“This is a question about the fundamental nature of being, I suppose. One of the hypotheses in the New Testament—which is a different hypothesis, in some sense, than the one that structures the Old Testament—is that faith makes being good. It’s a very interesting proposition, so the notion would be—and it’s an action-oriented issue, as well. You act out the proposition that, if you act properly in the world, that being will reveal itself to you as benevolent. But you will never know unless you do it. So this is a call to that. Act out the proposition that, if you act properly, that being itself is benevolent. There’s no reason to assume the contrary. To assume the contrary would be to be as cynical and bitter as possible. It’s not like we don’t have reason for that; it’s not like I don’t understand why that happens to people.

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."

That’s a reciprocity issue, right? This is another thing I learned from Jung. Jung reversed this. This is the Golden Rule, and it’s often read as, be nice to other people. It’s like, that is not what this rule means. It doesn’t mean that even a little bit. It means something like—and we’ll reverse it so that it concentrates on you rather than on the other person, to begin with. It means something like, conceptualize how things could be great—if they were great for you, if you were taking care of yourself—and then work to make that the case for everyone else.

You see that in Buddhism. Buddha reached nirvana. That’s the theory. He was tempted with the offer to stay there. He rejected that offer, and came back to the profane world. He felt that the attainment of nirvana was insufficient unless everyone attained it simultaneously. It’s something like that. It’s to treat yourself properly. That’s a hard thing to do, because you’re a fallen, shameful, cowardly, deceitful, malevolent, mortal creature. And so it’s not easy, and you know it. It’s not easy to treat something like that properly.

It isn’t obvious that people treat themselves better than they treat other people. I don’t think that’s obvious, at all. But, maybe, you could start with yourself, and think, ok, I’m going to take care of myself as if I have value. What would that look like? And then I’m going to work to extend that courtesy to everyone else. The hypothesis here is that, if you take all of the moral wisdom that mankind has generated over its millennia of struggle, evolved and then manifested in metaphors and stories, and then codified into articulated law, and you pick one principle that dominated all of that, this would be the principle.

It’s interesting, too, because it’s "the law and the prophets." The law is the rule, but the prophets are the process by which the rules are being updated. And so the prophets are superordinate, in some sense, to the law. The proposition that’s set forth in this particular statement is that this maxim, which is to optimize your own mode of being and then to work to do the same for everyone around you, is not only the thing that’s at the core of the law, but it’s at the core of the process that generates and updates the law. It’s a hell of a thing for someone to say.” — Jordan Peterson

Edited by Bearsella

Music in this video
Song: Melodic Interlude Two
Artist: Alexander Nakarada

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