JORDAN PETERSON: WHEN YOU HAVE BEEN CHEATED


In Dante’s Inferno when he outlined the levels of Hell so Dante was trying to get to the bottom of what constituted evil really, in this representation so it’s a work of psychology and he was thinking well there there are various ways to behave reprehensibly but there’s a hierarchy of reprehensible behavior and there’s something absolutely the worst at the bottom and Dante believe that it was betrayal and I think that’s right because you know one of the things that enables long-term cooperation, peaceful cooperation between people is trust.

So what happens if you’re in a relationship with someone and you trust them then you make certain assumptions about the past and you make certain assumptions about the present and you make certain assumptions about the future and everything’s stable and so you’re standing on solid ground.

Whereas the chaos it’s like you’re standing on thin ice, the chaos is hidden the shark beneath the waves.

Isn’t there, you’re safe you’re in the lifeboat but then if the person betrays you like if you’re in an intimate relationship and the person has an affair and you find out about it then you think one moment you’re we’re everything is secure because you’ve predicated your perception of the world on the axiom of trust.

And the next you’re in a completely different place and not only is that place different right now the place you were years ago is different and the
place you’re going to be in the future years hence is different and so all of that certainty that strange certainty that you inhabit can collapse into incredible complexity and you say well if someone betrays you think who were you because you weren’t who you thought you were and I thought knew you but I didn’t know you at all and I never knew you.

And so all the things we did together, those weren’t the things that I thought were happening something else was happening and you’re someone else and that means I’m someone else.

Because I thought I knew what was going on and clearly I don’t some sort of blind sucker or the victim of a psychopath or someone who’s so naïve, that they can barely live and I don’t understand anything about human beings and they don’t understand anything about myself and I have no idea where I am now.

I thought it was at home, but I’m not I’m in a house and it’s full of strangers and I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow or next week or next year.

It’s like all of that certainty that habitable certainty collapses right back into the potential from which it emerged and that’s a terrifying thing.

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