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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