Jordan Peterson touches on what I believe gives any relationship - partner, friend or work mate - a better
chance of some longevity. Of course, this same advice could increase its brevity; but, I believe bringing that
relationship to an end, sooner, will also be for the best, if that's the outcome.
This is not easy; but, it seems
to me it's the only way forward, in any meaningful and worthwhile sense.
I would like to move on now.
I would like to talk about truthfulness, in Chapter eight and rule eight you write about the lie, the life lie
Mm-hmm.
It's, you say someone living a life lie is attempting to manipulate reality with perception
Based on what you write in the chapter
Couldn't one say that a large part of the population in 21st century
Live a life lie because they avoid conflict. They say what they think pleases their spouses or their bosses instead of telling the truth
Oh, yes
If they do what is convenient at every given moment instead of saying what they really want.
Yes
Well, perhaps not at every given moment, but they certainly fall prey to that temptation. It's conflict avoidance. Yeah, well as a psychologist
psychologists deal with a variety of problems, but I would say the two most common normal problem our
anxiety and depression that would be one class and the other would be lack of assertiveness and
and lack of assertiveness subsumes the, the
Problems that you just described people won't stand up for themselves and say what they need and want and then they don't negotiate
properly and you might and they're avoiding
They're avoiding conflict in the short term, which is a form of lie by omission and what that means is that problems
Aggregate around them that's often why people end up divorced, you know?
People will stay married for a long time and one partner will say to the other eventually
Well, I've been unhappy for the last eight years
it's like well that
might have been something to announce in increments
Say weekly or even daily
Long before everything accrued to the point where the only possible solution is a catastrophic
dissolution there's a lot of conflict involved in setting a relationship straight
You have to let each other know who you are because you're different that's going to cause conflict
You're going to conflict about
Whose job takes priority and win you're gonna come conflict have conflict about how to spend your free time about how to raise your children
about how to manage the domestic economy
About what disciplinary strategies you should use about where to vacation about what to eat like all of those things have to be negotiated
through and all of that requires truthfulness so that each of you know
What the other is wants and will be satisfied with and conflict. It's very very
What would you say the only thing more exhausting than telling the truth and
Negotiating with your spouse is not doing it and waiting for the divorce
Both of them are difficult, but I would recommend the former.
Yeah, we if we talk about the workplace
What do you want to say to those viewers that regularly, you know?
Agree with their bosses and instead of telling the truth. What are they doing to themselves in the long run?
Well, they're taking the soul out of their work. You know, let's say well just imagine for the sake of argument that you
encounter one annoying thing a day at work a small annoying thing and then let's say
for the sake of argument that you could have a little battle about that and
Improve it somewhat or you could just say it doesn't matter. It's like probably doesn't matter today
Oh, it might not even matter tomorrow
But if you make a thousand decisions like that
Which you will do or three years then now you have a thousand things
Bugging you at work, and if you wait for five years then it's well
Then it's 2,000 things and the same thing happens with your kids and the same thing happens in your marriage those things
Accrue and they turn into a monster.
Yeah you but you would agree that conflict avoidance is practical sometimes
People do it just go along with their...
No, I don't actually I think in a marriage for example, there's almost nothing so small you shouldn't fight about it
But the question is what does fight mean? It doesn't mean win
Like if if you and I have a relationship, let's say it's a business partnership
it doesn't really matter if we have a relationship and we have a
Difference of opinion we need to battle it through
But the purpose of the battle isn't so that your viewpoint prevails or that my viewpoint prevails because either of us might be wrong
The purpose is to engage in the conflictual exchange of opinion so that we can see a joint path
forward to peace and
that's and that's the thing is like if you're fighting with your wife the first thing to remember if you're fighting with your wife is
You have to live with her
So maybe beating her in the argument is not the right outcome. What the right outcome is is saying what you have to say
listening to what she has to say and see if you guys can come up with a
Mutually agreed upon solution that will make the problem go away
so if we explore conversation
Between people in society a lot of these conversations are full of falsehoods and lies
People are nice to people they dislike
They're being fake. because we try to be friendly. Yeah, I mean, it's
Is it in fact morally wrong to live your life in that way?
Yes. Yeah it is it is I mean
you can't avoid the
Necessary conflict of negotiation towards peace. If you avoid it all that it means is that it accrues and multiplies.
It's the oldest one of the oldest stories we have the oldest stories
We have point to that as part of the prime moral doctrine, you know, it's it's it's a form of impulsivity, you know
If you only do what you want in the moment
Impulsively that there would be consequences of that into the future which is why you shouldn't act impulsively
Impulsively avoiding conflict is exactly the same and people, same problem
people know this, you know, if if someone's casually rude to you in, in, a bus driver for example, and
You'll, you, there's always the possibility that you'll stew for hours over what you should have said
It's like when someone
Transgresses against you let's say you have to say what you have to say. You don't have to say it as if you're the
totally, correct
authoritarian tyrant you can say it in the spirit of of
inquiry inquiry
You know because there's always the possibility that you're wrong and you want to listen
This is also why you want to listen to your partner your, your, your spouse even if what they're saying to you is
You find very annoying
It's always possible that they're right and you should listen because if they're right then they can stop you from
Heading for trouble in the future.
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