Jordan's Hierarchy

 I have always been a little uncomfortable with Jordan Peterson's repeated insistence that human performance or competence in any  given pursuit creates an automatic hierarchy of competence whereat a few people do very well and the vast majority are mediocre, average performers at the bottom.

Jordan, of unusually high IQ, and a bit of a snobbish elitist, is so successful that he assumes that less intelligent people are just not able to perform at peak levels, so, were they to become clinical psychologists, they would be mediocre thinkers in that field. They cannot help their blah performance becase that is all that they are capable of. That is a natural distribution of people along hierarchies of competence.

Hoffer and I believe that through self-realization even average people will perform brilliantly, creatively and productively, and this society wide base line of competence and performance, among a Mavellonializing population, will start at a very peak level of performance. This wide base of the hierarchy will lead upwards from there, that baseline of competence, and the rest of the members of society, will perform truly remarkable feats,  all the way up to and through God the Creator.

Now, with a direct line to God, I feel that my truth-detector and error-detector are very acute and accurate, and something about what Jordan is pushing here seems mistaken, and his being wrong is of huge importance.

Let me contradict myself immediately, laying out a paradox about hierarchies that govern human performance.

 One one side, Jordan is correct, for any type of human endeavor, where people work at that endeavor without Mavellonialist training and self-consciousness, a few people will do very well, and most people will do poorly or just get by in terms of their competence at said endeavor. In other words, a few people naturally self-actualize, or just accidentally stumble into that remarkable mode of existence. Most other performers, at that endeavor, less energetic, less focused, less industrious, less innovative, and completely group-oriented (That way of living that reinforces and even rewards not dreaming or following a dream, that promotes, laziness, fatalism, nonindividuating and breeds a willingness to waste time and one's life.) predictably perform poorly or in some unremarkable way. This naturally occurring pattern of behavior displayed regarding a specific pursuit is the one that Jordan has indentified, but its is only half of the human story.

Where people are self-consciously self-realizing, then the other side of that paradox emerges for observation and review: this unnatural occurring pattern of exceptional behavior and performance form 97% of the performers in that field or at that particular task will be peak performers, pioneer in their field, actually. And they are the bottom of the hierarchical triangle of competence, whereas a few ultra-geniuses rank way above like other angels, topping out with the Mother and Father at the top of the hierarchy.

To sum up: Jordan is half-right about naturally occurring hierarchies of competence for people. He needs to acknowledge the existence of a much more encouraging hierarchy ranging from great competence to greatest or divine performance at any given task.