Pederson was talking to Prager at the May, 2019 Prager U Summit. I just watched the video, and took 5 pages of notes which I want to lay out in this blog entry.
For most of my life, I have believed that people were not born good, but depraved. My psychology professor, a blond 40 year old Leftist and likely atheist secular humanist at NDSU in the fall of 1972 for doubting human goodness She sneered, and said that is a conservative position, implying that only a backward hick would be so unenlightened and conservative.
I have written in many places in my books since then that the radical conservative is one that believes that Satan exists, that it is a wicked world, that we are born depraved, and that we must struggle to be good and make the world a better place, and work our way back to God. It requires courage, tenacity, persistence and firm will to become and remain a good person. It must be the person's primary goal despite disadvantages attached to such self-positioning.
What comes out of this discussion is that true conservatives deny that human nature is good. All other putative conservatives remain liberal regarding this fundamental point, this first principle. Both Prager and Jordan are conservatives like I am regarding accepting this first principle of ethics.
Dennis introduces Jordan by allowing that his (Prager's) infallible goodness detector notified him right away that Jordan was a good man. As an aside, I too have that goodness detector and it works for me most of the time and explain why I dislike and disassociate with some people that seem fine to those around me, and I am blamed as unsociable if a conflict should arise, as groups revile me.
Jordan did not like being called good but he knew 40 or 50 years ago that humans have a deep capacity for evil, and that he personally had that same capacity. I too have long accepted that I am capable of great cruelty.
Jordan was horrified at human wickedness. Jordan advises us to read history as the dance of perpetrators, not victims or heroes. Jordan warns that if he accepts being called good, it becomes dangerous to believe that one is good, and no longer capable of cruelty or sinning. Jordan tries not to be evil--that is negative goodness I say, but positive goodness is trying to be and do good.
Dennis responded that Jordan has and would agree with Dennis that adopting the conservative, tragic view of life (we are sinners and the world is filled with sin and suffering) is the only way to be happy. Jordan urges people to know their full abilities, penchants and capacities, to know who you are in order to be happy and complete.
Dennis asked Jordan if he believes in God. Jordan did not like that question but did answer it in a round-about way. Once a person accepts that the conditions of human life are so shocking and tragic, one could despair and lose faith that goodness and God exist.
Jordan does believe in God but counters that belief in the divinity is not just so saying, but it must be lived and acted out in many complex but unitary behaviors as a whole person affirming God's existence. Jordan warns that to truly believe in God would require that one be maximally truthful and maximally courageous. If we developed this set of active behaviors, living at 70% of our talent potential, it would be a remarkable testament to our belief in God.
Dennis at graduate school had an epiphany that the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom. Because his bright professors did not believe in God, they had no wisdom and brainwashed their young students with nonsense. Jordan responded that if you do not believe in God, you will believe in anything, a quote from Chesterton.
Jordan suggests that humans require a narrative metaphysic to hold it together, predicated on something transcendent and absolute, or must settle for something else or nothing (nihilism I add).
Jordan refutes that argument of Rationalists or Atheists like Richard Dawkins anticipate that if they can rid humans of silly superstitions, then humans will become Rationalists like him, but Jordan disagrees.
Humans are only superficially rational, but are deeply irrational, deeply flawed and barbaric, requiring that narrative metaphysic with moral instruction to prevent all from being at war constantly with all, tearing each other apart. Our only hope is to see the divine spark in others as persons of dignity and worth, and then to treat them humanely in accordance with this recognition.
Jordan knew that Satan existed, so he concluded that out of logical necessity, God exists (I agree totally,).
Dennis and Jordan discuss that because America is so good, peaceful, free, tolerant and wealthy, Americans come to regard humans as good, because we are too sheltered against evil.
Jordan argues that war is the default position in the world, not peace. The miracle that is America where we live in peace, prosperity and liberty is to be preserved, though the Leftists vehemently dissent from this perspective. I believe that the Left is a mass movement out to wipe out America, white, patriarchy and all Western values, so their revolution is dangerous, wicked and completely harmful and destructive.
Dennis laments that 50% of young Americans view America as a rotten place, and that the West is an oppressive patriarchy.
Jordan responds that America is not perfect but is pretty good. He urges that people be grateful for how good they have it here (I suggest that it is about as close to Utopia as it is as can ever be constructed as a culture, society and political arrangement.).
Jordan castigates Academics so utterly without gratitude (and without wisdom or truth, I add) about their native culture. Dennis wants to strip universities down, and mostly abandon them because they are destroying the young and society itself. Jordan reluctantly agreed. Jordan accuses Academics of sickening America with their postmodernist, collectivist, toxic doctrine.
Jordan asserts that the controversy about suppressing and discriminating against conservatives and their presence and free speech on campus is really not the core issue. The core issue is that free speech is individualist free speech.
Jordan argues that the great fundamental truth of Western thought is sovereignty of the individual. The sovereign individual is made in God's image. (We are coming close to my theological conclusion that the Mother and the Father, the First Couple of the World, are its most powerful and talented Creators/Individualists/Individuators.). Jordan dismisses the PhD collectivists, the hordes that hate him and seek to see him fired from Academia and totally ruined, as furious because he has exposed what they are up to, teaching the West and the young that the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the individual is an absurd phantasm, so there is no unique self, no soul, that has an original, significant and valuable message to share with others, as freely offered free speech.
Leftists, Academics and Collectivists seek to wipe out individualism and wipe out the West. If all anyone on campus is is a member of a group, then group speech, controlled speech is all that matters, as individual speech or free speech is curtailed, silenced and deadened.
Jordan insists that we as individuals do have the capacity to communicate intelligibly as individuals, sharing the fruits of our thinking and experience, our unique individuality as we express this in free speech to others free spirits that use their free speech and communication to exchange ideas and negotiate a mutual peace.
The Progressives Nihilists in Academia want individualism wiped out and free speech eliminated. There is only group speech from one group expressed against group speech from a vying group. All that is left is raw power grabbing of group versus group, a Hobbling nightmare.
Pederson criticizes Academics as cowards unwilling to live as individuals to bear up and face the world as a private person of courage, curiosity and wisdom. They seek to turn all youths into weakened snowflakes that cannot make it on their own be themselves or think for themselves.
Jordan warns that if evil exists and something went wrong, it is your fault, not anyone else. (Sounds like Isaiah Berlin about total personal responsibility, I suggest). Jordan challenges the audience that the world would be a lot better, if each of you were a lot better.
He predicts that tyranny (a mass of lies) can be overthrown by individuals telling the truth. If you do not speak up against soft totalitarians soon hard totalitarians will be kicking your door in.
I enjoyed this video. It just reminds me that the world severely needs and is just about ready to receive Mavellonialist philosophy.
No comments:
Post a Comment