Jordan Peterson: Inequality and hierarchy give life its purpose | Big Think
Jordan Peterson: Inequality and hierarchy give life its purpose
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Criticized by the left and claimed by the right, Jordan Peterson’s ideas are a defense of traditional morality and leading a purpose-driven life. The Canadian psychology professor has become a YouTube and IRL sensation, garnering tens of millions of views seemingly overnight. His claim that hierarchies help individuals create goals for themselves (and that goal-setting is a good life skill) seems to deprioritize equality—at least equality of outcome—as the primary goal of society. Such counterintuitive ideas run throughout his newest book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
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JORDAN PETERSON:
Jordan B. Peterson, raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta, has flown a hammer-head roll in a carbon-fiber stunt-plane, explored an Arizona meteorite crater with astronauts, and built a Kwagu’l ceremonial bighouse on the upper floor of his Toronto home after being invited into and named by that Canadian First Nation. He’s taught mythology to lawyers, doctors and business people, consulted for the UN Secretary General, helped his clinical clients manage depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia, served as an adviser to senior partners of major Canadian law firms, and lectured extensively in North America and Europe. With his students and colleagues at Harvard and the University of Toronto, Dr. Peterson has published over a hundred scientific papers, transforming the modern understanding of personality, while his book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief revolutionized the psychology of religion. His latest book is 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Jordan Peterson: If you don’t have anything to look up to, you don’t have anything to do, right? A lot of the meaning that people find in their lives is purpose driven. And in order to put effort into something, to work towards something, you have to assume axiomatically that what you’re working towards is better than what you have. Because why else would you do it?
And there’s a relationship, like, if it’s way better than what you have, it’s obviously proportionally difficult. So you try to balance difficulty with positivity, let’s say, something like that. But you’re always aiming up if you’re aiming. And if you’re not aiming then you don’t really have any purpose, and that deprives your life of meaning, and that’s not good because if your life is deprived of meaning then what you’re left with is the suffering. It’s not neutral, right, it’s negative.
So now the problem with having to aim up is that produces a hierarchy, because if you posit and aim then everyone arrays themselves along a hierarchy of “better at it” to “worse at it”.
And it doesn’t matter—if you create basketball as a game, 100 years later you create people who are hyperspecialized at basketball and they’re great at it, and virtually everyone else is bad. So it doesn’t matter. As soon as you produce a value proposition, you produce a hierarchy.
The problem with a hierarchy is it produces inequality. The problem with inequality is it produces resentment. Right, but you can’t get rid of the damn hierarchy just because they produce inequality and resentment, because then you don’t have anywhere to go. So that’s not an answer.
Okay, so let’s say you’re trying to deal with the fact that you have to put up with a hierarchy if you’re going to have any values. Well, how do you escape from the resentment trap? And the answer is you do an intelligent multidimensional analysis of your life.
It’s like, by the time you’re 30, I would say, you’re a pretty singular person. You’re unique and particular and your life has multiple dimensions. And you’re more or less successful—or not—along many of those dimensions.
But it’s a completely ridiculous game to pick someone else arbitrarily, who’s doing much better than you on one of those dimensions, to assume that you’re a failure because of that, or that the world is unfair because of that, without knowing in full detail all of the rest of the elements of their lives. I mean, look, we’re absolutely awash in stories of unhappy celebrities mired in interminable divorces or in affairs or in addictions. And that’s par for the course.
It’s not helpful. It’s helpful to have a goal. It’s necessary to have a hierarchy. It’s not particularly useful to compare yourself to other people…
To read the full transcript, please visit https://bigthink.com/videos/jordan-peterson-improve-your-life-quit-resenting-inequality/
@bigthink
August 17, 2025 at 8:47 am
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@jefflee4001
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
I am a mathematician. What Peterson overlooks is that hierarchies are not necessarily pyramidal. He always uses his hands to make a pyramid shape when he speaks about this. But there are may hierarchical structures that have no maximal element and many that have more than one. In mathematics we use the term "partially ordered sets". In this well established and straight forward branch of mathematics we have notions of maximal elements and greatest elements (not the same thing). He doesn't show awareness of this. On top of that, there is no reason to think that the mind has a stable set of ordered values. We have a changing probabilistic ordered set of values that are in competition and depend on context. They reconfigure themselves in real time. In short, there is no unchanging highest value (thus no definitional single "god" even for a fixed individual). It is a fatal flaw in his thinking. If I had to make a judgement, I would say that much of the time Peterson's "highest value" is rabid right wing political distrust for institutions (ironically what makes western culture function) as well as a distrust of the idea of charity and justice. He does this with what we might call an untethered conceptual pareidolia. He sees and invents "deep" patterns that serve his conservative rhetorical values. He sees ancient mystical patterns in everything to the point of thinking that any ancient image that resemble a spiral or helix must me referring to DNA!! Just nuts. He is in some sense hallucinating.
@ThePrimeDirective-r7o
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
wow has this clip not aged well…
@Orlandomatheus
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
"Hierarchy" is not a word; it is a game. Its board is the collective mind, and each piece has been carefully positioned to protect the king.
"ι" (I): Proclaims authority. The "I" raised as the immutable center of power.
"ιε" (yes): Signifies acceptance, an implicit and unquestioned consent.
"ιερ" (sacred): Masks domination with the mantle of the father, legitimizing control under the guise of the divine.
"ιεραρ" (father): A centralized figure embodying paternalistic authority.
"ιεραρχ" (hierarchical authority): The flow of power ascending like a ladder, legitimized by a pact of command and obedience.
"ιεραρχία" (hierarchy): An inverted triangle of justice, where each step bears the weight of the next, transforming the oppressed into oppressors and sustaining an untouchable apex. Wouldn't true balance be a system without vertices?
This semantic construction whispers a silent truth:
"I accept the sacred, paternalism, authority, and the system."
@Zelp789
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
What a crock.
@GameLevelEditor
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games
@JackyNodles
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
We need hierarchy to look up to others or a better version of ourselves and hence have purpose to reach that ..
I believe we already have purpose we don't assigne that to ourselves since we are not the one who created ourselves and this whole thing is an excuse to excuse our greed and desire to power and knowledge and hierarchy due to our lack of security which is due to our diying weak belief of god and justice
You are smart mr.jordon but you have a heart for a reason it's not just there to pump blood it's their to drive your brain torwards the truth unless you ignored it and thought your way randomly you will eventually convince yourself with lies and continue living in this endless human competition or hierarchy .
The truth is in islam
Allah says
"If there were gods in them(heavens) except allah , they would be corrupted"
This applies to us too
If we forget whom created us and own everything is one
We will compete against each other until we corrupt the earth with killing and wars thats the final result of disbelief and hierarchy.
@zman6513
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
This guy is a neoliberal grifter
@BillYip-rb5wz
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
This is very touching. Peterson is at his best when he is at this comparatively calmer state of mind when he is not being attacked by vicious opponents. Thanks, Mr. Peterson.
@ramiel___6042
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
Not true. Family and social relationships give life purpose 🥴 this is just mental
@Rakscha-Sun
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
Hierachy 101: How beeing a slave gives your life purpose.
@GuyLakeman
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
if the meaning of your life means looking up skirts then you are far from growing up and becoming an adult
@GuyLakeman
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
hierarchies have destroyed over 400 empires and monopolies in recent history …. those who succeed form teams that lasted tens of thousands of years pre greed based religions
@mkkrupp2462
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
It’s not hierarchies that matter, they will always exist. It’s the EXTENT of the inequality and the EXTENT of power that those at the top have over others. And also whether there are social or legislative impediments to the efforts of those underneath to advance. And that is why people with similar problems ( unions, black people, women, disabled) have often worked together to overcome these impediments. Of course, Peterson calls this ‘identity politics’ but it’s often because of those very identities, that they’ve been discriminated against.
@soggmeisterlasagnagarfield
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
2:15 – 3:00
He's unintentionally dismantling individual responsibility. He implies that there are elements in your life affecting success that are outside of your control. He can't even stick to the neolib script without making contradictions. JP is not legit.
@polarcorpuscle2941
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
Hierarchies are good and natural. What's important is making sure those hierarchies are flexible and oriented in a way that minimises resentment and enables the best among us.
@gabe2o2
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
In my opinion, there are many ways for one to realize their purpose. As such, I can’t agree with the blanket notion inequality and hierarchy are the things that give a person purpose. Inequality and hierarchy could be a catalyst, but only one of many
@RK-nq3fj
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
This is such beautiful advice. And the beauty is, this works no matter what your goal is. Your goal can be to become rich, lose weight or even be a Buddhist monk – doesn't matter, this advice is the best. Incrementally work on getting better, and you get to define what better looks like.
@Thanatology101
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
This man is such a fucking knob. "We need hierarchies to create meaning." What drives people at the top then? If there's no place to rise then the only way to get higher is to push more people down. What about people that aren't motivated by hierarchy? Also it's super weird to proclaim hierarchies as useful for improvement while simultaneously saying you shouldn't compare yourself to people in the hierarchy and instead compare yourself to your potential future self . . . Which obviates the need for a hierarchy.
Look Jordan. Our problem isn't the lack of a hierarchy. We already have one, it's deeply entrenched, and it sucks because it's filled with self-serving twatburgers like you who sit up high telling people below how great the hierarchy is. What we need is change, and hierarchies resist that because the people at the top like very much for things to stay the way they are and generally the only way to get things done is to pull those people down and fucking eat them.
@markrodriguez4879
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
What an elitist pr!ck.
@gorillax1374
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
What a load of psuedo-intellectual, intentionally ahistorical crap: a handbook for justifying tyranny and greed. Rigid hierarchy and rampant inequality are not natural or good. They are the dystopian consequences of an originally egalitarian society becoming so large that the accounting and policing functions of reciprocal altruism networks have been captured by a bunch of brutal, self-interested thugs. Why do you give this villain a platform? People like him are destroying our society.
@anotherbadseed
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
To further elaborate on my comment: Hierarchy isn't "a thing". Every individual hierarchy is an individual thing, to be assessed for its onw validity, iondependently of the necessity of any other hierarchy. Peterson just does not like this particular truth.
@anotherbadseed
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
It took me approximately 2 seconds after Peterson's usual glibly placed error at 25 seconds "you have to assume (axiomatically) ….. what you are working towards is better than what you have"
No,. You don't, you cretin. That is the same erroneous reasoning that 75% of your silly arguments rest on. (The political correctness as legislation arguments being a terrible idea, I will grant you, and I agree there. But that's it, as far as most of your theoretical political-sociological pronouncements go.)
Clear as day disproof: Coal-miners worked every damn day of their lives in the 1880s KNOWING that it wasn;t going to get any better but that by that continual drudge they could just keep feeding their kids. There were NO axiomatic assumption there, you clown (or liar) – take your pick. End of.
And also the end of this stupid argument, but past that idea – here's the thing: Those coal-miners were locked in that place in 1880 by an unopposed hierarchy. That changed in the 1920s 30s. Get it? It's not that difficult. Try thinking a little past the stupid glibness, Jordan, if you facy yourself so clever. Proof your own thoughs before you commit them to the public record.
@robertbuttry5233
August 17, 2025 at 8:48 am
This is the worst person to talk about any quality in our society. She is the biggest propaganda when it comes to being a big head.
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