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Here is what is actually happening. YouTube and podcasts are revolutionary technologies. They bring long-form complex philosophical and psychological discussion to the very large audiences who have the time and inclination to watch and listen but who may not do the same with books, which always have been and remain a minority taste, unfortunate as that may be. Perhaps five to ten times as many people can and will listen and watch as would read. People can use found time (exercising, commuting, working around the home) to listen, and that means they have time that once wasn’t usable in that manner to illuminate and enlighten themselves. And there seems to be a vast, untapped market for precisely that desire. And both these new media forms (YouTube and podcasts) appear to produce very loyal audiences, who are also, as it seems, likely to want to see the people they have been watching and listening to in person. And what happens in these personal lectures?

I talk directly to the audience. No notes. No scaffolding. I tell them, as individuals, what problem we are here to address. It’s generally something of deep existential significance: the tyranny of society, the terror of nature, the ignorance and malevolence that too often characterizes the individual and the family. We talk about the darkness of life, and of suffering, and of betrayal and nihilism and hopelessness and the desire for revenge that all of that can produce. And then we extract some light out of the abysmal depths. There is no discussion of happiness as the goal of life. Happiness, welcome as it is, is a side-effect, an unexpected benefit, a bit of the grace of God. If it comes your way, open your arms to it, embrace it, and enjoy it. But it won’t last. What we all need instead of happiness is meaning — the kind of meaning that will sustain each of us through the suffering that life entails, so that we can endure the self-betrayal and the dissolution of our intimate relationships through death and distance and the illness and aging and disappointment and death that await all of us, just and unjust alike. And I tell my audiences something they all know, but have not been able to fully understand or articulate: the sustaining meaning in life is to be found in the responsibility of life, the load we voluntarily decide to bear (and the heavier the better). We must take care of ourselves, as individuals, in a manner that makes us better for our families, in a manner that sets the community right, such that the ship of state does not list too far right or left and sails forth for the destination that is true and proper. We must take stock of our multitudinous sins, attempt to atone for them, accept the adventure of our life, and try to encourage nature to shine her beneficial face upon us, keep the tyranny of our social organizations at bay, improve our characters as individuals and, most importantly, face the unknown with truth and courage so that we can discover what is new and necessary and eternally redemptive. It is in this manner that we cooperate in the creation of what has always been envisioned as the City of God, stumbling uphill towards it as we can.

Jordan Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist and the author of the multi-million copy bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. His blog and podcasts can be found at jordanbpeterson.com.