When we bargain with the future, we produce variants of our fu | Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Official Telegram Channel

When we bargain with the future, we produce variants of our future selves, alternative visions of who we could be, and project the real-world outcome.

When we sacrifice, we are bargaining with the future (alternatively: establishing a covenant with the future): we will give up this set of possible selves/possible futures now to propitiate God and ensure success for ourselves and those we value as we move forward.

We offer up something valuable, concretely valuable—self-evidently valuable—here and now, taking the chance that if we do so the future will make itself manifest in a more positive manner That is quite the risk, given the self-evident current value of the thing-to-be-sacrificed—one that carries with it a further mystery: with what or Who are we bargaining?

With the future, certainly; with our future self, certainly—but even more deeply, with potential itself, or the spirit of potential.

Furthermore, such bargaining has to be predicated on faith. That is ensured, not merely suggested, by the fact of our ultimate, unbounded and finally irreducible ignorance.

You have to move forward in faith.