Jordan Peterson: Lying Is Bad For You

Above is an old lecture on YouTube. In it, Jordan Peterson, the clinical psychologist and University of Toronto professor, talks about The Necessity of Virtue; why it is not only useful but also necessary for us and our society that we behave morally and act virtuously.

I have gone back to this lecture many times over the years, and it seems I learn something new every time. A lot of Peterson’s lectures are very dense; meaning he talks about a lot of very deep subjects in a short period of time. So it can be hard to catch everything that he says in one listening.

So, to simplify things and to emphasize some of the important points, I decided to write about some of the things I learned from this lecture. Among them, the real reason lying is bad for you.

I’m going to quote from the lecture, then follow it with my commentary. I hope you enjoy reading.

“We may occupy a more important place than we all think. And the consequences of our actions, our virtues or our lack there of, may echo far beyond what we want to believe”.

It might seem like the small things we do don’t make much difference in how things turn out on the larger scale in the world. Does it really matter if you lie about using an item when you’re trying to return it at the store? What about when you post a mean comment on social media? Or when you argue at length about your political stance knowing you haven’t done nearly enough research to be able to form a balanced opinion? It’s a drop in the bucket, so to speak. Right?

Peterson argues that it isn’t. In today’s connected world, relatively small transgressions like that have an increasingly long-lasting impact. The lie you tell to the cashier will cause her to lose trust in her society. Her lack of trust in the society will inform her actions, where she’s likely to also lie, to also cheat, because that’s the society she’s learning she’s surrounded by. Her learning is informed by your actions. The same applies to the mean comment on social media that contributes to a bully culture, or the mindless political arguments that contribute to the perception that there’s value in mindless arguing.

And above the larger societal effects, living untruthfully leads to disharmony and damages our personal lives. It breaks the very core of our psyche:

“If you lie, to yourself or to other people, then you corrupt the structure that you use to interact with being. You corrupt it. And if you corrupt it, then if you listen to it, it will guide you to the wrong way”.

When mentioning “the structure that you use to interact with being”, Peterson is talking about our intuition. Our intuition is the most valuable guiding mechanism that we are equipped with, and is based largely in our actions. Our actions inform our intuition, and our intuition informs our thoughts. Informed by our thoughts, we use our free will to take more actions, which then inform our intuition, and the cycle goes on. This creates a mechanism by which we constantly interpret the world and take action based on that interpretation.

Now, in our world, there are things that are, and there are things that aren’t. In other words, our world is comprised of what’s true, and what’s untrue.

This means that in order for us to be able to navigate our world properly and avoid pitfalls, it is crucial that we are able to distinguish the true from the untrue.

However, every time we lie, we introduce an element of the untrue into our guidance cycle, the one we discussed above. By lying, we are in effect breaking the very system we rely on for determining what’s true and what isn’t. By living untruthfully, we are dooming ourselves to a living with a guidance system that is shoddy, and unable to accurately interpret the world we are living in. If we rely on it, it will lead us the wrong way. And if we don’t relay on it due to it’s unreliability, we are very likely to rely on others, typically an ideology, a political party, or a cult, all of which largely feed on an absence of original thought and critical thinking in followers.

We can do better than that. It’s not easy. But nothing good comes easy. It’s time to get honest:

“If you’re honest, which is painful, you see that a lot of the things that you say aren’t real. You’ll see that a lot of the things that you do make you weak. You’ll see that a lot of the people that you associate with are probably not good for you. And then you have a lot of difficult choices to make”.

It happens gradually. As you feed more and more truth into the cycle of your guidance system, you’ll start to realize that a lot of what you say or do fill your core with an empty, weak feeling. You are actually feeling the weakening of your guidance system! Less truth means a weaker guidance system. Stop doing the things that make you feel that way. Stop saying the things that make you feel that way. We are a result of millions of years of evolution. Our bodies speak to us with the clear language of evolution, guiding us to a state of clarity and empowerment where we can function at our maximum capacity and strength. A weak system withers and dies. That’s why your intuition warns you when you act out of line with what’s best for you, when you act out of line with your personal evolutionary path.

It isn’t easy. But it’s worth it. Don’t you want to find out what you could be if your entire being was cleared of corruption and could therefore function at its maximum capacity?

“The wisdom that’s embodied in the totality of you, far outstrips rationality. And if you listen to yourself, and do the difficult things that your self tells you to do, the idea is you don’t have to compute the utopian future”

The wisdom is in your body, and in your intuition, and in your thoughts. Don’t make the mistake of assuming you can use only your rational thinking to get the best results in a situation. Life is not a math problem. It is a dance, and living well and properly is the highest of all art forms. A mastery in life is achieved when you realize you don’t have to force any of it. Things just flow naturally and fall into place.

But in order for that to happen you must have a reliable guidance system, and that starts with telling the truth.

There is of course a lot more that Jordan Peterson talks about in this lecture. These were the points that stood out to me this time around. I really appreciate your time if you’ve made it all the way down here. Please let me know if you enjoyed this content, and if you’d like me to write similar things in the future.

Live well and truthfully.

-Tim