Jordan B. Peterson: Življenje je trpljenje. Vsakdo to ve. (VIDEO)

Jordan B. Peterson je zame človek z velikim, kaj velikim, ogromnim vplivom na ljudi. In tale video nagovor je vpliven. Zame. Zato delim – video nagovor, angleški prepis in odličen prevod prijatelja. 

Sem gledal in si začel nekaj misli zapisovati. Potem sem zapisal (praktično) vse. In še dal prijatelju, ki je dopolnil angleški prepis in v celoti prevedel. Hvala Jože Sojer.

Slovenski prevod

Življenje je trpljenje. Vsi se tega zavedajo.

Poslušalcem na svojih predavanjih veliko govorim o dejstvih, ki so po mojem mnenju neizpodbitna. In mislim, da je temeljno neizpodbitno dejstvo to, da je življenje trpljenje. Prepričan pa sem, da je prav zato to temeljno načelo verskega prepričanja. V nekem smislu skoraj neglede na to, za katero vero pravzaprav gre. (Da je življenje trpljenje). In vsi se tega zavedajo, čeprav tega ne priznajo niti o tem ne govorijo nujno radi. V življenju nekega posameznika ni treba ravno prav globoko pobrskati pod površino, da bi naleteli na pretresljiv oziroma tragičen dogodek, ki se skriva v njem. Če se osebi, s katero se pogovarjate, ravno v tem trenutku ne dogaja nič posebno groznega, bodisi v ekonomskem ali socialnem oziroma družinskem ali fizičnem in duševnem smislu, je verjetnost, da se s tovrstno težavo srečuje nekdo, ki je tej osebi pri srcu, izredno velika. Če pa se slučajno uvrščate med pripadnike srečne manjšine, za katero to ne velja, je dovolj, da samo malo počakate, pa bo to kmalu doletelo tudi vas same, in to prej kot mislite, ter bolj boleče, kot si predstavljate. In tega se vsi zavedajo, zato ni težko razumeti, zakaj ljudje postanejo cinični, zagrenjeni, prizadeti in nihilistični. Mislim pa, da življenje ponuja možnosti za osebno rast.

Če ste naivni, imate občutek, da bo življenje enostavno in da so ljudje v temelju dobri, potem pa si, če niste preveč zaščiteni, naberete nekaj izkušenj, ta občutek pri vas uplahne ker ste se izneverili sami sebi ali pa so vas izdali drugi ljudje, ali se srečate s kakšnim pretresljivim dogodkom, in potem se vaša naivnost razblini in boste iz tega položaja najverjetneje prešli v nekaj cinizmu podobnega, ker ne poznate druge poti, vaša začetna vera, ki ni bila vera, ampak naivnost, pa se je razblinila zaradi strašne resničnosti tega, s čimer se soočate. Kot cinična oseba pa ste potem modrejši kot takrat, ko ste naivna oseba.

In potem se zgodi nekaj navadnega, saj ste v nekem smislu v slabšem položaju, kot ste bili prej. Niste več tako optimistični in niste tako polni upanja, vaše življenje pa je težje in verjetno ste bolj strogi do drugih ljudi in bolj nagnjen h krutosti, nič od tega pa se ne zdi pozitivno, vendar … pa se v cinizmu skriva modrost, ki je naivnost ne premore.

Vendar pa je težava v tem, da cinizem ni uporaben protistrup za, denimo, pretresljiv dogodek ali zlobo, saj obstajajo položaji, v katerih cinizem pustite za seboj ko se približujete modrosti, prav modrost pa je tista, ki jo potrebujete za to, da si izdelate nekakšen splav, ki vas bo obdržal nad gladino … Viharni časi …

Življenje je težko … Omadeževano je z zlobo in se izgublja v tragediji, zato potrebujete nekaj, kar bo to stanje uravnotežilo, saj boste sicer postali zagrenjeni. Če pa ste zagrenjeni, neizogibno postanete maščevalni in kruti. In potem vse, kar vas je naredilo slabšega, delate še slabše. In to se nikoli ne konča. Kot kmalu spozna vsakdo, ki se je vsaj malo zanimal za zgodovino, obstaja ideja, da je pekel brezdanje brezno, vendar pa za to ni razloga, saj ni situacije, ki bi bila tako strašna, da ne bi obstajala kakšna vsega obsojanja vredna neumnost, ki jo lahko naredi kakšen tepec in jo naredi še veliko hujšo.

Potemtakem je pravo vprašanje naslednje: kaj bi lahko predstavljalo alternativo temu? In ali alternativa sploh obstaja?

Pred mnogimi leti sem ob prebiranju predvsem verske mitologije ugotovil, da obstaja razlika med razmišljanjem in osredotočanjem na določeno stvar. Med tema dvema stvarema pa je osredotočanje veliko pomembnejše. Ne gre za stvar, ki bi bila enaka razmišljanju.

Ko se osredotočate, iščete tisto, česar ne poznate, saj se v določenem smislu izločite in opazujete ter poslušate in ugotavljate, ali so stvari take, kot mislite da so, in ob tem upate, da so, ker je življenje lažje, če so stvari takšne, kot mislite, da so, če pa ugotovite, da niso takšne, vi pa se osredotočate, potem lahko snujete in ste dejavni, lahko sprejemate in lahko se učite. In vi se morate naučiti osredotočati.

Kadar govorim, ljudi prosim naj se osredotočajo na tisto, kar že poznajo. Tukaj je nekaj, kar vsi poznajo.
Kdo je tisti, ki ga v svetu, sestavljenem iz trpljenja in zlobe, občudujete? Ali kdo je tisti, ki ga vi ne občudujete? To sta enaki vprašanji. Če veste, koga ne občudujete, no, potem imate negativen model in se lahko odločite za nekaj nasprotnega. Če pa veste, koga občudujete, ga lahko posnemate. In občutek za občudovanje je občutek za posnemanje, mi pa smo zelo posnemajoča bitja. In kako bi lahko to poimenovali? Globoko biološko in metafizično zakoreninjeno vodilo za pravilno življenjsko pot. Vprašanje je, ali obstaja pravilna življenjska pot? Zagotovo obstajajo poti, ki stvari še poslabšujejo. To je nekaj, česar se je treba zavedati. Takim potem bi se lahko izognili. Če pa obstajajo poti, ki stvari poslabšujejo, potem obstajajo tudi nasprotne poti, čeprav te morda niso tako jasno izražene. Mislim, da smo ravno zato pogosto tako navdušeni nad zlobnimi liki v izmišljenih predstavah, ker je, to je očitno, v nekem smislu lažje pojasniti tisto, kar predstavlja spolzko pot. Ljudje to lažje razumejo. Medtem ko je pot, ki je pozitivna, bolj zamegljena in jo je težje določiti. Vendar pa vsaj veste, da je ta pot nekaj nasprotnega od spolzke poti.

Koga potemtakem občudujete, ali pa bi morebiti lahko začeli s tem, koga ne občudujete?

Odraslega človeka, najsi bo moški ali ženska, ki ne želi prevzeti odgovornosti zase, bi jo pa lahko prevzel, ne občudujete. Lahko razumem, da obstajajo ljudje, ki so tako zlomljeni in prizadeti, da nenehno potrebujejo pomoč, ker ne morejo prevzeti odgovornosti zase, ali pa jo lahko prevzamejo v omejenem obsegu, nikakor pa ne v celoti. Vendar pa ne občudujete nekoga, ki odgovornosti zase ne bo hotel prevzeti. Pravzaprav vas ob tem preveva občutek prezira.

Če pa ste po kakšnem naključju takšna oseba vi, potem se sredi noči zbujate in se z vsem, kar vam je ostalo od vaše vesti, grajate, ker niste prevzeli svoje moralne dolžnosti, svoje notranje moralne dolžnosti, in temu ne morete ubežati. In ali se zavedate tega, da je to zelo zanimivo? Če bi bili bitje, ki bi si lahko izmislilo svoje lastne vrednote, kot je predlagal Nietzsche, kot protistrup za smrt Boga, potem bi si preprosto odpustili svoje prestopke in ne bi trpeli grenkih obtožb vesti. Vendar pa se vam to dogaja. Razlog za to pa je … ker počnete stvari, ki so napačne. In s tem bi morali prenehati, zavedate pa se, da … morebiti ne morete.

Dobro, denimo, da je potem nekaj nasprotnega to, da občudujete nekoga, ki lahko prevzame odgovornost zase. To je začetek. In potem morebiti še bolj občudujete ljudi, ki so v dovolj veliki meri izoblikovali svoj značaj, da so presegli cinizem, tako da ne samo da prevzamejo odgovornost zase, ampak lahko prevzamejo odgovornost tudi za svojo družino in so na voljo ljudem, ki jih imajo radi, ko je to potrebno. In če to lahko naredite, potem imate v sebi nekaj, ne bi rekel da nekaj, na kar ste neizogibno lahko ponosni, vendar pa imate vsaj eno stvar, ki bi si jo lahko očitali, manj. To pa je že kar nekaj.

In potem lahko to pustite za seboj. In lahko rečete, dobro, če vi morebiti dovolj skrbno uredite in osmislite svoje življenje, govorite resnico, če bi bili dovolj pogumni, kljub razlogom, ki jih imate, da ne bi bili … Da bi vi lahko bili tudi nekdo, ki bi koristil sebi, svoji družini in skupnosti. In da s takšnim načinom življenja sodelujete pri strukturiranju stvari na harmoničen način. Pri tem ne gre za etos, ki bi bil osredotočen na posameznika. Gre za etos harmonije med različnimi ravnmi. Delati morate, kar je dobro za vas, vendar mora biti obenem dobro tudi za vašo družino in vašo skupnost. In to deluje usklajeno. Posledica tega je, da vse ravni delujejo harmonično, vi pa lahko zaznate trenutek, ko se to zgodi. In to je še ena stvar, ki jo je zelo koristno poznati, da veste, da ste takrat, ko se nahajate na tistem mestu, kjer delujete na pravilen način in se pogumno soočate s stvarmi ter govorite resnico, prežeti z občutkom temeljnega smisla, ta smisel pa je protistrup za katastrofo življenja. In to je protistrup v psihološkem smislu, saj morate izhajati iz tega smisla, ker je sicer vaše življenje preveč temačno in strašno in vas bo pogubilo. Tako je to protistrup v psihološkem smislu, je pa tudi protistrup v praktičnem smislu, saj kot ljudje nismo nekaj kar nič ne šteje. Saj veste … pravijo, da smo ustvarjeni po Božji podobi. Težko je reči, kaj to pomeni, vendar pa vsaj delno pomeni, da sodelujemo v procesu vzpostavljanja dobrega. In vsi lahko delamo dobro, lahko pa delamo tudi nekaj nasprotnega. In če sprejmemo svojo odgovornost do sebe in do drugih ljudi in do svojih skupnosti ter se premaknemo na neko višjo raven, potem živimo življenja, ki so smiselna, in to nam preprečuje, da bi bili pokvarjeni. To nam zagotavlja zdravila proti katastrofi. Poleg tega pa tudi v praktičnem smislu izboljšuje svet. To pa je tista druga stvar. Ne gre samo za psihološki vidik. Stvari lahko tudi poslabšate. Tega se vsi zavedajo. In brez dvoma se vi tega zavedate na številne načine. Vendar pa vi lahko stvari izboljšujete in te se dejansko izboljšajo. In v tem je razlog za upanje.
Treba pa je reči še nekaj, namreč da bi se zavedali, da … ste vi take vrste bitje, ki se lahko tako rekoč neposredno sooči s smrtnostjo, katastrofo in zlom, pa kljub temu vstane in naredi tisto, kar je prav.
In samo bistvo pri vsem tem je … V tem … Je dobro. In to je tisto, o čemer sem ljudem pripovedoval …

English

Life is suffering. Everyone knows that.

I talk a lot to my audiences about what I believe to be incontrovertible facts. And I think that the fundamental incontrovertible fact is that life is suffering. And, I think that that’s why that’s a primary axiom of religious belief. In some sense, almost regardless of the faith. (That life is suffering). And, everyone knows that. Although they don’t necessarily like to admit it or to talk about it. You don’t have to scrape beneath the surface very far in someone’s life to find a tragedy lurking. If the person that you’re speaking with doesn’t have something pretty awful happening to them right at the moment, economically or socially or within their family or physically or mentally, the probability the someone they love has the problem of that sort is extraordinarily high. And if you happen to be among the fortunate minority for whom that isn’t true, well all you have to do is wait, and it will be true, soon enough, and sooner than you think, and worse than you imagine. And everyone knows that, and so it’s easy to understand why people become cynical and bitter and hurt and nihilistic. I thing there is a progression in life.

If you are naive, you think that life will be easy and that people are basically good and then you have some experiences, if you’re not sheltered too much and, that gets taken away from you because you betray yourself or other people betray you, or you encounter a tragedy, and then your naivety is shattered and the most likely place that you’ll go from there is into something approximating cynicism, because you don’t know the alternative and your initial faith, which was not faith, but naivety is shattered by the terrible reality of what you encounter. And then as a cynical person, you’re more wise than you are as a naive person.

And then, that’s strange thing, because you’re worse in some sense than you were. You are not as optimistic and you’re not as filled with hope, and your life is more difficult, and you are probably harder on other people and with more of a tendency towards cruelty, and none of that seems positive, but … There’s a wisdom in cynicism that naive lack.

But the problem is there that cynicism in not a useful antidote to, let’s say, tragedy and malevolence, because there are places that you go past cynicism as you approach wisdom and it’s wisdom that you need in order to fabricate yourself this sort of vessel that will keep you afloat during … Stormy times …

Life is difficult … It’s tainted by malevolence, and it’s cast in tragedy, and you need something to offset that, because otherwise it embitters you. And if you’re embittered, then you become vengeful and cruel, inevitably. And then you make everything that’s made you worse, worse in turn. And there is not bottom to that. As anyone who’s even a moderate student of history, soon comes to understand, there’s an idea that hell is bottomless pit, and there is no reason for that is that there’s no situation that’s so terrible that there isn’t some damn fool thing that some idiot can do that will make it far worse.

And so the question is, what might constitute an alternative to that? And if there is an alternative?

I learned a long while back reading religious mythology mostly, that there is a difference between thinking and paying attention. And of the two, paying attention is much more important. It’s not the same thing as thinking.

When you pay attention, you’re looking for what you don’t know, you kind of detach yourself and you watch and you listen and you see if there are the way you think they are and … You hope they are because life is easier if things are the way you think they are, but if you find out that they’re not and you’re paying attention then you can weave and you can bob, and you can adopt, and you can learn. And you have to learn to pay attention.

I just ask people when I’m speaking to pay attention to what they already know. Here’s something that everybody knows …
In a world that consists of suffering and malevolence. Who is that you admire? Or who is it that you don’t admire? Those are the same question. If you know who you don’t admire, well, then you have a negative model, and you can go for the opposite. And if you know who you admire, well, then you can copy that … And the instinct for admiration is an instinct for imitation, and we’re very imitative creatures, and … Our instinct for admiration is an instinct for imitation And what would you call it? A deeply biologically and metaphysically rooted guideline to the proper path of life. The question is, is there a proper path of life? There are certainly pathways that make things worse. That’s something to know. You could avoid those. And if there are pathways that make things worse, then there are the opposite pathways, even though those might not be so clear. I think that’s why we’re often so enamored of evil characters in fictional representations is because clear, it’s easier, in some sense, to make what constitutes the dark path clearer. It’s easier for people to understand. Whereas the path that’s positive is murkier and more difficult to ascertain. But at the very least, you know it’s the opposite of that.

So, who do you admire or we could start by who don’t you admire?

You don’t admire an adult who won’t take responsibility for himself or herself, and could. I understand there are people that are so broken and hurt that they need help constantly, because they can’t take responsibility for themselves, or they can in small ways, but not completely. But you don’t admire someone who won’t take responsibility for themselves. In fact, you have a sense of contempt for that.

And if you happen to be that person, then you wake up in the middle of the night and berate yourself with what’s left of your conscience for failing to undertake your moral duty, your intrinsic moral duty, and you can’t escape that. And that is so interesting, you know? If you were the creature who could invent your own values, as Nietzsche suggested, as an antidote to the death of God, then you just forgive your transgressions, and you wouldn’t suffer the bitter pangs of conscience. But you do. And the reason you do is … because you do the things that are wrong. And you should stop, and you know it … maybe you can’t.

Well, let’s say then the opposite is that you admire someone who can take responsibility for himself or herself. That’s a start. And then maybe you admire someone even more if they’ve forged their characters sufficiently to move past cynicism so that not only they take responsibility for themselves, but they can take responsibility for their family, and they are there for the people who love them when it’s necessary. And if you do that, then you have something, I wouldn’t say necessarily to be proud of, but at least you have one less thing to upbraid yourself with. And that’s something.

And then you can move past that. And you can say, well, maybe if you put yourself together enough carefully enough, spoke the truth enough, were courageous enough, in spite of the reasons you have not to be … That you could also be someone of benefit to yourself and your family and your community. And you partake in structuring things in a harmonious manner by living in that way. It’s not an individual focused ethos. It’s an ethos of harmony among levels. You should do what’s good for you, but it has to be what’s good for your family at the same time, and it has to be what’s good for you and your family and your community at the same time. And that works musically. It makes all the levels work in harmony, and you can tell when that’s happening. And this is another thing that’s a great utility to know is that when you’re in that place where you’re acting in the proper manner and you’re facing things courageously and you’re speaking the truth, you’re imbued with a sense of fundamental meaning, and that meaning is the antidote to the catastrophe of life. And it’s the antidote psychologically because you have to have that meaning, because otherwise your life is too dark and too dreadful and it will corrupt you. So it’s the antidote psychologically but it’s also an antidote practically because we’re not nothing as human beings. You know … they say we’re made in the image of God. It’s hard to say what that means, but it means, at least in part, to participate in the process of bringing the good into being. And we can all do that and the opposite. And if we accept our responsibility to ourselves and to other people and to our communities, and we lift that load up, then we live lives that are meaningful, and that stops us from being corrupt. It provides us with medication against catastrophe. And it also, practically improves the world. That’s the other thing. It’s not just psychological. You can make things worse. Everyone knows that. And no doubt, you have, in many ways. But you can make things better, and they actually get better. And there is reason for hope.

And there is something to be said to know that … You’re the sort of creature that can look at mortality, and catastrophe, and malevolence, straight in the eye, so to speak, and nonetheless, stand up, and do what’s right.

And that all there is … In that … Is good. And that’s what I’ve been telling people …

Foto: Aleš Čerin (ob obisku v Ljubljani, 18. novembra 2018)