In this lecture, Jordan talks about Existentialism: Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.
Jordan advises students to remember to detect and understand the philosophical assumptions behind any study or theory, in order to comprehend the study's import and its creators' motivations.
He shared that he began college in Poli Sci but was disenchanted by their Marxist, superficial explanation that all people are motivated by economic concerns. He switched to psychology to study what made people tick.
He is an ethicist and existentialist. He warns that aimless people are in real trouble. Each individual requires an aim so he has a fixed identity. I agree.
He advises each person to study the presuppositions that she lives by so she will recognize what ideas that she is controlled by to see if that is how she wants to live. I agree.
He then switches gears: World War II was an ideological batter between fascism and western democracy. He worries about the ideology that possesses the Western individual, and how they recognize and assume their responsibility against the State. If the country goes insane, what is the individual's responsibility? It is each person's responsibility to stand against and restrain the state. We too much accommodate authority. We tolerate murderous dictators, unleashed mass movements and totalitarian state structures. Where these vicious evils are running amok, it is the fault of the people to be blamed for not thwarting evil elites running things. The people are not just victimized followers. I agree wholeheartedly.
Jordan the existentialist boldly explains the we are individually responsible (I heartily agree.) for government misbehavior. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche predicted 20th century nihilism, world war and totalitarianism. Nietzsche examined how science killed Christianity and then nihilism grew out of science. Thinkers then learned to theorize, dropped dogma and then used the truth to become secular.
Mental illness is not Freudian so much as it is grounded in nihilism. Realizing that life is suffering tainted by malevolence can make us insane. Knowing that life is suffering so unbearable that we could be tempted to kill ourselves. Since suffering can drive us insane, we must have in our personal lives meaning to make life tolerable. Dostoevsky warned that if there is no God, then everything is permitted. If there is no God then along will come totalitarian communism. I agree. I would add that life is perhaps mostly suffering on earth but God, joy, love and meaning are available to most people, especial in liberal, Western democracies.
Jordan states that nihilism is close to insanity; we need to care to not go mad. Nihilism is not caused by social distress, physiological degeneration or corruption of all things; suffering is just part of life. If poor, ill or Being itself is evil these three do not cause nihilism. The death of Christianity and the loss of truth are causes of nihilism. When people believe that all is false, and are skeptical about morality, that there is no moral interpretation of the world, and no sanction in heaven, all we have left are nihilists with no meaning in their lives. I agree.
Christians believed that the earth was corrupt, and the good Christian must endure it, and wait for salvation. When Christianity began to fade, people needed the material solution and this led to science and the emphasis on the here and now. The worldly became more important than otherworldly Christianity. I agree.
These are my opinions: One of Jordan's most trenchant realizations is that once the believer, loses faith, if he has no replacement ism to latch onto, or worse has lost faith that any ism or belief system is absolute, then the horrifying loneliness, dread, recoiling from sheer nothingness and meaninglessness can compel that believer to resort to nihilistic practices like suicide, murder others or joining a mob to engage in mass murder against those from another tribe, or to accept or perhaps even work to bring about a totalitarian state. All these destructive, nihilistic substitutes are poor, dangerous substitutes for the loss of belief in God.
Jordan worries that once you lose your faith in your belief system, you might become meta-skeptical, so logical and critical that you accept that you can never be certain about anything. So true.
As true believers the lost, or ex-believers will pretend to be certain, though not certain at all, but will create values out of nihilism. These unbelievers latch onto a utopian promise of redemption for them here and now. Just join the Communist movement. If one is unselfish and shares with all others what one has, then all will have enough of everything. We will all be able to do what we want in this coming, earthly paradise. All are basically good and as all abandon selfishness, the dawn of paradise will come.
The reality is a nightmare once the totalitarian dream takes hold of a people or nation. Utopian ideology leads to hell on earth. Western liberalism is harshly critiqued as its followers are condemned as materialistic, selfish hypocrites. The nihilism of Communism is Utopian materialistic materialism and the individual is reduced to a cipher, a programmed machine. I agree.
As Jordan reiterates, prosperity and ease (Hoffer saw this too.) can corrupt people. Pure utopian ease bores people. They have no job, no purpose, and shoulder no responsibilities that give life meaning. They will tear the system down just to be free and struggle. Does this not, I ask, sound like our privileged, entitled, rich spoiled college students burning down beautiful America because their lives or empty of aim, challenge or purpose? No wonder these frustrated, self-loathing big children have latched onto revolutionary Leftism to tear down and destroy all that is good and wholesome in the Western and American culture.
Jordan cautions that eliminating suffering should not be the goal because the loss of suffering or difficulty to be coped with if not overcome will lead the individual to abandon divine responsibility, rushing headlong to chase after utopianism or nihilism. This tragic choice, individually or as a people, leads to the rise of mass movements or totalitarianism. The desire to eliminate suffering turns malevolent and turns all society into a hellish nightmare. I agree.
Jordan offers the existentialist approach, under which he links mental health to responsibility. Go ahead and experience angst, leading one to question the nature of existence.
Here is a brilliant insight from Jordan: Truth is not established by majority consensus or crowd opinion. In the group is untruth, not just collective untruth, The individual is the one most likely to uncover the truth.
If I may digress into my thinking: if we link the self-actualizing individual to such existential mental and ontological, concurrent attitudes as individual-living, loving love, thinking a lot and for oneself, loving the truth, loving goodness, then it can be seen that the authentic individuator seeks the truth, and will find the truth--not so with the inauthentic joiner, nonindividuating, group-living, speaking and living in accordance with the accepted herd collection of lies, its official narrative. The groupists will find untruth and label it as true, and the loner will discover the truth and label it as truth, so this dispute becomes a bitter point of contention between the group and the stubborn individualist flouting their stated preferences.
Under Jordanian psychology of existentialism, life is suffering but the individual is to defy nihilism and meaninglessness by taking responsibility in the face of that suffering, The authentic, courageous, thoughtful self is to refute nihilism and ideological pessimism and their myrmidons, the duped egoists. He wants his authentic individualists to take responsibility, tell the truth, live an ethically good life, and if enough individuals straighten themselves out, the that is the way to heal society for the common good. Fail to follow Jordanian instructions will lead to pointless suffering that will bring ruin down upon the individual and society. Well said, wise, brilliant, truthful and good Jordan Peterson.
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