Mark Manson and Jordan B. Peterson: Relationships and Responsibilities

Kind of what I'm critical of in both of my books is people just taking the cultural definitions of success and doing good... at face value and not really questioning: 'If I do achieve these things, will that actually solve my problem? Will that actually make me any happier? Will it bring any more meaning to my life?'

Often, the difference between somebody being depressed and somebody not is something as simple as getting a job or making a new friend or moving out of your parents basement—it's actually very basic things that have compounding effects.

We kind of invent metrics for ourselves to define what success is going to be, and I think, for a lot of us, our default setting is to define our metric by whatever the people around us are doing or have recently done ... If you're not consciously questioning that, it can get you into trouble.

When you live in a society where information is no longer scarce; where there's essentially more stuff for you to consume, and understand, and learn about than is humanly possible; the most obvious question becomes 'What is worth pursuing? What is worth learning about? What is worth trusting and believing in?'

I think people, in lieu of religion, they're taking worldly values—things like politics, cultural issues, social group identities—and behaving religiously around them, adopting kind of religious belief systems around them, and that's extremely concerning to me.

The more people that you take to bed, the more you're with one person—and that person is yourself because all those relationships are exactly the same. The fact that they happen to be different bodies is trivial compared to the depth of realization that you obtain by getting to know one person really well.

The Flat Earth Society has grown by like 1,200% over the last few years. To me, that kind of says everything, right? ... If you were a flat Earther 50 years ago, all your friends and family would kind of laugh at you and tell you you're ridiculous, and you'd move on with your life. But now, there are all sorts of communities, and groups, and YouTube channels that you can hop onto, and they'll sit there and tell you that you're right.

The more desperate you are for something to hope for, I think the more liable you are to just grasp at anything that comes around and just dive in headfirst, and I think that can get people into trouble.