Jordon Peterson on Switching Jobs, Transcending Suffering, and the Moral Responsibility to Pursue what is Meaningful

Transcribed below are a two excerpts from interviews with psychologist Jordan Peterson in which he speaks about the importance of having a purpose in one’s life.  The first excerpt is from Dr. Peterson’s 2018 interview with Thorbjorn Thordarson of Iceland’s Channel 2.   I was going to stop there with the transcribing and then throw in this pertinent commentary on living as though money was no object by Alan Watts (the book, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is also relevant to this topic), but I came across another excerpt which complements the first one well.  This second exerpt is from Jordan Peterson's Oxford Union’s address and Q&A.

TT:  There is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient. What do you say to those viewers that don’t pursue their dreams and locked into their careers because they’re too afraid to take risks and pursue something meaningful? 

JP:  Well the first thing I would say is: you should be afraid of taking risks and pursuing something meaningful, but you should be more afraid of staying where you are if it’s making you miserable.  The first thing you want to do is dispense with the idea that you get to have any permanent security outside of your ability to contend and adapt.  It’s the same issue with children.  You’re paying a price by sitting there being miserable. You might say, “well the devil I know is better than the one I don’t.”  Don’t be so sure of that.  The clock is ticking, and if you’re miserable in your job now and you change nothing, in five years you’ll be much more miserable and you’ll be a lot older. 

TT:  But isn’t it a luxury to pursue what is meaningful?  Our viewers have mortgages, they have children, they have payments and loans.  It’s a luxury to pursue because we lack the resources. 

JP:  Remember now I’m not talking about what makes you happy.  It’s a luxury to pursue what makes you happy.  It’s a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful.  And that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  It might require sacrifice.  If you need to change your job – let’s say you have children, family, and mortgage – you have responsibilities – you’ve already picked up those responsibilities, you don’t just get to walk away scot-free and say “I don’t like my job, I quit.”  That’s no strategy.  But what you might have to do is you think, “This job is killing my soul, alright so what do I have to do about that? I have look for another job.  Well, no one wants to hire me.” Okay.  Maybe you need to educate yourself more.  Maybe you need to update your curriculum vitae, your resume. Maybe you need to overcome your fear of being interviewed.  Maybe you need to sharpen your social skills.  You have to think about these things strategically.  If you’re going to switch careers you have to do it like an intelligent, responsible person.  That might take you a couple years of effort to do properly…  I’ve dealt with hundreds of people in my clinical and consulting practices and we set a goal, we develop a vision, and work towards it and things inevitably get better for people.  So, it’s not a luxury, it’s difficult, it’s a moral responsibility – and it isn’t happiness, the pursuit isn’t for happiness.  

TT: It’s a moral responsibility to pursue what is meaningful.

JP:  Absolutely.  

JP.  You have to move from point A to point B in life, but point A is often a very difficult place to be because we’re fragile and bounded and mortal and limited, and because we know that.  So one of the implications of that, as many great religious traditions are at pains to illustrate or demonstrate or proclaim, is that life is essentially suffering. And I believe that to be a fundamental truth, but perhaps not the most fundamental truth, because I think the most fundamental truth is that despite the fact that life is suffering people can transcend that.  And partly the way they transcend that is pursuing things of value.  So if there is no value proposition at hand, then you have no meaning to justify the difficult conditions of your life, and that’s brutally difficult for people.  Nietzsche said, “He who has a why can bear any how.”  And you see – and I’ve certainly seen this as a clinical practitioner – that people who have no purpose in their life are embittered by the difficulties of their life.  They become first bitter and then resentful and then revengeful and then cruel.  And there’s plenty of places to go past cruel, that’s just where you start if you’re really on a downhill.