Jordan Peterson Speech at the 2019 PragerU Summit | Speeches and Events

so I think I'll tell you what I've learned over the last year I've traveled to about a hundred and sixty cities since last January with my wife Gannon and spoken to about three hundred thousand people that live events and so the first thing I learned was that for some reason I can travel to 160 cities and speak to 300,000 people and that was a shock in itself that it's a continual shock that everywhere we go there's a massive hunger for whatever it is that I happen to be talking about and you know I think about that constantly when I'm discussing what I'm discussing with my audiences trying to understand what it is that's driving this I do that a variety of ways you know one of the things that do is listen for silence if you have thirty five hundred people in the auditorium and they all fall dead silent what that means is that you've touched on something of that's of universal importance in that moment anyways because it it supersedes the topic supersedes anything else that's being considered right it supersedes the desire to shift your position in your chair supersedes the desire to whisper to your neighbor it it grips your attention completely and enforces the silence and it's a very interesting thing to to to listen for that because you see that people are in the grip of something and then you have to puzzle out what it is that they're in the grip of I can tell you some of some about that you know there's this idea that became very popular in the 1960s I just talked to Bishop a bishop Bishop Baron about a week and a half ago for my youtube video channel and for my podcast and I told him that I was a strange psychologist because I never told my audiences that and now I speak to individuals in the audience I never tell someone that they're OK the way they are you know there's this idea that came up in the 60s that you're OK the way you are yeah and well I like that idea very much and I think it's a very bad idea especially when you're talking to young people who are lost and nihilistic and depressed and suffering and aimless and ideologically possessed and prematurely cynical because they're not okay the way they are and if you tell them that they are then they think well this is it that's it that's life it's like I've hit the pinnacle at 18 I don't know anything about the world I haven't contributed anything to it but there's no up because I'm okay the way they are the way I am it's like you're not okay the way you are especially if you're 18 you've got 60 years to put yourself together and you better you better be better at the end of that than you were at the beginning or something has gone seriously wrong and so it's not an optimistic thing to tell people that they're okay the way they are it's a pessimistic thing because what you do is denigrate what they could be for what they are and and I know that is a terrible idea technically speaking from a psychological perspective because it's who you could be that imbues your life with meaning it's not the only thing and you have your friends in your family but they expect something from you to you know expect the best from you they expect a certain amount of improvement especially if you have children but even if you're our child you might some improvement from your parents as well but that's what you hope for is you hope that the person can manifest what's best in them and if they don't do that then you're disappointed in them just like you would be inexorably or are inexorably disappointed in yourself if you don't manifest what's best in you and I think that that's very interesting moral law you know I talk a lot to my audiences about what I believe to be incontrovertible facts and and I think that the fundamental in contrary incontrovertible fact is that life is suffering and I think that that's why that's a primarily primary axiom of religious belief in some sense almost regardless of the faith and the 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 imagined and so and everyone knows that and so it's easy to understand why people become cynical and bitter and hurt and nihilistic know 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 you 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 and 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 and so I talk to you my audience is about wisdom and I think I tell them other things that I believe to be true it's like well 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 Steven them moderates student of history soon comes to understand oh 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 it's reasonably probable that you're that idiot and so the question is what might constitute an alternative to that if there is an alternative and you know I learned a while back long while back reading religious mythology mostly that there's a difference between thinking and paying attention and of the to 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 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 and 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 question 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 our instinct for admiration is the instinct for image and what would you call it it deeply biologically and metaphysically rooted died line to the proper path of life the question is is there a proper path of life well 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 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 well who do you admire or we could start by who don't you admire well you don't admire an adult who won't take responsibility for himself or herself I 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'll 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 know 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 knowing 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 abrade 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 and 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 what makes all the levels work in harmony and and you can tell when that's happening and this is another thing that's of 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 cycle logically 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 be 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 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 thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you for watching this video to help keep prettier you videos free please consider making a tax-deductible donation