Best Lessons Learned from Jordan B. Peterson | Afterskool

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Sacrifice: You get to pick your damn sacrifice. That's all. You don't get to not make one. You're sacrificial whether you want to be or not. This is the Peter Pan story, roughly speaking. Peter Pan is this magical boy. Pan means Pan is the god of everything, roughly speaking, right? And so, it's not an accident that he has the name Pan, and he's the boy that won't grow up, and he's magical. Well, that's because children are magical. They can be anything; they're nothing but potential. And Peter Pan doesn't want to give that up.

Why? Well, he's got some adults around him, but the main adult is Captain Hook. Well, who the hell wants to grow up to be Captain Hook? First of all, you've got a hook. Second, you're a tyrant. And third, you're chased by the dragon of chaos with a clock in its stomach, right? The crocodile, it's already got a piece of you. Well, that's what happens when you get older: time has already got a piece of you. Eventually, it's got a taste for you, and eventually, it's going to eat you. And so, Hook is so traumatized by that that he can't help but be a tyrant.

Then, Peter Pan looks at traumatized Hook and says, "Well, no, I'm not sacrificing my childhood for that." So, that's fine, except he ends up king of Lost Boys in Neverland. Well, Neverland doesn't exist, and who the hell wants to be king of the Lost Boys? He also sacrifices the possibility to have a real relationship with a woman because that's Wendy. Right? And she's kind of a conservative, middle-class, London-dwelling girl. She wants to grow up and have kids and have a life. She accepts her mortality; she accepts her maturity.

Peter Pan has to content himself with Tinkerbell. She doesn't even exist. She's like the fairy of porn. She doesn't exist; she's the substitute for the real thing. But the dichotomy that you're talking about is very tricky because there's a sacrificial element in maturation, right? You have to sacrifice the plural potentiality of childhood for the actuality of a frame.

The question is, well, why would you do that? Well, one reason is it happens to you whether you do it or not. You can either choose your damn limitation or you can let it take you unaware when you're 30 or, even worse, when you're 40. And then that is not a happy day.

You see, I see people like this, and I think it's more and more common in our culture because people can put off maturity without suffering an immediate penalty. But all that happens is the penalty accrues, and then when it finally hits, it just wallops you. Because when you're 25, you can be an idiot. It's no problem. Even when you're out in a job search, it's like, "Well, you don't have any experience, and you're kind of clueless." It's, "Yeah, yeah, you're young, you know, it's no problem. That's what young people are like," but they're full of potential.

Okay, well now you're the same person at 30. It's like people aren't so thrilled about you at that point. It's like, "What the hell have you been doing for the last 10 years?" "Well, I'm just as clueless as I was when I was 22." "Yeah, but you're not 22. You're an old infant!" Right? And that's an ugly thing: an old infant.

So, the part of the reason you choose your damn sacrifice—because the sacrifice is inevitable—but at least you get to choose it.

And then, there's something that's even more complex than that. In some sense, the problem with being a child is that all you are is potential, and it's really low resolution. You could be anything, but you're not anything. So, then you go and you adopt an apprenticeship, roughly speaking, and then you become at least—you become something. And when you're something, that makes the world open up to you again. You know, like if you're a really good plumber, then you end up being far more than a plumber, right? You end up being a good employer.

Not that plumbers—I'm not putting plumbers down. It's like more power to plumbers; they've saved more lives than doctors, so hygiene, right? So, you know, if you're a really good plumber, well then you have some employees, you run a business, you train some other people, you enlarge their lives, you're kind of a pillar of the community, you have your