Jordan Peterson: "Weak men can't be virtuous"

but if you only know how to behave you're just a domesticated house cat or or a lap dog you have to be you have to push beyond the persona and that's what the integration of the shadow does from the Union perspective it's like to pull that monster that's being edited out of you to pull that back in and to allow that to reveal itself within your within your increasingly sophisticated way of being and then you're not just a persona so if you want to push back on your persona are you saying that you have to cultivate your dark do your shadow is that yeah well draw your path yeah because the thing is you can't you can't escape from your persona unless you can say no like here's here's an example from popular culture in the Harry Potter series Harry Potter is obviously the hero of the story he's touched by malevolence right the only reason he can stand up against evil is because there's some evil in him that he's incorporated essentially well that's exactly right and that the persona that that if you're a persona then you're an obedient citizen but the problem with being an obedient citizen is that if the society tells you to March the Jews off to the death camp for example and you're obedient then that's what you'll do and it doesn't it isn't like society's civilized then all of a sudden you're performing some active atrocity that isn't how it works it's like yours you're obedient citizen and then you're asked to violate your conscience a little bit yeah and you you have to because you don't have anything other than that persona and so now it's obedience and so a little more obedience is demanded you say okay well then your little bent because the society is becoming a little bent and then you're a little weaker then you're asked to violate your conscience a little bit more and you think while there's a little less of me and the pressure is on a little more and I could have said no before but I didn't so you say yes again then you say yes again and then and then you have a society where one third of the population is informing on the other two-thirds it's hell it's like well so how do you say no well that's the shadow it's like and that's see the reason that the video I did would about Bill c16 it's compelled speech provisions went viral was because I said no I didn't say it casually what I meant was there isn't anything that you can do to me that I can imagine that will force me to utter the words that you want me to utter nothing and I meant it and when I made the video I think people could actually tell that I meant it and so I took this abstract problem and made it concrete I said no that's not happening and so and that's part of the incorporation of the shadow but in this regard the shadow is actually benevolent not malevolent well once it's incorporated yeah yeah well that's the thing and and and I don't know what to make of that in its entirety because it sort of means that if you it means something like because one of the old metaphysical problems is why would God allow evil into the world I think well maybe God didn't allow evil into the world maybe God allowed the possibility of evil into the world that's different and maybe the world with the possibility of evil is actually a better world than the world without the possibility of evil it's something like that you know in that maybe a man is better when he's a dangerous man who's being good then he would be if he was just a good man who wasn't capable of being dangerous and I believe that because the best man that I've ever met are very dangerous men you don't mess with yeah so and you know that as soon as you meet do you think weak men can be virtuous no because I think that when you're weak let's say that signals that you don't have the options to sin right which is something that creates resentment and resentment creates corruption hmm so in this sequence do you think that someone without teeth or without the options to sin can be can be be good see that's that's a real theological question right because the question you're asking is and this is tied up with the idea of free will and evil can a person who doesn't have the option to be evil be good and I would say no so maybe that's the reason that metaphysically speaking you know and I don't know where you are when you're speaking metaphysically exactly but the question of why is there evil in the world is a constant question it's like it's possible that without the possibility of evil there cannot be good good requires the possibility of evil and and may be good is so good that the fact that it requires the possibility of evil is acceptable maybe it's even desirable I mean you know you kind of end out end up on the edge of your knowledge when talking about such things but it seems to me to be right yeah and and it seems to be right in a lived sense you know like I met charcoal will ink he's a good example I mean will ink was the commander in Ramadan I think and you know you can say what you want about American military involvement has nothing to do with that really not at this level of analysis he's a tough guy I follow him on Twitter yeah so you know he gets up every morning at 5:30 4:30 he's a tough guy he's a he said he told me quite straightforwardly that he was one of those kids that as an adolescent could have gone either way right how could have been a highly successful Street criminal yeah right but he'd yeah probably well you can see it but he decided not to do that and you know he's very I would say he was a seal right mm-hmm that's right he's psycho physiologically intimidating he's a big guy you can tell he knows how to use it and you can tell he used it yeah but as far as I can tell he's a good person and that's how all of that capacity for mayhem is part of what makes him a good person and people know that that's why they're listening to him and that like I said the other people I've met who the man I've met who are good men they're all like that they're all dangerous they're all dangerous yeah have they all been not good men before or is that not part of becoming a good man I would say they've certainly all done things that they that well you know adolescents break rules right and healthy adolescents break rules and so then the question is well how extreme does the rule-breaking become well it would vary from person to person but I would say that most of them not all of them but most of them were more on the end of the rule breaking spectrum right they broke more rules than normal but they clued in you know and decided explored that and then decided no that's that's not that's better than cowardice it's better than weakness but it's not as good as what's good so he followed this doctrine actually the people that are accusing you of instantiating like toxic masculinity well let's say that it's true that you're that you're promoting male strength if you fall so promoting it women yeah you know like my daughter's a good example man she's tough you don't mess with her she'll cut you apart yeah maybe it was wrongly phrasing no no it's okay no but the thing what I'm trying to get is that when you're telling people to empower themselves hmm I wouldn't say that because I'd never used that word and power I hate that word but it's okay to be guys encouraging people yeah I like that word better because I'm encouraging people yeah you know to put courage into them that's better yeah so by becoming courageous you increase your potential from being virtuous hmm that's basically huh well and I one of the most amazing things that I discovered this year or stumbled upon was I was puzzling over a line in the New Testament which I've always been curious about because it never set right with me the meek shall inherit the earth and so I was as I said before if you go online Bible hub I think it's called Bible hub it's really good for this because it contains a collection of commentaries so you can look at average yeah yeah you can look at a verse and other translations multiple translations and multiple commentators so each verse is taken apart by many many people and I found out that the word meek me either doesn't mean now what it meant when we'll first translated the text or it was a mistranslation either way but because Meeks aren't sounds like powerless and harmless is something like that right but what meek actually means it's the derivation of a word it's the translation of a word that meant something more like those who have swords and know how to use them but keep them sheathed I thought oh yes that's exactly it the world the those who have swords and know how to use them but choose to keep them sheath will inherit the world it's like yes exactly right exactly right much different than the idea of quite different quite different I think this is a good point and a good note to close that agree thank you very much my pleasure nice talking with you same-same

Channel: GeenStijl

Views: 1,162,491

Keywords: Jordan, Peterson, Weak, Men, Virtue, Morality

Id: bWYrAU5mmXE

Length: 9min 18sec (558 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 23 2018