If you're not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you're going to be punished for them, then what's your motivation to continue?
Interpretation
The quote questions the value of maintaining one's principles if they lead to punishment instead of reward.
Jordan Peterson's quote highlights a crucial dilemma that individuals might face in life: the challenge of adhering to their virtues in the face of adversity. When good actions result in negative consequences, it creates a significant motivation crisis, making one wonder whether their efforts toward integrity and righteousness are worth the sacrifice. This brings into question the nature of reward and punishment in society and challenges the individual to consider the purpose and impact of their moral choices.
In practice
Use this quote in a motivational speech about the importance of staying true to one's values.
Part of the reason there's an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you're in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let's say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.
I don't tell people, 'You're okay the way that you are.' That's not the right story. The right story is, 'You're way less than you could be.'
Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.
If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.
Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.
Strive for perfection, but settle for excellence.
When you are going through hell, keep on going. Never never never give up.
It's okay to work for someone else; not everyone is cut out to own a business, and even so, working for someone else is a chance to learn how to both be an employee and an employer.
Don't ever give up on ability. Don't give up on a player who has it.
Most of the stuff I try in a game, in the moment, I have supreme confidence I'm going to execute it.
Even as a fierce competitor I try to smile.
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