https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=EcjEJp2ng4Q
See, if you have a functional identity, when you act it out in the world, then you get what you want and need. And if an identity doesn’t do that, well, then you either retool your identity or you retool the world. Your conception of the world? Well, if you’re retooling your conception of the world, then you’re retooling yourself. No, you can actually, I mean, what a revolutionary does is try to bring the world into alignment with their theory. So literally change the world. Yes, literally. Well, and we all do that to some degree because we are practical engineers, you know? I mean, not only do we perceive the world, but we also interact with it so that it does manifest itself in accordance with our desires. There’s limits, obviously, to how far you can go or how far you should go with that. And what are the limits? Well, there’s practical limits. Nature won’t do what you want it to unless you’re very sophisticated in your application of your knowledge and other people will object. So now you might say, well, you should forge forward regardless of their objection. And there are circumstances under which that’s true, but generally speaking, that’s not a very good idea. It certainly doesn’t make you popular as a child. And so that brings up one other issue. I would also say, and I developed this idea quite a bit in the new book, you go from egocentrism as a child, you have to go through this period where you’re socialized as a child and adolescent. And that really means that you allow your identity to be molded and shaped by the group. And you know, you think about how important peers, friends and peers are to children and adolescents. You know, your mother will say when you’re a teenager, well, if Johnny jumped off the bridge, would you too? And you say, well, no, but the real answer is, well, probably if all your friends are there taunting you, you would in fact jump off the bridge. And not only that, generally speaking, you should because it’s your duty, it’s your developmental duty as a child and a teenager to take your isolated self and turn it into a functioning social unit. Now, you could say, well, Peterson wants everybody to be a functional social unit, a robot, you know, a cog in the wheel. And I would say, well, that isn’t where development stops. It has to go through that period before you can emerge as a genuine individual, which means you have to know the rules of the game before you can break them. But not being able to abide by the rules is not anything like being a genuine creative individual. Those are not the same thing. And there’s plenty of attempt to confuse the two things because it’s much better if you can’t follow the rules to view yourself as a avant-garde revolutionary than as a failure. And it’s not like I don’t know that that social molding crushes. Obviously it crushes and everyone feels that. These are existential problems. Everyone deals with the tyranny of culture. And the fact that it does want you to be a certain way and not other ways. And those ways might not be in keeping with the deepest elements of your nature. Well, tough luck for you because you’re also the beneficiary of culture. And so you have to offer it your pound of flesh. Now you shouldn’t do that at the expense of your soul, but you shouldn’t stay an immature child either. And so this notion of identity that we’re being fed is very, very, it’s very thin. What are we being fed? Be very specific. Well, there is the idea, for example, that your identity is whatever you say it is and that everyone else has to go along with that. No, that isn’t how it works. Partly because no one even knows how to go along with it. Like let’s say, just for example, that you’re a gender non-binary. Okay, what am I supposed to do about that? Man, I don’t know. I hardly know what to do if the rules are already there. So let’s say I grew up, being a heterosexual male, I wanna find a woman, fall in love with her, raise a family, have children, have grandchildren. That’s a game. I know the rules to it. Not well, because everyone’s a failure at that. It’s very difficult, but at least you kind of know what the goal is. And so does the person you’re with. Well, you leap out of that, which is already terribly difficult. You leap out of that into completely unknown territory, saying that I’m presenting yourself as something other than those categories, leaves everyone around you, and you, completely bereft of direction. What do you do? Let me put it in words that I get from your material. So what I heard you just say, tell me if I’m wrong, is part of the negotiation that we do from the time we are little kids and figuring out that play, we’re up on the bridge, we jump maybe because we want to fit in with our peer group. There is a sense of order to that. Now you’ve been very careful, and it will drive me crazy if people respond to this interview as if you have not already illustrated that it is the balance between two opposing forces. But so we need enough order so that somebody can find their way through the world. And that many, I think a big part of the reason that your work has resonated so profoundly with people is they’re, excuse me, they are left in a world where they don’t know how to move forward in a way that serves them spiritually, practically as well for sure. And so, hey everybody. Both of those, both of those practically shades into spiritually as you move up into the broader reaches of identity. No, and look, this, see, one of the things, I really laid this out in Maps of Meaning, it took me a long time to understand that belief regulated emotion. So what happens is that if you act out your identity, if you act out your beliefs in the world, and what you want doesn’t happen, what happens is that your body defaults into emergency preparation for action. And the reason for that is you’ve wandered too far away from the campfire, and now you’re in the forest, and maybe you’re naked. And so what do you do then? And the answer is, well, you don’t know what to do. So what do you do when you don’t want, know what to do? And the answer is you prepare to do everything. And the problem with that is that it’s unbelievably draining psychophysiologically. Like it hurts you. And there’s an immense physiological literature detailing the cost of exactly that kind of response. And so people need people and animals. People stay where what they do has the results they want. That’s partly why you wanna be around people who share your cultural presuppositions, is because you know that, for example, even in small ways, let’s say you’re a country music aficionado, and you’re hanging around with your cowboy-hatted buddies, and you throw on a tape, and everyone says, great tunes, man. And you’re happy about that. But you throw on a piece by Tchaikovsky, and you’re in a different subculture, and who the hell are you? The people in your group will say, man, who listens to music like that? And that’s a trivial example in some sense, but I believe it’s one that everyone can resonate to. It’s very hard on us not to be where we know that what we want is going to happen. We hate that. We hate that, and no wonder. And then there are varying degrees of that, obviously. You can really be where you don’t know what’s going to happen, or you can only be there to some degree, but by and large, by and large, we’re conservative creatures, even if we’re liberal in temperament. We can’t tolerate that much uncertainty. And you might ask, well, why? And the answer is, well, because you can be hurt, pain. You can be damaged. You can become intolerably anxious, and you can die. So it’s no wonder you’re sensitive, because you’re very sensitive to negative emotion. And so our identities, functional identity regulates your emotion.