We Who Wrestle With God: In the Image of God

Identity is not something we assume, nor something we 'decide.' The markers of it come from a source far beyond our knowledge and understanding. Through the analysis of Genesis and Peter Pan, Peterson connects his audience to the divine anchors that define identity properly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:24Jordan B. Peterson?

  Sí, estoy muy curioso sobre la charla de esta noche, porque tengo muchas cosas que se me ocurren en mi imaginación que están relacionadas con el tema de la identidad. Y estoy muy curioso de ver si puedo juntarlas. Así que supongo que vamos a descubrir.

• 0:44Jordan B. Peterson?

  Es muy divertido tratar de hacer algo. Hago una charla diferente cada noche. Tengo una pregunta diferente cada noche. Es muy divertido ver si puedo hacer algo coherente a partir de una investigación genuina. Sabes, es un tipo de acto de alto nivel, pero es muy divertido. Es divertido hacerlo con una audiencia también, porque puedo ver simultáneamente si puedo lograr empujar mi pensamiento hacia adelante de una manera coherente, pero también de una manera que es comunicable y comprensible. Es un gran privilegio poder tener esa oportunidad. Así que, la identidad. Sabes, tenemos política de identidad, ¿verdad?

• 1:27Jordan B. Peterson?

  Y ese es un elemento central de la guerra cultural. Así que la identidad se ha convertido en política. Así que no es necesariamente el caso de que la identidad sea política. Puede ser psicológica, puede ser sagrada, puede ser patriótica, puede ser nacional. Hay muchas maneras en las que la identidad se puede manifestar. Y es un misterio que se ha convertido en política. Ahora, tiene algo que ver con lo que Jonathan hizo referencia, es cuando el sagrado se colapsa, eso es la muerte de Dios. Cuando el orden más alto de las cosas se colapsa, no desaparece, es como si se derrumbara hacia abajo. Y lo que ha pasado en nuestra sociedad es que el sagrado se ha convertido en político.

• 2:10Jordan B. Peterson?

  Y eso es realmente malo, porque hay un espacio para el sagrado y hay un espacio para el político. Por eso te presentas ante César lo que es César y ante Dios lo que es Dios. Y no quieres confundir los dos, porque si lo haces, entonces... "God becomes Caesar, and that's not a good thing. And Caesar becomes God, and that is a much worse thing." And so, and that's the situation that we're in. And so that means, and this is part of the conundrum that we have. You know, and maybe it's part of what Nietzsche prognosticated too, because he believed that the consequence of the death of God would be that human beings would have to create their own values. And I believe that's wrong. I don't believe we can create our own values.

• 2:54Jordan B. Peterson?

  But to give Nietzsche his due, which is always an important thing to do, because he was a genius. It certainly is the case that we have to rethink. It seems to be that we have to rethink what identity is from first principles. Now, can we do that successfully? We're gonna find out, because the culture war is a war because of the difficulty of rethinking identity from first principles. What is it? Is it political? Is it ethnic? Is it racial? Is it economic? Is it desire? Jonathan pointed to that. Are you nothing but what it is that you want? Or what something within you wants? Is it subjective?

• 3:38Jordan B. Peterson?

  Like, is your identity only something that you control? All of those questions, that's like 10 questions. Every single one of those questions is extraordinarily difficult, and we seem to be stuck with all of them. So, we're going to try tonight to see if we can take identity apart from first principles and see where we get with it. And... So let's start with something basic. One of the things that I thought through deeply when I was a university professor was how to evaluate someone's writing.

• 4:23Jordan B. Peterson?

  Right, when you're evaluating their writing, you're evaluating their thinking. And the purpose of evaluating their thinking is not so much to grade them, to put them in the appropriate bin, but to provide them with...

• 4:40Jordan B. Peterson?

  The corrective feedback that would enable them to become better thinkers, right? When you're criticizing someone, if you're doing it in a sophisticated way, you're helping them separate the wheat from the chaff. And one of the things I learned as a grader of essays, let's say, was that one of the most effective things I could do to students wasn't to circle what they did wrong, which was often 95% of the essay. But seriously, like, our school system does a very bad job of teaching people to write. I had super bright kids in the fourth year of university, who, they were terrible at writing.

• 5:25Jordan B. Peterson?

  And they could learn quickly because they were smart, but no one had ever taught them. That was an awful thing to see after 16 years of education. One of the things I learned was, you know, I'd be wading through a mess of cliches and second-rate thought and quasi-copying, or, not precisely Claudine Gay's sin, let's say, but close to it, plagiarism. And then now and then, you know, it would be, it would be as if the student's actual genuine intelligence popped up briefly through all the mess

• 6:10Jordan B. Peterson?

  and they said something clear and useful. And, you know, people do this in your relationships with them. You know, all the time is they'll, they'll offer you a kind of mishmash of what they think you want, or maybe even what they think they want, or what they should offer.

• 6:35Jordan B. Peterson?

  And if you really listen, then now and then you'll hear the person say something that they really mean and that's true. And if you reward that, because you can if you learn to listen, if you reward that, then more of that will happen. Now, that can be daunting, because you've got to ask yourself if you really want to know what your wife thinks of you, for example, but in the long run, it's probably a better idea than finding out in divorce court, you know, 25 years later. So, people will hide bits of wheat in the chaff, and what you do as a discriminating critic is dispense with the chaff, but identify the wheat.

• 7:17Jordan B. Peterson?

  This is a really important thing to know when you're mentoring people, when you're grading, but when you're communicating with people in general, what you're really looking for, if you're wise, are things to reward. Now, you dispense with everything that's second-rate, not because you want to criticize and get rid of, or rise above the person that you're criticizing morally, but because you want to get to the wheat. And it was frequently the case, for example, when my students were maybe writing the first essay of the semester, that, you know, literally 95% of what they wrote was just painful. It would have been easier just to rewrite the essay than to grade it, you know, and so, seriously.

• 8:02Jordan B. Peterson?

  But, you know, one of the things I noticed is that if I circled a couple of sentences that were genuine thought, the students were so thrilled that someone had noticed when they dared to put their head up above the parapet and say something they believed to be true and genuine, that the next time they wrote an essay, it would be more like 30 or 40% that. And then if they got further reward for that...

• 8:31Jordan B. Peterson?

  Assuming they had the talent and the diligence, then perhaps by the end of this semester, it would be like 90% genuine thought, genuine wheat. And then they were thrilled about that too, because people are thrilled to have the opportunity to offer their best, especially if it's received in the right manner. People will often obfuscate and produce what's second rate because they're terrified in their heart of hearts that if they did reveal themselves genuinely, which is also a way of making yourself vulnerable because it lets people see who you really are. If they did reveal themselves genuinely, that that would be rejected. And so, part of the reason that my students

• 9:16Jordan B. Peterson?

  delivered such dross to begin with was because they had a history of having what they offered that was good ignored or condemned. And so often, they'd hide under the cliches. They'd hide under giving the professor what he wanted to hear so they would get a good grade because they had sickened of the risk of doing something genuine and having it be rejected. And that's something else to know in your relationships, man. You've got to be very careful not to punish the people around you that you love for doing something good because you can eradicate what's good with punishment quite rapidly.

• 9:58Jordan B. Peterson?

  And so, it's a deep thing to understand that you need to be watching the people around you all the time to see when they hit the target and to point that out. And people love that. If you do that to people around you, they'll be so thrilled with you, you could hardly stand it, right? Because people, all people but those who are utterly nihilistic and faithless will...

• 10:25Jordan B. Peterson?

  Risk offering something genuine from time to time in the desperate hope that it is in fact noticed and appreciated. And if you can transform yourself into the sort of person who notices that and rewards it, then people will bring their best to you, and that's a great deal. Now, you know, it's demanding in a sense and frightening, because if you start to encourage the best in other people and you set that as a standard, you more or less have to apply the same criteria to yourself, and that can be daunting. And so, you know, we tend to engage in a pathological dance with other people,

• 11:08Jordan B. Peterson?

  and they offer what second rate to us, and we accept it and offer what second rate to them. And we do that because we can shirk responsibility and because it lets everybody off the hook. But, you know, there was a famous Soviet joke, typical Russian humor. "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." Right, right, that's a brutal joke. That's a brutal joke. That's the sort of joke that destroys everything, right? And did, in fact, because the Soviets were well on the way to destroying everything when they finally destroyed enough so that they fell apart. And thank God that happened without,

• 11:53Jordan B. Peterson?

  well, without the Third World War, which we seem to be striving mightily to bring back right at the moment, by the way. Okay, so what are you doing? When I was thinking through what I was doing when I was grading an essay, I was, I was, I asked myself, you know, what are you doing when you're writing? What is a student doing when he or she is writing? What are you doing when you're thinking? And it's so interesting, because if you think that through deeply, there's never anything that you do...

• 12:31Jordan B. Peterson?

  Aún en el nivel micro, nunca hay una palabra que pronuncie. Nunca hay una letra que escriba, y quiero decir una sola letra, que no esté infundida con el espíritu de toda su identidad. Y lo que eso significa, por ejemplo, si vas a escribir un ensayo para un curso universitario y lo haces bien, significa que tienes que escribir la aproximación más cercana a la verdad que puedas manejar. Y eso es un negocio muy complicado, porque hablar o escribir la verdad significa que tienes que estar orientado hacia la verdad, y que tienes que hacer práctica de eso. Y no hay nada sobre eso que sea temporal o fragmentario. Tiene que ser

• 13:15Jordan B. Peterson?

  parte de tu identidad, o tal vez tiene que ser tu identidad. Y tal vez lo que estás haciendo cuando encourages a la gente a traer su mejor a la mesa y le recompensas por esas ofertas que son genuinas, es que estás alentando a su identidad como contadores de verdades hacia arriba. Y no hay diferencia entre eso y alentar la manifestación de los logos, ¿verdad? Es lo mismo, los logos siendo el espíritu de la palabra o el espíritu de Cristo, el espíritu de Dios que brota en el agua, profunda en el comienzo del tiempo, y que trae el orden creado a la existencia. Es todo lo mismo.

• 14:00Jordan B. Peterson?

  Y la identidad es un fenómeno muy profundo, y las preguntas sobre la identidad son problemas muy profundos. Van hasta el fondo, o hasta el顶部, o ambos. Y este es el caso con cada palabra que escribes cuando escribes. Y esto es algo bueno de saber cuando escribes. Puedes pensar que está bien ser casual con tus palabras. Nunca es bienestar ser casual con tus palabras. Es parte de la tradición judía-christiana que es la palabra que trae la realidad en sí a la existencia fuera de su potencial. ¿Verdad?

• 14:40Jordan B. Peterson?

  That's the truth, and what that means is you bloody well better be careful with your words, because every word you speak is either a manifestation of the fact that you're made in the image of God, or it's a rebellion against that. And there's no such thing as trivial communication. If you're communicating trivially, or you're communicating about something trivial, that just means that you've wandered off the path. That's all it means. It's just, it's an analog of this. If you find people boring, that's you. Right? Because if you listen to people, they are not boring. They are so interesting that you want to get away from them. Right?

• 15:25Jordan B. Peterson?

  Right? So, there's no trivial, there's no trivial use of words. Okay, so now, let's take that apart a bit as we investigate identity. We could, we could do that. We could start the investigation with anything you do. But I'm gonna use the domain of words. Because we all talk, we all communicate, we think in words. It's as good a place as any to start, or perhaps better than most. What are you doing when you're writing? Well, let's say you're using a pen.

• 16:03Jordan B. Peterson?

  Well, you're, you're drawing, you're drawing letters, you're moving the muscles of your hand, like at the kind of the highest level of resolution, at the most, at the most precise, the most precise formulation is the act of writing. It's a motor act, it's actually an action. Right? And you have voluntary control over that. But interestingly enough, what you're doing at that high resolution level, the mechanics of writing as an act, that shades into mystery. Right? Because you can control your hand... But you don't know how, right?

• 16:48Jordan B. Peterson?

  Like, I can move my fingers, but I have no idea which individual muscles I'm moving. So that's unconscious, it's unknown and unconscious. And then, well, the muscles are made out of cells, and they work, but I have no idea how they work. And if I was in charge of them, they wouldn't work. And so, that's just out of my purview, right? My consciousness doesn't enable me to either apprehend or to control my physiology at that level of detail. And that's only the beginning of the level of detail that I don't understand. I don't understand how the cells work. I certainly don't understand how the proteins and other molecules and sub-organs within the cells work.

• 17:33Jordan B. Peterson?

  I don't even know what they are. And much less perceive them or control them. And then, those cells and the molecules they're made out of are made out of atoms, and they're a mystery. And then atoms are made out of subatomic particles, and no one knows what in the world those things are. And so, the reason I'm telling you this, there's a very specific reason, is that even if you're a reductive materialist, what you can see is that there are elements of what you do, let's say what you do is part of your identity. There are elements of your identity that shade into mystery, right? At the material level. You can move your hands, but that's about as far down into the physiology as you get.

• 18:17Jordan B. Peterson?

  There's all these other layers underneath that that... Who knows how they function? It's taken the world a very long time to create something like you that can operate with that degree of unbelievable complexity, that can have some conscious control over that.

• 18:41Jordan B. Peterson?

  There's all that mystery underneath what we're capable of consciously apprehending. So, our identity shade into the mysterious as we move down into the material realm. Okay, so that's a good way of thinking about it. We have a conscious domain that we can apprehend, there's a mystery on the material side. Okay, then, you're writing down letters, one by one. You're doing that to craft words, right? And so you choose the words carefully, if you're wise. What do the words mean, and why do you choose those words? Well, that's complicated, because each word... No letter has a meaning, right?

• 19:24Jordan B. Peterson?

  A letter needs to be combined with other letters before you get any meaning. Words have meaning, but the meaning is partial and context-dependent. That doesn't mean words are meaningless, but it does mean that in order to understand what they mean, you have to assess them in relationship to other words. And so, a word is a unit of meaning, but barely. A phrase... Phrase starts to be a little more meaningful, and a sentence is even more meaningful than a phrase. And then, you understand the meaning of a sentence in the context of something like a paragraph. Like what a paragraph should be, is a collection of sentences that address an ideal coherently. And if you're listening to someone who's sophisticated speaking,

• 20:07Jordan B. Peterson?

  they'll speak in paragraphs, and the sentences within the paragraphs will have some relation of meaning to one another. Otherwise, the person is... You think the person is all over the place, let's say, and could well be. And the more coherent you are as a personality, the more sophisticated your ability to erect structures of meaning at broader and broader levels of sophistication. And so, a very sophisticated speaker or writer will pick the right word and put it in the right phrase, and put that phrase in the right sentence. The sentence will be an accurate representation of the aim of the thought.

• 20:51Jordan B. Peterson?

  It'll have a certain rhythm, a poetic rhythm. It'll have a certain beauty. It'll have the proper relationship with the other sentences that surround it. That'll make up a paragraph. Then the paragraphs themselves have a harmonious relationship with one another, so that when you read paragraph one and then you read paragraph two, paragraph one informs paragraph two, and paragraph two, perversely, also informs paragraph one. Right, and so part of this is a question of where's the meaning in a text? And the answer is, well, the meaning is at multiple levels simultaneously. It's like the meaning of the world. It's not something you can exactly point to,

• 21:35Jordan B. Peterson?

  because it's everywhere in this entire hierarchy at once. Right, so now you have the paragraphs in relationship to one another, and maybe they make up something like chapters, and then the chapters are arranged into a book, and then you might think, well, the book is the unit of meaning, but that's not exactly right, because you interpret every book you read in relationship to all the other books you ever read. And not just the other books that you've read, but all the people you've met, and all the discussions you've had, and every thought you've ever managed to create, and every word you've ever uttered. All that bears on the meaning of the book. And then, all that knowledge that you have is a reflection of, well, the sum total of human knowledge,

• 22:20Jordan B. Peterson?

  as it's encapsulated, let's say, in words. You will have sampled that as an in-cultured creature, as a speaker of your language, and as a reader of the texts of your culture. And you're a partial reflection of that body of literature. And it's the interaction between you as an embodiment of that body of literature and the specific text that reveals the meaning of the text. But that's not all, that isn't where it stops, because the corpus of human knowledge, insofar as it's written, is a reflection of the social structure of humanity itself,

• 23:04Jordan B. Peterson?

  the history of humanity. That's a reflection of the psychobiology of the human, and the natural order. And that's a reflection of the material order, and that's a reflection of the cosmic order. And all of that, operating at the same time, is... All of that is operating at the same time with every single thing that you do. And it's the relationship between all of those levels simultaneously, that's your identity. And so, it's no wonder that when identity collapses, let's say, at the highest levels, that the problem is overwhelming, because

• 23:46Jordan B. Peterson?

  in some way, in some mysterious way, everything that you do, every micro behavior that you make manifest, is a reflection of the entire order of things, all the way from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, and possibly beyond, because it's the religious presumption that even if you stretched your identity to the further reaches of the cosmic order, that's not far enough, because the creator of the cosmic order is held to be outside of time and space itself, outside of the realm of the conceptual, and so, your relationship to that ultimate transcendent element

• 24:29Jordan B. Peterson?

  also plays a role in determining everything you do.

• 24:35Jordan B. Peterson?

  So, well, you can see that, you can see that in a sense as a religious vision, because all of a sudden, you can envision what you do in relationship to all of those levels, and see that that's the full reality of every gesture you make, let's say. And so, that's overwhelming, but there's no reason to assume that an accurate apprehension of who you actually are would be anything other than overwhelming. I mean, you're a very complicated creature, and God only knows what you're up to, or who you are, what you are in the final analysis. It's not like we know. And it's certainly not the case that you're divorced in any simple sense from everything else.

• 25:21Jordan B. Peterson?

  I mean, you're certainly not divorced from other people. And if you are, well, God help you, because it's very bitter and horrible existence to to exist in isolation, and that also highlights something. It highlights the fact that whatever your identity is, it's not merely subjective. You know, and this is something that our culture is, we're just tearing ourselves apart about that at the moment, because the claim of the hedonistic rationalists essentially is that...

• 25:51Jordan B. Peterson?

  Your identity is whatever you say it is, or whatever you feel it is, whatever the hell that means. Or, well, it's very much akin to saying that your identity is identical to whatever whim or desire grips you at the moment. And that's just palpably untrue, partly for the reasons I laid out. It's like, there's a lot of things going on when you're doing anything, and what you want, or what you desire, or the desire that makes itself manifest within you is like one tiny little element of that. But why you would proclaim that to be your entire identity? That's merely a consequence of the fact that the transcendent order of identity has collapsed.

• 26:34Jordan B. Peterson?

  We're so confused in our culture that we believe that our sexual preference is our identity, for example. And that's... well, good luck with that. You know, I mean, first of all, if your sexual preference is your identity, which means in some sense that that's... that, what would you say? That's the defining element of your character. "I don't want to be anywhere near you." I mean that, because what you want from other people is you want their desires to take you and the world into account, right?

• 27:18Jordan B. Peterson?

  It can't... there's no possible way that things can work if it's not only all about you, let's say, but worse than that, it's all about whatever fragment of you, say, biological instinctual fragment that happens to have the upper hand subjectively within you at the moment. That's just... there's no community in that, right? There's no consideration for other people. There's no future in that. There's only the immediate now, right? And so, that proclamation of radical, subjective identity based on desire is the reduction of that whole cosmic tree, because that's what that is, to...

• 28:04Jordan B. Peterson?

  A fragment of you now and to hell with everything else. And I use that language very carefully, because the pursuit of that subjective identity is the worship of that subjective identity, that is a pathway to hell. And the reason it's a pathway to hell is because it doesn't give a damn for the future or other people. And so if we all generate identities that have no consideration for other people, or even for your future self for that matter, because you know perfectly well that if you're only ruled by your immediate subjective whim now, all you're gonna do is something stupid

• 28:49Jordan B. Peterson?

  that's gonna get you in terrible trouble in a week, or a month, or, you know, in a year, or five years down the road. If you have an iota of wisdom, everything that you do in the present is bounded by your understanding of the repercussions of that action as they cascade into the future. And there's not much difference between that, say, taking your future self into account carefully, there's not a lot of difference between that and taking other people into account. You know, in a harmonious marriage, for example, presuming such a thing exists, it's something to aim for, at least in a harmonious marriage, there isn't a lot of difference between taking

• 29:33Jordan B. Peterson?

  care of your wife, say, or a wife taking care of her husband, and the husband taking care of himself, all things considered, or vice versa. Because, well, the thing about being married to someone is, well, they're there right now, but they're also there tomorrow, and they're there next week, and they're there next month, and next year, and so everything you do with them or to them...

• 30:02Jordan B. Peterson?

  It sticks around. And so, conducting yourself so that their welfare is, let's say, your highest consideration, their genuine welfare, that's not what they want, or even exactly what they need, but their highest welfare. There's not much difference between making that highest welfare your aim and treating your future self optimally. You know, because there's, you know this perfectly well, because there's almost no hell that's more miserable than a really bad marriage. Because it's so immediate, and it's right there, and it's there all the time. And so, you know, if you conduct yourself in your own life

• 30:46Jordan B. Peterson?

  so that it's all about you, and you're married, and so your wife takes second place, the probability that your relationship is gonna transform itself into something that makes all about you hell is like, it's 100%. This is also why it's so useless to be selfish. It's like, what do you mean selfish exactly? What self are you talking about when you're selfish? Right? We, we think, well selfish means that it's about me. It's like, no, it's way worse than that. Because it could be about you in the higher sense, right? It could be about you in a way that took you tomorrow, and you next week, and next month, and into the future, into account. That's kind of maturity, right?

• 31:30Jordan B. Peterson?

  If you're mature, you're not bound to the present. And so you could be selfish in a way that was sophisticated, so that you didn't do stupid things right now because they're entertaining, or because they rectify a desire that would get you in trouble in the future. So, when you say someone's selfish, that isn't exactly what you mean. You mean that they're bound to the present in a way that makes them only the servants of their immediate desire. Right? And that's a form of radical immaturity. Right? Because that's a mode of being that's characteristic, let's say, of two-year-olds before, well, before they have any cortical maturation at all, before they're sophisticated social agents,

• 32:15Jordan B. Peterson?

  before they understand that the future exists, before they're able to take other people into account. And so, the notion that your identity is subjective...

• 32:28Jordan B. Peterson?

  In that narrow sense, so that you, only you can define it, for example, or that you should be the servant of your own desires. That's... You're not the servant of your own desires. You're the slave of your own desires. If they're local and immediate and you don't have the discipline or the wherewithal to control that, you're not the master of your own fate. You're not acting out your subjective self. You're just the prisoner of the instincts of a two-year-old. And, but the warped, the instincts of a warped two-year-old, who should have been two when they were two and not when they're 40. Right, so, so this identity.

• 33:11Jordan B. Peterson?

  So why did we get obsessed with the idea of subjective identity? Well, I think this is where, you know, I thought for a long time, if I had to classify myself politically, I thought for a long time that I was a classic liberal. And to some degree, and I mean really in the classic sense, I don't mean in the progressive sense, whatever that is. That the liberal philosophy is essentially the presumption that the cardinal level of identity in a political system should be the individual. Right, and there's some things to be said about that.

• 33:53Jordan B. Peterson?

  I think that a political system that shifts to the group as the locus of identity is very dangerous and unstable. So if it starts to become about race, for example, or ethnicity, or gender, sex, let's say, like we should say, sex. And if the, if the emphasis is on the group, then you get the war of groups against groups, and that's not good. And the individual, the individual who's capable of suffering gets subjugated to the group. And groups get elevated above one another. That's a very bad solution. But the atomistic individual solution is also not good. The thing about classic liberalism, right?

• 34:37Jordan B. Peterson?

  That, that insistence on the primacy of the subjective is, and the, the classic liberals knew this, that only works in a society, well, that's the question. When does that work? And the classic liberals, they kind of knew this. They knew that... La suposición de que el individuo era soberano podría ser tratado como soberano y podría ser tratado como la unidad cardenal de análisis y podría ser tratado como el local, digamos, del derecho divino, derechos naturales. Eso era solo sostenible en una cultura que era intrínsecamente moral. Así que digamos que es por eso, por ejemplo,

• 35:17Jordan B. Peterson?

  que su nación se estableció como una nación bajo Dios. Puedes perseguir tu felicidad individual, pero eso solo funciona si colectivamente y individualmente estás haciendo algo como "apuntando". Y lo que eso significaría es que ese entorno que describí como característica de la identidad, como si se estirara hacia el orden cosmico, es intacto y funcionando. Ahora, yo diría que una sociedad integrada en relación con su historia religiosa tiene ese entorno.

• 35:58Jordan B. Peterson?

  Y las personas que actúan en la ética que podría estar asociada con ese entorno religioso pueden tratarse de sí mismos como individuos. Pero si el entorno desaparece, entonces

• 36:15Jordan B. Peterson?

  cada individuo lucha contra cada otro individuo. Las cosas evolucionan en caos. Necesitas una unidad de creencias en lo trascendente para que el individuo sea la unidad adecuada de análisis. Y luego, por supuesto, eso se pregunta, y eso es ciertamente la pregunta de nuestro tiempo. Bueno, ¿qué es ese entorno trascendente? ¿Cómo conceptualizas eso? Esa es otra pregunta sobre qué constituye la identidad. Así que vamos a profundizar en eso un poco. ¿Qué creencias, suposiciones, elementos de la identidad son necesarias para que el individuo pueda ser libre y soberano?

• 37:00Jordan B. Peterson?

  Alright. I used to ask my students, for example, why they were writing an essay. "Why are you bothering with this?", right? "What's your motivation?" Well, the thoroughly indoctrinated and thoughtless students would say, "Well, to get a grade." And I had students who literally could not think beyond that. They had no idea that there might be some utility in either thinking or writing outside of the practical consequences of getting the grade. And I'm not saying that to denigrate the students. I'm saying that to indict the education system.

• 37:44Jordan B. Peterson?

  Because these were students, and this was mostly at the University of Toronto where this happened. These were very high caliber students. So, they were the beneficiaries, let's say, of 15 years of education. And many of them had no idea that thinking was useful. Right? Well, and it is a bit of a mystery. It's like, "Why think?" Well, if you think before you act, you decrease the probability that you'll do something cataclysmically stupid. So, that's the issue. That's why you want your thought criticized. Because if you have a stupid idea and you act it out,

• 38:27Jordan B. Peterson?

  then terrible things will happen to you. And maybe if you discuss your stupid idea with someone who loves you, they'll point out critically why it's stupid, which will hurt your feelings, but you won't die. Right? And so, parents do that for teenagers all the time. Right? And mostly, they don't die as a consequence. So...

• 38:54Jordan B. Peterson?

  ¿Entonces, ¿qué estás haciendo cuando estás escribiendo? Bueno, estás escribiendo... ¿Por qué estás escribiendo el ensayo? Bueno, digamos... En el lado filosófico, para mejorar tu pensamiento. Bien, voy a dejar eso de lado por un momento. Vamos a volver a esa idea. Solo voy a pasar por esto un poco más prácticamente. Bueno, tengo que completar el ensayo para obtener un marcador. Y luego tengo que... ¿Por qué te importa si obtienes un marcador? Bueno, no puedo pasar el curso a menos que obtenga un marcador. ¿Por qué te importa si pasas el curso? Bueno, si no paso el curso, no puedo terminar mi año. Bueno, ¿por qué te importa eso?

• 39:39Jordan B. Peterson?

  Bueno, si no termino el año, entonces no puedo obtener mi grado. Así que, ¿por qué te importa tu grado? Hay un regreso infinito en la cuestionación aquí. ¿Por qué te importa tu grado? Los estudiantes empiezan a sentirse incómodos si los empujas a ese punto. Porque a menudo han estado en un tipo de camino automático, ¿verdad? Es que, especialmente si son estudiantes conscientes, se fueron a la universidad porque, bueno, eso es lo que haces si eres inteligente una vez que graduas de la escuela secundaria. O era lo que hacías si eres inteligente. Ahora, no sé qué haces si eres inteligente. Tal vez vas a la Academia Peterson. Así que...

• 40:18Jordan B. Peterson?

  Bueno, $300,000 para convertirte en un idiota marxista nihilista parece ser un trato muy malo para mí. Así que...

• 40:34Jordan B. Peterson?

  Creo que sería más divertido convertirte en un nihilista en la barra. Sabes, así que...

• 40:41Jordan B. Peterson?

  Sería más barato también. Probablemente mejor para ti neurologicamente en la análisis final. De todos modos, ¿quieres obtener tu grado? Bien, ¿por qué? ¿Por qué preocuparte? Bueno...

• 40:55Jordan B. Peterson?

  Porque você quer ter um emprego. Ok, então, por que você quer ter um emprego? Bem, você precisa de um emprego para manter o corpo e a alma juntos, mas há mais para isso do que isso, certo? Talvez você queira um emprego que te torne seu interesse e te forçe, então, está focado em algo... O que? Algo importante para você, algo que tem algum significado para você? E então, talvez, se a pessoa é inteligente, eles também estão pensando, "Bem, você sabe, eu preciso assumir meu lugar como um responsável agente social, e se eu tiver um emprego, bem, talvez eu possa atrair um marido ou uma esposa, e, você sabe, talvez eu possa fornecer para meus filhos, então, talvez a carreira esteja colhida em algo como, o que? Serviço à comunidade? Serviço à família?

• 41:38Jordan B. Peterson?

  Espero que... Agora, você sabe, também poderia ser, "Bem, eu gostaria de ganhar uma moeda enorme e perseguir meus esquemas hedonísticos em consequência", que é um sonho delusional, mas, você sabe, jovens podem certamente, e pessoas mais velhas podem certamente ter isso. E então, você pode dizer, "Bem, por que você quer crescer?" Digamos que se assumirmos que

• 42:01Jordan B. Peterson?

  estabelecer alguma responsabilidade e cuidar das pessoas é parte da madureação. E essa é uma pergunta complicada! Por que se preocupar com a madureação? E então, essa é a pergunta abordada na história de Peter Pan. Certo? Então, Peter Pan é... Ele é Pan. Pan é o de tudo, de todo o deserto, de instinto selvagem. E Peter Pan é um filho eterno, certo? Ele tem essa natureza de Pan, porque ser um filho é estar sob o leque do instinto primordial. E há algo atraente sobre isso, é muito espontâneo, como, há algo muito atraente sobre crianças pequenas, certo? Eu quero dizer, elas são terríveis crianças barbaras e elas não podem

• 42:46Jordan B. Peterson?

  governar elas mesmas. Como, não há sociedades de crianças de dois anos úteis. Certo? Então, bem, isso é uma coisa realmente importante para entender, porque, você sabe, as pessoas estão enlouquecidas pela pureza e brilhante de seus filhos, e eu posso entender isso, porque eles são maravilhosos, mas eles também eles não são adultos, e então, eles não são auto-governantes, eles não são autônomos, eles não podem cuidar de si mesmos, e então, todo esse maravilhoso é bom, mas...

• 43:16Jordan B. Peterson?

  It doesn't work, right? It has to be replaced by maturity. Okay, but is the sacrifice of the spontaneity of childhood worth the burden of maturity? This is the problem that Peter Pan wrestles with. Now, he has Tinker Bell, who I like to think of as the porn fairy. And so, because she doesn't really exist. She's kind of an attractive little sprite, but an enticing, and she flits around, but she's imaginary. And so, she doesn't really require any real commitment. And so, porn fairy works out quite nicely in that regard. And it's certainly the case that being enticed by the porn fairy is a way of continuing

• 44:00Jordan B. Peterson?

  a kind of pathological immaturity and foregoing a certain kind of responsibility, because it means the possibility of sexual gratification with no relationship and with no adult status. And you might say, "Well, who the hell cares? Like, if it gratifies my immediate whim, then why not do it?" And you'd especially believe that if your identity was that you were nothing but your immediate desire. And so, and you know, pornography is like 30% of internet traffic. This is not some trivial little social detail. This is a major problem, you know? And we're so, what would you say?

• 44:41Jordan B. Peterson?

  We're so accustomed to the pathology of pornography that we don't even notice what a cataclysmic problem it actually represents. We've just given up even being concerned about it, except, you know, on the periphery. So, that's not good, because it's an immense enticement to this sort of hedonistic immaturity that is one of the consequences of the collapse of our identity. And so, but that isn't the only issue that Peter Pan wrestles with. Now, you remember, and you may remember in the story, that he makes friends with this girl Wendy. And Wendy's an actual girl. And Wendy decides she's going to grow up and age, right? And she gets married, and she has children.

• 45:23Jordan B. Peterson?

  And Peter Pan remains in Neverland, which is where everyone immature lives, in a land that doesn't exist. And he's king of the lost boys, which is a kind of king. But if all your subjects are lost boys and you're the king, that kind of means you're the most hopeless of the worst of the lost boys, not, not... It's like being... The tyrant of a totalitarian state. It's like, "Well, are you the most successful? Or the least successful?" And I would say, "If you rule over hell, you're the least successful devil in hell, not the most successful devil." And so, that's a good thing to know about tyrants.

• 46:05Jordan B. Peterson?

  And so, Peter Pan maintains childhood. He refuses to move to maturity. He satisfies himself with the imaginary feminine, foregoing any relationship with a real woman, a sacrificial relationship with a real woman. Well, why sacrificial? Death of childhood, death of immaturity, the necessity to forego all other sexual opportunities, all that's sacrificial. Sacrificial in relationship to what? Maturity and responsibility? Well, why bother with that? Well, that's the dilemma that Captain Hook confronts Peter Pan with. Because Captain Hook is a brutal, barbaric, power-mad, dominating tyrant.

• 46:49Jordan B. Peterson?

  And when Peter Pan looks to adulthood and sees the face of Captain Hook, he thinks, "I don't want any part of that." And Captain Hook is worse than a mere tyrant because he's a coward as well. And what's he afraid of? Well, he's afraid of death and time. And how do you know that? Well, what chases him? Well, it's a crocodile. And the crocodile is a predator, and time is the ultimate predator. And the crocodile's already got a taste of him, just like it has a taste of all of us, which is why he's missing a hand. And it has a clock in its stomach that's ticking. And so, Hook is a tyrant because he's terrified of predatory time.

• 47:34Jordan B. Peterson?

  He's terrified of his own mortality. That makes him power-mad. And then, Peter Pan looks at Captain Hook, and he thinks, "Yeah, no, that's not for me." But...

• 47:45Jordan B. Peterson?

  É pensa que isso é uma decisão moral, mas realmente o que ele está fazendo é manter sua própria imaturidade para que ele possa permanecer mago e não assumir nenhuma responsabilidade. Este não é um bom caminho para a identidade. E assim você pode ver também que há algo... Se você pensar nisso, da maneira como nós pensamos nisso, digamos, você pode ver que há algo que não é moralmente relativo à ideia de responsabilidade madura, certo? É realmente uma catástrofe que Peter Pan permaneça hedonístico e imaturo. Não é a opinião de alguém que isso não é uma boa coisa. Não é um modo sustentável de ser de qualquer forma.

• 48:27Jordan B. Peterson?

  Leva à sua própria degeneração patológica ao longo do tempo. Há implicações no texto de Peter Pan continuamente de que o seu resultado mais provável é suicídio e a sua negociação de madurez é uma forma de suicídio de qualquer maneira, porque ele está matando seu melhor self futur. Isso é o que você faz quando permanece imaturo, certo? É matar seu melhor self futur. E se você faz isso, então a tentação de suicídio real eventualmente vai se tornar grande, porque sua vida será tão miserável como consequência de sua isolada e desunidade não produtiva que o peso da existência vai se tornar imparável para você. E assim não há nada nisso que seja ok, certo?

• 49:10Jordan B. Peterson?

  Não é apenas um caminho alternativo, essa imaturidade hedonística. É uma catástrofe completa e não é apenas uma catástrofe subjetivamente, embora isso não seja bom. É uma catástrofe socialmente, porque Wendy ama Peter Pan, mas ela não consegue casar com ele porque ele decide permanecer em Neverland. E assim isso não é bom para ela. E assim o hedonista imaturo, terrificado pelo tyrano patriarcal, digamos, não só se deu o seu bem a um comportamento emotivo que...

• 49:48Jordan B. Peterson?

  That culminates in something like suicidally distressed nihilism, but also violates the order of the relationship between men and women, because he refuses to grow up to become the sort of person that a woman could establish a relationship with. Of course, that demolishes any possibility of future family. And so, insofar as part of what gives your life meaning across time, as my wife pointed out, when she started to talk, is the fact that you have children that you might love, so that's a good deal for you and them. And then grandchildren as well, you cut all that off. And then what the hell are you gonna do when you're 40, or 50, or 60, and isolated and alone,

• 50:32Jordan B. Peterson?

  and still terminally immature? So, the probability that that's going to be a good time for you is pretty low. It's not gonna be a good time for anyone that knows you, that's for sure, because what the hell good are you? And it's worse than that, because the bitterness that will accrue to you is a consequence of that pathway to failure, that consequence of failing to make the right sacrifices, is that you'll become bitter and dangerous. And so, that's not good socially. And so, and none of that, there's none of that that's morally relative. Right? That's as stark a fact as anything you could ever hope to run across,

• 51:15Jordan B. Peterson?

  or maybe the starkest of facts. And so, you write the essay, and you get the grade, and you get your degree, so you can have your career, so you can mature, so you can be useful to yourself now and your future self, and so you can be useful to your wife and your children, and so that you can extend yourself across time. And if you do that properly, then, well, then that isn't where it ends, because maybe you're also a model for other people. You're a mentor for other people, at least by example, and maybe by practice, right? And you establish a mode of being that if replicated by others, stabilizes the whole social order

• 51:59Jordan B. Peterson?

  and makes it trustworthy and productive. And then everybody can trust each other and cooperate. And if they all trust each other and cooperate, then they can do impossible things together, and they can make the desert bloom, and everyone can thrive. And so, that's a good deal.

• 52:18Jordan B. Peterson?

  We know que uno de los mejores predicadores de éxito a largo plazo desde una perspectiva psicológica es la conciencia consciente. No es tan bueno como la inteligencia nativa, digamos, pero es un buen predicator. Y quieres contratar a personas conscientes para la mayoría de los trabajos. Y las personas conscientes están dispuestas a renunciar a la gratificación inmediata para cuidar el futuro. Eso es un gesto sacrificial. Se deshacerán de lo que quieren y necesitan ahora mismo para estabilizar las cosas a largo plazo y para otras personas. Y esa es la definición de la madurez. De hecho, es probable que la razón por la que tenemos un cortejo, digamos, la parte superior del cerebro que nos hace específicamente humano,

• 53:03Jordan B. Peterson?

  sea para que podamos reemplazar las demandas inmediatas de gratificación de nuestros instintos básicos con un largo... ¿Cómo dirías? Un modo de visión y acción que no solo nos ourselves, nuestros sobreses, en cuenta, sino el futuro interno y otras personas. ¿Verdad? Así que eso es lo que estás tratando de animar a tus hijos cuando se maduren, para que puedan tomar turnos y compartir y jugar con otros hijos y ser buenos deportes. ¿Sabes? El tipo de buenos deportes que ayudan a sus compañeros a desarrollar y no solo ellos,

• 53:43Jordan B. Peterson?

  y que pueden compartir la gloria en la victoria y pueden tolerar la derrota con cierto grado de nobleza. Y todo eso... ¿Pero qué es la alternativa? ¿Ese desagradable, resentible, inmaduro tontería de tempero que es la alternativa? No hay nada en eso que sea aceptable o bueno. Y no hay nada sobre eso que sea arbitrario. De nuevo, esos son los factores claros de la vida. Bien, entonces lo que eso implica es que en los niveles más altos de tu identidad, digamos, fuera del ámbito de la madurez, las cosas que estás haciendo localmente, como ahora mismo, las palabras que estás diciendo, los gestos que haces,

• 54:26Jordan B. Peterson?

  están asociados con esta jerarquía de valor que extiende hacia el futuro y la comunidad.

• 54:35Jordan B. Peterson?

  And as you near the uppermost reaches, it's associated with something like mature responsibility. But that's not yet. Why be mature and responsible? Because you can ask the same question again. Well,

• 54:53Jordan B. Peterson?

  we laid out the alternative. Immature and irresponsible, that's not going to be very good for you. It's going to cause a lot of pain and misery. It's going to culminate in hopelessness and it's going to be pretty bad for everyone else. Well, what would be the alternative to that? Let's say, well, what are you pursuing when you're pursuing mature responsibility? Well, you could think about it in terms of duty, right? Duty to the future, duty to other people. That's a kind of a conservative approach to the idea of maturation, right? Is that you, it stops being about you. It starts being about your family, your town, your state, your nation. Patriotism comes out of that, right?

• 55:35Jordan B. Peterson?

  You're serving some higher order traditional structure and it's the traditional structure that binds everyone together, if it's functioning properly. But there's more to maturity than that. There's more to it than that. Because being able to bear your duty, to bear up under your duty and to be responsible, doesn't exhaust the realm of your, of the possibility of your identity. And so, once we step beyond mere maturity, we start to step into the transcendent realm that touches on the religious. So,

• 56:16Jordan B. Peterson?

  think about the story of the hobbit. Think about an adventure story, right? So, we're attracted to adventure stories that portray a hero.

• 56:26Jordan B. Peterson?

  Now, a hero can be a king who is the embodiment of the stable and just state. But that's typically not a hero in a hero story. A hero in a hero story is usually an adventurer. Right? So you see that, for example, in The Hobbit. You see that in The Lion King, because the hero of The Lion King isn't Mustafa, the father. The hero of The Lion King is Simba, who's the son. The son is the hero. That's a good way of thinking, but that's very typical in literary representations. The father is necessary, but the son is the hero.

• 57:06Jordan B. Peterson?

  You see that echoed in the Christian story, because Christ is the hero of the biblical corpus, at least from the Christian perspective. And that's an element of the divine, the son. And it's the element of the divine that's associated with adventure. Okay, so let's walk through that. Let's take a more prosaic adventure story. That would be The Hobbit is a good example. Everybody knows that story. So The Hobbit is this sort of nondescript, everyman. There's nothing remarkable about him in any real, in any obvious sense. He's certainly not a wizard.

• 57:48Jordan B. Peterson?

  He's not an elf, he's not magic. He's a good, decent beginner. That's a good way of conceptualizing him. He lives in this circumscribed area, right? So in both Lord of the Rings and in The Hobbit, the shire is... It's sort of like your neighborhood if it was only full of naive people. And all those naive people know that the Eye of Sauron is gathering in the distance. Constantly, that's China, as far as I can tell. That all-seeing eye of the tyrannical state, right? That's over the horizon.

• 58:29Jordan B. Peterson?

  The terrible dragon that has the capability of destroying everything, that's lurking out beyond what's really apprehensible. And all the ordinary people in the Shire want nothing to do with that. They want to have their circumscribed lives, and you can understand that. And one of the things that makes the Hobbit himself, let's say, attractive as a character is because he does have that pull towards tranquil domesticity, and that's not a vice. It's only a vice when you insist upon that when the times don't allow for that, right? And it's questionable at the moment, for example, whether the times allow for that.

• 59:13Jordan B. Peterson?

  So far, yes, but I wouldn't count on that continuing, not unless we become more assiduous adventurers. So what happens to the Hobbit? Well, he's called out by a magical agent, it's Gandalf in this case, to have an adventure. Okay, so what does that mean? What's a magical agent? A magical agent is one of those things that you encounter in your life that transforms your aim, that transforms your identity. So you can imagine that you have a stable identity from time to time, you kind of know who you are. But then imagine that, well, fair enough, but what about the possibility of further development, right? Because if you were really who you could be,

• 59:56Jordan B. Peterson?

  you wouldn't only be what you are properly, you'd also be moving towards something more, right? And so if your character is fully developed, sort of at the outer edges of your identity, beyond mere maturity, you're not only mature and responsible, you're an agent that's transforming itself into something that's even better. And what happens in your life is there are magical occurrences that transform your aim. And sometimes those are people that you meet that are... Mentors, o que te inspira de alguma forma, ou às vezes é o chamado da tua consciência. Há algo te incomodando profundamente e tu decide perseguir isso. Às vezes é alguém com quem te apaixonas,

• 1:00:41Jordan B. Peterson?

  ou uma oportunidade que cai em teu lapso e que te exige sacrificar quem és para que possa tomar o próximo passo para se tornar quem pode ser. E isso é o que é retratado na história do Hobbit de uma maneira mitológica, porque o Hobbit vai fora da sua zona de conforto, como o Abraão no Antigo Testamento, e tem que desenvolver elementos do seu caráter que ele considerava desejável mesmo. O próprio Hobbit tem que se tornar um assassino para se tornar um herói. E o que isso significa? Significa que nunca sabes quando pode precisar dos lados mais sombrios do seu caráter integrado dentro de você

• 1:01:25Jordan B. Peterson?

  de uma maneira que não te terrifique para tomar o próximo passo para frente. Você sabe, se não for um pouco de monstro e você encontra um monstro, você vai perder. Então você precisa ter algum dos monstros dentro de você. Isso é o que acontece com Harry Potter, certo? Por isso ele é capaz de alcançar a ascensão sobre Voldemort. Ele tem uma parte da alma de Voldemort escondida nele, certo? Você pode chamar a parte de você que tem a capacidade de mal para te proteger e aqueles que ama quando o mal vem a ameaçar. Mas isso tem que ser desenvolvido e isso é algo terrifyingo moralmente, porque é fácil ser dutável e confuso e não permitir que essa capacidade se reveal,

• 1:02:10Jordan B. Peterson?

  mas você nunca sabe quando vai precisar disso e você definitivamente vai precisar disso quando os dragões vêm cair. E então, porque o dragão? Porque é o que o Hobbit finalmente tem que enfrentar e essa é a história mais velha da humanidade, a confrontação com o dragão. Literalmente, a história mais velha que temos é a Anuma Ilish de Mesopotâmia e é a história do combate com o dragão. O herói da Anuma Ilish... Confronts the cosmic dragon and makes the world out of its pieces. Right, something echoed in the Old Testament stories in the representation of Jehovah as the forest that triumphs over the Leviathan.

• 1:02:52Jordan B. Peterson?

  Right, so there's this idea of combat with, well, what's a dragon? A dragon's a predator. Predator as such, right? A dragon is a predatory cat and it's a predatory bird. And it's a predatory reptile. And it's, and it's, and it's fire, which is its own form of predator, because fire is a primordial threat. And so, a dragon is an amalgamation of everything terrifying into one figure. And the hero who exists at the ultimate edge of identity is the ordinary person who takes it upon himself

• 1:03:32Jordan B. Peterson?

  to transform himself into the hero who can confront the dragon and prevail. And what does prevail mean? Well, it means to gain the treasure that the dragon eternally guards. And that's the next level of identity, that hero story on the outer edges of, what would you say, the cosmic reaches of human identity. But that's not the outermost limit. And you see, as you move farther out, or farther down, or farther up, pick your metaphor, you wander into territory that's increasingly religious in nature.

• 1:04:12Jordan B. Peterson?

  And so, let me lay out a level of identity that's even beyond the mythological hero. And the easiest way to do that is to use the Christian passion as the example.

• 1:04:29Jordan B. Peterson?

  ¿Cuál es el predador final?

• 1:04:34Jordan B. Peterson?

  La muerte

• 1:04:36Jordan B. Peterson?

  y el mal.

• 1:04:39Jordan B. Peterson?

  Así que eso es, ¿qué dirías? Eso sería una abstracción de la idea de predador. ¿Verdad? Así que la muerte es la reloj en el vientre del crocodile. ¿Verdad? Y la malverdad, bueno... El predador peor es el predador que no es sólo un animal que tiene su próximo almuerzo en mente, sino alguien o algo que quiere sacarte de aquí de la manera que te hace sufrir de manera más pointless. Digamos. Así que hay... La combinación de la muerte y la malverdad es algo como el desafío final o el predador final. Y así... Eso es como el rey de todos los dragones.

• 1:05:24Jordan B. Peterson?

  Esa es una forma razonable de pensar en ello. La muerte y la malverdad en sí. Y así el héroe final es la persona que determina confrontar las forzas últimas de la destrucción voluntariamente. Y esa es la historia que está encapsulada en el cristiano pasión. ¿Por qué? Bueno, porque es una historia de... Es una historia de finalidad. Es la historia de la exposición final a los alcances más lejanos de la catástrofe mortal. Así que puedes pensarlo a través de razones. No pido ninguna suspensión de desconfianza aquí.

• 1:06:09Jordan B. Peterson?

  Te estoy diciendo cómo funciona esta historia de identidad.

• 1:06:13Jordan B. Peterson?

  Así que es terrible morir. Eso es tragedia.

• 1:06:19Jordan B. Peterson?

  Es peor morir joven.

• 1:06:22Jordan B. Peterson?

  It's the worst thing to die after being tormented when you're young. It's the worst thing to die if you're tormented, if you're tormented at the hands of your own people and you're betrayed by your best friend. And your own people choose to torment you even when they could have picked someone they knew to be a villain to substitute for you, even though they knew he was a villain and knew you were good. It's worse to face that fate at the hands of your own mob if behind that fate, there's a foreign tyrant who occupies your land. Right? The barbaric empire of Rome in the story of the Christian Passion.

• 1:07:06Jordan B. Peterson?

  It's worse to have all that happen to you when you're young. It's worse to have it happen to you when you're young in front of the people who love you, particularly your mother. It's worse to have all of that happen in the most unfair and torturous possible manner, which was the crucifixion, because that's why the Romans designed that punishment. And that wasn't bad enough, because crucifixion wasn't sufficient to satisfy the bloodthirst of the mob. So Christ had to undergo a flaying before being crucified. And none of that's bad enough yet, because

• 1:07:52Jordan B. Peterson?

  the worst possible tragedy is all that, but not only all that, all that inflicted on the least possible deserving person. Right? So that's an ultimate tragedy. And that's not enough yet, and so we're really stretching out to the furthest possible reaches of identity. There's a Christian tradition that after Christ is crucified, because all of that's not enough, he has to descend into hell itself. And what does that mean? It means that at the ultimate reaches of human identity, it's not only the confrontation with catastrophe and death that's required, but the full-fledged confrontation with malevolence itself.

• 1:08:37Jordan B. Peterson?

  And then the ultimate hero is the person who can do that voluntarily, without being corrupted, while maintaining his upward aim.

• 1:08:48Jordan B. Peterson?

  That's identity. All of that's identity, right? That's that Jacob's ladder that stretches up from the earth to the heavens, right? That situates every person in the confines of a heavenly hierarchy with that ultimate heroic sacrificial gesture at the pinnacle. Well, why? Well, the person who dares the ultimate gains the ultimate reward. Well, that's represented in the Gospel texts as the resurrection. That's represented as the reconciliation of God and man, right? As the antithesis to death and evil.

• 1:09:33Jordan B. Peterson?

  And it is the case that, to the degree that each person is capable of voluntarily taking on the burden of being unto themselves and moving forward and upward, despite that catastrophe, that death is overcome and evil defeated. And so, all of that's true. And the collapse of that truth leaves us in a situation where our entire identities are up for question. Now, the alternative to that is something terrible, because the alternative is coming to understand what identity means. And coming to understand that means coming to understand what I just described, is that that's the burden that's placed on people

• 1:10:17Jordan B. Peterson?

  who want to get to the bottom of what constitutes identity, right? Is that you're called upon to maintain your upward aim, regardless of the catastrophe of life. And the promise is that if you do that voluntarily, the Spirit of the Cosmic Order will walk with you while you do it, right? And that seems right, because we know practically, we know psychologically, that you become braver and better with every decision you make to confront what...

• 1:10:57Jordan B. Peterson?

  Obstacle terrifies and terrifies you and stops you in your tracks, right? You develop into more of what you could be by constantly confronting the things that challenge you most deeply. And there's no end to that. And in principle, there's no end to the amount of development that can emerge as a consequence of that. And that's another part of that upward spiraling Jacob's ladder that leads up into the incomprehensible reaches of the divine itself. And so, and then what you have in that is just as you fade into incomprehensibility on the material end of things,

• 1:11:38Jordan B. Peterson?

  you fade into incomprehensibility at the transcendent end of things too. And that what your identity is, is the thing that bridges the gap between earth and heaven. And really, and that's who we are. And that's what we need to understand to set things right. And that's a much better story than you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, with anyone you want, and to hell with the consequences. But it's a terrible burden. It's a terrible thing to realize that that adventure is your moral responsibility.

• 1:12:20Jordan B. Peterson?

  And that if you accept it, then you set the world right. And if you reject it, then you destroy yourself and everything around you. And we're at a state now where we need to understand all that and not only understand it, but act it out with every word, with every gesture, right? With every impulse, with every, with every fiber of our being, so that we can bring the order that's good into being in the world. And that's an investigation into identity from first principles. Thank you very much.