DON'T BE NAIVE | Jordan Peterson | #CLIP

it's not easy to find your own words but if you find your own words and they're truthful words there isn't anything that can stop them you think well do you believe that well let's go back to the sovereign idea are you sovereign citizens or not well if you are well why is that well it's because you have a certain faculty a certain power well what do you have you have the power of your convictions and your truth and your ability to communicate and that's what's supposed to set the state straight okay so you have that it's like well then maybe it's truth that you're pursuing and seeking if you have any sense and what's truth well truth is the best reflection you can manage of reality imperfect because you're imperfect but it's the best you've got it's like what what's going to be better for you than to have reality on your side and what's going to stand in your way if you have reality on your side live i don't think so that isn't how it works and i don't think anyone believes that because the other thing i've noted and discussed with people frequently is if you have someone that you love a child let's say and you're trying to raise a child in a decent manner you don't tell them look kid this is how the world runs everything's corrupt beyond belief including you and your parents and and society and nature for that matter it's just complete bloody hell everywhere and the only possible way that you can make it through life effectively is to learn to lie as brilliantly and undisguiseably as possible no one does that well why not if you believed in falsehood if you believe that that was the way forward then that would be the right thing to teach but you don't you teach your children to tell the truth even if it's painful and the reason for that is that you actually believe in the power of the truth i'll finish that with one thing there's there's a very interesting scene in revelations there's a very strange document appended to the end of the primary book in the western canon right and it's a hallucinogenic nightmare um revelation and in it christ comes back to earth and he's not the merciful savior of the gospels he's the judge and there's a reason for that a psychological reason and the reason is is that if you have an ideal and whatever christ is metaphysically or psychologically he's an ideal if you have an ideal an ideal is a judge because the ideal judges you right okay so he comes back as a judge he has a sword in his mouth and he judges that's saved in the and the damned and it's not pretty but here's something interesting it's so fascinating he saves his worst contempt and uses contemptuous language says i will spit you out of my mouth it really means i will vomit you out of my mouth not if you were a bad person not if you were a good person not if you were a bad person but if you sat on the bloody fence right if you were neither warm nor cold you wanted to play it both ways well i'll lie when it's in my favor and i'll tell the truth when it's expedient for me it's like you're you're in the category of the damned and i think that's absolutely right because that's real cowardice if you believed in falsehood it's like good get on with it man you can be a criminal and lay your life out and see how that works and if you believe in truth well then perhaps you put yourself on the line for the truth but you don't play the the two sides against the middle because there's there's nothing in that that isn't self-serving at the cost of your own well-being and at the cost of everyone else's so you have to think about you have to think about your relationship with the truth you know there isn't anything more important that you can do than that and because you're you're on you're i've seen people in major corporations that were corrupt and failing spend three years doing nothing but telling the truth often at their own peril fix the companies and it's such a relief to the people that they were talking to because they'd go talk to them that companies run by people who are not doing what they should be doing and they're questioning it's like okay well what's really going on here well no one wants to talk because they're afraid but the person who's doing the questioning actually wants to know and people start opening up and he gathers information it's like oh i see here's the real problems here it's like we've got all sorts of problems here this is why the company is in trouble but it's okay if we know the problems well then we can fix them and we'll go ahead and fix them and then the company will work and everybody who's terrified and won't say anything and isn't really working hard anymore because they're so dispirited and believing that the projects are corrupt and that the leadership isn't doing what it's supposed to they start having a bit of hope it's like really you mean you're actually willing to admit that that is the problem and you're going to give me a problem that is a real problem that i could actually work on and actually solve and benefit from that and the whole company switches around and and it that works it's not naive to believe that and i'll say one more thing about trust that's very much worth knowing so this is what you learn if you're a clinician most people who trust are naive and naive is not a virtue it's a fault it's partly a fault because if you're naive and you run into someone who's malevolent including you they might do you incalculable damage so that you will never recover so that's not a good thing you don't want to be naive if you're not naive that means you've been burned once or twice or three or four times and you know once you've been burned in that manner well then it's hard to trust because you think well why would i trust you or me for that matter knowing full well that i can be betrayed and so then you're cynical and you think that's an improvement over being naive you know it's you're more mature cynical than you are naive even if it's premature and it's often premature in young people it's like okay so how do you get out of that conundrum well this is a crucial thing to know you trust people because you're courageous that's why it's the same reason that you're grateful it's a mark of courage it's a mark of commitment it's like you and i we're gonna make an agreement and you're full of snakes and so am i and there's lots of ways this can go sideways but we're going to put together an agreement we're going to articulate it out we're going to try to find something that is of mutual benefit to both of us we're going to put our hands out and shake and we're going to try to stick to that and we're going to risk trusting each other right it's a risk and that's the risk upon which the state is based really like i believe and i think the evidence for this is very strong by the way i don't think that there is any other natural resource than trust and for trust you need courage not naivety and you go to overcome your cynicism so that you trust and then you ask yourself too if you don't trust your institutions it's like hey they're your institutions why don't you go out and do something about them you think well i can't it's like that's not true that is that is absolutely not true that that's there's there's nothing vaguely accurate about that in a society like this almost all of our democratic institutions are crying out for people to participate they can't find enough people to do it and if you participate and you and and you do it diligently and you have your say and you're careful and trustworthy and you and you and you and you and you speak your mind you can have way more effect than you think so if you're cynical about the institutions it's like look in the mirror because those institutions the corruption of those institutions is a direct reflection of your inability to get your act together and that's what it means to be a sovereign part of the western community so it's not someone else [Music]

Channel: John Anderson

Views: 167,984

Keywords: John Anderson, John Anderson Conversation, Interview, John Anderson Interview, Policy debate, public policy, public debate, John Anderson Direct, Direct, Conversations, naive, truth, speaking, society, leftist, chaos

Id: OdLQ8iFusJI

Length: 8min 18sec (498 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022