This Simple Skill Will Make You More Powerful In Life | Jordan Peterson

it's very helpful for people to hear that they should make themselves competent and dangerous and take their proper place in the world competent and dangerous why dangerous because it's the alternative to being weak and weak is not good the people who shoot up the high schools they're weak they're weak how is it good to be dangerous because it makes you formidable and life is a very difficult process you're not prepared for it unless unless you have the capacity to be dangerous that doesn't mean that you should be cruel it doesn't mean any of that there's

a statement in the New Testament the meek shall inherit the Earth but the meek isn't well translated it means something more like those who those who have swords and know how to use them but keep them sheathed will inherit the world that's a way better way of thinking about it you have to be powerful and formidable and then peaceful in that order and that's not the same as being naive and weak and harmless which is what young men are being encouraged to be it's like that's a very bad idea it's a very bad idea because

naive weak and harmless means that you can't withstand the tragedies of life you can't bear any responsibility you'll end up bitter and when you get bitter then you get dangerous but one thing I'm not getting there's a big difference between letting people do something for themselves and saying men should be dangerous by dangerous that implies I should be ready to threaten someone to hurt somebody no you should be capable of it but that doesn't mean you should use it there's nothing to you otherwise like if you're not a formidable Force there's not there's no morality

in your self-control if you're incapable of violence not being violent isn't a virtue people who teach martial arts know this full well right if you learn a martial art you learn to be dangerous but simultaneously you learn to control it both of those come together and the combination of that capacity for danger and the capacity for control is what brings about the virtue otherwise you confuse weakness with with moral virtue I'm harmless therefore I'm good it's like no that isn't how it works that isn't how it works at all if you're harmless you're just weak

and if you're weak you're not going to be good you can't be because it takes strength to be good it's very difficult to be good you said that a harmless man is not a good man A Good Man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control how should people become more dangerous oh becoming more articulate is definitely I would say that's the primary array of weapons so mean physical prowess is something and it's not nothing that physical confidence that comes along with that as well but the same thing replicated at the level

of the ability to communicate and to think that's way broader field of of battle and opportunity so this is one thing that isn't taught well especially to boys it's more important to teach it to boys I would say because they're more skeptical of such the educational Enterprise in general generally speaking partly because they're less obedient partly because they're less agreeable that's particularly true for disagreeable boys and agreeable boys get higher grades independent of their IQ and their and their academic achievement because they're easier to deal with so what do you tell disagreeable boys there's nothing

that makes you more formidable than verbal competence than being able to articulate be able to think to Marshal your arguments right it's a battlefield metaphor get everything in order it all your information straight so to Marshal your forces so I mean that's part of the reason that rap artists are so popular especially among disaffected young men black and white alike because they're unbelievably articulate they have this incredible verbal prowess it's unbelievably attractive you know and it's associated with genuine artistic and Redemptive activity often focusing on something that's approximately the voice of the underclass let's say

but a powerful voice right and it's interesting to see how many young white guys identify with that was it aldously that wrote dolls of perception yeah yeah so this is kind of an equivalent of that right that you have a experience which many people struggle to articulate you take the best of us the one that has the most precise most articulate erudite language you drop them in and you say Okay show us what you've learned this is the equivalent but for just a different Community a different sort of life that maybe you don't have the

ability to describe what it feels like to live on a council estate in Manchester or in you know the one of the neighborhoods of Brooklyn or whatever it might be and then this person can and it feels like it's your voice yeah well you still if you're a young man you still feel alienated from your place as rightful error of the proper Kingdom I mean that's an existential truism for everyone for every particularly for every young man because he is an outsider in many ways he's young and juvenile and not very highly valued and and

then is is in some sense hurt by the inadequacies of the current King the current culture and is easily turned against it because of that and that's the machinations of the evil Uncle that's the King Arthur's story that's the story of Horus Horus and Osiris it's an Ancient Ancient story it's the story of Sauron and it's there all the time and you see in that in rap music in hip-hop the all of that alienation being given an articulated voice in in an artistic sense and that's a good example of the power of verbal facility and

that's the route to let's say marketing education to young man it's like you want to take your rightful place in the Kingdom it's like get your tongue straight man get it on under control in the highest possible sense we went to a comedy club Tammy and ion in New York the comedy seller it's a great comedy club and the last Comic was an English guy and uh he was not particularly physically pre-possessing and he he made a lot of jokes about that and it was quite funny and then he divided the audience into five sections

and he asked each section to toss up a topic just to Yellow the topic and they were like random topics like the Kennedy assassination and electric lighting before 1890 those were two of the topics and the other three were just as diverse and then he put on some beats and he did about an eight minute wrap with every verse rhymed and he tied the whole thing together at the end and ended at the end of the music all spontaneously it was unbelievable and that's logos man that's the Redemptive power of the logos right there the

magic word the sacred word it's just manifesting itself on stage this is something very impressive something about that that does feel dangerous as well and not in a I need to be concerned and they should be contaminated and walled off but in a way that you think that person has so much competence that it it's flowing out of them and you almost feel competent by being around them so but you certainly feel confident by appreciating it right because it speaks to the part of you that is capable of appreciating such things you think wow that's

really something that's really that's an amazing display that's an amazing thing to see amazing right a very interesting word amazing and you're you're trapped and you're trapped by the Charisma of that and that Charisma that's not nothing that's that's a signal of something Redemptive occurring that that accounts for virtually all of the attraction of hip-hop and raps the articulate articulated voice of the struggling but worthy underclass I suppose that's a good way of putting it but those who are alienated from their rightful place and so that verbal prowess is one of the ways they struggle

up towards the light you know and and that that's a good example of that uh of having that danger under control because it's a dark genre in many ways right it's it's a there's a there's a there's a real undercurrent an air of violence that surrounds that and its culture like the punk movement in the in in the UK back in the late 70s same same sort of thing but that that capacity to express that in a poetic manner in a compelling manner Joni rotten was great at that he's so intense he has a song

called rise which I used to show my my clients all the time when I was starting uh assertiveness training with them I'd put on Johnny rotten's rise and the line in there is anger is an energy and he's got these unbelievably intense eyes anger is an energy you bet and John Lyden man he could Channel out like almost no one I've ever seen he'd get that anger built up inside him and then it was completely under control and he expressed it in his music and he's absolutely captivating unbelievably charismatic and I really liked his music

that raw anger and the music that but it was it was in the bloody music wasn't it wasn't some random Riot you know he transmuted that into something you know you can argue about the poetic merits of um of punk rock although I don't think you should I mean uh I Did It My Way Sid vicious's version of it did it my way my God that's a work of Genius that it's so it's so brilliantly satirical