Jordan Peterson: Advice for Hyper-Intellectual People

you know not everybody is equipped to or interested in engaging in highlevel discussion of abstract and creative ideas you know you hear this idea that everyone's creative that's a lie it's as straightforward as that true creativity is very very rare and so and if you happen to be a creative person or if you happen to be someone who's profoundly interested in ideas you are in a pronounced minority just as you are if you happen to be extremely extroverted or extremely agreeable or extremely conscious ious these are minority issues and what you do is you find

like-minded people who are capable of engaging that you know heavyweight we heavyweight weightlifters compete with heavyweight weightlifters for a reason and everyone thinks that's fine and the same thing applies to intellectual and creative Endeavors so what you do is you try to find a community where that's that's the nature of the community and you likely have to find a relationship like that as well you know I don't think so I think what contributes to the siloing is the arrogance that goes along with it because if you're you can be interested in ideas and you can

be creative well that's the arrogance of the intellect right that's the thing the Catholic church had warned about for centuries is the arrogance of the intellect so because if you're if you're wise as well as smart and there is no relationship between being smart and being wise they are not the same thing there's no quick pathway from smart to wise and many of the people who I've known who were very wise were well some of them were intellectually impaired and were still wise you know so it's the arrogance that brings up the block and I

see this for example happening in the United States in particular because the last time I went down there for example I was I had friends down there and and and some of those friends are very very smart people and some of them were talking about the Trump voters and they were talking about the Trump voters with contempt and I thought you better watch that because that's 50% of the damn population and it might be convenient to think that they're stupid and beneath you but it's not conducive to a civil State and there's no evidence that

it's true because there isn't a straight line between intelligent and wise and so I think that if your if your character is developed and you're intelligent you can have your siloed creative Community but you develop enough wisdom so that you can see all the things that people can do that are of high ethical utility that are outside the intellectual domain you know and I think that's why in the New Testament I think that's why Christ is a carpenter right because well first of all Carpenter is one of those jobs that when you're dishonest it manifests

itself immediately because what you build falls down and so if you're an honest Carpenter you build a good house so so that there's a nice metaphor there but it's also it's also um a warning in some sense against the the equation of intellectual Brilliance with moral superiority and so if the intellects would drop their moral superiority and fat chance there is of that then the Divide between the working class say and the elite would would resolve and there's every reason to have respect for decent workingclass people I mean it's on their labor as the left

wiers at least hypothetically agree that the entire edifice of the culture is is resting so you can have your cake and eat it too but you have to not assume that your Niche makes you Superior and it's very difficult for smart people especially smart there's this scene in nich's thus spake zarathustra where zarathustra the Prophet comes down from the mountain and he comes into a Public Square and there's this crowd around this little who's only about this High who has a gigantic ear and everyone is marveling at him well that's what the modern intellect is

like it's a with a giant well mouth generally not an ear and the the the being is underdeveloped but the intellect is hyperactivated and and it makes the person extraordinarily unbalanced and it's part of because they a they can't compete outside the intellectual realm and that makes them very bitter because they tend to think well God I'm so smart everything should just come to me it's like sorry that's not how the world works and and it it also that that and that that that attitude is immediately evident to people that they're talking to when they

talk in the manner that they talk if they are arrogant intellectuals of that sort you see that in The Simpsons did a good job of that with Comic Book Guy right I mean he completely useless in every possible Dimension with an IQ of about 160 and it's very annoying to people who have an IQ of 160 that they can also be completely useless but it happens a lot so yeah [Applause]