WATCH: Jordan Peterson's message to Gen Z | ARC Conference 2023

This speech not only highlights the importance of individual action and responsibility but also offers a roadmap for leading a meaningful life. It's a call to embrace the complexity of existence, to acknowledge our potential for both good and evil, and to strive relentlessly towards a vision that elevates not just ourselves, but the world around us.

I would rather Peterson have the balls to interview Norman Finkelstein instead of watching him take a pathetically lazy approach to the ongoing genocide being perpetrated by the Terrorist, zionist, Apartheid government of Israel. I've followed him for years and I'm still shocked at how disappointed I am with him. He was initially fooled by the Plandemic but then came around. Then he was fooled by Shapiro and Netanyahu and sadly it does not appear that he will come around to study the history and to see the truth about what is going on. Either that or Netanyahu and his mossad agents have threatened Peterson. This is actually a distinct possibility in the minds of many. Sad times when a great man can be so willfully blind.

Amazing uplifting speech from JP what an inspiring guy Dr peterson is. I listen to Jordan every single day without fail and he makes my life better. I'm wiser because of him. I'm stronger. And I'm doing better. Thanks JP

[part 1 of 2]

So I think maybe what I'll talk to you about is vision. So first of all, I'm very happy to be here speaking to all of you. One of the things we wanted to do right from the beginning of this organization is to make sure that we identify a large group of young people, and that's you by the way. We picked all of you very carefully. We picked you because you had already demonstrated in one way or another that you were doing something to aim up, and that you were communicating that.

Now, you know, I've been thinking about how to conceptualize the world and our place in it for a long time, and one of the misconceptualizations that lead people into a dismal nihilism is a linear conception of the relationship between people. So if you imagine yourself for a moment as one speck among seven billion specks, then you're going to immediately leap to the conclusion that nothing that you could do could possibly matter. Now there's a payoff to that, because if nothing you do matters, then you can get away with anything. And so when you're feeling nihilistic, you have to ask yourself the question whether or not you're actually hopeless, or whether you're just looking for an excuse for selfish nihilism and for selfish hedonism. I think the latter is very much worth considering. But I also think that's a very bad model of the way that the realm of human experience is constructed. You can think about it mathematically very rapidly in a much more instructive sense.

So there is a notion, a metaphysical notion, that each of us stands at the center of the cosmos in some strange way, and that seems impossible because we are accustomed to assuming that everything that we understand has a single center. But there's lots of things about the way existence lays itself out that we don't understand, and it is possible for something sufficiently complex to have multiple centers. We're all conscious, and that's a mystery in and of itself, and each of those consciousnesses is a kind of center. So and then you think, well, what potentiality does that center have? And you can think very rapidly that certainly in the span of your life, if you're reasonably fortunate, you're going to have a thousand people that you have very close encounters with, that the manner in which you conduct your life is going to have a substantive effect on at least a thousand people. And each of those thousand people are in contact with a thousand people, and that's a million people, one person out from you, and it's a billion people, two people out from you.

And so we're each at the center of a network like that, and that means two things. It means that the stupid, miserable, resentful, bitter things you do have a lot more cataclysmic effect on the way the world unfolds than you think. And that's worth thinking about. But it also means that the good that you do can have a much broader effect than you might think, especially if you buy the one speck among seven billion specks model. And the thing is, too, it's what you do as an individual doesn't just radiate out from you spatially. It also radiates out from you temporally. So if you have the adventure of having a child, for example, you have no idea what the overall consequence of that is going to be as the generations cascade out into the future.

And so it is the case that you stand at the center of things, and one of the things we wanted to do when bringing all of you relatively young people together was to drive that point home. You know, you're not here, and I think you know that, but you're not here to listen to experts tell you how you should conduct your life. You're here to be encouraged to take yourselves as responsible entities of intrinsic worth seriously, and also to contemplate the possibility that you have something very real to offer the world very real and that the world itself will be much less than it could be if you fail to bring that forward. And I believe firmly, I truly believe this, that the world degenerates into hell when people hide their light under a bushel. If enough people do that, it's hell. And enough people stop doing that, well, then we move incrementally uphill towards the promised land on the hill, let's say. And I think that's as realistic a way of conceiving the world as can possibly be put forward. There's nothing about that that's pie in the sky or naive dreaming.

Quite the contrary, in fact, because it puts quite a burden on you. You don't get to mess about. The stupid things you do matter, and they matter in a very negative way. And if you're ever wondering why the world is going to hell in a handbasket, the first place to look to determine that is in the mirror. And in that, you know, there's a nobility in that, too.

I also think, you know, that you actually can't take yourself seriously until you take your capacity for stupidity and bitterness and resentment seriously and understand how much damage that can do in the world. Because when you can see in yourself, as a force for evil, you can start to understand that the corollary of that could well exist. At least you could not be as wretched as you are, and then after that, perhaps you could aim up.

And then maybe I could talk a little bit about how you might aim up. I have a program online called the Future Authoring Program and it helps people develop a vision. And so if you're looking for a practical way of developing a vision, finishing that program is a very good idea and you can do it very badly and it'll still work.

But I want to tell you what the idea behind the development of a vision is. They say that without a vision, the people perish, and there's technical reasons for believing that. The first thing is that if you don't have a well-developed and integrated vision, you can't have any hope. And the reason you can't have any hope is because hope signifies movement towards a valuable goal. And so if you don't have a valuable goal in mind, you have no hope. And that's not good because there will be times in your life where you'll perish without hope and so you need a noble goal that will fill you with hope.

Now the other thing that a goal does is it unites you internally. And if you're a leader you can unite many people behind a goal. But a goal of your own unites you internally and what's the consequence of that internal union? The answer to that is apart from an abundance of hope is an absence of anxiety, because what anxiety does is signal a fractured vision. You're anxious when there's too many things that you don't understand that you could do or too many directions that beckon that you could wander down. It's the freedom of being in the desert or the freedom of being dropped in the ocean: too much unstructured potential. You put the proper constraint on potential with the vision.

Okay, so now a vision is something you negotiate. Let's say if you're in a marriage you have to negotiate the vision of the marriage with your wife or with your husband. Now what bearing does that have on what you do with yourself? Well, here's a very practical way of thinking about it. There's a cost that you're gonna pay for being alive and the cost is, well, the cost is your death. That's one. The cost is the suffering that will definitely come to you as you make your way through life. Now if that suffering makes itself manifest in the absence of sufficient purpose, you will get bitter and resentful and you'll work to make things worse and that's not a desirable outcome if you're clear-headed in the least. And so then you might ask yourself well, what's the alternative to that? And that's actually the question you should ask.

[part 2 of 2]

So one of the things we ask people to do with this Future Authoring Program is to sit down with yourself, let's say like you would sit down with someone that you were taking care of and to ask yourself all right, well what's my price for not being bitter? What would I have to have in my life? What is it that I need in my life so that if that was delivered to me, I would be how about thrilled? How about thrilled to do what I'm doing? And that's a good criteria to apply if you're negotiating for a new position at work. It's like why not negotiate a contract you're thrilled with? Then you get to go to work and be thrilled. So then well, would you negotiate a covenant with yourself that would enable you to be thrilled?

Well, it's a game you can play, you know if you could have the relationship you want and you have to imagine like you're a child right to enter that realm of dreaming that you did when you were daydreaming as a child. It's the form of thinking which we suppress very early in childhood to our great loss. You can ask yourself in a meditative way well, imagine that I had a genie and I could rub it and I'd have my wish and my wish was that I could have the best intimate relationship that I could imagine. It's like well, what would that look like? And you have to be honest with yourself to let that vision make itself manifest. You have to admit to yourself what you really want and need and then you also have to admit to yourself the gap between where you are now and that actual endpoint, but at least that in principle can be motivating.

And you can do that with your intimate relationship. You can do that with your friends. You can do that with your career. You can do that with your educational vision. You can do that with the service that you might be to others. You can do that with your own care on the mental and physical health dimensions. You can figure out how to regulate your response to temptation. It's like if you could be the person that you would most admire in some realistic sense, what is it that you would do and what is it that you would stop doing? And then you have to ask yourself well, those are my conditions for satisfaction. That's what I want to pursue and then well, then you're motivated and I mean technically you're motivated because now you have some hope.

You think well you know if I accomplish that well, then what? Well, I might be as pleased as a reasonable person could be with the conditions of my own existence. I would exist in some degree of harmony with the social world around me. I would be able to fulfill the commandment say to act as if existence itself is good. And you have that capacity. There's a gospel suggestion. It's a very strange line. Christ says to his followers: if you knock the door will open, if you ask you will receive, and if you seek you will find. And it's easy to deride that as a form of naive sentimentalism and it's not that at all. It's the most practical possible advice that anyone could ever deliver.

It's like WHAT DO YOU WANT? You know, the world is full of endless difficult possibility. It's an unexplored storehouse of potential treasure. And there's no reason to assume at all that if you made the sacrifices that were necessary to bring yourself closer to the goal that you envisioned that it would be impossible for you to attain that. Now if you're wise, you'll know that you hold a vision, you hold a goal with a light hand because as you approach it you may find that you are unwise in your choice and that you have to modify your vision. But that's okay. You can accrue wisdom along the way. And it also means that you don't have to be afraid to stumble forward, you know. Like what the hell do you know about where you should be in four years? Well, maybe you can have a vision that would clarify you to some degree and then when you get to that next point you'll be able to see the location of the shining city on the hill with more clarity.

So if you develop a vision wisely, you can start from wherever you are and you can stumble forward as stupidly as you need to and you'll improve along the way and God only knows what you might be capable of in the future. And that's a good question to ask yourself too you know. You pulled out all the stops and if you were all in, which you are anyways right, which you are anyways. The worst thing you can possibly imagine is definitely going to happen to you. And so there's no way around that. You can accept that as an a priori risk and you can say well given that limitation and that burden how is it that I would like to make myself manifest in the world? And what would I want to bring about?

You listen to Magatta. She's an amazingly inspiring speaker and why? Well she has a vision for Africa. She said, you know if she could see in 25 years that she had taken concrete steps to make the world's youngest continent wealthier and more productive that she could die thinking that life had been worthwhile. Well, maybe that's a goal. So how do you die thinking that your life is worthwhile? If you live a life that's worthwhile you strike the bargain with yourself and you put it into practice and we invited you here because that's what we hope you will do. And I think as well I spend a lot of time thinking about tyranny and thinking about slavery and trying to understand how we fall prey to tyranny. We fall prey to tyrants when we do not act out the necessities of our own vision. They can offer us the blandishments that tyrants offer and we'll take them because we don't have anything of our own.

So you can have something of your own but you have to decide what it is. You have to discover what it is. You have to enter into a conversation with yourself and see if you can determine clear-headedly what your preconditions are to thrive in the world. And what we would like you to do as attendees here and to take forward as you move back out into the world is the idea that you should think about what it is that is necessary for you to do as someone that you're taking care of, as someone with intrinsic value. And to think as well what does that mean about what you have to offer the world? And we're hoping that you're here you're going to listen to a variety of people who are inspiring, a number of people who've done remarkable things with their lives as models for the fact that you can do and not only can but have a moral obligation to do remarkable things with this miracle of existence that has been granted to you with all its difficulties.

And so you walk away from this conference thinking that the burden is on you, but so is the adventure and the responsibility, all the opportunity and possibility that goes along with that. And we're hoping that you take that dead seriously as your contribution to tilting the world away from hell and more closely approximating heaven. And that is your ethical responsibility as someone made in the image of God.

Thank you.

Couldn't make up my mind as to which suit to wear today, so I though 'Sod it, I'll wear 'em both'.

We love you Jordan!!! Thank you for all the live and care you bless us with!!! May god
Give you the strength to deliver your messages for as long
As possible

Jordan Peterson needs our support and I give him 100 percent of mine. His vision for how society should be run is smart and right. Klaus Schwab has no clue what he's doing and globalists need to learn that we don't support them.

I have so much respect for JP. I listen to his Maps Of Meanings lectures every morning on my way to work. Life changing stuff!!
Im 33, but his material has already pushed me to go back to school. He changed my perspective on children and raising them, and he has completely changed my perspective of religion.
If you WANT to be better, JP wants to HELP you be better.

My worth is not defined by what I have accomplished in my life. My worth is what God has accomplished in my life.

That would be Matthew 5:15-17.

Thanks for all you do, Dr Jordan Peterson. Your two 12 Rules For Life books have had such a positive effect on me, having read each of them twice in quick succession in the early summer. I feel so much better than I did in 2019, when I had a serious nervous breakdown and had to be sectioned, it took several years to get over it. I'm finally trying to do more with my limited talents (jazz piano playing, composing music, doing artwork and designs, some voluntary work) and feel much better as a result. Only a couple years younger than Dr Peterson himself, I'm living proof that his wise words are not just beneficial for the younger generations. So thanks for everything Dr Peterson from this rather eccentric woman of a certain age. Hoping that the ARC project goes well too. Dr Peterson is a gift to humanity, a gift that just keeps giving. My two siblings both enjoy listening to his You Tube podcasts, the interviews in particular. Thanks to my recommendation, a friend at the piano meet-up group I attend is now listening to Dr Peterson's podcasts and is also going to buy the two 12 Rules For Life books soon too. So it is fair to say that Dr Peterson is having a beneficial effect on millions of people. Long may Dr Peterson be a part of our lives, he's a legend in his own lifetime.

I'm a 61yo male who sits in the obscure Jones Generation (Between Boomers and Gen X). As a empathic creative, I resided on the left side of the spectrum (Bitterness/Resentment) until I discovered JBP during the pandemic lockdowns. This message maybe directed to Gen Z, but it's applicable to all of us and this message is even more important than ever! My deepest gratitude to Dr Peterson for literally saving my life

Brilliant 💫

Beautifully said

If I knew I was going in the very short term I would think…I had a wonderful wife, raised four outstanding children, not because of what they achieved but because of the good people they are and their beautiful children…and that our Catholic faith contributed in great part to all of this.

I hear all these people flapping their gums wearing their high price suits, shoes, dresses etc. I don't hear or see them DOING anything. When are you going to put your money where your mouth is? When are you actually going to create the parallel system you drone on about? When are you all going to stop the facade that you care and start showing the world that you care. Every day you sit there espousing your feel good rhetoric, more people lose their homes, jobs and lives. Don't you think it's time to stop talking about the problem and ACTUALLY start fixing it? That is what you claimed your objective/agenda was didn't you? Or are you all just the other side of the same coin?

Sorry, maybe I'm thick, this man talks absolute nonsense has he just said how to put food on the table.

In general you are saying. As a humanist I don’t know if a higher intelligence exists or not, but I shall live my life in such a fashion that if or when humans are discovered, I will not be embarrassed by my lifestyle.

Most of the problematic gen z don’t even recognise the gen z issues. Hence the issues.

'Hope is movement towards a valuable goal, you need a goal that unites you internally, you have less anxiety when you have a vision, there is a cost of suffering in your life, if that suffering is without purpose, then you will be bitter, what do I want to not be bitter, or to be thrilled, being thrilled is good, imagine the relationship that you want, admit what you don't have now, be a person that you would admire, technically now you are motivated, to fulfill and act that existence is good, if you ask you will receive is good advice, if you make the sacrifice then you will attain, but you may have to modify your vision...

[Wow impressive. It's good to have good goals?]

Shill, fake, controlled, cheap, Benjamin Shapiro is his boss...

"give them hell, Netanyahu"

You listen to such stuff being in a country like the Democratic Republic of Congo, and look around, and lift your eyes up to the heavens and want to curse everything you can and can't see or touch. Fuck!!... But there must be hope somewhere... Perhaps somewhere beyond this endlessly black horizon of corpses and tears and warm blood and wailing... Maybe...

Horrible suit.😢

wardrobe choice confirms peterson as schizophrenic

If you life has been devoted
To earn MONEY
( FIAT CURRENCY )

Then yes your life was
WORTHLESS

Finally somebody bringing the hope.

dont be fooled kids everything you do in life will have an equal and opposite reaction ,best to do less ,say less and utopia will take care of itself.
there is a reason why people like Peterson are on medication😉you have nothing to prove- just be

Damn I hope in my travels I find people with the same vision for the future, but even if I don't I shall spread the word like it's gospel!

How can someone be on straight fire for 15 minutes straight delivering nothing but a truthful non-optimistic vision? The leader we don't deserve.

I wish Deming could be alive to talk about Jordan Peterson.

Sou brasileira e gostaria de participar.

That's inspiring

I read JP’s books several years ago. I’m 27 now and taking his advice, combined with my own introspection and thinking, has fundamentally altered the way I see the world and my life. I can’t say enough good things. I recently started sharing some of the things that I’ve learned on my channel, my hope being that I can share what I have learned to help others avoid mistakes I’ve made. If you have ever thought of sharing your stories, I encourage you to do it too! We can all learn from each other.

I don't see it with President Biden or Former President Trump, but wouldn't it be outstanding if we could elect a president that would stand before us and deliver speeches, news, and concerns for America with the same passion, wisdom and control of the English language as Jordan Peterson.

Be a positive center for making things better. Don't get yoked by woked. Woked tend to work collectively to make things worse.

By knowing I did it alone.

This one is simple and I suspect Jordan secretly agrees with it. Dedicate your life to God Almighty live by his standards, serving Him gives meaning and purpose to your life and provides a hope and promise for the future.

Oh, JORDAN! I almost "perished myself" it got so bad. You have helped me so much, and you are a Godsend to me and so many people. I'm eternally grateful.
I want to say to you, "BELIEVE!" But first off, I don't know if I could make a more compelling argument for why you should than you have already heard, and secondly, I'm not sure that you don't already "believe." I hope you do, and suspect you do, even if you are not sure. We all fall short of the Kingdom of Heaven in one way or another. And besides, it's none of my business anyway, ay?

Nothing new here, he's said it before. The inability to walk past the lack of apparent meaning to see what might be beyond it is the hero's journey.

What a bunch of gobbledeegook. Dresses like the Joker and sounds like a grifter.

Thank you JP!!

I wish he were my therapist. Although, I think the suits and the $20,000 watch I might find distracting 😆

Nice to see the ARC subscribers growing rapidly now. 100k nice!

ARC, I need encouragement, I need my reward. Where is my little heart emoticon for my opinions?
Peterson start with this idea and come back often to it: young men... I am not so young, but what a heck... so young men need encouragement these days, 😢, just a little encouregement... From the generation that screw up this world, of course. 😂 Pretty soon a lieutenant will have to encourage them, in the real trenches.

The sheer bombastic narcism of this fool beggars belief ARC how dare they presume to know how people should live there lives the sheer contempt that shows again beggars belief.

If we decided that a single solitary speck has no significance then each speck in the collective whole would be reduced to nothing and so will the whole.