"The worst snake of all is malevolence" Jordan Peterson on the snake within

That's partly the archetypal underpinning and then with regards to the stories themselves You're you're in a map So to speak you're using a map and with any luck its detailed enough so that you can use it to get to the place that you want to go and sometimes you don't and that means that you have to Recalibrate your your journey along the map which by the way is exactly what GPS systems do when you go off the pathway Right, they stop That's an anxiety response from the GPS system They stop they recalibrate and they readjust the map now and then if you're unfortunate this very rarely happens anymore You'll be on a road that isn't mapped. And then the GPS system doesn't know what to do Well that happens in real life too. I mean, those are I'm using GPS for a very specific reason Those are intelligent systems as far as I'm concerned those are the closest things we've ever designed to intelligent systems because they can actually orient right they orient in real time and they're unbelievably Sophisticated systems right because they rely on a huge satellite network and and so on and they're cybernetic systems. Technically speaking They respond very much like the way that we respond so so anyways, you know, you're in you inhabit a map you try to adjust the Resolution of the map so that it's munot more complex than it needs to be to get you from point A to point B That's it. You want minimal resolution? Because that enables efficient cognitive processing It doesn't overload you too much like when I'm looking at this room if I look say I want to walk down this pathway basically what my mind does my perceptual field and you can detect this if I look straight ahead I Can barely see you people on the periphery. You're more like you're kind of like blurs You too, I can tell that you have heads but that's about it when you move I can see your hand I can probably see your eyes, but barely so you're all very low resolution And even though I can't detect it at the very periphery of my vision You guys are black and white so my color vision disappears at the periphery, even though I can't I can't actually perceive that So what happens is if I want to walk down here this pathway becomes high-resolution. It becomes marked with positive emotion All of this turns into low resolution back here It's not even represented and then I find out well, am I doing this properly and the answer is well I walk forward and if I get to the goal, then I've done it properly Enough and if you know one of you stand up and get in my way Then I'm gonna focus on you and assume instantly that I haven't mapped you properly right? I put you in the category of irrelevant entity when in fact you happen to be in the category of strange Object the thing that objects and so well, so then we inhabit those structures all the time We're in a structure like that a perceptual structure and if it's working then it's got the archetypal quality of Paradise so to speak because it's axioms are correct And it's functional and then now and then something comes along and that's what the snake is the eternal snake in the garden That pops up inside a structure and it turns out that the things that you weren't attending to are The most important things rather than the least important things and that what does that do? It blows the map into pieces and That can happen at different levels of severity But at the ultimate level of severity its apocalyptic Right everything goes and that's a that's a traumatic intrusion And essentially the story of the Garden of Eden is the story of a traumatic intrusion. That's exactly what it is And so what happens is that Adam and Eve are living in unconscious bles. Roughly speaking Everything's fine. They're in their walled garden. They're in a paradisal state. They're not aware of their own vulnerability or nakedness so they they're not suffering from negative emotion something pops up that Radically expands their vision and all of a sudden now, they can apprehend all sorts of things that exist as threats So that's their own nakedness and vulnerability and temporality itself because they become aware of the future and bang that State of being in that paradise is forever gone. That's the strange thing about human beings Is this is what what happened to us? I think is that our perceptions developed to such a degree that We could no longer ignore what was irrelevant We couldn't do it because we discovered roughly speaking once we discovered our finite limitations in time and space We discovered that we surrounded by infinite threat always and maybe that's why people are so hyper awake because Threat wakes you up. Well, we're in a constant state of existential threat now the advantage to that is that we take We take arms up against a sea of troubles constantly, that's the advantage right and we build enclosures and we take precautions for the future and we live a very long time and we Generally live quite safe lives compared to the lives we could live and so we've traded pain for anxiety That's another way of thinking about it now It's still a pretty rough trade right because who wants to be nervous all the time But you're alive and awake when you're nervous and it is a form of consciousness elevating Activation that's another way of thinking about it So the story of Adam and Eve is the story of the eternal fall that that's what it is It says look you exist in these walled enclosures, but there's something that lurks that will always knock you off your feet And then the question is what is that? And and the answer to that is being formulated over very long periods of time partly It's the probability of predation itself that's the snake the thing that can come in subtly and undermine you okay, but then that's that's What would you call it? Expand it upward to include The abstract snake which is that thing that can undermine your conceptual schemes, right? So you have your actual territory and then you have your abstract to our territory and in your actual territory? There are actual snakes and in your abstract territory. There are abstract snakes, right? And then the worst snake of all is malevolence and that's I think that's technically, correct because one of the things that you view for example When you're looking at post-traumatic stress disorder is that it's almost always the case that someone who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder Which you might think of as a real real-life Reincarnation of the fall is that people encounter something malevolent? And It breaks them because it's the worst thing to understand. It's like suffering is one thing man. That's that's bad enough vulnerability and suffering That's bad enough but to encounter someone who will is that upon you and we'll work to bring it about That's a whole different category of horrible. Especially what it also Reflects something back to you about yourself because if someone else can do that to you and they're human That means that you partake of the same essence strangely enough That's actually the cure to some degree to post-traumatic stress disorder is it like if you've been victimized you're naive and you've been victimized the way out of that is to no longer be naive and to No longer be victimized and that means that you you see this reflected in the Harry Potter idea For example that the reason that Harry Potter can withstand Voldemort is because he's got a piece of him But he's been touched by it and the way that you the way that you keep the psychopaths at bay is to develop the inner Psychopath so that you know one when you see one, right and then but that's a voluntary thing It's it's so it's like a it's like a set of tools that you have at your disposal Which is full knowledge of evil and that does Nietzsche said if you look into an abyss for too long you risk having the abyss gaze back into you, right? The idea is that if you look at something monstrous you have a tendency to turn into a monster and people are often very Afraid of looking at monstrous things exactly for that reason and then the question is well Should you turn into a monster? And the answer to that is? Yes You should but you should do it voluntarily and not accidentally and you should do it with the good in mind Rather than falling prey to it by possession essentially because that's the alternative. How does it possess you? That's easy Your suffering makes you better your bitterness makes you resentful you're resentful Means me it makes you vengeful. And once you're on that road you go down that a little bit farther man Well you end up it Fantasizing in your basement about shooting up the local high school and then killing yourself, right? Because that's sort of the ultimate end of that line of pathological reasoning being should be eradicated because of its intrinsic evil And I'm exactly the person to do it and I'll cap it off with an indication of my own lack of worth just to hammer the point home right and if I can garner a little post Post posthumous Fame along the way. Well that'll satisfy my primordial primate dominance hierarchy Jennings - at least in fantasy so you know It's the full package If you want to go down that route, and of course people don't like to think about that sort of thing And it's no bloody wonder but without the capability for mayhem Europe You're you're a you're a potential victim - may have so you need your sword? It should be sheath but you need to have it and it's very frequently the case if you treat someone with post-traumatic stress disorder There's two things you have to do. You have to help them develop a very articulated philosophy of evil Because otherwise their brain bothers them over and over and over. What why were you so mean with naive? How did you become victimized? Why were you such a sucker? These are good questions. You don't want to have that happen to you again You don't want to be exploited twice. Okay, so your eyes have to open up We know the price of that from them Egyptian myth right you come into contact with Seth What happens even if you're a god you lose an eye? It's no joke, man It's no joke, and then the cure for that is the movement down into the underworld and with the revitalization of the Father That's the identification with the force that created culture right and that then there's you and that together then you can withstand Malevolence, maybe you can withstand tragedy and malevolence and then that's the whole secret, right? Because that's what you want in life You need to be able to withstand tragedy and you need to be able to withstand malevolence because those are the forces they're always working against you and so it's just this is Associated with the Union idea of incorporation of the shadow, right? You have to be we know this God We know how predators work with regards to children. Even if you're a pedophilic predator and you're Looking at a landscape of children the child that you're going to go after is the one that's timid and won't fight back You've picked your victim and predatory people in general or exactly like that man. They're because they're predators They're not going to attack someone who's who's gonna fight back? In fact, the issue is likely not to even come up they're going to be looking for someone one way or another that cannot conceptualize what they are and Then perfect it's a it's an open season and it's open season. And so if you're treating someone with post-traumatic stress disorder First they need an intraday to the philosophy of malevolence and second They have to learn to become dangerous because that's the only way out. What's the alternative? To get these recurrent thoughts about their vulnerability in the face of malevolence and their own Naivety because by definition if someone's psychopathic has exploited you you're too naive It's a definitional issue. You can say well that's no fault of mine How the hell could I be prepared fair enough, man? A perfectly reasonable objection doesn't solve your problem because it's an it's an eternal problem, right? The internal problem is how do you deal with tragedy and malevolence? And you can say well I'm not prepared. It's like yeah fair enough Unsurprising especially if you were over protected as a child It's not a good idea to overprotect your kids because the snakes are going to come into the garden No matter what you do. And so then you instead of trying to keep the damn snakes away What you do is you arm your child with something that can help them chop them into pieces And make the world out of them so that the trick for human Thriving in the face of suffering and malevolence is strength not protection. It's a completely different idea You

Channel: TheArchangel911

Views: 288,756

Keywords: self, jordan, peterson, psychology, personality, philosophy, biology, physiology, high, school, college, university, emotions, intellectuals, science, IQ, test, lecture, excerpt, snake, malevolence, 2017, maps, meaning

Id: 87OIyCFKQBk

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2018