Student: Hi, doctor Peterson. Um, my question is, um...
I know you stated in the last uh, lecture, that the importance for setting aims in life.
Dr. Peterson: Yeah.
Student: And um, to kind of have goals to work towards, right?
So my question was, um: How do you do that, if you don't know where you wanna go?
Because, that's kind of where I got stuck on your Future Authoring program, because...
Dr. Peterson: Okay, that's a good question, that's a really good question. Um....
I think it's echoed, to some degree, in the structure of the biblical stories, and in this manner.
So there's this notion in the Old Testament, that morality is following a sequence of prohibitions.
There's a bunch of bad things you shouldn't do, and then basically you're good enough.
And I think there's wisdom in that, I think that's kinda where children start, right? You-
I mean, I love children and all that, but they're crazy little creatures, and they need to be, you know, civilized.
Well partly what you do, is you lay prohibitions on them.
And mostly what you're trying to do, is lay prohibitions on them,
for the behaviors that if they manifested, would make their life miserable.
So, I have another chapter in this book I'm writing, called "Don't let your children do anything, that would make you dislike them".
And the idea there is, that your job as a parent is to...
...help your children become the sort of 4-year-olds, that adults genuinly smile at, when they come in to a room.
Because that makes the entire social environment both truthful and welcoming.
And so, your job is to make them desirable social beings. And lot of that is prohibition.
Okay, and there's this ethical transformation.
It happens, to some degree, in the tradition of the- in the prophetic tradition,
where there's a spirit that seem, in some sense, to rise above the law.
But there's a real transformation between the Old Testament and the New Testament,
because the Old Testament is prohibition, and the New Testament is...
"Well here's the good things you do, one you're more than merely prohibiting yourself from..." from impulsive sin, let's say.
There's positive good to be, uh, accomplished.
Well, you might say: "Well, I don't know what the positive good is!"
Fair enough, man!
So... so this is why, this thing that I've said to people, has become this crazy Internet meme,
but that's to clean up your room, and... [audience laughter]
Which is a lot more useful, than people think! It's a lot more harder too, but...
The first thing you do, I think,
and I learned this in part from Solzhenitsyn, he was trying to iron out his soul, when he was in the gulag,
because he was trying to figure out, how he got there.
How HE contributed, to how he got there.
You know, not Stalin and Hitler, even though they were kinda to blame, you know, but...
it wasn't much he could do about that.
I think what you have to do, and this is part of humility,
is you have to look around you, within your sphere of influence,
like, the direct sphere of influence, and fix the things that announce themselves as in need of repair.
And those are often small things.
You know, and they can be, like... your room. Put it in order!
Because the thing is, it isn't exactly so important, that your room is in order, although it is.
What's important, is that you learn, how to distinguish between chaos and order,
and to be able to act in a manner that produces order.
And in most households, there's a 100 things that could be done,
to just make it less hideous and horrible.
And so, practicing that is a real useful form of meditation.
And it's also- it's also... I think it's a divine act, because you're taking Chaos!
And you know, if you pay attention even to a room, it's so interesting.
And I learned- cause I renovated many places now, tried to make them beautiful.
And one of the things I really learned, is that even if you own a structure,
unless you investigated all the nooks and crannies, and cleaned them up, and put your own imprint on them,
and made them yours - they're not yours.
The mere fact of physical ownership doesn't make them yours!
You have to establish a dynamic relationship with the objects, before they're actually yours.
And I think, you can do something as simple as just sit on your bed, and think:
"Okay, there's probably like 5 things I could do today, so that...
tomorrow morning is slightly better than this morning was, or at least I'm not falling behind."
And those would usually be... it's like having to eat a toad in the morning, right?
It's like, it's not gonna be something you wanna do, there'll be things you're trying to avoid.
They're snakes, essentially.
But if you ask yourself, like you're asking someone, which I think is a form of prayer,
if you ask yourself instead of telling yourself, you know,
"What is it that I could do, to set things more right today,
that I would actually do?"
It's usually some small thing, cause you're not that disciplined, you know.
Then you can go do it!
And then, you... You put the world together a little more,
when you do that, and that spreads out,
but you also put your- you also construct yourself into something,
that's better able to call Order forth from Chaos.
And that makes you just incrementally stronger!
And then the next day, you can maybe take on a slightly larger task! And...
Like, you get the benefit of compound interest, if you do that, it's a tremendously powerful technique.
And I think if you do that, at some point, instead of just having to fix things up, that are not good;
you'll start to get a glimmer, of the positive things that you could do,
[stutter]
the positive things that you could do, that would actually constitute a vision.
And that- that's what I would recommend.
Student: Thank you.
Dr. Peterson: Alright, good night. [applause]