The Meaning of Life (vs. Jordan Peterson)

that's a great thing too that's a great
thing to hypothesize as your aim a juxtaposition is not necessarily a criticism I'm here gonna present my own conclusions on the meaning of life which I'd prefer to present ads how to lead a meaningful life with a juxtaposition to what Jordan Peterson has recently had to say on the topic I open with an anecdote that will probably be more appealing to fans of Jordan Peterson and it would be to any fans I might have I went to a lecture at university many years ago and the speaker who was a lifelong political dissident atheist and critic of the CIA told a story from his youth when he was a true believer in the Catholic faith as he said at the time when he was a child he wasn't just religious he was also a snob he didn't have a very high opinion of the local priests and local religious teachers he had access to so he waited for his chance to go up to a senior Jesuit goes after this more August religious scholar as a small child and he asked him a question that he'd been preparing for some time yes and quote how do I find God close quote and at this the Jesuit is delighted and laughs probably because it's a small cute child asking his question is not what he's expecting that day and he says something like oh my son the fact that you are searching means that he has already found you I think that the red flag here is with every other sort of question were interested in definite answers and yet when it comes to this question when it comes to the question of the meaning of life people of all religious backgrounds people of all faiths are really quick to divert our attention towards some sort of notion that the way we ask the question is the most important part the fact that we're questioning the fact that we're searching all of a sudden it becomes about the process and not the product it becomes about the and not the destination that's a real red flag that your religious leader may well just be a artist what you should be pursuing instead is well there's two things you should be pursuing who you could be that'd be the first thing it's like cuz you're not who you could be and you know it you have guilt and shame and regret and and you berate yourself for your lack of discipline and your procrastination and all your bad habits you know perfectly well that you're not who you could be and associated with that you should be attempting to formulate some conception of the highest good that you can conceive of that you can articulate part of that's definitely going to be to develop your character as much as possible to dispense with those parts of you that are unworthy you know one of the things I've told my audiences the young guys take to this a lot I said you should be the strongest person at your father's funeral right now that's something to aim for it's a transition the generational transition and it means that well all the people around you are suffering because of their loss they have someone to turn to can you illustrate by their behavior that the force of character is sufficient to move you beyond the catastrophe and you need that and that's a great thing too it's a great thing to hypothesize as your aim and happiness just evaporates as irrelevant in light of that sort of conceptualization the human spirit fundamentally triumphs over death and so that's that's optimism you know in the midst of the Sorel and the malevolence we have the capacity we have the capacity sorry we have the capacity to transcend that then there isn't anything more optimistic than that and there's nothing there's nothing in it that isn't good some things are true on a small scale when dealing with pragmatic particulars but then they can't be scaled up and generalized very well many people live their lives in a sort of loop of knowing doing gratification they know what they got to do maybe they struggle to get motivated to do it then they do it and then they feel some gratification because they've done the thing they knew they had to do so this is a really simple loop and it covers things like going to do the groceries and many mundane particular pragmatic tasks in life knowing doing gratification but is this the way to a meaningful life or is this the meaning of life no it doesn't scale up very well it doesn't generalize very well it's not small it's not well-suited to the more profound questions we get into when talking about the of life keep in mind that most people commit to things without knowing them first they commit to Marxism without having really read the works of Karl Marx yet they commit to Buddhism while knowing remarkable a little about Buddhist philosophy most professions and jobs that people commit to they only find out the hard way afterward what the job really entails what it's really like as a child you might have some notion of what it's like to be a nurse and then you find out the hard way what a career in nursing really means its advantages and disadvantages you could be 20 years old and still not really understand what you're getting into when you sign up for nursing in general or you sign up for a very specific job or field within nursing for me I got involved with economics thinking economics was gonna be the philosophy of poverty I get to the Department of Economics at university it's unbelievably depressing department where everybody's just trying to get rich and going to real estate and work as a hedge fund manager this kind of thing that's not what I signed up for when I was studying economics I found it inspiring and interesting rewarding I had a sort of humanitarian set of goals and interests and I ended up in the wrong Department so instead of a cycle of knowing and doing and gratification the way we live with the more profound decisions and the more profound unexpected events that unfold their lives is a cycle of doing doting and then doing again it's a cycle of learning where we most often have to start off with action with initiating action - even with undertaking them a certain set of convictions that leads to action this kind of thing but then we have to continue to doubt those convictions or doubt those commitments doubt those choice Romanians we go so that it's a learning process people ask me questions all the time like is it worthwhile for them to study Buddhist philosophy not is it worthwhile for everyone or anyone but is it worthwhile for this particular person to start studying with us and then what what would I recommend that they give them their particular interests or what is they're trying to do in their career or academia or something the hardest answer for people to live with is maybe the hardest thing to do is to commit yourself to hundreds of hours of hard work whether that's on Buddhist philosophy or learning the Chinese language or going to college to become a nurse and studying for that chemistry exam so you can go to nursing the hardest thing is to commit yourself to the hard work to the suffering that it entails without knowing whether or not this is the right thing to do without knowing whether or not it's a mistake you're going to regret later and it's hardest of all to really be honest with yourself about that it's hardest to keep that stage of doubt in the cycle of doing and doubting and doing again it's very very hard for most people to live with the knowledge I don't really know so if you undertake the study of Buddhist philosophy you're starting off probably just with an awareness there is a bookshelf in the library that says Buddhist philosophy that's really all you know you know there's a category of books to be found in this you don't know what its contents are gonna entail what its gonna mean you may have some really misleading ideas from watching kung fu movies you may have some ideas about yourself and how you're gonna become a better person by studying this or you may have some use you're gonna try to apply it to like maybe you think I'm gonna be better able to teach non-violence or something by studying this philosophy or I'm gonna be able to do reconciliation or I'm gonna be able to help people in prisons deal with their rage you may have all kinds of misconceptions or expectations or hopes or dreams whatever it is but you're gonna start by undertaking this labor in darkest ignorant and you're inevitably going to suffer as you realize that the task you've undertaken is not the one that you had imagined it would be that the outcomes can't be what you've anticipated that's it's not even saying sometimes I'm saying absolutely all the time when we're dealing with these questions that are about the meaning of life and I meaningful life if you're going to the grocery store to buy a tube of toothpaste yeah sure that's that goes back to mode one you know what you're gonna do you do it then maybe you feel some gratification after the fact the type of gratification you can get out of leading a meaningful life is instead the gratification of realizing how ignorant you were before and what it is you've learned and then the sense in which you're better off now the process of your own disillusionment is what lets you know that you're leading a meaningful life and you may well say what do you mean I don't have any illusions that's right whenever you start the process at any stage you don't think you have illusions you enroll in the study of economics at university you decide to become a nurse let's be more specific you decided to come an x-ray technician or nutritionist maybe something more specific than just nursing in general and you you don't think you have illusions about that profession or about that academic discipline but you do and in that process if you have the detachment if you have the self-discipline to stick to to stick to that kind of doubt not to cling to some kind of belief not to try to convince yourself that you know this is meaningful and you know you're going to be gratified by accomplishing this goal if you can if you can keep that kind of detachment of doubt ongoing then you're gonna recognize the degree of your own disillusionment when you find out how different these things really are from what it was you had expected what it was you had had dreamed about or yearned for people want to resort to saying it's not about the answer it's about continually asking the question and I think that is ultimately dishonest that really we have to challenge ourselves to move beyond these stereotype notions of oh well it's about the journey not the destination or rights it's just a methodological question of you know how to how to continually engage with the question of what is the meaning of life know ultimately what I have had is the luxury of making the wrong decision and learning the right things from them and moving on you can do that with Buddhist philosophy you can't do that with a tattoo you can't do that with heroin you can't do that with cocaine right so the the gravity of making the wrong choices the gravity of miss apprehending what will lead you to a meaningful life the consequence of spending five years studying Buddhist philosophy in your spare time and then coming to the conclusion you know what this philosophy it doesn't really answer the questions I thought it would answer or maybe it doesn't help me in my career as a conflict resolution counselor or doesn't doesn't have what I was hoping for that's not going to harm you but tragically we live in a world where people all the time or making decisions whether it's something as seemingly benign as getting addicted to playing video games or something as seemingly wonderful as falling in love and getting married you know people make decisions that have catastrophic long-term consequences for them so when you're talking about a meaningful life there's really a pretty limited range of legitimate questions that we can include in saying it's about the journey not the destination or it's about a mode of questioning more than it's about any specific answer I have one friend who always wants to ask me is it or is it not a good use of his time to go to the gym and lift weights for however many hours per week the hardest answer for people to live with is I don't know the hardest answer is maybe the hardest answer is you can't know until afterwards when I was younger I thought that vanity would have no place in my life when I was at grown-up like wow you know what's the point why not just be fat and ugly when you're a middle-aged person who cares why would I care about vanity today there's a sense in which man it doesn't matter I would never wear a jewelry or a gold chain or anything in some ways that live up monastic life but on the other hand I do think health and fitness and strength justify a certain number of hours going to the gym but maybe I'm wrong maybe I don't know maybe I'm gonna look back at this period of time in my life and think wow I made the wrong decision I should have been pouring my time and effort into learning Chinese as a language and not into bench-pressing over a hundred kilograms what was the point of doing that at 40 years old maybe I'm gonna look back at that and think that's vanity vanity of vanities I have to live with that uncertainty I have to live on the razor's edge of that kind of doubt with what I do intellectually and physically with what I do in the pursuit of leading a meaningful life if you undertake humanitarian work what are the outcomes you're pursuing are you trying to make yourself a better person are you trying to make you know the poor but better off you're trying to help poor people with this humanitarian work you're doing the hardest thing is to undertake humanitarian work not with the faithful delusion that you you're certain you know you're doing the right thing but to undertake it at every step with a canny measure of detachment and self-doubt with an awareness that the outcomes are beyond your control that it's very likely you're going to have terrible regrets and that when it's all over you're going to look back and be able to measure the extent to which this was a meaningful part of your life precisely because you were disillusioned by it precisely because you didn't accomplish the things you said to accomplish maybe you accomplished something else maybe at a minimum you can say I accomplished turning myself into the person that I know I am [Music] you