If they do happen—is it the opposite of that? Well, maybe you could say it depends on the degree to which they happen. And it's a continuum. How thoroughly can they happen? Well, we don't know, because you might say, "How good of a job do you do of encouraging your children to live in truth?" Well, that's part of the answer to this question. And the answer likely is that you don't do as good a job of it as you could. So it works out quite well, but you don't know how well it could work if you did it really well, or spectacularly well, or ultimately well or something like that. You don't know." - Meaning and context.">

If the mother doesn't make the sacrifice, then you get the horrible Oedipal situation in the household, which is its own catastrophic hell. If the maternal sacrifice isn't there, then that doesn't work. If the paternal sacrifice isn't there, if the father isn't willing to put his son out into the world, then that's a non-starter because the kid doesn't grow up. And if the son isn't willing to do that, then who the hell is going to shoulder the responsibility? So if those three things don't happen, it's chaos, it's cataclysmic, it's hell.
If they do happen—is it the opposite of that? Well, maybe you could say it depends on the degree to which they happen. And it's a continuum. How thoroughly can they happen? Well, we don't know, because you might say, "How good of a job do you do of encouraging your children to live in truth?" Well, that's part of the answer to this question. And the answer likely is that you don't do as good a job of it as you could. So it works out quite well, but you don't know how well it could work if you did it really well, or spectacularly well, or ultimately well or something like that. You don't know.

— Jordan Peterson

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "If the mother doesn't make the sacrifice, then you get the horrible Oedipal situation in the household, which is its own catastrophic hell. If the maternal sacrifice isn't there, then that doesn't work. If the paternal sacrifice isn't there, if the father isn't willing to put his son out into the world, then that's a non-starter because the kid doesn't grow up. And if the son isn't willing to do that, then who the hell is going to shoulder the responsibility? So if those three things don't happen, it's chaos, it's cataclysmic, it's hell.
If they do happen—is it the opposite of that? Well, maybe you could say it depends on the degree to which they happen. And it's a continuum. How thoroughly can they happen? Well, we don't know, because you might say, "How good of a job do you do of encouraging your children to live in truth?" Well, that's part of the answer to this question. And the answer likely is that you don't do as good a job of it as you could. So it works out quite well, but you don't know how well it could work if you did it really well, or spectacularly well, or ultimately well or something like that. You don't know." in the context of ""Bible Series V: Cain and Abel: The Hostile Brothers"" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Jordan Peterson" (Quotes, Lectures, Biblical Lectures) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Jordan Peterson

About Jordan Peterson

Jordan Bernt Peterson (born June 12, 1962) is a Canadian clinical psychologist at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999), 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2017), Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life (2021) and We Who Wrestle With God (2024)