JORDAN PETERSON | The "Peterpan" Analogy (Lecture)

this is the Peter Pan story roughly speaking as Peter Pan is this magical boy pad means Pat is the god of everything roughly speaking right and so it's not an accident that he has the name pan and he's the boy that won't grow up and he's magical well that's because children are magical they can be anything they're nothing but potential and Peter Pan doesn't want to give that up why well he's got some adults around him but the main adult is Captain Hook well who the hell wants to grow up to be Captain Hook first of all you've got a hook second year at Island and third you chased by the dragon of chaos with a clock in its stomach right the crocodile it's already got a piece of you well that's what happens when you get older time has already got a piece of you and eventually it's got a taste for you and eventually it's going to eat you and so hook is so traumatized by that that he can't help but be a tyrant and then Peter Pan looks at traumatized Herc and says well no I'm not sacrificing my childhood for that so that's fine except he ends up king of Lost Boys in Neverland well Neverland doesn't exist and who the hell wants to be king of the Lost Boys and he also sacrifices the possibility that help a real relationship with a woman because that's Wendy right and she's kind of conservative middle-class London dwelling girl she wants to grow up and have kids and have a life she accepts her mortality she accepts her maturity Peter Pan has to content himself with Tinker Bell she doesn't even exist she's like she's like the fairy of porn she doesn't exist she's the substitute for the real thing and so but the dichotomy that you're talking about is very tricky because there's a sacrificial element in maturation right you have to sacrifice the player potentiality of childhood for the actuality of a frame and the question is well why would you do that well one reason is it happens to you whether you do it or not you can either choose your damn limitation or you can let it take you unaware when you're 30 or even worse when you 40 and then that is not a happy day you see I see people like this and I think it's more and more common in our culture because people can put off maturity without suffering an immediate penalty but all that happens is the penalty accrues and then when it finally hits it just Wallops you because when you're 25 you could be an idiot it's no problem even when you're holding the job search it's like well you don't have any experience and you're kind of clueless it's yeah yeah you're young you know it's no problem we can that's what young people are like but they're full of potential okay well now you're the same person at 30 it's like people aren't so thrilled about you at that point it's like what the hell have you been doing for the last 10 years well I'm just as clueless as I was when I was 22 yeah but you're not 22 you're an old infant right and that's an ugly thing an old infant so the raised part of the reason you choose your damn sacrifice because the sacrifice is inevitable but at least you get to choose it and then there's something that's that's even more complex than that in some sense is that the problem with being a child is that all you are is potential and it's reading low-resolution you could be anything but you're not anything so then you go on duty adopt an apprenticeship roughly speaking and then you become at least you become something and when you're something that makes the world open up to you again you know like if you're a really good plumber then you end up being far more than a plumber right you end up being a good employer not not that plumbers are not putting plumbers down it's like more power ducts plumbers they've saved more lives than doctors so hygiene right so you know if you're a really good plumber well then you have some employees you run a business you you you make you train some other people you enlarge their lives you're kind of a pillar of the community you you have your family it's you can once you pass through that narrow training period which narrows you and constricts you and develops you at the same time then you can come out the other end with a bunch of new possibility at hell at hand and young talked about that he thought that the proper part of the proper path of development in the last half of life was to rediscover the child that you left behind as you were apprentice it and so then you get to be something and regain that potential at the same time very very smart well he was very very smart so that's a very wise very wise thing to know so yep sacrifice we'll talk more about that too you get to pick your damn sacrifice that's all you don't get to not make what your sacrificial whether you want to be or not that's a good thing to know as well so even though it's rather you know it's rough thing to figure out but other questions okay that thing you just said about noticing and more morning people later to their 20 yeah what do you think about that very thing that comes when terms of think universities facilitate it because you can go to university to not be something instead of going to university to be something and and that's its Pleasure Island and the price you pay for it especially in the u.s. is debt and your enticed into it because the administrators can pick your pocket so they rob your future self while allowing you to pretend that you have an identity right very nasty and you can't declare bankruptcy with your student loans in the u.s. its indentured servitude and it is plain it's precisely Pleasure Island it's exactly that and so tuition fees have short way out of control and part of the reason that universities don't make more demands on their students and let them get away with all the things they let them get away with is because they're basically why the hell would you chase them out there are a hundred thousand dollars or more so they can do whatever they want as long as you get to sell them to the salt mines right so and that you know it's not the only reason because the other thing that's happened is that the rate of technological transformation is so fast now in the rate of turnover of things is that it's it is genuinely harder for people who are say eighteen to twenty when I was a kid roughly speaking the kind of rough patch for for for life is probably fourteen to seventeen something like that now it's I think it's eighteen to twenty five something like that and I think the reason for that is is that all the jobs that the bloody hippies complained about being doomed to in the 1960s have now disappeared their problem was oh my god I'm going to go have to work for a corporation and get a salary for the rest of my life you know and then I'll just end up in it with a pension and that'll be my whole life it's like well it seems like a lot better deal than an endless round of part-time Starbucks jobs so you know some of it is that it's it's it's it's there's a space now in our culture that that is lacking for people to make that transformation from from adolescence into adulthood and so it's just it's it's the cost of that is for stalled it's not a good thing it's not a good thing

Channel: School of Peterson

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Keywords: jordan peterson, peterpan, analogy, lecture, 12 rules, libral, bible, grow up

Id: H-ckxQSutO4

Length: 7min 45sec (465 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 29 2018