This Speech Will NEVER Be Forgotten | Delivered In Tears by Jordan Peterson

i talk a lot to my audiences about what i believe to be incontrovertible facts and i think that the fundamental in controv by incontrovertible fact is that life is suffering and i think that that's why that's a primary axiom of religious belief in some sense almost regardless of the faith that life is suffering and everyone knows that although they don't necessarily like to admit it or to talk about it i mean you don't have to scrape beneath the surface very far in someone's life to find a tragedy lurking if the person that you're speaking with doesn't have something pretty awful happening to them right at the moment economically or socially or within their family or physically or mentally the probability that someone they love has a problem of that sort is extraordinarily high and if you happen to be among the fortunate minority for whom that isn't true well all you have to do is wait and it will be true soon enough and sooner than you think and and worse than you imagine and everyone knows that and so it's easy to understand why people become cynical and bitter and hurt and nihilistic i think there's a progression in life you know if you're naive you think that life will be easy and that people are basically good and then you have some experiences if you're not sheltered too much and that gets taken away from you because you betray yourself or other people betray you or or you encounter a tragedy and then your naivety is shattered and the most likely place that you'll go from there is into something approximating cynicism because you don't know the alternative and your initial faith which was not faith but naivety is shattered by the terrible reality of what you encounter and then as a cynical person you're more wise than you are as a naive person and then that's a strange thing because you're worse in some sense than you were you know you're not as optimistic and you're not as filled with hope and your life is more difficult and you're probably harder on other people and with more of a tendency towards cruelty and none of that seems positive but there's a wisdom in cynicism that the naive lack but the problem is there that cynicism is not a useful antidote to let's say tragedy and malevolence because there are places that you go past cynicism as you approach wisdom and it's wisdom that you need in order to fabricate yourself this sort of vessel that will keep you afloat during stormy times life is difficult and it's tainted by malevolence and it's cast in tragedy and you need something to offset that because otherwise it embitters you and if you're embittered then you become vengeful and cruel inevitably and then you make everything that's made you worse worse in turn and there's no bottom to that you know as as anyone who's even a moderate student of history soon comes to understand there's an idea that hell is a bottomless pit and the reason for that is that there's no situation that's so terrible that there isn't some damn fool thing that some idiot can do that will make it far worse and so the question is what might constitute an alternative to that and if there is an alternative and you know i learned a while back long while back reading religious mythology mostly that there is a difference between thinking and paying attention and of the two paying attention is much more important it's it's not the same thing as thinking like when you pay attention you're looking for what you don't know like you you kind of detach yourself and you watch and you listen and you see if things are the way you think they are and you you hope they are because life is easier if if things are the way you think they are but if you find out that they're not and you're paying attention then you can you can weave and you can bob and you can adapt and you can learn and so you have to learn to pay attention i just ask people when i'm speaking to pay attention to what they already know here's something that everybody knows you know in a world that's consists of suffering and malevolence who is it that you admire or who is it that you don't admire those are the same questions if you know who you don't admire well then you have a negative model and you can go for the opposite and if you know who you admire well then you can copy that and the instinct for admiration is an instinct for imitation and we're very imitative creatures and our instinct for admiration is the instinct for imitation and what would you call it a deeply biologically and metaphysically rooted guideline to the proper path of life the question is is there a proper path of life there's certainly pathways that make things worse that's something to know you could avoid those and if there's something that if there are pathways that make things worse then they're there there are the opposite pathways even though those might not be so clear i think that's why we're often so enamored of evil characters in in in fictional representations is because it's clearer it's easier in some sense to make what constitutes the dark path clearer it's easier for people to understand whereas the path that's positive is murkier and more difficult to ascertain but at the very least you know it's the opposite of that so who do you admire or we could start by who don't you admire you don't admire an adult who won't take responsibility for himself or herself and could you know i understand there are people that are so broken and hurt that they need help constantly because they can't take responsibility for themselves or they can in small ways but not not completely but you don't admire someone who won't take responsibility for themselves in fact you have a sense of contempt for that and if you happen to be that person then you wake up in the middle of the night and berate yourself with what's left of your conscience for failing to undertake your moral duty your intrinsic moral duty and you can't escape that and that's so interesting no that you can't escape that if you were the creature who could invent your own values as nietzsche suggested as an antidote to the death of god then you just forgive your transgressions and you wouldn't suffer the bitter pangs of conscience but you do and the reason you do is because you're doing things that are wrong and you should stop and you know it maybe you can't and then well let's say then the opposite is that you admire someone who can take responsibility for himself or herself that's a start and then maybe you admire someone even more if they've forged their character sufficiently to move past cynicism so that not only they take responsibility for themselves but they can take responsibility for their family no one and they're there for the people who love them when it's necessary and if you do that then you have something i wouldn't say necessarily to be proud of but at least you have one less thing to upgrade yourself with not something and then you can move past that and you can say well maybe if you put yourself together enough carefully enough spoke the truth enough were courageous enough in in spite of the reasons you have not to be that you could also be someone of benefit to yourself and your family and your community and you partake in structuring things in a harmonious manner by living in that way it's a it's a it's not an individual focused ethos it's an ethos of harmony among levels you should do what's good for you but it has to be what's good for your family at the same time and it has to be what's good for you and your family and your community at the same time and that works musically you know it makes all the levels work in harmony and and you can tell when that's happening and this is another thing that's a great utility to know is that when you're in that place where you're acting in the proper manner and you're facing things courageously and you're speaking the truth you're imbued with a sense of fundamental meaning and that meaning is the antidote to the catastrophe of life and it's the it's the antidote psychologically because you have to have that meaning because otherwise your life is too dark and too dreadful and it will corrupt you so it's the antidote psychologically but it's also the antidote practically because we're not nothing as human beings you know they say that we're made in the image of god and it's hard to say what that means but it means at least in part to participate in the process of bringing the good into being and we can all do that and the opposite and if we accept our responsibility to ourselves and to other people and to our communities and we lift that load up then we live lives that are meaningful and that stops us from being corrupt it it provides us with the medication against catastrophe and it also practically improves the world that's the other thing it's not just psychological it's you can make things worse everyone knows that and no doubt you have in many ways but you can make things better and they actually get better and there's a reason for hope and there's something to be said to know that you're the sort of creature that can look mortality and catastrophe and malevolence straight in the eye so to speak and nonetheless stand up and do what's right and that all there is in that is good and that's what i've been telling people [Music]

Channel: Pursuit of Meaning

Views: 923,361

Keywords: motivational speech, motivational video, jordan peterson responsibility, jordan peterson motivation, jordan peterson, jordan peterson clips, inspirational video, jordan peterson speech, jordan peterson advice, wisdom talks, success chasers, motivationhub, be inspired, motivation madness, better chapter, chaos & order, wise advice motivation, forever inspired, inspirational speeches, jordan peterson god, jordan peterson religion

Id: lKq4q6lM2T0

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022