The Art of Being a Monster | Jordan Peterson

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>> Well, if you're harmless, you're not virtuous.

>> >> You're just harmless.

You're like a rabbit. A rabbit isn't virtuous. It's just just can't do anything except get eaten. It's not virtuous.

If you're a monster and you don't act monstrously, then you're virtuous. But you also have to be a monster. Well, you see this all the time. Harry Potter's like that, too. It's like he's he's flawed.

He's hurt. He's got evil in him. He can talk to snakes, man. He breaks rules all the time. But, you know, he has a good reason for breaking the rules. >> >> And it And if he couldn't break the rules, him and his little clique of rule-breaking, you know, troublemakers, if they didn't break the rules, >> >> they wouldn't attain the highest goal.

So, it's very peculiar, but it's it's very there. It's a very very very very common mythological notion. You know, the hero has to be The hero has to be a monster.

I was at my sister-in-law's house once and her son was running around. He's about four, very precocious, very verbal, very intelligent, running around with a night hat on and a sword. So, he's engaged in this pretty intense play world. And when he goes to sleep, he puts the night hat on his pillow and the sword by his pillow. And at the same time, he's having night terrors. So, he's waking up and had been for a number of weeks, night waking up screaming. And then But he doesn't know why. There's some things that aren't going so well in the household and the parents get divorced shortly afterwards. Okay, so that's that's that's what's going on underneath, right?

And he's also going to go to kindergarten and so he's about to go into the world. And so he's coping with this.

I'm watching him zoom around as this knight and thinking that's pretty cool.

And uh that night he woke up and had a and it was screaming. And so we're all at breakfast the next morning and I said "Did you dream anything?" And he got really intense and he said, "Yes, I had a dream.

I was out on this field and all these like dwarves came up to me. They're only about as high as my knees and they didn't have any arms.

They had powerful legs and they had beaks.

And when whenever he moved anywhere they would jump at him with his with their beaks and there were lots of them and everyone like just said nothing at breakfast. It was like Cuz and he was right into this story, eh?

And then he said, "Yeah, and then in the background there was a dragon.

And every time the dragon puffed out smoke, it would turn into these dwarves.

It's like, "Oh man, kid, you really got a problem there. You got You got beak things that are biting you and you can kill them and that's fine.

But then there's the dragon just puffing out new ones. So it's like a hydra problem, right? The old hydra is the serpent. You cut off one head, seven more grow. It's not a good thing and it's such a cool dream because it it really portrayed this class of all possible monsters problem. So you've got the specific monsters and that's a problem. So you got to get rid of them.

But that's not the problem. The problem is is that there's a there's something in the background that's just generating monsters like mad.

And so I said to him "What do you think you could do about that?" And that's a that's a loaded question, right? That's like leading the witness in a trial. You don't get to ask a question like that because it implies that it implies the answer. What could you do about that is not any different than saying you could do something about that.

Right, so I hinted at that as a possibility and his eyes lit up. Now, you remember he's already running around as at night, eh? So, he kind of already knew what to do because he had the whole sword and the hat and and he said, "I'd get my dad and then I'd jump up on top of the dragon and I'd poke out both of its eyes with my sword and then I'd go right down its throat to the firebox where the fire comes out and I'd carve out a piece of the firebox and then I'd use that as a shield."

And I thought, "Yes." >> >> Right. Right. Man, it's so smart, eh? Because he got the thing instantly.

So, imagine. First of all, he thought, "Okay, I have to go to the heart of the problem." Right? And really to the heart, not to the dragon, but right down the damn thing's gullet, right to the place where the fire was actually being was actually being created cuz there it was there you could find the shield.

And that he'd take this thing that was fireproof and make a shield out of it.

And so, that was just dead bloody perfect. It was so cool. And you think, "Well, how could a kid come up with that?"

So, you could say that like the kid already had within him not only the capacity to represent not only the monster, but the class of all possible monsters and the fact that the problem wasn't monsters, the problem was that monsters could continually be generated.

It's a way worse problem. And then the answer to that isn't to kill an individual monster, the answer to that is go to the source of the monstrous itself and defeat it. What you might do about a particular monster is hide or go out and get rid of it.

If it was just an actual animal, right? But that doesn't help because there's all the other potential predators that are still there. And so maybe you can go hunt all them down, but that doesn't help either cuz you you can't hunt them all down. It's not or it's not very likely anyways. So instead what you have to do is figure out how to configure yourself so that you're in the best possible position to fight off the monsters when they come. That's your best bet.

All right. So now people are trying to figure this out forever.

They're trying to figure out what's the answer to the problem of the class of all possible monsters. And so sacrifice is actually one way that you can tame the monsters. If if you think about the monster as the set of all negative future potentialities, you make the proper sacrifices, those monsters stay at bay. But then there's heroism as an alternative, too. Which means the active confrontation of the class of all possible monsters and the building up yourself up into the sort of courageous person that can do that.

One of the propositions of formal logic is >> >> it's a fundamental proposition is that something can't be itself and it's opposite at the same time. It's like that's true for some sorts of things. It's true for logical claim.

But it's completely wrong in this particular situation because things are what they are and they're opposite at the same time. And that makes it very very difficult to That's why a dragon hoards gold. It's like what's up with that? Well, it'll eat you.

And it will. But it has gold.

Well, so what do you do about that? Cuz it's it's paradoxical demands. Well, what you want to do is face the dragon and get the damn gold. That's what you want to do. >> >> You know, in in The Hobbit he's called on a great adventure to go and find the dragon. And he has to become a thief in in to manage it. Well, that's pretty weird. You know, it's like, well, it's it's because >> >> as a good citizen, he's just not enough to conquer a dragon. He has to also become a bad citizen in some sense. He has to >> >> incorporate the part of himself that's monstrous, let's say, and develop that and hone it.

And and that's to say that, well, if you're harmless, you're not virtuous.

You know, and you might say, well, it's it's too ambitious. It takes too much responsibility. It's like, yeah, yeah, that that Those are definitely problems. And one of the things that I've figured out over the years is that if you offer the person the opportunity, you know, because people say, well, life doesn't really have any ultimate meaning. It's like, let's say it has an ultimate meaning. But that in order to experience that ultimate meaning, you have to take on ultimate responsibility for what you do.

Well, that's a heavy price to pay to have a meaningful life.

And you might say, well, there's no damn way I'm going to do that. I'll just go for the the trivial, pointless perspective, which, you know, is kind of hard on me existentially, but it frees me up. I can do whatever the hell I want moment to moment. I don't have any ultimate responsibility.

And so then, you think, well, that's kind of a good deal.

That raises this weird spectrum of doubt, which is, well, when you hear people talk about the ultimate futility of life, is it because life is ultimately futile, or is it because they've decided that they would just as soon not adopt the responsibility, and they use that real decision, which is to not adopt the responsibility, they rationalize that by proposing that life is ultimately meaningless.

Cuz scientifically, deterministically, there's nature and there's culture, and you are the deterministic product of the interaction between nature and culture. There's nothing else to you than that.

That's that. But the mythological world doesn't say that. It says something different. It says that there's nature and culture and then there's you. And the you that's in there has choices and a destiny and that you actually affect the interplay of nature and culture in determining your own character.

Perhaps the star that you're wishing upon is the wish that the hero will be born in your soul. It's something like that. You're aiming at an ideal, right?

It's the ideal you, whatever that would be. Well, you can certainly figure out what it isn't.

That's where you start as far as I can tell. You know, you know what you shouldn't be doing and you could at least stop doing those things and then see what happens, you know? And if you ask yourself, it's a meditative exercise, you know? And you do this with the autobiography to some degree. It's like, okay, sit down for 10 minutes and have a little dialogue with yourself like you actually wanted to know the answer, you know? So, yes. Well, I'm probably doing something stupid that if I quit doing my life would be better, that I could quit doing, that I would quit doing.

And maybe it's not a very big thing because you're not very disciplined, but maybe there's something to ask yourself that question, man. You'll have an answer in no time flat. Like, well, I should stop doing this. It's like, yeah, yeah, I know and I could and you know, I won't but or maybe I would, but if I did, I know my life would be better. It's like, you could figure that out immediately. And if you do that a hundred times, well, you'll be in way better shape. So, if you don't know what to do that's good, you could at least figure out what you shouldn't do that's just moronically, you know, pathetic and you can be sure you're doing like a dozen of those things at least.

There's an idea that the divine element of the individual is the thing that uses language, communicative language, to call the world into being. And that is what we do. As far as we can tell, it's like you make a decision, you think it through, you talk it over with your friends, you plot a course, and the world manifests itself in relationship to your choice. That's why you have rights.

>> >> Fundamentally, that's why the law has to respect you is because you've got this spark of divinity in you that's transcendent that nobody gets to transgress against.

And you say, "Well, do you believe that?" It's like, "Well, you act like you believe it. You treat other people like you believe it, or they're not very happy with you." So, it depends on what you mean by believe. You act it out. Well, do you accept it as a proposition? Oh, I don't care if you accept it as a proposition, frankly, because I think the best indicator of what you believe is how you act, not what you say. Cuz what do you know about what you know? Hardly anything.

And so, actions speak louder than words. And if you want to be treated properly by someone, what that means is that you want to treat them You want them to treat you as a valuable, autonomous entity. That's what you want.