The 2017 Peterson Clip

Today I listened to a 4 minute, 25 second excerpt of a lecture given by Jordan Peterson on March 16, 2017; it was a YouTube, Bite-sized Philosophy clip, entitled: There is nothing to do without value structures. Below I will write out my notes on this mini lecture of what Peterson said, with my comments on it. I wish to preface my notes and responses, by acknowledging that Dennis Prager has long taught that with proper Judeo-Christian values--and Greek, classical values I would add--one can build a moral, solid personal life, and a healthy vibrant society. With no values, poor values or evil values, then all goes to hell according to Prager. Below, Jordan Peterson is reaching much the same conclusion. Jordan Peterson (J): The postmodernists are the logical conclusion of the Nietzchean dilemma: God is dead, so the value structure has collapsed. The specter rises of all value structures collapsing. The postmodernist dogma is that all value structures have collapsed. My response: Western value structures are greatly collapsed, but they could make a comeback if we traditionalists unite and fight back hard against the Leftist nihilists working assiduously to tear down Western society. God is not dead, and the values that the Divine Couple share with us, and from all other benevolent deities like Christ, will sustain and fulfill us again if we return to the God-centered fold. J: These value structures were only there for purposes of exclusion. My response: Jordan is describing the postmodernist claim that value structures, science, logic, individualism, capitalism, liberty and classical human rights are all social constructs or lies that the corrupt capitalist, sexist, racist white patriarchy taught to American citizens to keep them down, exploited and oppressed. The victims and the oppressed were excluded from power, freedom, wealth, control and equal outcomes. No, there is right and wrong built into the ontological fabric of reality, and values are our conceptual descriptions of the attitudes, behaviors, actions and speech that can be analyzed and assigned moral descriptors like good or evil, or praiseworthy or blameworthy. Humans serve God or Satan, so moral and spiritual alignment with either of these selected deities is unavoidable for each agent to choose, and thus said choice makes the world a better place or a worse place, and value structures are biological and cultural concepts that aid humans in knowing how to live successful and happy lives. J: Value structures have no intrinsic value, and this is a very powerful argument. That is why it dominates universities. And it allows people to dispense with their moral responsibilities. My response: What Jordan lectured right above is his characterization of postmodernist view that value structures are worthless, and that this outlook is much favored by professors and administrators in Academia, because demolishing existent value structures is key to replacing the old, traditional value structures with postmodernist, collectivist, secular, nihilistic value structures of chaos and conflict. Note that Jordan rebukes postmodernists for belittling the importance of value structures as an aid to assisting people in avoiding their moral responsibilities. If moral codes do not exist or apply to this generation, then there is no exhortation announced to push people to behave in a humane, civil, kind manner. J: That people avoid working to meet their moral responsibilities is not something that postmodernists talk about but give the Devil his due. What is the problem with postmodernism? If all value systems have collapse, there is nothing to do. My response: It seems to me that Peterson is operating on several unstated presuppositions here. First, humans must have values to live by, and a purpose for getting out of bed each morning. That is, they need a challenge, a teleological mark to work towards. That is, they need something to do. Second, with a wholesome set of values and religious doctrines available to citizen believers, that country[s value structure or value structures provides those citizens with rich opportunities to have plenty to do, and that satisfies their basic and deepest needs, at least for those that are ambitious or care. J: In order to do something, one thing has to be better than another or why do it? My response: here Jordan is suggesting that value ideation is the pressing upon each experience or action, a valuational status, ranked in comparison to other higher or lower ranked values, a hierarchy of worth from more to less. If one cannot know that the goal of an action is to become or capture what is more beautiful, desirable, smarter or better, than one is disincentivized in trying to do anything. J: People ensconced in the postmodernist philosophy are undermined by their own tradition. They can deconstruct their own deconstruction so they might as well just sit and do nothing--which is actually would be preferable to what they are doing now. My response: Jordan like Hicks and others all point out the glaring paradox at the heart of postmodernist philosophy: for ideologues that deny grand narratives of any kind, and yet believe, and practice that Marxist theory and values about power and conflict serving as the ontological substrata of all reality, and serving as our motive to live, move and plan. Either they are willfully blind, liars, fanatics unfazed by this self-contradictory juxtaposition, or cynics that are Communism true believers at the bottom, playing Sophist word games to gain advantage and advance their cherished cause. I suspect all these motives are at work. Since they claim to believe in nothing, they might just as well do nothing, but they have their Maoist cause, so they do have something to do, bringing totalitarianism, collectivism, war and genocide to the West, and seeking world domination. The great-grandchildren of Stalin are on the march once again. As Jordan wryly suggests, it would be much better if they did do nothing, rather than spread misery, nihilism and suffering all across the globe. J: So how do they extract themselves from that dilemma? They do it illogically. But they do not care because, first of all, they do not believe in logic. That is a reflection of the Logos that they have dispensed with. Dialogue that they do not believe in--that is a reflection of the Logos so that they have dispensed with. Logic and dialogue are irrelevant. My response: Jordan is pointing out that the Western tradition champions that application of knowledge, reason, experimentation, logic and dialogue so that we cooperate and compete peacefully in liberty and harmony, wrangling and seeking to advance our knowledge and our culture. Since the individual is the sovereign, core Western idea, and the Divine Couple are Great Individualists, then Logos, or the power of Reasoning, is a necessary tool for humans to function, be creative, moral, and survive. As we reason, think and speak out our thoughts, our ideas are dialogued in the public arena of ideas, and this free and open exchange of speech and views elevates all individuals and benefits the entire community. Logos is God's principle, or God Deself, at work through the universe, and reason and logic are our parallel if more modest rational efforts within the human arena. Logos and logic are fundamental and critically relevant, not irrelevant, and mere weapons fielded by the corrupt white patriarchy to keep of the victim groups oppressed and exploited. J: That brings up the problem of what to do. The postmodernists finesse that by reverting to the Marxist doctrine from which postmodernism emerged. You do not get direction from postmodernism but we do not worry about such things. We will just use sleight of hand to push forward the communitarian doctrine from which our original hypothesis emerged. We will turn a blind eye to the paradox because we need something to do. And to the degree that we are communitarian we can take out our nihilistic resentment and arrogance and ingratitude on every single person that we deem to have more than we have. My response: Communitarian control of everything, gained under the guise of using power, war, revolution and conflict to fight for the rights of the poor, women, blacks, LGBT, etc. is the power drive that animates these true believers. Their rage, their violent lust to get revenge upon being itself for bringing them into the world, revenge gained by burning up the whole world, and killing all humans, that is their aim as their fury, revenge-craving, their arrogance, their ingratitude and their jealousy towards the successful and self-made people are all meant to justify their attack upon first whites and the West, and then burning down the entire world. J: So, if you are wondering why certain values can exist in the absence of any values you have to look no farther than to understand people that are desperate and chaotic will still be angry and destructive, and they can manifest that perfectly with the moral mask that says I am not after you because you have a little more than me. I am attacking you on behalf of those that have less than me. My response: These postmodernists thugs-turned-revolutionaries are able to justify anything act of murder or theft that they wish to justify. They are to be opposed. J: This is absolute nonsense. It is funny to watch Yale students complain about the privileged elite and rich, when they are among the most wealthy and privileged people that have ever lived. They are dominant patriarchs in training. They are baby representatives of the patriarchy. All they do is complain about a small sliver of people that have more than they have right now. It is appalling and their idiot professors pat them on the back and send them out to protest instead of teaching them how to live. They damage their mental health. They hurt their society. They are bringing things down. And is what they are aiming at. My response: Talk about a hard-hitting and accurate portrait of pampered, spoiled, indoctrinated, misguided Yale elite students not knowing what they are doing or why. Their nihilist professors are using them as useful idiot to help foment that revolution to finally take out the West. That is the scary end game. J: The postmodernists manage to be nihilistic and totalitarian at the same time. And that is something that not even Nietzsche dreamed about, and Nietzsche perhaps was the greatest imagination ever for pathology that ever existed. They, the postmodernists, combine nihilism and totalitarianism with the worst aspects of dogmatic religion. because what they have essentially established is a cult which children that attend university are now indoctrinated into. And at great cost with very little practical outcome. My response: Jordan has asked elsewhere what motivates the sheer persistence and endless striving by Leftists and postmodernists to spread their power everywhere, taking over America lock, stock and barrel, and eventually, the entire world. I have warned for a couple of years now--no one reads me anyway, let alone pays attention to my opinion--that Leftism is now a religion and Big Government is their God. Leftism is a mass movement and these baby zealots on campus are the newest recruits of true believers. They believer absurd and outrageous things, but no one should underestimate their will to power and their unwavering devotion to spreading Communism everywhere as soon as possible, by any means, fair or foul. As Jordan notes their nihilism and totalitarianism now united with dogmatic religious fervor, that is about as close to being the definition of a mass movement as I can conjure up, but I am not sure Peterson is at all familiar with Eric Hoffer.