In this video, Jordan Peterson explains that beauty calls to us outside the faculty of rational criticism. There are experiences that we have in life that our outside of rational criticism, and we need to attend to them. Jordan Peterson describes the action of listening to beautiful music and the way it grips you. The critical mind could pop up and say, “Well, what are you doing? This is just noises. It doesn’t have any significance.” But the wiser part of you says, “You’re out of your depth…listen to the music and experience what happens.” Beauty calls you to a higher motive being. And Jordan Peterson shares that to be engrossed in beauty and meaning is more powerful than perhaps death itself.
Also, Jordan Peterson says that there is a divine aspect to beauty and that it is true whether you’re an Atheist or not. This is because the divine element is the depth of the experience which is independent of propositional beliefs.
Lastly, Dr. Oz asks Jordan Peterson why we find it important as human beings to make ourselves more attractive for each other. Jordan Peterson expresses that many of these markers of beauty can be associated with health and youth, but it is also the reflection of the ideal human form. A call to health. A call to physical appearance. And also a call to figure out what is “attractive”.
Also, Jordan Peterson says that there is a divine aspect to beauty and that it is true whether you’re an Atheist or not. This is because the divine element is the depth of the experience which is independent of propositional beliefs.
Lastly, Dr. Oz asks Jordan Peterson why we find it important as human beings to make ourselves more attractive for each other. Jordan Peterson expresses that many of these markers of beauty can be associated with health and youth, but it is also the reflection of the ideal human form. A call to health. A call to physical appearance. And also a call to figure out what is “attractive”.
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LearningTranscript
00:00 - What is the importance of beauty?
00:01 Why do we innately desire to make ourselves
00:04 attractive to each other?
00:06 - Well, beauty, I have a chapter in my book,
00:09 "Beyond Order" called,
00:11 "Make One Room in Your House as Beautiful as Possible,"
00:14 which is an elaboration of the idea of cleaning your room,
00:18 and which is something I've become famous for saying,
00:20 I suppose, or infamous, or parodied, satirized.
00:23 - Mothers around the world love you for that.
00:24 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:26 So, well, Dostoevsky said, "Beauty will save the world."
00:31 And Solzhenitsyn, another great Russian author,
00:37 wrote a remarkable essay on beauty
00:40 as a consequence of that statement.
00:41 And interestingly enough, just this week,
00:44 I have a translation team working in Russia,
00:47 translating my videos, some of them, and also my book.
00:50 And they were talking to me about that book,
00:53 and said that they're translators who are,
00:55 there's many of them on a team,
00:57 and they're doing a very good job, as far as I can tell,
00:59 really liked that chapter.
01:01 They thought it was the best chapter.
01:02 And I thought that was great,
01:03 because I think that's the best chapter in both books.
01:06 So-- - You do?
01:07 - Yes, I do.
01:08 There was a chapter on beauty, I was most happy with that.
01:10 And beauty, the thing about beauty is that it calls to you
01:14 outside of that faculty of rational criticism.
01:17 So I'll tell you a story.
01:18 I had this client, he was a real brilliant architect,
01:22 great artist as well, and really creative guy.
01:26 But he had an incredibly critical intellect,
01:30 and it was always after everything.
01:32 So he was atheistic and very rationalistic.
01:34 And he couldn't figure out how to not believe
01:38 that life was meaningless and pointless.
01:40 And when those critical ideas would occupy
01:43 the theater of his imagination, it would just take him out.
01:46 He would become depressed and nihilistic and unable to work.
01:49 But if he could not think that and concentrate on his art,
01:53 then he was alive.
01:55 And you might say,
01:55 "Well, he's just ignoring those criticisms."
01:58 It's like, no, no, that's not right.
02:01 Because there are experiences that we have, thankfully,
02:04 that are outside the domain of rational criticism.
02:07 And we need to attend to them,
02:09 because the critical intellect,
02:10 which helps you discriminate, is a wonderful thing.
02:12 But it's an authoritarian devil that's cynical
02:15 beyond belief, and that undermines everything.
02:17 And we all fall prey to that.
02:19 And that's particularly true of people who are,
02:22 you know, maybe exceptional in their verbal intelligence.
02:25 It's a gift, but also a curse,
02:27 'cause it saws the branches that they sit on off
02:30 all the time. - Right, you fall.
02:31 - Yeah, well, but then you think about music,
02:35 and beautiful music, and the way it grips you, you know?
02:38 And so you're listening to music,
02:41 and you don't, the critical mind could pop up and say,
02:45 "Well, what are you doing?
02:46 "This is just noises.
02:47 "It doesn't have any significance."
02:48 But the wiser part of you says,
02:51 "You're out of your depth.
02:53 "Shut up.
02:54 "Listen to the music and experience what happens."
02:59 And music is the harmonious interplay of patterns,
03:02 and you fall into that pattern harmoniously
03:06 if you're listening to music,
03:07 and that sets you right with the world.
03:10 And that's a real thing.
03:11 It's real.
03:12 It's more real, hopefully, than anything else.
03:14 Maybe it's even more real than suffering.
03:17 That's what we could all pray for,
03:18 that that capacity to be engrossed in beauty and meaning
03:22 is more powerful than,
03:23 perhaps more powerful than death itself.
03:26 And so, and you have to watch yourself
03:30 to decide if that's true rather than thinking about it.
03:33 Just notice what happens when you're engrossed in something,
03:36 and beauty calls you to a higher mode of being.
03:41 And it does that underneath rationality,
03:44 and that's partly why Dostoevsky said,
03:45 "Beauty will save the world."
03:46 That's what Solzhenitsyn commented on.
03:48 It's like, it's the antidote to rational cynicism.
03:51 It's part of the, there's more,
03:53 but it's part of the antidote,
03:54 and it's more powerful than rational cynicism,
03:57 experientially, in an embodied manner.
04:00 And so beauty calls to you with,
04:04 it's a representation of the essential goodness
04:06 of the world, and it calls to you to be more than you are,
04:10 to adopt a mode of being that's engrossed in meaning,
04:14 and an orientation towards the good.
04:18 You know, when the fathers of the Christian church
04:20 were trying to understand God, to conceptualize God,
04:24 one conceptualization is the sum of all good.
04:29 So does that exist?
04:33 That's not the issue here.
04:35 What's the highest value?
04:37 It's the sum of all good.
04:38 It's the integration, say, of beauty, and truth,
04:41 and justice, and all these partial goods.
04:44 And so beauty is a window into that highest good.
04:48 It's a pointer to it.
04:51 And so, of course it's vital,
04:52 because what could possibly be more vital
04:54 than a pointer that is immune to rational criticism
04:57 to the higher good?
04:58 How could anything be more important than that,
05:00 except the higher good itself?
05:02 And so there's a divine aspect to beauty,
05:05 and that's true whether you're an atheist or not,
05:09 because the divine element is the depth
05:11 of the experience, right?
05:13 And that's of religious significance.
05:16 And this is independent of propositional beliefs.
05:19 Well, does beauty, do you believe in God?
05:22 No.
05:23 Does beauty have a embodied effect on you,
05:26 an emotional effect, a motivational effect?
05:28 Yes.
05:30 Okay, well forget about your criticism.
05:32 Focus on that.
05:33 There's something to that that's not trivial.
05:35 It's certainly not secondary,
05:38 like who cares if things are beautiful?
05:39 It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
05:42 We care.
05:43 And then we could talk about this economically as well, too.
05:47 You know, one of the things
05:48 that's so absolutely stunning about Europe,
05:50 it's not limited to Europe,
05:52 but it is absolutely stunning,
05:53 is there's so much beauty there that human beings created,
05:58 especially architecturally, but not only architecturally,
06:01 in the domain of pure art as well.
06:04 And then you think about all the people around the world
06:06 making pilgrimages to Europe to see that beauty,
06:09 'cause that's what it is.
06:10 They think they're tourists.
06:12 They think they're out to be, I don't know,
06:13 rejuvenated, revivified.
06:15 It's a holiday, it's entertainment.
06:17 No, no, it's a spiritual journey.
06:19 And they're called by the beauty.
06:21 Even the cathedrals themselves, for example,
06:24 are so stunningly beautiful
06:25 that they can sustain themselves in some sense,
06:28 even in the face of that onslaught of rational criticism,
06:31 just because of what they implicitly represent
06:36 as creations in and of themselves.
06:38 And they are pointers to the divine.
06:40 There's absolutely no doubt about that.
06:42 - So back to your patient for one second.
06:43 Did it help him to have this insight?
06:45 - Oh, definitely, absolutely.
06:47 You know, we differentiated between these.
06:50 Look, you've got this rational demon in your mind,
06:52 essentially, an autonomous spirit in some sense
06:55 that is useful and powerful, but unbelievably critical.
06:59 It's not your friend, not all the time.
07:03 When is it that you can tolerate your life best?
07:06 'Cause he was suffering a lot.
07:07 He had very severe depression.
07:08 He was really suffering.
07:10 And so it was a process.
07:15 It was the process whereby he consulted himself.
07:18 I wasn't trying to convince him of something.
07:19 It was an investigation.
07:20 It's like, watch yourself for two weeks.
07:22 When are things better and when are they worse?
07:25 Well, they're better when I'm making representations
07:28 of the community that he was making,
07:30 a model of this little town he lived in
07:32 and investigating its history.
07:34 - Art, beauty.
07:34 - Yeah, yeah, definitely.
07:35 And he was very good at that sort of thing.
07:37 And he was very engrossed in that,
07:38 although then he'd think about it.
07:40 He'd say, "Well, why am I doing this stupid thing?
07:42 "It doesn't really matter."
07:43 - So let me take you to the next step, though.
07:44 Why is it important for us to look our best?
07:47 Why do we focus on it so much?
07:49 I mean, the amount of effort that women in particular,
07:52 but even more men these days as well,
07:54 to spend to make sure they look their best.
07:56 And much of this imagery is, in a way,
08:00 reflecting what we would look like
08:01 if we were fertile and vibrant and young, right?
08:04 So rosy cheeks, lips that are reddish,
08:07 again, blood going there 'cause you're interested.
08:10 The big eyes, again, excitement.
08:12 Eyelashes accentuate that.
08:14 All these elements of the modern world
08:17 are not just coincidences.
08:19 People are hardwired.
08:21 Now, as a physician, I always thought that external beauty
08:23 was a barometer of internal health.
08:26 And in fairness, the quality of your skin
08:28 is a pretty good reflection of how healthy you are.
08:30 - As is your symmetry.
08:31 - Symmetry is another good example.
08:33 What was it like for you in utero?
08:34 I mean, was everything working correctly on the outside?
08:37 'Cause that means probably everything's
08:38 working correctly on the inside.
08:39 But you're saying there's even more to that.
08:42 Then maybe we actually,
08:43 by representing the best we can be on the outside,
08:46 we're perhaps focusing on that same on the inside.
08:48 - Well, we're practicing that,
08:50 at least to some degree, right?
08:51 To put yourself together.
08:52 I mean, women will say that I have to go put myself together
08:55 and they mean to adjust their appearance.
08:57 And some of that, that can be manipulative.
09:00 It can be overstated.
09:02 It can be a burden that women have to carry.
09:05 There's no doubt about that.
09:06 But there's all these other things happening as well.
09:08 And some of it's, in some sense, extremely brutal
09:11 because, as you said, markers of sexual beauty in particular
09:15 do tend to be associated with health and youth.
09:18 And so if you're not healthy and you're not young,
09:21 that's reflected in your appearance.
09:22 It's pretty hard on you, you know?
09:24 And so it's no wonder people object to that,
09:27 as the primary marker of someone's significance,
09:29 but we are biological creatures as well.
09:31 But there is something underneath that as well.
09:33 It's like some of it is the reflection
09:35 of the ideal human form,
09:37 celebrated in sculpture and in art across the centuries.
09:40 And a call to approximate that to the degree
09:43 that it's possible in your own life.
09:45 And a call to health and a call to physical fitness
09:48 and a call to, well, trying to understand
09:52 what it is that's attractive.
09:54 You know, I mean, why do women reject men?
09:57 Well, because they're not Jesus Christ.
10:00 Really, that's why.
10:01 I mean, that's a crazy thing to say,
10:03 but women have a lot at stake
10:05 when they're trying to pick a mate
10:07 because they want someone who will stick by them
10:08 and be as good as possible for them and their children.
10:12 They need someone who's really together
10:14 to do that properly.
10:15 And so they reject men who don't approximate that ideal.
10:19 Well, is it Jesus Christ?
10:20 It's like, well, you can replace that
10:21 with whatever ideal you might see fit,
10:23 but it's the same issue.
10:25 And so we are trying to approximate an ideal.
10:27 And there is some of that.
10:29 So in Revelation, Christ comes back as a judge.
10:34 He's very merciful in most cases in the gospels.
10:37 He comes back as a judge.
10:38 And part of that ideal, and every ideal is a judge, right?
10:43 Every ideal is a judge.
10:45 So you say, well, no judges, okay?
10:47 No ideals, okay.
10:49 Well, no ideals, well, no direction, no meaning.
10:51 You throw out the judge, you throw out the meaning,
10:55 or you throw out the positive meaning
10:56 'cause you're still gonna be left
10:57 with pain and suffering and terror.
10:59 That's a terrible thing, you know,
11:02 to understand that judgment is associated with value.
11:05 But of course, you have to discriminate
11:07 between what's highest and lowest.
11:09 And you do that all the time when you act.
11:11 It's built right into the act of perception.
11:13 And it's a precondition for action.
11:15 There's no escaping judgment.