Train Your Brain: Notes from Jordan Petterson
In life there is a problem that each one of us must face. It’s like a snake with many heads. If you cut off one head of the snake, seven more will grow in its place. This is the problem of life. What have people come up as a solution? The solution is to deal with what you’re terrified by and to learn from it. There is also the idea of sacrifice. Think about the countless times people have sacrificed in history. In stories people have burned things as a form of sacrifice to their god. So you wonder why would people do this? What were they feeling? They weren’t stupid, those people who lived long ago. If our ancesters were stupid, we wouldn’t be here. For sure, if they didn’t know how to survive, then humans would be extinct. Those people who lived long ago had to deal with much harsher conditions than we have to deal with now. If you had to survive back then you may last about 15 minutes. So you don’t wanna be thinking of your ancesters as stupid.
Lets look at sacrifice. What does that mean? It’s a discovery, a discovery of the future. A future is a place where there is threat, so what do you do? You make sacrifices in the present so that the future is better. Everyone does that. that’s what you’re doing right now. Ratification now. Even exist yet. Believe that. Champs for Christ sake. Well, we talked about it for 7000000 years and you know, we got to the point where we can contact about. But we didn’t know what we were doing, but it was a dream. So the terror of the future is a dream and this solution to that error, the dream of the terror of the future is another dream and it comes out in. Stop on the way to full understanding so we can say sacrificed now instead of doing it. You don’t want to. We still do it, it’s just don’t compromise. Anyways apart from that. No no no no. Set up a society that will work. I’m so one of them is is that society has to be set up so that your sacrifices will pay off or you won’t work and then this is heidi will die so it has to make promises he will have to make promises to one another that’s what money is money is a promise that your sacrifices will pay off in the future that’s what money is in so if the society is stable you can store up your work right now you can sacrifice your impulses and you can work and you can store up credit for the future and then you can make the future better place but society has to be stable enough to allow for that What you’re doing now will pay off in the future and if people don’t have that promise then will we know what they do because in in gangs. For example, say games in North America, but I’m her eyes and the gang member shrink rapidly because they don’t really expect to be alive. Much past 21 so they get really impulsive and violent and like why the hell not. That’s that’s what you do when when the future doesn’t matter when it’s not real. No wonder because you don’t know if you’re gonna be around in a any year and you get whatever you can well. You can bloody well get it and that’s like anarchy that state. So you don’t wanna live in some people like to live in that stuff, there really wired for that you know. I said that some people will tell you that the purpose of life is to be happy and those people are idiots. What I meant by that it was actually inspired by a statement by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn it was the great critic of the Soviet prison system and he commented that happiness is something that’s done in by the first harsh blow that reality deals. You and I believe this to be the case. There are many circumstances in life where happiness is not only the wrong response, but also where the expectation of happiness has a response will put you the person with him to be happy and absolutely the wrong psychological state to be prepared for what must be done. States that there a tenuous relationship to one another and the reason for that is the environment that human beings and Abbott is so complex that are adaptation depends on variety of very finely. Differentiated responses and soul. There is a time to be compassionate and there’s a time to be aggressive and there’s a time to be in pain. And there’s a time to be anxious and there’s a time to be joyous in a time to be satisfied and healthy and well adapted person has a very wide range of finally differentiated response, which cannot be boiled down to a single dimension say happiness versus unhappiness. Making happiness the focal point of in order to regard anything is truly important. You also have regarding tomorrow is truly mean it and that means that to open yourself up to experiences of deep cleaning also simil tinius. Lee means that you have to open yourself up to the possibility of getting hurt and sorrow is something strange that I have served with my students is but when I stayed the proposition to them clearly that life is suffering in the purpose of life is not happiness. They actually experience that as a great. You know, even if they wouldn’t necessarily articulate that their experiences taught them that life is complex and tragic and difficult and the problem with the public. People these young people feel ashamed of their own suffering they feel that if their suffering and if they find their life tragic in assassins that that means that there something wrong with him, then instantly that makes it impossible for them to communicate anything real about their own tragedy and so it appears to me that. Purpose of life given that his team. Identifying and follow I’m only thing that makes life justifiable. Suffering suffering of other people. And self critical and then you become cruel and destructive and so not only is there a necessity for your own mental health, too. The cheapest questions of life, but if you don’t then you remain a danger to yourself and maybe more importantly, the others. As an adolescent you, also shed childhood potential to become the limited but specialized in potentially useful thing that you will become and so you might say Well, is it worth it is worth sharing that potential and Peter Pan’s answer to that is well. No, he wants to remain in Neverland, as a magical boy forever and he’s King of the lost boys, which I would say is not a very best. Not much of a dominant her right. It’s like you’re the King. King of the king of the losers. So to speak people who can’t get their act together in mature now and you notice in Peter Pan, Peter Pan doesn’t grow up. He doesn’t establish a relationship with Wendy, who is actually real. He asked him settle for Tinker Bell, who you know is a fairy and they don’t exist and so she’s really in some. Fantasy actually so seriously it is it is like knowing that it’s it’s It’s gone down allot in the movie version. I’ll be asleep but still that’s what’s underlying it now, you might say well? Why doesn’t Peter Pan wanna grow up and the answer is the only figure of authority that’s around for him and his Captain Hook. And he doesn’t like Captain Hook. And that’s because Captain Hook is a tyrant is brutal. You know, and he’s also a coward because he’s he’s lost a hand already took rock it out with o’clock in the stomach. That’s khaosan time you know that’s the dragon that lives underneath everything. It’s like the basilisk and Harry Potter and that damn crocodiles already got it piece of them, which is exactly the case like that. Crocodiles got a piece of meat. You know, I’m older than 50 and so time is already God its grip on me and you know part of the problem with being an adult is that? But you’re not rich you’re poor and you don’t have any power that’s another thing but you’ve got your damn room and you shains but then will happen is that if your family isn’t together they will interfere with that you will interfere with that because you won’t have the discipline to do it properly but then when you start building this is this little microcosm of perfection with what you have at hand in italy vochol the path ologies of everyone in your household no wonder what the hell you’re up to in there and they won’t necessarily be happy because if you’re if there in the lonely place let’s say and so are you and you’re trying to move out of that then the higher you move out of that the more the place there in looks bad and you might say well what they should do is celebrate your victory over chaos and evil but that isn’t what will happen will happen instead is that they will attempt to pull you back down to I mean obviously all family still do that but so what that means is that if you’re going to organize your room then you’re going to have to confront the devils in your house and that’s often that so often it terrifying thing because some of those devils have have lineages but go back many many many generations and god only knows what you have to struggle with in order to overcome that and so and then it and so to sort yourself out in to fix up your room is a non trivial matter you know and you can do that you will learn by doing that and then maybe you’ll learn enough by doing that so that you can fix up your family a little bit and then having done that you’ll have enough characters so that when you try to operate in the world at your job or maybe in the broader social spheres that you’ll be a force for good
In life there is a problem that each one of us must face. It’s like a snake with many heads. If you cut off one head of the snake, seven more will grow in its place. This is the problem of life. What have people come up as a solution? The solution is to deal with what you’re terrified by and to learn from it. There is also the idea of sacrifice. Think about the countless times people have sacrificed in history. In stories people have burned things as a form of sacrifice to their god. So you wonder why would people do this? What were they feeling? They weren’t stupid, those people who lived long ago. If our ancesters were stupid, we wouldn’t be here. For sure, if they didn’t know how to survive, then humans would be extinct. Those people who lived long ago had to deal with much harsher conditions than we have to deal with now. If you had to survive back then you may last about 15 minutes. So you don’t wanna be thinking of your ancesters as stupid.
Lets look at sacrifice. What does that mean? It’s a discovery, a discovery of the future. A future is a place where there is threat, so what do you do? You make sacrifices in the present so that the future is better. Everyone does that. that’s what you’re doing right now. Ratification now. Even exist yet. Believe that. Champs for Christ sake. Well, we talked about it for 7000000 years and you know, we got to the point where we can contact about. But we didn’t know what we were doing, but it was a dream. So the terror of the future is a dream and this solution to that error, the dream of the terror of the future is another dream and it comes out in. Stop on the way to full understanding so we can say sacrificed now instead of doing it. You don’t want to. We still do it, it’s just don’t compromise. Anyways apart from that. No no no no. Set up a society that will work. I’m so one of them is is that society has to be set up so that your sacrifices will pay off or you won’t work and then this is heidi will die so it has to make promises he will have to make promises to one another that’s what money is money is a promise that your sacrifices will pay off in the future that’s what money is in so if the society is stable you can store up your work right now you can sacrifice your impulses and you can work and you can store up credit for the future and then you can make the future better place but society has to be stable enough to allow for that What you’re doing now will pay off in the future and if people don’t have that promise then will we know what they do because in in gangs. For example, say games in North America, but I’m her eyes and the gang member shrink rapidly because they don’t really expect to be alive. Much past 21 so they get really impulsive and violent and like why the hell not. That’s that’s what you do when when the future doesn’t matter when it’s not real. No wonder because you don’t know if you’re gonna be around in a any year and you get whatever you can well. You can bloody well get it and that’s like anarchy that state. So you don’t wanna live in some people like to live in that stuff, there really wired for that you know. I said that some people will tell you that the purpose of life is to be happy and those people are idiots. What I meant by that it was actually inspired by a statement by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn it was the great critic of the Soviet prison system and he commented that happiness is something that’s done in by the first harsh blow that reality deals. You and I believe this to be the case. There are many circumstances in life where happiness is not only the wrong response, but also where the expectation of happiness has a response will put you the person with him to be happy and absolutely the wrong psychological state to be prepared for what must be done. States that there a tenuous relationship to one another and the reason for that is the environment that human beings and Abbott is so complex that are adaptation depends on variety of very finely. Differentiated responses and soul. There is a time to be compassionate and there’s a time to be aggressive and there’s a time to be in pain. And there’s a time to be anxious and there’s a time to be joyous in a time to be satisfied and healthy and well adapted person has a very wide range of finally differentiated response, which cannot be boiled down to a single dimension say happiness versus unhappiness. Making happiness the focal point of in order to regard anything is truly important. You also have regarding tomorrow is truly mean it and that means that to open yourself up to experiences of deep cleaning also simil tinius. Lee means that you have to open yourself up to the possibility of getting hurt and sorrow is something strange that I have served with my students is but when I stayed the proposition to them clearly that life is suffering in the purpose of life is not happiness. They actually experience that as a great. You know, even if they wouldn’t necessarily articulate that their experiences taught them that life is complex and tragic and difficult and the problem with the public. People these young people feel ashamed of their own suffering they feel that if their suffering and if they find their life tragic in assassins that that means that there something wrong with him, then instantly that makes it impossible for them to communicate anything real about their own tragedy and so it appears to me that. Purpose of life given that his team. Identifying and follow I’m only thing that makes life justifiable. Suffering suffering of other people. And self critical and then you become cruel and destructive and so not only is there a necessity for your own mental health, too. The cheapest questions of life, but if you don’t then you remain a danger to yourself and maybe more importantly, the others. As an adolescent you, also shed childhood potential to become the limited but specialized in potentially useful thing that you will become and so you might say Well, is it worth it is worth sharing that potential and Peter Pan’s answer to that is well. No, he wants to remain in Neverland, as a magical boy forever and he’s King of the lost boys, which I would say is not a very best. Not much of a dominant her right. It’s like you’re the King. King of the king of the losers. So to speak people who can’t get their act together in mature now and you notice in Peter Pan, Peter Pan doesn’t grow up. He doesn’t establish a relationship with Wendy, who is actually real. He asked him settle for Tinker Bell, who you know is a fairy and they don’t exist and so she’s really in some. Fantasy actually so seriously it is it is like knowing that it’s it’s It’s gone down allot in the movie version. I’ll be asleep but still that’s what’s underlying it now, you might say well? Why doesn’t Peter Pan wanna grow up and the answer is the only figure of authority that’s around for him and his Captain Hook. And he doesn’t like Captain Hook. And that’s because Captain Hook is a tyrant is brutal. You know, and he’s also a coward because he’s he’s lost a hand already took rock it out with o’clock in the stomach. That’s khaosan time you know that’s the dragon that lives underneath everything. It’s like the basilisk and Harry Potter and that damn crocodiles already got it piece of them, which is exactly the case like that. Crocodiles got a piece of meat. You know, I’m older than 50 and so time is already God its grip on me and you know part of the problem with being an adult is that? But you’re not rich you’re poor and you don’t have any power that’s another thing but you’ve got your damn room and you shains but then will happen is that if your family isn’t together they will interfere with that you will interfere with that because you won’t have the discipline to do it properly but then when you start building this is this little microcosm of perfection with what you have at hand in italy vochol the path ologies of everyone in your household no wonder what the hell you’re up to in there and they won’t necessarily be happy because if you’re if there in the lonely place let’s say and so are you and you’re trying to move out of that then the higher you move out of that the more the place there in looks bad and you might say well what they should do is celebrate your victory over chaos and evil but that isn’t what will happen will happen instead is that they will attempt to pull you back down to I mean obviously all family still do that but so what that means is that if you’re going to organize your room then you’re going to have to confront the devils in your house and that’s often that so often it terrifying thing because some of those devils have have lineages but go back many many many generations and god only knows what you have to struggle with in order to overcome that and so and then it and so to sort yourself out in to fix up your room is a non trivial matter you know and you can do that you will learn by doing that and then maybe you’ll learn enough by doing that so that you can fix up your family a little bit and then having done that you’ll have enough characters so that when you try to operate in the world at your job or maybe in the broader social spheres that you’ll be a force for good
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