Potential: Jordan Peterson at TEDxUofT

Translated by: Peter van de Ven Reviewed by: Axel Saffran Today I am going to talk to you about a different way of considering reality. It is difficult to determine what is real because our knowledge is not unlimited, so we always make some assumptions about what is more real. And it really matters what you consider most real, because you base the decisions you make that shape the entire course of your life on those assumptions, whether you recognize it or not. And if you have wrong assumptions, or even if they are incomplete, you will pay a high price for them.

And the assumptions we use in our culture, although they have allowed us to develop powerful technology, are so wrong that we pay a price for them and they are extremely dangerous. Since the scientific era began, we have lived in a universe where the bottom layer of reality is considered something dead, like dirt. It is important. It is objective. It is something external. And we find nothing in it that attributes any reality to things like meaning or destiny; All of this is relegated to the subjective and sometimes to the imaginary. But it is by no means evident that these assumptions are correct, because our knowledge is not unlimited and because we do not understand many aspects of the structure of being, chief among them consciousness.

We don't understand it, and we don't understand the role it appears to play in the transformation from

potential

to realization, a role that has been recognized by physicists for almost a hundred years. This remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science. There are other ways of seeing what is real and those other ways have their benefits and one of those benefits is that they protect us. Knowing that we can look at reality differently protects us from certain conditions. And modern humans are susceptible to a number of ailments that arise from the presuppositions of the systems through which they define reality.

And one of those conditions is a kind of nihilistic hopelessness that results from the realization that, ultimately, nothing really has meaning. And because life is hard (and you certainly can't avoid that meaning), having to give up your belief in transcendent meaning can leave you weak at the precise moments when you can't be weak. And it makes us vulnerable to even greater afflictions: the afflictions of faith. And we have seen the most horrendous examples of that (the most horrendous, I hope) in the 20th century, where people whose belief systems were torn apart, at least in part, by differences between religious and scientific views, joined movements of masses. in large quantities that were, for all intents and purposes, a replacement, if not a more rational replacement, for religious beliefs that no longer seemed sustainable.

And the consequence was almost annihilation, because we came close to annihilation twice, in the '60s and in the '80s. And even without complete annihilation, we lost hundreds of millions of people to pathological belief systems in the 20th century. When belief systems become pathological, that pathology has the

potential

to be the most significant threat to our existence. And if you believe in Darwin even a little bit, then you will understand that the things that most threaten your existence are the most real. You have to do something about it. Here's a different approach. I will start with the definition of this word.

The word "phenomenon" is derived from this word "phainesthai". Phenomena are things that appear to you, and phaineshtai means "emerge." And phenomenologists, who were interested in the emergence of things, assumed that the things that seemed most important to us were the most real. And I think there's a lot to be said for the fact that your brain is in tune with that too, because your brain responds to things that have meaning before constructing the experience that you interpret as an object. And the reason for this is that the meaning of things is somehow more real and more important than the perception of things as objects.

For example, there is a famous disagreement between philosophers and psychologists that when you approach a cliff, you don't see it; you see a 'falling place'. You don't first see it as an object, a cliff, to which you then attribute the meaning of a falling place; no, the perception of the place of fall comes first and the abstraction of the objective cliff, if it occurs at all, comes much later, much later conceptually, because even a baby can perceive a cliff, and much later historically. Poets became aware of the phenomenon, the emerging reality, and often associated it with youth, and I think rightly so.

I don't think your brain is an inhibitory structure when you're a child, before it's fully developed, so there are neurological reasons for that, but there are also reasons that come from life experience. You can see in children that they are more open to things than adults. They open by surprise. And adults like to be with children for that reason. Because although a child requires a lot of care and it can be scary to have a relationship with him because he is very vulnerable, one way to pay you back is to open your eyes, your eyes that through your experience are closed and I have learned to filter the things that they emerge.

And when you have a child, you can look through his eyes again and sometimes they seem to glow, like a candle or something burning brightly. This may be partly because we don't filter the fire (we actually see it) and so we always have to look for it when it's there. I think something similar happens when you're in love with someone, if it's true love. Because true love gives you a glimpse of what the future could be if you could correct yourself; You can glimpse what the future could be when you fall in love. Not only do you understand it, but you see a flash, and I think that's because when you fall in love, and I think it's a biochemical transformation, the perceptual structures that normally prevent you from seeing people, because you see people, you really don't. ago, you only see shadows; those filters are temporarily turned off, and what's really there shines through and that's overwhelming.

But remaining in that state requires an enormous moral effort; That's the best way to look at it. Wordsworth said of children: "There was a time when meadows, and woods, and streams, and the earth, and all that was common, seemed to me clad in heavenly light, the glory and freshness of a dream. It is not as it used to be." ; where I too can look, day or night, the things I once saw I can no longer see. The earth fills her belly with her own pleasures, she has desires in her own unique way and even with a maternal spirit, and Sin. unworthy goal, the housewife does everything she can to make her adopted son, her man prisoner, forget the glory he knew and that imperial palace from which he came.

What Wordsworth means by this is that as one converts. In a competent adult (and that is exactly the direction in which you should develop) much of what you do is actually narrow and restrictive. You narrow and constrict yourself towards a specific purpose and a specific way of being. And that's the way it has to be. , because during that development you have to grow towards a specific way of being, otherwise you will not develop anything and you will not be able to always remain a child; That will naturally end badly. So the destiny of people is to reduce their perceptions, sharpen themselves and focus on very little, to at least be able to do it.

But the price for that is that we begin to replace our relationship to limitless reality with shadows that are complex enough to allow us to do our job, but nothing more. And although we have become more competent, we have also become more blind. And the law knows more or less how this happens: from scratch. This is a painting by Magritte and its meaning is clear, in a sense, namely that we are blind even to what is in front of our eyes through the objects we see. And we think that seeing means letting in light, but it's letting in a fraction of the light, because we can only process a fraction of everything when we do something specific.

So a lot of what we do is filter things. A lot of what your cortex does is inhibit. And Magritte tries to portray it that way. There is a businessman in his uniform. He can't see anything but what's directly in front of his nose. How did that happen? What do you learn first when you are a baby? You learn to build your body from scratch. You build your structures of perception and action from scratch. You learn to move your arm. You learn to close your hand. You learn to do things that are practical with those skills.

You pick up a spoon. You have to do it if you want to feed yourself. You learn to hold a plate. You learn how to set the table, and this is where it starts to become social, because you can set the table for yourself and for others. You learn to cook: a more complex set of motor actions and perceptual skills that are highly focused. As you develop, the chains of your actions become more complex, but also more specific: you have to take care of your family, which means there are all kinds of things you don't do.

You have to find a good job, something that everyone finds restrictive from an early age. Maybe not all, but many think: 'oh no, now I have to limit myself to this role.' I don't want to just be that role.' But it is better to play that role than to have no role at all. And perhaps the path to the other side is through that role, and not by avoiding it. The responsibility of limiting oneself and specializing cannot be avoided. Be a good father. You make that sacrifice for the next generation. Be a good partner: same story.

Be a good citizen. Young people in particular are skeptical about this, because the old society is always corrupt, archaic and blind, and to become a member of it it seems that one must adopt that same ingrained blindness. But that also develops you; It teaches you every word you know. It's something to be grateful for, even in its old-fashioned and archaic form. And human responsibility requires, among other things, that one become a good citizen. And that means even more giving up what could be, or at least maintaining what is. There is a satirical song from around 1890, in English: "I am a typical modern major general, I have information, vegetables, meat and minerals, I know the kings of England and I quote the historical battles, from Marathon to Waterloo in categorical order. ..." The satirical thing here is that he has the knowledge, he has an official position, and that is not easy, but at the same time it is limited and categorical, and an artist would protest against that.

But it's better than nothing and that's the alternative. Which can be far beyond a good burger: sometimes a good burger isn't all that good. If you were a good citizen of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or Mao's China, you were restricted in some way; perhaps necessarily, but pathologically. So it seems like there has to be something, although it is necessary to apply that limited perspective, there has to be something that is above that. And that is also what can give you back the feeling of genuine entanglement with life's deepest and most meaningful truths. That's about being a good person.

That is above good citizenship; It's something else. It has something to do with individual development. And that is also ingrained in us. So the idea seems to be to lose what we had, specialize, but once specialized, reopen. Once we have built the skills into ourselves and can deal better with reality, because we have adapted and become more flexible, then we can begin to open those doors again. And I think your nervous system is designed to help you achieve that if you don't fight it, if you notice it. And you notice that by paying attention to the things that appear to you, that seem interesting, they catch you.

And they catch you right where that vague map you're following doesn't blur the underlying reality. It looks like there is a hole in the card and the light shines through it and that attracts you. And it will drag you away. That's when your interest in something is piqued. Your nervous system does that; You don't do that yourself. It is an unconscious process. You could even say that the world is talking to you. And that's how phenomenologists see it too. And it's a real phenomenon, not something derivative, and you know it because you can't live without it.

You die, become cynical, become nihilistic, or adopt a wild belief system if you don't have something to hold on to, a sincere meaning that gives meaning to your life. And it's hard to do because it can put you at odds with society, which it doesn't. It is not good citizenship; It's something else. It is also what allows you to be a good citizen. The Egyptians knew this for a long time. They didn't really know that they knew it because they represented it in plays and they represented it mythologically because they didn't have the ability to articulate the ideas properly.

But the Egyptians worshiped the human eye. They worshiped the eye because they knew that the eye pays attention (we are actually visual beings) and your eye is immediately drawn to the things that manifest or shine before you, and you have to look at them. If you pay attention to the things that arise, because then you see reality and not your map, then you gain access to the real information that the world offers. It is not packaged information. That could be wrong. It is real information that flows from the very basis of existence and if you pay attention to it, it will help you achieve the goals that you have already set for yourself as a good citizen, which are part of the built-in value structurethat you adopt. but at the same time it will do something different: it will make you transform those objectives.

Because as you pursue what has piqued your interest and gain more and more information about it, as you process that information (which is essentially learning), you become a different person, a stronger and more informed person, and a more complete person, a person with more integrity and strength, and with more direction. And at the same time differentiate your card. Then you live more and more in the real world. So as you move toward your specific goal, even if that goal is culturally determined, what you learn along the way transforms you and that transforms the nature of your goal.

Things continue to shine. There is a reason for that. And you know it, because if you are busy with something that interests you, that has your attention, then you feel alive, then life is worth living. It's so worth it that you don't even ask that question anymore. The question itself disappears, because the meaning to which you are connected is so powerful that it drives away the adversity that normally characterizes life. Nietzsche said that someone who has a "why" can carry with him all the "hows." And it's really good to know, because you think, well, we're very vulnerable and our lives end in catastrophe and terrible things happen;

How do we tolerate that? And the answer has always been that you have to be connected to something deeper than yourself, because that connection gives you the strength to endure those terrible limitations. You see it happen; people know it. Everybody knows. Our culture just can't express it well. We have lost that to a large extent. We have not developed our knowledge of this as well as our knowledge of the objective world. And that costs us. You see it in strange places. Here at the bottom right is an ancient symbol. It is called Round Chaos and alchemists believed that Round Chaos held together the element that the Earth was ultimately made of, the most real element.

And they conceptualized it as something like information. They saw it as a combination of mind and matter. It was a combination of mind and matter, and that's basically what information is, because when you came into contact with it, you took some information and you built yourself from it - the spiritual element - and you took some information and you built the world. . with it, the material element. And they saw that reality as something that came before the spiritual or material and that it was that reality that emerged. And that is dramatized in stories, modern stories of transformation.

The most interesting place it came back was in Harry Potter, where the central theme of Harry Potter is a game called Quidditch. And in Quidditch, which is a game, you can win by playing a game outside of Quidditch. You win the game of Quidditch by finding, following something that calls to you, a golden thing that shines and moves. If you catch it, you will win the game along with your entire team. And there you will find the stone of resurrection: it is a diamond, a jewel. The idea is that if you follow what you find interesting, that will help you overcome adversity and difficult challenges, and in the meantime (not beyond your capacity, that's what it's designed to do) what happens is that when you collide with the world In your search for what you find interesting, you come into harmony.

Your molecules, your structure, your internal structure, lose their contradictions - like the internal structure of a jewel, something that reflects light -, making you hard and durable and ready for the terrible conditions of existence without corrupting you. T.S. Eliot said something about this: “We will not stop discovering, and at the end of all discoveries we will arrive where we started and understand that place for the first time.” And that is a five-line summary of the most remarkable elaboration ever written on the nature of the relationship between individual human consciousness and reality itself, and the culmination of a system of thought that has evolved over thousands of years. years and that we have lost and I can't express it well.

Follow what interests you. It takes you to and through adversity; It will transform you from citizen to individual and then the doors will open again. And at that moment you are strong enough for your life. And at that point you are strong enough not to fall into pathological belief systems and participate in the destruction of things. Thank you.