Jordan Peterson: Secrets to life and relationships

I'm not I wouldn't consider myself either naive or a particularly optimistic person I don't think I'm either of those but this is an actually an idea this is one of the only ideas that I've ever found that I really believed to be rock-solid I actually think that it's true and and it's very optimistic because it says you can use your sense of meaning to calibrate your progress through life but but there's rules you have to aim at the highest possible good that you can conceive now and that's subject update because what the hell you know but you know they start by aiming at the star you can see rather than the dimmer one that you can't yet perceive and then you decide that you're going to do that honestly right there's that that's a big decision so the first decision I think in some sense is a decision of love you're going to decide that being is worthwhile and that you're going to work for its betterment and that's a decision that's based on love and the second decision is based on truth having made that decision you're going to play a straight game having made those two decisions I think that you can allow your sense of meaning to calibrate your pathway and then what's so interesting is that you hit a state that's as close to paradise alas you're going to hit right away because being engaged like that it's better to be engaged in the solution of a complex problem than not to have a problem at all and that's that's no different than saying it's better for there to be being that non-being because being is a problem and so if you want to have no problems then you have no being and and you could say well being is so miserable that maybe that's the route we should take and fair enough but maybe you can have your cake and eat it too you can have the damn problem it could be a problem worth solving and you can be so engaged in solving the problem that it justifies the fact that the problem exists and then you get then you get to have you get to have the problem and the solution at the same time and maybe that's better than not having the problem at all and I believe that because one of the things I have seen and I've seen this so interesting being so interesting when I've been lecturing to people especially more recently and and this is also manifested or utilize itself on YouTube I'm talking to people a lot about responsibility and it's young men in particular that seem to be responding to that and I think that's partly because I think that young women in some sense have their responsibility map already laid out for them it's also less voluntary in some sense for women because they have more complicated problems to solve in the first part of their life right because they have to get the family problem solved but whatever I've been talking very in a very delineate 'add matter about responsibility which is a strange thing to sell to people but responsibility is what gives your life meaning and so then you might say well then take on ultimate responsibility and what happens you have an ultimately meaningful life and then you might say well if your life is ultimately meaningful doesn't matter if it's punctuated by tragedy or even predicated on tragedy it's worth it and I think that's true and in everything I've seen indicates to me that's true every time I get my clients to take on more responsibility you know it and it isn't an injunction you're a bad person you should take on responsibility it has nothing to do with that you can define the damn responsibility it isn't something that that someone else should impose on you it's not a matter of doing what you should do in some abstract manner it's it's not that it's the choice of what game you're going to play and you know you can play the game of the seeker I would say and if you play that game then everyone wins and it's the best game you can play and so the the answer in some sense to the tragedy of life to the catastrophe of life to the fall is to adopt the responsibility of mortality that goes along with that and to play that game maximally and paradoxically it's in the willingness to do that that the solution emerges and I don't you know I have done my best with every single thing I've talked to you guys about I have done my best to do what does TS kee does in his novels which is I make a proposition and then I spend months or years trying to figure out if I can take the bloody thing apart if there's something wrong with it because I want to find out I want to hit it with a hammer and see if it breaks and what I've been trying to do is to tell you all the things that I've gathered let's say or laid out or articulated or discovered over the last 30 years that I have not been able to break with the biggest hammer that I could take to them and I guess that's the fundamental one is that I believe that the the the idea that lurks in these images derived from very different cultures it's the same idea life is suffering right indisputable what do you do about that you you voluntarily accept it and then strive to overcome the suffering that's a consequence of that and you do that for you and you do that in a way that makes it better for other people and then that works and one question might be well how well does it work and the answer is you the only way that you can find out is by trying it that's it that's the extension element of it the proof is to be derived by the incarnation of the attitude in your own life no one can tell you how it will work for you it's the thing that your destiny is to discover that and you have to make you have to make the decisions to begin with it's like because you can't do this without commitment you have to commit to it first so that's the act of faith that that Kierkegaard was so insistent upon you have to say I'm going to act as if being is good I'm going to act as if truth is the pathway to enlightenment I'm going to act as if I should pursue the deepest meaning possible in my life and there's there's reasons to do none of those they're real reasons so it's really a decision but you you can't find out what the consequence of the decision is unless you make the decision I think the same thing happens when you get married by the way is it if you think you might leave you're not married and then you think well the marriage didn't succeed it's like well maybe you were never married because the rule is you don't get to leave and there's a reason for that rule now I'm not saying that there aren't situations where there should be exceptions made for that that's not the point the point is that there's some games you don't get to play unless you're all-in and the other thing that's so interesting about being alive is that you're all in no matter what you do you're all in this is going to kill you so I think you might as well play the most magnificent game you can while you're waiting because do you have anything better to do really why not pick the best thing possible that you could do why not do that maybe you could justify your wretched existence to yourself that way I think you could that's what it looks like you know people find such meaning in the responsibilities they adopt it stops making them ask questions about what life is for if you have a newborn child for example like unless you're really in a bad way psychotically depressed or maybe your personality really needs some retooling you stop thinking about anything but ensuring that that baby is doing well and if someone comes along and asks you an existential question about your commitment to that the right response is why are you asking me such stupid questions when when when this this is manifesting itself right in front of your eyes like how blind can you be that isn't a time for for questions about the meaning of life the answer is right in front of you and if you can't see it it's not because life has no meaning it's because you're blind I mean that's what the image of the Virgin Mother and the child is all about it's like what's the answer to the meaning of life here is an answer it's like well I'm gonna criticize that well go right ahead you know it's like it's like what what you're you're like a you like what do you call that a termite going on a temple there's no there's no utility and that sort of criticism you're it's blindness and it's the same thing with regards to the path of the hero it's like it glistens in front of you and you can criticize it it's like fine put the cart before the horse and and see how far you get so I thought to bring full closure to the class I was trying to solve this terrible puzzle that confronted me for and many other people about how it was that human beings got themselves in such a tangle about what they believed such a tangle that we were pointing the ultimate weapons of destruction at one another which by the way we are still doing and I thought okay well I understand that we need their belief systems they orient us and that means there will be conflict between belief systems and that can be a catastrophe and that's being played out everywhere again in very many ways what's the solution to that well one possibility is there's no solution it's just mayhem all the way around could be the case but it seemed to me as I delved into it that the proper solution to that was to live properly as an individual because you're more powerful didn't you think way more powerful than you think I mean god only knows what you are in the final analysis you're blind to your own weaknesses but you're also blind to your own strengths and so then I think well if you've got your act together it'd be better for you and instantly it would be better for your family assuming they wanted you to get your act together and not everyone does but and then it would be better for the community it's like how far could you take that if you stopped wasting time and if you stopped lying and if you oriented yourself to to the highest possible good that you could conceive of and you committed to that how much good could you do well I would say why don't you find out so that's what I think you should do you should find out you don't have anything better to do and there's nothing in it as far as I've been able to tell there's nothing in it but good so maybe you could sort yourself out so that you wanted nothing but the good and and then maybe you could help make that manifest in the world and maybe we wouldn't have all these terrible problems then at least we'd have fewer of them and that would be a start so it's the it's that the answer to the problem of humanity is that is the is the integrity of the individual that's the answer so and states that are predicated on that realization are healthy so n states that aren't are doomed to stagnation and catastrophic collapse and it's personalities that are predicated on self tyranny and the tyranny of others are doomed and doomed to collapse so and then you think well what's the barrier and the barriers are you willing to accept the responsibility and part of the answer to that is reduce the dam responsibility until it's tolerable you don't have to fix everything at once you could just start by fixing the things that you can fix or you could even do it more you can do it with even less self-sacrifice you could start by fixing only the things that you want to fix God you can get a massive way that way so do it see what happens that's what you should have been taught in university right from the beginning it's like aim at the highest good tool yourself into something that can attain it and go out there and manifest it in the world and everything that everything that comes your way will be everything that comes your way will be a blessing and so all you have to do is give up your resentment and your hatred I know that's a hard thing to give up because you have plenty of reason for it that's probably a good place to stop so there's a pleasure [Applause]

Channel: Essential Truth

Views: 516,634

Rating: 4.9327593 out of 5

Keywords: Jordan B Peterson, Jordan Peterson, Essential Truth, manofallcreation, PowerfulJRE, Clash of Ideas, bite-sized philosophy, philosophyinsights, Ramble, Intense 5, Maps of Meaning, TheArchangel911, advice for men, Ideacity, Transliminal, Gravitahn, M Czerna, JRE clips

Id: fGnakQebLys

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2018