Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, and in his new series, he provides a roadmap towards healing. While the journey isn t easy, it s absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you re suffering, please know you are not alone. There s hope, and there s a path to feeling better. Go to Dailywire Plus now and start watching Dr. B.P. Peterson on Depression and Anxiety. Let s take the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Episode 12: Season 3, Episode 12, "The Great Sacrifice: Abraham and Isaac: A Jordan B Peterson Lecture," presented in Belgrade, Serbia. We re still in Serbia, and I ll be back producing actual interviews soon enough. But for now, if you re interested in checking out my podcast, I m releasing interviews every Tuesday, check out Daily Wire Plus now! I'm releasing interviews with my good friend Christopher Williamson on Life Hacks every Tuesday. You can get 10% off of a monthly subscription to Basis, a groundbreaking supplement that works by increasing your healthspan by visiting trybasis.com/Jordan10 and using the promo code Jordan10. That s a great deal on a breakthrough supplement that can help you live longer, healthier, happier, longer, and more fulfilled. Enjoy the episode. - Mikayla Peterson Enjoy! - The Jordan Peterson - Episode 12 - Season 3 Ep 12: The Great Sacrifice, Abraham & Isaac, a Jordan Peterson lecture - "Do Do Do What is Meaningful?" - Chapter 7, "Do Not Do What's Expedient?" - What is Not Meaningful? by Do Not Do This? by Dr. Jordan Peterson, a book written by Meghan McElroy, an author of Do This Week on this week on the book "Do This, Not That's Not a Good Thing by Meals on the Week on This Week, by Meelsey and Isaac, is out on Amazon and is available on Kindle, iBook, Kindle, and i'm trying to extend my understanding of sacrifice, which is a very difficult chapter 7.
00:00:00.960Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.780Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:51.040Welcome to Season 3, Episode 12 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.
00:01:03.780I hope you enjoy this episode. It's called The Great Sacrifice, Abraham and Isaac.
00:01:08.680We're still in Serbia. Dad's going to be back producing actual interview podcasts soon enough.
00:01:14.640But, for now, if you're interested in checking out my podcast, I'm releasing interviews every Tuesday.
00:01:21.080Last Tuesday was a podcast with my good friend Christopher Williamson on life hacks, simple things you can change to massively improve your productivity.
00:01:29.320They're not nearly as intense as these lectures, but I like them.
00:01:32.900You can just Google The Mikayla Peterson Podcast and episodes to show up on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:01:38.780I hope you have a good week. Enjoy the episode.
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00:02:58.240Season 3, episode 12, The Great Sacrifice, Abraham and Isaac, a Jordan B. Peterson lecture.
00:03:15.400So, I've been thinking about things that I'm happy about, and what I'm most happy about so far is that I haven't spilled my bubbly water into my computer so far while I've been doing these lectures.
00:03:26.980That's always. I'll probably do it tonight now that I'm bragging about having avoided it.
00:04:00.620You know, it's something, a story that everyone with any sense should approach with a substantial degree of trepidation.
00:04:06.340I've been working on my book this week on chapter 7, which is called Do What is Meaningful, Not What's Expedient.
00:04:14.840And it's really, it's been a very difficult chapter, because I'm coming to, I'm trying to extend my understanding of sacrifice, which is, of course, what we're going to talk about tonight in great detail.
00:04:30.060And I've been wrestling with exactly how to do that, and I'm going to read you some of that, I think, today.
00:04:35.600I don't generally read when I do my lectures, but this is so complicated that I'm not confident of my ability to just spin it off, you know, sort of, what would you call it?
00:04:48.260And so, and it'll also give me a chance to test out whether what I've written, which I've been struggling with, has the kind of poetic flow that I'd like to have.
00:04:56.800If you're writing, it's really good to read things aloud, you know, because you can tell if you've got the rhythmic cadence right then.
00:05:02.820So, anyways, thank you all for coming.
00:05:06.100Many of you have, I believe, attended all 12 lectures, and that's really remarkable.
00:05:10.680It's amazing that, you know, this place has been full every single lecture.
00:05:15.180It's completely unbelievable, that would be the case.
00:05:17.460And, you know, about more than 2 million views have, this has been watched more than 2 million views.
00:05:23.200It's not 2 million people, because it would be the same people, I would suspect, many times.
00:05:48.240Not really easy to comprehend in any sense of the word.
00:05:52.100I mean, with the story of Isaac, God calls on his chosen individual, Abraham, the person he's made this contract with, to sacrifice his son.
00:06:02.420And it's, how in the world are you supposed to make any sort of sensible sense out of that?
00:06:07.440It's exactly that sort of story that makes modern people who are convinced that the faster we put the biblical stories behind us, the better.
00:06:15.420It's grist for their mill, you know, because it seems like such an incomprehensible and even barbaric act on the part of God.
00:06:22.580And so, you know, I hesitate to even approach it, because, well, because there's so many ways that an interpretation of that sort can go wrong.
00:06:33.980And so, let's walk through it and see what happens.
00:06:36.940So, we're going to start with the story of Sarah and Isaac.
00:06:40.740And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said.
00:06:43.400You remember when Abraham was in the midst of his appropriate sacrificial routines, which we've characterized as his return to the contract he made with the idea of the good, the contract with God.
00:06:56.340He was informed by God that he would get what he most wanted, which was an error, despite his advanced old age.
00:07:03.140And, of course, Sarah was very skeptical about that, as she had every reason to be.
00:07:07.100But this story opens with the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham.
00:07:12.560And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said.
00:07:14.960And the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken.
00:07:17.900For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.
00:07:25.260And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac.
00:07:31.180And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac, being eight days old, as God commanded him, had commanded him.
00:07:36.680And Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born unto him.
00:07:42.040And Sarah said, God hath made me laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.
00:07:50.180And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham that Sarah should have given children suck?
00:07:54.580For I've borne him a son in his old age.
00:08:57.400You know, I've seen many people delay having children.
00:09:01.260And for understandable reasons, it's no simple decision to have a child.
00:09:04.380And of course, now we can make the decision to have a child, which of course people couldn't in past ages, really.
00:09:10.180But sometimes you see people delay, and they delay too long, and then they don't get to have a child.
00:09:14.120And then they're desperate, and you know, they spend a decade doing fertility treatments, or that sort of thing.
00:09:19.140And immersing themselves in one disappointment after another.
00:09:21.960And it's just at that point, you see exactly how catastrophic it is.
00:09:25.620It can be how catastrophic it can be for people not to have one of the, not to be able to undergo one of the great adventures of life, let's say.
00:09:37.000And one of the things this story does by delaying the arrival of Isaac, and delaying the arrival of Isaac continually, is to exaggerate the important significance of the child.
00:09:50.020Because it isn't until you're deprived of something, it's truly not until you're deprived of something, that you have any sense of what its value is.
00:09:57.180And Isaac was waiting, or Abraham was waiting a very long time, a hundred years is a very long time.
00:10:05.440And of course, this also heightens the drama that's inherent in the entire sacrificial story.
00:10:10.640Because it's not only that eventually that Abraham is called upon to sacrifice Isaac, which would be bad enough under any other, any circumstances whatsoever, self-evidently.
00:10:20.180But the fact that he's been waiting a century for the arrival of this child desperately, and made all the proper sacrifices, and lived in the appropriate manner to allow this to occur, dramatically heightens the literary tension.
00:10:36.000Now you remember, Hagar, this is the next part of the story, Hagar was Sarah's handmaid.
00:10:45.760And when Sarah was unable to bear Abraham a child, she sent him Hagar, and Hagar immediately got pregnant, and gave birth to Ishmael.
00:10:57.140And the story picks up from that point here.
00:11:01.740I mentioned the other week, when I was talking to you guys a couple of weeks in a row, just how interesting it has been to scour the internet for the paintings that are associated with these stories.
00:11:11.820There's just a, there's an amazing wealth of great paintings that illustrate every single bit of the, of every single biblical story.
00:11:20.540And it's, it's, it's, it's really been enlightening to me to find out just exactly how poorly educated I am.
00:11:26.440You know, like I, I, I'm a, I'm a, what would you say, I'm, I'm a great admirer of, of artistic talent, and of artistic endeavor.
00:11:35.340But, there's so much I don't know about the history of art, that it's just absolutely beyond belief.
00:11:39.920And to see this treasure trove of images that I really had no idea that existed.
00:11:45.540Of course, they're spread all over the world, and it's only been in recent years that you could have access to them in this way.
00:11:50.720Just, it's just a, it's a, it's a, it's a constant revelation of the depth to which these stories have absolutely permeated our culture.
00:12:00.380And the loss that it would be if we didn't know them properly, and, and take them with the degree of seriousness that they deserve.
00:12:07.580So, anyways, this is one of those great images.
00:12:10.680And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had borne unto Abraham, mocking.
00:12:17.980Wherefore, she said unto Abraham, cast out this bondswoman and her son, for the son of this bondswoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.
00:12:26.380And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son.
00:12:29.660There's been quite a bit of tension between Abraham, or between Sarah and Hagar, as you could imagine there might be.
00:12:36.980I mean, first of all, Hagar had the first child, and, and that elevated her status, and she was Sarah's maid, handmaid.
00:12:43.300And so, that's obviously going to be quite awkward.
00:12:45.320And then, she, she lorded it over Sarah because of the fact that she got pregnant so easily.
00:12:52.040And now we see this situation where Ishmael is doing the same thing with regards to Isaac.
00:12:58.940And that causes a substantial amount of trouble.
00:13:02.720The family, there's a familial division occurring here.
00:13:05.660And God said unto Abraham, let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad and because of the bondwoman,
00:13:12.860in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice, for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.
00:13:18.980And, but also of the son of the bondwoman, will I make a nation because he is thy seed?
00:13:23.760That's, so that's it, that's an interesting outcome too.
00:13:26.160You know, we, we pointed out before, we discussed before the fact that because Abraham has made, has lived his life properly and has kept the contract with God, there's every evidence in the story that no matter what the vicissitudes of Abraham's life, you know, how the great serpent that he sits on in some sense weaves back and forth.
00:13:46.160There's always the promise that things will work out positively and, you know, you could read that as naive optimism.
00:13:52.740But I think it has a lot more to do with the actual power of keeping the contractual agreement.
00:13:59.680Because I really do believe, and I've spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about this over the last couple of weeks in addition to the decades before that, is that, and all that's happened since I've been doing these biblical lectures is that my conviction in this has been strengthened, which is quite interesting, is that if you, if you do what it is that you're called upon to do,
00:14:19.660which is to lift your eyes up above the mundane, daily, selfish, impulsive issues that might beset you and attempt to enter into a contractual relationship with that which you might hold in the highest regard, whatever that might be, to aim high and to make that important above all else in your life, that that fortifies you against the vicissitudes of existence like nothing else can.
00:14:45.080And I truly believe that that's the most practical advice that you can possibly, that you could possibly receive.
00:14:53.560You know, I received, I was answering questions last night, I did this Q&A, which I do about once a month for the people who are supporting me on Patreon, which I also release on YouTube, and somebody asked, you know, they were struggling with their religious faith, and they asked what they could do about that.
00:15:10.540And I'd also been thinking about the difference between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, which I'll discuss in a minute, and I was trying to answer this question with regards to religious faith, because he, this person was shaky in his faith in life, let's say, which is a better way of thinking about it.
00:15:28.100And it seems to me that the way that you fortify your faith in being, and in life, in your own existence, isn't to try to convince yourself of the existence of a transcendent power, that you could believe in the same way that you believe in a set of empirical facts.
00:15:43.540I don't think that's the right approach. I think it's a weak approach, actually.
00:15:48.380I don't think that the cognitive technology, I don't think that's the right cognitive technology for that set of problems, you know, that's more technology that you'd use if you were trying to solve a scientific problem.
00:15:59.600It's more like, it's more something that needs to be embedded in action, rather than in statable belief.
00:16:06.820And the way that you fortify your faith in life is to assume the best, something like that, and then to act courageously in relationship to that.
00:16:14.800And that's tantamount to expressing your faith in the highest possible good. It's tantamount to expressing your faith in God.
00:16:22.760And it's not a matter of stating, well, I believe in the existence of a transcendent deity, because in some sense, who cares what you believe?
00:16:31.000I mean, you might in all that, but that's not the issue. It's not the issue. The issue, it seems to me, is how you act.
00:16:37.580And I was thinking about this intensely when I was thinking about Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, because, of course, you know that Nietzsche was the philosopher who announced the death of God, right?
00:16:46.980And who was a great, great critic of Christianity, a vicious critic of institutional Christianity, in the best sense, you know?
00:16:53.840And he announced the death of God, and he said that we'd never find enough water to wash away the blood.
00:16:59.300It wasn't a triumphant proclamation, even though it's often read that way.
00:17:02.760And Nietzsche's conclusion from that, from the death of God, the fact that our ethical systems were going to collapse when the foundation was pulled out from underneath them,
00:17:12.980he believed that human beings would have to find their own values, to create their own values.
00:17:17.620And there's a problem with that, because it doesn't seem, this is something Carl Jung was very thorough in investigating,
00:17:23.300it doesn't really look like people are capable of creating their own values, because you're not really capable of moulding yourself just any old way you want to be.
00:17:31.680Like, you have a nature that you have to contend with, and so, it isn't a matter of creating our own values, because we don't have that capacity.
00:17:39.480It might be a matter of rediscovering those values, which is what Jung was attempting to do.
00:17:44.940Now, and so I think Nietzsche was actually profoundly wrong in that recommendation.
00:17:52.340Now, you know, Dostoevsky wrote, in many ways, in parallel to Nietzsche, and was a great influence on Nietzsche.
00:17:59.860Their lives parallel each other to a degree that's somewhat miraculous, in some sense, it's quite uncanny.
00:18:05.940Dostoevsky was obviously a literary figure, whereas Nietzsche was a philosopher, a literary philosopher, but still a philosopher.
00:18:12.560Dostoevsky wrestled with exactly the same problems that Nietzsche wrestled with, but he did it in a different way.
00:18:20.840He did it in a literary manner, and he has this great book, The Brothers Karamazov, and in that book, the hero of the book is really Eliosha, who's a monastic novitiate.
00:18:30.680A very good guy, kind of, not an intellect, not an intellect, but a person of great character, you know, but he has a brother, Ivan, who's his older brother, who's a great intellect, and a very handsome soldier, and a brave man, and like Dostoevsky's villains, Ivan isn't exactly a villain, but that's close enough.
00:18:48.320Ivan, or Dostoevsky, makes his villains extraordinarily powerful, so if Dostoevsky's trying to work out an argument, he clothes the argument in the flesh of one of his characters,
00:18:58.960and if it's an argument he doesn't agree with, then he makes that character as strong as he possibly can, as strong and as attractive and intelligent as he possibly can,
00:19:07.320and then he lets him just have at her, and so Ivan is constantly attacking Eliosha, and from every direction, trying to knock him off his perch of faith, let's say,
00:19:17.240and Eliosha can't address a single one of Ivan's criticisms, and he doesn't have the intellect for it, and Ivan has a devastating intellect.
00:19:27.080It's devastating to him, himself, as well. What happens in the brothers Karamazov, essentially, is that Eliosha continues to act out his commitment to the good, let's say,
00:19:38.020and in that manner, he's triumphant. It doesn't matter that he loses the arguments, because the arguments aren't exactly the point.
00:19:43.980The arguments, in some sense, are a side issue, because the issue is, and this is the existential issue, the issue is not what you believe,
00:19:51.460as if it's a set of facts, but how you conduct yourself in the world, and so Dostoevsky, he grasped that, and it's one of the things that makes him such an amazing,
00:20:00.280amazing literary figure, an amazing genius, because he was smart enough to formulate the arguments in a manner that no one else really could,
00:20:09.240with the possible exception of Nietzsche, and that's quite an exception, and yet he could still,
00:20:13.380using his dramatic embodiment, he could still lay out solutions to the problems that he was describing,
00:20:20.220that are extremely compelling, and both Crime and Punishment, which is an amazing, thrilling, engrossing book,
00:20:28.880and the brothers Karamazov, all of Dostoevsky's great books, really circulate around those profound moral issues,
00:20:35.300and so I've learned a tremendous amount from reading him, so,