Jordan Peterson - Is Life Worth The Suffering?
What this covers
original source: https://youtu.be/hdrLQ7DpiWs?t=1h1m29s Being requires limitation and suffering, but there are modes of being that allow that to be good.
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The speaker argues that existence is justified not by the absence of suffering but by modes of being that courageously bear and potentially transcend suffering, and that this redemptive narrative is the core message of biblical stories and human mythology.
- Suffering and limitation are inevitable features of existence, so the question is not whether being should exist but how to live within it
- Certain modes of being—heroic, virtuous, oriented toward good—make suffering bearable and even justifiable; others amplify it into meaninglessness
- The biblical narrative is fundamentally a dialogue between despair (the Mephistophelean claim that existence is unbearable carnage) and redemption (the claim that transcendent good can exist)
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Mephistopheles' philosophy is that the world is fundamentally a bloodbath of suffering—everything eats everything, people die terribly, and the entire existence is endless carnage and ruin—and therefore it would be better if the world had never existed at all.
“Memphis dolly says well look at the world I mean all you look around the world it's nothing but a bloodbath it's just suffering everywhere everything eats everything and people die terribly and and they're cruel to one another and the whole mess is nothing but a constant haul of terrible carnage and and ruin and and and and and and wreck he says it should be better if it was never existed at all”
The perpetrators of the Columbine High School shooting explicitly stated in their writings that their philosophy was that being should not exist because it is too terrible, but their true and actual motivation was to cause as much suffering as possible to others before their own deaths.
“if you read the writings of people like the kids who showed up to Columbine High School they'll tell you exactly that that's precisely and exactly what they conclude it and then act it out”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn believed that the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II represented the most important event of the 20th century because they established the principle that certain actions constitute crimes against humanity and are universally prohibited regardless of cultural context or justification.
“Alexander Solzhenitsyn who who was the person who did most unmask the absolute horrors of communist totalitarianism said that he believed that the Nuremberg judgments were the most important event of the 20th century and that was the judgment at the end of World War two that there were certain actions that no one was to undertake no matter what their cultural background was because they were let's say crimes against humanity”
People in deep despair—especially those who have experienced betrayal, severe family suffering, or grave personal loss—encounter the thought that being itself is not worth existing because it is fundamentally characterized by suffering, and this thought is a precursor to suicidal ideation.
“I do believe and I've seen this in people many times that in the depths of despair especially when you've been betrayed for example and you wander into the wrong subdivision of the underworld that's something that comes to mind if you know you have a very sick child for example or maybe your whole family is suffering as whole families do sometimes an idea is going to come to you it's like good God who put this mess together and is it really worth it is it really worth the suffering”
If there are no transcendent universal standards of good and evil (only pragmatic preferences), then actions such as the torture, gassing, and forced removal of children from parents in concentration camps become merely matters of opinion or practicality—which is a conclusion that is rationally unacceptable.
“the problem is is if you debate that then you have to say that there are conditions under which the sorts of things that happen say in the concentration camps which would be the gassing of children after their torture and and their their forcible removal from their parents and all the terrible things that went along with that that that's just ok it's just an opinion it's just something that happened and there are circumstances under which that's justifiable if there's no transcendent good and evil underneath that argument it's only a matter of practicality”
Biblical stories constitute a dialogue between despair and redemption, specifically examining whether modes of being exist that allow existence characterized by limitation and suffering to be not merely tolerable but actually good.
“I believe that the narrative that runs through the biblical stories is precisely a dialogue between those two types of being and the optimistic part of the story is that being requires limitation and suffering there's no escape from that but there are modes of being that allow that to be perhaps even more than tolerable perhaps there are modes of being that allow that to be good”
The question of whether existence is justified depends fundamentally on what 'modes of being' are available—certain ways of existing in the world make suffering and limitation tolerable or even good, while other ways of being make existence unbearable.
“maybe it depends on how it is that you are right because it could be that there are ways of being in the world that justify the world and their ways of being in the world that make the world unbearable”
The biblical stories represent humanity's best imaginative attempt to address and answer the question of whether being with consciousness of mortality can be justified and made meaningful.
“I believe that the biblical stories and perhaps not only the biblical stories but the biblical stories are the human imagined one of the human imaginations best attempts to address and answer that question that's what the entire story is about”
Being young on earth with many difficult things to contend with, one cannot tolerate oneself in one's insufficiency and mortality unless one adopts a sufficiently profound and redemptive mode of being—which itself becomes justification for existence.
“you've got this short time on earth and there's lots of things that are very very difficult to contend with and and you have the problem of tolerating yourself even in all your insufficiency and one of the things that seems to me to be the case is that if you adopt a sufficiently profound mode of being if you attempt to do that then the mere act of lifting up that weight is enough to justify the fact that you're insufficient and mortal and and and bound by tragedy”
Acting out the Mephistophelean philosophy—the belief that being should not exist because it is too terrible—inevitably makes the suffering that generated the despair far worse rather than better, which means it is logically inconsistent to claim that producing more suffering is a valid response to suffering.
“I think what happens if you act it out is that you make that very things that led you to despair far worse and I can't see that if it's reasonable to draw a logical conclusion that suffering should in justifies your desire to make being end that the answer to that can't be to produce more suffering that just doesn't make sense”
Evidence that there exist modes of being that make suffering tolerable or justifiable is found in the fact that people universally admire others—this admiration and imitation of admired figures suggests a deep instinct that lifting up the burden of being in a heroic manner justifies existence and insufficiency.
“if you watch how people act they look for people they admire and they do admire people right it's it's a natural it's a natural phenomena you see it starting with children admire and then they imitate and we look to people who seem to be able to bear the burden of being in a heroic manner and there's something inside of us that calls to that”
It is incumbent upon anyone who participates in the process of furthering creation to act as if being could be good, not because it is certain that being is good, but because doing so is the only possible way to justify one's own existence.
“the notion that it was good well even if you don't believe that and you know because maybe it's not as good as it could be I would say it's incumbent on you as some who participates in the process of furthering creation to act as if it could be good at least and to further that with with all of your efforts partly because what the hell else do you have to do that could possibly be better than that that could possibly justify your existence more than that”
The biblical narrative begins with catastrophe—the collapse of self-consciousness and humanity's entrance into history, marked by awareness of mortality—and the remainder of the narrative is an exploration of whether there exists a motive or principle in the world that makes mortality and consciousness justifiable or even triumphant.
“the first of it is the catastrophe of the collapse of self-consciousness and the entrance of humanity into history and the rest of it is okay now we're in history now we know that we're going to die we know about our mortality we're conscious of our own being is there a motive acting in the world that allows that to be justifiable or maybe even more that allows that to be triumphant”
The central question of human existence is whether it is possible to simultaneously live with being that requires limitation and suffering while also transcending that condition through mode of being—whether we can 'have our cake and eat it too.'
“the question is well are there ways that you can act that make things really much better and I think that's the question is can we have our cake and eat it too can we have the being that requires limitation and suffering and also simultaneously transcend that by our mode of being”
The true motivation of those who enact the Mephistophelean philosophy is not actually the belief that being should cease to exist, but rather a desire for revenge—to make everyone else suffer as much as possible before departing—and this is masked by the ostensible philosophical justification.
“and my conclusion has always been that is that the mask is well being shouldn't exist because it's too terrible but the true motivation is I'm gonna make everyone suffer as much as I possibly can before I say goodbye to this place”
The admiration people feel for those who heroically bear the burden of being is among the deepest and most profound human instincts, and it is right to follow this instinct even if one is uncertain about the positive justification for existence.
“I think that that's a I think that that's the deepest and most profound of instincts and I think it's right”
People desperately seek others who act with moral clarity and virtue—even if only momentarily like 'a light in the darkness'—because encountering such people lifts their spirit and gives them hope to continue, demonstrating that this is a universal call to being and self-improvement.
“you're desperate and maybe you're cynical and now and then someone appears that acts at least momentarily like a light in the darkness and that lifts your spirit up and gives you a little bit of hope and maybe helps you continue on it's well that's obviously a call to being it's it's a it's a statement from your old soul that says well there's something about that that's how you should be”
Everyone knows intuitively that there are ways one can act that make things worse, and logically this entails that there must be ways one can act that make things better; the question is whether there are ways to act that make things significantly and sustainably better.
“everyone knows this that there are ways that you can act that make things worse everyone knows that and so if that's the case there has to be the opposite right there has to be ways that you could act that make things better and obviously you can act in ways that make things really way worse and so the question is well are there ways that you can act that make things really much better”
Even if one remains unconvinced by positive arguments for the value of existence, one can be entirely convinced by negative examples—there exist modes of being that are so brutal and reprehensible that merely reading about them traumatizes a person with a functioning conscience and compels them to recoil from such ways of being.
“even if you're not so convinced on the positive end you know because it's more difficult to be convinced of the positive you can certainly be convinced on the negative end because there are ways of being that are so brutal and so reprehensible that merely to read about them is enough to traumatize you and I think that if you're a person who hasn't lost their soul completely you can't help but encounter stories like that and shudder away from them”
Mephistopheles, the devil character in Goethe's Faust, represents the adversary of the word and is the philosophical force behind the serpent in the Garden of Eden, expressing a coherent philosophy rather than mere troublemaking.
“he's the adversary of the word that's a good way of putting it because that's how it works out mythologically he's the figure behind the snake in the Garden of Eden which is something we'll talk about more but he has a he has a sophisticated philosophy he's not just some random troublemaker”