Jordan Peterson: evaluation

Transcript context

…If there’s a young man in their 20s listening to this, how do they escape the pull of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground? With the eyes open to the world, how do they select the adventure? So there’s other characterizations of the divine say in the Old Testament story. So one pattern of characterization that I think is really relevant to that question is the conception of God as calling and conscience. Okay, so what does it mean? It’s a description of the manner in which your destiny announces itself to you. I’m using that terminology, and it’s distinguishable say from Nietzsche’s notion that you create your own values. It’s like part of the way you can tell that that’s wrong is that you can’t voluntarily gerrymander your own interests. You find some things interesting, and that seems natural and autonomous, and other things you don’t find interesting and you can’t really force yourself to be interested in them. So what is the domain of interest that makes itself manifest to you? Well, it’s like an autonomous spirit. It’s like certain things in your field of perception are illuminated to you. You think, “Oh, that’s interesting. That’s compelling. That’s gripping.” Rudolf Otto, who studied the phenomenology of religious experience, describe that as numinous. The thing grips you because compelled by it, and maybe it’s also somewhat anxiety provoking. It’s the same reaction like a cat has to a dog. When the cat’s hair stands on end, that’s an awe response. And so there’s going to be things in your phenomenological field that pull you forward, compel you. That’s like the voice of positive emotion and enthusiasm. Things draw you into the world. It might be love. It might be aesthetic interest. It might be friendship. It might be social status. It might be duty and industriousness. There’s various domains of interest that shine for people. That’s on the positive side. God is calling. That would be akin to the spirit of adventure for Abraham. But there’s also God as conscience, and this is a useful thing to know too. Certain things bother you. They take root within you and they turn your thoughts towards certain issues. Like there are things you’re interested in that you’ve pursued your whole life. There are things I’m interested in that I felt as a moral compulsion. And so you could think and I think the way you can think about it technically is that something pulls you forward so that you move ahead and you develop. And then another voice, this a voice of negative emotion, says while you’re moving forward, stay on this narrow pathway. And it’ll mark deviations, and it marks deviations with shame and guilt and anxiety, regret. And that actually has a voice. Don’t do that. Well, why not? Well, you’re wandering off the straight narrow path. So the divine marks the pathway forward and reveals it, but then puts up the constraints of conscience. And the divine in the Old Testament is portrayed not least as the dynamic between calling and conscience. What do you do with the negative emotions? You didn’t mention envy. There’s some really dark ones that can really pull you into some bad places, envy, fear.…

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