YouSaid · the spoken record

Jordan Peterson

lines on the record: 214
first: 2022-08-19
most recent: 2022-08-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That was the question you posed in some sense. You're obsessed with, say, what happened on these mass scale catastrophes in the communist countries? It's like, well, millions of people participated. So you could have and maybe you would have enjoyed it. So what part of that is you And you can find it if you want.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's handmade. I thought about that for a long time, right? This hierarchy of ideal. And the thing about truth, that bitter truth, let's say, that cynical truth is it can. The shackles of naivety, and actually he Burnt cynicism is a moral improvement over a blind naivety. Even though one is in some ways positive, but only because it's protected, and the other is bitter and dark, but still better. But you're not done at that point. You're just barely started. It's like you're cynical. You're not cynical enough. Like, how cynical are you? Are you, I'm an Auschwitz prison guard level of cynical? You have to be, you have to go down pretty deep into the weeds before you find that part of you, but you can find it if you want, and then you think, well, I want to stop this.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that tighter you bind yourself to it, the more you find out what it is. And that's like a radical embrace. And it's a really radical embrace. That's the crucifix symbol. And more than that, because like I said, the full passion story isn't death. It isn't even unjust death. It isn't even unjust death and the crucifixion of the innocent, which is really getting pretty bad. It's unjust torturous. Innocent death attendant upon betrayal and tyranny followed by hell. That's a hell of a thing to radically embrace. It's like bring it on.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Adventure along the route, man. And I would say where's that adventure to be found? In faith, what's the faith? The highest value is love, and truth is its handmaiden. That's a statement of faith, right? Because you can't tell. You have to act it out to see if it's true. And so you can't even find out without, and that's so peculiar, you have to make the commitment a priori. Like a marriage, it's the same thing Like, well, is this the person for me? Well, that's the wrong question. Do I find out if this is the person for me By binding myself to them. Well, maybe the same thing is true of life, right? You bind yourself to it.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's Dostoevsky said this is something else. Every man is not only responsible for everything he does, but for everything everyone else does. It's like her. What is that profounder? Are you just insane? Then you think, I'm not Is what you receive back proportionate to what you deliver? The answer to that might be yes. That's a terrifying idea, man. And it's certainly you can see that it's true in some sense because people certainly respond to you in kind with how you treat them. That's certainly the case.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, it's, you know, one of the things I did learn perhaps from looking into the abyss to the degree that I have had to or was willing to That at some level, you have to make a fundamental statement of faith. When God creates the world after each day he says he saw that it was good. Think, well, is it good? It's like, well, there's a tough question. Do you want to bring a child into a world such as this, which is a fundamental question of whether or not it's good? It's an act of faith to declare that it's good. Because the evidence is ambivalent. And so then you think, okay, well Am I going to act as if it's good? What would happen if I did Maybe the answer to that is I think this is the answer. More The proposition that it's good The better it gets.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Atheist, materialist, and puts forward an argument on that front that's still unparalleled as far as I'm concerned, and overwhelms Elyosha, who cannot respond, but Elyosha's still the better man. So, which is very interesting, you know.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He is definitely that. Is definitely that, yes. Apparently, Dietz knew more about Dostoevsky than people had thought. There's been some recent scholarship on that grounds. Dostoevsky didn't know anything about Nietzsche, as far as I know. I could be wrong about that. But the thing that Dostoevsky had over Nietzsche is Nietzsche had to make things propositional in some real sense because he was a philosopher. And it's hard to propositionalize things that are outside your ken, but you can characterize them. And so in the brothers Karamazov, Ivan is a more developed character than Eliosha in the explicit sense. He can make better arguments. But Elyosha wins, like Mishkin, because he's the better man. And Dostoevsky can show that in the actions, he can't render it entirely propositional, but that's probably because what's good can't be rendered entirely propositional. And so Dostoevsky had that edge over Nietzsche. He said, well, Ivan is this brilliant rationalist.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's uncanny parallelisms in their writing and their lives. And Dostoevsky is deeper than Nietzsche, but that's because he was a writer of fiction.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enough to be an influence. Know you have to be deaf in some fundamental sense not to encounter a great dead friend and fail to learn. And I mean, I tried to separate the wheat from the chaff when I read, you know, and I read all the great clinicians, all of them, perhaps not. Those who are foremost in the pantheon, and I tried to pull out what I could, and that was a lot. I learned a lot from Freud. I learned a lot from Rogers. And I learned a lot from, well, from Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. I'm going to do a course on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche for this Peterson Academy that's coming up in January.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why no one enters the kingdom of heaven unless they become like a child. That's Prince Mishkin. Dostevsky knew that. So that's why you like the idiot. That's so interesting. See, I think I like crime and punishment because, well, you identified with Mishkin, I think I identified more with Roskoln I was tempted by Luciferian intellect in the manner very similar to the manner he was tempted. But I mean, I think you can make a case that the brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's crowning achievement Not something, man. He ruined literature for me. Everything else just felt insipid afterwards. Not everything. Not everything. I found some books that In my experience, hit that pinnacle. The master in margarita. That's a deadly book. I've read that I think four times, and I still, there's still, it's unbelievably deep”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are unsophisticated, not great literature, though. It's very rare in great literature what you have in great literature generally is the internal drama, right? As the literature becomes more pop, I would say, the characters are more unitary. So there's a real bad guy and he's all bad and there's a real good guy and he's all good. And that's not his interesting, it's not as sophisticated. When you reach Dostoevsky in Heights in literary representation or Shakespearean Heights, You can identify with the villain. That's when literature really reaches its pinnacle in some sense.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, the cosmic drama that's Satan versus Christ. Like, well, who's that about if it's not about you? I'm speaking just as a psychologist or as a literary critic. Those are characters, at least they're that. Are they human characters? Well, obviously. Well, are they archetypal human characters? Yes, what does that mean cosmically and ontologically? I don't know because the world is story? Maybe”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Him, and restraining orders don't work on the sort of people that you put restraining orders on. And he used to be harassed now and then by, you know, a bureaucrat in a bank with delusions of power. And he would say to them, he used to kind of act this out to me when I was talking, he'd say. Going to be your worst night. And he meant it. And he would do it. He had this obsessional, psychopathic vengeance that was just like right there, paranoid to the hilt and paranoid people are hyper acute. So they're watching you for any sign of Deceit or manipulation, and they're really good at it because they're 100%. That's what paranoia is. It's 100% focus on that. And even under those circumstances, if you step carefully enough. You can maybe avoid the axe. That's a good thing to know if you ever meet someone truly dangerous.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Voluntarily, right? It's like, and what's so cool about that is that even though the person you're dealing with is full of snakes, if you offer your hand in trust and it's real, you will evoke the best in them. And that's true even. I've dealt with people who were pretty damn criminal and pretty psychopathic. And sometimes dangerously so. And you tread very lightly when you're dealing with someone like that, especially if they're intoxicated. And even then, your best bet is that. Alert trust It's the only, it's the fact the only thing I know that I had one client who was paranoid. He was paranoid psychopath. That's a bad combination. He was a bad guy, man. He had like four restraining orders.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Offering other people what they need and want, the more people will line up to play with you. And so it's the wrong question. It's like, how can I be the best partner possible? And then you think, well, if I do that, people would just take advantage of me. And that's the non naive objection, right? Because the naive person's saying, well, I'll be good and everyone will treat me right. It's like, the cynic says, no, I'll be good and someone will. Take me out And then you think, well, what do you do about that objection? And the answer is, well, you factor that in. And that's why you're supposed to be, what is it? As soft as a dove and as wise as a serpent. It's like, I know you're full of snakes I know it. Maybe I know it more than you do. Will play, anyways. And that's a”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Willing to delay gratification. So you dance with a woman. It's like, what's she doing? What are you two doing? Well, it's a pattern. There's patterns happening around you. That's the music. Patterns, patterns of being. That's the music. Now, can you align yourself with the patterns of being gracefully? That's what she's checking out. And then, can you do that with her And then can you do that in a playful and attentive manner and keep your bloody hands to yourself for at least a minute? So, can you dance in a playful manner? It's like you can go through this in your imagination and you know, you'll know, you know. And then you think, well, how far am I from those things? And the answer is usually, man, it's a pretty horrible abyss separating you from that ideal. Harder you work on.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vary. It always came up to the top. And I got asked that. Three times in a row, and I didn't have a good answer. And then I thought. Why don't I have a good answer? Thought, oh, I know why,'cause that's a stupid question. So, why? Because it's putting the cart before the horse. Here's the right question. Do I make myself into the perfect date? Answer that question, and you will not have any problem answering the previous question. It's like, I want in a partner If I offered everything I could to a partner, who would I be? You work on that. Ask that question. Just ask. Just ask yourself, okay, I have to be the person that women would want. What do they want Clean, that's not a bad start. Reasonably good physical shape So healthy Productive, generous, honest, and”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A good question. I was asked that multiple times on my tour, three times in a row, in fact, because we asked people to use this Slido gadget.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll give you the same leeway, and then we'll practice stupidly for 20 times, and we'll talk about it. And then maybe we'll get it right for the next 10,000 times. Right. And you can do that with your whole life, and you can do that with your kids, and you can do that with your family. Like, it's not easy, but you can do it. It's a lot easier than the alternative.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you could have what you wanted, and so she sits down and she thinks, okay, if he comes home, what do I want to have happen? And then now you got two visions and you say, well, what would you like? And you listen and she says, what would you like? And you tell her. And then you think, okay, now can we bring these visions together? So not only do we both get what we want, but because we've brought them together, we even get more than we want. Well, who wouldn't agree to that unless they were aimed down? And that's so exciting. It's not a compromise. It's a union of ideals that even makes a better ideal. And then you get to come home. And then there's another rule that goes along with that, which is, please, dear, have the grace. To allow me to do this stupidly and badly, well I learn at least twenty times.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably let's go sit and talk about our day. It's like that sounds pretty good. Okay, that sounds pretty good. Might not be perfect, but sounds a hell of a lot better than what we're doing now. So how about we go talk to, we'll go talk to your wife and say, okay, this is what's happening when I come home. I would like it to be better. What would you like to have happen?”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Knocking the door will open. Okay, you get to pick what happens when you come home, but you have to figure out what it is. So now this is the deal. You treat yourself properly. You imagine coming home and it goes the way you want and need it to go. Okay, what does that look like? You get to have it, but you have to know what it is. What does it look like? And you think, okay, I want to come home. I want to be happy about coming home. I come home. I opened the door. I say hello, honey, I'm home. My wife says, Hi, it's so nice to hear your voice. She comes up, she says. Hi, dear. She gives you a hug. She says, How was your day? And you say, Well, we'll sit and talk about that. How is your day? Well, we'll sit and talk about that. Do you need something to eat?”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your life is in order I thought I did that with my clients a lot, so a lot of them would come home from work. The guys, hey, and their wives would meet them at the door and it'd be a fight right away. And it's a clash there because he comes home and he's tired and hungry and he's worked all day and he's hoping that, you know, he gets welcomed when he comes back to the home. But then the wife is at home and she's been with the kids all day and she's tired and hungry and she's hoping that when he comes home he'll show her some appreciation for what's happened today. And then they clash and then they both have problems to discuss because they've had their troubles during the day. And so then every time they get together, they're not like it's a bit of a fight for 20 minutes and then the whole evening is screwed. And so then you think, okay, here's the deal.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything has to be a walled garden before the children will play. That's a good way of thinking about it. So you put everything in order and you think, oh my God, now I'm tyrannized by this order. It's like, no, you aren't, not if it's voluntary. And then the order is the precondition for the freedom. And so then all of a sudden you get all these things in order. It's like, oh, look at this. I've got some room to play here. And then maybe you're not depressed. Now, it's often not that simple. Not that simple. Try putting your room in order. Perfect order. That's hard.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty sure that's pretty accurate. It's approximately right. So you got 200 five minute chunks and they repeat. A lot of them repeat. So if you get every one of those right, they're trivial, right? Who cares what my sock drawer looks like? It's there. Fair enough, man, but that's your life. The things you repeat every day, the mundane things. Think I could get all those mundane things right. That's the game rules. It's like now all the mundane is in place. Now you can play because all the mundane is in place. And this is actually true. So with children Imagine you want your children to play. Well, play is very fragile neurologically. Any competing motivation or emotion will suppress play. So everything has to be in order.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's three minutes a week, that's 12 minutes a month, that's two hours a year. So maybe your life is made out of, if you've got 16 hours a day, let's figure this out. Five, twelve in an hour, 12 in an hour, 144 in 12 hours. Yeah, let's say 200. 205 minute chunks. That's your life.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But not too much. So the rule is pick something you know would make pick a problem. A solution to it that you know wouldn't help, that you could do. You would do so, you have to negotiate with yourself. It's like, well, I won't clean up this room. How do you know? I've been in here for 10 years and I've never cleaned it up. It's like, well, obviously that's too big a dragon for you. Would you clean one drawer? Find out. So imagine now you want to be happy when you open that drawer and you think, well, that's stupid. It's like, is it It's your sock drawer, which I cleaned up in my room the other day, by the way. You're going to open that every morning. That's like 30 seconds of your life every day.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look around and see what bugs you in your room. Just look. It's like, okay, I'm in my room. Do I like this room? No, it bugs me. Okay. Why? Well, the pain's peeling there and it's dusty there and the carpet's dirty and that corner's kind of ugly and the light there isn't very good. And my clothes closet, it's a mess, so I don't even like to open it. Okay, that's a lot of problems. That sucks. That's a lot of opportunity. Pick something and fix it.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Craftsmanship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For discipline, you know, I mean, I said in one of the chapters in my books is focused on putting your house in order. It's like, well, how do you start? Make your bed. You know, it actually took me quite a long time in my life before I made my bed regularly in the morning. Most of my life whispered in pretty good order, but that was one thing I didn't have in order. My clothes and my closet as well. All that's in order. Not all of it. I'm cleaning out some drawers right now, but.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can be nice to the customers, you can develop your social skills, you can learn how to handle boss employee relationship, you can be there 15 minutes early and leave 15 minutes late. Like you can learn in an entry-level job, man. And I'll tell you, if you take an entry-level job and you learn and it's a reasonably decent place, you will not be in an entry-level job for long because everyone who's competent is desperate for competent people. And if you go and show yourself as competent, there'll be a trial period. But if you go show yourself as competent, all sorts of doors you didn't even know were there will start opening like mad.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Job to find a job, do your best with the customers, don't be above your job. You're going to get an entry-level job when you're a kid. What else would you want? You want to be the boss? What do you know? You don't know anything. You could be the boss of your job, you know, if you're working in a grocery store or you're working in a convenience store, assuming you're not working for terrified tyrants.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On some responsibility. Something for other people Doing something for yourself while you're doing that, even if you don't know it for sure, because you're a community across time.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Aggregates exponentially increase and failures due to, by the way, but aggregates exponentially increase. So once you start the ball rolling, it can get zipping along pretty good. This person that I talked about was incapable of sitting with me in a cafe when we first met just talking, even though I was her therapist. But by the end she was doing stand-up comedy. So, you know, it took years, but still most people won't do stand-up comedy. That's quite the bloody achievement she would read her poetry on stage too. So, for someone who is petrified into paralysis by social anxiety, And who had to start very small, there's a hell of an accomplishment.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, my God. Sometimes it's way worse than that. Like, I had clients who were so depressed they literally couldn't get out of bed. So, what's their first step? It's like, can you sit up? Once today Can you prop yourself up on your elbows once today? Like you just scale back the dragon till you find one that's conquerable that moves you forward. There's a rubric for life. Scale back the dragons till you find one conquerable and it'll give you a little bit of gold. Commensurate with the struggle, but the plus side of that, because that's you think that God, that's depressing. You mean I have to start by sitting up while you do if you can't sit up. But the plus side of that is it's the Pareto distribution issue is that”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Young men who do that could go to college, young men who do that, 90 minutes, just the future authoring, 90 minutes, they're 50% less likely to drop out. That's all it takes.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just like it's terrible, just arbitrarily opposed them. You could do the self-authoring program online because it helps you write an autobiography. And so if you have memories that are more than 18 months old that bother you when you think them up, part of you is locked inside that. An undeveloped part of you is still trapped in that. That's a metaphorical way of thinking about it. That's why it still has emotional significance. So you can write about your past experiences, but I would say wait for at least 18 months if something bad has happened to you. Because otherwise you just hurt yourself again by encountering it. Bring yourself up to date with an autobiography. There's an analysis of faults and virtues. That's the present authoring. And then there's guided writing exercise that helps you make a future plan.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were talking about 80% of the time, but she literally, she had never been attended to properly, ever, and so she was an uncarved block in the Taoist sense, right? She hadn't been subjected to those flaming swords that separated the wheat from the chaff. And so you can do that in therapy. If you're listening and you're depressed, I would say if you can't find a therapist and that's getting harder and harder because it's actually become illegal to be a therapist now because you have to agree with your clients, which is a terrible thing to do with them.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What she wanted from me was for me just to shut the hell up for 50 minutes, which is very hard for me, and to just tell me what had happened to her. And then what happened at the end of the conversation, then I could discuss a bit with her. And then as we progressed through the years, the amount of time that we spent in discussion increased in proportion in the sessions until by the time we stopped seeing each other when my clinical practice collapsed.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, as opposed to a dead fish. You know, and there's these elementary social skills that hypothetically, if you were well cared for, you learned when you were like three. And sometimes people have, I had lots of clients. Whom no one ever paid any attention. And they needed like $10,000 of attention. And some of that was just listening because they had $10,000 of conversations they never had with anyone. And they were all tangled up in their head. And they had to just. One client in particular, I worked with this person for 15 years.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, okay, you have a terrible life. Well, Let's pick a front. How about you need a friend, like one, sort of friend? Do you know how to shake hands and introduce yourself? I'll have the person show me. So let's do it for a sec. Like this. Hi, I'm Jordan. And people don't know how to do that, and then they can't even get the ball rolling.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Use your time outside of work not only badly but destructively. You have a drug or alcohol habit or some other vice, pornography addiction. You are completely unengaged in the surrounding community. You have no scaffolding whatsoever to support you in your current mode of being or you move forward. And then as a therapist, well, you do two things. Well, if it's depression per se, well, like I said, there's sometimes a biochemical route. a nutritional root there's ways that can be addressed it's probably physiological if you're at least in part if you're depressed but you have an okay life sometimes it's conceptual you can turn to dreams sometimes to help people because dreams contain the seeds of the potential future and if your person is a real good dreamer and you can analyze dreams that can be really helpful but that seems to have only true for more creative people and for the people who just have a terrible life”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have friends, you have family, you have an intimate relationship, you have a job or a career, you're about as educated as you should be, given your intelligence, use your time outside of work wisely. You're not beholden to alcohol or other temptations. You're engaged in the community in some fundamental sense and all that's working. Now, if you have all that and you're feeling really awful, you're either ill or you're depressed. And so then sometimes there's a biochemical root to that, treatment of that. My experience has been as a clinician is if you're depressed, but you have a life and you take an antidepressant, it will probably help you a lot. Now, maybe you're not depressed. Exactly. You just have a terrible life. What does that look like? No relationship. Your family is a mess. You've got no friends. You've got no plan, got no job.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First thing I do as a clinician, if someone comes to me and says they're depressed, is ask myself a question. What does this person mean by that? So I have to find out, like, because maybe they're not depressed, maybe they're hyper anxious, or maybe they're obsessional. Like there's various forms of powerful negative emotion. So they need to be differentiated. But then the next question you have to ask is, well, are you depressed or do you have a terrible life? Or is it some combination of the two? So if you're depressed, Far as I can tell, you don't have a terrible life.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's why the central Christian doctrine is pick up your cross and follow me. And I'm speaking not in religious terms saying that. I'm just speaking as a psychologist. It's like one of the things we've learned in the last hundred years is voluntary exposure to that which freezes and terrifies you in measured proportions is curative.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Voluntarily. And then you might ask well, why should I have to subject myself to death and hell? I'm innocent. And then the answer to that is Even the innocent must be voluntarily sacrificed to the highest good.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take your preoccupation with suffering seriously. It's serious business. And that's part of that to circle back to the beginning, let's say, that's that willingness to gaze into the abyss, which is obviously what you were doing when you went to Ukraine. Gazing into the abyss that makes you better. The thing is, and this is maybe where Nietzsche's idea is not as differentiated as it became. Sometimes your gaze can be forcefully directed towards the abyss. Then you're traumatized. If it's involuntary and accidental, it can kill you. More it's voluntary. More transformative it is. And that's part of that idea about facing death and hell. It's like, can you tolerate death and hell? And the answer is, this terrible answer is. Yes, to the degree that you're willing to do it.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so that's quite a frame for a discussion, right? You had all sorts of reasons. And then you think, well, are you just letting the conversation go where it will? It's like, well, not exactly. You spent all this time. It's not like this came about by accident, this conversation. You spent all this time framing it. And so all of that provides the implicit substructure for the play and the conversation. And if you have that implicit, here's another way. This is very much worth knowing is If you get the implicit structure of perception right, everything becomes a game. Not only that, a game you want to play. And maybe in the final analysis, a game you'd want to play forever. That's obviously a distant beckoning ideal. We know games need rules. There's no”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're not optimal, especially if you're not willing to admit them, right? And so they can contaminate you. So you want to be decontaminated. So you have the right trip, let's say. And so you have to put yourself, that's a meditative practice. You have to put yourself in the right receptive position with the right goal in mind. Then you can... And I think you can get better and better at this, then you can trust. What's going to happen? You know, so for example, before I came here. I mean, I presume you have a reason for doing the podcast with me. What's the reason?”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Answer is orient yourself properly while in the conversation we're having, you have an orientation structure you want to be prepared. You want to be attentive. Then you want to have an interesting conversation and you want to have the kind of interesting conversation that other people want to listen to that will be good for them in some manner. Okay, so that's pretty good frame. And then you kind of scour your heart and you think, is that really what you want? Are you after fame or after notoriety? Are you after money? I'm not saying any of those things are necessarily bad.”
2022-08-19 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #313 – Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source