Jordan Peterson - An Antidote to Suffering

hello and welcome it is my privilege  to present you with the following video   given to me spontaneously in late march of 2021  by the talented and prolific animation team   after school the lecture selected by the after  school team provides a good brief introduction   to the ideas i've been striving to formulate and  communicate over several decades while working as   a clinical psychologist professor and researcher  at harvard and the university of toronto   author and public lecturer the micro movies  created so carefully by after school transform   each of the individual ideas i'm presenting into  a compelling story helping the viewer and listener   deeply engage and understand i hope you find  the video interesting meaningful and worthwhile the conditions of human life are such that  suffering is an integral part of existence   now it's an important thing to understand  it's also a viewpoint shared by the bulk   of the great religious systems of  the world life is suffering why well   one reason is because of society's arbitrary  judgment right every single one of us has   traits and features and and  quirks and idiosyncrasies that are   far from ideal and that are judged by the  standards of society as insufficient and so   you suffer because of your imperfect insufficiency  in the eyes of others and you can certainly make   the claim that fairly frequently that's arbitrary  and so that's the claim that society is tyrannical   and judgmental and needs to be constantly re  constituted so that the tyrannical element doesn't   take full control and fair enough you have to stay  awake so that that doesn't happen but the thing is   it doesn't matter what society it is although they  vary in the degree of their tyranny the mere fact   that you're grouped together with other people and  have to come up with a common value structure in   order to live together means that many of the  things that characterize you are going to be   sub-optimal and so the price you pay for social  being is that much of you is deemed insufficient   now hopefully there are various ways that you can  be within a society that's sufficiently diverse   so that you can find a place where what's good  about you in the eyes of others and perhaps in   your own eyes can flourish of its own accord  because you don't have to be good at everything   if you can be good at at one thing well enough  that might allow you your niche and hopefully   a healthy society allows for that certainly  societies can become so tyrannical that they don't   so you can lay one source of human suffering  at the feet of tyrannical social structures but   the other element of it clearly is the mere fact  of the arbitrariness of the natural world you   have a lifespan that's going to be counted in the  number of decades that you can count on two hands   and that has nothing to do technically with the  tyranny of the social structure now you could say   if we got our act together more completely  perhaps you could live longer and fair enough but   the fact of the limits of your lifespan  and the suffering that's necessarily a   consequence of that the death of your parents  and the death of most people that you will know   before you means that that part of suffering  is an integral part of existence itself and so   that can't be laid at the feet of an insufficient  social structure except insofar as it's tyrannical   and blind it's a condition of existence and then  by the same token you have your own responsibility   for some of your unnecessary suffering because  there's things you could be doing to make your   life better and to make life better for other  people that you know perfectly well that you're   not doing and so if you stopped doing all the  unnecessary things that make your life bad then   it would improve to some degree that is not  really computable because you don't know how   far you could push that so there's three reasons  why you suffer and one is well look at you and the   way you're built it's inevitable there's not very  much of you and there's a lot of everything else   and so you just don't last that long and you're  fragile across multiple domains and then you're   harshly treated by society and there's no doubt  about that and then there's responsibility that   can be laid at your own feet well the existential  take on that and the thing that all these diverse   people that we've been talking about including  victor franklin including alexander solzhenitsyn   as well as um uh kierkegaard nietzsche  and dostoevsky and the people that i've   already talked to you about is that the proper  pathway through that is to adopt the mode of   authentic being and that is something like  refusing to participate in the lie in deception   in the lie to orient your speech as much as you  can towards the truth and to take responsibility   for your own life and perhaps also for the lives  of other people and there's something about that   that's meaningful and responsible and noble but  also serves to mitigate the very suffering that   produces say the nihilism or the flea into the  arms of flea or or the or the escape into the arms   of totalitarians to begin with you need something  to shelter you against your own vulnerability   and you can adopt a comprehensive description of  reality that's formulated for you by someone else   that neatly divides the world into those who are  innocent and perhaps innocent victims and those   who are guilty and perhaps the perpetrators of  the suffering but none of that has anything to   do with you and in addition it's simply not it's  not a reasonable way of assessing the world that   the suffering is built in so that's why the  there's an existentialist insistence upon that   so that for the freudians the psychoanalysts and  even for people like carl rogers to some degree   if you're in a situation that's characterized by  psychopathology if there's something wrong with   you mentally that's a consequence of something  gone wrong but that's not the existentialist   take the existentialist take is no that's just  how it is that's just how it is you don't have   to necessarily have done anything wrong for things  to get completely out of control it's a terrifying   doctrine but it's not a hopeless doctrine because  it still says that there's a way forward there's   a pathway forward and the pathway forward is  to adopt a motive being that has some nobility   so that you can tolerate yourself and perhaps  even have some respect for yourself as someone   who's capable of standing up in the face of that  terrible vulnerability and suffering and that the   pathway forward as far as the existentialists are  concerned is by well certainly by the avoidance of   deceit particularly in language but also by the  adoption of responsibility for the conditions   of existence and some attempt on your part to  actually rectify them and the thing that's so   interesting about that is that well two as far as  i'm concerned and some of this is from clinical   experience you know if you take people and i've  told you this and you expose them voluntarily to   things that they are avoiding and are afraid of  you know that they know they need to overcome in   order to meet their goals their self-defined  goals if you can teach people to stand up in   the face of the things they're afraid of they  get stronger and you don't know what the upper   limits to that are because you might ask yourself  like if for 10 years if you didn't avoid doing   what you knew you needed to do by the deaf by  your own definitions right within the value   structure that you've created to the degree  that you've done that what would you be like   well you know there are remarkable people who come  into the world from time to time and there are   people who do find out over decades long periods  what they could be like if they were who they were   if they said if they spoke their being forward  and they get stronger and stronger and stronger   and we don't know the limits to that we do not  know the limits to that and so you could say well   in part perhaps the reason that you're suffering  unbearably can be left at your feet because you're   not everything you could be and you know it and  of course that's a terrible thing to admit and   it's a terrible thing to consider but there's  real promise in it right because it means that   perhaps there's another way that you could look  at the world and the number another way that you   could act in the world so what it would reflect  back to you would be much better than what it   reflects back to you now and then the second part  of that is well imagine that many people did that   because we've done a lot as human beings we've  done a lot of remarkable things and i've told   you already i think before that today for example  about 250 000 people will be lifted out of abject   poverty and about 300 000 people attached to the  electrical power grid we're making people we're   lifting people out of poverty collectively at a  faster rate that's ever occurred in the history of   humankind by a huge margin and that's been going  on unbelievably quickly since the year 2000   the un had planned to have poverty between 2000  and 2015 and it was accomplished by 2013. so   there's inequality developing in many places and  you hear lots of political agitation about that   but overall the the tide is lifting everyone  up and that's a great thing and we have no   idea how fast we could multiply that if people  got their act together and really aimed at it   because you know my my experience is with people  that we're probably running at about 51 percent   of our capacity something i mean you can  think about this yourselves i often ask   undergraduates how many hours a day you  waste or how many hours a week you waste and   the classic answer is something like four to  six hours a day you know inefficient studying   uh watching things on youtube that not only do  you not want to watch that you don't even care   about that make you feel horrible about watching  after you're done that's probably four hours   right there you know you think well that's 20  25 hours a week it's 100 hours a month that's   two and a half full work weeks it's half a year  of work weeks per year and if your time is worth   20 an hour which is a radical underestimate  it's probably more like 50 if you think about   it in terms of deferred wages if you're wasting  20 hours a week you're wasting 50 000 a year   and you are doing that right now and it's because  you're young wasting 50 000 a year is a way bigger   catastrophe than it would be for me to waste  it because i'm not going to last nearly as long   and so if your life isn't everything it could be  you could ask yourself well what would happen if   you just stopped wasting the opportunities that  are in front of you you'd be who knows how much   more efficient 10 times more efficient 20 times  more efficient that's the pareto distribution   you have no idea how efficient efficient  people get it's completely it's off the charts well and if we all got our act together  collectively and stop making things worse because   that's another thing people do all the time not  only do they not do what they should to make   things better they actively attempt to make things  worse because they're spiteful or resentful or   arrogant or deceitful or or homicidal or genocidal  or all of those things all bundled together in an   absolutely pathological package if people stopped  really really trying just to make things worse   we have no idea how much better they would  get just because of that so there's this weird   dynamic that's part of the existential system of  ideas between human vulnerability social judgment   both of which are are are are major causes of  suffering and the failure of individuals to adopt   the responsibility that they know they should  adopt and that's the thing that's interesting   too is that it isn't merely that your fate depends  on whether or not you get your act together and to   what degree you decide that you're going to live  out your own genuine being it isn't only your fate   it's the fate of everyone that you're networked  with and so you know you think well there's 9   billion seven billion people in the world we're  going to peak at about nine billion by the way   and then it'll decline rapidly but seven billion  people in the world and who are you you're just   one little dust mote among that seven billion and  so it really doesn't matter what you do or don't   do but that's simply not the case it's the wrong  model because you're at the center of a network   you're a node in a network of course that's even  more true now that we have social media you'll   you'll know a thousand people at least over the  course of your life and they'll know a thousand   people each and that puts you one person away from  a million and two persons away from a billion and   so that's how you're connected and the things  you do they're like dropping a stone in a pond   the ripples move outward and they affect things in  ways that you can't fully comprehend and it means   that the things that you do and that you don't do  are far more important than you think and so if   you act that way of course the terror of realizing  that is that it actually starts to matter what   you do and you might say well that's better than  living a meaningless existence it's better for it   to matter but i mean if you really ask yourself  would you be so sure if you had the choice   i can live with no responsibility whatsoever  the price i pay is that nothing matters   or i can reverse it and everything matters  but i have to take the responsibility that's   associated with that it's not so obvious to  me that people would take the meaningful path   you know when you say well nihilists suffer  dreadfully because there's no meaning in their   life and they still suffer yeah but the  advantage is they have no responsibility   so that's the payoff and i actually think  that's the motivation say well i can't help   being nihilistic all my belief systems have  collapsed it's like yeah maybe maybe you've   just allowed them to collapse because it's  a hell of a lot easier than acting them out   and the price you pay is some meaningless  suffering but you can always whine about that   and people will feel sorry for you and you have  the option of taking the pathway of the martyr so   that's a pretty good deal all things considered  especially when the when the alternative is to   bear your burden properly and to live forthrightly  in the world well if you live a pathological life   you pathologize your society and if enough  people do that then it's hell really really   i hope you found this animated  lecture selection engaging and useful   and would like to thank the after-school  team for their work and their generosity   i would also like to extend to all of those  watching and listening a sincere invitation   to further explore what my team and i are offering  on this youtube channel my podcast and in my books   your engagement is most welcome and your  attention and interest most genuinely appreciated you

Channel: After Skool

Views: 456,188

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Id: kdwnOAJXeq0

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021