Taking care of your own life and being responsible for the things in your purview isn’t enough for some people. They need to solve the world’s problems. In this video, an audience member on some Australian talk show asked Dr. Jordan Peterson about his advice for young people. That is, other than cleaning their room.
I want to know what is your answer to young people for some of the really big problems facing humanity, like the climate catastrophe ….
The question reminds me of the Monty Python skit where the accountant wants to be a lion tamer.
He’s good at accountancy, but that’s not enough. He needs “something exciting, that will let me live.”
The idiot 20-something, who knows nothing of the world, but wants to direct how everyone else should live, is just like that accountant.
Back to the question ….
[M]ost of us are never going to be able to afford to have all of these assets to have responsibility over, so what is your advice ….
IOW, I’m an ordinary person, of ordinary intellect, who will never amount to much or have control over much, because … I’m ordinary. But I want to be a lion tamer. I want to tell the Big People of the world what they should be doing. I want to restructure society with my ordinary, dull, mostly useless ideas that I picked up on the Internet because I don’t know any better.
It’s because I have passion, you see. I feel these things deeply (because I’ve latched on to a bunch of nonsense). I don’t know how a nuclear power plant works, but I want to be in control of the electric grid. I don’t know how many countries there are in the world, or even where they are, but I want to control foreign policy. I don’t know a thing about medicine, but I want to tell everyone how we should do healthcare.
The moderator breaks in and asks Dr. Peterson to answer the question about collective responsibility. The argument the questioner was making, he says, is that individual responsibility does not change the climate, which needs global, collective responsibility.
Dr. Peterson responds.
Fundamentally, I’m a psychologist, and my experience has been that people can do a tremendous amount of good for themselves, and for the people who are immediately around them, by looking to their own inadequacies and their own flaws, and the things that they’re not doing in their lives and starting to build themselves up as more powerful individuals ….
IOW, you can make a positive contribution to the world in your small sphere, if you’re willing to be responsible. But the people who get to decide policies are people who have demonstrated some level of competence in a much larger sphere. If you want to play in that game, go right ahead. Get yourself in order and become a more powerful person. But don’t be some weak little pansy, crying in the corner because the homecoming queen hasn’t come over and asked you to dance.
If [people are] capable of doing that [being faithful and responsible with what is actually in their bailiwick], then they’re capable of expanding their career. And if they’re capable of expanding their career and their competence then they’re capable of taking their place in the community as effective leaders. And then they’re capable of making wise decisions, instead of unwise decisions, when it comes to making collective political decisions.
That is, once you show that you know how to do something in the real world, people might ask your advice. Not before. And you’re silly if you expect powerful people, who actually know how the world works, to care much about your ignorant opinions.
And to all the wall flowers who want to run the world …
I think that generally people have things that are more within their personal purview that are more difficult to deal with — and that they’re avoiding — and that generally the way they avoid them is by adopting pseudo moralistic stances on large scale social issues so that they look good to their friends and their neighbors.
Precisely. Virtue signaling is a comfortable substitute for an honest examination of conscience and a pledge to do better.
