2016 Personality Lecture 08: Existentialism: Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Social Hierarchy

When Nietzsche announced the death of God, he was announcing the collapse of Western Civilization's belief in itself. This has had dire sociological, political and psychological consequences. It wasn't just that God died. Christ was the symbol of the perfect Western man. What died was that ideal, taking with it direction, purpose and meaning. What emerged was rational nihilism and the predilection towards resentment and authoritarian revenge.
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[@KATVballSpiker]

Nietzsche may be a "hammer" but I found Dostoevsky to be like a surgical knife - so eloquent, succinct and accurate in his distillation of "the mouse". It brought chills as his closely packed points hit home again and again. My list of "must reads" continues to grow.

[@alexsveles343]

Dostoyewski is a bit deeper than Nietsche.,but 5uey both are incredible

[@davidwilliamson5406]

It’s so nice to listen to a person who scrutinized their own intuition so carefully. I am a suspicious person and it is hard for me to trust lecturers, but you don’t have to trust Peterson. He will tell you exactly where the shortcomings of his ideas are.

[@mimisworlda]

Wow, lecture like this makes me proud of being human. Knowledge like this gives me hope. Thank you!

[@ferashannawi1136]

And theme

[@DoclightmegamanX]

Jordan B Peterson I've been that mouse person described in your lecture. Your lecture about reality and the sacred helped me let go of the spite I felt for others, especially religious people. Obviously I was already transitioning away from that person to start with, or one lecture wouldn't have made the difference. You helped me widen my frame of reference to include the future. I have imbued my life with meaning and am less stressed. I'm thinking seriously about my future as well as contemplating where being complacent will lead. People around me are responding positively as well. Thanks from a random american

[@nadjiguemarful]

I loved reading this, GO FORTH WITH STRENGTH MY BRATHAR

[@graphthelord1994]

Well said... u described the process 2.

[@lunaflamed]

Updates?!

[@manusm3097]

I appreciate how modest Dr. Peterson is , to put this video on on KZbin he recorded with a self standing camera kept on Side on lecture stand rather than say recoding being handled by some person, which could involved overhead expense or other stuff that could have become hindrance in production of recording but thankfully a simple effort is enough for us to receive fruits of this education.

[@theninjafuckr4109]

You uploaded this just before my finals for Philosophy started last year, and Nietzsche was one of the main authors. My teacher pretty much left all the work up to me, with the exception of the names of his major works. If only I'd found you sooner, Dr. Peterson.

[@funkyboodah]

[21:51] Jung and Nietzche [51:23] The Death Of God [1:04:38] Death of God II

[@Herintruththelies]

Fascinating. It is refreshing to me to see someone marry Philosophy and Biology. I did not go to a university but I still read as much as I can about both Philo (Russell) and Bio (Darwin) and I often find myself thinking in a sort of fusion of the two disciplines. This was very illuminating. Thank you so much for sharing it with us plebs.

[@nickstanton1090]

Four years on I hope you don’t consider yourself a pleb.

[@Herintruththelies]

@@chrispywilliams1992 I thought he was insightful, broad, and helpful

[@Herintruththelies]

@@chrispywilliams1992 nope

[@timrichardson4018]

At 26:51. I have long admired Nietzsche's intellect and his diagnosis of the death of God, once I understood that it was more of a lament and a recognition that society was in serious moral trouble because of it. Hearing this statement of his, I'm struck by how Socratic it is (I'm more learned in Greek philosophy that 19th century). Socrates believed that all learning was remembering, that there is something eternal and shared about human cognition, foreshadows of Jung's idea of the collective unconscious.

[@dustinjef]

I'm working though seeing all your videos and just want you to know the absolute love i have for you.

[@GelidGanef]

The prof's inspired me lately to finally pick up "Thus Spake Zarathustra" which has been on my shelf for a while. Fucking genius. It takes me ten minutes to read a page. I wanna pick up a highlighter but I know I would just highlight everything. Can't think of anything I've read but the Gospels that profess such a unique and intelligent moral system.

[@GelidGanef]

***** I took a break from Zarathustra to read The Glass Bead Game, which turned out to still be halfway about Nietzche. I feel like Herman Hesse was trying to express a middle way between the excesses of Nietzsche's philosophy and those of the church. Beautiful, and very archetypal story. Thanks for the recommendation. I may start on Beyond Good and Evil next before I finish Zarathustra. Zarathustra was lovely but a little long and very dense for a first encounter.

[@dionhenderson]

Natural Law is a fantastic moral system IMO.

[@Beofware]

Seriously incredible stuff, Mr. Peterson. You speak so genuinely, and so truthfully that it FORCES me to see my pathological problems. Thank you so much.

[@afinedeadsound]

“Reasoning led [Levin] into doubt and kept him from seeing what he should and should not do. Yet when he did not think, but lived, he constantly felt in his soul the presence of an infallible judge who decided which of two possible actions was better and which was worse; and whenever he did not act as he should, he felt it at once. (791)” Tolstoy, Anna K.

[@martinburrows6844]

I've never listened so intently to anyone . Ever. Jordan Peterson. Outstanding brilliance with every utterance .

[@dessiec6489]

I'm in the belly of the whale & can't articulate the spark needed to flame the fire. Thank Christ for men like Dr Peterson.

[@r0n1n-]

Cry it out, get angry at the situation and use that anger to face what's harming you, really ride the roller coaster and go with it without letting anxiety and judgement holding you back. And most importantly, never go null. Your comment is a year old now. So how are you now ?

[@googlewantstoknowyourlocat1115]

@@r0n1n- what does "never go null" mean?

[@Gallowglass7]

4 years on I hope it worked for you and you're improving yourself. I feel ya

[@awilda4807]

Thank you so much Professor for making these lectures possible to all and the convenience of one's surrounding. I've learned so much. Please continue providing lectures. You are helping so many people.

[@rajab2852]

Illuminating elaboration! I had goosebumps watching this video!

[@dhrumilbarot1431]

you are incredibly inspiring and inspired me to look into psychology despite me being a computer engineering student ,from other part of world and exorbitantly motivated ..

[@GAB-vq7re]

Went to continue watching my long list of JBP videos. Then the ads come up and one is an hour plus ad. Jonathan Haidt talking about anti fragility and the rise of psychopathology in the western world. First hour plus ad I've ever watched. Well done algorithm I will be watching more of this gentleman. Highly recommend if this pops up for anyone else watch it or at least go to the page and save it to watch later.

[@HP-ow2up]

Much food for thought here. Even better on second time of watching

[@jeanneneumann461]

I love his righteous heart

[@jeanneneumann461]

I see the goodness in the man.

[@Toxodos]

Here's my impression of Dr. Peterson >:( "It's like, good luck with that! Pathological bloody Neo-Marxists!" Seriously: Great channel, thanks for doing this, I'm learning a lot. Also thanks for being a voice of reason in that whole SJW-debate.

[@JacksonTaylorandTheSinners]

Toxodos 😂

[@JacksonTaylorandTheSinners]

Thank you so much for these videos. 🙏🙏🙏

[@hakimhakim389]

No words can channel my gratefulness to you

[@PexDoombringer]

That concept of abstract death is mind-blowingly revealing. I can relate so much with it, that maybe I've suffered it and I didn't even know it.

[@Totemiaczek]

The internet is strange place i make full circle, Some time ago I start know Your persona from identity politics videos/stance, and last week i play game NieR: Automata what make me to look after some philosophy. The game was about "human condition" end "existentialism" in me opinion one of best game of the year [2017] and make me cry in scenes looking like asteroids. and after round of some wikipedia links.. some youtube videos I get to some of Your lectures on this topic.its nice for me how game spark interest to search for philosophy and i end leasing this in background at work.

[@dcoburn88]

I love your interest in finding connections and compliments between ancient and modern sources, as well as in integrating insights from science, psychology, psychotherapy, religion, mythology, etc. What is your take on Ken Wilbur's work?

[@3rdcoastnyucka]

Not only is the lecture fascinating, but you watched the Robert Crumb documentary too? Awesome.

[@invin7215]

Amazing.

[@fbidawi]

Very smart guy

[@TheMikeyp60]

Seems like the laughter has left the classroom after that first test

[@user-hh9ni8su3p]

Lol. I wonder what his tests look like?

[@jman2697]

how could you boil a lobster to death knowing it belongs to a lobster society :^(

[@pendejo6466]

Homer Simpson did it, and he's the man.

[@buffgarfield5250]

I wish pinchy were here to enjoy this...

[@jman2697]

i wish that corporate greed is stricken down! lobsters have souls! lobsters have souls! but to be honest i dont think killing animals is nice, especially boiling them i think its very wrong.

[@pendejo6466]

J Man Everything you do is bad for someone.

[@jman2697]

well saving a lobster isnt bad for someone.

[@AmalAmal-cx1ev]

Thank you😮

[@helenbostock2350]

Another personalty treat is I know I do know everything. When I talk to a friend tonight about drilling a wall he was interested so we talk. He says you know. Yes I away remind him not evertime.

[@symbolicmeta1942]

I saw you confirmed the 2015 version has much material that did not overlap with the 2016 version. So I wanted to know whether the 2014 was obsolete or not? Or is watching all 3 years worth while?

[@rileylaforge7640]

I wish I could sit at a cafe and talk to you for an entire weekend. Ever come to Edmonton? haha

[@UnluckyFatGuy]

Few people know that Nietzsche is the glorious mustache not the man. Most of the works Dr. Peterson alludes to here can be attributed to it.

[@user-we2qv1cx6x]

This was great. I read all of these authors but heard some cool preservatives.

[@wilskr8]

38:21 kitkat!

[@theguy9067]

i wonder if Jordan gives the students some of these statements of the philosophers to go think about BEFORE these lectures?

[@lunadog71]

I'd like to have references to the excerpts Dr. Peterson read.

[@zayed4675]

I don't think I quite understand what he said at the end. He read out Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and they seem to say (in a massively oversimplified way) stop being lazy and do hard things. But how is that a solution to the death of God? There is no belief structure to guide action since the one predicated on God has collapsed. So how do you decide what to do? What hard things are worth doing?

[@intraterrestrial5035]

1:07:40 the biological urge to crack the knuckles overrides the logical urge to resist

[@alexsveles343]

Philosophers and book writers are capable of 9bserving trend and moments inside a culture that vary few can.And dostoyewski and nietsche do just that, And givent that nobody else predicted the unfolding events but them its vary much accurate in considering them as prophets

[@feelingluckyduck373]

If you haven't seen persistence hunting you should check it out. It expanded my understanding of the biological human as far as uprightness and the absence of fur for energy conservation and modulation. I used to think it was a funny thing that we had so much less fur than other apes.

[@Sophia.]

A whose perspective? Piége? At around two minutes... I keep hearing this name but I have no clue, how it's spelled, so I cannot ask our god Google for more information and I haven't yet heard Dr. Peterson name a book of this man the title of which could lead me to the man's name... Anyone?

[@sheiken9754]

Piaget

[@Sophia.]

@@sheiken9754 thanks :) came across him in other ways by now, but thanks nonetheless!

[@elitesenslaveus415]

God I love Jordan Peterson

[@TUBULAR1213]

Your lectures bring together seemingly separate fields of human knowledge into a compelling narrative. I wish there was more of this approach in our liberal arts colleges and universities. I enjoyed and learned a lot. Thank you JP.

[@charlesfarrant6819]

This is it. But i think every next is worth the gamble, i hope im not mistaken in thinking it can be on the whole for every self. maybe there's always a conflict, the baby and bath water are equally succession and suffering degradation, cheering hope and perfect corruption. Can we appreciate beauty in imagining the structure of our ignorance in extrapolating the known, rack the bars from the inside a little. will something always wrestle back in desire of death. death of what doesn't directly succeed in the end, and uplifting that which it painfully anchored. some reason we ache. Maybe that battle is what it's about, id rather not call any game quits yet though even if it'd be worth waiting for the next only by chance. I think the struggle on is it, and maybe we can agree to play nicely and it'll struggle on along side us, however there will be some godly collisions Loved this lecture

[@tricorntom2254]

The camera angle is Alfred Hitchcock. Kind of matches the content.

[@williamotoole8668]

Imagine if it came out, he was alone in the classroom talking aloud to himself lol

[@jessemontano762]

Dude. That would be great. I'll be like, who is he looking at???

[@FG-fc1yz]

4:09- 8:43 11:50 24:40 29:06,, 33:04 35:48 37:22 40:24,, 41:33,,-- 48:30 50:30,- (siehe 41:33-47:00) 51:25,,-- ("Gott ist tot") 52:25,, 55:25 59:43 Z 1:04:30,, EXPL 1:10:00

[@alexsveles343]

Notes from the underground or the first existentialist novel ever

[@TheRevAndIsWorld]

hear life within existence first

[@TheJojoaruba52]

If you listen to this man, you will become truly educated in psychology.

[@Rubashow]

We got to watch out for those Lobsters ...

[@BigRed4231]

What do you think is happening now in Europe with the radicalization on both left and right? The massive number of immigrants that is threatening the stability of the union, and the member countries. The polarization of the politics and peoples politic beliefs, all while the economic problems are growing bigger. I wonder ... will democracy survive the multicultural project?

[@billfriendtoanimals2953]

I'd have to disagree with the human sensation of chills being comparable to an animal making itself seems larger, Awe vs.Threat. If that were true wouldn't before a fist fight we'd feel chills? What we do feel before a physical altercation is adrenaline, which shows itself in shaking, facial twitches, and maybe a red face due to blood pressure rising. I'd be curious to know what others experience with chills is like and what they think the cause is. Personally, when I come to a realization that I am not searching for enters my thoughts I experience chills. It is usually something that no outside source pushed it's way into my thinking, something like an original thought... Maybe I just need to really pay attention myself the next it happens? Comments are welcome :]

[@nancymohass4891]

Dostoyevsky tried ( in his book the karamazov.....) to explain how people who love to listen to a big brother / church , etc. Are like children who do not like to be responsible ! They like to taken cared of, instate of having Freedom to choose , so did Nietzche who repeat after him : God is dead! They were not against God but against immaturity and irresponsibility of human beings !

[@dustinbehnka4589]

With over 30,000 hits, he better be getting money from Coca Cola to drink that Coke 0 with the label facing the camera at 26:58.

[@b00gi3]

I think I understand most of what he says with reference to dominance hierarchies (so much interesting stuff) -- and I guess he allows room for the many actual exceptions to such beliefs as "people at the top of the hierarchy being more likely to breed" --- I think due to the way things are structured this is clearly no longer the case for humans -- with reference to such things as the movie "idiocracy" : Every unfortunate unfit "dumbass" (just as a loose description, for lack of me bothering to think of a better word) who feels like it can breed, and breed a LOT, and they DO (probably a lot more than people who may be far more "fit" to breed, say, from a deep, un-opinionated biological standpoint).... although maybe such dumbasses are at the top of a subset-hierarchy of dumbasses, and do not pass reference to larger structures, and the larger structures do not refer downwards : So : the way many things in society are currently structured is a bit of an upside-down pyramid, and will remain such, until the job-lot comes tumbling down. It's easy to see a lot of upside-down pyramids developing in society. For example, the cancer of management. There are many organisations with many more management and administration staff than the skilled people who actually do the work the organisation is purportedly supposed to do -- and I note that many times in such organisations, competence is actually not the selector for climbing upward into such managerial and executive structures (see "Dilbert", and everything in reality which that cartoon reflects). Competence is a selector to a distinct point .... and then no longer.

[@EerieExpeditionEnigmas]

I completely agree with the upside-down hierarchy idea. Jordan Peterson often says that competence and industriousness ensure one's way up the dominance hierarchy, unless the society one lives in is extremely corrupt. Maybe I am biased because my country actually is extremely corrupt, but I wonder how much of his theory actually applies. Where I am from, some specific groups of people that are uneducated, unemployed and make a living illegally have around 5 or more children starting at a very young age. At the same time, the more educated people are less likely to have families and children. The natality rate is decreasing day by day, but not among those groups. Exactly as in Idiocracy. And I can also notice the overwhelming number of managers of all sorts, some of which are not even backed up by skilled people who actually produce something. As if competence was replaced by the capacity of being ostentatious and loud. Despite of all I said, I think Jordan Peterson's statements are meant to encourage, guide and support young people who are depressed or anxious, not to state universally applicable facts. I am ok with that, he does a really good job. Listening to him has helped me a lot.

[@vargas0897]

@@EerieExpeditionEnigmas Well, reading what you wrote, I have the feeling you answered the problem in the begining of your statement. JP says these 'rules' apply in societies that are not extremely corrupt. So if you say you live in an extremely corrupt society, that's where the problem lies. In healthy societies meritocracy and competence do play a big role in the climbing of the social ladder (or the hierarchy)

[@riblets1968]

I gather then that Rodion Raskolnikov was such a mouse as Dostoevsky described in that passage.

[@b00gi3]

26:54 this lecture brought to you by Coke Zero. The aspartame packed migraine-maker .

[@FreeAmerica4Ever]

Judge not my friend. Everyone has their vices. Thankfully his doesn't stop him from being the best professor in modern history.

[@strangersound]

The cup of coffee biological subsystem is extremely powerful in it's ability to distract. ;)

[@nadjiguemarful]

The joint one is too

[@strangersound]

LOL! :D

[@helenbostock2350]

Hi one of my personal treat are not good. I get anocey. When I see people doing stupid things. Silly is different idea. I give you an explain. Why do people sit in car lane try to turn right when they no right turn. Or shops turn up thier music to load I can think over loud music but it's put me personally of shopping. It not the first time it's the 24 time I see it or hear it. I thought chances was good. I changed a bit but other no not really. Then if I say anything peoples say why get angry. I don't feel child sometimes.

[@johnrobb889]

Game of games. Lobster dominance hierarchies...

[@Heyuhp]

"So brilliant, its a joy to encounter their thinking." That's who you are to us Peterson:)

[@toddbukauskas8804]

We know the universe is 14 billion years old?

[@CasLee]

1:00:18 for coke zero

[@scr4932]

CA L 26:57

[@ironrobin]

39:55

[@chandrasekarsekar634]

Who is using Jordan Peterson lectures in lockdown .

[@TijmenRaasveld]

what maniac actually took the time to subtitle an hour and 10 minute long lecture.

[@KingoftheLizardz]

Update on human evolution: Homo sapiens first appeared as early as 300,000 years ago from dating of Moroccan evidence

[@atharvasalpekar204]

33:04

[@DivinitySaid]

i'm at 31:37... 1:37 away from whatever you're highlighting 🥂

[@TobiBaronski]

TIL when you die a virgin you literally lose The Game

[@feelingluckyduck373]

Did you grow up going to church? Your mannerisms remind me of a preacher big time, or is it in your biology. I wonder?

[@FreeAmerica4Ever]

I don't believe he did. But he's a well versed speaker and has done a lot of studying in every subject to do with communication, writing and how to make your point lol.

[@Pantherazure]

"God is dead, out of pity for man hath God died"

[@nadjiguemarful]

why would his pity have come before his death

[@MrJoycie1]

Dont ✍️ mess✍️ with✍️ chimps✍️

[@monstersisters8167]

Geez, he lost a lot of weight.

[@susannec659]

Lobster Society playing games 400 million years ago

[@BigRed4231]

Can`t believe God managed to create this much mess in just 6 days. He for sure was not the idealistic-, artistic-type.

[@TheEternalOuroboros]

Dr. Phil - God is beyond any humanistic understanding, is he not?

[@wyattmccafferty4131]

The dull forest macropharmacologically scratch because history feasibly clear but a flimsy base. precious, bumpy samurai

[@edwardramize6690]

The quarrelsome person appropriately attach because lion namely sneeze between a ashamed step-grandfather. halting, guiltless squirrel

[@mahaaalghamdi711]

why he keeps talking about evolution as a fact?

[@thomaslove6494]

Because it is....