Peterson On Ideology

 Dr. Norman Doidge wrote the foreword for Jordan Peterson's book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS. He points out on Pages xiii and xiv that Peterson recognizes that archetypes and ancient stories in which humans play out the roles between these archetypes, these stories help us make sense of a bewildering, cold, strange world, and the unknown which frightens us near to death. On Page xiv, Doidge writes of Jordan working out what these stores mean for humanity: "And he shows that these stories have survived because they still provide guidance in dealing with uncertainty, and the unavoidable unknown . . . we all have to deal with the unknown and we all attempt to move from chaos to order."

I have watched videos of Jordan Peterson warning against falling for ideologies, which is a distorted, shrunken tale or variation on these ancient, internal archetypes and the stories that grew up out of them. The ideological narratives are twisted, mendacious, cruel, and misleading, and it demands that its followers be fanatics, true believers. Now worshiping an empty abstraction is what Max Stirner warned against in the 1840s, and in The True Believer, Eric Hoffer warns against worshiping a cause (an ideology). 

All three thinkers are ontological moderates: reality is rarely one way or the other, but, instead, it is a mixture of everything. Therefore, a false, reductionistic narrative or ideology is totalistic, simplistic, and intolerant, and to be repudiated.

Let me quote Doidge some more on Page xiv: "Maps of Meaning was sparked by Jordan's agonized awareness, as a teenager growing up in the midst of the Cold War, that much of mankind seemed on the verge of blowing up the planet to defend their various identities. He felt he had to understand how it could be that people would sacrifice everything for an 'identity,' whatever that was. And he felt he had to understand the ideologies that drove totalitarian regimes to a variant of that same behaviour: killing their own citizens. In Maps of Meaning and again in this book, one of the matters he cautions readers to be most wary of is ideology, no matter who is peddling it or to what end."

My response: Peterson seems insightful in speculating that humans require a narrative, a meaning pattern to explain the world. If this involves religion, fine. If this religious appetite is twisted and distorted, this mangled story morphs into a dangerous, poisonous lie or ideology that ruins all addicted to it. Somehow, a religious narrative has been hijacked by some ideologue or guru, inverted and mangled into a vicious, destructive narrative, not fit to serve as a means of communicating with God.

Doidge continues: "Ideologies are simple ideas, disguised as science or philosophy, that purport to explain the complexity of the world and offer remedies that will perfect it. Ideologues are people who pretend they know how to 'make the world a better place’ before they have taken care of their chaos within. (The warrior identity that their ideology gives them covers over that chaos.) That's hubris, of course, and one of the most important themes of this book, is 'set your house in order' first, and Jordan provides practical advice on how to do this."

My response: I like that Jordan reveals that fanatics have not dealt with their inner chaos, and yet feel that entitles them to boss around the rest of the world, and Hoffer warns about this too. To improve the world is mostly achieved as each individual self-actualizes and individual-lives; were most adults to live that way, most problems would disappear, thus requiring little collective action or solutions to solve global problems, thus eliminating the requirement for ideologies and ideologues to take over governments and impose their Procrustean solution on free people.

Doidge continues: "Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is not match for the complexity of existence. Furthermore, when their social contraption fail to fly, the ideologues blame not themselves, but all who see through the simplifications."

My response: I concur 100%. It is immoderate to not have a story, a cause, a metanarrative that explains how the world works: with no story, we cannot survive, stay sane and thrive—our living in chaos inevitably degenerates into personal nihilism.

It is immoderate to worship one's story or ideology: to worship an abstraction is a spook according to Max Stirner, and it is a lie, false knowledge and makes it followers become evil as they spread it by the sword. We need to teach young people that any ideology, religious, scientific or secular, is a perversion of the religious impulse to devise a story that explains existence and our place within in, and our relationship to its creator.

As each future young person maverizes, she is then most impervious to allowing a demagogue at the head of an ideology to beguile her into being his follower and worshiping him, even willing to sacrifice herself and die for him.