Jordan Peterson's Brilliant Breakdown on DOSTOYEVSKY "Notes From Underground" — Transcript

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1. 0:00and so I would say with regards to fiction if you  take someone like Dostoevsky who would think is
2. 0:05a favorite of mine by the way I would highly  recommend that you read all five of his great
3. 0:09novels because they are unparalleled in their  psychological depth and so if you're interested
4. 0:15in psychology dostoevsky's the person for  you Tolstoy is more of a sociologist but
5. 0:21Dostoevsky man he gets right down into the  bottom of the questions and messes around
6. 0:27a transformative reading anyways this is from  Notes from Underground it's a very short book
7. 0:33about this character who is a bureaucrat nasty  sort of bureaucrat he knows he's a nasty sort
8. 0:39of bureaucrat all he does he spends his whole  life trying to make life more miserable for
9. 0:43people because he's so resentful and and crushed  and weak and so he he just not did nothing but
10. 0:50abuse his bureaucratic position and used his  trivial bit of power to Lord it over people he
11. 0:54gets a little bit of an inheritance and and quits  and this is his confession Notes from Underground
12. 0:59he's the underground man it's a brilliant book  it's viciously funny and it's so psychologically
13. 1:05alive if you're if you're interested in Psychology  it's a spectacular book and it's only about 100
14. 1:10pages long anyways he's arrogant and nihilistic  and resentful and what he does is he tries to
15. 1:16justify his life to himself and does a very poor  job of it even though he's trying to be honest
16. 1:20there's a lot of honesty in it at one point  he meets a woman who's been forced out onto
17. 1:25the streets because there weren't very many  options for women in the Victorian period who
18. 1:30who had fallen a foul of economic necessity and  he basically in a fit of false messianism offers
19. 1:37to save her which he can't because he's completely  useless he can't save himself even but he offers
20. 1:43to save her and she more or less accepts and then  when she shows up having sacrificed a tremendous
21. 1:49amount to do so he basically tells her that he  was toying with her and joking and and and and and
22. 1:55makes her situation far worse than it was to begin  with it's a brilliant book because you see he
23. 2:02repents he says what he's like he's this horrible  person he knows it weak and resentful and then he
24. 2:07confesses and then he says well now I've confessed  I'm a better person then he tries to do something
25. 2:12good but he hasn't changed a bloody bit not a  bit the confession was just to make himself feel
26. 2:17better and so he offers to help someone and pulls  them right into the into right under the water
27. 2:22where they drown it's an amazing book and this is  from Notes from Underground in short one may say
28. 2:28anything about the history of the world anything  that might enter the most disordered imagination
29. 2:34the only thing one can't say is that it's rational  the very word sticks in one's throat this is a
30. 2:40good example of the existential criticism of the  idea of rationality Dostoevsky says well lots of
31. 2:45things operate according to rational principles  but let's think about history for a minute
32. 2:49especially from from the perspective of a thinking  and feeling being history is a is a slaughterhouse
33. 2:56it's a catastrophe and and how would you ever  consider that something rational dostoevsky's
34. 3:02Point his rationality fails in its analysis of  something as complex and terrible as history
35. 3:10the only thing one can't say is that it's rational  the very word sticks in one's throat in short
36. 3:16one may sorry and indeed this is the odd  thing that is continually happening there
37. 3:24are continually turning up in life moral and  rational persons sages and lovers of humanity
38. 3:30who make it their object to live all their  lives as morally and rationally as possible
39. 3:36so to be to be so to speak a light to their  neighbors simply in order to show them that it
40. 3:41is possible to live morally and rationally in this  world and yet we all know that those very people
41. 3:47sooner or later have been false to themselves  playing some queer trick often a most unseemly one
42. 3:53now I ask you what can be expected of man since  he is a being endowed with such strange qualities
43. 4:02this is a criticism of utopianism that's what  he's trying to do right because the utopian
44. 4:08ideas were starting to emerge in Russia at about  this point in the 1880s the idea that you could
45. 4:12reorganize Society so that material privation  would disappear and that as a consequence the
46. 4:18the paradise would be ushered in well Dostoevsky  was no fool he knew perfectly well a that that was
47. 4:24never going to happen but even more importantly  that if you gave people exactly what they wanted
48. 4:30even what they needed there's no reason whatsoever  to presume that that would make them any more sane
49. 4:37than than they already are yeah now and he takes  that further because he says well you can give
50. 4:43people cake and and material Goods until they're  satiated and they'll still be ungrateful and
51. 4:49insane and you might think well that's pessimistic  but then he says well wait a minute what makes you
52. 4:54think that that Insanity isn't exactly what's  valuable about people what makes you think you
53. 4:59would ever want to take that away and that's the  case that he makes shower upon him every Earthly
54. 5:04blessing drown him in a sea of Happiness so that  nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the
55. 5:10surface give him economic Prosperity such that he  should have nothing else to do but sleep eat cakes
56. 5:17and busy himself with the continuation of his  species and even then out of sheer ingratitude
57. 5:25man would play you some nasty trick he would even  risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the
58. 5:31most fatal rubbish the most uneconomical  absurdity simply to introduce into all this
59. 5:37positive Good Sense his fatal fantastic element  and it's just his fantastic dreams his vulgar
60. 5:44Folly that he will desire to retain simply in  order to prove to himself as though that were
61. 5:50so necessary that men are still men and not the  keys of a piano which the laws of nature threaten
62. 5:56to control so completely that soon one will  be able to desire nothing but by the calendar
63. 6:02and that is not all if even if men really were  nothing but a piano key even if this was proved
64. 6:09to him by Natural Science and Mathematics  even then he would not become reasonable
65. 6:13but would purposely do something perverse out  of Simply ingratitude simply to gain his point
66. 6:20and if he does not find means he will contrive  destruction and Chaos will contrive suffering of
67. 6:26All Sorts just to gain his point he will launch  a curse upon the world and as as man is the
68. 6:33only animal that can curse it's his privilege the  primary distinction between him and other animals
69. 6:38Maybe by his curse alone he will attain his object  that is to convince himself that he's a man and
70. 6:45not a piano key and if you say that all of this  too can be calculated and tabulated chaos and
71. 6:51darkness and curses so that the mere possibility  of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all
72. 6:57and reason would reassert itself then man would  purposely go bad in order to be rid of reason and
73. 7:02gain his point I believe in it I answer for it for  the whole work of man really seems to consist in
74. 7:09nothing but proving to himself every minute that  he's a man and not a piano key it might be at the
75. 7:13cost of his skin it might be by cannibalism and  and this being so can can one help being tempted
76. 7:20to Rejoice that it has not yet come off and that  desire still depends on something we don't know
77. 7:26you will scream at me that is if you condescend  to do so that no one is touching my free will that
78. 7:32all they're concerned with is that my will should  of of itself of its own free will coincide with
79. 7:37my own normal interests with the laws of nature  and arithmetic good Heavens gentlemen what sort
80. 7:44of Free Will is left when we come to tabulation  and arithmetic when it will all be a matter of
81. 7:49twice two makes four twice two makes four  without my will as if Free Will meant that
82. 7:59it's brilliant I think it's it's one of the most  remarkable criticisms of utopianism I've ever
83. 8:04read it's like and it's so it's so intelligent  it's like what makes you think that if you had
84. 8:09everything you asked for that that would satisfy  you what what if being dissatisfied is part of
85. 8:15what satisfies you what if the fact that you have  to have limits and need them and that there's an
86. 8:20element of Insanity in the world and that there's  an element of insecurity and vulnerability what
87. 8:24if that's what you need what if it's what you  want it's what what if that's what gives your
88. 8:29life meaning you're going to be like a lion after  it's eating a zebra and do nothing but sleep it
89. 8:34hardly constitutes the appropriate human Paradise  what makes people think that merely providing
90. 8:39economic security would be sufficient who wants  that it's what you it's what you offer a cow in
91. 8:46its pen so that it remains calm and fat it's not  something for human beings and that's Nietzsche's
92. 8:53fundamental point and he formulated that what 40  years before the damn Soviet Revolution when that
93. 8:59sort of utopianism was put into practice  with absolutely catastrophic consequences