The Egoism Of Max Stirner

 A I have planned  to write a book on the ethics of such polar opposite egoists, subjective egoist Max Stirner versus objective egoist Ayn Rand, I figured it was about time for me to flesh out initially the egoism of Max Stirner. 

To accomplish this, I need to quote him in his own words, and I think an interpretation of me of his written worldview, a hint of the elusive thinking of this egotist, will come to light. 

I will quote from Stirner's Critics, by Max Stirner, Page 64, the translation by Wolfi Landstreicher: "This self-forgetfulness, this losing of oneself, is for us only a mode of self-enjoyment, it is only pleasure we take in our world, in our property, i.e. world-pleasure.

It is not in this self-forgetfulness, but in forgetting that the world is our world, that unselfishness, i.e., duped egoism, has its basis. You throw yourself down before a 'higher,' absolute world and waste yourself. Unselfishness is not self-forgetfulness in the sense of no longer thinking of oneself and no longer being concerned with oneself, but in the other sense of forgetting that the world is 'ours', of forgetting that one is the center or owner of this world, that is our property. Fear and timidity toward the world as a higher 'world' is cowardly, 'humble' egoism, egoism in its slavish form, which doesn't dare to grumble, which secretly creeps about and 'denies itself'; it is self-denial."

My response: Max Stirner is considered to be a psychological egoist, and I believe he is. He seems to divide people as egoists into two camps. The vast majority of people are duped egoists, self-enslaved to some cause, ism or abstraction, who define their self-interest as serving something, some ideal, abstract spook outside of themselves. Their unfulfilling, dishonest lives are the lives of objective selflessness, selflessly serving an objective cause. They enslave themselves to some vicious abstraction, some spook that does not exist.

Only a few like himself are not-duped egoists, or authentic, free, subjective egoists if I may so characterize his kind of egoism. He, the alert egoist, worships no abstraction: all feelings, all thoughts, all abstractions, all brands of morality, joinerism, lonerism, egoism and socialism are all rationalized fetishes that we are not supposed to worship or serve. They are to be the individudal's property, his source of power, property, ownership and ownness: he makes them and breaks them as he will.

His self-forgetfulness is suggesting to me that the self is consciousness that includes both thought and language, but these tools serve it, its needs, its objectives, its purposes: they are sufficient and necessary aspects of his consciousness but they are not the whole of his consciousness. They neither define him or conceptualize the Unique in a definitive, realistic, scientific way: they only distort an authentic revelation of the self to the self and to the world.

Those that I have read on Max Stirner would characterize him as perhaps a normative (though he finds prescriptive rules and character assessments false, oppressive, inaccurate, and offensive) and rational egoist too.

The duped egoist forgets the world is his, and that he is the center of the world and the center of his own world, and this is what being unselfish amounts to.  The cowardly, unselfish duped ego runs from his own power and invests his allegiance and fealty to a thing, world or cause out there which he regards as superior to him, and it is his duty to serve and defend it.

Stirner is an atheist as is Ayn Rand, but he is an amoralist: he is not against moral codes and labels per se, but he believes the Unique and its property are so free, so radically self-editing and self-creating and recreating in a universe, theirs for the taking if they elect to grab the world and make it their own, in the own image. There are no moral labels that apply to the Unique that are accurate, those hurled at the Unique ones as sinners, rebels, and evildoers, but those are Christian labels, not applicable or pertinent denies Stirner.

Ayn Rand, the atheist dogmatist is a normative egoist and a rational egoist. She is an essentialist declaring and averring that human nature is set, permanent, identifiable, assignable and is linguistically describable and morally blameworthy or praiseworthy.

She is an objective egoist with an objective epistemology, and Stirner is a subjective egoist with a most subjectivist epistemology, bordering on pure skepticism and solipsist self-isolation from others.

Still, he does believe in an external world and that there are other authentic Unique Ones that one can form a union of egoists with.

My Solutions

 I have never recovered from my astonishment, horror, and disgust how commonplace and ubiquitous evil is in and among people every day just going about their business. People are malevolent towards themselves and each other. To some small degree they know that they are doing wrong but choose to live in sin anyway because they like suffering more than enjoying life, and doing evil and tolerating evil all around one allows one to suffer to the maximum amount, and that is satisfying for most mixed-up people.

To some degree, nonindividuators/joiners/group-livers are so unenlightened, so steeped in a world of self and communal deception, and a social world of illusion and delusion, that they know they suffer, but are not more than semi-conscious of why they continue to live the maladaptive way that they do, or are even so asleep in the dream world that the Dark Couple have erected as a bubble of suffering around them, that they are largely unconscious to the fact as to how wrong and rotten their lives actually are.

I have never ceased to be amazed at the powerful, near universal, the consistent, rather global need for hundred of people that I have met over the decades, to seek power over others, and to lord their superiority over others, whenever they have the chance to.

As you know with me, I always start with my presupposition that people are born depraved. What this means is that they are selfless, group-oriented, mostly detest themselves and suffer an innate lack of a sense of self-worth or high self-esteem. 

When people do not like themselves, as they naturally do not, they are filled with hatred, anger, deceit (I am using Jordan Peterson's adjectives here.) resentment and bitterness. All that unhappiness, that despairing, that wretchedness needs to be exported to others (when one's nature is social and group-affiliation, exporting and dumping one's frustration upon neighbors is based upon propinquity.).

This frustration is exported to others in at least two primary ways. 

First, humans are addicted to unwholesome power, the power of powerlessness, the bottomless craving to rule others, to dominate them, to soul-rape them, to bend them to our will. When you add prejudices of a "superior" (a mere social convention or opinion) class, ideology or ethnic group or club membership of the haves/oppressors/victimizers over those belonging to "inferior" (again these labels are not objectively real) classes, unpopular or minority isms, outlier ethnic groups, or less prestigious clubs, then the powerful go after and attack, exploit, ridicule, persecute and exploit those less powerful, less well-connected. 

People rarely, though selfless to the core, do the kind and unselfish thing, and give someone less popular or less powerful a break, and do away with these bad, destructive social games of power and dominance. People love their negative power, want always more and more of it, and are unable or unwilling to set it aside, and make their inferiors, their new equals. 

Of course, those, in societal hierarchies, more powerful or more popular are sadistic towards those below them, and also are masochistic towards abusers above them beating them at their own game.

Second, one cannot feel superior over others unless one is superior in rank over others in some socially accepted framework or hierarchy, be it extended family, nuclear family, tribe, clan, neighborhood association, social clubs, workplace hierarchies, public, private, military, or ecclesiastical, etc. 

This need to feel a little good about oneself based upon whatever paltry or significant rank one can gain above others--that is a primary human motivation, and class structures cause needless suffering as well as malevolent abuse of those down below, or inferior in rank, as the perpetrators are then abused, and accepted that it is their lot to be abused by their superiors from above. Being joiners, nonindividuators and group-living are all existential stances that accompany the construction and maintenance of the majority of people populating established hierarchies.

Jordan Peterson is correct that we naturally live in hierarchies, but such existence sickens and corrupts us. Cruelty and malevolence wax strong in such settings.

Here are my solutions: if we can teach young people to love themselves, to discipline themselves, to seek to find pleasure and happiness--gained by growing in love, intelligence, godliness and talent expression, then they will learn to be living angels, to grow into great-soulness, to forsake craving superiority and rank over others, to seek to rob others of their power and liberty that are their natural rights, their natural gifts bestowed upon them by their Creators to be all that they can be.

As maverized individuators, living angels and supercitizens, young people can esteem themselves, esteem their neighbors and esteem God and the Good Spirits, and find fulfilled the two urges that biologically well up in them, and which have led to the downfall of many, countless generation of humans.

As they self-realize, and enjoy their personal, considerable application of their own, private, expanding power as they define themselves, developing their amassed power, wealth, skill and new thoughts without requiring to enslave a neighbor to rob her of her power to do her own thing on a grand scale.

As a generation of individuating, anarchist supercitizens and living angels constitute America as one huge classless class of mostly upper-middle class citizens, all of whom are strong, independent, smart, confident, superior persons of impressive accomplishments, they will be the best mix: their desire to be elite and to rule is met by their competition with themselves diachonically over time and their ratcheting up their competence, talent and excellence give them their feeling of elite status, without hierarchical domination of enslaved underlings.

And all will be roughly equal in status, liberty, public esteem, popularity, and magnificent, personal achievement, that equality is thus socially and legally reinforced as hierarchies are unnaturally flattened and limited to the greatest practical extent.

No longer, will the natural human craving of groupist, nonindividuating, selfless, self-loathing, insecure nobodies need to waste everyone's lives, inflicting great senseless pain, by anyone having power over anyone else, or craving or working to gain rank and superiority over others, and none seek it or reward or put up with such foolish ranking attempts.

Back Again

 Here I am harping again against Jordan Peterson's concept that talent is rare, and it is only or primarily those with the highest IQs that are creative, and we need to encourage and facilitate their expression of their individuality and pursuit of excellence for the sake of everyone.

These points are true as far as they go but I do not believe for a moment that talent is rare, and is a faculty enjoyed and demonstrated in substantive, meaningful ways only be the very brightest humans.

First, Eric Hoffer has amply and often demonstrated that original thinking, creativity, and innovation is the playground of misfits, and less talented people, introducing new technologies and new ideas to humanity. Hoffer seems to think that the novel tinkerers are, it is true, often less talented and the geniuses then push them aside and do great things with the novel approach. 

I would argue that those less talented people, as maverizers could not only introduce the novel and unique, but lay their case and work out in polished, systemic ways.

Second, look at new species of birds, insects and mammals that emerge slowly or quickly, evolving new behaviors and approaches to living and breeding, often clever and novel, but certainly these instinctive innovators are not that 'bright' by human standards. It indicates to me that average people, if they learn to self-realize, could by accident engender new techniques, forms of poetry, new technology, etc., just instinctively coming to them, not connected to IQ necessarily.

Third, each person is unique and special, and with the Mavellonialist social technology of maverizing, each person would bring their singular worldview to bear, and ingenious products of imagination and logic would shine forth for public perusal and review.

Fourth, on Page 233 of the book, The Syndicated News Article, Hoffer wrote this on April 5, 1970: "Those who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure  to a lack of inspiration or ability, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus, talent is a species of vigor."

Hoffer seems to be chiding the "untalented" that what they lack is not innate genius, so only a Mozart can just lay pen to paper, and compose an opera, pure, complete, and flawless in nonstop 9 hours of composing whilst the Muse is upon him.

Obviously, Peterson is correct in noting the higher the IQ, perhaps the greater the creativity but genius Hoffer looked at at his fellow workers and only saw raw, unchanneled, undeveloped talent burst at the seams everywhere crying for some approval, support and instilling of confidence that each person has something to offer.

Inspiration and surprising ability is commonplace and universal if each individual maverizes, has confidence in his raw talent and his unique point of view, and applies himself.

It is much more about hard work, patience, will and vigor. Perhaps if Hitler had kept at his painting, he would have found an artistic outlet and harmless sublimation of his sociopathic rage and hatred that would have kept him from taking revenge upon humanity for his failures and willingness to quit trying.

It could be that an innate great soul like Hitler, once he turned evil and sought only to destroy, the perversion of his creative impulses render him all the more successful as a Destroyer.

One should never cease maverizing, and that will to create is victory morally in itself, and something beautiful and original may yet come out of it.

Did Jordan Peterson Find God?

 Did Jordan Peterson find God, or did God finally reach Jordan Peterson, who is now a believer? I think Jordan has found some comfort and love of the Higher Power.

Now, I turn my attention immediately to Ayn Rand and Stephen R Hicks, both of whom respectively were or are atheists, and strict materialists.

I mention this to warn believers not to overdo it. During pre-history, and during the Pre-Modern times, faith ruled over reason, especially secular, scientific reason. That reign was too one-sided and cannot be repeated.

I am an ethical moderate and remind the faithful that their faith is holy only as long as their practice of it remains moral, and it is so easy to lose our way as people always were prone to do historically. This requires permanently that we critically need, in our midst as believers, secular competitors: we need atheists, scientists, our material culture, and all or most areas of research being undertaken strictly on a physicalist presupposition.

God the Mother and Father are not only artists, spiritual creators and feelers of rich sentiment, but they are mechanics, administrators, scientists and technicians. They believe in God, Satan, Fate, and they are also part atheist. The Divine Couple are wondrous precisely because they are not entirely self-consistent. It is the source of their strength and permanency.

The Divine Couple authored the natural law that the middle is the way, and this entails two consequences. First, a blended approach or point of view is more loving, truthful and incorruptible. True-believing and ideological purity are anathema to the Light Couple.

Second, the middle way has to be administered or allocated practically and actually in the everyday world in terms of power-distribution patterns. Power needs to be, for the most part (If it is concentrated in institutions, these hierarchies need to be potent, efficient, kept limited and monitored to prevent, slow down or halt the inevitable, predictable plotting and scheming by its corrupted, sickened, greedy, power-addicted functionaries seeking to gobble up society via subtle, quiet incrementalism and mission creep.)

The Father and Mother want and demand a complex approach to science, empiricism, and the material world, so that we not get out of balance, and turn religion evil, intolerant and fanatical.

I likely am not making myself clear and specific. It looks to me as if the Mother and Father would send a email to Dr. Hicks to believe in them and talk to them if he wishes too, but they know that he is doing good work and their work in his secular pursuits. They would bless his efforts, and just chide him to be morally kind, and aware of unintentional consequences to the science and technology that they unleash onto and introduce to the world.

They would bless and encourage his efforts.

There is an inherent moderation in the American/Enlightenment enterprise that the Founders tapped into. They were Christians and deists, they were religious and secular, scientific and sacred issues-interested all at the same time. They did rather preach some kind of separation-of-church-and-state in public affairs, public policy and in the operation of public, republican institutions (not in the Constitution?). They wanted state and church separated, but they also, contradictorily, urged the voters to be virtuous, educated, thinking voters and to be good Christians.

Analogously, roughly, that is what the Divine Couple want for modern Mavellonialist worshipers. They want room in society for strictly secular undertakings to be allowed, countenanced, underwritten, and permitted legally with divine blessing. Dr. Hicks et al need to free, unmolested and even entreated to continue do science to keep faith strong, challenged, and non-monopolistic, not absolutist, demanding conformity and group think.

In civil society, in the arena of scientific research, and technological experimentation, in secular gatherings and associations, in areas of commerce, the Mother and Father want the principle of separation of church and state to permeate all society culture, institutions, and conceivable settings.

Then, inconsistently, they would welcome the vast majority of citizens to worship whatever deity that they want to, or not, but the deity must be morally and spiritually good, and the citizens must be spiritually and morally virtuous, and that citizenry will run a decent, functioning, society that can be perpetuated and replicated in future generations.

Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk has now narrated at least two Prager U videos, and I liked what he told about college education not being for everyone, and that is where young people are lost, now becoming true-believing Progressives.

He apparently is actively recruiting young people not to go to college, or to reconsider attending university if they are on campus. 

I approve of his efforts, with one important qualifier.

Ayn Rand stands tall in promoting that each individual exercise her mental faculties to the maximum. We cannot think too much, too logically, be too eager to learn more, to ask why, what, when, why, really? and why not? We cannot learn enough or know too much, and we must be thinking originally and creatively as best we can, as much as we can, as often as we can, outside the box, every day of our lives.

Back to Charlie Kirk's ant-college movement. Formal learning, especially advanced formal learning is not if it ever was that much connected to advanced state of student learning, or the nurturing of intellectual giants.

We do want much intellectual decentralization, diversity of centers of learning, anarchism, outside of Academia, to occur. We do not want to wipe out Academia or end formal programs or their certifications, but we do want the university monopoly of prestige, authority, god-like status as experts in every field, and uniformity of thought, to end.

We may be anti-college as institutions,  but we are never, I say never, anti-learning, and Kirk must be careful to send that message to parents and students alike.

I envisage a generation of average citizens that are, each of them, intellectual giants, deep, subtle, practical, original thinkers. They may be formally educated or autodidacts. They may be polymaths or geniuses at one think, but a mass society of great-souled, individual-living, individuator-anarchist supercitizens, upper middle class on average in wealth, making money, fame, advances of all kinds, and living and enjoying life to the fullest in the America, this Jerusalem on the hill, a massive, sprawling country of constitutional republicans and capitalists, where all are welcome, and all are enjoined to enjoy their personal power and liberty, without depriving the neighbor of his share, or allowing him to rob them of their natural bounty from the Divine Couple.

For those that Kirk urges to abandon university, I offer in exchange and replacement, the life of the self-actualized, great soul and living angel, and that person will really use her mind, and enjoy the exhilarating awareness of what it is to know and understand how the world is and works.

The Tragic Sense Of Life Revisited

 A while back I was writing about the tragic sense of life being the useful precondition to understand the human heart and what it must face and muscle through before optimism can be deployed.

I was reading John Macquarrie's book Existentialism, Page 164, this morning when this phrase popped out at me: "On the whole, it has been 'the tragic sense of life' , as Unamuno called it (el sentimentio tragico de la vida) that has been prevalent among the existentialists; and the attempt to redress the balance and to encourage a more hopeful sentiment has come later and is less pronounced. Thus we shall consider first of all anxiety as a fundamental ontological affect, and this is probably most typical of existentialism as a whole. But so our account may be a fair one, we shall also take not of the different, more positive tendencies to be found in some writers."

The tragic sense of life is not the last word for a religious practitioner, but it is part of his metaphysical posture.

Now let me contrast this sense of gloomy orientation with a quote from Eric Hoffer's writing, from The Syndicated Articles, Page 233: "Man is the only young thing in the world. A deadly seriousness emanates from all other forms of life. The cry of pain and fear man has in common with other living things, but he alone can smile and laugh."

The tragic aspect of living is instructive, but our humanism, our faith in the Divine Couple, our association with the Good Soirits, these encounters restore our souls, and good news is in our ken and anticipation.

Destroy Them All

 Derek Hunter in his Townhall online editorial column announced that Democrats do not need to be defeated, but need to be destroyed because they are pure evil, and he is more right than wrong.

Now, let me quickly qualify what he said: we need to destroy woke Democrats not liberal Democrats (few of the latter even exist anymore) politically, not murder them or put them in concentration camps.

But neoMarxism and woke postmodernism are different names for the same extremist ideology, and they are so sick and perverse, that all of their ideas are not just wrong, but they are evil, and Hunter laments angrily.

Destroy them: Communism should never be allowed to be practiced anywhere, ever again. Marxism must be discredited completely and now.

There is no room for dialogue with these demons.

Suffering--Jordan Peterson

 On Page 43 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson addresses the issue of human suffering and white it occurs, and, he does not provide a definitive answer, probably because there is not one. As a man of faith, I do not  believe it is because God is cruel, indifferent or does not exist.

At times it may be connected to good luck or bad luck, or divine justice as a reward or punishment for what we have done, or it may just be random or pointless.

One thing that is true is that humans are finite, and vulnerable as Jordan points out, and somehow he credits our being vulnerable as linked to our suffering and existence itself, and seem like a wise take on it.

That we suffer and know loss, including death, sickness and hurt from malevolence from Bad Spirits, from other human beings or it is self-inflicted does introduce change into our lives, into Being itself. And it could be that without change or adjustment or happenings, the world cannot become, develop, grow, or improve, and this applies to each of us too. Our suffering, our loss, is that existential boundary line between past and future, and it is an opportunity and catalyst for us to become larger, more loving, stronger, kinder, smarter, more creative, or more talented, and these directly or indirectly may be gifts from God, openings in Being for us to go the next level, whatever it is.

Jordan writes: "Imagine a Being who is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. What does such a Being lack? The answer? Limitation.

If you are already everything, everywhere, always, there is nowhere to go and nothing to be. Everything that could be already is, and everything that could happen already has. And it is for this reason, so the story goes, that God created man. No limitation, no story. No story, no Being.  . . . But there's something to be said for recognizing that existence and limitation are inextricably linked."

God is pure freedom and Satan is pure slavery. The human being, part beast and part angel is free to become, limited enough to have room to self-perfect, and perfectible enough to enjoy the capacity to improve. That is freedom, that is living, that is exciting, that is free will being demonstrated, that is meaning and making a difference. That is being alive, and mattering, making a difference. It is a human blessing and a human curse, but it is still suffering, and the hurts is real as can be.

In-Group Vs Out-Group--Jordan Peterson

 On Pages 336 and 337 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson reports on the fascinating research done social psychologist Henri Tajfel. Let me quote Jordan: "Tajfel found that his subjects displayed a marked preference for their own group members, rejecting an egalitarian distribution strategy and disproportionately rewarding those with whom they now identified. . . .

Tajfel's studies demonstrated two things: first, that people are social; second, that people are antisocial. People are social because they like members of their own group. People are antisocial because they don't like members of other groups."

My response: Jordan goes on to theorize about in-group preferencing along with concurrent out-group hostility towards rival groups or tribes.

These, I believe are just animal, instinctive, herding patterns. Chimps seem to love their own groups but kill interlopers from rival troops from neighboring territories.

For humans to evolve socially and individually, we need to do two things. We need to individual-live more than we group-live, and we all need to self-realize more than we are group-oriented. 

These two artificial adjustments will be good for societal peace and harmony, as well as allow people freedom, means and opportunity to develop each her own talents and abilities.

Rule 12--Jordan Peterson

 On Page 35 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson states Rule 12: "Pet a cat when you encounter one on the  street."

Be Both Masculine and Feminine

 Jordan Peterson would not use my words, but it seems to me that his moral imperative that we  follow the middle way between Yin (feminine, chaos, unconscious and subterranean) and Yang (masuline, order, consciousness and sky/light focused) to be a balanced person. Women, generally, should accent their Yin characteristics more than their Yang attributes, but enjoy both; men, typically, should accent their Yang characteristics more than their Yin attributes, but enjoy both.

Jordan Peterson And Individualism

 On Page 316 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan open declares himself to back the sovereign idea of Western individualis: "Every person is unique--an not just in a trivial manner: importantly, significantly, meaningfully unique. Group membership cannot capture that variability, Period."

Derrida & The Postmodernists

 On Page 311 of his book 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson writes this: "There is sufficient truth to Derrida's claims to account, in part, for their insidious nature. Power is a fundamental motivational force ('a,' not 'the'). People compete to rise to the top, and they care where they are in dominance hierarchies. But (and this is where you separate the metaphorical boys from the men, philosophically) the fact that power plays a role in human motivation does not mean that it plays the only role, or even the primary role. Likewise, the fact that we can never know everything does not make all our observations and utterances dependent on taking some things into account and leaving other things out (as we discussed extensively with Rule 10). This does not justify the claim that everything is interpretation, or that categorization is just exclusion. Beware of single cause interpretations--and beware the people that purvey them."

My response: This paragraph is loaded with rich information. Power is a fundamental motivational force, but it can be to build, create, love not just tear down, destroy and hate. Power can be decentralized and shared to guarantee a rough social, political and economic equality.

Jordan later adds that competence not power is how well-functioning hierarchies work, and he is correct  but I would like to explain that competence is the positive power of knowledge and skill applied in the competitive marketplace.

We cannot know everything, so we find meaning and survival in applying a working and practical set of hierarchical values to all kinds of incoming events, keeping some, escalating some, and deemphasizing, even casting aside lest valuable or irrelevant concerns. We prioritize and rank to be able to function, to live. 

Everything is not mere opinion or interpretation, and many of these ranking-rich categories are necessarily applied, and accurately applied also.

On one hand Derrida and his minions deny metanarratives capture the gist of anything, and then they introduce cultural Marxism as their single cause panacea for every human need and problem. These true believers bring nothing good to anyone.

Why?

I believe college education severs the instinctive common touch that most people retain into adulthood. When one feels that one has ascended to upper class status, because one is now better educated than the average person, one's natural corruptibility to seeking unearned power kicks in, and one feels righteous, even entitled to boss other around, deprive them of their wealth, their dignity, their liberty, and their power.

Such processes of bullying, exploitation, abuse, and oppression are often regular in caste society. Once the educated young person is elevated into the elite class, then his heart hardens, and he becomes one of the rulers. Then he turns mean, even cruel to those suffering under his reign, and he feels no pity to their outcries and pleading for help. Indeed, he wears his obstinacy and pitilessness as badges of honor.

Only among equals is mercy more common, so obviously a just society will not be very stratified.

Along comes Jordan Peterson with daunting evidence that hierarchical society is 350 million years old, and naturally a few by competence rise to the top and every hierarchy, and most do little at the bottom.

Now hierarchies turn corrupt, but only artificially established, and formulated populations of elitist common people, the superior supercitizen, upper middle class indivduator-arnarchists, are roughly equals with each other, in a classless society of all upper middle class people, and no elite can emerge to boss anyone else.

The Reformer

 Why do you seek to change others? Are they so vicious and unenlightened that they need someone, like your holiness, to straighten them out? And let us say that is true for the sake of this argument, are you the one to illuminate things for them? Are you the one so perfect and wise, that you possess all the right answers, the effective solutions?

What is your motive? Are you deflecting from focusing on what is really wrong, the fixing of your terribly flawed, blemished self?

Are you so afraid of being alone, that you need to micromanage and interfere with the lives of your neighbors to end the silence, to assuage the guilt and uneasiness, to smother the doubt, to keep God and truth at bay?

Underneath, the platitudes and self-identify with the noble role as social justice warrior, are you not just addicted to gaining power over others, to make yourself more powerful than you were meant to me, by timing them to your conception of how to live and interrelate with others?

Rule 11--Jordan Peterson

 On Page 285 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson shares his Rule 11: "Do not bother children when they are skate boarding."

Jordan seems to be advising adults not to make life too easy, too sheltered for children turning them into college kids, snowflakes requiring, safe spaces and bowdlerized speech.

Here is what Jordan writes on Page 287: "Thus, if things are made too safe, people (including children) start to figure out ways to make them dangerous again. 

When untrammeled--and encouraged--we prefer to live on the ledge. There, we can still be confident in our experience and confronting the chaos that helps us develop. We're hardwired, for that reason, to enjoy risk (some of us more than others) . . . . Overprotected, we will fail when something dangerous, unexpected and full of opportunity suddenly makes its appearance, as it inevitably will."

We need some chaos and danger in our lives to stay strong and alert, and enough order so that structure provides meaning and continuity to build our identities around.

Jordan Peterson And Human Consciousness

 From Page 261 to 265, Jordan Peterson describes how a human, a subject/agent and biological consciousness operating in the world, perceives objects, people, and stimuli from that world, but do so epistemologically and ontologically in a way that seems almost like they are spiritual beings operating in and making sense of the living world around them. I think this is some of his finest writing. I am not even quite sure what he is saying, but, with words, he somehow captured how humans interact with the world, and the exchange is spiritual, objective, intellectual, intuitive, subjective and biological--all of these epistemologies are real, and all of them are operating in the living consciousness of each human interfacing with the world out there.

On Page 261, Jordan describes modestly of what he is about to depict in for fantastic pages of description: "We assume that we see objects or things when we look at the world, but that's not how it really is. Our evolved perceptual systems the interconnected, complex multi-level world not so much into things per se as into useful things (or their nemeses, things that get in the way). This is the necessary, practical reduction of the world. This is the transformation of the near-infinite complexity of things through the narrow specification of our purpose. This is how the world makes precision sensibly manifest. This is not at all the same as perceiving objects.

This is epistemology of a higher order, and yet it is everyday perceiving the world any anyone, anywhere. It seems we are able t see patterns among the billions of incoming units of stimuli, and that is a remarkable cognitive gift of nature, but it is epistemologically tricky and unfathomable, almost a miracle, and it could be that the world that we live in is not the only one that we know even while living and experiencing here on earth--a most remarkable explanation of what has happened, and I only 1/3 understand wat Peterson is driving at.

Rule 10--Jordan Peterson

 On Page 259 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson shares his Rule 10: "Be precise in your speech."

You want to know the truth, think the truth, speak the truth and live the truth. If you can learn to speak with precision and clarity, it forces you to use words most carefully, conveying exactly what you want to convey. 

Dennis Prager values clarity above all else, and his observation runs parallel to what Jordan is offering here.

Rule 9--Jordan Peterson

 Here is Rule 9 from Page 233 of Jordan Peterson's book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS: "Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't."

No one has a corner market on the truth, and if you believe you have all the answers--not only are you arrogant and mistaken but your conceit and hubris are preventing you from growing, learning, adjusting. addressing mistakes. To paraphrase, Ralph Waldo Emerson, he never met a man that he could not learn something from."

The Warning: Jordan Peterson

 It appears that the fanatic lies more than anyone else because he believes the lies that he tells, and convinced of the absolute certitude of his point of view. Peterson alludes to this on Pages 218 and 219 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE, AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS: "To say it again: it is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own production and to claim that in the face of its theories nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist. That means that all important facts have been discovered. This means that nothing important remains unknown. But most importantly, it means denial of the necessity for courageous individual confrontation with Being. What is going to save you? The totalitarian says, in essence, 'You must rely in faith in what you already know. ' But that is not what saves. What saves is the willingness to learn from what you do not know. That is faith in the possibility of human transformation. That is faith is the sacrifice of the current self for the self that could be. The totalitarian denies the necessity for the individual to take ultimate responsibility for Being."

My response: It may be that certain truth could be known but, those, that would gain in, still would be epistemically humble because that is how one keeps one mind clear about reality out there and inside. The true believer does not have all the facts does not hold certain truth, although he claims to possess just that, and earnestly believes his mendacious assertion.

We must remain open to new possibilities or our knowledge cannot grow. Jordan urges that the individual is responsible for how Being unfolds, and that is achieved by religious faith, ethical behavior, truth-questing and keeping a really open mind.

Rule 8: Jordan Peterson

 Here is Rule 8, from Page 203, of Jordan's book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS: "Tell the truth, or at least, don't lie."

We cannot always tell the truth, but it is generally the ethical thing to do. Epistemically, seeking truth, speaking truth, and acting authentically and morally are all ways of speaking the truth.

Jordan used his young self as an example that most of us are lying fakes and frauds most of the time, and that is likely so being that we group-live and would say or do most anything to stay in our group's good graces.

The more we maverize, the more we think, the more we walk with the Good Spirits, and the more virtuous we strive to become, the closer to truth, actual objective truth, will we travel.

Well-Said, Jordan Peterson

 On Page 199 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson offers a sharp, brilliant definition of meaning: "Meaning emerges from the interplay between the possibilities of the world and the value structure operating within that world.  If the value structure is aimed at the Betterment of Being, the meaning revealed will be life-sustaining. It will provide the antidote for chaos and suffering. It will make everything matter. It will make everything better."

If we conduct our lives as if our values matter, as if we can make a difference, uplifting the world and ourselves, in the service of the Good Spirits, that is life-sustaining, and there meaning is found, and that is satisfying on many levels

On Page 201 he offers many lovely metaphors for meaning, but I like one from Page 200 the best: "Meaning signifies that you are in the right place, at the right time, properly balanced between order and chaos, where everything lines up as best it can at that moment."

Suffering In Jordan Peterson

 On Page 197 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan found his first principle of existence, the substrata of existence, which could not be doubted, and upon which he could build a philosophy of life.

Now Descartes the epistemologist famously concluded that he could not doubt his own existence or consciousness because he was thinking, whether delude or not about what he was thinking, it did not matter. He thought because he existed. He was able to build a metaphysical castle upon this certain fact, his epistemological foundation. 

If Descartes was a foundationalist, essentialist, and epistemologist, then Jordan Peterson is an existentialist, asserting that he and we exist because we suffer, and there is no doubt about that, and that fact of existence exists, and cannot be doubted.

For Descartes, essence precedes existence. For Jordan Peterson, existence precedes essence.

Values

 Jordan Peterson, playing off of Nietzsche and Carl Jung, claims that humans cannot create their own values. I deny that. The engaged self-actualizer creates value by his personal development as a living angel, and his sojourn is so customized, unique and singular, that should he provide the descriptive, explanatory and normative words to conceptualize his endeavor, value ineluctably is created.

Now, you may ask if his Muse is the Divine Couple or the Good Spirits, obviously much or most of his ins is gained from them, but some of it is his own invention.

 

Christianity And The Idea Of Individuality--Jordan Peterson

 In the long quote below--long to capture his whole argument--I quote from Pages 186 and 187 of Jordan Peterson's book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE. I want to contend, with Jordan's help that reason (Logos, Yahweh's spoken creative speech when the world was created), individualism come to the West from Judeo-Christian sources, not just Greek culture, and philosophy, as suggested by Stephen Hicks.

Here is that quote: "The Christian doctrine elevated the individual soul, placing slave and master and commoner and nobleman alike on the same metaphysical footing, rendering them equal before God and the law. Christianity insisted that even the king was only one among many. For something so contrary to all apparent evidence to find its footing, the idea that worldly power and prominence were indicators of God's particular favor had to be radically de-emphasized. This was partially accomplished through the strange Christian insistence that salvation could not be obtained through effort or worth--through 'works." Whatever its limitations, the development of such a doctrine prevented king, aristocrat, and wealthy merchant alike from lording it morally over the commoner. In consequence, the metaphysical conception of the implicit transcendent worth of every soul established itself against impossible odds as the fundamental presupposition of Western law and society. That was not the case in the world of the past and is not yet the case in most places in the world of the present. It is in fact nothing short of a miracle (and we should keep this fact firmly before our eyes) that the hierarchical slave-based society of our ancestors reorganized themselves, under the sway of an ethical/religious revelation, such that the ownership and absolute domination of another person came to be viewed as wrong."

My response: the individual soul, likely for the first time in human history, got a boost, all were equal as individuals before God. So, the implicit transcendent worth of every individual soul was realized, and this became the fundamental presupposition of Western law and society. 

Note that the king, the noble, the clergy and wealthy merchants were rather individualistic in comparison to slaves and serfs, the vast majority of collectivized commoners at the base of the social heap. Still, elites were then and now rather collectivized, not reach individuals. 

Individualism started to grow now that the worth of the individual soul had its own moral worth, no matter its impoverished, oppressed worldly status. If slavery and exploitation of serfs were wrong, then the end of slavery, the rise of democracy, the rational exercise of the individual of his right to think and ponder--the seeds of free rational common people that popped up during the Age of Enlightenment had its roots in classical Christianity, even Judaism itself.

Jordan noted that it took time for the idea of slave-ownership and serfdom to be questioned, but over time they were: "Christianity made explicit the surprising claim that even the lowliest person had rights, genuine rights--and that sovereign and state were morally charged, at a fundamental level, to recognize these rights."

The Response From Christ--Jordan Peterson

 On Pages 181 and 182, in his book 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, PETERSON relates how Christ deflects Satan's temptations: "Satan first tempts the starving Christ to quell His hunger by transforming desert rocks into bread. Then he suggests that He throw himself off a cliff, calling on God and the angels to break the fall, Christ responds to the first temptation by saying, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'

Satan Described: Jordan Peterson

 On Page 181 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS,  Jordan Peterson thusly describes Satan: "Satan embodies the refusal of sacrifice; he is arrogance, incarnate' spite, deceit, and cruel, conscious malevolence. He is pure hatred of Man, God and Being. He will not humble himself, even when he knows full well that he should. Furthermore, he knows exactly what he is doing, obsessed with the desire for destruction, and does it deliberately, thoughtfully, completely."

Note that peoples for thousands of years everywhere offered sacrifices to their favorite gods, seeking their favor and blessing. Satan regards himself as God' equal, worthy competitor or perhaps De's superior. He is above and beyond sacrificing anything to God to win De's blessing or approval.

Oh, as an aside: if one does self-realize and is a holy person, a living angel, that is a living self-sacrifice of oneself, given to the Divine Couple, and that pleases De immensely.

Yahweh desires that his supplicant be humble and kneel before him with head down, but none of this for Satan.

Note too how voluntarily, openly, and enthusiastically Satan sets about destroying everyone and everything.

Encountering Satan by Jordan Peterson

 On Page 180 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson offers a quote from Carl Jung that suggests that one is not really conscious and aware of the good, even if one is committed to being good and ethically, a meaningful existence, if one is not living in complete truth about the existence, from deep in one's nature, the presence of hell as well as the presence of heaven: "'No tree can grow to Heaven,' adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, unless it roots reach down to Hell.'"

My response: One cannot get to or know heaven unless one knows and has experienced the presence of evil in the world, and has combatted it earnestly, whether victorious or not. One has not digested gathered fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil lest one eat the entire piece of fruit.

On the bottom of Page 180 and 181, Jordan reveals how soldiers in combat come to know or expereince the presence of Satan, not abstractly but directly and personally in battle: "Soldiers who develop post-traumatic stress disorder frequently develop it not because of what they saw, but because of something they did. Involvement in warfare is something that can open a gateway to Hell. Now and then something climbs through and possesses some naive farm-boy from Iowa, and he turns monstrous, something terrible. He rapes and kills the women and massacres the infants of My Lai. And he watches himself do it. And some dark part of him enjoys it--and that is the part that is most unforgettable. And later, he will not know how to reconcile himself with the reality about himself and the world that was then revealed . . ."

Jordan here ascends to the level of moral genius, he is a moral giant. To admit that Satan and Hell exist, to admit that any of us, at any time, are capable of being a sadistic, homicidal Auschwitz guard and enjoying it--that is when complete, conscious, voluntary and rational conception of what every ordinary human is capable, from the worst torturing imaginable, to self-sacrifice in the scale of a Christ-like adoption of responsibility--this is the gamut of moral standing that any of us is capable of--this is ontological grasping of what it is to live alert, and our wrenching experience in the world is the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that we have just eaten.

Jesus and God--by whatever name that you give the deity that you worship and follow--forgive even the worst sinner, if he admits his sins, asks forgiveness, and forthrightly does penance, and works to turn his life around.

We cannot protect ourselves potentially from committing great evil, unless we accept our depravity, and use Mavellonialist strategies to enable us to avoid the moral quagmires feeding up from Hell.

 

Rule 7--Jordan Peterson

 On Page 161 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson records his Rule 7: "Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)."

With this rule, Jordan is advising his readers not to waste their lives on trivial pursits--there is too much at stake and each active, committed soldier in God's army makes a significant difference God's winning the war against Satan in this world.

If one is working to serve God, to live as a developing living angel, there is not much more that one could take on spiritually, ethically, materially, socially or intellectually to make a meaningful commitment to advancing all good things in the world, even if such participation in the divine plan, hinders one's social success in the world.

Carl Panzram--Jordan Peterson's Analysis

 On Page 152 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson writes this about serial killer Carl Panzram: "His destructiveness was aimed in some fundamental manner at God Himself. There is no other way  of phrasing it. Panzram raped, murdered and burned to express his outrage at Being. He acted as if someone was responsible. . . . Cain is jealous, of course, of his successful brother. But he destroys Abel primarily to spite God. This is the truest version of what happens when people take their vengeance to the ultimate extreme."

My response: Jordan exposes how our suffering naturally or from the malevolence of others can lead to us doing evil, hurting, destroying, even killing in revenge against the world and its Creator for our undeserved suffering.

But there are others that choose to do good, to love and create rather than seeking revenge against God and Being, and Jordan talks of them. Which way will you jump?

Why? Jordan Peterson

 On Page 151 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan asks why: "Why is there so much suffering and cruelty?

Well, perhaps it really is God's doing--or is the fault of blind, pointless fate . . ."

My response: There is not ultimately satisfying answer to why there is so much suffering and cruelty in the world, as either there is no certain knowledge to be had of these puzzles, or humans are not intelligent to grasp such knowledge, or whose science and religion together do not yet suffice or maybe never will be powerful enough to solve such puzzles.

I think the whole world is Fate, and that the Dark Couple and the Light Couple battle eternally for power and territory, and that the allocation of power and domains ebb and flow. Fate is above, beyond and in all of that and certain knowledge of if this is how it is, this is how it must be, and this is how it will be eternally is unknown to me.

We can choose to love and follow the Light Couple, and then we can endure most suffering and then minimize our malevolent response to such embittering (if we succumb to self-pity) suffering.

 

Dennis Prager Today

 I was in traffic today (3/22/22) when I heard a few minutes of Dennis Prager's Ultimate Issues Hour. He was brilliant and on fire.

He was talking about how the Founding Father knew overwhelmingly that slavery was wrong, but they did not give up their slaves. He said there is hope for those that did wrong, but know they are doing wrong or evil, and those, like the Southern Slave Owners that did evil and did not know even know they did evil as slave owners. For those that do evil, and do not even realize it, there is no or little hope for them, because they have lost their moral compass.

Dennis compares Leftists to the southern slave owners, evil people without hope, for they do evil and do not even realize it. They have lost their moral compass. 

My thought is that such ethical nihilists are true believers, and they worship their ism, and ideologues worshiping a word, a cause, an abstraction, are people that are devil-worshipers.

So, to take this analogy farther, the Founding Fathers that did evil, but knew they were out of line, can still face redemption and salvation, if they repent and change their ways. The still troubled sinner is more moderate than the militant sinner that is all in, and proud of his wicked conduct.

This does not allow the moderate sinner to get off the hook. They are to blame for their wickedness, and need to cease doing it, repent, reform, and give their lives over to God. 

Prager also noted how traditional Americans would note that God sayeth X, so we did X. Today the secular say if experts say X, we do X.

Dennis continued, insisting that most PhDs were fools, and I agree. Why are experts so brilliant in their specialized subject, and yet so unable and unfit to run society and manage our affairs as part of a huge, bloated government?

There are several reasons. First, let me note that they really believe that they are superior, smarter and better than the masses over which these elitists and bureaucrats rule or crave to control. Their blindness disallows them to make quick, good policy decisions and then redirect, and adjust if one is mistaken.

 Second, their fanatical solutions lack creativity, practicality, and adaptability.

Third, being part of big government disallows them to govern well with their command-and-control model.

Four, a well-run America requires few experts, little top-down supervision, limited government, and the business of America mostly should be business, and none of this is so when experts run things.

Fifth, most effective governing should be done at the state and local level with bottom-up control, not top-down management by experts, but that is not the modern statist framework.

Sixth, experts or professors tend to be group-creatures, moving in cliques, as factions and educational bureaucrats--all such creatures are ideological and fanatical, and that keeps them disconnected from reality, so there is no way for them to escape their worldview and generally make sense.

Seventh, if they have not been out in the world of business, they do not know how to do things, how to be practical, how to get things done by some commonsense hunch about applying Occam's razor to getting red tape out of the way to get things done well, cheap, fast, and right.

Eighth, experts are extremist in so many ways. Their share of social power, institutional power, academic power, economic and political power all take them out of the mainstream, so the ontological fact of being part of a ruling elite is inherently corrupting, and sickens the elite power-holders’ outlook. The poor and powerless suffer from this too: their extreme and immoderate share of power and abnormal rank makes them ontologically extremist, rendering them more susceptible to demonic temptation, which is largely passionate, fanatical and out of balance.

Ninth, humans are born psychological altruists and ascetical/self-denying/self-attacking persons of low self-esteem. To compensate for this ineradicable sense of inner-worthlessness (This may well be affiliated with Jordan Peterson's emphasis on personal vulnerability, that, if wrongly expressed turns the agent resentful, angry, bitter and then capable of extreme cruelty and wickedness, furious at being born, so all must pay.), that never can be completely overcome, people seek and lust after the power over neighbors, or to be a victim of a neighbor or neighbors. The power of powerless is very alluring and addictive as experts cannot get enough of this drug of illegitimately amassed power stolen from surrounding individuals, called by God to maverize, wielding her personal power of powerfulness, a engaged Unique and her Property. The expert can never glom onto enough power, rank, and adulation from his victims to surfeit his bottomless need to rule from above. There are masochistic and sadistic phases of corrupt power relations among experts and non-experts at various levels of a hierarchy, but this need to wield the unholy power of powerless over others will sully any human thinking they are personally exempted from being tainted by such power-wielding. None can escape being corrupted when engaging in power-games involving such ungodly power of hatred, hating and exported self-hatred.

The only solution--and this is not a permanent solution, for weak, cruel people can quickly return to group-living, sadomasochistic power enslavement rituals in various hierarchies--is for America to become  a society of individuating-anarchist supercitizens escaped from and defying those eager experts and elites so eager to jump into personal lives where they have no right to do, where they have no clue what is the way to proceed, and where they destroy everything and everyone they touch.

Decades ago, Eric Hoffer warned against allowing intellectuals and experts to have power. They make excellent advisors but cruel, soul-raping masters, serving every mass movement and totalitarian killer that the world has ever known.

These born-elitists always prey upon, attack, exploit, whip, oppress and mind-rape the people, and sincerely believe that that is their just role, and that they are doing the masses a favor, and that the common people deserve nothing better than top-down rule.

 

Labels

 To live is to make categories and then assign categories and ranked value assignation to these values attributed to each category.

Values have adjunct labels signed to each of them: pretty, ugly, good, bad, right, wrong, correct, incorrect, greater and lesser.

Labels are instructive but are they the last word? Probably not, but they are indicative and slightly authoritative if well-conceived and well-assigned. Epistemic humility as a personal trait does oblige one to feel a twinge of hesitancy about any value assignation. One is confident about getting it right, but still cautious.

Where Jordan Peterson's Genius Especially Shines Through

As often is the case, the rich implication of such a short, simple rule are profound, and quite significant. How so?

First, Jordan's first principle is that the individual is the sovereign, the core idea and contribution of the West. I agree.

Second, to improve the world, if the individual is sovereign, then by improving each individual, or giving them the moral education so that they are liberated, educated and empowered to self-discipline their personal shortcomings--that is the only, lasting, effective way to make the world a better place.

Third, to live as an idealist or ideologue is to seek to change the world by changing political structures, and to challenge people to change within the herd as collective entities. That is doomed to fail because improving is an egoistic, person endeavor, and dragging people down and destroying them is best accomplished in the herd, bureaucratically, hierarchically, and politically. 

Fourth, once the individual is quite healthy, bright and maverized internally, then if he wants to undergo some political reforms, that is acceptable, while acknowledging that solving problems is best undertaken by each individuator-anarchist supercitizen, at his own pace as he applies his power and thought to his personal situation, away from interference from or considerations and inputs from others.