Jordan Peterson: belief

Transcript context

…So there’s not a bell curve, like the struggle of moderation. Basically, you have to welcome whatever as hard as it gets, and the crucifixion in that way is a symbol. Of that. Well, it’s worse than that in some ways because the crucifixion exemplifies the worst possible death. But that isn’t the only element of the struggle. Because mythologically, classically, after Christ’s death, he harrows hell. And what that means, as far as I can tell psychologically, is that you’re not only required, let’s say, to take on the full existential burden of life and to welcome it regardless of what it is and to maintain your upward aim despite all temptations to the contrary, but you also have to confront the root of malevolence itself. So it’s not merely tragedy. And I think the malevolence is actually worse. The reason I think that is because I know the literature on post-traumatic stress disorder, and most people who encounter, let’s say, a challenge that’s so brutal that it fragments them, it isn’t mere suffering that does that to people. It’s an encounter with malevolence that does that to people. Their own sometimes often, by the way. Soldier will go out into a battlefield and find out that there’s a part of him that really enjoys the mayhem, and that conceptualization doesn’t fit in well with everything he thinks he knows about himself and humanity. And after that contact with that dark part of himself, he never recovers. That happens to people, and it happens to people who encounter bad actors in the world too. If you’re a naive person and the right narcissistic psychopath comes your way, you are in mortal trouble because you might die, but that’s not where the trouble ends. 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?…

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