At a Crossroads: Jordan B. Peterson 2022 Commencement Address (Transcript)

You know, we’re very presumptuous as moderns, we look back and we think, well, this person who did all these remarkable things said these things that we now regard as inappropriate, and therefore can be dispensed with.

It’s like, well, what makes you think that you’re above that criticism a hundred years from now, that, you know, the best you can do is to be as good as you can in your time and place, and if you can manage that, well, good for you. If you can transcend that, well, then maybe you’re some sort of saint, you’re probably not, so aiming at just the first is not such a bad upper aim.

And so there’s the chaos domain, and I would say, those of you who are graduating, you don’t want to be tempted into that. One of the things I’ve thought a lot about in relationship to faith… we have this idea, it’s not a good idea, and it’s certainly an idea for which religious people are often pilloried, that faith means the sacrifice of reason, and the willingness to believe things that are patently not true. And when religious people debate scientists, they’re often sort of hung out to dry on exactly those presuppositions, their willingness to accept on principal propositions that seem on the face of them impossible.

I don’t think that’s what faith is at all, in some fundamental sense. I think faith is a form of courage. If you’re hurt by life, and you will be, it’s understandable that you might react in a nihilistic and hopeless fashion, and become anxious and depressed and cynical and bitter and all of that, that’s a bad pathway. And I think part of what helps you through that is faith, and part of that faith is that it’s incumbent upon you, and actually in your best interest, and everyone else’s, to maintain faith in the fundamental goodness of existence, including your own, despite the evidence to the contrary, right, because you can draw conclusions from suffering in two ways, right?

One is that you have a duty, and perhaps the capability to transcend the suffering and still serve the good, or you can derive the conclusion that life is so unbearable that it would be best terminated, which is the conclusion that Goethe’s Mephistopheles derives for example in Faust, he says, well, the world is rife with suffering, it’s so unbearable that consciousness itself, all beings should cease to exist, that would be better. Nothing is better than something if something is rife with suffering.

And you can derive that conclusion, and you’ll be driven to it in some of the farther reaches of your life when terrible things happen to you. But I would say faith is the courage to not take that path despite the evidence that that might be justified, and so I think it is a form of courage in the highest sense. And I also think it is a redeeming form of courage.

One of the things I told my daughter who was very, very ill for a very long period of time and in tremendous pain, and suffering the high probability of continued slow, painful, inevitable degeneration, was: do not let your illness — do not take advantage of your illness as an excuse, and I told her that when she was in grade two. You know, it’s no joke to tell someone that, because I knew she’d had every reason to be embittered, but I also knew that if she was, in combination with her illness, the two things might be worse than fatal.

And if you don’t think there are things that are worse than fatal, you have not suffered, because there are things that are much worse than fatal, and there’s certainly not something you want to doom your child to, so that’s one temptation, right. That’s the temptation of kind of faithless hopelessness, and all me, you might say, existential angst that you allow to pervade yourself, and I’m not saying you won’t have your reasons, because you will.

I’m saying that the reasons don’t justify the conclusion, and they certainly don’t justify the conclusion, not self-evidently, and they don’t justify the conclusion in any simple deterministic sense. You know, I met a woman once in my clinical practice. Man, this was something, she was as damaged a person as you could hope to contemplate, so she looked like a street person, she’d come to this behavior therapy clinic that I worked in as a student. And she was dressed like a street person, you know, she had this old ratty winter jacket on that was really dirty, and she stooped over, she wasn’t very tall to begin with, she stooped over, hunched over, and she approached everyone like this, which made people shy away from her, because it’s an odd method of approach.

But the reason she did that was she was really so timid and so humble that it was as if anybody that she approached had a light that was emanating from them too unbearable for her to behold, so it wasn’t so much an oddity, although it was as a — well, a preternatural humility, and I thought she had come to the behavior clinic because she wanted help, she was an outpatient at a psychiatric hospital that I worked at.

And she couldn’t communicate very well, partly because of her shyness, partly because her first language was French, which maybe she could communicate perfectly well in French, but I doubt it, she was not an intelligent person, technically speaking. You know, she was intellectually impaired, and probably in the bottom tenth percentile of the population, that’s a pretty rough place to exist cognitively; you’re barely literate at that point. And her mother was very ill and was bedridden, and her mother had a boyfriend who was a violent alcoholic schizophrenic who was always haranguing her about Satan, and like, man, she had a rough life. She just didn’t have anything going for her, she wasn’t an attractive person physically; you know, people shied away from her; she just was the downtrodden of the earth in the realist sense.

And that woman, you know, she actually came to that behavior therapy clinic, she’d been an inpatient, and this was a rough place, man, because it was a hospital after deinstitutionalization. And there were tunnels connecting some of the wards to other wards, because it’s so cold, this is in Montreal, it’s so cold in the winter, they built a hospital on these tunnels. And I took my brother there one day, and it was like walking through Dante’s Inferno, I mean, if you were so psychiatrically impaired that you weren’t released in the 1980s when deinstitutionalization was maybe at its peak, you were so damaged that there was just no possibility that you could function in the outside world. So the people that were left were sort of the most demolished of the most demolished.

And so just walking through there for my brother, who had no experience in such things was traumatizing, you know, and she had been in the inpatient ward for some time and then was released. And she wanted to talk to the hospital administration, because she got out, and she got this dog that she took care of and went for a walk. And she really liked this dog, and she took care of it, you know, and she walked with it, and she wanted to see if she could go find one of those inpatients who was worse off than her, and take them for a walk every day with her dog.

You know, it’s so funny, eh, you meet someone like that, and they just have nothing, they have nothing in the world that you would recognize as any marker of success, or status, or ability, or they’re outcast and tortured. And then nonetheless, a woman in that dismal state was able to rise above her own catastrophe, which was like manifold, and find someone worse off to try to serve. You don’t need many experiences like that to convince you that there’s things about the world that you truly don’t understand on the ethical front.

So I would say, when you’re at the crossroads and you’re counseled to despair, rise up and encourage it and see if you can resist it. It’s better for you, and it’s better for the people around you. So, that’s the flood, man.

And so, the story that follows that is the TOWER OF BABEL. I was reading a Wikipedia article on the Tower of Babel the other day. I’m always curious about how these things are represented most publicly, right? And Wikipedia is a great way to do that, because it’s collectively edited. And the interpretation was essentially, it was the description of how the languages of the world arose.

And I think, I don’t think that’s what that story’s about at all, except peripherally. I thought, yeah, you just missed the point 100%. I mean, Babel is Babylon first, so you need to know that. And Babylon is the state that’s gone mad. And it’s a continual temptation for human beings to build complex organizations, right, that get too high.

And so, what does that mean? How about too many layers? Not local enough, not distributed enough, right? Too separate from the people that they serve. I think the EU did that. I think that’s why the British left. That’s the Tower of Babel. In fact, they used — unbelievably, they used a famous painting of the Tower of Babel as a representation of the EU in some of their literature, which I think it was a painting by Bruegel, but I’m not sure of that. But that was just like, okay. I just do not understand how that happened at all.

In any case, this Tower of Babel, it’s also a Luciferian story. You know, Lucifer is the spirit of intellect, the light bringer, who’s flown too high and challenges God Himself and falls. And in Milton’s story, Lucifer is called on his pretension by God and said, you know, if you — because he is God’s highest angel gone most catastrophically wrong. So a symbol of intellect, that in combination with the notion that he’s a light bringer, it’s a symbol of prideful intellect. And it is the prideful intellect that raises itself against what is most properly placed at the highest place, which is what God is, whatever that is. Whatever it is, it’s not the intellect. That’s a subordinate spirit. And if it isn’t, then it becomes aimed essentially at something approximating hell and perfectly capable of creating it and then perfectly capable of ruling in it.

And so when God calls Lucifer on his rebellion, He says, if you… but repent, you could be welcomed home. And Lucifer says, well, I am the sort of spirit that even if I once repented, I would be instantly tempted to merely repeat my mistake. And he says, as well, I would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.

It’s like, hey, man, here’s a choice for you at the crossroads. And so, you know, people have asked me, for example, I’m very opposed to the idea that the fundamental human motivation is power, which is pretty much what every student is taught at every level of their education, in every educational institution, except a handful now across your country. Fundamental motivation is power. There’s no place for people of goodwill to meet and have and engage in constructive dialogue, dialogos, none of that, because our fundamental motivation is nothing but the will to power.

And so there is no place for people of goodwill to meet. There is no such thing as dialogue. It’s all a mask, a rationalization, a post hoc rationalization for pretension and power. It’s such a dismal philosophy. It’s so — you could not, and I believe this technically, you could not formulate a more pathological philosophy. It obliterates your faith in society and it eradicates the notion of the individual. It removes the notion of good faith and goodwill and it makes communication impossible.

It’s like, that’s a temptation to engage in that sort of destruction as a consequence of your intellectual pretensions, let’s say. And for all of you, this is going to face you too, this pretension, you know, so maybe you’re not the hopeless type and the temptation that assails you at the crossroads isn’t your degeneration into a kind of faithless nihilism. Maybe it’s a self-aggrandizement in some sense instead, and that you feel that now you have the opportunity to serve your own ambition.

Well, we could take apart what that means, because I think it’s worthwhile. Psychopaths serve their own ambition. And they’re the people who are most truly motivated by power, by the way, if you think about it clinically. And they’re not very successful, all protestations to the contrary. They never rise above about 3% of any general population. And maybe it’s a better strategy to be a manipulative psychopath than to lay inert in your bed, in your mother’s bedroom when you’re 40, but it’s not an optimal strategy.

And so you can get away with it being a psychopath, because you can mimic competence and you can take advantage of people who have learned to expect the best from others, and so you can manipulate them. But you produce nothing on your own. And one of the things that’s really interesting about psychopaths is they don’t learn from experience, which means not only do they betray other people constantly, but they betray their own future selves. And there’s really no difference between your future self and someone else, right?

You know, if you’re going to act ethically, and this is a very good way of thinking about acting ethically, you act in a way that works for you now, that works for you tomorrow, that works for you next week and next month and next year and in five years and in 10 years and for you and your family and your friends and your broader community, and all of that simultaneously. And that’s a place to find purpose in your life, to manage that balancing act simultaneously, and to sacrifice your narrow, self-oriented pretensions, ambition, all of that, the celebration of your own intellect, the construction of your own empire for your own narrow purposes.

Part of the reason you shouldn’t do that, even though it’s tempting in some sense, especially if you have the ability, is because, do you want to rule over hell? I mean, and that’s another interesting question with regards to the question of whether power is a valid motivation. It’s like, okay, well Kim Jong-un, let’s take him, he’s a manifestation of a power player. You think it’s better to be leader of North Korea than to be just an ordinary peon there? Are you so sure it’s better to rule over hell than just to be a servant in hell? It’s not obvious to me. That’s not success by any stretch of the imagination.

The most powerful devil. That’s like the worst possible failure. And so, you’re called upon to take the lessons that you’ve been taught in a university like this, that tempts to teach you to abide by the eternal verities, to sacrifice your own narrow pretensions, in the highest sense, to something that’s truly better. Not because you should, in some finger-wagging sense, but because there is truly nothing better, and perhaps you don’t have the wisdom to see that, because it’s difficult to see. It’s difficult to have a purview broad enough to encompass those expanse of time and community and see what pattern of behavior is to be manifested in proper service, to balance all of that in some musical manner.

But that’s definitely the appropriate pathway. It’s the best possible path of action. And anything you pursue that isn’t that is insufficient, especially for people of your ability. And I would also say, and this is very much worth thinking about too.

You know, there is this idea that your great country is founded upon, for example, that each individual is of divine worth. You know, and I made reference to this client I had when I was a junior therapist, and so even the most, what would you say, ignored and alienated, marginalized, let’s say, to use a word that’s been overused, have something of real value to bring into the world. And this is the case. You’re a particularized creature as a son of God or a daughter of God, let’s say, you have something to bring into the world that no one else can bring in.

And so if you fail in that duty, then you deprive the world of that. And maybe you shouldn’t do that. Like, maybe everything’s lesser if you do that. And you don’t know how much lesser, you know, because the world is also constituted in a very strange way. You know, Dostoevsky said that we’re not only responsible for what we do, but for what everyone else does, which is truly an insane thing to say, but also in some sense, fundamentally true.

You know, I don’t know how it is that each of us can bear the burden of the world on our shoulders singularly, because I can’t really comprehend how things can be structured in that manner. But I do believe, nonetheless, that it is the case. And so that if you forswear your responsibility to the highest good, then you tear something out of the fabric of being that that is of inestimable value. And I do believe you will pay for that if you do it. And I would suggest that you don’t pay that price because it will not be pleasant. That’s definitely hell.

And if you don’t think hell is real, you haven’t thought about it enough. It isn’t a matter of other people believing foolish things. It’s a matter of you being so naive and so well protected that you have no idea how the world is constituted. And so that’s, well, that’s the temptations, let’s say, chaos and nihilism and hopelessness or intellectual pretension and the desire for self-aggrandizement and narrow power. Don’t do that. It’s not helpful. It won’t do you any good.

And it’s beneath you, you know, it’s beneath you to do that. And that will manifest itself in your life, that subordination of what’s highest in you to those lesser gods, let’s say, that will manifest itself in the torments of your own conscience. And no one escapes from that, you know. And so don’t do that. Don’t make that choice at the crossroads.

And then we might say, practically speaking, because I’m a behavioral psychologist, you know, I like to be practical. Well, that’s what you shouldn’t do.

What should you do practically? Well, we could walk through that, you know, a little bit, practically. I had lots of clients and students who were chaotic in their orientation of life. They didn’t know what to do, and they didn’t know what to do about not knowing what to do. It’s like, I don’t know what to do with my life, and I don’t know what to do about my ignorance. And my reaction to that, in some sense, wasn’t exactly the reaction of a clinician, because, not a typical clinician, because typical clinicians are liberal Protestant in their fundamental orientation, and they tend to think of psychological development as something like self-actualization, right? It’s really a self-development process.

But that wasn’t my observation, partly influenced by the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget. I had a more communitarian view of human development than that, and my observation was that most people find the cardinal meanings in their life not as a consequence of the development of their self, whatever that is, but in service to other people, in the adoption of responsibility.

You know, because you’re told, be responsible, and it’s a finger-wagging thing again, you know, that if you were a good person, you’d be responsible, you’d do your duty. But no one ever says, well, because that’s where you find the abiding meaning in your life, and you need that meaning to sustain you through suffering. And that’s definitely the case.

You know, I was very ill for a number of years, and a lot of what got me through that wasn’t my own special nature, let’s say, but the support of my family, and the support of my friends, and the support of the broader community made a huge difference, not only psychologically, because I knew people were supporting me, but also practically. You build yourself a community, you sacrifice yourself in the service of other people, not so much because you should, although you should, but because that is where meaning is to be found, and you need a deep meaning to sustain you through tragedy. That’s the arc.

And you find that deep meaning, and you know, there’s a notion that it’s better to give than to receive, and it sounds like a hallmark greeting card in some sense, and people are cynical about that, too, as, well, yeah, you say that because you should be good and think that, but if you watch yourself, you’ll see that it’s true, because one of the things that’s been really a pronounced element in my life is that, you know, people thank me from time to time for the things that I’ve done or said, and there isn’t a better experience than that, you know, that you put something out that’s actually a manifestation of what you truly believe, and the consequence of that is part of the redemptive process for someone else. There is nothing that’s better than that. Zero. Nothing.

In fact, I don’t think there’s anything that’s even in the same conceptual universe of that in terms of its intrinsically rewarding properties. There’s nothing better than to have people, perhaps particularly people you’ve never met, tell you that what you have been doing has had a salutary effect on their lives, and so that’s a hell of a fine thing to aim for, and why not aim for it, you know, because you could do it.

I wouldn’t even say necessarily that you put other people first, because I think that’s a mistake, but I do think it’s the case that you treat other people in the manner that you would wish to be treated if you were treating yourself properly, and that’s also a sophisticated thing, right, to learn to treat yourself properly, because that doesn’t mean you get to fulfill every momentary whim, because that’s what you do when you’re two, and two-year-olds can’t live without their parents.

You know, you have to be wise enough to govern your current behavior in light of the future, and that’s really what it means to be an adult. It’s what it means to forestall gratification and to attain the responsibility of an adult, and the reason that you should do that, because you should, is because it’s actually better in all ways. It’s a panacea for suffering to adopt that responsibility.

And so I would tell my clients and students as well, it’s like, well, let’s just take a look at where other people find meaning, you know, and we’ll see how your life matches with that. Do you have an intimate relationship? Yes or no? The right answer is yes. Now, maybe not for you, and maybe you don’t right now, and maybe you have your reasons not to because you’re a singular person in that regard, but probably not, because that’s like a third of life.

And so if you don’t have that, that might be one of the reasons you’re not doing so well. And the fact that you don’t have it might be an indication that you’re not oriented in the proper direction. Oh, I can give you an example of that. I had many people question me when I was just on tour. This is a question that came up quite rapidly often in the Q&A sessions.

How do I find the right person when I’m dating? How do I find the person who’s right for me when I’m dating? I got that, or on the internet, huh? I got that question like three times in a row, and I thought, because I always think this, what about that question? What’s wrong with that question? Something wrong with that question?

How about — how do I conduct myself so that I am the best possible partner? Now, that’s a whole different, right, that’s a whole different conceptual universe, and virtually no one ever asked that question, and I would say, well, if you want an answer to the first question, which is how do I find the person who’s right for me, you actually start by asking the second question, which is what can I bring to the table for someone else? And if you’re really good at bringing something to the table for someone else, hey, man, people might be lining up to be your partner. And if they’re not, then you might think, well, maybe I’m just not bringing the right thing to the table. And that’s worth thinking, especially if you’re desperate, you’re lost, and you’re alone. It’s like, hmm, maybe I got this wrong.

And I usually sort of top that with the suggestion that even if you did find the person who was perfect for you, and they’re that perfect, what makes you think they wouldn’t take one look at you and run screaming away? And they likely would if they were that perfect, because, you know, really, are you that much of a catch? And if you think you are, that might be part of the problem.

So look, so that’s one, right? Intimate relationships. So I would say to you at the crossroads, develop a vision for your relationship. You know, there’s a gospel saying, which is, of course, impossible to comprehend or believe, knock and the door will open, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find. And people think, well, no way, the world’s not constituted like that. It’s like, it goes back to the idea of aim.

If you don’t aim at it, you’re not going to hit it. And, you know, it might also go back to a question about what do you mean by ask? And what do you mean by want? Because it isn’t just some casual request, you know, you’re praying to God, I wish, you know, I wish I could find my wallet or something like that, as if He’s the casual grantor of magical wishes, like, like a fairy with a magic wand. You know, it’s not that.

Asking means something like this. I am willing to give up everything that I’m doing wrong so that I can put things right if I could know what right was. And that’s a non, you’re on your knees when you say that, man. And maybe if you’re on your knees, you get the answer. And so that’s worth thinking about.

So, you know, if you knocked and you wanted to walk through and you asked and you wanted to learn, you know, and you sought because you wanted to find, maybe you would receive and be answered and find, but not without aim. And so I might say, well, look, if you could have the relationship you wanted, you get to have the relationship you want and need, but you have to know what it is.

And so then you need a vision of that. It’s like, and a developed vision, you know, no, I need to find the person right for me. It’s like, what do you mean by that? You know, how about, how are you going to treat your partner when they come home from work? How about something that concrete? Or how would you like to be treated when you come home from work? Or what sort of partner do you want in relationship to their attitude towards children? You have to make it real, you know, like it’s the story of your own life, which by the way it is.

And then maybe you find it because at least once you’ve developed the vision, if it manifests itself, you’ll recognize it. That’s something. So then you need an intimate relationship.

Well, why don’t you set your family right? No, you need siblings. Maybe you don’t have them. Set your relationship with your parents right. Fix your relationship with your father, with your mother, with your siblings. The same thing. And then what sort of relationship do you want to have with your children?

You know, if you could have what you wanted. I have a very good relationship with my children. My daughter, as I said, was very ill, so that made things complicated. But I had a great relationship, and still do, with my son. It’s one of the lights of our life. And we concentrated on making that relationship pristine. You know, both of us. And my wife as well.

And so, imagine, well, I want my son to love me. I want my son to respect me, and vice versa. I want a child who can make mature decisions. I want someone I can rely on. I want someone who other people gravitate towards. Because I can have what I want if I’m willing to make the proper sacrifices. And so that’s a good thing.

Could you set your family straight? Well, you need a job or a career. So what can you offer? And what can you bring the world in that regard? And then I would say, well, if you’re thinking about career success in this Tower of Babel manner, then that’s a temptation. But you might think, well, how much good could I do if I had the opportunity in the shortest possible period of time? If I went all in? And then, there’s a name, man, there’s a name. And then you might think, well, what would that look like? You know, if I was a light to my community, if I was a light to the people I work with? Who would I be if I was like that?

And then you can conceptualize that, and you can see when you deviate from it, and why couldn’t you correct for the deviations and move towards that? And then you might say, well, are you going to make productive use of your time outside of work? Productive and generous use of your time? Productive, generous, and meaningful use of your time.

How about that? You’re going to control your susceptibility to temptation, regulate your alcohol and drug use, because alcoholism takes out lots of people, regulate your sexual temptation, and control yourself for some reason that’s worth controlling yourself for. You know, because there’s something to being sybaritic, there’s at least the momentary pleasure, it’s not nothing, and you’re not going to sacrifice that if you have any sense, unless you sacrifice it to something clearly better.

You know, this is classic clinical finding with regards to alcoholics. The only cure we know for alcoholism is religious transformation. Even the hardcore secular researchers know that. They don’t know why, but they know that’s the case, and part of the reason for that is that if you’re an alcoholic, you really like alcohol. It’s an anti-anxiety agent of potency, and it’s a stimulant. It’s a great drug. And so once you have a great drug, a great spirit, let’s say, you need something better to replace it with. And maybe you can find something better. It appears that way, because people do, and then they stop drinking.

And then there’s civic service to your community. You know, I’ve been thinking about church lately. People have abandoned the churches, and vice versa, in many ways. And people think, you know, I can’t believe what the church teaches. It’s like, first of all, who cares what you believe? Like, who are you, anyways? Right? Well, really, it’s like, I’m 16, I don’t like what the church teaches.

Yeah, that’s who you are. You’re the judge of the church, and you’re 16. And that’s like, that’s commonplace. I know it’s funny, but it’s not, because that’s a commonplace. That was certainly me at 16. Who could believe that? You know, I’m above that. It’s like, really? Here’s this 15-year-old juvenile delinquent from northern Alberta, and it’s like, who cares about St. Augustine, anyways? You know, what did he know?

So, yeah, so civic duty. Well, I’m not going to go into politics, because it’s a snake pit, you know, or maybe you’re cynical about social institutions. It’s like, well, go fix them. Right? You know, that’ll give you something to do. If they’re so racked, great. Well, it’s an opportunity. You see something broken? Fix it.

And then, you’re the person who fixes it. Like, good for you, man. It’s like, you got something to do. Really? And then, people think, hey, you’re the guy that fixed that. Maybe you could fix this, and this, and this, and this. And then, you fix things, and your life just expands, you know? I guess I’ll tell you something about telling the truth.

So, one thing I did in 1985 – ‘82, I swore that I would stop lying. I said, I’m going to try not to say anything I know to be untrue. You know, that doesn’t mean I swore to tell the truth, because that’s hard. But you can consciously stop lying when you know you’re lying. You can stop doing that. And that has been revolutionary for me.

And one of the things I’ve really realized in recent years, and this is very much worth knowing, is that many times when people speak to each other, they have an agenda in mind, you know? You want something from someone, maybe you want a job, and you want to craft your image to get the job. Right?

So you say what you need to say to get what you think you need. The problem with that is, what do you know about what you need? You’re so accurate about that, are you? And you think you know what you need exactly, and so you’re going to falsify your utterances to bring about the desired end. And you’re going to use the other person as a target of your manipulation.

Well, that’s like you write an essay because that’s what the professor wants to hear. It’s like, you don’t do that, because you don’t falsify your words, because hypothetically they’re divine, and the whole stability of the state rests on them, hypothetically. And maybe really, too. And so you don’t do that.

And so instead you strive to tell the truth, and maybe that’s an aim, too. And then it’s an adventure, because I’ll tell you one thing, if you tell the truth, you have no idea what’s going to happen to you. Because you have to let go of that. It’s like, I’m going to say what I think, and then I’m going to assume, faith, I’m going to assume that whatever happens, if I am telling the truth, is the best thing that could happen. Because the truth brings about what is best. And even if it looks hard for me, because it might be, because people take the easy way out often when they lie, even if it looks bad for me, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means I don’t see the whole picture.

And if you believe that the truth will set you free, and that there is such a thing as the truth, and that the truth is redemptive, then you’re pretty much stuck with that conclusion. But one of the remarkable things about that, and this really is worth knowing, is that if you do that, you will have your adventure. Right? That’s the Abrahamic adventure, you know? The call from God that justifies your life because of the excitement of what you’re doing. And the truth does that.

And then, if it’s the truth, man, it’s your adventure. Because what adventure are you having if you tell someone else’s story? It’s not yours. And maybe if it’s not yours, it’s not good enough for you. And then you suffer, and then you’re bitter, and then you’re cruel, and then you’re resentful. That’s not good, or you get arrogant. So you break up your life into practicalities, your career, your education, your intimate relationship, your marriage, your friendship, hopefully your intimate relationship and your marriage are the same thing.

Your use of time outside work, your civic duty, you know, and you develop an image for yourself, a vision for yourself on all those fronts, and assume that you can have, with the proper sacrifices, what you need and want. And then I’ll say something interesting about that, because that’s the pursuit of goods in a practical way, right? And what’s valuable in a practical way, in an implementable way.

And you pick those pathways and you dedicate yourself to their optimization, along any of those axes. And then you learn to optimize and aim. And then you see, once you’ve learned to optimize and aim, across a set of goods, you start to aim at what unites those goods. Because that’s what makes goods good. It’s whatever is common across a set of goods. That’s the highest good, or a higher good.

And so by practicing any good, in any rigorous sense, and making the proper sacrifices in that direction, you simultaneously learn to approach the good that is the sum, or the essence, of all those proximal goods. And I would say that the essential insistence in Christianity is that the good that unites all those goods is the same good that’s reflected in the image of Christ, which is an image of acceptance of the suffering of life, and the necessity of serving the lowest as the highest calling. And that’s something, and it might be true. Like really, actually, 100% true, more true than anything else.

And I actually think it is. Partly because the freest societies that we have, that the world has ever known, the most successful societies, are predicated on precisely that idea. As an unshakable foundation, a self-evident truth, in the case of your country. And so it might be true. And if it is true, and if that is real, then why in the world would you ever attempt to do anything else? And it’s kind of earth-shattering, in some sense, to take this with real seriousness. It’s all very frightening. If you’re not afraid of that, of that vision, and what it implies for you, and your soul, then you didn’t understand it.

But it’s also an unbelievably, what would you say, endlessly promising vision of what your life could be. And you might think, well, I need a life so rich that I can justify its suffering. And that’s really asking for something, because there’s no shortage of suffering in life. And it’s, no one thinks their own suffering isn’t real. And maybe there’s a possibility that there’s some aim that’s so high that the attempt alone to move in that direction is of sufficient value to act as a panacea for the suffering.

And so you could say at the end of your life, oh my God, that was so hard. It was worth it. And so that’s the choice you make at the crossroads, if you have any sense.

Thank you.

For Further Reading:

Denzel Washington: Put God First Speech (Full Transcript)

How to Put God Above All Else: Billy Graham (Transcript)

Full Transcript: Steve Jobs’ Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish Speech at Stanford (2005)

The Downfall of the Ivy League: Victor Davis Hanson (Transcript)

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