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Two of my favorite intellectuals are Jordan Peterson and Stephen Hicks. They are pro-Modernism, pro-capitalism, pro-individualism, pro-America. They are anti-postmodernism, anti-Socialism, anti-collectivism, and anti-globalist. They like Modernism because it provides us with scientific knowledge, liberty, progress and prosperity. They disagree with the cynical postmodernists that words and ideas just serve raw power amassing for each avatar of each identity group as they claw their way up the hierarchical food chain. Marxism is rejected by both as a murderous, enslaving, tyrannical, impoverishing totalitarian retread political and economic system and culture. Dennis Prager, Jordan Peterson and I all share the tragic view of life. We believe that human nature is not good, that suffering and malevolend are basic to existing. Stephen Hicks is more optimistic, a secular atheist: he believes we are born good, and that happiness is readily accessible. He is too optimistic, but long-termi optimism remains a possibility andthe desired goal. Jordan to some degree is an elitist in that he avows that the competent and superior individuals (the brightest) rise to the top of every hierarchy and should. He believes that talent is rare, so the talent of these superior individuals must be developed, appreciated, praised and rewarded for the benefit of all. Hicks is not an elitist. Neither he nor I think talent is rare. He believes the individual can reason and think originally with no need for elites or authority to do his thinking for him any longer. Both would argue, but especially Peterson, that power is not the only or even the primary human drive. It is an important one, but they believe that empathy and power-acquisition can be to develop the self as an individuator, not to cquire power over others Jordn is correct in being suspicious of the relativism and skepticism by the postmodernists about the possibility of metanarratives. They are subjectivists about knowledge claims, while positing raw power grabbing as the primordial base drive of all individuals and groups vying for power, say and resources in this world. Peterson rejects this simplistic but universal objective overgeneralization, typical of neo-Marxists the new and active mass movement with one answer to solve the world's problems and unifactorial analysis of complex social problems. Both accept that the postmodernist Marxists are inconsistent and self-contradictory in denying any moral or epistemological claims to absolute or objective truth on one hand, while suggesting that all reality is socially constructed and delimited there within that milieu in that all thoughts and concepts are expressed and limited to relevance in that social linguistic world, that reality and language are coterminous and that there is no objective reality outside of linguistic enterprises. This is severe linguistic pessimism. Still, the postmodernists push that biologically instantiated power welling up in the psyche of each competing human being, struggling to gain rank status and money along that hierarchy, that their power drive comes from the outside of linguistic reality as an extralinguistic force; they reject meta-narratives while admitting that raw biological power, an extra-linguistic motivational drive in people, is at work in social settings. They glaringly here contradict themselves. Stephen Hicks (From March 12-16, 2020) was in Melbourne for a Culture Wars conference, and I below took notes from his two-minute characterization of Jordan Peterson; the excerpt is entitled: About Jordan Peterson: Here is my notes of an excerpt: Jordan Peterson has a foot in both worlds. He is a proficient man of science, especially biological psychology and its applied science. He is an inheritor of the modern world's big debate and dilemma over the scientific opinion that there is no relation between fact orientation in our thinking and value orientation in our thinking. My response: Jordan Peterson is a scientist, but he is also an existentialist philosopher, that form of subjective philosophy that places Peterson in the relativistic world of values. He is struggling articulately with defining the relation between our fact orientation and our values orientation. He is a genuine moderate. He will not declare if he believes in God, and nor will he directly characterize who and what God is, but he is a believer. Our values flow out of our religious faith, but we need science and religion both at the same time to lead civilized, fruitful, meaningful lives in the West going forward. Stephen Hicks seems to be an atheist and Objectivist and a scientist, but he wants no values that are religion. The scientific dogmatists and the religious dogmatists are both astray. We need mutual tolerance and no fanaticism from either the scientists or theists. Rational religion is a great way to bridge the divide and Marxist postmodernists are the real enemy of all. Here are more of my notes on Hick's excerpt: Jordan Peterson does not see how it is possible to define value as good or bad in a physicaistic or modern scientific framework. That points him back in the direction of values and meaning and the pursuit of those things that are absolutely critical to human identity. The modern world cannot deliver on that. We need to go back to the ancients, the pre-moderns to find those things. But then, the tradeoff there is not a rational grounding to speak about meaning. So, Jordan talks about religion and values in approximate, metaphorical and unsatisfactory language, and that frustrates people. My response: Hickes lives in a world of reason, consistency, and truth, or at least he believes that he does. Peterson, like I am, is a moderate, and we know that the reason, consistency and truth are part of the world, but so are evil, lies, irrationally, incompetence, subjectivity and mystery that cannot be explained. This is why the wisest and most honest metaphysical slant on the world is part science and part feeling or values. With every weapon of consciousness in our arsenal and utilized, we may come much closer to discovering the truth, and how to best cope with messy, muddy human existence. Hicks describes Peterson as recognizing that postmodernists are launching a deep, fully frontal attack on Western civilization, and it is a combination of ancient Judeo-Christian insights plus modern, rational insight. The project is to be neither pre-modernist or post-modernist but to find a synthesis, but Jordan Peterson says I do not know how to do this and that is the project. My response: I agree with Hick's characterization of Peterson here, and perhaps Mavellonialism is that correct synthesis, part-value and part-science.