Summary notes created by Deciphr AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylg8ZQYtAm8&ab_channel=AllianceforResponsibleCitizenshipJordan Peterson delves into the story of Jonah to highlight themes of responsibility, meaning, and cultural renewal. He presents Jonah as an everyman who initially avoids his divine calling to warn the city of Nineveh, leading to personal and communal peril. Peterson emphasizes that evading one's moral duty not only endangers oneself but also the broader community. He draws parallels between Jonah's journey and the dangers of remaining silent in the face of wrongdoing, arguing that true courage and meaning arise from speaking truthfully, even at personal cost, to prevent societal decay and foster genuine renewal.
"It's the story of Jonah and I like to tell this story partly because it's one of the stories that cynical unimaginative materialist reductionist atheists point to when they take ignorant pot shots at the foundation of Western civilization."
"When we meet Jonah, the protagonist of this story, we don't know anything about him. He's an ordinary man as far as we can tell, and we can infer that because we don't know anything about him when the story begins."
"People don't know where to find meaning in their life, and one of the places you find meaning in your life is in your problems."
"A voice comes to him and says, 'You're aware of a city Nineveh. It's historically a City full of the enemies of your people... I'm God and I'm unhappy with the citizens of Nineveh and I'm thinking about wiping them out because of their unwillingness to abide by the appropriate moral order.'"
"Jonah thinks, 'Well, if you're God and you want to deliver the historical enemies of my people a good smiting, I'm perfectly happy with that.'"
"Jonah thinks, 'I don't think I'm going to go there and tell them King and all that they wandered off the straight narrow path and that God himself is ready to reap destruction on them.'"
"He boards a ship and heads to a city whose name I don't remember, which is as far away from Nineveh that you could get at that time."
"He's on the boat and he falls asleep. That's what you do if you don't follow the promptings of your conscience; you drift into a kind of wishfully Blissful unconsciousness."
"If you run from the promptings of your conscience, then not only do you risk drifting into a counterproductive unconsciousness, but you endanger everyone on board the ship that you're part of."
"Jonah stays asleep and the sailors are terrified and they unload the ship and the waves rise higher and they have a sense in their superstitious manner that maybe there's someone on the ship who isn't right with God and they cast dice essentially to find out who it might be and the pointer points to Jonah."
"They go and wake him up and they say well we're in the midst of a storm and the ship is threatened and we cast lots to determine who's at fault and it pointed to you are you okay with your God and Jonah says well not exactly."
"The sailors who are a heathenish lot of pagans and polytheist say well who is your god and they're thinking well he's like the god of the local oak tree or the god of the local some minor God that you could stumble over in the dark and hardly notice and Jonah says well he's the creator of the oceans and the land and the cosmos itself."
"The sailors think you probably don't want to piss him off then and so he confesses to his cowardice which indicates actually that he's fundamentally a decent man because when there's a crisis and it's possible that he's responsible he admits to his error even though you could imagine doing so under those circumstances might be uncomfortable."
"He implores the sailors to throw them overboard and they refuse and because they also turn out to be decent people and so they work as hard as they can to bring the ship to port to escape the storm but they can't the storm gets worse and worse."
"Finally Jonah prevails upon them to throw them into the Briny deep sea and so they do."
"Jonah was called on by the voice that comes to people to tell them that things aren't exactly right in the world and that maybe they have something to say and he refused that call and he threatened the Integrity of the vessel that he was protected by and transported by and now he's received his due punishment but that's not where the story ends."
"One of the criticisms that's levied by the Freudians for example by the Marxists at the religious Enterprise is that it's a what would you say cowardly and immature defense against death anxiety and I would say that an ideology and a naive belief can be a defensive mechanism used to protect people foolishly against fear but if you think that's the case for the central stories of the Judeo-Christian culture then you don't know anything about the stories and you don't know anything about life because the people who think that religion is a defense against death anxiety are naive enough to think that death is the worst thing and that's that's just where worst gets started and that's what happens to Jonah."
"He ends up in the Briny deep blue sea facing death but then the worst possible imaginable Beast Rises up from the abyss and grips him in his jaws and takes him down to Hell itself and you might say well that's an interpolation Dr. Peterson and it's not an interpolation he spends 3 days in the belly of the Beast just as Christ is said to spend 3 days harrowing hell after the crucifixion."
"It says in the text itself that the Beast that takes Jonah in its jaws is from the h from Hell in the abyss and so it's no interpolation."
"What does it mean for a country to descend into the grip of the totalitarian nightmare well it means that every single person who is an inhabitant of that country has decided to hold their tongue when they've been called upon to say what should be said and so then you end up with a country that is in a state so dire that there'll be many times if you inhabit that country where you you would pray to drown in the ocean instead of being a citizen of that dread State."
"If you hold your tongue when you're called upon to say what you know to be true it's not only that you put the ship of State in Peril in the most immediate sense it's that you doom yourself and everyone you love to a journey to the darkest place you can possibly imagine."
"Good people have a burden on their conscience. The burden requires them to speak from the spiritual source of their heart, and they refuse the call."
"If you know nothing at all about totalitarian states, you know nothing about lies of commission and lies of omission."
"Jonah's in the whale for three days in the depths of hell and because he's a good man fundamentally, he repents."
"He goes to Nineveh and tells his enemies that they're pushing their luck with their impropriety and their misbehavior."
"If you have something to say, you hold your tongue at not just your peril but the peril of everything you love, everything you know, your state, the world itself."
"Don't be ever thinking there's no cost, and don't be thinking that the cost to you for speaking is going to be less than the cost to you for remaining silent."
"You can't even initiate a conversation about energy policy in Germany. The poor are further impoverished by the fools who believe that we'll move to planetary salvation by quintupling energy costs and leaving pollution intact."
"Anyone with any wisdom whatsoever understands quite clearly that most punishments deferred are much worse than punishments taken when the time is right."
"If you're in a situation where telling the truth means that you'll run into some dreadful trouble, it means you're already in a pretty damn bad situation and you better speak up now."
"You better speak up now before it gets a hell of a lot worse, which it can and will in precise proportion to your willingness to remain silent when you have something to say."
"Jonah was called to be called upon by his conscience to be the prophetic voice of redemption even for his enemies."
"The price you pay for not speaking is that you're not even there but you'll still have the suffering."
"If you did have the wise courage to speak when you have something to say and that did disrupt your life... you would thereby embark on the greatest romantic adventure of your life."
"The rewards that you'll obtain by abiding by the dictates of your conscience when you're true to it will be so much greater than whatever punishment you acre momentarily for speaking."
"You'll be the light on the hill that illuminates the world that invites people up Jacob's Ladder."
"Do you believe in the truth? Does the truth set you free? Well, that doesn't mean there won't be a price paid for it."
"You don't get to pick whether there's a price; you get to pick what you're willing to pay the price for."
"The story of Jonah is a pointer to that understanding... with that wisdom, there's no choice; why would you not do the best thing that you could do?"
"The best thing that you could do is to say wisely what you know to be true, and if you have to pay a price, then that's the price you pay."
"Say what you think is true and have the adventure that goes along with that."
"That's the life more abundant that's promised in the ancient texts."
"The alternative hypothesis is what? You're going to live a life of falsehood which means it's not your life; it's the life of falsehood."