Understanding Vision: Transforming The Chaotic Potential Of The Future

Below is an excerpt from Vision and Destiny, Dr. Jordan Peterson’s new series. You can Watch DailyWire+ has the exclusive deal

Let’s talk a little bit about vision. To begin, let’s look at vision technicalally. Vision is the ability to see the world around you. The world appears before you and you start to think. “That is vision.” Vision can also be interpreted as visionary. Visionary refers to someone who is able to see possibilities and not reality. We should start by assessing the relationship between vision in the narrow technical sense — what happens when you orient your eyes toward the world — and vision in the visionary sense. 

Your vision is what will guide you through life. To see the world in a way that allows you to achieve your desired goals, your vision will show you how to navigate through it. You might say, “Well, the world consists of what is.” If you observe what is, you can gain enough vision. You can observe what is and get a lot of vision. When you are walking up the stairs, your steps should be in line with the ones you see. But the problem with the idea that you can derive sufficient direction from seeing what is is that, what is changes — and that is really the problem of the future. So, you might say the past is fixed and you might say that the present is stable, but the future is indeterminate — and it is technically indeterminate. I don’t think you can use an algorithm to get from the present to the future.

The future is very different from what you have known. We are not just clockwork machines. It is impossible to be one because clockwork machines operate according to established principles and cannot determine the future. While the future may not be completely unpredicable because it is limited by the past, it is also indeterminate in many aspects. The future can be described as multiple paths forward. This is just one way to look at it. There are infinite directions that you can walk across a field. The future is where those possibilities exist before they become tangible. The world is a vast expanse of possibilities. “Well, I am confronting the actuality of the present world.” However, your apprehension is not really based on reality. The possibilities that exist in that space of the present are what you see. You deal with the possibilities; you deal with the future.

In a sense, I believe you could say that the past and present are finite, bounded, while the future is infinity. We can only see the future if we are in touch with it. This is where the infinite meets our finite. The infinite has to be somewhere, and it makes its presence known in the form of the future — and the future is what we envision. You can think about that neurophysiologically. Vision is used to guide us in relation to the current territory, but there is always a new territory. 

Now the question is: How do you open yourself up to possibilities? This might be what your conscious is doing, since it doesn’t have to pay attention to things that are already set. Everything that is predictable and already fixed you ignore. You actually attend consciously — so this is your reality — to that which is transforming or is most likely to transform because why otherwise pay attention to it? It is already a skill you have mastered. Unless there is an earthquake which is a transformation in the future, then you don’t need to pay attention. The floor is not important as you move towards the door. Actually, the concept floor was designed to ignore solid surfaces. It is an axiomatic assumption — the solidity of the floor — and most of the time, it is true (although not always). 

All that is predictable you can make unconscious. It disappears from reality in some real way. This is the horizon of transformation you are battling with. This is what your consciousness does. That is the essence of the human being: The spirit that confronts the possibility — or possibility itself — and then endeavors to transform that into habitable actuality that is good. This is the logos. That is the logos.