Jordan Petersons Unexpected Eye Opening Speech Why is everyone Silent about This

it took me a long time to understand why

there’s religious injunctions

supporting humility

to even understand what the word really

meant in that sort of technical sense

and it means something like this it

means what you don’t know is more

important than what you know

then then what you don’t know can start

to be your friend you see people are

very defensive about what they know and

for the reasons we’ve already discussed

but the thing is

you don’t know enough and the re you can

tell you don’t know enough because your

life is not what it could be and neither

is the life of the people around you you

just don’t know enough

and so

what that means is that every time you

encounter some evidence that you’re

ignorant someone points it out you

should be happy about that because you

think oh you just told me how i’m wrong

it’s like great like maybe i had to sift

through a lot of nonsense to get through

the real message that you’re telling me

but if you could actually tell me some

way that i’m wrong and then maybe give

me a hint about how to not be wrong like

that well then i wouldn’t have to be

wrong like that anymore that that would

be a good thing and you can embark on

that adventure by listening to people

and if you listen to people they will

tell you

they’ll tell you amazing things if you

listen to them and many of those things

are little tools that you can put in

your toolkit like batman and then you

can go out into the world and use those

tools and you don’t have to fall blindly

into a pit quite as often and so the

humility element is well

do you want to be right

or do you want to be learning

and then it’s deeper than that it’s do

you want to be the tyrannical king who’s

already got everything figured out or do

you want to be the continually

transforming hero or fool for that

matter who’s getting better all the time

and that’s actually a choice you know

it’s a deep choice and it’s better to be

the self-transforming fool who’s

humble enough to make friends with what

he or she doesn’t know and to listen

when people talk and listening is a

transformative exercise like if if you

listen to the people in your life for

example if you actually listen to them

they’ll tell you what’s wrong with them

and how to fix it and what they want

they can’t even help it if you start

listening because people are so shocked

if you actually listen to them that they

tell you all sorts of things that they

might not have even intended to things

they don’t even know and then you can

you can work with that

and the other thing that’s so

interesting you know now and then you

have a meaningful conversation right you

have a good conversation with someone

you walk when you think geez you know

what we really connected and i know more

than i did when i came away from that

conversation and during the conversation

you’re really engrossed in it

and that that feeling of being engrossed

is a feeling of meaning and the feeling

of meaning is engendered because you’re

having a transformative conversation

your brain produces that feeling of

meaning for it says oh yeah

this is exactly where you should be

right here and now it’s

it’s the right place and time for you

and that’s a great place to occupy and

so a good conversation where people are

listening has exactly that nature and

the reason it has that nature is because

it is in fact transformative it’s one of

the truisms of of clinical psychology

like if you’re a clinical psychologist a

huge part of what you do is just listen

to people

it’s like you know

they come in they’re unhappy and they’d

rather not be something like that you

say well

why do you think you might be unhappy

and they don’t know they have some ideas

they may have to ramble around for like

a year before they figure out why

they’re unhappy they get rid of a bunch

of reasons

why they thought they were unhappy that

are untrue and then you kind of get to

the heart of the problem then you might

ask them well

if you could have what you wanted so

that your life would be okay

what would that look like then they have

to ramble around a bunch about that

because they don’t really know but the

listening will straighten them out

because people think by talking and in

order to think you have to have someone

to listen because it’s very hard to

think hardly anyone can think and even

the people who can think can only think

about a limited number of things

i know you stated in the last lecture

that the importance for setting aims in

life and

to kind of have goals to uh work towards

right so my question was

how do you do that if you don’t know

where you want to go because that’s kind

of where i got stuck on your your future

authoring program because

okay that’s that’s a good question

that’s a really good question this

notion in the old testament that

morality is following a sequence of

prohibitions there’s a bunch of bad

things you shouldn’t do and then

basically you’re good enough

and i think there’s wisdom in that i

think that’s kind of where children

start right you

i mean i love children and all that but

they’re they’re they’re crazy little

creatures and they need to be you know

civilized and well partly what you do is

you you lay prohibitions on them and

mostly what you’re trying to do is lay

prohibitions on them

for the behaviors that if they

manifested would make their life

miserable this is why this thing that

i’ve said to people has become this

crazy internet meme but that’s to clean

up your room and

which which is a lot better and more

useful than people think it’s a lot

harder too but the the thing the first

thing you do i think and i learned this

in part from solzhenitsyn when he was

trying to iron out his soul when he was

in the gulag because he was trying to

figure out how he got there how he

contributed to how he got there you know

not stella and hitler even though they

were kind of to blame you know but there

was much he could do about that i think

what you have to do and this is part of

humility is you have to look around you

within your sphere of influence like the

direct sphere of influence and fix the

things that announce themselves as in

need of repair and those are often small

things you know and they can be like

your room put it in order because the

thing is it isn’t exactly so important

that your room is in order although it

is what’s important is that you learn

how to distinguish between chaos and

order and to be able to act in a manner

that produces order i think you can you

can do something as simple as just sit

on your bed and think okay there’s

probably like five things i could do

today so that

tomorrow morning is slightly better than

this morning was at least or at least

i’m not falling behind and those will

usually be it’s like having to eat a

toad in the morning right it’s like it’s

not going to be something you want to do

there’ll be things you’re trying to

avoid they’re snakes essentially but if

you ask yourself like you’re asking

someone which i think is a form of

prayer

if you ask yourself instead of telling

yourself you know what is it that i

could do to set things more right today

that i would actually do it’s usually

some small thing because you’re not that

disciplined you know then you can go do

it

and then you you put the world together

a little more when you do that

and that spreads out you also construct

yourself into something that’s better

able to

call order forth from chaos and that

makes you just incrementally stronger

and then the next day you can maybe take

on a slightly larger task and like you

get the benefit of compound interest if

you do that it’s a tremendously powerful

technique and i think if you do that

at some point

instead of just having to fix things up

that are not good you’ll start to get a

glimmer of the positive things that you

could do

the positive things that you could do

that would actually constitute a vision

and that that’s what i would recommend

you’re actually tougher than you think

you never knew that and maybe you didn’t

want to take on the responsibility

because you know people play a role in

their own demise so to speak when you

had opportunity to go out and explore or

withdraw because you were afraid you

chose to withdraw because you were

afraid so it’s not only that you were

over protected often it’s that you were

willing to take advantage of the

fact that you were over protected and

run back there whenever you had the

opportunity

you know so maybe you’re a kid in the

playground right and you’re having some

trouble with other kids and you know in

the back of your mind i should deal this

with deal with this myself but you go

and tell your mom and get her to

intervene and you know that that’s not

right you know that you’re breaking the

social contract but it’s easier and so

that’s what you do you run off to an

authority figure and hide behind the

great father

roughly speaking well the problem with

that is you don’t learn how to do it

yourself so then you have to relearn it

painfully when you’re 40.

so then you take people out

you say well what are you afraid of

rank it from one to ten

we’ll make a list of ten things you’re

afraid of the least the thing you’re

least afraid of we’ll call number ten

so we’ll start with that okay well i’m

afraid of elevators okay well let’s

let’s look at a picture of an elevator

let’s have you imagine

being in an elevator let’s go out to an

elevator and let you watch the terrible

jaws of death open because that’s how

you’re responding to it symbolically

right and you’re going to do that at it

at the the closest proximity you can

manage

you find out you go do that it works

you’re nervous as hell especially from

an anticipatory perspective shaking you

go out you stop you watch it happen and

you actually calm down you do that 10

times and it no longer bothers you

well what you’ve learned that you didn’t

die but more importantly than that

you’ve learned that you could withstand

the threat of death that’s what you’ve

learned

and then you move a little closer and

then you move a little closer and then

you move a little closer and finally

you’re back in what’s no longer the

elevator from a symbolic perspective

it’s a tomb right it’s it’s a place of

enclosure and isolation and you learn

turns out i can withstand that and then

you’re met much more together much more

confident and that’s often one of the

things that often happens in situations

like that i’ve seen this multiple times

is that

if you run someone through an exposure

training process like that and and

toughen them up a man of renown but he

was old

but he was also willfully blind and it

was the combination of his age and his

willful blindness that allowed seth to

chop him up into pieces and and depose

him and so that with that fair enough

it’s brilliant right it’s like why do

states fall apart

because the structures get old and no

one’s taking care of them and people

have their eyes closed

and so it’s the same situation it’s the

same situation in the flood myths it’s

like well yeah things fall apart and

they’re going to flood but if you were

awake enough

and you were on top of it then you could

continually stave that off and actually

partly what you’re doing

because you’re alive is staving off

entropy like you’re an anti-entropic

process it’s a really good definition of

life there’s a great physicist named

erwin schrodinger who wrote a book

called what is life and that’s the

fundamental thesis of the book you’re

always trying to stave off entropy

what’s the best way to stave off entropy

decay chaos

keep your eyes open

that’s the rule shut your eyes

especially to things you know you should

see the flood comes and that’s the evil

of man that’s laid out in this story

because that’s the worst sort of perhaps

it’s not the worst it’s one of the

primary sins so to speak that will bring

about the flood we already talked about

the other things that characterized

cain’s attitude

so god’s upset because he made man on

the earth and grieved him at his heart

and god says i will destroy man whom i

have created from the face of the earth

both man and beast and the creeping

thing and the fowls of the air

i repent that i’ve made them

but noah found grace in the eyes of the

lord okay so that’s an interesting thing

so here what we have is

the question is

the whole world’s in chaos at this point

right in this point in the story and the

chaos is of multiple sorts it’s it arose

from the fall it rose from the emergence

of self-consciousness it emerged safe

arose from the sins of of cain like

things are not going well it’s multiple

levels of collapse

i said with bill c-16 that i wouldn’t

speak the language of the radical

leftists because i don’t think that that

language should define the game but

let’s say it does

so here’s the game

the world is a battleground of groups

and

they’re battling for power that’s it

that’s the game and some of them win and

they oppress those who don’t win so

that’s how we’re going to view the world

okay now the leftists say okay well

here’s the oppressed people the

oppressors

the patriarchy type patriarchal types

they should be ashamed of themselves and

give up some power

the right wingers the radical

right-wingers look at that and they say

oh i see so the game is ethnic identity

is it it’s identity politics okay

we’re white males

we’re not going to lose

that’s the right wing version of

identity politics it’s like screw you

if we’re going to divide into groups if

we’re going to divide into tribes

and i’m in my tribe

i’m not going to get all guilty and lose

i’m going to get all cruel and win

and that’s like then you think well

there’s people in the middle they’re

kind of looking back and forth which

side of the identity politics spectrum

am i going to fall in

do i want to be driven primarily by

compassion and

am i going to accept guilt for my

historical privilege so that’s one

possibility and then i’m the oppressor

i’m the member of the oppressor group or

am i going to say no to hell with that

i’m just going to play the win well then

i’m going to go to the right it’s like

well my sense is how about we don’t play

either of those games and the reason we

shouldn’t play them is

well the soviets played the left wing

game and like killed who knows how many

tens of millions of people you can’t

even count it accurately the estimates

range from 20 to 100 million those are

pretty big error bars and the maoists

may be 100 million certainly 60 million

so okay that didn’t work out so well

then there’s the nazis like they played

ethnic identity politics and racial

superiority it’s like what do we want to

play that game

see what i’ve been trying to do really

what i’ve been trying to do for the last

30 years is say look there’s heavy

temptations to play those sorts of games

but that’s not the only game in town

it’s a much better game to play

individual it’s like get your act

together

stand up in the world make something of

yourself stay away from the ideological

oversimplifications

set your house in order that’s rule six

in the in the in this book so i have a

book rule in there says set your house

in perfect order before you criticize

the world and it’s a very dark chapter

about the motivations of the columbine

high school killers and this other guy

named carl panzram who was a serial

rapist and arsonist and murderer and

these he wrote an autobiography and the

columbine kids also wrote about why they

did what they did they’re resentful to

the core bitter bitter resentful

terrible and

well i’m suggesting that people stay

away from that resentfulness and

bitterness even though life is hard and

there’s malevolence in the world it’s

like yeah you can you can tell a story

where everyone’s a victim

because we all die we all get sick

you know and things happen to us that

are

bitter and terrible betrayal deceit lies

like people hurt us on purpose you know

so it’s not just the tragedy of life

it’s malevolence as well everyone’s a

victim you can tell that story the

problem is if you tell that story and

you start to act it out you make all of

that worse

that’s the problem

and it’s so this is why partly i got

attracted to christian imagery at least

in part

because there’s an idea in christianity

that you should pick up your goddamn

cross and like walk up the hill

dramatically that’s correct

that’s the right answer it’s like you’ve

got a heavy load of suffering to bear

and a fair bit of it’s going to be

unjust so what are you going to do about

it accept it voluntarily

and try to transform as a consequence

that’s the right answer it’s the right

answer because the rest of it is

tribalism and we’re we’re too

technologically powerful to get all

tribal again

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