Online Lecture

 Jordan Peterson has a 10/17/2015 online lecture on Existentialism and Authenticness. This lecture is important to understanding Jordan because I had earlier sense that he was an existentialist, and the content of the lecture confirms that hunch of mine.

Jordan lectures that we are more than just our intellect (he is not just an essentialist or rationalist), for we are embedded in a social context. I agree: moderate philosophers contend that we are not just our intellect, but are a composite of the whole, living person, with all its jumbled, jostled parts and particular, all must be factored in to form a clear picture of what it is to be human.

Still, Jordan suggests that we are abstract and can learn abstractions, and pull in ideas, but like Stirner and Hoffer he seems to warn us against worshiping an ism, for it will enslave us. As true believers, we end up being inauthentic, licing a lie and feeling noncongruent (nothing quite fits).

If we tell the truth and speak the truth, we will be strong. Much of us is a lie, inauthentic, not us. We must speak the truth and reveal our true selves in order to have real conversations with others, and think original thoughts. I agree, but worry that Stirnerian and Petersonian  irrationalist attack on reasoning will lead to more barbarism, pathology, groupism, fanaticism, lying and passionate decision-making. Again, as a moderate philosopher, I buy most of what Jordan is selling here, but I believe that the passions or emotions convince the true believer to worship his ism or abstraction, and these psychic functions are more to blame for his fanatical self-enslavement than is his cognitive appreciation of or obsessing about one single concept. Obviously, his logic and his passion, for the true believer, do poison his relationship with a universal that he worships as a rational fetish, but it is less the former than it is the latter.

Jordan goes on to report that Jung announced that ideas have people more than people have ideas. This is true for duped egoists, groupists and nonindividuators. Both Jordan, Stirner and I agree that that is how it is for most people.

Jordan recommends that each individual be truthful and authentic. Jordan claims that truth is hard to define (true) because we have no ultimate definition of truth since we are not infinitely informed . Ignorance is our lot.

 My response: certain knowledge may not exist, or it may not be available to creatures as intellectually limited as are human beings. Still, probably certain truth is available and ascertainable, so it is enough to hang our epistemological hat on.

Jordan: Ignorance is our lot, but truth is still valid. If we can't know for sure what is true and good, we know what is false and bad, so we can quite doing those.

Jordan thinks we can get a long way by quit doing what is bad and false and pursue mostly what is good and true. The masses bottom up, by failing to be responsible,  allow pathology to take over as things like Stalinism are caused by inauthentic little people not standing tall and opposing it. Amen, I concur.

Jordan seems to advise that as truth-loving, authentic, ethical, responsible individuals, we can make a difference--we may not be able to clean up the world but we can clean up ourselves.

Here is where Jordan hits a home run: I am not a psychologist but I believe that I have caught his meaning: People are born flawed, and suffering and malevolence that is their lot in life, and it is about enough to make anyone sicked, defeatist and unwilling even to go on living, let alone keeping on, keeping on. People are sick due to existence in a troubled tragic world, not sick much due to psychoanalytic troubles. 

The suffering, the malevolence and our personal failings are so daunting and depressing that it amazes Jordan that people even try to surmount things, and it is a miracle that people are as healthy as their are, and that things are quiet, efficient, orderly and normal is remarkable, and I agree.

Jordan advises us as individuals to be truthful, authentic and moral to make life and the world moral. We need to build a life for ourselves. The tragedy inherent in life will destroy us and we will become pathological unless we defy and fight the tragedy, and we must eschew lies and deceit.

Life is tragedy and suffering, and blind, random chance works us over everyday. Life is not rational, and we are thrown into the world. We are finite facing the infinite, and we do not know why things occur as they do. Jordan the existentialist.

Jordan the existentialist denies that we are just thinking subjects: reality is best conceived of as the totality your experience--your emotions, instincts, perceptions, etc must be included. Your experience is fractured, incoherent and paradoxical. The terrible shock of encountering brutal, painful reality can and does weaken your spirit so it does not remain strong. People are corrupted by the tragic conditions of existence.

Jordan yells at us. We are not to make it worse: we must be responsible: there is a moral necessity to be good and strong. You cannot be immoral without increasing suffering and punishment for yourself and the world at large.

Doing wrong is immoral and so doing is catastrophic for the world. That is universal morality at work.

Jordan points out that deception is immoral. Scientific truth is descriptive but existential truth is action-predicated truth, a way of being, embodied, not a collection of descriptions. Truth is what you do, not what you say.

We are not to be passive observers but active participants in our world. 

Jordan admires Nietzsche as a prophet, crying out that God is dead, and the science and modern man has killed him. What would follow, according to Nietzsche, was nihilism and communism, with hundreds of people being murder.

Jordan defines nihilism as denying life's meaning and purpose. Too claim all meaning is relative, they assert, and it sickens its believers and followers.

Jordan urges that you cannot  live a truth, it is not a truth. Living your lie makes you a mendacious fraud.

Jordan insists that you as an individual must particularize your own meaning. You are not to be a fanatic worshiping an ism as an duped egoist. You the authentic, engaged, courageous individual must stand up and be counted. Everything you do matters. You have meaning as an individual--you have free agency. You will get away with nothing. Your pathology corrupts the world and it ripples out, and your deceitful ways makes your responsible as you do damage.

The good Dr. is offering each individual a chance to lead a responsible, meaningful life as an ethical, authentic individual. 

This fits rather nicely within my Mavellonialist scheme. If the religion and ethos of self-realizing is included with Petersonian teachings on self-improvement, we can pay attention to the convergence between his philosophy and mine. I am the first Mavellonialist and he is the 2nd Mavellonialist, whether he realizes it or not, and whether he would rebuff the comparison or not.