Jordan Peterson on Cleaning Your Room - The Joe Rogan Experience

Hello freak bitches. Are you in an unmanageable position now though as far as like responding to people? Oh, I can't like I try to respond to people but I can't yeah, it's not possible. It's not possible I would imagine like over the last few months. It must be just overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah Well, I've given up trying to keep up on eat me email It's just not my wife helps me with that and I've had some other people help me But you know what I do is I I look and I try to say thank you to people and write them a couple lines When I have a moment, but you know because I can't get to all of it. They just come in by the And it's too bad because people are writing me very heartfelt long letters they're often brilliant Frequently like amazing letters telling me, you know their experiences with the authoritarian left or or or The way they've been, you know cornered in one way or another or or how starting to clean up the room changed their life That's quite fun because it's something I always tell people to do instead of going out and protesting Jesus I just can't clean up the room. Yeah Meaning well, my sense is is that if you want to change the world you start from yourself and work outward because you build your Competence that way it's like I don't know how you can go out and protest the structure of the entire economic system If you can't keep your room organized. Yeah, it's not an issue with people though that they always want to enact some sort of Control over the outside world when their inside is all fucked up. Yeah, well, so the people that are the most adamant about it Well, I think there's some truth in that I think there is truth in that I mean people try to change the outside world for lots of ways But many of those ways aren't just pure good But you know, I thought about well I made a video call which was called message to Millennials where I was it was called how to change the world properly a Bit of it on the pretentious side I suppose but I was trying to produce something that was a counterposition to this idea that what You should do is go out and fix up other people, you know That's just not right and there's a New Testament line about that something about you know Not worrying too much about the log in your neighbor's eye Or about the spec in your neighbor's eye when you have a log in your eye. It's like yes, no kidding But you know, do you really want to do you really want to face that? And so what I've thought about is that well what you start to do is you start to tell and act out the truth locally like within the domain of your actual competence, you know because the world presents itself as a series of puzzles some of which you're capable of solving and some of which you're not and You have many puzzles in front of you that you could solve but you choose not to you know That those are the things that weigh on your conscience. It's like, you know, I should really do this, but you don't It's like so I had this idea a long time ago because the world is a pretty dreadful place I thought well, what would the world be like if people stopped avoiding the things they knew they should do you know because the question is how much are we contributing to the fact that Life is a is an existential catastrophe and a tragedy. How much is our own corruption contributing to that? That's a really worthwhile question the things you leave undone because you're angry you're resentful. You're lazy you have inertia Well, you consult your conscience and it says well, you know that place over there could use a little work It's the same as working on yourself and so you clean that up because you can and then things are a little clearer around you and You're a little better off because you've practiced a bit and and so you're a little stronger and then and something else Manifest itself and says well Maybe you could like take a crack at fixing me up too So you decide to do that and then that gets a little bit more pristine You know and soon and it's it's humble because you're not exceeding your domain of competence You know, it's like don't be fixing up the economy 18 year olds You don't know anything about the economy. It's a massive complex machine beyond anyone's understanding and you mess with it at your peril So and can you even clean up your own room? No Well, you should think about that You should think about that because if you can't even clean up your own room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world? That's a very very important thing for people to hear