The Speech

 

Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report has posted  (today is 12/5/2023) a speech, 24 minutes long, by Jordan Peterson and this is what its title is: “This is Easily the Most Important Speech Jordan Peterson Has Ever Done.”

 

I will take notes on the Rubin video, and what he and Jordan Peterson say, and the comment on content.

 

Rubin: “This might be Peterson’s best speech ever. This is the closing speech of the ARC (the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship). The speech was posted on 11/24/2023 and was a 3-day, invitation-only, conference of 1500 people. This is the single best Peterson speech ever.”

 

Jordan Peterson (J after this): “We find ourselves in the midst of the so-called culture war. It is a psychological and social mine field. At this conference we’ve been trying to weave our way through that mine field and offer a solution that is productive and generous.

 

But, I want to investigate a little further. I want to investigate the central feature of that war and while doing so I want to weave together the strands of this conference.

 

We are at odds about identity. In order to reduce the tension and to bring about a nice psychological integration and a proper social peace, we cannot just criticize. We must define identity should and must be and how that impacts how social structure should and must be.”

 

My response: Personal identity, cumulatively or collectively, frames the identity of the society, and Peterson below will lay out his vision as a secular and/or neo-Christian altruist of what the identity moral agent must be, and my vision of society as a neo-Christian egoist, lay out a counter-vision of what that moral agent’s identity must be as committed, responsible individual, with its social implications.

 

J: “I opened the conference by proposing that the 2 fundamental themes that we would address are faith and responsibility.

 

Faith is the courage that allows you to welcome the possibility of the future with open arms.”

 

My response: Faith here seems to be an attitude of hope and open engagement with future possibilities, but it implicitly seems tied to an activist, worldly Christian faith too, and that if fine.

 

J: “The future is the manifestation of possibility into actuality.”

 

My response: He has a wonderful way with words.

 

J: “The possibility of the future is what we contend with, and it is the unknown treasure house of what we could be, and is what we contend with, and decide how to contend with that.

 

One answer is with faith that is courageous, we contend by putting ourselves on the line to act out the proposition that existence itself, being itself, and becoming itself are intrinsically good, and that it is incumbent upon us to act in accordance with that dictum come hell or high water.”

 

My response: This seems right and optimistic, that the future can and will be positive—or as positive as we can make it, if we keep growing and becoming in creativity, love, and goodness. We keep striving to improve things.

 

J: “We look into the future and cast onto the unknown landscape and look at it with a vision that gives us hope and security because that is what a vision does. We form this vision, and then bear responsibility for attending to see that hopeful, security future prospects are met, making that vision possible tomorrow.”

 

My response: Jordan has established that American and the world are psychologically, morally and spiritually sick: the cultural war is a manifestation of that sickness being fought by the children of light against the children of darkness with mixed success and failure resulting.

 

His altruistic assessment of the problem as young people pursuing their immediate concerns and selfish whims, and in need of service to a collectivist, spiritual vision is partially correct, but we need to see the sickness as stemming from their altruistic self-indulgence and ease at the expense of their enlightened self-interest, a life of self-discipline and self-development, improving and growing the self in service to God, the self and humanity.

 

Once we analyze what is the problem, we can come up with the workable solution, and Jordan misses the egoist solution as a vision of the future to cherish.

 

J: “This vision is that identity is the proper union of faith and responsibility. We then must ask how a proper identity unites faith and responsibility, and it does so in a subsidiary manner. If you are beset with conflict subjectively in your identity and in society’s identity, you need a counter-position that is well-developed.

 

So, identity is the proper union of faith and responsibility, and a proper identity is subsidiary in structure. Let us take that apart. I tell you a simple story, but simple stories scale upward. Jacob’s ladder is that vine that unites earth with heaven. How do we climb Jacob’s ladder?”

 

My response: Personal identity is the proper union of faith and responsibility, so the vision for each moral agent must help him and society to climb Jacob’s ladder from earth to heaven, to improve life on earth in the future.

 

J: “When my son was 1 ½ years old, I taught him to clean his room. I taught him to set the table. But that is not right. If you take a 2-year old and teach him to clean his room, he will not understand. But tell him to put the teddy bear on the shelf and he will get it and do it. Teach him a hundred micro-routines he knows, and then he can clean his room. And that is how we build ourselves up.

 

That is a micro-vision. If he can put the teddy bear away, that is a micro-vision, a small step to macro-vision, the vision of uniting heaven and earth.”

 

My response: All of this is normal training uncivilized, selflessly selfish children to be socialized and contribute to the general good, and it is fine as far as it goes.

 

J: “We scaffold ourselves up from the finite to the infinite and it’s the scaffold that constitutes our identity.”

 

My response: Scaffolding up from being finite to reach the infinite as a great signifier of personal identity, and if that moral agent is a maverizer that self-realizes, then as a brilliant, advanced creator and thinker, she will have actualized the divine in her.

 

J: “I taught my 1 ½ year-old son to set the table. Then he sits at the table learning to share food take turns and be hospitable. That starts to scale upwards. He starts to be a good boy and that is a proper role of being as part of the family. Sharing, learning to play properly with others are what he does. This prepares him to take his place as a potential friend in the community as he matures.

 

As he matures the scale of his vision expands until it encompasses not just what he wants in the short term, but also what he wants in the medium or long term. So, the temporal scale of his vision expands. He does not only what is good for him, but he incorporates more and more other people. He expands his vision so when he is an adult, he knows how to be hospitable and play with others.

 

Even in your marriage you take responsibility for your partner and the partner takes responsibility for you. From this you get the satisfaction and adventure, responsibility and meaning, as the burden of your family is yours. You embed that in your community, and you take responsibility for that.”

 

My response: I cannot argue with the direction Jordan is urging the moral agent to go, but he over-emphasizes self-sacrifice for the sake of others as our primary moral duty, and it is but the second ranked moral duty. The primary moral duty is to sacrifice one’s hedonic and short-term interests for one’s nobler and long-term interests.

 

J: “And you take responsibility for that for your town, city, state. Do this in as balanced, and harmonious way as you can. And the spirit that infuses society is something like spiritual goodness and stands at the top of that ladder; it is what is highest and associated with God. Your identity is all of that stretching from the lowest level to the highest level at once.

 

You now understand what is genuine human flourishing at the psychological level. One of the disservices that clinicians have offered the Western and the world at large is that mental health is something subjective. We know that is not true even though we do know it is not true.”

 

My response:  Jordan is pointing out that we all have a conscience and sense of truth that inform us as to truth or falsehood, right and wrong, even when we ignore our conscience and repeat a popular or prevalent lie until we believe it in the conscious state.

 

J: “You will not be mentally happy if your wife is miserable. A mother, a Toronto neighbor once told me, is never happier than her most miserable child.”

 

My response: Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager are good and wise ethicists, but they miss the boat on a couple of critical points. First, they are correct that we will never be happy or moral wallowing in subjective narcissism and chasing immediate, constant fulfillment of our most basic urges and desires. Their mistake is to assume it is the individual as an individualist so acts, but I hotly refute this. It is the emotional, anti-intellectual, groupist joiners that are selfish, hedonistic, and narcissistic, not individualists. These groupists with their shallow version of altruism makes them self-absorbed inside because everything outside is a clone of artificial group role assigned to all, and accepted and lived by all in that clique.

 

Peterson and Prager are correct that being stoic, rational, and pouring most of one’s time and energies into objective interests makes us mature, fulfilled, happier and satisfied for our lives are based on work and self-sacrifice in achieving long-term ends.

 

These committed, purposeful adults are not subjective, miserable, and unhappy. These mature adults would be most fulfilled, noble, and happy as self-realizers and that is the most objective state of existing for humans, and it is the most noble moral state of existing.

 

Subjectivistic, morbid, sick, self-absorption is a collectivist illness, and that is what they rail against, rightly so, but it is embedded in altruist-collectivist ethics, not arising from egoist-individualist morality.

 

Jordan mistakes the objective for the other-centered (The objective is self-centered in an enlightened mode of focus and existing.) as when a wife is miserable or a child is unhappy; these do impact us, but we must maverize, for only we as individuals can make ourselves happy, and we cannot make others happy or rescue them—life is a do it yourself repair task.

 

J: “Mental health is not merely mental and not merely subjective—it is something like what exists when there is harmony in the entire subsidiary structure when all the parts functioning in harmony like a well-tuned orchestra. This is how to make good music. Music is the eternal dance between chaos and order, and that is where meaning is to be found.”

 

My response: Mental health is mostly mental and comes from the self-identity of the maverizer doing his thing to grow and through his self-sacrifice give back to the Divine Couple. Each maverizer’s creative output is putting right and extending his part of the cosmos that is by him innovatively reconfigured and grown, and that is objective outside of himself and a real gift to God.  When each person maverizes, then the community gains from the lowest to the highest points. There is social happiness and a cure to nihilism.

 

J: “We have so many people lost in the world with their absolutely fragmented identities.”

 

My response: Only as Self-loving, Other-loving, God-loving, successful self-realizers can each person find himself in this world, and this is how each person best recovers his integrated personality his wholesome and whole restored identity as a person. A community of such maverizers will strengthen that social structure form the bottom all the way to heaven.

 

J: “They have no meaning in their lives, and meaning in your life does not come from your own proximal, hedonic, subjective, merely self-serving drives and goals. There is nothing nourishing in that in part because you cannot integrate yourself over a long span of time, taking care of yourself in the future, while simultaneously fulfilling your social obligation in a responsible manner.

 

Nothing within the subsidiary structure can operate properly when you chase after your hedonic pleasure; you are not flourishing either. Your pursuit of pleasure will not give you meaning you need to find to sustain you in times of trouble. You find meaning and positivity when, in the middle of your stupidity and suffering at least you are helpful to your wife and children. You took care of folks, friends, customers and associates and your nation. You find that meaning in that service of that harmony that makes up that Jacob’s ladder that stretches all the way to heaven. And it has always been that way. We offer our kids thin gruel to replace this magnificent, multi-dimensional harmony of responsibility and beauty. And there is more to it too.”

 

My response: Jordan is correct that duty over pleasure is desirable, but the best way to help others is to self-sacrifice by self-development, and if all are doing this, this is how we most successfully improve the common good. Enlightened egoist ethics and noble self-interest is good for the self and good for the community, but excessive altruistic leanings, group-living, group values, group identity, group right over individual rights—these sicken the individual and break whole rungs off that ladder leading to heaven that Jordan wants so hard to preserve.

 

J: “I read where Abraham began his life with all his hedonic needs met. God says to him: ‘Go out into the world and have the adventure of your life.’

 

We are not just built for hedonic satiation, for mere proximal infantile satiation of our base desires, but we are to move out into the world, to be adventurous and complex, catastrophic future with nobility and courage. We are to hoist the world on our shoulders and struggle up hill, and it is that struggle that is the meaning of life. Life is determined by your living life to the fullest; then life justifies itself . You may find the meaning that justifies the suffering of life in shouldering the burden of responsibility which is not a burden but is the greatest opportunity in your life if you sacrifice to others.  your perpetual self-sacrifice to others is where meaning is found. That maintains Jacob’s ladder from the bottom to the top. “

 

My response: All Jordan exhorts here is solid and worthy, except my difference with him that self-sacrifice is for the sake of the long-term good of the self, and service to others, though still needed, is best acquired, when most adults are maverizers, and this serves the common good.

 

J: “You are to abandon hedonic whims for patterns of behavior that sustain you in the long run. This sacrifice has great payback compared to the sacrifice. Anyone who has had a child that escaped from the primordial narcissism understands this. Bringing a child into the world is a bittersweet adventure because children are fragile, so if the kid thrives, it is very satisfying. Then the sacrifice was well worth it. We need to instruct young people on how to grow up and be parents themselves.

 

In the last 20 years psychologists have discovered there is no technical difference between thinking about yourself and being miserable. Those are the same thing. Children are adrift, self-conscious, and self-absorbed; their locus is on their own immediate needs. To be happy and moral is to be outside of yourself serving a higher purpose. You can be cynical about that.”

 

My response: Again, to be happy and moral is to be outside yourself serving a higher purpose, and that objective state of accomplishment is one of life-long self-actualization and self-love. When each adult is a mini-creator sustaining the existing cosmos and expanding it a bit by personal innovation and intellectual originality, that is doing as those divine individuators, the Mother, Father, Jesus and the other good deities do.

 

J: “You set the table for a meal to enjoy, share and feel the harmony with your family, to replicate the world in that microcosm, and that infuses every level of complexity to the pinnacle of the ladder. That is real and we have forgotten that.

 

We have forgotten the responsibility that we were meant to bear to make life meaningful and bearable. We have forgotten the meaning, significance and purpose and the earned self-regard that goes along with that sacrificial attitude.”

 

 

 

My response: Jordan and Dennis Prager both fit the Judeo-Christian classical ethical stance that are for individualism, capitalism and traditional values, but their primary moral emphasis is self-sacrifice for the sake of the collective, whereas under Mavellonialism I demand of each agent self-sacrifice for the sake of the self-betterment and growth, and through this prodigious personal effort, that effort individually and collectively—where millions of adults would maverize—hugely benefits the collective good—indeed it is only effective way to serve the common good, through a life of enlightened self-interest, and this life is a gift back the to the Good Spirits that gave us life.

 

J: “We forgot to tell our kids the same thing we have forgotten to remember. This conference is to help us remember who we are. You are the men and women made in God’s image to stumble eternally uphill to New Jerusalem.

 

These spiritual visions are not silly superstitions but are the most brilliant insights into fundamental reality. We predicated our civilization on these presuppositions, and they are not so bad. We have given wealth and plenty to billions of people and if we are careful, we can continue to gain ground.”

 

My response: This Western and American plethora of freedom, technology, luxury, ease, and plenty came from sovereign individuals and their attempts to better life on earth by reason and hard work and the scientific method as well as Judeo Christian altruism.

 

We can create prosperity, abundance, and opportunity for all if we individually and collectively are responsible. Our view is the truth not superstition; we are to avoid death and anxiety on earth by taking up our divine responsibility: Act it out in our own lives until the world tilts towards heaven and away from hell.

 

We people can and must make the world better. It is our responsibility to avoid oscillating between absolute tyranny and utter slavery.

 

My response: we best serve God and tilt the world towards heaven by living as anarchist-indiviudator supercitizens; such versatile, rational, assertive highly skilled and originally thinking great souls will disallow tyranny and enslave none and allow none to enslave anyone else.

 

J: “If you take the world on your shoulder you obliterate the need for tyrants and slaves. You have divine responsibility and individual rights given you to apply to setting the world straight. We need not settle for zero sum Malthusian pessimism. We can make the world better. We come together however imperfectly to craft a plan to save the world.”