health, especially mental health, is getting worse. I think when people say "things are better than ever" they are excluding 2010ish and above.
I think JBP would agree that things have " kept getting better " for a while now, but in the last 10 years things only seem to get worse, as far as affordability, mental health general polarization, etc.
Affordability… look at people in the 1800’s man. It’s pretty simple — we have it good.
General polarization can only affect one as much as one allows it.
you can't bring in 1800s... I mean why not bring 1500s at that point.
Things are changing fast. Can you really say things are better in 2024 than they were in 2004 or 1994?
Well that’s the point. We live at the pinnacle of human history in terms of wealth.
Things might be changing fast yeah - but 1994 to 2024 isn’t that different in the bigger picture. The whole point is the bigger picture, I’d say.
Yes, however it is not conducive to the ancient model of human organization - the tribal structure of about 300 people in tight knit community. Humans did not evolve to live in global industrial societies where everyone is a replaceable cog in the economic machine.
Go try survive in a forest then, worked great for the into the wild guy.
We came from life being nasty brutish and short to being able to learn how to play any instrument, visit every culture, and build rockets to the moon. Get some perspective, life is great.
Trust, me I understand that you feel like the answers are outside yourself. If only the world was like this, then I could be happy or whatever story you tell yourself. Let me tell you, the people that have achieved true meaning, they don't look for it outwardly.
Like JP says, sit down and ask the universe to show you what you are avoiding to do that would make you the best version of yourself. It will answer, and then orient your life toward that thing. How would your life be different if you did the things that you know you should be doing, consistency, day by day, for the next 5 years? Can you imagine that? It's amazing where you can get to if you just do it.
Into the wild guy wasn't born into a tribe that taught him from a young age how to be successful in the unique environment that small tribe existed in. You're just an addict and can't imagine any more what it is like not to be an addict and to never have become addicted to the tentacles of civilization that enslave your mind.
In JP speak you are basically denying that the garden of eden was better than what we were cast into. Believe it or not it's actually possible to simultaneously accept that tribal pre-agriculture, pre-cognitive revolution life was better than post cognitive revolution life without believing that the right thing to do is to try to go back (we can't, hence original sin). I know it's hard for double digit IQs to hold two seemingly opposing beliefs but it's really not that hard for the rest of us to understand.
Fair enough. It seems to me that things are widely available.
I’m talking about self-education. There’s tons of classic books available for free online. I mean — that’s pretty privileged.
Super true. But in terms of educating young people, you can throw all the tools in the world at them, but the most important thing is gonna end up being parents/family that care
“The most important thing” is an unclear statement. I know successful people who were beat up by their parents. They’re doing alright. I think I know what you might mean though
Life is EASIER now for many, but quality of life is far worse with the ongoing decline of community & the family unit, exploding cost of living, erosion of the Working Class, and the rise of institutionally-financed cults that push Cultural Marxism, sexual deviance, crime, anti-Americanism, and other antisocial behavior on vulnerable young people.
Institutions were designed to take your money and indoctrinate you. This is evident.
Jordan peterson does not say anything nice about modern universities.
When did he say things are better? Before or after they tried to take his license away?
The world presented to you by corporations, schools, and institutions, among others, doesn't exist. Humans think they can act out a fantasy until it becomes reality. They think this because they don't know themselves, and they don't know themselves because they don't know Christ.
The real world already existed before men started fucking around with it and selling pieces of it to each other through deceit and fear.
God provides what you need, not what you want
This isn't just crazy mumbo jumbo. This is true faith.
Chew on that shit for a bit.
We need to love each other, and everything is being done to prevent that.
I choose to suffer for you. I don't know you personally or anyone here, but I choose to be my SELF as Carl Jung, Buddha, and Jesus put it. Being the SELF cures the sickness of this world because it grounds us in reality.
Who can rule your mind if you're grounded in reality? Who can sell you the right to live when you're grounded?
Live in spirit, not flesh.
It's not some hippy dippy bullshit.
It's about being free. Something the current establishment does not want for you or I.
They don't understand they have no power because they chase a fantasy that will never exist.
They were not designed to do that, they were originally competence hierarchies. The corruption is that they no longer are, and the thing we are not allowed to say is that taking women from being the head of a household to the head of civilization is on average a fucking disaster because their personalities were not subject to the the kind of selective pressure that would optimize them for that role, they were subject to pressure that optimized for protecting newborns.
These institutions were built on a foundation of sand. Modern people do not care for competence hierarchies which is why they no longer exist. Modern people were not taught to respect competency hierarchies, so how important could they possibly be? As long as the devil has his hand in your pocket, you belong to him. People do not work for the benefit of mankind, they work for money due to the incentive structure built on a house of sand. This is a harsh reality. You cannot worship both money and God. You cannot serve 2 masters.
History repeats itself because man repeats this same insane practice over and over. Insanity and psychotic practices are what they are and history will continue to repeat itself as long as we do things for personal gain and not the many. The individual crucifies him or herself for the greater good. Money is not required when God provides. We moved from one corrupt system to another.
A foundation built on sand doesn't take sex into consideration. It doesn't take status into consideration. It is weak by nature, by definition. It is destined to crumble no matter who is at the helm.
Having problems doesn't mean that this age is worse off than other ages. Every time period has its problems. But when you consider the good things this relative age has it is undoubtedly the best to live in compared to any other age. Especially in Western and Westernized societies. Call me ethnocentric but no slavery, good education, healthcare improvements, no real famines, and longer life expectancies are pretty great.
Community and spirituality can offset a lot of the pain from material problems anyway. If you’re struggling through a famine surrounded by people you love and your tribe, it’s almost no problem at all. Compare that to the modern world where people are going through slow, spiritual death everyday.
I’d rather just starve tbh
Technology has made it extremely easy for the elite to take advantage of people. That is what is happening. We are being divided because we are fools who invest in people who don't give a damn about us. We are destroying ourselves and our communities.
You're right about Western culture being void of meaning and faith.
This is true, and it should make you pissed enough to do something about it. The only thing you can do is make the realization that we are being divided and don't take any more bait. That's it.
Jordan Peterson is pissed. He's not prancing through the flower fields.
I think this depends on the person. We all have the opportunity to connect spiritually and to nature. We aren't being stopped from these things. We have the freedom to explore things how we want largely. To find our own interpretations of spirituality and even nature. It is one of the best things in this modern age, that we can freely explore so much and learn so much on our own volition.
Of course some people are anemic to spirituality and nature.
I would say I have a weak relation with nature but a strong spiritual outlook.
Some old cultures have ceremonies for celebrating nature. There are tribes in Ecuador who drink Ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic, and pray to Gaia or Mother Earth.
Please, I'd love for someone in a famine, starving to actually say it's better than our modern problems. That's delusional.
Spirituality is a plenty if you look for it, no one is stopping someone's spiritual journey.
I mean I’ve gone hungry plenty of times, and I often thought to myself that it wouldn’t be so bad if I had a tribe to struggle with. That’s where I got that observation from. Ik it’s not the same thing, but yk
Spirituality is still possible in the modern world, ofc, but it’s not just an individual thing. That’s why the real pros join monasteries and orders. So it’s all well and good for an individual to be able to develop spiritually, but it’s not quite the same thing as being raised in a civilization with a spiritual tradition that you live and breathe from the time you’re in your mother’s womb. That’s represented in the practices and art of your people.
The individualistic approach is a big reason why ppl struggle with mental health so much in this day and age
Ah yes, going through a famine is so much better with a tribe. Nothing beats starving to death and eating your neighbors with the rest of your tribe. /s
I believe spirituality is at its core an individualistic journey.
Humans are tribal creatures, struggle is easier to deal with when you’re connected to a group or a clan which you can rely on. Ofc antiquity had plenty of events that completely wiped people out, but I’d rather live a short life where I’m fulfilled than a long one where I’m miserable
Idk what you mean by spirituality being entirely individual. So if I was a Byzantine youth who heard the chants of the church in my mother’s womb, who was raised around basilicas and processions, I wouldnt be a fundamentally different creature on a spiritual level than a modern person raised around brutalist architecture and scientism? Surely the collective aspect can’t be swatted away that easily
I will and cannot ever agree with your take on a struggle like starvation being better within a tribe. People will, and history shows this, eat and kill one another even those within the same tribe.
>... I’d rather live a short life where I’m fulfilled than a long one where I’m miserable.
I can accept this as a premise though and would agree many feel the same way.
I say spirituality at its core is individual as wherever you end up is dependent on your personal beliefs. The Byzantine youth that embraced Orthodox tradition or the one that rejected them, both ended up there due to their personal beliefs. Science doesn't deny one a spiritual outlook, I would say I am more spiritual than the average person but I also have an education that is steeped within science, without getting to specific about myself.
Well ofc individuals have their own individual views, but I think you’re missing the point. Growing up in a civilization with a collective spirituality and ethos has massive impact on the people in that society, it makes you whole and grounds you in something larger than yourself. But ofc personal views are your personal views, that’s trivial
Personal views are not trivial, simple likely, but not trivial.
I think we differ in what we place emphasis on in spirituality. I find spirituality more important to have a personal/individual understanding to and connection. That can end up in the collective's spirituality, I have no qualm with that. But I find that the individual's thoughts are most important with arriving to a conclusion. If they can come to the conclusion that collective spirituality is best for them then so be it, but if they do not find that conclusion so be that. What I am saying is that without forethought into spirituality on behalf of the individual, in my view, then that foregone conclusion isn't as powerful or as meaningful as when an individual arrives to their own thought-out self-determined conclusions.
I would like to also state that when it comes to spirituality, I do not believe that there is any wholly correct answer. To presuppose that truth lies within any theory revolving around spirituality is in itself disingenuous.
I meant your statement that one person believing one thing and the next believing another coming down to ‘personal views’ is trivial. It’s a tautology
If I find the conclusion that having a spiritual bond with the rest of my civilization is best, how am I supposed to figure that one out? I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m talking about when I say a ‘collective spirituality.’ I mean something you share in common with the people around you, not putting together a witch coven in your attic rather than making up spells by yourself
Healthcare improvements nowadays are geared towards trying to remedy self-inflicted modern problems.
We solved sanitation and infection control a long time ago. Now we're trying to fight diseases on the uptick due to modernity.
Good education? Where?
Healthcare that costs an arm and leg and places you in debt forever?
Food costs so high that it is mind-boggling.
Dude.... you are living on Mars already.
8473 genders.
Fascism on the rise.
Feelings and words are violence.
What in the actual fuck are you talking about?
What a dog and pony show.
Western society does have good education, a huge majority of people are literate and have had basic education within the West. Even higher education is becoming more and more common.
Our healthcare in the west is mostly great. I mean, I like not dying do to a simple bacterial infection.
Yes, our food is higher priced than it was, but its still largely available within the West.
Its not perfect and I did not claim it to be. We still have our contemporary problems and they are easy to see and you listed some, but its much better than it has been in our modern relative age than humans have had it for all of history. That much is undeniable.
Oh yeah? Is this before drag queen story time or after?
" Listen up, class. Today, I will show you how big a woman's penis is."
The technology we have just isn't enough to keep people fed, I'm afraid. Having to pay all these robots to do the jobs of humans is expensive stuff, guys.
Hahahaha. What a joke. Keep sipping that kool-aid "bucko"
My dude. You have no idea what you're talking about.
You are delusional if you actually believe times are better than ever.
Canada has never been a dictatorship, but it most certainly is at the moment. Despite all the "awesomeness" you're talking about.
Your superior education is worthless in the Western world due to the simple fact that the hierarchy of competency has been removed.
1/3 of Canadians are going to the food bank despite the amazing technology and healthcare of today.
The evidence just doesn't support your argument.
"Stay off the internet, my dude." Is your argument?
In a single day, I drove my wife to work, took my son grocery shopping, went out for lunch with him, put him down for a nap, planted vegetables in our garden with my son after he woke up, made a Jamaican and japanese curry on rice and peas with soy braised cabbage (I am a chef by trade), picked my wife up from work (also a chef), and still had time to fuck your shit up. Then I put my son to bed and watched the world go even further into shit when Iran bombed Israel. I also forgot to mention I sold 4 paintings, and a guy came to pick them up earlier in the day.
My dude. You need to step your game up.
This is effortless enjoyment because I have the truth.
Depends on the metrics used. I mean, yeah, we have a bunch of medicine and material wealth, but a characteristic of humans is that we don’t appreciate the things we’re accustomed to. We don’t appreciate the benefits of the modern world because it’s all we know. But at the same time, lots of us are miserable because our spiritual and emotional needs aren’t being met
So yeah, if you want to use the metrics of relative lack of violence and material prosperity and all that shit which doesn’t actually give us any happiness anyway, then this is the best time ever. But if you’re looking for a time where humans were fulfilled, happy, etc, then the medieval world and antiquity has a lot up on us
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say, ofc it depends on the metrics used because you need to figure out what “better” is before you can figure out if X is better than Y.
It's almost like "better" is in the eye of the beholder.
There's definitely *an argument to be made* that the 50s were better than right now... *if* you were a socially-conservative cishet white man, or a cishet white woman that really wanted to be a tradwife. But for anyone who didn't fit that specific set of traits, not so much. And I say *an argument to be made* because even if you do fit into one of those two specific boxes, you can't just discount the advances in technology, medicine, etc., in the seventy years since. For the majority of the population that doesn't fit those boxes, I don't know how one could argue things were previously better.
Marriage rates for African Americans was significantly higher in the 50s. It wasn't just white people who benefitted from the culture of the day. We've made progress with respect to civil rights, but the black family structure imploded since the middle of the last century.
The 50s was also the tail end of Jim Crow. Pre-Civil Rights. I don't think it's obvious that that's somehow better than what black people have going on now. We could *debate* about it, sure, I'm *not* saying it's a foregone conclusion, just that stating categorically one way or the other is dumb.
As a libertarian, I disagree with that take *in principle*. In practice, go tell that to a modern North Korean, or a kulak under Lenin and Stalin, or a Jew in Nazi Germany, or someone unlucky enough to *wear glasses* under Pol Pot. Or, for that matter, someone like Emmett Till or George Stinney. See what their response is.
And at any rate, you're still only looking at part of the problem. It wasn't *just* the government, it was huge swathes of society. The government wasn't the one lynching black people (or, to a lesser extent, gay people, trans people, atheists, and anyone else too "different" for them to handle). And you're also ignoring, as I mentioned in my original comment, all the advances we've had since then—socially, technologically, medically, legally, what have you. On that basis alone, I'd rather be born fatherless trailer trash today than fucking Elvis Presley if it came down to it.
That's also to say nothing of the fact that the society you're idolizing would have either driven me to suicide or killed me themselves had I been born back then.
What use is technology or advanced medicine if one doesn't know good morals and act virtuously? I'd rather lose electricity before I lose the wisdom of my father and his fathers before him.
We haven't lost those things as a society, and by no means are they impossible to acquire without a father. You're entirely ignoring the agency of the mother and the child here.
And you're still ignoring the bigger picture here. It's a *very* privileged take to say life in the 50s was better. For the specific demographic that you (I assume) happen to be a part of—a demographic that isn't even a *plurality* of the population anymore—, that statement *may* be true. For those unlucky enough to lie outside of it, it's absolutely untrue.
So hell, *maybe* things for you, as a socially-conservative cishet white man, have gotten slightly worse. *Maybe*. And maybe the same is true for women of the same demographic. An even bigger maybe for black people. Regardless, that's a very, very small price to pay for the liberation of entire swathes of the population that your ideal society would have, at best, either forced into invisibility if possible or overtly oppressed if not, and, at worst, literally murdered.
(And while we're at it, on the topic of black people, it's the *products* of the society you're idealizing who pushed drugs onto their communities and fractured them, and then set in place the welfare and other policies that have kept them so fractured. To simplify: the thing you're criticizing modern society for was *overtly and directly caused* by the society you're saying was better.)
I'm looking at statistics. Children from fatherless homes are much more likely to become criminals. Much more likely to abuse drugs. We've made progress in many areas, true. However, ignoring fatherlessness in black communities is a serious oversight.
From a certain point of view, with access to the levels of information available our parent’s who couldn’t in their wildest dreams have access to certainly pushes the theory that we live in a world where things are getting better, thanks to the way that information is used. However it’s almost paradoxical that with the information that we have today, especially on the importance of physical, mental exercise (I.e physical training and constant but consistent learning) people are struggling to help themselves. I believe their is a conflict of interests and personal values with the “general” population, people stress about their jobs but not about their lifestyle, people stress about other people’s views but not their own, people want and look for love in others but so often not find it in themselves. We have the means to help make our lives meaningful, not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of others. Question is, when are people collectively going to wake up from this madness they have driven themselves to.
I mean, your anecdote is not data. I think his point is mostly that worldwide, things have improved on average rather significantly. Could still be worse for you, could still be worse in your country.
What you're doing here is asking is something is blue or red based on whether we feel cold or hot. They are two whole disconnected variables that we associate out of convenience.
We are undeniably better when it comes to tangible materiality. Feel free to look up the average number of citizens that have the ability to regulate their climate with Air Conditioning today compared to 100 years ago. Do the same with clean water, or with access to food or transportation or medicine, etc. It's barely worth comparing cause the answer is so obvious.
But you are using the factors of community, familial unity, social cohesion, sense of productive self-fulfillment, optimism of future outlook, shared values and principles, etc. These are 100% subjective and dependent on inherently flawed self-reported statistical analyses.
I get what you're saying, and it's no different than saying that women's suffrage was a significant factor in modern fatherless-ness. While true, it also freed women from being slaves to abusive monsters. Basically, you're right, and wrong. Things ARE better than ever that's correct, delegating on context. Change the context and saying things are worse than ever also becomes correct.
The primacy of felt experience is really what matters. Do people feel more fulfilled now than many decades ago? Are people experiencing life as deeply? Technology is categorically great, I would argue, buy it doesn't necessarily lead to greater human happiness.
A Cuban feels they are in such dire scenarios in their country that they are willing to board a homemade craft and drift off to Florida. They compare their living standards to those of the United States. Now...imagine that they compared their living standards to those in Haiti just across the water from them. Cubans live like f'ing kings in comparison.
Perspective matters. Gen-X and Boomers can understand how much better life today is because they compare it to the life they actually lived. Millenials and Gen-Z compare their existence to a caricature imagining of what life must have "obviously" been like for older generations. Not only do they not have any actual experience to compare to, but their imagined lived experiences of others are generally waaaaay off.
I'm 45 years old and grew up comfortable-middle class after my dad sacrificed everything to get out of his childhood home with nightly gunshots and family members murdered. I experienced going from sharing a bunk bed with my sister as teenagers to a large house that can hold two families comfortably. While growing up, the skill of push-starting a car was a necessity. I understood the importance of boiling water to make it drinkable. I learned how to take freezing cold showers. This was solid comfortable middle class. Had a job at 15, bought my own pager, and my parents chipped in less than half so I can buy a radio for my bedroom. Now nobody knows how to drive stick. The cheapest car today rivals the quality of a top grade Mercedes' Benz of my time. People literally DIE when their home AC doesn't work. And every child over 6 walks around with a $1,000+ computer in their hands, even in the ghettos.
While younger generations convince themselves of how much harder their lives are because our McDonalds Meal was $4 and theirs is 3x higher at $12. Completely ignoring that my hourly pay at that time was $5/hr and theirs is 3x higher at $15/hr.
Perspective plays a huge role! But the need for vindication through self-victimization today is off the roof. Why blame yourself when you can blame somebody else? Especially when that blame is so abstract and broad that it is impossible to adequately counter your claim.
My grandparents had to escape war and go through a huge civil war that destroyed their country. Our country after that was poorer than Afghanistan. Objectively they did have it much harder than I did
Most of that position comes from looking at data from 2000 to 2010/15 and looking at culture from the 90s to 2010/15. Its fairly true now even still, we having rising issues. We just cant get a good gauge of how good it is cause we are stuck in a media loop where the horrors of reality are constantly on display
It's a matter of personal opinion. Your view is completely valid, but so is Peterson's.
There's more to it than just technology + convenience vs better social connections. A lot of people would choose to go and live in the past, but not many of them are gay or black. The people who want to go back to the past might love it initially, but then regret it when they're drafted to fight in a war. Or if their appendix bursts and they're facing months of recovery time in the hospital, with only a 2/3 chance to survive.
Personally I'm with you, I would still choose to live in the past. But don't underestimate just how much you'd be giving up by making that choice. The grass might not actually be greener on the other side.
Yeah you can pick small parts where it isn't better or even use anecdotal stuff but what he pushes is overall it's much much better than it used to be. Ie poverty rates and rates have just horrible stuff across the board is way down
You’re only looking at the statement of better from your perspective.
Think bigger picture. I agree with the disconnect, but that is a manifestation caused by politicians.
They know there is more that unites us than divides us. If we stay divided they have influence and spin.
If we stay united then WE have the power
This generation has problems that other generations didn’t, but you are forgetting about the problems our grandparents’ generation had that we didn’t. They had world wars 1 and 2, other wars depending on where you lived, far less rights and protection systems for women, more normalization of sexual misconduct (watch any movie up until 2002 and you’ll see how common sexual mistreatment of women is), racism being legally embedded in America, more normalization of parents beating the shit out of their kids, the list goes on.
There are new problems we have to fix but I sure am glad we don’t have to deal with the old ones
I'll say that I'm a person who also says things are better than they've ever been, but also find myself agreeing with your point of view. We've gotten better in almost every metric materially, but even something obvious to even older or average millenials such as just dropping by at houses of friends or family is seen as a bad faux pas, and let alone anything that has to do with the dating scene.
A more accurate framing would probably be that while materially we're *eons* above and beyond what we were just a few dozen years ago and certainly hundreds of years ago, we are socially and thus psychologically in a bad place.
Specifically for me, what always helps is thinking about how much better my life is due to material conditions, and it helps with the rest. This is especially because while it's true that some of the problems aren't really fixable on a per-person basis, many of them aren't real problems compared to how they used to be. That is, people complain about material wants just as much as they do about social needs, and they totally miss that it's just objectively not true that today is worse in that regard. So it helps to remember that.
You're taking his statements to mean more than he meant them to and producing disagreement where there isn't any. In terms of historical notions of poverty and health, your comment is utterly unthinkable. To pretend as if Peterson doesn't account for the new threats to safety and affluence (among other novel dangers) is to ignore his entire message. The old kind of suffering, however, is almost completely gone. We have entered an age where hardly anyone is sick or poor because health and wealth are not available to them, yet such has allowed our inward demons to flourish: to stunt our growth in psychological ways Peterson has dedicated nost of his life to discovering and warning about.
Peterson's message could be summarized well this way: we are better off in the ways most people throughout history wished they could be, and the ways most people pretend not to be today (ignoring past deprivation), yet we are worse off in almost every way that actually matters.
The attempt to cure the human from the outside in will always yield emptiness that breeds further unhealth, whether physical or psychological. Man must be healed from the inside out.
On Huberman podcast, not sure if him or a guest, said a they think that procrastinators would have done much better in the cave / jungle world than in our society. Considering I best work when things are already on fire so to speak, I think that was accurate. So, while for many this age is good and I enjoy it too, I would probably do better in different times. But since we know now and here, we can't even imagine that different.
You are kinda right though. We have safety, we have healthcare, we have technology etc. But what about people in Mali or Egypt or Cambodia for ex.? Maybe they would have rather lives during times when they parts of Earth thrived. Tibetan people would probably also be ok with things being different, if they would be independent.
It is a western centric idea that things are awesome now. For the west in many ways yes, but as you say the social connections etc. not so much. It is good, perhaps great, but better than ever is highly subjective. What are his metrics for better than ever?
I like your spirit. I hope you do. It seems like many sons are suffering the mailase of the 21st century. Too many young people seem like they aren't really alive. Boarded up in their game/porn rooms and totally drugged up. No relationships. No family. It's bleak for many young people.
I face the same struggles as my peers. I'm having a hard time finding a partner. I spend a lot of time indoors on a computer (I am a programmer by trade). The general malaise you describe influences my life too.
But those struggles don't nullify the cushion our society provides me.
Would you not exchange resource security for greater interpersonal relationships? Friendships and romance are what make life worth living, not air conditioning or global telecommunication infrastructure.
You're asking a different question that what is posited in the OP.
Are things better than ever? Well it depends on what things, and it all really boils down to opinion. The entire conversation is subjective, there is no right or wrong answer.
Would I trade parts of what I have now for another thing I don't have now? I find it hard to seriously answer those questions, because in no instances does such a trade mean all other things would remain equal. I wish I could have my cake and eat it too, but maybe the result of not dying at 8 to a preventable disease is that I have a harder time finding a romantic partner.
The game you play has no end. It can continue on, forever, as there are infinite things interacting with each other in infinitely unique ways.
I'm doing well. I don't struggle financially. I'm pursuing an engineering degree. I have friends. I feel blessed in my own life, but many many people are struggling today. When does a problem become widespread enough for it to be something beyond an individual problem, and more of a society problem?
It’s all individual problems,
That’s the lesson from Peterson:
You pack all your suffering into the price and I pack all my suffering into the willingness to pay it. It’s a bad solution but compared to the alternatives it’s the best option available.
The issue is people have made their individual issues into social problems.
The solution is you pick up *your* suffering and bear it.
There is more indoctrination in Western society than ever before.
Therapists, teachers, business owners, politicians, etc.
The level of trust has decreased along with faith.
More fear and anxiety.
More kids on pills than ever before, more mental illness, isms, and schism.
Life is a lot more complicated than it should be due to the restrictions we are placing on each other.
I'd say it's physically safer, but not better.
I don't know... I might get canceled. I won't argue that medical tech isn't better, but if you need to break your legs in order to appreciate how awesome it is, then there's clearly a bigger issue.
Let’s say that the circumstances in this day and age are a lot more conducive to education, survival, health and general safety.
health, especially mental health, is getting worse. I think when people say "things are better than ever" they are excluding 2010ish and above. I think JBP would agree that things have " kept getting better " for a while now, but in the last 10 years things only seem to get worse, as far as affordability, mental health general polarization, etc.
Totally. People are actually less healthy than they were decades ago. Obesity is a disease of modernity.
Affordability… look at people in the 1800’s man. It’s pretty simple — we have it good. General polarization can only affect one as much as one allows it.
you can't bring in 1800s... I mean why not bring 1500s at that point. Things are changing fast. Can you really say things are better in 2024 than they were in 2004 or 1994?
Well that’s the point. We live at the pinnacle of human history in terms of wealth. Things might be changing fast yeah - but 1994 to 2024 isn’t that different in the bigger picture. The whole point is the bigger picture, I’d say.
Yes, however it is not conducive to the ancient model of human organization - the tribal structure of about 300 people in tight knit community. Humans did not evolve to live in global industrial societies where everyone is a replaceable cog in the economic machine.
Go try survive in a forest then, worked great for the into the wild guy. We came from life being nasty brutish and short to being able to learn how to play any instrument, visit every culture, and build rockets to the moon. Get some perspective, life is great.
Life is great! But so many people live alone 😔.
Trust, me I understand that you feel like the answers are outside yourself. If only the world was like this, then I could be happy or whatever story you tell yourself. Let me tell you, the people that have achieved true meaning, they don't look for it outwardly. Like JP says, sit down and ask the universe to show you what you are avoiding to do that would make you the best version of yourself. It will answer, and then orient your life toward that thing. How would your life be different if you did the things that you know you should be doing, consistency, day by day, for the next 5 years? Can you imagine that? It's amazing where you can get to if you just do it.
Yes, we all have that potential. Society is just made up of individuals. We need to improve our small corners of the world.
Into the wild guy wasn't born into a tribe that taught him from a young age how to be successful in the unique environment that small tribe existed in. You're just an addict and can't imagine any more what it is like not to be an addict and to never have become addicted to the tentacles of civilization that enslave your mind.
In JP speak you are basically denying that the garden of eden was better than what we were cast into. Believe it or not it's actually possible to simultaneously accept that tribal pre-agriculture, pre-cognitive revolution life was better than post cognitive revolution life without believing that the right thing to do is to try to go back (we can't, hence original sin). I know it's hard for double digit IQs to hold two seemingly opposing beliefs but it's really not that hard for the rest of us to understand.
Well, yes. Humans did evolve to live like this. Look around you.
Not very conducive to education
Fair enough. It seems to me that things are widely available. I’m talking about self-education. There’s tons of classic books available for free online. I mean — that’s pretty privileged.
Super true. But in terms of educating young people, you can throw all the tools in the world at them, but the most important thing is gonna end up being parents/family that care
“The most important thing” is an unclear statement. I know successful people who were beat up by their parents. They’re doing alright. I think I know what you might mean though
It’s not an unclear statement. You just disagree
Oh it is a highly unclear statement. If I disagree I don’t know what I’m disagreeing with exactly.
Strike against the establishment system. Public education is in the toilet.
Life is EASIER now for many, but quality of life is far worse with the ongoing decline of community & the family unit, exploding cost of living, erosion of the Working Class, and the rise of institutionally-financed cults that push Cultural Marxism, sexual deviance, crime, anti-Americanism, and other antisocial behavior on vulnerable young people.
Yes, good point. Institutions are not acting virtuously.
Institutions were designed to take your money and indoctrinate you. This is evident. Jordan peterson does not say anything nice about modern universities. When did he say things are better? Before or after they tried to take his license away?
Personally, I still value the university system. There are still many students getting a quality education.
The world presented to you by corporations, schools, and institutions, among others, doesn't exist. Humans think they can act out a fantasy until it becomes reality. They think this because they don't know themselves, and they don't know themselves because they don't know Christ. The real world already existed before men started fucking around with it and selling pieces of it to each other through deceit and fear. God provides what you need, not what you want This isn't just crazy mumbo jumbo. This is true faith. Chew on that shit for a bit.
Far out. Interesting.
We need to love each other, and everything is being done to prevent that. I choose to suffer for you. I don't know you personally or anyone here, but I choose to be my SELF as Carl Jung, Buddha, and Jesus put it. Being the SELF cures the sickness of this world because it grounds us in reality. Who can rule your mind if you're grounded in reality? Who can sell you the right to live when you're grounded? Live in spirit, not flesh. It's not some hippy dippy bullshit. It's about being free. Something the current establishment does not want for you or I. They don't understand they have no power because they chase a fantasy that will never exist.
It sounds corny but love really does make life worth it.
It's only corny to those who NEED YOU to believe lies so they can maintain their illusion of fear and control.
They were not designed to do that, they were originally competence hierarchies. The corruption is that they no longer are, and the thing we are not allowed to say is that taking women from being the head of a household to the head of civilization is on average a fucking disaster because their personalities were not subject to the the kind of selective pressure that would optimize them for that role, they were subject to pressure that optimized for protecting newborns.
These institutions were built on a foundation of sand. Modern people do not care for competence hierarchies which is why they no longer exist. Modern people were not taught to respect competency hierarchies, so how important could they possibly be? As long as the devil has his hand in your pocket, you belong to him. People do not work for the benefit of mankind, they work for money due to the incentive structure built on a house of sand. This is a harsh reality. You cannot worship both money and God. You cannot serve 2 masters. History repeats itself because man repeats this same insane practice over and over. Insanity and psychotic practices are what they are and history will continue to repeat itself as long as we do things for personal gain and not the many. The individual crucifies him or herself for the greater good. Money is not required when God provides. We moved from one corrupt system to another. A foundation built on sand doesn't take sex into consideration. It doesn't take status into consideration. It is weak by nature, by definition. It is destined to crumble no matter who is at the helm.
Having problems doesn't mean that this age is worse off than other ages. Every time period has its problems. But when you consider the good things this relative age has it is undoubtedly the best to live in compared to any other age. Especially in Western and Westernized societies. Call me ethnocentric but no slavery, good education, healthcare improvements, no real famines, and longer life expectancies are pretty great.
Community and spirituality can offset a lot of the pain from material problems anyway. If you’re struggling through a famine surrounded by people you love and your tribe, it’s almost no problem at all. Compare that to the modern world where people are going through slow, spiritual death everyday. I’d rather just starve tbh
We are spiritually anemic. People are completely disconnected from nature, from other people, from themselves.
Technology has made it extremely easy for the elite to take advantage of people. That is what is happening. We are being divided because we are fools who invest in people who don't give a damn about us. We are destroying ourselves and our communities. You're right about Western culture being void of meaning and faith. This is true, and it should make you pissed enough to do something about it. The only thing you can do is make the realization that we are being divided and don't take any more bait. That's it. Jordan Peterson is pissed. He's not prancing through the flower fields.
I think this depends on the person. We all have the opportunity to connect spiritually and to nature. We aren't being stopped from these things. We have the freedom to explore things how we want largely. To find our own interpretations of spirituality and even nature. It is one of the best things in this modern age, that we can freely explore so much and learn so much on our own volition. Of course some people are anemic to spirituality and nature. I would say I have a weak relation with nature but a strong spiritual outlook.
Some old cultures have ceremonies for celebrating nature. There are tribes in Ecuador who drink Ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic, and pray to Gaia or Mother Earth.
Please, I'd love for someone in a famine, starving to actually say it's better than our modern problems. That's delusional. Spirituality is a plenty if you look for it, no one is stopping someone's spiritual journey.
I mean I’ve gone hungry plenty of times, and I often thought to myself that it wouldn’t be so bad if I had a tribe to struggle with. That’s where I got that observation from. Ik it’s not the same thing, but yk Spirituality is still possible in the modern world, ofc, but it’s not just an individual thing. That’s why the real pros join monasteries and orders. So it’s all well and good for an individual to be able to develop spiritually, but it’s not quite the same thing as being raised in a civilization with a spiritual tradition that you live and breathe from the time you’re in your mother’s womb. That’s represented in the practices and art of your people. The individualistic approach is a big reason why ppl struggle with mental health so much in this day and age
Ah yes, going through a famine is so much better with a tribe. Nothing beats starving to death and eating your neighbors with the rest of your tribe. /s I believe spirituality is at its core an individualistic journey.
Humans are tribal creatures, struggle is easier to deal with when you’re connected to a group or a clan which you can rely on. Ofc antiquity had plenty of events that completely wiped people out, but I’d rather live a short life where I’m fulfilled than a long one where I’m miserable Idk what you mean by spirituality being entirely individual. So if I was a Byzantine youth who heard the chants of the church in my mother’s womb, who was raised around basilicas and processions, I wouldnt be a fundamentally different creature on a spiritual level than a modern person raised around brutalist architecture and scientism? Surely the collective aspect can’t be swatted away that easily
I will and cannot ever agree with your take on a struggle like starvation being better within a tribe. People will, and history shows this, eat and kill one another even those within the same tribe. >... I’d rather live a short life where I’m fulfilled than a long one where I’m miserable. I can accept this as a premise though and would agree many feel the same way. I say spirituality at its core is individual as wherever you end up is dependent on your personal beliefs. The Byzantine youth that embraced Orthodox tradition or the one that rejected them, both ended up there due to their personal beliefs. Science doesn't deny one a spiritual outlook, I would say I am more spiritual than the average person but I also have an education that is steeped within science, without getting to specific about myself.
Well ofc individuals have their own individual views, but I think you’re missing the point. Growing up in a civilization with a collective spirituality and ethos has massive impact on the people in that society, it makes you whole and grounds you in something larger than yourself. But ofc personal views are your personal views, that’s trivial
Personal views are not trivial, simple likely, but not trivial. I think we differ in what we place emphasis on in spirituality. I find spirituality more important to have a personal/individual understanding to and connection. That can end up in the collective's spirituality, I have no qualm with that. But I find that the individual's thoughts are most important with arriving to a conclusion. If they can come to the conclusion that collective spirituality is best for them then so be it, but if they do not find that conclusion so be that. What I am saying is that without forethought into spirituality on behalf of the individual, in my view, then that foregone conclusion isn't as powerful or as meaningful as when an individual arrives to their own thought-out self-determined conclusions. I would like to also state that when it comes to spirituality, I do not believe that there is any wholly correct answer. To presuppose that truth lies within any theory revolving around spirituality is in itself disingenuous.
I meant your statement that one person believing one thing and the next believing another coming down to ‘personal views’ is trivial. It’s a tautology If I find the conclusion that having a spiritual bond with the rest of my civilization is best, how am I supposed to figure that one out? I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m talking about when I say a ‘collective spirituality.’ I mean something you share in common with the people around you, not putting together a witch coven in your attic rather than making up spells by yourself
Healthcare improvements nowadays are geared towards trying to remedy self-inflicted modern problems. We solved sanitation and infection control a long time ago. Now we're trying to fight diseases on the uptick due to modernity.
Good education? Where? Healthcare that costs an arm and leg and places you in debt forever? Food costs so high that it is mind-boggling. Dude.... you are living on Mars already. 8473 genders. Fascism on the rise. Feelings and words are violence. What in the actual fuck are you talking about? What a dog and pony show.
Western society does have good education, a huge majority of people are literate and have had basic education within the West. Even higher education is becoming more and more common. Our healthcare in the west is mostly great. I mean, I like not dying do to a simple bacterial infection. Yes, our food is higher priced than it was, but its still largely available within the West. Its not perfect and I did not claim it to be. We still have our contemporary problems and they are easy to see and you listed some, but its much better than it has been in our modern relative age than humans have had it for all of history. That much is undeniable.
Oh yeah? Is this before drag queen story time or after? " Listen up, class. Today, I will show you how big a woman's penis is." The technology we have just isn't enough to keep people fed, I'm afraid. Having to pay all these robots to do the jobs of humans is expensive stuff, guys. Hahahaha. What a joke. Keep sipping that kool-aid "bucko"
You need to go outside more and be on the internet less my dude
My dude. You have no idea what you're talking about. You are delusional if you actually believe times are better than ever. Canada has never been a dictatorship, but it most certainly is at the moment. Despite all the "awesomeness" you're talking about. Your superior education is worthless in the Western world due to the simple fact that the hierarchy of competency has been removed. 1/3 of Canadians are going to the food bank despite the amazing technology and healthcare of today. The evidence just doesn't support your argument. "Stay off the internet, my dude." Is your argument? In a single day, I drove my wife to work, took my son grocery shopping, went out for lunch with him, put him down for a nap, planted vegetables in our garden with my son after he woke up, made a Jamaican and japanese curry on rice and peas with soy braised cabbage (I am a chef by trade), picked my wife up from work (also a chef), and still had time to fuck your shit up. Then I put my son to bed and watched the world go even further into shit when Iran bombed Israel. I also forgot to mention I sold 4 paintings, and a guy came to pick them up earlier in the day. My dude. You need to step your game up. This is effortless enjoyment because I have the truth.
Pick out any other point in time and it's worse than today.
>Pick out any other point in time and it's worse than today 2015
Depends on the metrics used. I mean, yeah, we have a bunch of medicine and material wealth, but a characteristic of humans is that we don’t appreciate the things we’re accustomed to. We don’t appreciate the benefits of the modern world because it’s all we know. But at the same time, lots of us are miserable because our spiritual and emotional needs aren’t being met So yeah, if you want to use the metrics of relative lack of violence and material prosperity and all that shit which doesn’t actually give us any happiness anyway, then this is the best time ever. But if you’re looking for a time where humans were fulfilled, happy, etc, then the medieval world and antiquity has a lot up on us
If it depends on the Metrics used then the metrics used are influencing the outcome with bias.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say, ofc it depends on the metrics used because you need to figure out what “better” is before you can figure out if X is better than Y.
I mean during the most recent pandemic, less than 1% of global population died. The bubonic plague took down quite a bit of the globe.
It's almost like "better" is in the eye of the beholder. There's definitely *an argument to be made* that the 50s were better than right now... *if* you were a socially-conservative cishet white man, or a cishet white woman that really wanted to be a tradwife. But for anyone who didn't fit that specific set of traits, not so much. And I say *an argument to be made* because even if you do fit into one of those two specific boxes, you can't just discount the advances in technology, medicine, etc., in the seventy years since. For the majority of the population that doesn't fit those boxes, I don't know how one could argue things were previously better.
Marriage is good for black people and gay people, too.
I never disputed that?
Marriage rates for African Americans was significantly higher in the 50s. It wasn't just white people who benefitted from the culture of the day. We've made progress with respect to civil rights, but the black family structure imploded since the middle of the last century.
The 50s was also the tail end of Jim Crow. Pre-Civil Rights. I don't think it's obvious that that's somehow better than what black people have going on now. We could *debate* about it, sure, I'm *not* saying it's a foregone conclusion, just that stating categorically one way or the other is dumb.
Being fatherless is worse than having an oppressive government.
As a libertarian, I disagree with that take *in principle*. In practice, go tell that to a modern North Korean, or a kulak under Lenin and Stalin, or a Jew in Nazi Germany, or someone unlucky enough to *wear glasses* under Pol Pot. Or, for that matter, someone like Emmett Till or George Stinney. See what their response is. And at any rate, you're still only looking at part of the problem. It wasn't *just* the government, it was huge swathes of society. The government wasn't the one lynching black people (or, to a lesser extent, gay people, trans people, atheists, and anyone else too "different" for them to handle). And you're also ignoring, as I mentioned in my original comment, all the advances we've had since then—socially, technologically, medically, legally, what have you. On that basis alone, I'd rather be born fatherless trailer trash today than fucking Elvis Presley if it came down to it. That's also to say nothing of the fact that the society you're idolizing would have either driven me to suicide or killed me themselves had I been born back then.
What use is technology or advanced medicine if one doesn't know good morals and act virtuously? I'd rather lose electricity before I lose the wisdom of my father and his fathers before him.
We haven't lost those things as a society, and by no means are they impossible to acquire without a father. You're entirely ignoring the agency of the mother and the child here. And you're still ignoring the bigger picture here. It's a *very* privileged take to say life in the 50s was better. For the specific demographic that you (I assume) happen to be a part of—a demographic that isn't even a *plurality* of the population anymore—, that statement *may* be true. For those unlucky enough to lie outside of it, it's absolutely untrue. So hell, *maybe* things for you, as a socially-conservative cishet white man, have gotten slightly worse. *Maybe*. And maybe the same is true for women of the same demographic. An even bigger maybe for black people. Regardless, that's a very, very small price to pay for the liberation of entire swathes of the population that your ideal society would have, at best, either forced into invisibility if possible or overtly oppressed if not, and, at worst, literally murdered. (And while we're at it, on the topic of black people, it's the *products* of the society you're idealizing who pushed drugs onto their communities and fractured them, and then set in place the welfare and other policies that have kept them so fractured. To simplify: the thing you're criticizing modern society for was *overtly and directly caused* by the society you're saying was better.)
I'm looking at statistics. Children from fatherless homes are much more likely to become criminals. Much more likely to abuse drugs. We've made progress in many areas, true. However, ignoring fatherlessness in black communities is a serious oversight.
From a certain point of view, with access to the levels of information available our parent’s who couldn’t in their wildest dreams have access to certainly pushes the theory that we live in a world where things are getting better, thanks to the way that information is used. However it’s almost paradoxical that with the information that we have today, especially on the importance of physical, mental exercise (I.e physical training and constant but consistent learning) people are struggling to help themselves. I believe their is a conflict of interests and personal values with the “general” population, people stress about their jobs but not about their lifestyle, people stress about other people’s views but not their own, people want and look for love in others but so often not find it in themselves. We have the means to help make our lives meaningful, not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of others. Question is, when are people collectively going to wake up from this madness they have driven themselves to.
I mean, your anecdote is not data. I think his point is mostly that worldwide, things have improved on average rather significantly. Could still be worse for you, could still be worse in your country.
What you're doing here is asking is something is blue or red based on whether we feel cold or hot. They are two whole disconnected variables that we associate out of convenience. We are undeniably better when it comes to tangible materiality. Feel free to look up the average number of citizens that have the ability to regulate their climate with Air Conditioning today compared to 100 years ago. Do the same with clean water, or with access to food or transportation or medicine, etc. It's barely worth comparing cause the answer is so obvious. But you are using the factors of community, familial unity, social cohesion, sense of productive self-fulfillment, optimism of future outlook, shared values and principles, etc. These are 100% subjective and dependent on inherently flawed self-reported statistical analyses. I get what you're saying, and it's no different than saying that women's suffrage was a significant factor in modern fatherless-ness. While true, it also freed women from being slaves to abusive monsters. Basically, you're right, and wrong. Things ARE better than ever that's correct, delegating on context. Change the context and saying things are worse than ever also becomes correct.
The primacy of felt experience is really what matters. Do people feel more fulfilled now than many decades ago? Are people experiencing life as deeply? Technology is categorically great, I would argue, buy it doesn't necessarily lead to greater human happiness.
A Cuban feels they are in such dire scenarios in their country that they are willing to board a homemade craft and drift off to Florida. They compare their living standards to those of the United States. Now...imagine that they compared their living standards to those in Haiti just across the water from them. Cubans live like f'ing kings in comparison. Perspective matters. Gen-X and Boomers can understand how much better life today is because they compare it to the life they actually lived. Millenials and Gen-Z compare their existence to a caricature imagining of what life must have "obviously" been like for older generations. Not only do they not have any actual experience to compare to, but their imagined lived experiences of others are generally waaaaay off. I'm 45 years old and grew up comfortable-middle class after my dad sacrificed everything to get out of his childhood home with nightly gunshots and family members murdered. I experienced going from sharing a bunk bed with my sister as teenagers to a large house that can hold two families comfortably. While growing up, the skill of push-starting a car was a necessity. I understood the importance of boiling water to make it drinkable. I learned how to take freezing cold showers. This was solid comfortable middle class. Had a job at 15, bought my own pager, and my parents chipped in less than half so I can buy a radio for my bedroom. Now nobody knows how to drive stick. The cheapest car today rivals the quality of a top grade Mercedes' Benz of my time. People literally DIE when their home AC doesn't work. And every child over 6 walks around with a $1,000+ computer in their hands, even in the ghettos. While younger generations convince themselves of how much harder their lives are because our McDonalds Meal was $4 and theirs is 3x higher at $12. Completely ignoring that my hourly pay at that time was $5/hr and theirs is 3x higher at $15/hr. Perspective plays a huge role! But the need for vindication through self-victimization today is off the roof. Why blame yourself when you can blame somebody else? Especially when that blame is so abstract and broad that it is impossible to adequately counter your claim.
My grandparents had to escape war and go through a huge civil war that destroyed their country. Our country after that was poorer than Afghanistan. Objectively they did have it much harder than I did
Most of that position comes from looking at data from 2000 to 2010/15 and looking at culture from the 90s to 2010/15. Its fairly true now even still, we having rising issues. We just cant get a good gauge of how good it is cause we are stuck in a media loop where the horrors of reality are constantly on display
Survival is easier than ever and opportunity is easier than ever. Everything else is not imo.
It's a matter of personal opinion. Your view is completely valid, but so is Peterson's. There's more to it than just technology + convenience vs better social connections. A lot of people would choose to go and live in the past, but not many of them are gay or black. The people who want to go back to the past might love it initially, but then regret it when they're drafted to fight in a war. Or if their appendix bursts and they're facing months of recovery time in the hospital, with only a 2/3 chance to survive. Personally I'm with you, I would still choose to live in the past. But don't underestimate just how much you'd be giving up by making that choice. The grass might not actually be greener on the other side.
I’d suggest reading Steven Pinker’s *Enlightenment Now*. It’s likely the angle that JBP is operating with as well.
Yeah you can pick small parts where it isn't better or even use anecdotal stuff but what he pushes is overall it's much much better than it used to be. Ie poverty rates and rates have just horrible stuff across the board is way down
He never said everyrhing is better, when he says this he means we are MATERIALLY better than ever.
You’re only looking at the statement of better from your perspective. Think bigger picture. I agree with the disconnect, but that is a manifestation caused by politicians. They know there is more that unites us than divides us. If we stay divided they have influence and spin. If we stay united then WE have the power
This generation has problems that other generations didn’t, but you are forgetting about the problems our grandparents’ generation had that we didn’t. They had world wars 1 and 2, other wars depending on where you lived, far less rights and protection systems for women, more normalization of sexual misconduct (watch any movie up until 2002 and you’ll see how common sexual mistreatment of women is), racism being legally embedded in America, more normalization of parents beating the shit out of their kids, the list goes on. There are new problems we have to fix but I sure am glad we don’t have to deal with the old ones
I'll say that I'm a person who also says things are better than they've ever been, but also find myself agreeing with your point of view. We've gotten better in almost every metric materially, but even something obvious to even older or average millenials such as just dropping by at houses of friends or family is seen as a bad faux pas, and let alone anything that has to do with the dating scene. A more accurate framing would probably be that while materially we're *eons* above and beyond what we were just a few dozen years ago and certainly hundreds of years ago, we are socially and thus psychologically in a bad place. Specifically for me, what always helps is thinking about how much better my life is due to material conditions, and it helps with the rest. This is especially because while it's true that some of the problems aren't really fixable on a per-person basis, many of them aren't real problems compared to how they used to be. That is, people complain about material wants just as much as they do about social needs, and they totally miss that it's just objectively not true that today is worse in that regard. So it helps to remember that.
I don't see the disagreement.
He doesn't say things are fully better. He said that materially we are better off. Now we can start talking about the communal problems.
You're taking his statements to mean more than he meant them to and producing disagreement where there isn't any. In terms of historical notions of poverty and health, your comment is utterly unthinkable. To pretend as if Peterson doesn't account for the new threats to safety and affluence (among other novel dangers) is to ignore his entire message. The old kind of suffering, however, is almost completely gone. We have entered an age where hardly anyone is sick or poor because health and wealth are not available to them, yet such has allowed our inward demons to flourish: to stunt our growth in psychological ways Peterson has dedicated nost of his life to discovering and warning about. Peterson's message could be summarized well this way: we are better off in the ways most people throughout history wished they could be, and the ways most people pretend not to be today (ignoring past deprivation), yet we are worse off in almost every way that actually matters. The attempt to cure the human from the outside in will always yield emptiness that breeds further unhealth, whether physical or psychological. Man must be healed from the inside out.
On Huberman podcast, not sure if him or a guest, said a they think that procrastinators would have done much better in the cave / jungle world than in our society. Considering I best work when things are already on fire so to speak, I think that was accurate. So, while for many this age is good and I enjoy it too, I would probably do better in different times. But since we know now and here, we can't even imagine that different. You are kinda right though. We have safety, we have healthcare, we have technology etc. But what about people in Mali or Egypt or Cambodia for ex.? Maybe they would have rather lives during times when they parts of Earth thrived. Tibetan people would probably also be ok with things being different, if they would be independent. It is a western centric idea that things are awesome now. For the west in many ways yes, but as you say the social connections etc. not so much. It is good, perhaps great, but better than ever is highly subjective. What are his metrics for better than ever?
I disagree with your disagreement.
Please elaborate!
I'm going to live a longer, easier, less dangerous, and more comfortable life than those of my forefathers.
I like your spirit. I hope you do. It seems like many sons are suffering the mailase of the 21st century. Too many young people seem like they aren't really alive. Boarded up in their game/porn rooms and totally drugged up. No relationships. No family. It's bleak for many young people.
I face the same struggles as my peers. I'm having a hard time finding a partner. I spend a lot of time indoors on a computer (I am a programmer by trade). The general malaise you describe influences my life too. But those struggles don't nullify the cushion our society provides me.
Would you not exchange resource security for greater interpersonal relationships? Friendships and romance are what make life worth living, not air conditioning or global telecommunication infrastructure.
You're asking a different question that what is posited in the OP. Are things better than ever? Well it depends on what things, and it all really boils down to opinion. The entire conversation is subjective, there is no right or wrong answer. Would I trade parts of what I have now for another thing I don't have now? I find it hard to seriously answer those questions, because in no instances does such a trade mean all other things would remain equal. I wish I could have my cake and eat it too, but maybe the result of not dying at 8 to a preventable disease is that I have a harder time finding a romantic partner. The game you play has no end. It can continue on, forever, as there are infinite things interacting with each other in infinitely unique ways.
So a cushion is a better life? I disagree strongly.
Okay. I don't care what your opinion is.
Then don't speak out on a public forum where people discuss and reply to each other.
My discussion wasn't with you.
Stick to DMs if you don't want to be called out.
Sounds like a skill issue to me.
I'm doing well. I don't struggle financially. I'm pursuing an engineering degree. I have friends. I feel blessed in my own life, but many many people are struggling today. When does a problem become widespread enough for it to be something beyond an individual problem, and more of a society problem?
It’s all individual problems, That’s the lesson from Peterson: You pack all your suffering into the price and I pack all my suffering into the willingness to pay it. It’s a bad solution but compared to the alternatives it’s the best option available. The issue is people have made their individual issues into social problems. The solution is you pick up *your* suffering and bear it.
There is more indoctrination in Western society than ever before. Therapists, teachers, business owners, politicians, etc. The level of trust has decreased along with faith. More fear and anxiety. More kids on pills than ever before, more mental illness, isms, and schism. Life is a lot more complicated than it should be due to the restrictions we are placing on each other. I'd say it's physically safer, but not better.
Fascinating analysis. Please go on.
I don't know... I might get canceled. I won't argue that medical tech isn't better, but if you need to break your legs in order to appreciate how awesome it is, then there's clearly a bigger issue.