Jordan Peterson: The Meaning Behind Harry Potter's Golden Snitch

one of the sections of your book that I really loved it was chapter two where you get into Alchemy and you get into you know a discussion of uh it was one of the richest chapters for me Helen Lewis said I sounded like a stoned undergraduate uh well I was like interesting hey because this is she she wrote this review in the Atlantic um and I was talking about sorry I'll let you get back to this right away but he was talking about I commented on this uh the snitch in Harry Potter because I found that it's a very old symbol that's a really old symbol it shocked me to death that she used it I couldn't believe she used it because it's really obscure this symbol and so I talk about it in the book and you know which that's what she dismissed as the ravings of a of a you know stoned undergraduate but then I thought well look Rowling is richer than the queen she came from nothing she produced this Empire it's an absolute Empire books that's that were 600 pages long that she could read to children in stadiums a whole string of movies that dominated the entertainment landscape for like six years it was a it was a cultural a global cultural phenomenon it's like well don't you think that's worth looking into that's what makes you a stoned undergraduate it's or are you so clueless that you can't see that when something like that happens there's a mystery it's why in the world would the story of a magical orphan become a multi-billion dollar decades-long Global cultural phenomenon well if you're interested in culture and if you're interested in anything besides narrow politics you'd think that that would be a you'd think that would be worthy of Investigation it's not easy to see these things sometimes for the mystery that they are no doubt so and I think it's what you say about stories stories can be true stories the story of Harry Potter and the snitch is a true story because it's in resonance with a real idea something that's in the collective Consciousness something that's in our primordial psyche in a way and so when we hear it otherwise be Collective exactly we wouldn't we wouldn't all enjoy it and look we can go to those movies we suspend disbelief willingly instantly and we get immersed in the story that's magic that's magic what's going on it's worthy of Investigation so anyways I I sort of sidetracked that well that's actually exactly where I was going so I'm going to read I'm going to read this section and you're talking about the snitch as the uh alchemical symbol of the round chaos and you say this the Seeker is the person who is playing the game that everyone else is playing and who is a disciplined expert at that game but who is also playing an additional higher order game the pursuit of what is of primary significance the snitch like the round chaos can therefore be considered the container of that primary significance so for those of us who don't know the Harry Potter movie there's a game called quidditch and it's basically like lacrosse and you try to get the ball in the goal but there's a Seeker who actually is seeking this magical golden orb which has alchemical and roots and in the round chaos and if they seek that the game is over and it's been given that you know additional as you say primary significance and this concept was really really interesting to me to have it unpacked because I didn't I watched some Harry Potter and I saw it and I saw the game that of course didn't occur to me it was just like oh this is the rules to this game but then I realized in my own life there's the game that I'm playing while I'm running on it and I'm doing these things but what is my snitch what is my round chaos what is that ultimate higher order potential that I'm seeking and so my question was have you thought about for you because we can obviously see the game being played as far as the normal Quidditch game but for you personally what is your what is your snitch what is your round chaos that you're seeking the game within the game that you're playing at large well what's always attracted my attention [Music] predominantly so so let me unpack some things here is right um some some of the interpretation of that symbol a lot of it came from my reading of young because he's the only person that I've ever read who seems to know about such things even knows that they exist Jung believed that your your interest which is a relatively involuntary phenomenon right you get interested in things but but you can't make yourself interested in something the interest grabs you and and grasps your attention and so Jung thought of that as a deeply seated biological mechanism which it obviously is it's a neurological mechanism of some sort that governs it possesses it has the capacity to possess your voluntary attention just like hunger does when when you get hungry you're typing away writing a book or something and you get hungry hunger starts to grab your attention well look you're interested in some things and you're not interested in others well why well some of that has to do with your choice but but not that much A lot of it has to do with who you are in the deepest sense and Jung believed that you were likely to become interested in things that furthered your development that furthered your psychological development made you more and more competent so for example you might get interested you might really come to admire someone and so what they do grabs your interest and that happens with children quite a lot and they get interested in kids who are slightly ahead of them in the developmental curve and then they mimic them and so your the interest is something that grabs you to move you forward on the developmental curve and so it's it's the it's the manifestation of your potential higher self in the present and Jung described that as the self the self was in his view the totality of your being it's not definable it includes you in the future and you are you are in some sense something that's coming to be into the future uh hopefully to be more than you are although you know not always because we also degenerate in any case your interest pulls you along on a particular developmental pathway I've always been gripped in some sense by things that are very very dark um and most of what's my pathology of of one sort another which is of course partly why I'm a clinical psychologist you know but I wanted to remediate it I wanted to help but but it was it was the compulsion to investigate the darkest of darkness and whether that's been good for me or not well that's a that's a that's a different question I suppose it has been extremely good in some ways and it's been it's been complicated we could certainly say that but but then more I I wanted to figure out what what what would protect us from from that Darkness and I guess it was because I was so shocked existentially shocked when I first encountered writings that pertain to the Holocaust and to other genocidal acts of that sort and I was always interested in that for some reason from uh psychological perspective it's like what compelled people to do that and how can we not do it again and that so so anyways anything that that focused on that grabbed my interest that's why I read Jung uh extensively and Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and socialites and those are the people I ran across others as well that who seem to have some answers as far as I could tell and um so that's what it's been for me uh yeah yeah I don't and I don't know why it might be my proclivity towards depression I really have no I you know I'm a creative person by temperament and I also have this depressive illness maybe it's the consequence of those two I don't know who knows right who knows what what what pulls you forward the Ancients the Ancients would typically externalize these forces you know when they couldn't understand and you talk about that with the god Mercury the god Mercury was the one that Drew you to these different things he's got wings and he Splitters and it's that's what your attention does it pulls it's like an up that that Pixar movie every time there's a squirrel the dog that's their snitch they that's the grip of instinctual forces it's very comical but but it's and see in human beings I think it's unbelievably sophisticated because I do believe that we're compelled to follow a line that leads to our further development and I do think that that involves mimicry of the hero for example um the hero psychologically speaking is that figure which represents a a potential stage of development for you and you'll find your hero because you'll admire something or someone and why is that well something's well I gave you the best explanation for that that I can that's that's the future you in some sense manifesting itself in the present saying here's where you could go yeah and that's another Instinct for growth another aspect that they externalize was the idea of the Daemon which is almost like the uh the Mercurial impulse that's taken and stretched out for a long time it's something that's continually drawing you towards some potential realization of what you're capable of and they put that again in this kind of demigod landscape but of course that was just their way of understanding things although it also makes a tremendous amount of sense like sure to make to make um rage a God Like Mars well yes why well it's immortal I mean rage will be here long after you're gone you're definitely it's Pawn at times you know it's not obvious who's in control when you're enraged yeah in fact at at some levels of Rage that can even be a legal defense because we recognize that you can be out of your head your normal personality isn't in control and really powerful motivational forces have that transcendent reality it's not and it rage is older than human beings it's really really old and it it can have you in its grip sexual impulse is the same way hunger all of these things are are unbelievably powerful forces and they don't just operate on the primordial level as far as I'm concerned there there are sophisticated gods of motivation and we we are um possessed by them when we do such things as go to movies we don't notice is what the hell are we doing watching this movie why are we entertained by it why does it grip our interest we don't know we don't even question it it's like well it's entertaining it's fun it's interesting if it's interesting you don't have to justify it then you think right well that's so that's interesting in and of itself if it's interesting you don't justify it and then someone can tap you on the head and say look what you're doing and you think oh yeah that's kind of odd that I'm doing that what the hell am I doing standing in line for three days to see Star Wars when I'm an atheistic engineer what's going on here oh look at that it's a it's a religious impulse and and I don't have a religion and so this is filling the Gap and that's why I go to Star Wars conventions and and it I'm possessed by something that I haven't pursued um one of the things that you wrote was really powerful for me to read because to me I think it described my snitch my round chaos that thing that I'm seeking underneath the games that I'm playing and so I'm going to read this little snippet here who could you be you could be all that a man or woman might be you could be the newest Avatar in your own unique manner of the great ancestral Heroes of the past what is the upper limit to that we do not know are religious structures hint at it how would someone who determined to take full responsibility for the tragedy and malevolence of the world manifest itself the ultimate question of man is not who we are but who we could be that's it for me I mean for me I read that I was like yep that's it there's the snitch with its wings and it's golden you know mercurius Allure that I'm that I've I'm really chasing underneath all of this and I enjoy all these other things but who could you be exactly you see that in children I watched little children play and what what they're doing you know they're they're they're they're they're attempting to grow forward but they toy with with identities I'm I'm my little granddaughter I wrote about her in this book too it's so funny watching her she had Pocahontas the Disney movie and she had a Pocahontas doll and she watched that movie a number of times and then for while it's been a year now she's only three and a half for a whole year she has two names scarlet and Ellie um and uh one's her middle name but but she's called one or the other and and is seems to be perfectly comfortable with both um if you ask her if she's Ellie she'll say yes and if you ask her if she's Scarlet she'll say yes but if you ask her if she's Pocahontas she'll also say yes and then if you ask her if she is Scarlet Ellie or Pocahontas she'll say she's Pocahontas and she's been she's been insisting on that for a whole year and so she's playing out this role I don't know how much of her imagination is devoted to it but enough for this trip like that's if you're how old are you 40. just turned 40. yeah okay so you know imagine that you had a fictional identity for 15 years that's approximately the same relative length of time and the kids you know they they weave up a fantasy world and then they let play out an identity in that and then they weave out another fantasy world and they play out an identity with that and they shape that identity by their interactions with other children and adults and hopefully they find an identity that suits them that other people also accept because your identity has to be something that other people accept or it isn't going to work for you but that's all part of this exploration of who they could be you know it's the play is in fact the the the exercising of that realm of possibilities and so a good father a good parent for that matter but I think this I think at least is an archetypally paternal role puts a border of security around the child you know and the mother might be inside that border of security when she has young children and play can take place there and the play is the investigation of multiple identities with the hope of finding one that is functional that is also socially desired because those things can't be dissociated one of the reasons I think that the identity politics has bothered me so much speaking of snitches you know it's bothered me it's like this bothers me and I've only recently realized that some of it had to do with what I saw as limitations on Free Speech which is I have to say the words that you know some Authority or some population demands that I say which I don't like um but there's something else too which is that it's based on a very misleading theory of identity your identity is not just who how you feel about yourself at this moment and you can't impose that on other people because they don't know how to deal with that like even if they wanted to they wouldn't know the rules of the game you have to negotiate your identity with other people and so then you have to think of identity as something that's negotiated with other people and so if you if you have an implicit theory of identity like the one that seems to be increasingly dominating the cultural landscape which is identity is something that's only subjectively determined and can also change from moment to moment then you're misleading people as they develop because they come up with a very unsophisticated notion of what identity is and that's not good because it that's a that's core and like but part of your identity is your value to other people that's a huge part of it and that's not subjective that's other people make that decision [Music] foreign

Channel: Aubrey Marcus Clips

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Keywords: aubrey marcus, aubrey marcus clips, aubrey marcus podcast, inspiration, inspirational video, motivation, motivational video, personal development, self development, self help, self improvement, spirituality, success habits, jordan peterson, harry potter, jordan peterson clips, jordan peterson motivation, jordan b peterson, harry potter game, quidditch, quidditch harry potter, golden snitch the quidditch game, the snitch quidditch

Id: tYedNVMB2YQ

Length: 17min 16sec (1036 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 13 2022