Jordan Peterson | What Regulates Death Anxiety?

Prof. Jordan Peterson describes what regulates us from death anxiety. Perhaps it is regulated in part by social constructs.

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00:01
One of the really useful things to
understand and this took me a long time
to formulate properly you know you hear...

00:07
The terror management theorists for
example and they have this idea that
you're you're meaning representation the
story you tell about the world regulates…

00:15
Your your death anxiety - it's something
like that but that's not right I mean
it's close to right and it's a smart idea.

00:20
It came from “Ernest Becker” by the
way who wrote a book called the denial
of death which is actually quite a good
book even though it's wrong you know
sometimes a book can be very useful it
it can be usefully wrong in that and
Becker's book is usefully wrong.

00:38
Because he [Becker] thought that it's the internal
representation of your belief system
that regulates your anxiety and that
anxiety is fundamentally in the final
analysis anxiety about death it's like...

00:50
Well okay fine it's a reasonable
proposition but that isn't how it works
you see it isn't my beliefs right now
that are regulating my emotion it's the
fact that I'm acting out those beliefs
which include implicit perceptions I'm
acting them out and so are you.

01:09
And so what you're doing and what I expect more
accurately what you're doing and what I
want you to do and the way I want you to
react to me that's working so it's the
match between my belief system and the
way everyone else is acting.

01:23
That is regulating my emotions - it's not the
belief system it's it's mediated by the
social culture and you see if you
understand this then you understand more
particularly why people are willing to
fight to the bitter end to protect their culture.

01:36
It's not a psychological
structure that they're protecting it's a
psychological structure and a
sociological structure simultaneously...

01:45
So the “social contract” is you have a set of
expectations and I have a set of
expectations they're actually desires
they're not merely expectations because
as living creatures were desirous we
don't just expect and so you desire an
outcome...

02:00
And I desire an outcome and we
agree to act in accordance with that
that's the social contract and so people
don't like to having that disrupted.

02:10
Well - it isn't because it psychologically
destabilizes them although it does it's
because it acts destabilizes them.

02:17
Right! if all of a sudden
we can't occupy the same
specified domain of territory it isn't
only that we're thrown into
psychological disarray although we will
be it's that we'll start fighting with
each other like and that can kill you.

02:34
It's it's no joke it kills people a lot
like it happens it can happen very
easily that a cohesive social group can
fragment along some fracture line of…

identity let's say and all hell breaks
loose you know that's what happened with
the Tutsis in the Hutu and in in Rwanda
you know and those things can get out of
control just so fast it's just
unbelievable and so and that wasn't
death anxiety that was death.

03:00
That's a whole different thing and that's the
other thing the terror management people
don't exactly get it's like it isn't
just that your culture and your cultural

03:10
Beliefs protect you from anxiety and say
anxiety about death even - it's that they
actually protect you from death as well
as protecting you from death anxiety.

03:20
I mean look it's warm in here it's cold
outside the fact that the culture is
intact means that you're not outside
freezing.

03:30
That's a hell of a lot more fundamental
in some sense than mere anxiety
although I'm not trying to under
play the role of anxiety that's a major
issue but there's something that's a lot...
Continued in comments...
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Original upload: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN2lydcu

Видео Jordan Peterson | What Regulates Death Anxiety? канала School of Peterson