Discipline is the Precursor to Freedom | Jordan Peterson | Best Life Advice

“You have to narrow yourself first, and then you can broaden outward.“ Try Audible’s free 30-day trial and enjoy 2 free audiobooks here: If you like Jordan Peterson, check out his book “12 Rules for Life“: ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂ ➤➤Speaker: Jordan Peterson ➤➤Video Sources: Higher Ed & Our Cultural Inflection Point: JB Peterson/Stephen Blackwood Pexels Video Videvo ➤➤Music: Doug Maxwell - Breathing Planet ➤➤Editor: WordToTheWise ➤➤Editing Setup: ASUS ROG Strix GL702VM Laptop: Cooler Master NotePal X3 Cooling Pad: Sony MDRXB50AP Extra Bass Earbuds: Logitech M720 Triathalon Mouse: SteelSeries QcK Mouse Pad: Powerful Life Advice | Powerful Wisdom | Best Life Advice ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂ ➤➤Transcript: It’s not enough, simply, for the library to be there. There needs a certain mediation of the institution. So for example, we could have—there’s a piano in the other side of this room. You know, we could say, well, there’s a piano here. You’re free to play the piano. Ah, but I—I can’t play the piano. I don’t know the chords and the scales. I haven’t—and yet, if I—if I did all that then what I can make happen on the piano is infinitely richer than if i’ve never learned to play the piano. And I suppose—I suppose when we talk about rescuing the values of the treasure trove— That’s discipline as the precondition for freedom. Right? Which is—which is a—which is actually a Nietzschean idea, at least in part—I mean it’s older than that. It’s the apprenticeship idea. It’s that—it’s that before you can be a painter who can paint what’s beyond mere memory, you have to inculcate that discipline skill, and that a lot of that is painful repetition and hard grinding work. It’s the sacrifice of the present for the future. But once you manage that then things open up, and virtually everything you learn of value is like that. It’s very, very, very difficult to learn to write and there’s arbitrary—“arbitrary“ rules that you have to follow and bind yourself to, and while you’re learning those rules, the probability that you have any creative freedom to speak of or any facility with the rules is very low. You’re a rank beginner. And even to some degree whatever creativity you have is going to have to be stifled while you’re passing through that—that keyhole. But if you pass through it, then something massive opens up on the other side, and it is definitely the case that disciplinary institutions, universities, are exactly that—is they’re places of guidance and they’re places to encourage people to develop the discipline that’s necessary to see beyond the discipline. I mean, that’s why we have disciplines, right? I mean, the words aren’t there by accident. You have to narrow yourself first, and then you can broaden outward, and that’s part of the process of maturation, that—that part of the—that’s part of the sacrifice of childhood. Say, in childhood you’re nothing but potential. But it’s not realized and you don’t know how to realize it. And so then the question is, well, how do you get to a point where you realize the potential? And the answer is you sacrifice almost all of it to a single direction. This is Nietzsche’s commentary on the Catholic Church. He’s a great admirer of the Catholic Church, despite the fact that he was also a radical critic of Christianity. See, the thing about the Catholic Church is that it forced everything to be interpreted within a single explanatory framework, and that was a discipline. And once that discipline was established then the disciplined mind could explode in every direction, which is precisely what happened. And so—and that’s the thing about growing up is that when you’re a teenager and a young adult you have to sacrifice everything you could have been as a child to be the one thing that you’re aiming at. But then that opens up and—and the universities are part and parcel of that process. And you need the guidance because the library is too large to wander through it unaided. ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂ Fair Use Disclaimer: Our purpose is to produce quality, educational and motivational video content, and to share it with our viewers. This video has no negative impact on the original works. This video is used for educational purposes. This video is transformative in nature. This channel’s owner claims no copyright, and cannot be held accountable. If you are the legal content owner of any videos used here and would like them removed, please contact @. Any infringement was not done on purpose and will be rectified to the satisfaction of all parties.
Back to Top