Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / The Hero Inside You Must Also Be a Monster | Jordan Peterson

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The Hero Inside You Must Also Be a Monster | Jordan Peterson · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: If you don't know what you're doing, you don't know
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: where you are, and you don't know where you're going.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And if you're in a place where you don't know
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: where you are or where you're going, you're.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: In danger.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Because that's unmapped territory, and God only knows what lurks
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: in unmapped territory. If you're so confused and disoriented that
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: you don't know where you are or where you're going,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: there are predators of the spirit who are much worse
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: than snakes that are waiting for you.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: And the probability that you'll move from.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Aimless, hopeless, joyless anxiety to nihilism, corrosive bitterness, and genicidal
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: fantasy in the fundamental extreme is very high.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, I just want to be happy. It's
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: a slogan.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's the most common slogan of our time, I would say,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: And it's such a preposterous slogan.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: It's like, what do you mean, just you just want
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: to be happy? That's all. That's all you want, that
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: absolute impossibility. You want bliss, unending no matter what you do,
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: and that's all you want.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: It's not exactly a small ask, let's say, because it's
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the same thing as asking to dwell permanently in paradise.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: It's something like that. And then it also isn't true.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: That isn't what you want. If you do careful analysis
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: of what people mean when they say they just want
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: to be happy, what they mean is they don't want
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: to suffer.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Stupidly, they're much more concerned. We're much more concerned with not.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Experiencing an excess of negative emotion than we are with
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: experiencing a surfight of positive pleasure. So first of all,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: we don't mean just want to be happy. We mean
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: please don't make us too miserable and fair enough, that's reasonable.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: But then on the happiness front, even on the absence
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of misery front, that's not true. It's like, it isn't
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: obvious at all that we want happiness. It isn't even
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: obvious that we want absence of misery. What's really obvious
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: is that we want an adventure, right, we want an
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: adventure that's so compelling that it makes the misery of life.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Not just justifiable but worthwhile. You want to look back
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: at your life and you know this to be true.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: You want to be able to say to yourself.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Even considering a month or a week or a series
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of days. You want to be able to say that
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: was really difficult, but you know what, it was worth it.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: And I think that's what you want from your life.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: It's something like, you know what, that was difficult, but
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: it was worth it. And that meant that the adventure
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: was so great that it justified the difficulties. And so
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: then the question is, and here's the question, where do
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: you find the great adventure of your life? Well?
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: How about in truth? Well? Why because you don't know
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: If you tell the truth, it's a mystery, it's going
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: to lay itself out for you. And so that's an
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: adventure because you don't you literally do not know what's
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: going to happen. You have to let go of knowing
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen, and so then you have that adventure.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And then what is also the case is that it's
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: you that's having the adventure, right because if if what
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: you're doing is living in truth, that's your that's you,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: That truth is you, and so that means that whatever
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: happens when you tell the truth is your adventure. And
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: then you think, well, I'm using deception it's like, well,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: maybe you are, but maybe deception is using you. And
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: then maybe it's the spirit of deception that's having the
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: adventure of your life. And then you might ask yourself, well,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: why are you so miserable and unhappy? And the answer
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: would be, well, the spirit of deception is having the
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: adventure of your life.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: You're not even there, because if you're not living in truth,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: you're not there. Obviously, what's there is the spirit of deception.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: And you might think that's your deception, but I would
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: be very careful about thinking that, because there has been
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: there have been centuries of meditation on the nature of
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the spirit of deception. And the answer isn't that the
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: spirit of deception is you. The answer is that the
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: spirit of deception is something that possesses you, convinces you
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: that it's you, and that's not something you want to
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: fall into.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: The clutches of the world is founded on a sacrifice, right,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and that's what the crucifix represents. And European towns were
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: built around a church, and the church was built around
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: an altar, and the altar was built around the idea
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: of self sacrifice. So the sacrifice, the proper sacrifice, is
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: at the center of the community. That's what that idea means. Now,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: you might ask, well, what's the proper sacrifice, and the
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: answer is something like the voluntary willingness to bury your cross.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And then you might say, well, what is your cross?
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: And the answer to that is, well, that's the catastrophe
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: of your life, right, that's the.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Fact you'll be betrayed, the.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Fact that you're going to die, the fact that you're
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: going to be in pain, the fact that your loved
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: ones will see you suffer, the fact that the mob
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: will come after you, the fact that criminals might be
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: preferred to you, et cetera. It's all the potential catastrophes
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of your life. And then the sacrifice is the idea
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: that you you have to you have to let your
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: what would you say, you have to let your narrow
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: ego go enough so that you pick all that up voluntarily,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: all of that, and then that transforms it.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: And I think I think that's literally true.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I think that's what all this that's what all the
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: psychological evidence points to, is that if you adopt a stance,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: a voluntary challenge, even in relationship to tragedy and malevolence,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: that that's the pathway to transcendence. Do you have something
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: to say that you're not saying. If you do, then
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: it's your fault. This is your fault, it's your problem.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: And you might say, well, I'm too afraid to talk.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: It's like, fair enough, how afraid are you not to talk?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: You know, people say to me frequently they compliment me
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: on my bravery, and I think you don't understand.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: I'm not brave. I don't like conflict.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I'm way more afraid of losing control of my tongue
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: than I am of the consequences of saying what I
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: have to say, because I know what happens when we
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: allow other people to control our tongues. It's not good.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: It's not good, it's hell itself. And so of course
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: it's troublesome to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: When you say what you have to.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Say, it's like, that's fine, Try.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Not say what you have to say. Well, that be
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: okay in the moments, like yeah, in the moment, but
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: unfortunately your whole life isn't in the moment. Practice in
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: developing the capacity for skilled movement forward in a manner
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: that simultaneously encourages the others that you're cooperating.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: With to do precisely the same thing.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: And that's not some arbitrary ethos. It's not arbitrary because
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: if that doesn't happen, then nothing flourishes, and if it
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: does happen, then everything flourishes. It's also not relativistic in
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: some sense, because you have to do that no matter
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: what you're doing, no matter what it is that you're doing.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: If you do that well, you're doing whatever it is
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you're doing well. In fact, that's really in some sense
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: how you would define well.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: If you give up enough psychologically, you'll cut your losses
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: in actuality.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: And of course that's sort of what thoughts for is right,
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: so that you can get yourself straight. You can give
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: it up in abstraction so.
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: You don't act out the pathology, and then nothing dies
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: in actuality.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: But that still means you have something to give up.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: You want to initiate a process of active engagement with
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the dragon that burned you. Fundamentally, the psychophysiological pattern of
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: active engagement is the opposite to the psychophysiological pattern of
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: involuntary stress. And so if you can practice embodying that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: voluntary confrontation.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Then that stance can come to dominate.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: And that's the stance you want to dominate, because that
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: moves you forward voluntarily into the world.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: And so and that.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: In all probability that will work. I want to be
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: free to do what I want. Okay, Well, hang on
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: a second, which I are you talking about there? Are
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: you talking about the mature eye that sees next week
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and next month, the next year and ten years out
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and that takes the community into account. Or are you
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: talking about the impulsive, hedonistic, self serving, narrow eye that
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: just wants exactly what it wants right now? And what
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: makes you think that when you make a case for
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: that hedonism, that you're not just falling under this way
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: of an impulsive, short sighted.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Demon so to speak. If you look at.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Music, for example, music operates by very sophisticated rules, and
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: so it's ordered and constrained. But out of that rules
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: system of rules comes an almost infinite array of possibility.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: And so you know, we have this sense. I think
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: it derives from Rousseau that any constraint of order is
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: a limit on freedom, when what we should be hypothesizing
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: is that with the optimal set of principles, you get
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the maximally desirable freedom, and it's not freedom from everything,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: and it's not freedom to do anything. It's certainly not
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: a narrow, hedonistic freedom because that backfires on you.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: You like the next day