Jordan Peterson's Life Advice Will Change Your Future — Most Underrated Speech

One of the things that strikes the audience as silent constantly, because I'm always listening to them to see, you know, when the attention is maximally focused, is whenever I point out to people that the antidote to the meaninglessness of their life and the suffering and the malevolence that they might be displaying because they're resentful and bitter about how things have turned out, the antidote to that is to take on more responsibility. I was watching The Simpsons the other day. I watched the first Simpsons episode and I deconstructed it. And so it's really interesting. So what happens in the first Simpsons episode is that it's Christmas, and Homer and Marge are going to buy some Christmas presents, but Homer doesn't get his Christmas bonus. And so he's absolutely crushed by that. And that actually is a recurring theme in The Simpsons, where Homer loses his job or something like that, or can't make enough money. He's completely crushed. Even though he's kind of useless, bumbling, laughing fool of a guy, you know, the thing that gives that show its soul is that he's still oriented towards his family. That's what makes him honorable, is that foolish as he is, he's decided to adopt responsibility for his family and to try to bear that. And so he's a holy fool. He's not a complete fool. And it's so interesting watching the story, because he suffers dreadfully as a consequence of not being able to fulfill his responsibility. Well, that's for men. Women know what they have to do. Men have to figure out what they have to do. A man has to decide that he's going to do something. You can decide, man. But, you know, there's some criteria. It should be good for you. It should be good for you in a way that facilitates your moving forward. Maybe it should be good for you in a way that's also good for the family and the community. It should cover the domain of life. I mean, there's constraints on what you should regard as a value. But within those constraints, you have the choice. You have choice. Well, the thing is that people will carry a heavy load if they get to pick the goddamn load. And they think, well, I won't carry any load. It's like, OK, fine, but then you're like the sled dog that doesn't have a sled to pull. You're going to tear pieces out of your own legs because you're bored. People are pack animals. They need to pull against a weight. That's not true for everyone. It's not true particularly, say, for low-conscientious people. But for the typical person, they'll eat themselves up unless they have a load. And it's so interesting to watch the young men when you talk to them about responsibility. They're so goddamn thrilled about it. It just blows me away. It's like, really? That's the counterculture. Grow the hell up and do something useful. Really? I could do that? Oh, I'm so excited by that idea. No one ever mentioned that before. It's so interesting because it's as if everybody kind of knows this, but that it hasn't crystallized. It's like, well, you should be responsible because that's what a good citizen is. No, no. You should be responsible because you need to have a deep meaning in your life to offset the suffering so you don't get bitter. And the way you do that is to bear a heavy load, to get yourself in check for you now and for you in the future, and then to do the same for your family and your community, and that there's real nobility in that and there's real meaning. And more, the other thing that I've been suggesting to people, and I also believe this, is that if you don't get your act together and you let yourself slide, then what kind of moves in to take the place of what you could have been is something that's really not good at all. So it's not only that if you're living like a dissolute life, that you're not aiming at anything positive and so you don't have any real meaning and you're subsumed by anxiety and all of that hopelessness, but something kind of hellish moves in there too to occupy that place and so then you end up making things worse. With many of my clients who were suffering, what we would strive to do was not so much make them happy, because sometimes that was impossible. They were so crippled in so many ways, often physically and in pain. But something meaningful, that would keep them going and keep them from straying and keep them from thinking homicidal and genocidal thoughts, all of that. And meaning, that's the antidote to suffering. The question is, well, how is that best to be found? What you should be pursuing is, well, there's two things. You should be pursuing who you could be. That'd be the first thing. Because you're not who you could be and you know it. You have guilt and shame and regret and you berate yourself for your lack of discipline and your procrastination and all your bad habits. You know perfectly well that you're not who you could be. And God only knows who you could be. And so that's what you should be striving for. And associated with that, you should be attempting to formulate some conception of the highest good that you can conceive of, that you can articulate. Because why not aim for that? It's like your life is short and it's troublesome. And perhaps you need to do something worthwhile with it. And if so, then you should do the most worthwhile thing. And you should figure out what that is for you. And part of that's definitely going to be to develop your character as much as possible. To dispense with those parts of you that are unworthy. And then maybe, if you're fortunate and you do that carefully, then happiness will descend upon you from time to time. And that's the best you've got. And then also perhaps during sorrowful times, or worse, evil times, the fact that you've strengthened your character and that you're aiming at the highest that you can conceptualize, that'll give you the moral fortitude to endure without becoming corrupted during those times. And to be someone who can be relied upon in a crisis. There's an aim. And I think of people as beasts of burden in some sense. Like we're built for a burden. And we're not happy without that burden. And we want to find the one that suits us. And that's difficult. It's part of the adventure of life to seek out the burden that suits you. But when you have that, then yes, then hopefully you're operating in harmony with the requirements of those around you. And the thing to me is that everything else pales in comparison to that. That's why it says in the New Testament that you should stack up riches in heaven. It's like there isn't anything better than that. You know, you're functioning well. Your family's functioning well. You're contributing to your community. What you're doing is worthwhile, you know. You're not tormented by your conscience. You're aiming at something that the sacrifices that you have to make that clearly justify the sacrifices you have to make. Maybe even the sacrifice of your life. Because you're in this. Like this is a mortal game. You're in this with your whole life. And you'd think that what that would mean, at least in part, is that you need to find a game to play that's of sufficient grandeur and nobility so that perhaps even the fact that mortality is built into the structure now becomes justifiable. I mean, it's a hell of an ambition. But it doesn't seem to me to be something that's impossible. I think you can live your life enough so that it justifies itself despite its limitation. That's the real question. Can you do that? And I believe that you can, and I believe that what that means is that the human spirit fundamentally triumphs over death. And so that's optimism, you know, in the midst of the sorrow and the malevolence. We have the capacity to transcend that. And there isn't anything more optimistic than that. And there's nothing in it that isn't good. Right? It's good for you. It's good for the people you love. It's good for the broader society. It's like it's good. And that'll take you through your times of travail. There isn't anything else that will. And then maybe on your deathbed you can think, I justified my privilege, the terrible privilege of my existence. And maybe that's good enough. It's possible that that's good enough. You certainly don't have anything better to do than that, as far as I can tell. Thank you.