You Can Start By Cleaning Your Room Painting

“What you start to do is you start to tell and work out the truth locally, like within the domain of your actual competence. The world presents itself as a series of puzzles. Some of which you’re capable of solving and some of which you’re not. You have many puzzles in front of you that you could solve, but you choose not to. Those are the things that really weigh on your conscious. So I had this idea a long time ago because the world is a pretty dreadful place. Well what would the world be like if people stopped avoiding the things they knew they should do? The question is - how much are we contributing to the fact that life is an existential catastrophe and a tragedy? How much is our own corruption attributing to that? That’s a really worthwhile question. Things you leave undone because you’re angry, you’re resentful, you’re lazy, you have inertia. You consult your conscious and it says, “well that place over there could use a little work.” It’s the same as working on yourself. So you clean that up because you can. And then things are a little clearer around you. And you’re a little better off because you’ve practiced a bit. And you’re a little stronger. Then something else manifests and says, “well maybe you could take a crack at fixing me up too.” So you decide to do that. Then that gets a little bit more pristine. It’s humble because you’re not exceeding your domain of competence. Don’t be fixing up the economy, 18 year olds. You don’t know anything about the economy. It’s a massive, complex machine beyond anyone’s understanding. And you mess with it at your peril. Can you even clean up your own room? No. Well, you should think about that. You should think about that because if you can’t even clean up your own room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world?” - Jordan Peterson