You can't have a value structure without a hierarchy. They're the same thing because a value structure means one thing takes precedence over another.
Interpretation
Values are prioritized in a hierarchical structure, indicating that some values are more important than others.
In this quote, Jordan Peterson emphasizes that values are not merely a collection of ideas or beliefs; they are organized in a hierarchy. This hierarchy implies that certain values will take precedence over others, influencing decision-making and behavior. Recognizing this structure is crucial for understanding how individuals prioritize their goals and aspirations.
In practice
This quote can be used in a leadership workshop to discuss the importance of prioritizing values in decision-making.
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.
My mother would write letters when I was away at camp and say, 'There's an Ann-shaped space around the house. Nobody fills an Ann-shaped space except an Ann.' I'm convinced we all have a God-shaped space in us, and until we fill that space with God, we'll never know what it is to be whole.
Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.
All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.
We do not celebrate the death of our enemies.
No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts off from its youth severs its lifeline.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
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