"The issue is not what you believe as if it's a set of facts, but how you conduct yourself in the world."
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➤➤Speaker:
Jordan Peterson
https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos
https://jordanbpeterson.com/

➤➤Video Sources:
"Biblical Series XII: The Great Sacrifice: Abraham and Isaac" by Jordan B Peterson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUP40gwht0

➤➤Music:
"Dramatic and Emotional Background Music For YouTube Videos" by AShamaluevMusic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il9HGo4hPjI

➤➤Editor:
WordToTheWise
https://www.youtube.com/wordtothewise
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[TRANSCRIPT]
It seems to me that the way that you fortify your faith in Being, life, and your own existence isn’t to try to convince yourself of the existence of a transcendent power that you could believe in, in the same way that you believe in a set of empirical facts. I don’t think that’s the right approach. I think it’s a weak approach, actually. I don’t think that’s the right cognitive technology for that set of problems. That’s more a technology that you’d use is you were trying to solve a scientific problem. It’s more something that needs to be embedded in action, rather than in statable belief. 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. That’s tantamount to expressing your faith in the highest possible Good. It’s tantamount to expressing your faith in God. It’s not a matter of stating, ‘I believe in the existence of a transcendent deity,’ because, in some sense, who cares what you believe? You might, and all that, but that’s not the issue. The issue, it seems to me, is how you act.

I was thinking about this intensely when I was thinking about Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. Of course, you know that Nietzsche was the philosopher who announced the death of God, and who’s a great, great, critic of Christianity, and a vicious critic of institutional Christianity, in the best sense. He announced the death of God, and he said that we’d never find enough water to wash away the blood. It wasn’t a triumphant proclamation, even though it’s often read that way. Nietzsche’s conclusion from the death of God, the fact that our ethical systems were going to collapse when the foundation was pulled out from underneath them, was that human beings were going to have to create their own values. There’s a problem with that. This is something that Carl Jung was very thorough in investigating. It 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. You have a nature that you have to contend with, and so it isn’t a matter of creating our own values. We don’t have that capacity. It might be a matter of rediscovering those values, which is what Jung was attempting to do.

I think Nietzsche was, actually, profoundly wrong, in that recommendation. I think he was psychologically wrong. Dostoevsky wrote, in many ways, in parallel to Nietzsche, and he was a great influence on Nietzsche. Their lives paralleled each other to a degree that’s somewhat miraculous. In some sense, it’s quite uncanny. Dostoevsky was obviously a literary figure, while Nietzsche was a philosopher—a literary philosopher, but still a philosopher. Dostoevsky wrestled with exactly the same problems that Nietzsche wrestled with, but he did it in a different way. He did it in a literary manner. He has this great book, The Brothers Karamazov. The hero of the book is really Alyosha, who’s a monastic novitiate; a very good guy. Not an intellect, but a person of great character. But he has an older brother, Ivan, who’s a great intellect, and a very handsome soldier, and a brave man.

What happens in The Brothers Karamazov, essentially, is that Alyosha continues to act out his commitment to the Good, let’s say, and, in that manner, he’s triumphant. It doesn’t matter that he loses the arguments, because the arguments aren’t exactly the point. The arguments, in some sense, are a side issue. Because the issue—and this is the existential issue—is not what you believe—as if it’s a set of facts—but how you conduct yourself in the world.
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