Video summary
A recent report from The Harvard Graduate School of Education highlights a severe crisis among young adults aged 18 to 25, with 34% reporting feelings of loneliness and significant percentages citing achievement pressure, lack of purpose, and confusion about life direction as negative influences on their mental health. Jordan Peterson notes that while much attention has been paid to teenagers, the transition into adulthood is where difficulties mount for this demographic, who report roughly twice the rates of anxiety and depression compared to teens. He argues that a significant portion of these issues stems from a secular liberal Protestant worldview prevalent in therapy circles, which conceptualizes mental health as an internal state carried around in one's head rather than something dependent on external social structures. This perspective encourages individuals to define their own identity arbitrarily, ignoring the reality that others must voluntarily accept or reject such definitions; consequently, those who cannot find voluntary acceptance face a bleak existence unless they resort to force, which is ineffective and unsustainable. Peterson contends that mental health in young adulthood requires establishing long-term stable relationships, specifically marriage, as a precondition for successful adaptation rather than viewing identity as something isolated within the mind. He distinguishes between sanity, defined by commitment to others and integration of sexuality into a lasting relationship, and insanity or immaturity, which he characterizes as impulsiveness focused solely on immediate gratification without regard for tomorrow. When individuals reduce their sense of self to what they want right now, particularly driven by lower-level desires, they enter a cycle of aimlessness that leads to despair. This approach treats mental health as subjective validation rather than investigating how one should be properly embedded in social hierarchies at every possible level, which provides the necessary identity and purpose to protect against anxiety. The discussion further explores the dangers of reducing human sexuality to mere sexual desire for short-term gratification, a strategy observed across animal species like fish but fundamentally different from humans due to our high-investment reproductive strategies involving long dependency periods. Peterson argues that separating sex from relationship leads to two distinct types of people: those in one-night-stand scenarios who often develop psychopathic, narcissistic, or sadistic traits because they use others for short-term gain, and those committed to long-term relationships. He cites the example of Russell Brand, a charismatic figure with fame and unlimited access to sexual gratification through alcohol and cocaine, who ultimately confessed to experiencing despair, anxiety, hopelessness, and legal troubles as his past actions came back to haunt him. This illustrates that indulging in short-term binges inevitably leads to crossing lines repeatedly until consequences manifest, leaving individuals damaged and unable to form healthy connections with others who are also seeking genuine fulfillment rather than transactional encounters. Ultimately, Peterson critiques the modern "self-esteem movement" where life becomes entirely about satisfying one's immediate wants, leading to desperation and loneliness because it attracts only those willing to play that same destructive game. He emphasizes that good aims and goals must be situation-independent, socially inclusive, and sustainable over the medium to long term; otherwise, they remain self-centered projects that fail to integrate with a broader social reality. By voluntarily adopting levels of hierarchical responsibility within family, community, and society, individuals construct an identity that is robust against anxiety and despair. The podcast concludes by contrasting this view of mental health as relational and responsible with the prevailing notion of it being merely internal or subjective, urging young adults to seek validation through meaningful commitments rather than isolated self-definition.
Read the full video transcript
I wanted to bring this to you so
interesting so recent report was
released by The Harvard Graduate School
of Education detailing the drivers of
anxiety for young adults aged 18 to 25
34% reported feelings of loneliness 51%
said achievement pressure negatively
impacted their mental health 58%
reported lacking meaning or purpose in
their lives in the last month 50%
reported their mental health was
negatively influenced by not knowing
what to do with my life there has been
much examination of the well-being of
teens aged 14 to 17 not much has been
known about those occupying the critical
young adult years and yet young adults
report roughly twice the rates of
anxiety and depression as teens the
young adults are not
okay yeah I believe that I saw even with
my own kids that the the mo like when I
was a
kid probably the time between 13 and 15
was the most difficult transition but I
saw that become older by the time my
kids my kids are 30 now basically by the
time my kids were young adults I could
see that that transition into adulthood
was the place where the difficulties
were starting to
mount I think perversely that the
therapeutic world has a fair bit to do
with this partly
because therapists who are basically
secular
liberal
Protestants that's a good way of
thinking about them tend to
conceptualize mental health as mental as
subjective right it's like mental health
is something you carry around in your
head like you carry around your identity
that's why we have these ridiculous
ideas that you can just Define your own
identity I am whoever I say I am well
obviously you're not because other
people what other people have to go
along with your game they're buddy and
they're either going to do that they're
not going to do it or they're going to
do it voluntarily or they're going to do
it by force if they're not going to do
it you're screwed if you have to use
Force that's not going to work and if
you want them to do it voluntarily then
it's not going to be all about you
obviously even no four-year-old can find
someone to play with if he always gets
to pick the game okay
so why might young adults be lost well
part of it is that they're thinking
I'm not trying to be judgmental of a
whole generation it's a it's a form of
thought your mental health isn't
dependent on you that's not the right
way to think about
it you I don't think you can be mentally
healthy in the absence of a long-term
stable relationship so you have to be
married let's put let's let's make that
part of the precondition for successful
adaptation as a young adult you have to
be married so you have to establish a
relationship with someone that
integrates sexuality that's there for
the long run because there for the long
run is the same as
sane there for tomorrow there for the
next minute that's not sanity that's
impulsiveness that's aimlessness they're
the same thing if it's what if it's all
about what you want right now or more
accurately all about what something in
you wants this moment that's the
definition of immature Insanity you have
to commit so you commit to someone else
you commit to your family you commit to
your community like there are multiple
levels of identity that stretch out into
the social world and voluntarily
adopting those levels of hierarchical
responsibility gives you an identity it
gives you a purpose it protects you from
anxiety it does that in all sorts of
ways like you know you said earlier that
one of the things you do is seek for
validation and you you related that to
uncomfortable experiences you had when
you were very young well it might not be
precisely that you're seeking for
validation you might be properly
investigating how you should be embedded
in a social
hierarchy at every possible level it's
like well people think their mental
health is something that they just carry
around in their head and that if they
just got the way they looked at the
world right or if other people just
played their game that all of a sudden
they'd be meant healthy it's
like there's no difference between
thinking about yourself and being
miserable technically if you if you if
you look at you can you can
group descriptive statements about
yourself
statistically all the all the
descriptive all the descriptors that are
reflective of self-consciousness load on
negative emot otion can you not think
about yourself in a positive
way probably not really
not well let's take that
apart you like doing your podcast and
you feel positive about it okay but your
podcast isn't about
you right so if you're thinking about
how you're of utility to a broad number
of people you know maybe you would take
some satisfaction in that but that isn't
exactly thinking about yourself is it
it's thinking about the relationship
you've established with other people and
it's a relationship of responsibility
why do you like your podcast you can
pursue what you're curious about but you
wouldn't have to do that publicly okay
so why do you do it
publicly for a few reasons first one
being that it keeps me accountable that
was one of the main reasons that it kept
me accountable because I knew that if I
didn't do it if I wasn't rigorous and
precise and and uh aligned with what I'd
said and done previously that there was
an external eye that's watching keeps
okay okay so well that's very
interesting so I would also say that's
not exactly about you that's about your
ability to live to establish Harmony
between what you say and the way you act
and the expectations that an
increasingly Broad Social Community has
a view as a consequence of what you say
and how you act okay that's not about
you that's about your nesting in a
social hierarchy right and so I think I
think you can and then you might say too
well maybe you're thinking about
yourself when you're establishing an aim
or a goal well not if they're good aims
or
goals because if they good aims or goals
and and I would say what good means
technically is an aim or goal that will
play out
well in the medium to long long
term across a multitude of situations
including many many people so the a
solution that iterates across
time that and that
is situation independent and that's
broadly socially inclusive is a better
aim right it's a higher aim because it
integrates more all right now you might
want to be setting up aims and you might
be pleased about how you're prog ressing
in relation to those aims but if those
aims aren't don't have the
characteristics that I just
described
then if the aims have the
characteristics I just described they're
not about you and then we could also ask
what do you mean about you exactly what
you are you talking about here you know
and so we play these identity games in
the modern world that are making people
anxious and hopeless and one identity
game is I'm defined by my sexuality okay
so let's take that I'm defined by my
sexuality okay but what do you mean by
your sexuality exactly do you mean the
opportunity to engage in sex like are
you reducing sexuality as such to the
act of sex okay let's say you are so now
what you're telling me is that who you
are is who you are when you're sexually
desirous that's what you've reduced
yourself to but it's even more than that
it's the kind of SE ual desire that
wants gratification right now with no
relationship whatsoever so not only have
you now reduced who you are to your
sexual desire you've reduced your sexual
desire to the minimal set of
preconditions that would satisfy it well
then the first question that might come
up there is why not just use porn it's a
lot simpler and the answer to that is
that is what people are doing well it's
no wonder that they're anxious and
Lonesome and aimless because they've
they've reduced themselves to to a
short-term desire they found the easiest
possible way of gratifying that and
they've abandoned everything that would
be a much broader conceptualization of
what sexuality would be if it was
embedded properly in how about a
relationship to start with and I'm not
just these aren't just opinions
so there are two different strategies of
reproduction broadly in the animal world
one is
zero
investment fish mosquitoes million
Offspring they all die but one right so
you can reduce reproduction in
mosquitoes basically to sex and you make
a million mosquito Offspring all you
need is one to survive problem solved
okay on the opposite end of the spectrum
literally are human beings because we
have the longest dependency period of
any animal by a large margin we have a
high investment strategy y sexual
reproduction strategy so whatever sex is
for human beings isn't you're off and
that's over that's not what it is for
human beings it's embedded in a
relationship now you might say well we
could pull sexuality out of the
relationship and just indulge in it for
the pleasure okay so now let's forget
about all the other animals now we've
got two types of human being we've got
the one night stand human being
repetitive one night stands and we've
got the long-term committed relationship
human being and then we might ask okay
what are the personality characteristics
of the people in those bins so let's go
to the short-term one night stand
sequential relationship types okay who
are they Psychopathic narcissistic
mellan and sadistic all one night stand
people if they don't start out that way
they're going to end that
way right because you can't use your
yourself or other people for short-term
gratification look the definition of a
psychopath is someone who uses someone
for short-term
gratification okay so it's definitional
right so and then you might say well I'm
not like that I just like sex it's like
yeah but if you practice that for five
years you're not going to become what
you practice you know
and I talked to Russell Brand about this
a little bit on and I can say this
because it was on his podcast so it's
not like this is secret you know Russell
had what Andrew Tate promis as his
followers he had Fame he was
charismatic and he had more or less
unlimited access to short-term sexual
gratification okay in combination with
you know the chemicals that make that
even more likely alcohol and cocaine
let's
say so what are the consequences well I
asked him what were the consequences you
had this he said uh despair anxiety and
hopelessness right but but not just that
because you know Russell got himself in
trouble here month and a half ago just
about took him out well it was his past
coming back to haunt him like and he had
to scroll through his psyche and see you
know well and with all these short-term
relationships these
short-term sexual gratification binges
that I indulged in did I ever cross the
line well the answer is well you're
going to have like 200 encounters like
that you're not going to cross the line
when you're drunk when you're on cocaine
you're going to cross a bunch of lines
and then it's going to come back and
haunt you and
so it's very interesting to see in our
culture back to the hopelessness and
despair that you were mentioning that's
characterizing young adults life it's
like well it's all about me that's the
self-esteem movement but then me becomes
it's all about what I want and then that
becomes it's all about what I want right
now then it's it's what the lowest part
of me wants right now and to hell with
everyone else it's like
okay how are you going to play that game
without being desperate you're going to
be desperate as soon as you start
playing that game and the other thing
it's even worse than that because you're
going to end up with
the Jeremy the the the porn star problem
anybody you're not going to be very
happy about being with the people who
want to play that game with you because
they're not going to be the people that
are really going to make you feel that
life is worth living they're going to be
the people especially on the female
side women who are willing to take
advantage of themselves for short-term
sexual gratification those aren't happy
women they're they're usually damaged
women and if they're not damaged when
they start playing that game they're
going to be plenty damaged by the time
they're done with it we'll get back to
talking to Jordan in one minute but
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Jordan you will love the over 3-hour
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