September 16th 2024 | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
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Hello,

In this week’s edition, I discuss the depths of our social nature and why being embedded in social institutions helps alleviate pain. Then, I talk with Matt Walsh about his experience filming “Am I Racist?” and why concepts like white guilt have taken the place of religion for many on the secular Left. From the archives, I address what is required of a sincere apology. 

Advice

Become A Part Of A Social Context To Find Meaning

You can walk through someone’s life and find out if they are reasonably embedded in a hierarchy of social institutions. If they are not — no intimate partner, no family, no children, no friends, no job, no career, no educational pathway, no engagement in civic responsibility, no church attendance, no spiritual life, no routine — then they are not depressed; they just have a horrible life, multidimensionally. It is no wonder they would think they are depressed; there is nothing in their life that is working. But that is not exactly a diagnosis at the level of the individual; it is a diagnosis of the relationship between the individual and the structure containing social institutions. 

If you do not have an intimate partner, a family, any friends, a career or a job, any civic involvement or any involvement with religious institutions, and no creative striving, all you have left is pain. Though your mess of fragmented subpersonalities — anger, anxiety, impulsive enthusiasm, lust, and so on — can pull you different directions, you need to integrate them within yourself so that as an individual, you are integrated. But the nature of that integration is dependent on your integration within the broader social context.

We are deeply social creatures. We are unbelievably social. One of the corollaries of being miraculously social is that to be well-constituted, you have to be a harmonious player in a multidimensional symphony of social interaction. 

In a special episode of “Foundations of the West,” Jonathan Pageau joins Dr. Jordan B. Peterson for dinner in Bethlehem, a setting with special significance to the West’s present society. The conversation at the table addresses the competing worldviews that persist from a joined past to today and the realistic danger of a potential collapse. Pageau and Peterson touch on methods to cultivate and uphold society in the way it should be structured and how suffering and sacrifice can be understood alongside the reality of death — and meaningfulness of resurrection — with Christ at the center of Western civilization. Available exclusively on DailyWire+. 

Interpreting Guilt: How White Guilt Becomes A Replacement For Religion

It's necessary for human beings to discharge their moral duty; otherwise, they'll be overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy and self-deprecation. That's because we are communal and social creatures, and we have to live in relationship to other people. If we don't do that, we violate our deepest instincts or our most divine calling. For the typical person, you find that expiation of your self-centeredness in responsibility to your wife, like long-term committed responsibility, and to your kids, to your grandkids, and to that multi-generational endeavor. If we didn't have that propensity for guilt, we wouldn't be social the way that we are. And it can be exploited by the sadistic, narcissistic, histrionic psychopaths. 

Am I Racist? | Matt Walsh | EP 479

In this episode, I talk with author, documentarian, and podcaster Matt Walsh about his new film “Am I Racist?” in theaters. We discuss implicit bias, the disparity of demographics, how men and women both find meaning through responsibility (in different ways), and why concepts like white guilt have taken the place of religion for many on the secular Left.