To Be A Collectivist

 

 

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In some ways, I am obsessed with Jordan Peterson. He is a genius, who lately, with his veering towards radical altruism at the expense his modest, implied, formed support of rational egoism as the preferred human moral code, upsets me. My frustration with his wrong turn should lead me to never study him again. But I am not willing to abandon him yet.

 

He is an individualist in part, as Christians classically are, in part a bit for individualism and even self-interest. In the main, though, he and they are altruistic in their ethics and collectivism in their group-identifying prioritization.

 

Below is a 5:57 minute long video excerpt from Jordan’s interview with The Epoch Times in maybe 2017. I wrote notes on it and slightly edit it below for clarity and then make comments. Its title is, Jordan Peterson Explains That Collectivism is Tyranny under the Guise of Benevolence (which it is, Ed Says). A reporter is interviewing Jordan.

 

But, before I go over the Epoch-Times/Peterson interview tape, I will digress for a moment.

 

 

I copied and pasted this AI version of Jordan Petersons views on collectivism and individualism, posted online on 9/9/25. I will comment on the AI points:

 

AI: “To understand Jordan B. Peterson's views on collectivism versus individualism, consider these key points:

1. Definition of Individualism: Emphasizes personal responsibility and the importance of the individual in society.”

My response: I must unpack this: Jordan does emphasize personal responsibility—as he should--but wrongly dismisses and fails to prioritize the individual’s right and obligation to assert his natural rights, his constitutional rights, his legal rights, and his property rights, and his liberty rights to run his own affairs. Jordan seriously underestimates the importance of knowing and asserting one’s rights as the vehicle for driving the route of personal individuation and asserted supercitizenship.

A corollary point to make is that Jordan mistakenly dismisses the importance and value of seeking happiness as a moral, desirable goal. This requires explanation, for if one is selfish, indulging whatever impulse one feels, or gives in to any or all desires and temptations, and claims to be an individualist and happy to boot, it is obvious that he is shallow, callow, selfish and his feeling of happiness gained by getting his way will be a high for him temporarily, but his overall feeling of being unhappiness will increase as his character and will keeps being bad or getting worse.

Happiness has an essential moral component: unless one is kind to oneself and to others, one is not a person of good will and good character. Without a benevolent deity constantly instilling love and optimism into one’s consciousness, and if one does not act ethically, then one cannot be happy. And the positive, merited happiness and attitude of the spiritually and morally good person is a goal and after effect of being noble and good, both in self-care and other care.

 

This happiness is compatible with and likely inseparable from asserting one’s legitimate rights and doing one’s duty.

 

 

2. AI: “Definition of Collectivism: Focuses on group identity and collective goals, often at the expense of individual rights.”

My response: To be an altruist, to group-identify more than individual-identify, to prioritize collective goals over personal goals, at the expense of individual rights, is to grow evil and tyranny in the world.

 

AI: “

3. Psychological Perspective: Individualism fosters personal growth and self-actualization, while collectivism can lead to conformity and suppression of individuality.”

My response: Jordan used to talk about how individualism fosters personal growth and self-actualization while collectivism can lead to conformity and suppression of individuality, but now, 8 years later, he has backed away from these positions somewhat. He rejects categorically individualism, self-interested, self-consciousness and egoism, accusing individualists of being guilty of Luciferian pride and rejection of godly ways.

He may think totalitarian collectivism can lead to tyranny and suppression of individuality, but his recently discovered and announced hyper-altruism promotes social and political collectivism, be that his intention or not.

 

AI: “

4. Historical Context: Peterson discusses how collectivist ideologies have led to totalitarian regimes throughout history.”

My response: Collectivist ideologies do lead to totalitarian regimes.

 

AI: “

5. Moral Responsibility: He argues that individualism promotes moral accountability, as individuals are seen as agents of their own choices.”

My response: Individualism does promote moral responsibility—much better and more so than collectivism, and groupists are often slaves to the collective will, whereas individualists are much more inclined to be agents of their own choices.

 

AI: “

6. Cultural Implications: Individualism is linked to innovation and progress, while collectivism can stifle creativity and personal initiative.

 

My priority: Individualism is linked to innovation and progress, and collectivism always stifles creativity and personal initiative, and this will lead for humans to perish if individuating and egoist ethics are not the cultural norms of the West by 2080.

 

 

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Here is the excerpt: “Jordan (J after this) Well, but that’s the issue is that caring for someone or for a group of people is a very complicated thing. And it doesn’t always mean, be compassionate and feel sorry for them because they’re downtrodden.”

 

My response: Jordan is wise here: I agree that social reform intentions often go astray with unintended consequences, especially if we grow government control over private lives by legislating morality. It is acceptable to feel compassionate for the downtrodden but growing government and socialism grows tyranny evil and groupisim with the terrible side effect of increasing the amount of people that are poor and downtrodden; socialism never works, and it and federal solutions usually make things worse.

 

J: “It’s not enough, like a lot of the structures that we put in place to help people over the long run are rather harsh in their operation in the short. And so, the values that are associated with that can, trait conscientiousness for example which are reasonably good predictors of more conservative leaning political beliefs aren’t very warm, fuzzy virtues.”

 

My response: We want warm hearts with cool heads: We want people to solve problems personally and that is the best macro-solution upon a few good strong enforced laws under limited government. If people were personally maverize most social ills would dry up and evaporate.

 

Jordan: “They’re cold, hard, judgmental virtues. They’re the demands for performance for example that go along in the workplace. But if you want to take care of an infant who’s crying, you want warm, instantaneous, impulsive compassion, because there’s a problem and you have the solution, right.

 

The baby is not. The baby is too cold. The baby needs to be fed. You can fix that right now.

 

If you’re dealing with, with systemic poverty, for example, of trying to determine how to how to produce more opportunity for everyone to benefit from everyone’s abilities, you have to use a hell of a lot more than compassion to get there.”

 

My response: I agree: Real virtue, tough love, rational virtue seems cold and harsh but for an adult or adult society, it is kinder by far in the long run.

 

J: “And so to think of a community in the positive sense of being driven by nothing but empathy which is really one of the central arguments of the postmodern types—at least that’s what’s driving some of their argumentation—is it’s an absurd position so it’s, so it’s not so much that they confuse the two things as they fail to differentiate the concepts.”

 

My response: Postmodernists feign compassion, a pretext to grab totalitarian power over the masses, and to force all to conform to their Marxist ideology, or face the torture rack, prison, or the firing squad.

 

Empathy, warm feelings, and compassion is no justification to brutal federal oppression of the masses as a solution far worse than the disease. They may confuse the two or lie about being compassionate just to lull the credulous, keeping mass opposition down while they gain grow, revealing their true natures and intentions once they have amassed enough arms and followers to overthrow the government and culture.

 

J: “I take it, it’s very, very difficult to build functional structures that help people thrive individually and socially over long periods of time.”

 

My response: As a proponent of mass individual supercitizenship in a free market constitutional republican government and economy, I propose that beyond these strong, limited functional structures, we fare best by having no external functional structures, but rather a personal egoist plan of individuation as each citizen’s internalized functional structure to guide her to act and save herself for the benefit of herself first, and then for all indirectly.

 

J: “And merely being empathetic, man, that’s just going to get you nowhere. A three-year-old is empathetic. And I’m not dismissing that. Empathy is important but as a problem-solving mechanism, it, it has very limited ability.”

 

My response: I agree.

 

Epoch Interviewer: “You talk briefly about national socialism and collectivism, the difference being from my understanding of fascism was made to control the individual. Marxism was more the control of the means of production. Socialism is more the means of controlling the fruits of production, if I’m not mistaken. And I think we have seen the destructive nature of collectivism in destroying the individual, right?”

 

My response: Socialism, fascism and Marxism have slight differences, but they are all altruistic and collectivist, so the evil similarities far outweigh niggling differences.

 

J: “Well, I think that, uh that’s actually the point in, in large part. I mean Derrida for example coined a term he called phallocentrism, which, which he regarded as the central axiomatic position of the, of the West, hey. Not only the Enlightenment West but also the Christian or Judeo-Christian, for that matter, West, prior to the Enlightenment. Derrida went after the tradition running through Judeo-Christian through modernism and the and the Renaissance and Enlightenment and criticized that.  And that was the idea that and he was critical of this.

 

It's the presupposition that culture is first male-dominated, which is a presupposition which I take great exception to because it’s a radical oversimplification of the historical story to the degree that culture was male-dominated. It was only dominated by a very small number of males. Most males were serfs or soldiers, or, or cannon fodder for that matter, or coal miners dreadfully toiling away for their work, certainly as oppressed as women were in general by the absolute poverty of the conditions.”

 

My response: Jordan discovered or relays a profound truth here; historically, Western culture or any culture was not male-dominated (it was by an elite ruling class of society, dominated by a few males). Most men had it no better than most women, severely oppressed and severely impoverished.

 

What Jordan implies and what I will make explicit is that human rights abuses, tyranny, oppression, exploitation, enslavement of human populations everywhere, forever in the past is less the fact that these elites were male-dominated, but that the real source of the unjust treatment of the masses, both men and women, is that elites everywhere abuse and rule over the masses.

 

To make things better, we have to figure out how permanently to get rid of elites. That is the key to growing a just society, not going after male-domination, more an effect generated by the social structure of overbearing elites trampling the masses, than the self-generated cause of mass subjugation going on in any society. Eliminates elites, and democracy, prosperity and freedom can become worldwide, and only a worldwide citizenry of individuating supercitizens can eliminate elites, potentially forever.

 

J: “You know up till 1895 the average person in the Western world lived on a dollar a day in today’s money, right. So, I mean you don’t have to go back, back very far in time before you find everyone oppressed, but not by the socio-cultural system, merely by that by the absolute insane difficulty of life itself.”

 

My response: Well, the socio-cultural system and its outreaching institutions are oppressing the masses everywhere, in the past and in most countries today, but, to Jordan’s point, that unjust dispensation is rooted in human nature and in the nature of the world itself. To paraphrase Jordan, hierarchies for humans are naturally, instinctually constructed social structure growing out of human nature, and the Pareto principle seems to occur naturally, and thus people divide or self-divide themselves into the ruling, oppressing elites, and the rule, oppressed masses.

 

J: “Well, so Derrida described the West as male-dominated which I think is a, as a, it’s something to take serious issue with as, as a blatant claim. It is not differentiated enough or sophisticated enough.

 

And he also and he also said it was Logos because Logos is the second person of the Christian Trinity and Derrida knew that perfectly well. And so his criticism—Derrida was a smart man—make no mistake about it.”

 

My response: Derrida seems to condemn Western society as inherently as wholly corrupt and unjust because it is male-dominated (Men are the evil ones in this world.), Christian dominated (Christianity is the religious and moral cover for the oppressors.), and Christ or the Divine Logos is corrupt and unjust, not loving, merciful and self-sacrificing.

 

Christ as Logos indicates to me that the love of reason and reasoning in the West does reveal that reasoning (We reason, use language, define our terms accordingly to concepts conceived, and weave together a metanarrative for our people to live by and extract meaning, hope, happiness, salvation, and purpose from.), the West’s greatest intellectual and cultural gift to humanity, originates from Judeo-Christian sources, as well as from ancient Greek secular society (Ben Shapiro’s take that Western civilization is a happy cultural marriage of borrowings from Jerusalem and Athens.)

 

The admirable Stephen Hicks and other Randian intellectuals from The Atlas Society and ARI, if intellectually honest atheists and secular humanists, must acknowledge the contribution to the West, celebrating reason and reasoning, a gift from Judeo-Christian sources.

 

Only if the atheists, Christians, and Jews work together, can the West survive and evolve, as rational religion enables us to go forward into the future, building onto our proud, rich heritage.

 

What is required in 2025, is right-wing populism, not fascism, but right-wing populism, the masses educated and self-educating, becoming, a majority of them, individuating supercitizens.

 

When the masses, each of them is a hybrid creature, part intellectual giant, part ethical lion, part brilliant poet, and part commoner in wealth and occupation (a housewife or an electrician), when they get each of them their own lives in order, and then work together to run society, this is when elites and class structures disappear, or the differences are slight and rather inconsequential. This is Mavellnialist populism, the only cure for human tendency to set up a stratified, exploitative, tyrannical, unjust social and legal arrangement.

 

We are all evil more than not from birth, and social power concentration turns each of us into morally radioactive monsters, but the cure is not the Thomas Hobbes approach that an absolute monarchy is required to keep the people in line, beasts which we all are.

 

The solution is to train the masses up into individating supercitizens. Only then will they peacefully cooperate and police each other without the need to coerce or use violence against one another.

 

Power, centralized, does corrupt all, but it corrupts a citizenry of individuating supercitizens least of all. The masses must rule society if we are to have any chance at all, and that is no easy or permanent fix, for it can always crumble, going back to tyrannical, class society where the few elite inflict their will upon the longsuffering but masochistic masses eager to be dominated and abused, of someone will just do their thinking for them.

 

J: “And lots of things he said were correct. Like one of the propositions, he laid forth was that there was a near infinite number of ways of interpreting any situation or any text, which happens to be technically true. And that’s being discovered in all sorts of fields, including artificial intelligence.”

 

My response: There are infinite interpretations of anything but some interpretations are more wholesome and sensible and socially useful than others, and we want to develop those interpretations for our own sake and for society’s sake, always as ontological moderate, understanding that we need to seek, appreciate and learn from almost any alternative interpretation all the while building our primary interpretation  of reality and the rightful human place in it, as our justified and justifiable grand Western narrative.

 

J: “So the central claim that he begins with is actually true, and it’s not surprising that it had such a powerful effect on the humanities, because it’s actually an extraordinarily powerful and, an undermining idea.

 

But he took it much further. He took it in directions I don’t think it should have gone in at all. But the logocentric idea is that his criticism of the idea of the logocentric society is a deep criticism of the idea that the individual as a speaking force is a communicative agent, is the appropriate, highest value upon which a culture should be built.”

 

My response: The Western axiomatic, fundamental assumption, that the individual, man or woman, gay or straight, regardless of color or wealth and power status, is the sovereign locus of civilizing action, legal citizenry, and the necessary ruler of his world—in voluntary conjunction and united association with the other members of the masses—this is the logocentric ideal, that the individual, the rational egoist (if we take it far enough as Rand and I have), this radically free-thinking, free-speaking, free-acting is a force for good, social justice and social harmony, this communicative and communicating agent is the highest value upon which any high culture and high civilization can and must be built—a constitutional, free market republic—all of which Derrida rejects, Peterson partially embraced—more so 8 years ago than now--, and all of which I embrace and advocate.

 

J: “He took that apart and criticized it, and that’s, that’s a deeper criticism, I would say, even in Marxist criticism which was mostly about unequal power relationships. Derrida went deeper than that. And the postmodernists that occupy the universities are anti-individual right now, right down, right down to the bedrock.”

 

My response: Derrida the professor and his acolytes, the postmodernist academics in Academia, are anti-individualist, right down to the bedrock.

 

This seems counterintuitive: are not members of the ruling, economic and political elite, supposed to be more individualistic than the masses they rule over?

 

Well, Eric Hoffer answers this better than anyone, even Jordan, and Hoffer may only hint at an answer implicitly or directly. The dirty little secret is that members of a ruling class, academics, soldiers, clergy, plutocrats, generals, journalists, labor leaders or politicians are considered as a generalization to be more individualistic than the masses they rule over.

 

Reality points to it being the other way around: rulers run in packs, and the most powerful ruler is the most evil member of his class, because he is the most selfless, purely group-oriented, self-hating, and power-addicted and power wielding, a real menace to society.

 

The masses in Hofferian scheme of things, are group-oriented and run in packs leading lives of quiet despair, but they retain enough individualism and self-interest not to be totally vicious, utterly altruistic and ideologically possessed, in their non-mass movement phase of existing. If radicalized, then pure altruism and ideological zealotry drives them to be crazy and cruel.

 

Once they are awakened to serve as cannon fodder for the revolution in service to the radical elite and elitists that command their fervent allegiance and self-sacrifice as minions of the holy cause on the march to remake society, these minions of this mass movement readily die for their cause, but, even then, their group-orientedness is not as pure and complete as the Stalinist monsters at the head of the movement.

 

Derrida, the postmodernists and the cultural Marxist ideologues that captured American Academia, in the last 20 years as chronicled by both Stephen Hicks and Christopher Rufo, they use skeptical epistemology as a rhetorical weapon to divorce the masses from the traditional grand narrative and dispensation which they lived under and supported. But deep down the  epistemology of the postmodernists is totalistic, being the fanatics and true believers that they are. They are pure, nihilistic altruist moralists—immoralists actually. Their collectivist economics if Marxism. Their collectivist government arrangement is totalitarian, be it secular Russia or sacred Iran, fascist Hitler, or Communist Stalin.

 

These postmodernists feign skeptical and relativistic epistemology as a weapon to overthrow the culture and set the masses adrift so they can be swept into the revolutionary mass movement while scared, confused and directionless, desperate to find an ism to escaped from their despised selves into, an ism allowing them to escape from their unbearable, frustrated blemished selves.

 

Postmodernists are epistemological absolutists or dogmatists, true believers in what holy cause they are so proud and willing to fight for and die for. A proponent or follower of a mass movement, which justifies its existence and wicked actions based upon a holy cause which provides all the answers anyone could ever want, is a pure collectivist in his social, religious, economic and political associations—this is how true believers, postmodernist while arranging conditions for the revolution—reveal themselves as revolutionary, epistemological ultraists or zealots once openly violently taking over society, then the purges commence.

 

This is what ties postmodernism to Marxism: epistemological collectivsim links directly to a person moral collectivism (radicalized, pure group-oriented altruism); economic collectivism or socialism enforced on all, and finally in legal, social structures of totalitarian centralized government, political collectivism.

 

 This is how postmodernism is epistemological cover for bring in Marxism and totalitarianism, a most undesirable and wicked ‘improvement’. Stephen Hicks has written and exposed this use of postmodernist epistemology as a cover for advancing the revolution while the masses remain asleep and still attached to the status quo and its cultural story.

 

This is not just a cultural Marxist phenomenon and story; it applies to and could be the goal of the radicals to introduce upon a free people other members of the collectivist family of social arrangements, systems like fascism, nationalism, theocratic regimes like Iran, Leftist or rightist regimes. They are all postmodernist skeptics about the system they seek to replace, until it is cast down and they their real, total epistemological certainty, black and white thinking, is exposed and admitted to. They can do anything to anyone and feel morally justified in doing it for the cause.

 

What dismayed me is that at a pivotal time a few years ago in my intellectual maturation process, though I was 60 years old, Jordan was central in teaching me that individuality was the sovereign idea of the West, but his early exposure to socialism and his love of altruism as a cultural Christian.

 

 He may suffer from a still residual tendency as a professor to rule the masses rather than allow them liberty to maverize and run their own lives (This is psychological speculation about him from my theorizing, no evidence of it being so), he seems alarmed about all the masses the individuals doing their own thing on a grand personal scale, or his realignment with conservatives and Christians is making him back away from his earlier promotion of individualism.

 

He is coming down hard now on Ayn Rand, individualism, egoism as the avatars of Luciferian pride, selfishness and rebellion against God, the sources of evil in the world. Peterson needs to nudge Christians to accept Randist egoism and merited prideful individualism and finding happinesnes in this world, and to blend that with Christian faith—less altruism please and more individuating and egoism accented—so we can reach my goal of Mavellonialist rational religion for the masses in the future, the individuating supercitizens.

 

J: “And so that’s partly why they push collectivism to such a degree. They don’t give a dam who you are. They care what your group identity is.”

 

My response: Jordan is right in this last statement. Postmodernists, Leftist ideologues and cultural Marxists and Progressive push collectivism to gain total power over the masses, and that is their only aim, all else is lies and cover for their true goal.

 

You as one of the masses, your personal identity is irrevelant. You are only an avatar of your group identities.

 

The masses as individuating supercitizens must counter than insisting that anyone’s group identities are important but secondary in importance to the individual identity which each one of the masses is to and should cultivate who she is as a living, accomplished great soul and living angel, a living singularity. She will push altruism and other care and others interests as her minority emphasis, but her primary obligatory function—as commanded from on high by the Mother and the Father and other good deities, Individuators and Individualists all, is her enlightened pursuit of her glorious self-realized self-interest in building God’s kingdom here on earth, converting chaos into cosmos, dark into light, and hate into love.

Gun Control Debate

 

We are born evil but can work to become better, even good. To be born depraved is to be a selfless, groupist, without self-esteem. Without self-esteem, one hates the self, and hatred is what evil is psychologically and when the hater acts.

 

To grow evil, we need people group-living, to group-identify, to live under the moral code of group-morality; when people are joiner-nonindividuators, they live and work in various institutions or hierarchies and that is where tyranny and injustice abound.

 

Thus, to grow government is to grow evil in our lad, so thus more gun control and government intervention and regulating fun rights is to grow evil in the land, and this is insufferable.

 

There is no middle ground on gun control. Governments always turn on the people, and tyranny ensues where the masses are disarmed. Part of our precious American heritage is the blessing the masses have here to keep and bear arms, a constitutional right. It keeps power hungry elites at bay.

 

There is no workable public solution to gun violence: we must improve the odds that the moral character of each gun owner is more inclined to be peaceable and law-abiding and this solution is solid, not glamorous, slow, and private.

 

The solution is to teach young children religious and moral self-control. But we live in a post-Christian era where the young have not spiritual and moral foundation, so social aberrations like transgender mass shootings increase, as can be anticipated.

 

3 years ago, a trans-woman--used to be a guy--took a shine to me at a job we worked in South St. Paul. I am as conservative as they come, but I treated him with dignity and respect, because I treat people that way. She was hated by everyone, very flamboyant, very in-your-face outspoken. I do not pile on when a mob of workers go after someone. She told me that she transitioned about 10 to 15 years ago in her late 40s. She confessed that she was no happier today than before when she transitioned, but that her therapist had talked her into the transition. She kept repeating: "My therapist thought it was a good idea. My therapist thought it was a good idea."

 

Jordan Peterson is mistaken on a lot of points, but he is right that we must live with our burdens and suffering, and vow never to take it out on others, or ourselves. We must create, love, and bring beauty and moral goodness to society, and that is how we transmute our anger, our frustration, our hurt, rather than allowing to fester until one gets a gun and blasts innocent little kids.

 

Liberty is the most important virtue in the world, and we all need to be armed to the teeth to let government at all levels know, we are in charge, and they had better not try to set up tyranny here; we will not allow elites to enslave us. That is why the Founders wanted us armed, and that is why Leftist elites take advantage of such tragedies to rile up the people to confiscate guns--it is their ruse to grab power and legislate gun confiscation. We must not allow them more illicit power-grabbing which happens, and they restrict gun rights. These are evil people doing evil things, and we must disallow their attack on gun rights.

 

The postmodernist/Leftist/ secular tilt in America is or was post-Christian in actuality or intent since the 60s; historically when the grand narrative guiding a nation is abandoned or weakened, angry and lost souls like the Minneapolisls child-killer may lash out against society. The violent American loner white male mass killer is another issue— these young men need religion, values and a personal plan to self-realize to canalize their horrible suffering into sublimated, socially ,acceptable channels. There is no home in America yet to offer these misfits help but my philosophy could help them.

 

If a youngster is a troubled, perhaps mentally ill misfit like many of these transgenerder youth are, a course self-actualization would give them a constructive create outlet for their anger and rage, so they then would be far less inclined to become a domestic terrorist. They must have an constructive outlet for their bitterness and frustration.

 

 

I said earlier that liberty is the most important virtue in the world, but that requires extensive contextualization to be believed. Christians (I am a fringe Christian, which is not relevant here.) are largely altruistic morally, and altruism requires a complementary, coercive political and legal framework; notice how you ask if we, the human community, should allow people access to firearms if they are not attending church or going to therapy.

 

The gun-control ideologues possess presuppositions not based in liberty: as a liberal and Leftist, they assume and insist that the community, or the government, its authoritarian branch, are or will be justified in deciding if the individual is competent, tested, certified to own a firearm. If he fails some communal or legal test, he is denied a firearm.

 

I repudiate the community or the government telling or meddling with the individual, who has a constitutional right to bear arms. I am a proponent of egoist morality, that freedom and power to decide to own a firearm resides with the sane, law-abiding individual, who will make the decision to bear arms or not, not the state, not the community.

 

The gun control proponents most certainly are altruists and  collectivists, more or less, so they believe it is moral and legally right for the community and government to decide which individual is allowed to bear arms, and that is not promoting liberty, but is promoting tyranny, and the growth of government power, intruding into private lives and the citizens right to bear arms.

 

Their solutions are what I call evil, and my solution is likely what they call evil. They see government, especially large expanded government as a benevolent, civilizing force. As a conservative, I prefer strong, lean, limited government, free markets, maximum freedom and power to the individual citizen to run his own affairs. I see government as inherently evil, a necessary evil, but not one to be given ever expanding powers to run people's lives. We live in a blessed country of constitutional republicanism, and to cede to government the mandate to do gun control is to open the door to tyranny, even Communism here. The gun controllers often mean well, but your legislated solution will bring the federal demon down upon our heads. We hate mass killers, but it is the collectivists both Marxist and Fascist, secular and theocratic, that murdered over 100 million citizens since 1910.

Unsettling Facts

 

This article seems fair, and it reveals that transgender young people are deeply trouble, many perhaps mentally ill. McCullough in this editorial for townhall.com, suggests the guns these youth are on makes many of them psychotic: wow.

The Uncomfortable Facts We Can’t Ignore

Kevin McCullough | Aug 28, 2025

Another school shooting. Another community shattered. This week in Minneapolis, a former student walked into Annunciation Catholic School during morning Mass and opened fire—killing two children, wounding seventeen, and leaving families forever altered. Police later confirmed what was already circulating: the shooter identified as transgender. 

It wasn’t the first time. In 2023, a former student opened fire at The Covenant School in Nashville, killing three children and three adults. That attacker, too, was identified as transgender. 

When individuals who are already vulnerable to mental distress, social alienation, or violent ideation also struggle with questions of identity and radical online communities, the mix can be combustible. That is a fact worth examining soberly—not sensationalizing. 

This leads to another uncomfortable but necessary question: what about the medications involved in gender transition—puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones? Do they contribute to instability or violent behavior? 

The truth is troubling. Reviews of puberty blockers (GnRH analogs) in adolescents point to significant concerns about bone health, fertility, and psychiatric effects, all in the context of a thin evidence base. These drugs were developed for entirely different uses and remain experimental when applied to gender-questioning youth. 

Cross-sex hormones—large, lifelong doses of testosterone or estrogen—are even more destabilizing. Reports link them to mood swings, aggression, mania, and psychiatric breakdowns, particularly in those already struggling with mental illness. Clinical protocols recommend caution precisely because of these risks. The claim that such treatments are “life-saving” or stabilizing is not supported by serious long-term evidence. What we do know is that they carry profound physical consequences and introduce further volatility into already fragile lives. 

There is another reality that makes this discussion urgent: transgender individuals as a population face significantly higher rates of psychiatric conditions, including psychosis, depression, and suicidal ideation. Much of this appears tied to social stressors—rejection, victimization, and isolation—but the introduction of powerful drug regimens into such instability cannot be brushed aside as irrelevant.

Still, when a person at elevated psychiatric risk is handed highly experimental treatments, placed in the middle of heated culture wars, and exposed to the copycat incentives of online fame, the risk for tragic outcomes rises. That doesn’t make every transgender individual a threat. It does demand that policymakers, physicians, and parents exercise vigilance. 

The Minneapolis and Nashville killers shared patterns common to many school shooters: detailed planning, fixation on prior massacres, online leakage of their intentions. These are the warning signs that threat-assessment teams, parents, and peers must be equipped to recognize and act upon. If we focus only on identity labels, we will miss the obvious red flags staring us in the face. 

Every serious analysis of mass shootings emphasizes prevention over politics: take leakage seriously, empower schools and families to intervene, and cut off the fame-seeking cycle that inspires the next killer. 

I do not write these words lightly. There are some who will accuse me of stigmatizing an already stigmatized group. Others will insist I went too soft by refusing to declare transgender identity itself as the culprit. Both groups will miss the point. 

 

My calling is not to make readers comfortable—it is to tell the truth as best as we can discern it. That means recognizing that transgender shooters, though rare, cannot be ignored. It means acknowledging that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones carry serious psychiatric and physical risks that deserve scrutiny, not blind celebration. And it means refusing to let culture wars obscure the urgent work of saving lives. 

Uncomfortable facts are still facts. If we are serious about preventing the next school massacre, then we must pursue the whole truth with sober minds and open eyes. Anything less would be a betrayal to the children whose names are now etched in memorials instead of class rosters. 

 

Prayer Is Bad?

 

Below is an editorial from townhall.com, dated 9/4/25, written by Kurt Schlichter; I copied and pasted the editorial and will comment on it.

 

Dems sneer at prayer for victims of gun violence, denouncing thoughts and prayers, insisting instead that conservatives are hypocrites if they do not immediately capitulate and take legislative action for massive gun control legislation.

 

Here is Kurt’s article (K after this): “Dems Don’t Have a Prayer

 

Kurt Schlichter | Sep 04, 2025

The Democrats are going full “Dodgeball” by deciding, after their latest perverted, weirdo constituent went on a mass murder spree of little Christian kids, that they should take aim at the idea of prayer. Apparently, the big problem in the aftermath of yet another Dem-aligned killer is that we’re turning to God and not to our Democrat betters. We shouldn’t be on our knees before the Lord; we should be on our knees before them, submitting, obeying, and accepting the divine right to rule of the No Kings Klan. That’s a bold strategy, Cotton – let’s see if it pays off for them. 

 

It’s unclear whether the Democrats are stupid and bigoted about Christians (as well as observant Jews, whom they also despise as a matter of policy), or whether they are merely bigoted. Regardless, the outcome is the same. They will fire up their freak show base but drive away the normals. The Democrat Party was born of largely faithful working-class people, and it has morphed into a party of largely pagan professional managerial-class swells who embrace a bizarre quasi-religious ideology that rejects God and embraces their SSRI-driven obsessions.

 

Purposefully or not, they misunderstand the purpose of prayer, which is to connect with God. The Lord is not a vending machine where you insert your prayer and get the result you want. This misunderstanding is of a kind with the over-credentialed cretins who think that Christian salvation is based on a tally of good deeds, as if Jesus is there at the pearly gates with a clipboard checking off mitzvahs until you get enough of them, and says, “Congratulations, welcome to heaven.” 

 

Now, of course, this may be stray voltage, that is, an attempt to create a smaller imbroglio to distract from a larger one. It certainly looks organized. Various politicians and media hacks, including Gavin Newsom, that femboy Minneapolis mayor, Jen Psaki-Longstocking, and Senator Tina Whateverhernameis, plus others, all jumped on the “How dare you pray!” bandwagon in a suspiciously coordinated manner. Perhaps they wanted to turn attention away from yet another trans freak deciding to murder normal people because he can’t become a girl. Americans are getting sick of evil, mentally ill mutants who take out their frustrations with either having or not having a penis on innocent people. Paired with the prayer calumny were the usual calls for common-sense gun control; what America needs is common-sense deviant control.”

 

My response: We do not need gun control but I am not anti-trans, so they should not be denied guns, but every school in America should  be hardened with armed guards who kill take out the nut jobs out to harm our children.

 

K: "The problem for the Democratic Party is that most Americans are still people who believe in normal religions and not weird pagan superstitions, like the climate hoax, systemic racism, and feminism. These boutique beliefs may be ubiquitous in blue urban areas and pampered suburbs, but they just don’t play with the normals. The people who run the Democrat Party no longer embrace Christianity, nor even tolerate it. They actively dislike it and the people who practice it, and they barely put up with it even when practiced by groups that are still inside their shrinking tent.

 

Pity the poor black church ladies who still believe in that Jesus stuff; you can almost see the eyes roll back in the heads of the frigid white Chardonnay women who dominate the party when they encounter sincere belief. Black ladies of faith, the door is open to you at the Republican Party. We’re not going to mock you or laugh at you or treat you as if you’re mental defectives who will vote as directed in exchange for a pat on the head, some DEI talk, and maybe a visit to your church where the Ultimate Tiresome White Lady can tell you how she don’t feel no ways tired. Remember, until the Democrat Party is finally gone with the wind, the wine women will always insist on being Scarlet, and you will always be Mammy, expected to submit and serve as an enabler and supporting player in their neurotic psychodramas.

 

In the meantime, the Democrats have their own rituals and sacraments. Just the other day, at the Democrat annual convention, they had some alleged Indian come up and give a land acknowledgment. Some people fast, some confess and do penance, and some listen to Elizabeth Warren’s second cousin give them grief because Europeans conquered this continent, to which they nod in approval at their own historical abnegation. Every time you order a glass of iced tea and it comes with a paper straw that degenerates into mush after the first couple of sips, you are participating in one of their rituals. It means nothing, but the sacrifice of both the utility and the dignity that come from a plastic straw is a secular sacrament.” 

 

My response: Dems are not anti-middle class and anti-Christian—they have become a fringe freak show.

 

 

 

K: "Oh, and they have heretics too. That would be us, the ones who don’t believe that a woman can have a penis or that a man can get pregnant. We refuse to say the holy words that are their preferred pronouns or their euphemisms like “the unhoused” for bums, junkies, and hobos. For these heresies, we must be driven from our employment, driven from society, and – increasingly – driven from this mortal coil by murderous perverts, whose minds are twisted by sick leftist lies.

 

While it certainly rallies their God-free communist cadres, disrespecting prayer and people who pray is going to be a huge turn-off to everybody else. It’s not clear they understand that, since they don’t seem to know anybody who believes in God and assume anyone who does is a little bit insane (to them, believing in God is insane; believing you were born the wrong gender is not). Note that this doesn’t apply to any other religions – those are awesome. It’s just the ones that founded America that are bad, because, of course, everything about America is bad except them.

 

It’s not clear that the Republicans will necessarily benefit from this in the long run, though they probably will in the short run. In Europe, there are overtly Christian parties that are usually the parties of the right and are in opposition to the leftist parties. In the past, these parties were actually conservative, but, like many of the mainline Protestant denominations in America, they’ve been infiltrated, overwhelmed, and assimilated into the Bolshevik Borg. The German Christian Democrats are just as ready to submit to foreign invasion as the Social Democrats. For this reason, while it might be tempting for the Republican Party to continue towards becoming the default party of religious people in America, that might not be good either for the party or the religions. Look at the Republican parties in the red states; when it’s the only game in town, people who should be Democrats come flooding into it and water it down into a gooey bowl of ideological tofu. While perhaps it will give us an edge in the short term, it is to our long-term advantage for both parties to welcome the religious. But that’s not going to happen while the Democrat Party is controlled by a bunch of atheist pagans for whom ridiculous ideology is a substitute for a meaningful faith.”

 

My response: Kurt’s description of Democrats as atheist pagans seem contradictory, but, typically, those that reject God find a substitute cause or ideology, to fill their religious cravings.

 

K: “So, pray for our country even if that makes Gavin Newsom’s teen social media gurus sad. "

 

 

Seeking Purpose--Ayn Rand

 

 

I watched and took notes on a 29.38 minute long video excerpt entitled WRONG: Jordan Peterson vs. Ayn Rand on Finding Purpose In Life. I did copy my notes, slightly edited for coherency, and clarity. Then I will comment on the commentators’ comments. The two ARI philosophers who put out this podcast vide are Onkar Ghate and Nikos Sotirakopoulus, instructors and thinkers at the Ayn Rand Institute. They showed some clips of Jordan Peterson and a guest, whom they commented on.

 

Here is the video—ARI: “Should we live for something bigger than ourselves? In this episode of the Ayn Rand Institute Podcast Onkar and Nikos the question of how to make one’s life purposeful without falling for the sacrifice tropes popular in our culture . . .”

 

My response: I think we should live for ourselves, and flourish as individuators, and that is the primary means of finding meaning and purpose in our lives. It requires that we delay and postpone our immediate self-gratifications, ease, and pleasure, by sacrificing our lower-level selves to individuate and become smarter, stronger, more loving, more creative, more rational. If we do this for a lifetime, then we will have lived a rich, rewarding life. Since the Mother and the Father, Jesus and the Good Spirits are Individuators more than they are joiners—they are that too and we should be joining nonindividuators too at least a little—as we maverize, our living angel lifestyle is a gift or sacrifice to these benevolent deities. And, in this way, we live and grow for something greater than ourselves while improving ourselves. Notice how I blend the Randian suggestion that we happily find  purpose in our own selves solely with being connected to good divinities, living with and working for forces greater than ourselves.

 

Onkar (O after this): “Life is its own meaning. It’s true that you have to construct a life. You have to become a full human being. And you have to live, and you have to choose to do that. You have to embrace that, and you have to see that as a mission. We give our lives meaning.”

 

My response: I agree with all that Onkar said above but would add that God is greater than the individual, and our soulful, personal relationship with a good divinity is required if we would know purpose, meaning, happiness, even. God provides meaning for us too; therefore, the complex challenge to figure out how to live and then live one’s plan is no slam-dunk, easily identifiable, easily definable, either/or choice. God does not want us to see living well and responsibly either as Randian secular humanism living without faith, or strictly Petersonian, suffering-laden, self-effacing, self-denying, total immersion of the self in the divine, an/or immerse in service to others in the community, beyond the self as the only resor to finding purpose in life.

 

O: “It is not that life has some meaning assigned to it. And we have to find some outside cause or crusade.”

 

Nikos (N after this): “Live for something bigger than yourself.”

 

My response: We as individuated souls are, in that mode of advanced existing, have linked ourselves to, are, and are living as something outside ourselves, greater than ourselves, to give our lives meaning and purpose. The individuated self is timeless, connected intimately and deeply to objective reality, to eternity, to the Divinity, and this is the most efficacious way to live for something bigger than oneself, is to grow the self to be growing beyond the undeveloped self.

 

N: “This is actually a very popular trope in the world of self-development. It is linked to the idea that life has meaning only when it is related to a purpose and to a mission, a mission that has to be difficult, an endeavor which has to be daring.

 

And so the story goes, we live in unheroic times when most people are lacking such a mission, this is why many are experiencing a spiritual emptiness. And quite often the trends are captured in popular memes which can, and this specific meme, which can in one hundred different variations, explain and capture exactly this sentiment. A study finds 100% of men would immediately leave their desk job to embark upon a crusade.”

 

My response: 100% of men willing immediately to go on an romantic, heroic venture or quest like Bilbo?—I doubt that, but they should if they dare, and they can maverize, while holding down the desk job to feed their families and pay their bills.

 

O: “And this lack of mission is prevalent particularly today in its counterculture. We see, for example, the very influential film and book club, Fight Club, capturing this trend in the often quoted words by Tyler Deran, when he addresses his little army of men. No purpose or place. No great war. No Great Depression. A spiritual (? Can’t make out the word—Ed Says.). Our Great Depression is our lives.

 

It looks like we need a battle of some sorts. We need to have something to aspire to, something big to aspire to. And indeed, is this indeed the case? Do we need battle and struggle to find meaning in life? Do we need at the end of the day to live for something bigger than ourselves?”

 

My response: I say yes to all of Nikos’s questions, and suggest that individuating, growing a greater, creative self is living in God’s image, and that is the God-sanctioned way to live for something bigger than ourselves.

 

N: “We’ll discuss it today with Dr. Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute. And Onkar, we will be critical of the statement that we need to live for something bigger than ourselves. But let me tell you something. I have to admit that there is something in this idea that you need a mission in life. Appealing, I find it quite appealing.

 

 And I will give a silly example. Last week we had our first, our first big conference in Australia. And getting there included a long trip. It was something that was a new endeavor. I felt as if I’m planting the flag of Objectivism in a new continent, and this made the event more meaningful for me. This made the event really special.

 

The difficulty of getting there and the fact that it was a first. So, does this actually mean that maybe we do need a crusade and a mission to experience our lives as meaningful?”

 

O: “There’s a lot to unpack here. And one of the main things is there are, and one of the main things is these are not all synonyms. So that you want something difficult is not the same as you want a life of suffering, that you want a mission or purpose, or even to be on a crusade is not the same as saying that mission or purpose is to serve something greater than yourself.”

 

My response: To encounter obstacles and suffering in life are inevitable and unavoidable, and they can be instructive, liberating and providers of purpose, but we need challenges and growth for positive reasons too.

 

Onkar, the moral egoist and atheist, must insist that meaning is found in the individual’s life solely, in this world.

 

O: “And, and if you think of the meme about the crusade. Part of that, when and when it’s literally like making a comparison to a crusade, or to a great war, it’s something like there’s a higher authority that’s telling you, you have to march on this crusade.

 

This is for the glory of God. Or we have to liberate Europe, if you, if you’re in the US and it’s we are embarking on this Great War. It’s really not in our interest. We’re not really in it but you have to go save Europe.

 

And there’s an element in that kind of perspective which I think is completely wrong. There’s an element of yours is not to reason why. Yours but to and I mean in the Tennyson poem to do or die. Like you’re given orders that you are to fulfill and that gives your life meaning and purpose.

 

To sort of blindly follow orders and to want some higher authority to tell you what to do, whether it is a father figure or in, in many religions, think of God as a father or mother figure.”

 

My response: It is okay not always to be self-sufficient, and instead seek help and communication from God to know what to do. It is also our duty to care for others as well as ourselves.

 

O: “Telling you what to do, or it’s a more secularized variant like go fight in a great war, and that’s going to give your life meaning, because you’re no longer in charge of your life because you’re taking orders.”

 

N: “What about the idea of the struggle and the idea that modern life is devoid of such struggle? And again, the example: Even in the Fight Club always is the office worker, the white-collar worker who follows a career. He is usually working for the trope; goes for this company that he couldn’t care less about. And this life, the comfortable life, the easy life, is, we are told, the life without meaning. Is there something to it?

 

O: “There’s something to it when you’re talking about the way it’s perhaps in the movies, and so on. I think it’s not just that you’re working for a big kind of amorphous corporation. It’s also that individuals are portrayed, and I’m not interested in this work. I’m not interested in what our company does. Our company makes washing machines, but I’m not interested in washing machines.

 

So, yeah, you shouldn’t work for something that you don’t think this is something valuable to do. But if you have been interested in machines all your life, say, and you grow up and you like taking apart things that you took apart, washing machines and dryers.

 

And, and it’s like you make a career out of this whether it’s just as a repair man, or working as a salesman in such a company, or working as an engineer, and a designer to get better uh machines, more efficient machines, and so on.

 

That is, that is difficult work, to do that and do it well. And if you’re genuinely interested in creating these values, and they certainly are values. If mean, if you can imagine life before these modern appliances. It is a tremendous value created.

 

And if you’re really vested in that. That’s not like some job—I don’t know what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it, and difficult doesn’t mean suffering.”

 

My response: Onkar makes a strong point as he differentiates difficult as the struggle the individual does for his own reasons—which give him purpose—and it is self-interested, and ultimately pleasing, from struggling as suffering and self-sacrifice for a greater cause than oneself, an outside cause which provides the individual with meaning.

 

O: “It doesn’t mean like you have to go and it’s suffering, and it’s painful. But if, if   mean just, just repairing washing machines, it is not self-evident how to do that, designing new machines. Again, it’s not self-evident how to do that and the creativity involved in that is difficult, and so that you want challenges in life, and you want to sort of think you are climbing a ladder, that I’m getting better and better and better.

 

And that’s difficult to do that. Think of a pro-athlete doing this. I don’t think we should think of like a Roger Federer or a Michael Jordan as like they’re constantly in pain and un suffering. But what they are doing is difficult and part of the challenge. And part of the joy is the difficulty and overcoming the difficulty so it’s not that, that’s not at all the same as, I’m, yeah, my day-to-day life is suffering.”

 

My response: Jordan Peterson is a bit gloomy in noting that roughly claiming that all or most of life is suffering, but it is undeniable that suffering is a large part of anyone’s lived experience.

 

N: “Right, and one of the voices in the cultural war who has popularized this idea that meaning, that meaning comes through struggle. And I mean there’s like this triangle: “struggle, meaning through struggle, purpose or meaning. And one of the popularizers of, of this idea is Jordan Peterson.

 

And here’s how he put it recently on Twitter: He says, ‘The purpose of life is finding the largest burden you can bear and bearing it.’

 

And we also have a clip in which he elaborates, and we can now watch it: Jordan Peterson: ‘You should be responsible because that’s what a good citizen is. It’s not no, no, you should be responsible because you need to have a deep meaning in your life to offset the suffering, so you don’t get bitter.”

 

My response: Deep meaning to offset suffering and ego damage in life can be accrued through self-interested individuating, or serving a cause beyond yourself, and it can be suffering or enjoyable or both, and probably is both, bittersweet.

 

N presents Peterson on the clip: ‘And the way you that is to bear a heavy load you know. Get yourself in check for you now and for you in the future and then do the same for your family and for your community and that there’s nobility in that. And there’s and there’s real meaning.’”

 

N: “So his point, Onkar, is that life is tough. Life is going to throw things your way. And the way to withstand, the way to cope with how hard life is, is to voluntarily take as much responsibility and burden as you can. You should carry a heavy load as he puts it.

 

And in some other videos he explains that first you need to carry this for yourself. Then you need to carry it for your family. Then you need to carry it for your community. And at some point, if you are strong enough, you should carry this burden for the whole world.

 

And this is indeed a life of struggle because the load is heavy but also for Jordan Peterson, it offers meaning and purpose because you are elevated to the level almost of someone like Jesus Christ, because that’s what he does. He takes all the burdens of humanity on his, on his, on his  shoulders.

 

Now the way he would—the interesting thing with Peterson is he presents it as if this is something that is actually good for you.

 

So, he doesn’t tell you to sacrifice. He tells you this is what we live that will make your life more manageable. Do you think there is a point to it, that by taking this responsibility not only for yourself, but responsibility for other people, you become stronger and therefore life becomes eventually easier. So, the more burden you overtake, the easier your life becomes in a way? This is the way, the Petersonian line. Do you find any merit in it?”

 

O: “Essentially, no. Sort of at the periphery are things like perseverance, um resiliency, the ability to overcome suffering. Are these positive qualities? Yes, in a certain context. Are they the essence of life? Absolutely not. And just what you quoted the purpose of life is finding the largest burden you can bear and bearing it.”

 

My response: I am not against Peterson’s exhortation that the moral person takes on the largest burden which she can handle, but it may be self-sacrificing for humanity, others, or for some external cause, or it might be pushing yourself to your maximum edge of talent to self-realize, that you enjoy that, and it is a contribution back to God and to humanity too.

 

Egoist ambition to improve the self morally, intellectually, and creatively, if the majority of humans engage in such high end, superlative self-care, has tremendous social benefit in that when most adults tend their gardens well, the need for other-care and charity greatly decline or even disappear. Then, charity and butting into the affairs of moral competent others getting it done is meddling, interference and power-grabbing, and is a failure to tend one’s own garden and clean up one’s own room—to quote Peterson.

 

O: Life doesn’t have a purpose.”

 

My response: Yes, it does.

 

O: “So the purpose of life is a, it’s, it’s this perspective that there’s some outside force that is giving meaning and purpose. Like giving you orders, a mission, a command that you are going to fulfill and you brought up like it’s bringing, it’s making you like Jesus.

 

That’s the portrait of Jesus and it’s important to get how incomprehensible the story of Jesus is. How does it—you’re the son of God. You’re suffering for other people’s sins. You’re perfect but in pain all the time. How like, how that is a meaningful existence?

 

I find the whole—I’m not raised a Christian, and the, the, the whole perspective is bizarre. Um, and that you would worship someone suffering on a cross, as that there’s something really, really, really wrong with that.

 

And to say to that person that there’s not a purpose to life. Life is its own meaning. It’s true that you have to construct a life. You have to become a full human being. And you have to live and and you have to choose to do that. You have to embrace that, and you have to see that as a mission and a goal that you have to and really like it is to create or construct a life that is a human life.”

 

My response: Yes, life is a do-it-yourself game, and one must build a life for oneself; it is not automatically gift-wrapped and set on the doorstep for one to answer a ringing doorbell, a suit of armor to take inside, unwrap from the package and don.

 

But one can build a life for oneself, while dedicating that life to God as a living, personal offering or sacrifice, and seek God’s approval on how one constructs and leads that life.

 

O: “That’s what’s not given to us. And that’s what we have to do if we’re going to embrace our own life. And that we give our life meaning, not life has some meaning assigned to it, and we have to find some outside cause or crusade that we’re going to serve, um, and you say it’s not a sacrifice. Well, it simultaneously is and is not a sacrifice.

 

It’s that sacrifice like and the, the portrait of Jesus. Is He sacrificing for everyone on the cross, dying, but it gives His life meaning?”

 

My response: Finding meaning in life is pursuing one’s own interest—but only if that interest is noble, not malevolent. To build a life for oneself (what makes one happy) is to building meaning in one’s life. Jordan’s point about self-sacrificing for a cause greater than oneself and outside oneself too has merit, but it is not suffering alone that provides meaning in a person’s life. That is too pessimistic a suggestion.

 

O: “So, it’s as though like the sacrifice but if gives your life meaning so in the end it’s really good for you, but, again, if you’re not raised as a Christian the idea that Jesus’s life and death and like is a, is a crucifixion is, is, a, is, a um like painful death. Oh yeah, okay that give some meaning or something.

 

No, like who wants that? And you shouldn’t want that. You shouldn’t want that existence. You should want a life that is challenging, um and difficult because you’re achieving real things. But, again, that’s not the same as suffering.”

 

My response is in the middle: We adults need to identify, adopt and work through an acquired mission: to be happy and fulfilled, we need real work to do, purpose and meaning to make life minimally bearable, and beyond that enjoyable and happiness-conducive. Jordan’s recommendation has some merit, that a life of duty, suffering, self-sacrifice for the greater good and shouldering responsibility are valuable. But Randian promotion of self-interest and self-care is the primary giver of meaning and purpose for the striving individual, especially if her chase is enlightened and she is self-realizing.

 

O: “I want to give a quote for how opposite Ayn Rand’s view here is about that like what and that um what you have to do is create a life. This is the description, a brief description, Francisco d’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged and um he’s often the character people most respond to. He’s not the character I most respond to in Atlas Shrugged but he often is. And this is part of why I think ad here’s part of the description when one first sort of meets him: ‘His tall, slender figure had an air of distinction, too authentic to be modern, and he moved as if he had a cape flowing behind him in the wind. People explain him by saying that he had the vitality of a healthy animal, but they knew dimly that that was not correct. He had the vitality of a healthy human being so rare that no one could identify it.’

 

Close quote. And the project in life is become a healthy human being in the full meaning of that and just like a healthy physical existence is just a part, a small part of what it means to be a healthy human being. And that’s, that’s what you should be striving for.

 

And in that sense, you are your own cause. You’re your own mission. There’s not something outside of you that’s giving it meaning. You have to give your life meaning by becoming a healthy, vibrant human being who deserves to live and is living.”

 

My response: You are your own cause and you give your life meaning by becoming a healthy, vribrant human being, but that includes, beyond the ken of the Randians, that one self-realize as an individuators, philosopher and creator, in the image of the good deities, and one is undertaking one’s personal venture as much for God as for oneself, perhaps more.

 

O: “And that’s the goal. Life’s its own goal.”

 

N: “That line with Francisco and the cape is one of those lines you read once and you remember it forever.

 

But going back to the point of something bigger than yourself automatically implies that you should be less concerned with yourself. And you said the purpose at the end of the day is you and your own life.

 

And yet people who advocate the idea to live for something bigger than yourself would say that the more you are concerned with yourself, the more miserable you are going to be. So, let’s see the next video that we have of Jordan Peterson when he makes exactly this point.”

 

My response. When Jordan complains that people obsessed with self-consciousness become so selfish, narcissistic, miserable, and sickened by their self-obsession, that the only way to be sane, happy, and healthy is to be almost wholly other-centered, this take is mixing apples and oranges, without realizing it.

 

When people wallow in a narrow form of self-absorption, a morbid, dead-ended kind of self-interest, this subjective quagmire of consciousness will make one miserable and unhappy, but this subjective morass is the private mental state most of the time of low self-esteeming, selfless, altruistic, collectivist of group-oriented joiners. Their interests are mostly other-interested.

 

Individualists and individuators are self-interested but their self-concern primarily is healthy and productive, objective worrying about improving their careers, talents and creative outlets, and this makes them wholesome, healthy gratified and optimistic, virtuous. They are self-conscious in a way that is not self-obsessed and morbidly selfish or subjective.

 

Jordan thinks the cure for human wickedness and mental illness, mild or severe, is a strong, repeated dose of other-centered, other-care in a serving mode of humble self-regard and self-forgetfulness, but his altruistic selflessness as a way for people to live rather, makes sick people sicker, often very sick.

 

Rather we want adults to mostly be self-centered, self-caring mental and moral giants whose self-assessment is honest and pleasing to them in a quiet, non-bragging demeanor, through which they are proud of their merited accomplishments. This realistic self-esteeming, modestly expressed in public, is much more virtuous and healthy for the doer, and even is good for the community in the long run.

 

N: “J: ‘The more you think about yourself the more miserable you are. There is no distinction between being self-conscious and being miserable. They’re statistically identical. As soon as you become aware of yourself, you’re anxious and ‘hurt’, right. So, then you might think well, the cure for that is not to think about yourself. It’s no, the cure for that is to think about other people. You exist in relationships to other people.’”

 

Young woman in Jordan’s video: “’And I think you hit one of the other reasons why I wanted to be married and wanted to be married young and didn’t want to waste time doing that is because I wanted something that was more important than my career. I wanted something that was more important than . . ..’

Jordan interrupts her: ‘Why is it more important than your career?’

 

Young woman: ‘Because it is the foundation upon which all of that is built.’

 

Video over, so N continues: “So Onkar, let me try to steal man, not to steal man. Let me try to find some plausibility in this argument that says when you are uh concerned with, with, with yourself, you might become more nervous. But when you embark on something bigger, suddenly you feel better in a way with yourself.

 

I remember in the first days, the dark days of the first lockdown when Covid was new. There was all this scare-mongering from the media. Everyone was scared and I also experienced myself, living in this gloomy atmosphere. And then I remember what was the moment where it, it changed, with some people we created an initiative in Your where it was something, where it was something like any who needs from our friends or our colleagues, anyone who needs shopping from the supermarket, we can help.

 

I mean, I mean we didn’t have to seal in place. We didn’t have with vulnerable immune systems at home to contend with, so we could take action and we could help.

 

And indeed, when we saw ourselves as capable doers, suddenly the atmosphere of fear and the atmosphere of passivity changed.

 

Now Peterson would probably say it’s because you stopped only caring about yourself, but I have a different explanation here. What actually changed is that I experienced myself differently as a doer. I experienced myself differently, not as someone who just passively thinks things happen to me. There was all this scare-mongering. And suddenly me and some friends, we said no, we’re going to do something.

 

It wasn’t about I don’t care if I don’t get Covid or not. It was no, I have self-esteem. I trust myself.”

 

My response: I concur wholeheartedly with Nikos suggestion that without self-esteem and self-trust, we will be assertive enough, self-confident, or willful enough to act decisively to do and bring meaning into our lives, either as self-care or other-care.

 

N: “I can understand the situation and I will rise up to the occasion. So, is there, is there even any merit to this idea that oh, if you care too much about yourself, you got, you’ve become self-obsessed, then, you become, uh, nervous? You get all sorts of anxieties. He says this is basically what anxiety is at the end of the day, and this leads to bad things.”

 

O: “No. And, and, and, so much of what Peterson of, I find so much of Peterson is what in um Objectivism we call package deals: putting things together as they are are all similar when they’re the things that need to be distinguished because they are very different from the other.

 

And so, your presenting the Covid—and I would agree with part of your analysis about there, what, what you felt and it was important to feel this, like an element of control again over your life. That you are not passive, just kind of buffeted by forces external to your agency, your action.

 

 

My response: Yes, the individualist should be an activist more than a passivist. She primarily is the one in control of her life, selecting her interest priorities, and defining and living what brings purpose and meaning to her life.

 

I believe she best expresses this enlightened self-interest if she is religious and faithful to a good divinity, and God wants her to run her own affairs, and rewards her for so living, and punishes her for being overly dependent on God for things to go her way.

 

God wants her to man up, to help build, extend, administrate a piece of the kingdom of heaven in this world of nature, on this planet, and she best affects her plan through self-control rather than God-controlled, though she wants to do her thing in ways parallel to God’s plan—if she can intuit what that plan is—and she still blesses God and prays for God’s blessing and guidance. She finds meaning and purpose when doing her thing is doing God’s thing and, she blends these dual—and hopefully not clashing objectives—obviously and compatibly.

 

O: “So you feel and rightly feel, yeah, I’m able to live because I can take the actions and I’m going to take  the self-initiated actions that are necessary to live.”

 

N: “But also to help others who couldn’t take these actions.”

 

O: “Yeah, that’s the other part. And that, that part of human life is having connection with other people. Other people you value and, and like all kinds of human relationships from work colleagues to friends, um, to just when you’re at the grocery store. And the sort of social interaction with the whatever, the cashier, to, to love relationships and family relationships.

 

These are enormously important elements of a good human life. But they’re not ones where you are living for other people.”

 

My response: Onkar makes a great point: one can be an Objectivist, an egoist, even an individuator whose primary source of meaning is gained by pursuing self-interest, while demanding that the listener not conflate self-interest with an utter rejection of all group affiliating, a false dilemma. At bottom, humans are social creatures, but the only way to socialize humans for maximum social benefit is to train the young to live for themselves more than they live for others, all the time enjoying some group-living and group-identifying.

 

O: “Like, it’s like my life doesn’t count and somehow their life counts.”

 

My response: It is not that my life, my concerns, my desires, my needs, my plans count more than the life, concerns, desires, needs and plans of others, but, instead the needs of each individual and all individuals in society is best serviced and served when each individual assumes and lives as if her life counts most, and that the lives of others, though vital and to be heeded, count less than her own for purposes of living for herself first, but not solely.

 

O: “So what my mission is to serve them and to minister to them, and to help them as though they are significant and I’m not. And this kind of view is rarely projected of and what about those people? Like this is what you are supposed to do, aren’t they supposed to the moment you give them something? Like you’re helping these people, like say take, your taking groceries to, shouldn’t the moment what they do as well. I can’t keep these.”

 

My response: Duty, as Peterson would define it, is the individual obligation to be selfless and self-sacrificing, to devote one’s life to giving priority to the needs of others. That is our secondary duty, I believe, and our primary duty is to live for ourselves, first, and to maverize, gaining meaning and purpose that way.

 

And the duty to self-discipline and self-sacrifice, delaying gratification of base desires so that the maverizing self can grow in creativity, technical skill, and intellectual prowess. One can still seek pleasure and happiness too.

 

O: “I have to go, go, give them to someone else. And it would be this endless chain. And Ay Rand makes this point because she thinks of these issues as you have to take them seriously, what they really mean, and take them to their full, logical expression.

 

And what that means it’s, it’s a life that is incredibly empty. And what human relationships should be are both people benefiting (Ed agrees.). And, um, and, and when you’re in a case of emergency um as Covid, as you said in the early days like it, it, could feel like that, then, yeah, that you’re together as a human community fighting this emergency. There’s real um significance in that but it is again significance from the perspective of life, not there’s some external thing that’s giving meaning to life.”

 

My response: God does give meaning to our lives from De’s internal and external loci of communicating to us, but we then receive this welcome nudge and express it sublimely as self-caring self-interest, if we are fully alive and fully live.

 

O: “You know, God told us it is good to suffer and I’m sending you Covid so you can suffer. That, that’s not what is going on.”

 

My response: We all know that life is suffering, and we intuit, if we are reflective that life is happiness, and enjoyment too. It is good to suffer a little, for it deepens us, and makes us aware of our human tragedy, fragility, and mortality. But, too much suffering, either natural suffering or unnatural, malevolent (humanly fabricated unnecessary suffering) soon reaches the point in each life where the individual is irreversibly damaged and degraded by too much pain. And that is to be minimized if we can, and we should take on the duty to maverize which helps us convert suffering into meaning, gain, even happiness and joy.

 

N: “Yeah, and actually the moment I realized that what Ayn Rand talked about (altruism) was a very hard pill to swallow for me. I was raised in a Communist or Christian country that altruism is a morality which is impossible to live by.

 

It was this example of try to imagine a life: a day in your life from morning to night, you try to constantly sacrifice. It’s, it’s impossible. And equally the idea that you have to pick the most difficult burdens from morning to night. How would you live?

 

What would you ever, ever do, and what would the towards what type of purpose? So, I think it is the other way around. First, you have a purpose and if the purpose you need to very clearly choose that purpose is, and, of course, that purpose are, will require for you to take difficult actions.

 

And then you take the actions. If the struggle come before the purpose, then this makes no sense. So which struggle would I pick and what would I pick it for? And one other thing in this idea of that for living for others, your life gets more meaning.

 

We have a very good example in fiction on, and this is Kate in the Fountainhead. She is a person who more and more loses herself because she believes the poison which if the leaking of her uncle Ellsworth Toohey. And we see her at some point complaining that the more I try to live for other people, the more I try to get this meaning for struggling and suffering for others, the more my life becomes meaningless.

 

So again, this is, this is a morality, this is a way of life which would be impossible, an ideal which would be impossible to live by, and this would be my parting words, Onkar.

 

I lived a life for many years where there was no purpose. Or, to put it this way, there was no mission. And it was a life that sucked, so I totally agree with us: if your life is without—you wake up in the morning and you don’t know why, what you’re trying to achieve, this is a life indeed that sucks.

 

And you feel somewhere inside you, your best part and conscience tells you, you should be doing more, you should be doing something else. When you find a purpose suddenly everything changes in life.

 

First of all, you got more self-esteem. You appreciate yourself because you experience yourself getting somewhere,”

 

My response: It is true that once you discover, latch onto, and grow the self through an implement an unfolding program of enlightened self-interest, your self-esteem does increases, and that is praiseworthy.

 

Many nonindividuators, as true believers, gain false self-esteem by serving a holy cause in a mass movement, and this belonging suffuses them with a powerful, complete sense of self-esteem, worth and purpose, but they have no self-esteem left, and they are growing evil and tyranny in the world by spreading their holy causes. We must be careful and avoid becoming true believers in any cause.

 

N: “as doing something that is efficacious, something which, something which is adding up to something. And if this purpose burns you with the fervor of a mission (a holy cause perhaps, Ed says), that’s even better. That’s then you’re even more living a life which you, which you experience it a strongly, you experience it as meaningful.

 

But here’s the thing. It needs to be your purpose. And it’s not something above yourself. It’s not you’re not living for something bigger than yourself. You’re living for yourself at his best. You’re living for yourself, a self who has a purpose, a self who has carefully chosen that purpose so it’s yours as yours can be. And this is a meaningful life, the purposeful life.”

 

O: “And either you say it is a purpose you’ve chosen, it’s a purpose you’ve chosen because what it is or involves the creation of values that further your life so. And this is what I it’s really perverse to tie together things that are difficult demanding effort with suffering. It’s a burden, look around, find the biggest burden, and take that on. That, one is a pro-life attitude and one’s an anti-life attitude.

 

And the pro-life attitude, what is distinct about human life is that we can grow. We can do things that are new, creative. We can learn more and therefore act in new ways.”

 

My response: Life is rarely either-or, but is more one thing, and less another thing, but do both. Jordan’s life of altruistic suffering and grim burden-hoisting is anti-life more than is the pro-life secular humanist, egoist route espoused by these two Randian scholars. But the Randian version is anti-life in that it makes no room for God in our lives or grounding our values with the Divinity. Jordan’s altruistic suffering of the self for the group is anti-life in that it denies individualism, self-enjoyment, which are godly attributes which humans need to imitate.

 

The individuators should be doing both more than not, but more Randian than Petersonian.

 

O: “And life is about and if you are taking your own life seriously, you want to advance it. It’s about getting better, and this is why like the perspective of a pro-athlete who’s constantly improving. That’s what life should be like—and your own life.

 

And if you think of it like that it is challenging. It is demanding. You’re moving from achievement to more difficult achievements because there would be a greater value you are achieving.

 

Like if you think of a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk of them venturing into the new creating. That’s what human life is, that’s what we are capable of. That’s what we should dedicate to grow in whatever capacity you can grow. But you shouldn’t look at a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk and say like when he’s working on Space X and Rocket, like that’s suffering, and he’s looked for the biggest burden.

 

No, it’s difficult and I’m sure there’s like, there’s long hours, there’s frustration, there’s dead ends. We try this, that doesn’t work. But that’s all what achievement looks like. And that’s not suffering. It is part of the joy of life. Not and then to think of it as a suffering or a burden or painful.

 

It’s just, it’s just a completely wrong perspective on what human life can and should be.”

 

N: “And since we are in the festive period, let me suggest once more for people to do themselves a favor and read for the first time, or reread The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

 

They’re the only, they’re the first time in my life that I saw the idea of your life and your work as a crusade and a mission. And actually, Ayn Rand uses the term crusade quite often in her work.

 

But crusade as you said, it’s a goal that is carefully chosen to add meaning to your life, a life lived properly with your happiness as, its goal so if you want to see a crusade without an actual cape, but someone who engages in very difficult endeavors, always with a goal, with a goal ahead.

 

And what it takes to reach that goal. Do yourself a favor these days and reread Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead.

 

This was the podcast of The Ayn Rand Institute. Many thanks for your time.