Jordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #313

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster.

Yeah.

And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Right. But I would say, bring it on. If you gaze into the abyss long enough, you see the light, not the darkness.

Are you sure about that?

I'm betting my life on it.

The following is a conversation with Jordan Peterson, an influential psychologist, lecturer, podcast host, and author of Maps of Meaning, 12 Rules for Life, and Beyond Order. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and now, dear friends, here's Jordan Peterson. Dostoevsky wrote in The Idiot, spoken through the character of Prince Myshkin, that beauty will save the world. Solzhenitsyn actually mentioned this in his, uh, Nobel Prize-

Mm-hmm.

... acceptance speech. What do you think, uh, Dostoevsky meant by that? Was he right?

Well, I guess it's the divine that saves the world, let's say. You could say that by definition, and then you might say, well, are there pointers to that which will save the world or that which eternally saves the world? And the answer to that, in all likelihood is yes, and that's maybe truth and love and justice and the classical virtues. Beauty, perhaps in some sense, foremost among them. It's a, that's a difficult case to make, but definitely a pointer.

Which direction is the arrow pointing?

Well, the arrow's pointing up, and no, I think that that which it points to is what beauty points to. It transcends beauty. It's more than beauty.

And that speaks to the divine?

It points to the divine. Yeah, and I would say, again, by definition, 'cause we could define the divine in some real sense. So one way of defining the divine is what is divine to you is your most fundamental axiom? And you might say, "Well, I don't have a fundamental axiom." Then I would say, "That's fine, but then you're just confused 'cause you have a bunch of contradictory axioms." And you might say, "Well, I have no axioms at all." And then I'd say, "Well, you're just epistemologically ignorant beyond comprehension if you think that 'cause that's just not true at all."

So you don't think a human being can exist within contradictions?

Well, yeah. We have to exist within contradiction, but when the contradictions make themselves manifest, say, in confusion with regard to direction, then the consequence of that technically is anxiety and frustration and disappointment and all sorts of other negative emotions. But the cardinal negative emotion signifying multiple pathways forward is anxiety. It's an entropy signal.

But you don't think that kind of, uh, entropy signal can be channeled into, into beauty, into love? Why does beauty and love have to be clear, ordered, simple?

Well, I would say it probably doesn't have to be... It can't be reduced to clarity and simplicity, because when it's optimally structured, it's a balance between order and chaos, not order itself. If it's too ordered, if music is too ordered, it's not, it's not acceptable. It sounds like a drum machine. It's too repetitive. It's too predictable. It, it has to have, well, it has to have some fire in it-