LOOK UP, MOVE AHEAD – Powerful Motivational Video | Jordan Peterson
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what should move forward in time with me
and what should be let go as if it’s
Deadwood
the more Deadwood that you let go of and
burn off when you have the opportunity
the less it accretes around you here’s
something interesting about forest fires
you know people have been trying to
prevent forest fires for a long time
especially that damn bear smokey right
because forest fires burn up the forest
and that can’t be good but here’s what
happens if you don’t let forest fires
burn
well forests collect a lot of dry
branches right because tree branches die
and wood falls on the forest floor and
collects and so the amount of flammable
material keeps increasing with time and
that’s not so bad if it’s wet but if the
amount of flammable material is
increasing and it gets really dry and
then it burns then you have a real
problem the forest fire can burn so hot
that it burns this topsoil right off in
which case you don’t have a forest at
all anymore you just have a desert and
lots of trees are evolved to withstand
forest fires of a certain intensity and
some won’t even release their seeds
unless there’s been a fire and so a
little bit of fire at the right time can
stop everything from burning to the
ground and that’s also a really useful
insight metaphorical insight into the
nature of sacrifice right it’s also a
lot easier to let go of something when
you’re deciding to let go of it because
you’ve decided yourself that you’re done
with that it’s a weak part of you it
needs to disappear you do that yourself
it’s much better and much easier than it
is if it’s taken away from you forcibly
in which case you’re very much likely to
fight it you know a lot of what people
regard as their own personalities and
are proud of about their own
personalities aren’t their own
personalities at all they’re useless
idiosyncrasies that differentiate them
trivially from other people but they
have no value in and of themselves
they’re more like quirks I remember once
I was trying to teach a particularly
stubborn student about how to write
and she had written a number of essays
in in University and got universally
walloped for them and the reason for
that was she couldn’t write really at
all she was really really bad at writing
and so I was sitting down with her
trying to explain to her what she was
doing wrong and she was being very
annoying about it very recalcitrant very
very unwilling to listen that was a
pearls before swine thing you know and
at one point she said it did I can write
perfectly well this university
professors just don’t like my style and
I thought what the hell’s with you you
can’t even write and you think you have
a style instead of humbling herself she
was proud of her insufficiency that’s
arrogance right that’s not humility it’s
self-deception and arrogance to be proud
of your insufficiency that’s a very
foolish thing and that means to cling to
the parts of you that are dead you know
as you elevate your aim you create a
judge at the same time right because the
new ideal which is an ideal you even if
it’s just an ideal position that you
might occupy even if it’s still
conceptualized in that concrete way that
becomes a judge because it’s above you
right and then you’re terrified of it
maybe that’s why you might be afraid
when you go start a new job right this
thing is above you and you’re terrified
of it and it judges you and that’s
useful because the judge that you’re
creating by formulating the ideal tells
you what’s useless about yourself and
then you can dispense with it and you
wanted to keep doing that and then every
time you make a judge that’s more
elevated then there’s more useless you
that has to be dispensed with
and then if you create an ultimate judge
which is what the archetypal imagination
of humankind has done say with the
figure of Christ because if Christ is
nothing else he is at least the
archetypal perfect man and therefore the
judge you have a judge that says get rid
of everything about yourself that isn’t
perfect of course that’s also what God
tells Abraham right he says to be
perfect to pick an ideal that’s high
enough and you can do this the thing
that’s interesting about this I think is
you can do it more or less on your own
terms you have to have
some collaboration from other people but
you don’t have to pick an external ideal
you can pick an ideal that fulfills the
role of ideal for you you can say okay
well if things could be set up for me
the way I need them to be and if I could
be who I need it to be what would that
look like and you can figure that out
for yourself and then instantly you have
a judge and I also think that’s part of
the reason people don’t do it right why
don’t people look up and move ahead an
answer is well you know you start
formulating an ideal you formulate a
judge it’s pretty easy to feel
intimidated in the face of your own
ideal that’s what happens to Kane vs
Abel for example then it’s really easy
to destroy the ideal instead of to try
to pursue it because then you get rid of
the judge lower the damn judge if it’s
too much like if your current ambition
is crushing you you know then maybe
you’re playing the tyrant to yourself
and you should tap down your ambitions
not get rid of them by any stretch of
the imagination but at least put them
more reasonably within your grasp you
don’t have to leap from point one to
point 50 and one leap right you can do
it incrementally but I really like this
idea I think it’s a profound idea that
the process of recapitulating yourself
continually is also the process of it’s
a phoenix-like process right you’re
shedding all those elements of you that
are no longer worthy of the pursuits
that you’re valuing and then I would say
the idea here is that as you do that you
shape yourself ever more precisely into
something that can withstand the tragedy
of life and that can act as a as a
beacon to the world that’s the right way
of thinking about it maybe first to your
friends and then to your family it’s
like it’s a hell of a fine ambition and
there’s no reason that it can’t happen
you know every one of you knows people
who are really bloody useful in a crisis
and people that you admire right you can
think of all those people that you
admire us partial incarnations of the
archetypal Messiah that’s exactly right
and the more that that manifests itself
in any given person then the more
generally useful and admirable that
person is in a multitude of situations
and we don’t know the limit to that but
people can be on
believably good for things you know it’s
really something to behold
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