Jordan Peterson Flashcards
What do we see, when we see things?
We don’t see objects or dead external categories, or at least we shouldn’t see things that way. We see tools, obstacles, people, friends, foes, meaning, ideas, guides, interconnections, narratives, and pathways.
Aim, pathway, tools and obstacles, positive emotion, negative emotion. On the social front: friends and foes.
When people say they’re self-conscious, they usually mean _______
they are embarrassed or anxious.
Our exploration is not random. We’re attempting to _______.
transform what has indeterminate significance—which means meaning—into something that we want, not something we expect. That’s what adaptation means
Really successful adaptation means: _______.
you turn possibility into desired actuality. And you do that by rearranging your behavior, or your schema of representation.
The phenomena that grip us (phenomena: from the Greek word phainesthai, “to appear, or to be brought to light”) are _______.
like lamps along a dark path: they are part of the unconscious processes devoted to integrating and furthering the development of our spirits, the furtherance of our psychological development. You do not choose what interests you. It chooses you. Something manifests itself out of the darkness as compelling, as worth living for; following that, something moves us further down the road, to the next meaningful manifestation—and so it goes, as we continue to seek, develop, grow, and thrive. It is a perilous journey, but it is also the adventure of our lives. Think of pursuing someone you love: catch them or not, you change in the process. Think, as well, of the traveling you have done, or of the work you have undertaken, whether for pleasure or necessity. In all these cases you experience what is new. Sometimes that is painful; sometimes it is better than anything else that has ever happened to you. Either way, it is deeply informative. It is all part of the potential of the world, calling you into Being, changing you forever—for better or worse—in consequence of your pursuit
The hero is the embodied principle of _______.
action and perception that must rule
over all the primordial psychological elements of lust, rage, hunger, thirst, terror, and joy. For chaos to remain effectively at bay (or, even better, tamed and therefore harnessed), this heroic principle must be regarded as the most important of all things that can organize and motivate mankind. This means, at least, that it must be continually acted out, which is what “regarded as important” actually means
All heroes act out what was perhaps the greatest discovery ever made by man’s primordial ancestors:
if you have the vision and the courage (and a good stout stick, when necessary), you can chase away the worst of snakes. No doubt the greatest of our ancestors were beginning to threaten snakes with sticks when we still lived in trees. No doubt it was those voluntarily snake-chasing ancestors who reaped the benefits of their bravery in the form of nearby grateful maidens (or their ancestral arboreal equivalents)—and perhaps this is why dragons hoard virgins, as well as gold. What constitutes the worst of all snakes and the stoutest of all sticks, however, might be regarded as the central religious questions of humanity. It is interesting to note that in The Hobbit, the worst snake is “only” a dragon, but in The Lord of the Rings, the worst snake, so to speak, is the much more abstract evil of the wizard Sauron. As humanity became more sophisticated in its capacity to abstract, we increasingly appreciated the fact that predatory monsters can come in many guises, only some of which are animal in their form. Literature of an arguably more sophisticated form endlessly echoes this realization
When Harry returns to Hogwarts after his summer vacation, he can detect strange and ominous noises emanating from somewhere in the building. At the same time, various students and residents of Hogwarts are _______.
found paralyzed—turned to stone—in diverse locations around the building. Turned to stone: What could that possibly mean? It certainly means to be unable to move—but it also signifies something deeper. It means to be hunted; to become a rabbit
confronted by a wolf; to become the horrified and awestruck object
of the predatory gaze. Many herbivores, comparatively defenseless, facing imminent and brutal death, freeze in place, paralyzed by fear, depending on camouflage and immobility to render them invisible to the terrible intentions of nearby red-toothed and razor-clawed carnivores. Predatory, reptilian forms still particularly have that effect on human beings (hence our awed fascination, for example, with dinosaurs). But to have no more courage than a rabbit is definitely not to be everything you could be
At some point in our evolutionary and cultural history, we began to understand that human evil could rightly be considered the greatest of all snakes. So, the symbolic progression might be _______.
(1) snake as evil predator, then (2) external human enemy as snake/evil/predator, then (3) subjective, personal, or psychological darkness/vengefulness/deceit as snake/evil/predator. Each of these representations, which took untold centuries, perhaps millennia to conceptualize, constitute a tangible increase in the sophistication of the image of evil.
The Terrible Mother, the dark half of _______.
the symbolically feminine. The feminine, as a whole, is unknown nature outside the bounds of culture, creation and destruction: she is the protective arms of mother and the destructive element of time, the beautiful virgin-mother and the swamp-dwelling hag.
People exchange information about how to act in many ways. They observe _______.
each other and imitate what they see. When they imitate, they use their bodies to represent the bodies of others. But this imitation is not mindless, automatized mimicry. It is instead the ability to identify regularities or patterns in the behavior of other people, and then to imitate those patterns. When a young girl plays at being a mother, for example, she acts “as if” she were a mother
If you observed many little girls, acting out many mothers, you could _______. If you were good with words, then perhaps _______.
derive a very good idea of what “mother” meant, in its purest form, even if you had never seen an actual mother
you could describe the
essential elements of maternal behavior and transmit them. You
might do that best in the form of a story
It is easier and more direct to represent a behavioral pattern with _______.
behavior than with words. Outright mimicry does that directly, action for action. Imitation, which can produce new behaviors akin to those that motivated the mimicry, takes that one step further. Drama—formalized imitation, enacted upon a stage—is precisely behavior portraying behavior, but distilled ever closer to the essence. Literature takes that transmission one more difficult step, portraying action in the imagination of the writer and the reader, in the complete absence of both real actors and a material stage
Everyone requires a story to structure their perceptions and actions in what would otherwise be _______. Every story requires _______. But, as time changes all things inexorably, every
specific, value-predicated story may _______. In consequence, the actor of a given story (and, therefore, someone deeply affiliated with the plot and the characterization) _______.
the overwhelming chaos of being
a starting place that is not good enough and an ending place that is better. Nothing can be judged in the absence of that end place, that higher value. Without it, everything sinks into
meaninglessness and boredom or degenerates and spirals into terror,
anxiety, and pain
fail, in its particular incarnation and locale, and need replacement by something newer, more complete, but different
still must bow to the spirit of creative transformation that originally created and may need to destroy and re-create that story. It is for this reason that spirit eternally transcends dogma, truth transcends presupposition, Marduk transcends the elder gods, creativity updates society, and Christ transcends the law (as does Harry Potter, along with his courageous but continually rule-breaking friends). But it is important to remember that those who break the rules ethically are those who have mastered them first and disciplined themselves to understand the necessity of those rules, and break them in keeping with the spirit rather than the letter of the law
Predatory evil can be overcome by _______. The analogy with Christianity is obvious, and the message, in essence, the same: _______.
the soul willing to die and be reborn
The soul willing to transform, as deeply as necessary, is the most effective enemy of the demonic serpents of ideology and totalitarianism, in their personal and social forms. The healthy, dynamic, and above all else truthful personality will admit to error. It will voluntarily shed—let die—outdated perceptions, thoughts, and habits, as impediments to its further success and growth. This is the soul that will let its old beliefs burn away, often painfully, so that it can live again, and move forward, renewed. This is also the soul that will transmit what it has learned during that process of death and rebirth, so that others can be reborn along with it
Christ in the sermon on the mount, which is a guidebook for revelation, says:
How do you pray? How do you orient yourself in the world?—same question. (1) Aim at the highest thing you can conceptualize. (2) Presume that other people are made in the image of that highest thing. So now you’ve set the frame. Now… pay attention. If you specify your aim properly, the proper pathway will appear, the proper tools will make themselves to you, the proper revelations will come to you. That is how perception and thought work.
Life is what repeats, and _______.
it is worth getting what repeats right
We use our past effectively when _______. We want to know what happened but, _______. Why is _______. Why enables us to _______.
it helps us repeat desirable—and avoid repeating undesirable—experiences
more importantly, we want to know why
more importantly, we want to know why
avoid making the same mistake again and again, and if we are fortunate helps us repeat our successes
In the longer term, willful blindness leaves _______. This is all a strange
concatenation of _______.
life murky and foggy; leaves it void, unseen, without form, confused—and leaves you bewildered and astonished
the psychological and the real, the subjective and the objective
Willful blindness and omission is _______. After all, the pathway to the Holy Grail _______.
the voluntary refusal of expanded consciousness
has its beginnings in the darkest part of the forest, and what you need remains hidden where you least
want to look
If you pile up enough junk in your closet, one day, when you are
least prepared, _______. This is
what it means to be crushed under excess baggage. This is _______.
the door will spring open, and all of what has been packed inside, growing inexorably in the darkness, will bury you, and you may not have enough time or energy left in your life to confront it, sort through it, keep what you need, and discard the rest
the return of Tiamat, the great Mesopotamian Goddess of Chaos, destroyer of those who act improperly
The world is full of hidden dangers and obstacles—and opportunities. Leaving everything hidden in the fog because you are afraid of the danger you may find there will be of little help when fate _______. Then you will come to curse _______. This attitude and the actions and inactions it will inevitably produce will _______.
forces you to run headlong toward what you have refused to see. Impaling yourself on sharp branches, stumbling over boulders, and rushing by places of sanctuary, you will finally refuse to admit you could have burned away the haze with the bright light of your consciousness, had you not hidden it under a bushel
man, reality, and God himself for producing such an impenetrable maze of impediments and barriers. Corruption will beckon to you, led as you increasingly will be by dark, unexamined motivations—bred by failure, amplified by frustration—viciously culminating in the resentful belief that those who have transgressed against you are getting from you exactly what they deserve
impoverish your life, your community, your nation, and the world. This will in turn impoverish Being itself (and that will be exactly what your darkest unexamined motivations desire)
What is left undone is often risky, _______.
difficult, and necessary. But that also means—does it not?—that it is worthwhile and significant
If you want to become invaluable in a workplace—in any community—just do the useful things _______. Organize what you can see is _______. Doing so will make you _______.
no one else is doing. Arrive earlier and leave later than your compatriots (but do not deny yourself your life)
dangerously disorganized. Work, when you are working, instead of looking like you are working. And finally, learn more about the business—or your competitors—than you already know
invaluable—a veritable lynchpin. People will notice that and begin to appreciate your hard-earned merits
