Jordan B. Peterson - Liberty University

I want to start by recognizing our athletic teams this spring they've accomplished so much I've got a I can't be at all the games but I've got a 70 year old second cousin his name is Terry Falwell he works in the visitor center and he goes to every single game in every sport and he sends me texts throughout the game telling me the score and so I called her coaches and I say look I might not be sitting there but I'm following you I called Richardson saw a lady's softball just an incredible season men's baseball of course men's baseball but baseball is for no against ACC teams this year they beat USC the Scott Jackson is doing an incredible job there of course ladies women's basketball went all the way to the championship game in the a-sun first year in the a-sun and that was with one of their best players injured so congratulations lady flames and Kerry green and finally of course our our men's hockey team has had an incredible year so we're that's why we brought in a Canadian speaker today guys it's for you all right and then of course it was so fun last weekend to go to California and watch the men's basketball to play it off I just hit a cold spot where they missed nine in a row if it hadn't been for that we'd been in the sweet 16 but we're so proud of them went in in the n-c-double-a tournament I know I have to have an excuse but that's my excuse but they are best team in school history I think they ended up 29 and 7 has just never been done before so coach Richie McKay men's basketball we're proud of you I'm so honored to introduce our speaker today dr. Jordan Peterson he's he's he's a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto a clinical psychologist he's published 100 more than 100 scientific papers with students and colleagues he's nominated for five consecutive years as the best as the best university lecturer in Ontario he's a best-selling author of 12 rules for life an antidote for chaos number one for nonfiction in 2018 in the US and Canada UK Australia New Zealand Sweden the Netherlands Brazil in Norway he's got two million plus social media followers so I hope he has a good experience here today and his podcast has nearly a million views per episode he's travelling today with his mother Beverly Petersen she's right over here becky has flowers for you thank you for being with us today we're honored so please welcome to Liberty Universe after the video introduction I want you to welcome to Liberty University dr. Jordan Peterson is undeniably one of the greatest intellectual phenomenons of our generation dr. Jordan Peterson obviously your Providence has just blown up in the last year and a half he has nearly 2 million subscribers on YouTube and has talks to sell out in a matter of minutes increasingly young people in particular find themselves disoriented in our world it isn't clear to them how it is that they should grow up and take their place in the world what would your life be like if you made use of all the potential that you were offered you need to have the capacity for danger but you need to learn how to not use it except when it's necessary and that is not the same as being harmless there's nothing virtuous about harmlessness everything this man says I think it's common sense you are misrepresented more than anyone I know people paint you as this figure of oppressive white male patriarchy why should your rights to freedom of speech from a trans person ease right what's behind it because in order to be able to think you have to risk being offensive I mean look at the conversation we're having right now you're you're doing what you should do which is digging a bit to see what's going on and that is what you should do but you're exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me and that's fine I think more power to you as far as I'm concerned you haven't sat there and I'm just trying I'm just trying to wipe that out I mean gotcha yeah I've got me you have caught me I'm trying to wait left turns my head yeah come on come on with your hands together for dr. Jordan Peterson such an honor to have you here honestly by far the most just requested speaker this semester it seems like so many of our students are watching your videos they're logging on to hear what you have to say many have been impacted by your books and so for all of you who keep hounding me about getting dr. Peterson here he's finally here can we again and welcome up to the house so many of our students I've just been impacted by you over three million books have been sold I walked into the Barnes & Noble the other day and you know you're doing well when you've gotten good product placement in a book right in the front but you know you're doing really well where they have stacks and stacks of your book behind the cash register just to keep up with the demand and the young lady that was there started talking to me a little bit and then this other employee came up and he said it's been interesting so many men are buying this book typically women are a lot more frequent you know shoppers at a bookstore these days but he said this book is just taking over the world and so why do you think it has it has just touched a nerve why do you think this book has really triggered 12 rules of life you know just and really connected with so many people well I think the fundamental reason I've sort of learned this in live lectures that I've been doing is I visited about 150 cities with my wife over the last year just a lot of cities and I've watched the audiences very carefully and listen to them to see what resonates and what doesn't and I think the the basic argument that I've been laying out is that while people we all have difficult lives you know that life is characterized in in large part by suffering there's an inevitable of suffering in life I mean obviously that symbolized in Christianity by the crucifixion which is a very harsh symbol and and not only is life sorrowful in in in part but it's also touched by malevolence and levels of each of us and the malevolence of our social creations our societies and even in some sense the kind of blind malevolence of nature and so it's it's it's it's it's a demanding occupation to to exist as a human being and you need something to sustain yourself through that it's not optional because the the price of existence is so high that without that sustaining meaning it it it corrupts you it embitters you and and once you're embittered things go downhill rapidly you get vengeful and you get angry and and you get destructive and then there's really no limit to that and I've been suggesting to people that the sustaining meaning that they can find in their life isn't to be found through happiness let's say because happiness doesn't work when you're not happy when when when when things have gone badly for you for even for accidental reasons but you can find sustaining meaning and responsibility and you can take responsibility for yourself you can do that and if you take responsibility for yourself you treat yourself as if you're someone that's worthy of care and discipline and then and then that has nothing to do with being soft on yourself or the pursuit of pleasure any of those things you can take responsibility for yourself and that works and then if you do that property you can take responsibility for your family and then if you do that properly you can take responsibility for your community and you can continue to burden yourself voluntarily let's say with without great in greater range of existential challenges and all that that does is make more and more and more of you and that works as an antidote to their catastrophe of life and you know so will I speak to my audiences seriously and pessimistically in some sense about part of the substructure of existence that the mortal side the fragile side but conclude I would say that there's more to you than there is to what faces you and I believe that to be true and then I'm encouraging people to to attempt that and I think part of the reason that the book has been perhaps particularly popular among men is because I don't think we do a very good job at the moment of encouraging men we have this idea that there's something intrinsically oppressive about the patriarchy and about masculinity in general and I think that's nonsense I think that strong honest truthful courageous men pursuing noble goals is of great benefit to everyone male and female alike [Applause] [Music] and I want that to happen I want that to happen so many universities in the United States now are 60% female the student body I don't know if it's like that in Canada or not oh yeah it's the same it's the same thing and then that's and that's changing extraordinarily rapidly at the rate the demographic shift is occurring there won't be a man left in the humanities or the Social Sciences in ten years and and that's clearly a it's clearly a failure on the part of the universities to have that happen it's wonderful to see women entering the sphere of higher education on Moz but but something is out of balance and it's and since you know for better or worse as men and women were bonded together intractably we have to ensure that our institutions are set up so that they're of optimal benefit to to everyone ever otherwise everyone pays do you think that there's with so much fatherlessness that that might have been another reason why you're just really seeing so many not just women but a lot of men just show up and read your book come to your events heard you tell a story about a father and son that you met in LA oh yeah you tell that story really quickly oh yeah it was I also think it touches to the point that you really seem to care about the people that your book is affecting at a very personal level I by the way I loved your opening it's so nice to come to a gathering like this it isn't characterized by a like like a toxic under structure of cynicism you know I see that in so many universities and it's really corrosive and I hate to see it among young people because well first of all you haven't earned your cynicism that would be the first thing but second while ii because it's so corrosive and it's such a catastrophe to go to Institutes of higher learning and see that what's being developed in young people when they're first starting to open themselves up to the world is a cynicism that tells them before they know anything that life is a terrible catastrophe human beings are a cancer on the face of the planet and nothing can be done about it and it was so lovely to see the opening ceremony here and then to feel that the what would you say the yeah the warmth and the welcoming and and and and the genuine you seem genuinely pleased to be here and look at there's twelve thousand of you coming out to this and congratulations to you I would say that's a real compliment to use a student body I was at we were at an airport in Virginia yesterday that we're looking at as a model for the one we're gonna do here at new London and that the manager of the airport says every time he comes here he's just shocked at how students walk up to him ask him if he needs directions welcome so welcoming to him so give yourselves a hand I'm proud of you oh that story [Music] and of course that answer made me lose track of the original question so you'll have to ask me that question again well I think I think actually something that president Falwell said triggered a video that we might we were thinking about maybe showing and I think it's such a black and white comparative of what's happening right now and so many Institutes of higher learning versus maybe one of the reasons where we're seeing an unlikely growth what other people are seeing just really a decline this is a video in 2016 where you came down to meet with some some students from your University at the University of Toronto I think it's also a perfect echo of Cambridge last week disinviting you by calling you close-minded in the irony of that that they would be close minded to hear you out but this right here is pretty much the same vein just this idea that an institute of higher learning would be afraid to hear someone out would be afraid to just come and listen to new ideas let's let's watch this video and I'd love to get some comments from you about [Applause] [Applause] [Music] well as you can see that you own it some free speech are capable of thinking among something articulate noise all right so I want to tell you a couple things about what this is about as far as I'm concerned I'm not going to talk about sexual politics it's not my primary concern but I'm going to talk about is ready to speak and I want to tell you a few things about freedom taking office very carefully I've been thinking about this very carefully over the last two weeks [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] so why do you think people are so afraid that just hear someone out or why'd drown out try to white noise maybe a thought that you might disagree with but certainly you don't need to be disrespectful you're such a champion for freedom of speech because you believe there are things to be said that can really affect someone's life in a positive way one of the things that it's necessary to understand is that inside the philosophical confines of the postmodernist movement as it manifests itself in universities currently is that it's very very important to understand this because otherwise you don't know what you're facing there is no debate about free speech because for the post modernists especially the ones that that have a Marxist leaning there is no such thing as free speech because you see in order for there to be free speech there have to be sovereign individuals not mere members of a group and in the postmodernist world there are no sovereign individuals that's a that's a judeo-christian oppressive Western patriarchal arbitrary presupposition it's your group identity that's its primary and paramount you don't have ideas and thoughts you have what you've been socially conditioned to believe and the exchange of ideas is nothing but a power game that's played between groups of people who are opposing each other for predominance on the world stage that's it and so it's not a debate about the value of free speech that that's a trivial debate in some sense it's a debate about whether free speech itself actually constitutes a genuine phenomenon and in classically speaking what we presume is that each of us are sources of information let's say that might be our opinions it might be our knowledge and that buy through the through honest discourse through truth essentially we can negotiate an agreement that will be if not to our mutual benefit which would be optimal at least capable of establishing something approximating peace and all of that idea all of those ideas are under I would say serious assault by the postmodernist types in the modern universities and so the reason that I was shut down at that free speech protest let's say which by the way was an open mic event all those people that were there who were trying to shut me down had the opportunity to speak after after I spoke and the noise you heard was a white noise generator which was far louder than appeared on them on the video and the reason that I was speaking forcefully let's say or perhaps even somewhat angrily by the end was because not only was the Frese the white noise generator help I just wanted to meet you I hope that you're not there find the help that you need [Music] [Music] [Music] exams professors like Gary having us here to face and we we just have to remember that David you know we're older were setting set in life and these guys are just coming up and yeah and so you guys will all be in our prayers to let me tell you something I think what you just saw is where a lot of you are but David's just honest enough to cry for help and some of your a place and this is what I think why your book has connected with people you're at a place where you're just looking for answers no one ever taught you basic principles of life basic survival skills no one ever told you to make your bed or to show up and listen and learn and then the dam breaks and in those moments I'd rather you be here in this context and in this community because I can tell you from our community group leaders to our Ras to our RSS and to every student here that we think God has you here for more than just an education but for community and polo don't clap hold on I want us to alleviate what God's saying in this moment and I'll be the first to tell you in front of our distinguished guests that these rules work but all of them stop short without the ruler without Christ in your life and and we are here for that we're here for you I'm so glad that happened because I think it just elevated part of me it was a little hard on David now why do you think why do you think men like that and so many of us are just crying out for help finally obviously you just see this visible manifestation like that's not conjured up that's real why do you think that it's so obvious why people are in like for me as a clinical psychologist I've always looked at things I think in some ways from the opposite perspective of most it may be even most psychologists okay it's never been a mystery to me why people are depressed it's never been a mystery to me why people are anxious and unsettled it seems obvious why they're concerned and hurt and anxious and unsettled I think the mystery is how it is that we can conduct ourselves so that that can remain under control I mean people deal with very heavy burdens in their life you know you you don't have to talk to someone for very long someone you might might be thinking is doing quite well in the world and and sometimes people are but you don't have to scratch very deep beneath the surface before you find out that they have a family member who has a serious illness or someone who's suffering through a economic crisis of one form or another or or who there's some source of genuine tragedy one degree removed from them if it's even removed and most people even as individuals have at least one serious problem that they're dealing with and so it's no mystery that people find it difficult to orient themselves in the world mystery is well what can do about it and we do know what you can do about it and you know Jonathan Hite wrote a book recently oh no I'm afraid that it's uh the name of the book has escaped me it's about the college situation and and the snowflake culture and one of the things that he pointed out along with lukianov who's his co-author was that if you're a psychotherapist of any sort particularly a behavioral therapist what you help people do is to identify their problems that's the first thing is to confront what's there the reality of what's there as bluntly as possible and so you often end up as a psychotherapist talking to people about their array of problems as it's as if they're putting their cards on the table and you sort out their problems just like and know they often decide that many of the things that are bothering them are not really that important they can wait but that there are crucial life challenges that present themselves to them and they're not just psychological problems although sometimes they are there there are problems in life right existential problems and then what you do is you help people break them down into manageable units let's say strategically and confront them voluntarily you know and there's an echo of that idea there's an echo of that in Christian thinking and the echo for that is to pick up your cross voluntarily which is that you have you have a an unavoidable mortal burden to bear in life there's no escape from it except to directly confront it and to take it on voluntarily and what's so fascinating about that two things one is that psychotherapists of every stripe understand that this is one of the primary reasons that psychotherapy works is no dispute about that among all the different psychotherapeutic schools is that the confrontation of existential problems voluntary confrontation is curative and that's really something and so and and and and and the practical aspect of that is quite straightforward it it it also indicates practical and philosophical it also indicates to you that there's far more to you than you think because it turns out that you have substantial problems genuine deep problems of malevolence and suffering but that if you decide that you will take that on as your responsibility that you can put yourself together psychologically just the courage and you can actually solve the problems and then and that seems to be true it's it's it's not a naive wish it seems to be well within our capacity and I mean that's part of the message I would say of 12 rules for life is that darkest things are there is more light in you than you know what to do with and there's more light in you than you can possibly manifest and and then the way to find that out is to to challenge yourself against these massive problems and to find out that you're the one that can deal with them so that's a great thing to know and so maybe the context isn't the most preferred but you just you have someone who just initiates the conversation and crying out for help and you're you know this is what you do your clinical psychologist so on a very practical everyday language you know for those of us who just what is a good first step if someone is sitting here and they're saying and I'm not gonna jump on stage and cry for help but I'm at a place where I'm thinking about ending my life I'm in such a dark season in my life where I feel like the valley is the Lotus that's ever been what is the first step right now that you would say look I would say that if you're if you're seriously suicidal and you can tell if you are if you have a plan like a plan that you've that you've played out in fantasy multiple times if you know how you would do it and win and where and if you fantasize about the aftermath like if that's a well-developed plan then you should go talk to someone you should talk to someone professional you should let a friend know you should let a family member know like you need to do that you're at risk you're in danger under those circumstances in in less serious circumstances I would say people often ask me if I pray which is an annoying question as far as I'm concerned but they still ask me that and I've suggested a form of Prayer which I would say I do engage in and that is - practically speaking to do something like sit on the edge of my bed door on the edge of a chair and to think there's probably something that I'm doing wrong or not doing well enough that I'm being blind to that I could fix and that I would fix you know you know you need both of those right because there's lots of things about your life that you know aren't right that you could fix but you won't who knows why you don't have the discipline or the vision or the courage or or or the integrity of character or the maturity or god only knows the reasons but there are some things that you're doing wrong or not doing that you could fix that you would fix and you have to sit and and and ask and now I think it's it's it's the reflection of the new testament idea that if you knock the door will open you know and if you ask you will receive it's a very interesting line because it's it sounds like something that's naively optimistic it sounds like it's representing God as you know the grantor of wishes in some sense but I don't believe that's what it means at all I think what it means is that if you actually want to know something and you actually want to devote yourself to something if you're willing to make the proper sacrifices right and reorient yourself that you can move towards what you're aiming at and I can tell you that if you ask yourself in all humility how it is that you could be better and what you could do in a small way to move in that direction that first of all you will receive an answer about what you're doing wrong it's not that much different than thinking we don't regard that is particularly miraculous like you can ask yourself a question and come up with an answer but if you ask yourself a question about how it is that you're lesser than you could be and what you could do about that you'll find out and then if you do that then you won't be lesser and that works and it especially works it's a nice form of humility as well because what you're gonna find out if you ask that question is it's not going to be something you're proud of it's gonna be some little rotten element of your character that you're ashamed of in fifteen different ways and and for good reason and it's it's and even the attempt to triumph over it isn't going to be something that you're going to be able to trump it proudly to your friends and your family because you know to fight off something that's shameful is a private affair in some sense but you can do it and if you can improve your life incrementally in that manner if you have the humility one of the things Carl Jung the famous psychoanalyst said about modern people which I loved was that modern people can't see God because they won't look low enough and a lot of that lowness is internal it's like well what's not good enough about me and the other thing that's so lovely about that is you're not gonna do anyone any harm you know if you find out something that you're lacking if you discover something you're lacking first of all great you've discovered something you're lacking and you need that thing you're lacking because life is difficult it's gonna call everything that there is out of you so you need that thing that you're lacking and then you can work on it incrementally and and humbly you know humbly meaning you can work on it in the way that someone as flawed as you could work on it successfully and then and then you and then it works and then things get better and as they get better they tend to get better and better and so that's very practical and and very much in keeping with psychotherapeutic practice and wisdom and and I would say with ancient wisdom in genie in general and so that's a that's a lovely that's a lovely set of things to know in my opinion Becky told me not to talk much because they're here to hear you know me today so but I am gonna ask two questions back to you okay all right could you tell them about the online course you developed that we discussed in the back that help helps improve retention colleges and sure because we're thinking about working together on that if yeah you don't mind yeah well you know I realized a number of years ago with my colleagues that and this really came as a shock to me talking to my 19 year old students 20 year old students who'd been in the formal education system for say 18 15 years and what I realized it was with him of course I was teaching called maps of meaning which is based on the first book that I wrote and it's just it's a book about how our existence or even our perceptions our motivations or emotions are grounded in narrative they're grounded in stories and and I believe the scientific evidence for that is actually overwhelming as well as the as the cloak Willey of it evidence so these are Jesus taught and pair yes it's the most effective way of teaching and what will look you'll go you'll go will pay money to go see movies to be instructed by stories it's it's it's a very deep part of our character in any case I realized that my students hadn't ever really been asked to write their own stories and you know you can write a story about who you've been and you can write a story about who you are now but you can also write a story about how you who you could be and you know they'd had they had written essays on all sorts of abstract topics and been asked to think to some degree deeply about those topics but no one had ever sat them down and said explicitly okay look kid like here's the deal you can have what you want and need assuming you're taking care of yourself right assuming that you're you're starting out with the proper attitude towards yourself which is that you're worthy of care and respect and and there's something to you that that's valuable that at least could be developed you need to give yourself that amount of credit like like you would with anyone that you might be willing to attempt to care for and love and then the next question is all right you can have what you want but you have to specify it what would you like from your friends three to five years down the road what would you like your friendship network to look like what would you like to do well how would you like your career to to shape itself how are you going to take care of your family your your and then what about children and and a and and a long-term mate wife or husband what are you going to do with your time outside of work that's useful and engaging and meaningful and productive how are you going to take care of yourself mentally and physically and how are you going to withstand temptation so that it doesn't take you down in the particular way the temptation might take you down and so you're asked to write a few sentences not to be obsessive about it but to sketch it out like a bad first draft you know and then you're asked to write for fifteen minutes is like okay it's three to five years down the road and you have what you need and want to make your life what it needs to be so that you can be a good person in the face of the suffering of life what does it look like and then we ask people to do the contrary which I think is also useful which is all right well consider for a moment your the multitude of your faults and the direction those faults could pull you in and everyone knows that everyone has a sense of how they would fall apart in their own particular manner with their own particular weaknesses this it's three to five years down the road and you let that part of your character dominate what particular corner of hell is it that you're now occupying and so now you have something to aim at you have a purpose right and and that that's motivating people need a purpose in life it it you need it a purpose neural chemically because without a purpose you don't feel any positive motivation or any positive emotion like our positive emotion is linked to our pursuit of valuable goals that's how our brains are set up and and so you need that that positive goal and also to stop you from being unduly uncertain and anxious because nothing is specified enough and you need something to run away from and so you can run away from the worst in you you can escape from the worst in you and you can move towards the best in you and and then we have people write out a strategic plan for the accomplishment of their of their goals it's called the future authoring program by the way it's available online at a site called self authoring dot-com and we we've tried it with thousands of university students now and it's had a remarkable effect on their retention the effect is approximately 25 percent we decrease dropout by 25% and it seems to be most effective for the most disaffected students so it works better for men because women are outperforming men acted and it actually works better for non West non Western ethnic minority men having a tremendous impact on their likelihood of staying in university and also on their grades and so we were speaking this morning about the potential utility of while of offering that to your to your online students in the hope that that would but the thing that was so strange to me when I was developing that program and this was like it was a miracle negative miracle of sorts it just struck me as so palpably surreal that we would spend 15 years educating people and never once sit them down seriously and say okay look you can craft yourself to some degree you have the capacity to write your destiny not not in its in its entirety but at least as a sequence of aims and having done that you you need also to justify it so for example one of the things we asked people to do once they've specified a goal is to say well okay imagine you achieve this goal okay so why is that good for you why is it good for your family why is it good for your community you know because if you want to be locked in on a goal in a manner that's sufficient to take you through the trials that will occur while you're pursuing this goal especially if it's a high order goal and it's difficult then you need an explicit philosophy a rationale for why this is worth pursuing it's like well here's what it'll do for me and in the sense of the development of my character and my capacity to deal with the world and here's how it'll strengthen my family and here's how it will benefit the community and then having formulated those arguments you have that you have that that that body of carefully articulated thought that enables you to chase away the doubts that will inevitably accrue as you're attempting to do something difficult you have to negotiate with yourself and you have to justify what you're doing carefully and philosophically deeply so that you have the commitment and the strength of character that enables you to push through times that are difficult and so well so we discovered that that hadn't been done except in in in in isolated cases there was some business people who are working on similar projects and a man at the University of Texas at Austin James Panabaker and the program has been phenomenally successful and thousands of people have now done it online and so and I can I'll close this by saying if you have any interest in doing this which I would recommend it's also okay to do it badly because a good first draft aim for your life is incomparably better than vague nihilistic hopelessness and and you're not gonna get it right anyways because what do you know you know you're gonna pursue your goal avidly for a year or so especially at your age and you can learn a bunch and then your trajectory is gonna shift but it doesn't matter because the trick is to get the process of moving forward toward the aim started and then to have the humility to make course changes along the way as you inform yourself and so it gets the ball rolling and so it's been very gratifying to have developed that because it seems to have been of great use to many people how many of you would be interested in taking that course if we made it available good number I've asked dr. Gary Habermas to join us today he's one of our top scholars on the faculty he was actually one of my professors here in 1982 84 but he I just teaches at Oxford and his in addition to Liberty Oxford Cambridge Edinburgh anything would you like to ask dr. Peterson about go ask them yeah no I would I wasn't prepared for that but let me let me do this one year ago last Easter somebody sent me a posting from your one of your postings and it included an article that I wrote a really brief one on the resurrection and you made a comment there you said not the article but the topic you said this may be the most important topic I've ever considered that you've been thinking about that for a long time or you know this Easter questions or opportunity this the sticking point I would say with the atheist community and the Christian community let's say I don't really think is the existence of God that's a sticking point and it's not trivial but I think the true sticking point is the idea of the bodily resurrection of Christ right and that's that's a very rough sticking point because it's it's key to Christianity and it flies in the face of standard the standard materialist objective view of the world and so it's something that I wrestle with continually and then I think that's okay I mean one of the things I learned I love this I did a series of biblical lectures in 2017 and one of the things I learned and I should have known this before but I didn't was that the word Israel the name Israel means he who wrestles with God and so that the chosen people the people of Israel are people who wrestle with God and I do think that that's that is the sign of a life that's being lived properly because if God is the source of meaning let's say among other things the source of significance this is the source of purpose and and and the the place where answers might can conceivably emerge it is a wrestling if you're honest because no one knows enough to be certain of anything in some sense and what you do as you pursue the adventure of your life if you do pursue it is to wrestle with those questions of ultimate meaning and the positive element of the idea that it's those who wrestle that are already the chosen people is it's it's such a lovely idea because it means that despite our doubt which is inevitable I believe the fact that we're willing to contend with that doubt and to move forward in our lives already puts us on the right track and so that's a lovely thing well we miss the resurrection it's it's it's it's it's an issue that that I wrestle with continually because there's so much in the New Testament that is profound beyond comprehension I mean them you see this in bible--and the biblical writings in general like the story of Cain and Abel for example is ten sentences it's some fragment of a story it's not even a full paragraph and it's infinitely deep you you could study that story and analyze it for your entire life and never get to the bottom of it it's a real miracle that a story like that can exist and there are statements in the New Testament that are like that they're so surprising you see that in the Sermon on the Mount in particular but not only their that are so surprising that it's almost impossible to understand how they could have come about from from from the standard scientific materialist perspective say but the claim is so overwhelming and also so mysterious that I don't know what to make of it I don't know what to make of the idea of the physical resurrection it's even it's it's complicated conceptually right within the confines of the Gospels themselves I don't know what it means metaphysically I understand what it means symbolic and that's usually the approach I attack it take given that I'm a psychologist I mean I do believe that the part of the human being that leads us to redemption is the part of us that dies when it's in error and is reborn as something better and new and I think that's true practically and scientifically and metaphysically it's true at every level of existence but I also don't know what it would mean to live that way fully you know if you were fully awake to your errors and fully taking advantage of every opportunity that was put before you and fully devoted to the good to the highest good that you could conceptualize I have no idea what the limit of transformation might be for for a human being because we're very mysterious creatures in a very mysterious world at lunch he'll get just get you clear on the resurrection one fun question I noticed I noticed that you you've done some extreme activities once you sailed around Alcatraz and a cardboard box or something whoa it was racing sailboat so which was slightly better than a cardboard box yeah so that was that was a great day that was I went to a asteroid crater with a bunch of astronauts so that was interesting and I have a brother-in-law who works for Intel who's an absolutely dangerous genius who has a carbon-fiber stunt plane which is a remarkable device and we did a lot of aerobatic in that including something called a hammerhead roll which so when you do a hammerhead roll in a plane you you you aim the plane directly upward and eventually it will stall unless it's a rocket and it's not it's a prop plan eventually it will stall and when it stalls it falls backwards and so in a hammerhead roll you drive you fly upward until plane stalls and falls backwards and levels out and then dives straight down and so that's when I was reading your BIOS exciting absolutely good when I read your bio and I got to that part I said good we do have something in common I know but I I wake surfed on the James River a few years ago with no rope behind it but and I learned how to snowboard just recently and I learned how to wakeboard a few years ago that's that's a big thing for somebody my age but and the swim and dive team got me to jump off the 33 foot diving platform when it when it opened a few months ago that's aggressive I don't know if I could do that had a whole crowd screaming so I had okay so it was either it was either coward or or or hero right yeah and I'm scared to death of heights anyway all right David I'm sorry Becky's gonna be mad at me it's fine hey young young young man the young man's name is David and he's not a Liberty student he's his friends with a Liberty student who graciously has begun to see that there's things in his life where he means he's crying out for help and so David came to a Bible study yes last night with a friend of his and then his friend invited him to come here you dr. Peterson and I just want to make sure we don't lose what god I think God predestined this moment for us and I want to I want to just thank God he's a tricky character you know he does he does he does put things on that got a skit I want to make sure we don't miss this moment dr. Peterson we can give David your 12 books 12 rules in that book we can give him your next book which is 12 more rules and he can they will be helpful to him I gave your book to my daughter they will be helpful to her I read the books I see Bible verses attached around them but without David submitting bending his need of Christ and just saying I don't want to clean up the behavior or deal with the symptoms what's broken in me is my heart doesn't belong to the Savior who's sitting on the throne where how does your book go beyond behavioral modification and walk into soul transformation you know you got to get on a plane here in a minute and go back to Toronto but David so he's crying out for help he needs someone who's omnipresent and so can you just help us understand what does David do once he's done with the last page of your book and he begins to apply these things because I know a lot of cleaned up people they're just as messed up as he is I'm that way sometimes so what can you tell me how Christ not just become a perfect model and behavior police but how does he become who he says he is when he claims to be God in David's life well this we talked about this a little bit last night about the idea that and and I wouldn't say that my ideas are fully formulated about this like they're one of the things that Carl Jung pointed out was that when you matured you needed to replace your father with the father right because otherwise your father stayed does the father and then that wasn't good because there's a confusion there between the individual your father of course you have respect for perhaps depending of course on your father but hopefully and the transcendent idea of the father itself if you're trying to put yourself together there's the the concept of yourself put together but then there's the transcendent idea of being put together itself and the idea of Christ at least and I'm speaking to you as a psychologist and I try to limit myself to that is that that's the embodiment the symbolic embodiment at minimum of the idea of the human ideal it's it's what it's it's it's it's the highest ideal that we can conceive of and if you go into an old cathedral and you look at the dome of the cathedral and that's the sky that's the cosmos and you see Christ portrayed on the ceiling as Pantocrator as creator of the world the idea there is something like it's something like consciousness and soul participates in the ongoing code generation of creation and that your goal as a human being is to participate in that creation in the in the most ethical manner possible so imagine it this way we can think about this very practically so you wake up in the morning your consciousness reimburses on on the stage of existence and what you're confronted by is the potential of the day this is something that's referred to in the Sermon on the Mount to concentrate on the day but so we use the day as our unit of analysis you see the day as a set of possible pathways you could do this you could do that you could not do this you could not do that and-and-and your conscience speaks to you to almost immediately I would say upon awakening here's something I need to do today to keep things in order here's something I need not to do today to keep things in order here's my my set of obligations that I need to undertake so that when I go to sleep tonight I can sleep with a clear conscience and things are better than they might have otherwise be and so what you see in front of you is the potential of the world and to me you see that's akin to the potential that God confronted in Genesis at the beginning of time that's the meaning of that story is that there's a potential that that that is confronted by an attitude from the attitude that is appropriate in relationship to that confrontation is the attitude of the logos and the logos is something like courage that that's one of its primary attributes and truth that's the other now there's more but but I would say if you had to boil it down to 2 it would be courage and truth and so there's this notion see what happens in Genesis is God employs the logos to generate order out of potential and every time he does that he says and it was good and the idea there is that if you confront the potential that's in front of you with truth and courage that what you do is you take what could be and you transform it into is and you do that and you transform it into what is that's good and then you have that that is you that's that's that's your soul that's the thing that as Genesis points out that it gives you that affinity with God that the fact that you're made in the image of God is the fact that you have that capability and that that that capability to take that potential and to make the world out of it is also dependent on your ethical choices and everyone knows that right even if we can't articulate it you know you know perfectly well that you can wake up in a miserable mood bitter and and unhappy and do twenty-five things that day to make your life more like hell than it was and to share that delight with the people around you everyone understands that and you know as well that you can you can decide to face things courageously and truthfully and you can make tomorrow's morning somewhat better than today's morning was by setting the world in in order and and and then the answer to your question is that you see you you can't be doing that because you want to be a good person in some sense and you can't be doing that because you want to be seen as being a good person that's not the right attitude you have to be doing it because it's the transcendently right thing to do it's the thing that you do if you aim at the highest possible ideal and you know and then that is laid out in the Sermon on the Mount is that you should aim at the highest possible ideal you should aim at a relationship with God and then that you should concentrate on the day and it's a deadly serious psychological it's deadly serious psychological advice aim high lift your eyes above the horizon right lift your eyes to the stars that beckon above try to set things right and to orient your life and and they there has to be a relationship with the transcendent that allows you to do that possible properly or it becomes an exercise in Eagle and then it doesn't work so well I could say I've learned a lot today and I you with the number of followers you have you you've really struck a nerve in people and you found something that they really need and you must have gotten that way by being a good listener that's something I'm not Becky says whenever she's upset there's a problem I'm just a fixer I just go fix it you know no I just want you to listen so I have I have something to say about that very briefly if I might well if someone if someone comes to you with a problem and this is I think something that men actually have to learn more than women is that the person that's coming to you with the problem doesn't exactly know what the problem is and the problem with jumping in with a fix too soon is that it's possible that you're you're curing the wrong illness and so you have to listen because the person has to stumble around foolishly and in pain too to let you know what the problem actually is and that's difficult right what you're gonna have to teach me more because I'm task oriented and I'm just always going 100 miles an hour I'll work on it alright go ahead Dave all right I just want to tell you because I because I genuinely think you have one of the most you want most tender hearted guests that we've seen I watched the way you were with your mom last night and this morning there's there's such an a compassionate soul in there and I just want to tell you sir that no matter how much David or David who jumped on stage or David who's sitting here with you no matter how much we I believe self-diagnose and begin to take steps forward we can certainly fix the circumstances and take forward but ultimately without Christ in the center of our life I just believe that we we lose our way at very best we just become a really good performer Holly and I'm more concerned about the man that David can be when he's a man of God and the marriage he'll have and the fatherhood he'll have and the person that he'll help one day who's crying out for help and in it's such a great opportunity to read and to learn these principles but to know that these principles are ultimately exemplified in the person of Jesus how can we how can we pray for you plus what we want to close in prayer is there a prayer request that we can just we can take away by the way have you not absolutely enjoyed and are you not just grateful for that hey love you awesome how can we amen [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] how can i how can i next week pray for you brother happy now right now just a standard slap right like my fervent hope and and perhaps this is something that could be transformed into a prayer is that the the that the mistakes that I am inevitably going to make well I'm pursuing that I don't pay an undue price for the mistakes that I'm inevitably going to make as I pursue what I'm pursuing that's my fervent hope you know and it has been since all of this has broken around me that I would be careful enough in my speech and that's the logos you know that I would be careful enough in my speech so that I would stay on the right track on the straight narrow path and and and and fulfill whatever obligations are my privilege to fulfill and and what I hope from the people that are supporting me is that if they wish to pray for me is that I'm careful enough I remain careful enough and fortunate enough so that my inevitable faults don't interfere to catastrophic ly with whatever good I might be able to do so let's pray for our brother come on put your hands towards him [Applause] all right I thank you for dr. Peterson I thank you Lord for the people that he's been able to help I thank you God for the principles in the book that have helped people just look up and I pray that when they would see as they look up is more than answers to fix the problems but more than ways to medicate the issues but a God they would just look inside their soul and mean wake up to them to the fact that they needs you I thank you Lord that it's an initial bridge that hopefully points to the gospel and I pray that for the people that are reading it that that book would ultimately call people to your word a lamp unto our feet I thank you for the seeking heart the humility and the teachability of our friend I pray that as he seeks you out that he would begin to see you Jesus as more than just the hero but a personal Savior just do that in his soul Lord we love you God we thank you that we're here Lord we pray for David right now we pray that he would know that they were for him or with him I'll create next semester he's a student here at Liberty that I get to pour into him and I get to learn from him I pray in the years to come that David will look back on this moment and see it as a crossroad moment where you just changed the trajectory of his life we love you God we we learn from each other and so thank you that we've learned so much from dr. Peterson we need this in your name amen amen one more time can we thank our brother [Music] as you're dismissed you can tell your professor all right that you'll be a few minutes late and that you're excused okay god bless you guys

Channel: Liberty University

Views: 905,370

Rating: 4.8270168 out of 5

Keywords: Liberty University, LibertyU, Liberty, Jerry Falwell

Id: aDepoPl1oEM

Length: 69min 7sec (4147 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

It's a really sad thing to see someone like this and I sincerely hope the guy gets better.

On the other hand, the whole scene is so insanely creepy, the way they are fucking praying for him and the other speaker is praising JP afterwards, the whole megachurch cult leader vibe. It kind of seems that JP styling himself as a kind of messiah/savior is gaining real traction and showing results, it's worrying.

[u/SnakePlissken5ever]

Well shit. It's about JBP so I figured I'd either be angry or laugh but I'm just sad.

[u/whateveryousaymom-]

An actual sad display of depressed People being falsely lured into the petersonian IDW trap - deperately thinking they could get help from those grifters

[u/[deleted]]

A sad display of the state of society.

[u/BensonBear]

Jordan Peterson is a professional clinical psychologist, probably the only mental health professional on the stage, and his initial response to a very, very troubled and hysterical person, upset enough to interrupt a public gathering of a huge number of people, is to stiffly say into the public address system "I hope that you will get the help that you need"? Eventually he realized that he had to be a little more personally involved but that was his initial reaction?

[u/BeNobleEnough]

He is really jittery

[u/[deleted]]

The worst thing is that they start praying for the guy. Are these people insane??