The Saving Way By Jordan Peterson

 

 On Pages xxxii and xxxiii of his book 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson worries aloud tribal conflicts over competing isms leading to nuclear Armageddon; he wonders what can be done about it: "While writing Maps of Meaning, I was (also) driven by the realization that we can no longer afford conflict--certainly not on the scale of the world conflagrations of the twentieth century. Our technologies of destruction have become too powerful. The potential consequences of war are literally apocalyptic. But we cannot simply abandon our systems of values, our beliefs, our cultures either. . . It is possible to transcend slavish adherence to the group and its doctrines and, simultaneously, to avoid the pitfalls of its opposite extreme, nihilism. It is possible, instead, to find sufficient meaning in individual consciousness and experience."

My response: Jordan metaphysically has gone very, very deep in recognizing that we must avoid internecine, tribalistic feuds among contesting groups and their favorite causes. What pleases and intrigues me about Jordan Peterson is the convergence of our ideas: Mavellonialism is about the divine calling and requirement for each young person to self-realize, to grow morally, spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally as an individual. My thought is that individualism, moderation, and good flow together as opposed by forces in which collectivism, immoderation and evil congregate. That seems to be Jordan's main theme, and we arrived at these wonderful suggestions for human improvement independently of each other, though anything I write was anticipated by Eric Hoffer from 50 to 75 years ago, though my personal take on all this is original to me.

Jordan Peterson is such a deep thinker and of such genius IQ that that caliber of mental power is what I am not naturally able to match. Where I perhaps surpass him is in a God-given link that provides me with courage, an unquenchable love for and interaction with truth, and a love of goodness and justice that is inherent in the very thinking, acting and consciousness of a living angel, like I am. I am not blowing my own horn--well not too much anyway--what I am doing anyone can do should they choose to maverize. 

It matters not their color, race, gender, sexual orientation, tribal or economic conditions: this individuating path to God is open to all, and all are bristling with unsurpassable talents, gifts, originality and creativity, no matter how smart or dumb they are--are you listening Jordan and other intellectuals rather snobbish about the masses being without much ability or talent? 

For these intellectual elitists, that require that the rest of us rather inferior, average humans just to get business degrees, to settle for working without individuating for life, in the trades or service industries, because that is the limit our capacities and talent, such a damaging lie or misreading, and lack of imagination by these theorists has inflicted boundless hurt and damage upon humans for thousands of years. 

 Elites throughout history have taught people not to be individuals and be all they can be. The waste and wrecked lives stagger the imagination. Jordan talks about human suffering, and it is natural and ontological, but a hyper-competent American middle class populated by individuator-anarchist supercitizens would be particularly successful at minimizing the hurt from suffering and malevolence. Suffering and evil will always be there, but they need not be human destiny. A great soul is filled with meaning, love, and tranquility, and that provides them with a God-centered gifts of inner peace, hope and happiness that are almost unshakable. This God-centered state of inner grace and what Jordan, the longtime agnostic or atheist now finding God, is missing because he has been without God in his life, and his intimate connection in person with cruelty and human suffering has shocked this depressive introvert in a most telling way.

It is an indication of their low self-esteem, their lack of deep understanding of how God allows and has plans for even the unique, but IQ limited among us to introduce humanity to enjoy the products of their thinking, creating and innovating, that unpredictable but anticipated, wondrous, miraculous, unlimited output so beneficial for the civil society, and reintroducing God's kingdom on earth.

With these attributes, I can mentally review what Peterson writes and says and my BS meter knows when he, Dennis Prager or Mark Levin go astray in their statements, and they do not err very often.  I have learned so much from all of them, but occasionally I will call them out when I think they are off-base, and I walk with God so ignoring me is the right that all free persons can choose to do, and most do ignore me, but the loss is theirs, God's, the Good Spirits, and humanity itself. This is a reality that I am loathe to admit and accept, but I delivered God's message, and where it goes from there is up to each person receiving it or walling themselves off from it.

My Dad was an indiviudalist, loner, a conservative, a blue-collar intellectual, that wrote at least one poem (which is now lost about the desert country around Albuquerque), a metaphysical centrist and informal deist: it is likely he profoundly influenced my view of life.

Below I will continue from Jordan's book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Page xxxiii: "My dream placed me at the centre of Being itself, and there was no escape. It took me months to understand what this meant. During this time, I came to a more complete, personal realization of what the great stories of the past continually insist upon: the centre is occupied by the individual. The centre is marked by the cross, AS X marks the spot. Existing at that cross is suffering and transformation--and that fact, above all, needs to be voluntarily accepted. It is possible to transcend slavish adherence to the group and its doctrines and, simultaneously, to avoid the pitfalls of its opposite extreme, nihilism. It is possible, instead, to find sufficient meaning in individual consciousness and experience.

My response: Jordan's realization here is of epic significance. The center of Being is occupied by the individual. If Father and Mother and the Good Spirits are too at the center of Being, then perhaps I am correct that it entails that they are individuals, individuators, male and female and married because we are made in their image and likeness.

Jordan advises that the individual take up his cross and grab all of her suffering, her painful changes, her existing, the love and hate that she is and receives: she is to transcend groupism and isms, without succumbing to meaningless, emptiness, madness, violence and destruction. His solution is Truthful and right from the Divine Couple.

Jordan continues: "How could the world be freed from the terrible dilemma of conflict, on the one hand, and psychological and social dissolution, on the other? The answer was this: through the elevation and development of the individual, and through the willingness of everyone to shoulder the burden of Being and to take the heroic path. We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and th world. We must each tell the truth and repair what is in disrepair and break down and create what is old and outdated. It is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. It's asking a lot. It's asking for everything. But the alternative--the horror of authoritarian belief, the chaos of the collapsed state, the tragic catastrophe of the unbridled natural world, the existential angst and weakness of the purposeless individual--is clearly worse."

My response: to translate the contents of this inspirational, paragraph of exhortation to come alive into my words, Jordan is asking for all humans to come alive very developed individuals, and remake society in God's image, a society of great-souled individuator-anarchists.

Warring Isms--Jordan Peterson

 Jordan Peterson seems to teach that the great mythic stories and legends are ancient, prehistoric efforts by early humans to make sense of existence, and these stories easily convert to religious. impulses, even pagan religions. This hypothesis seems attractive to me.

Then Peterson goes farther, arguing where each tribe perverts its abstraction, its cosmology, its meaning system or its religion into a cult or ideology, the worship becomes intolerant, fanatical, involuntary and imperialistic. If neighboring tribes or groups of people attack each other, each claiming to own the one, true faith, then endless warfare ensues, and ironically nihilism, or anti-meaning and anti-value system is what comes out of it, or the more powerful tribe and its ideology prevail everywhere.

Let me quote Peterson on Pages xxxi and xxxii where he discusses the above concern: "So, no value, no meaning. Between value systems, however, there is the possibility of conflicts. We are thus eternally caught between the most diamantine rock and the hardest of places: loss of group-centered belief renders life chaotic, miserable, intolerable; presence of group-centered belief makes conflict with other groups inevitable."

My response: Jordan accepts my first principle that the middle is the way, and here clearly demonstrates what happens: we cannot live without value systems, but, because they are group-centered, members of rival tribes are converted into true believers that conflict with each other, our value systems might well lead to the annihilation of the human race. Value systems save us and value systems will kill us. We must find a way to enjoy our essential value systems without transforming them into credal abstractions that we worship and will die for. There may be holy wars, but many are unholy or, once viciously conducted, become unholy.

My recommendation is for each tribe to enjoy their value systems, while moving towards member individuation, values of nonviolence towards rival isms, individual-living and moderate not totalistic support, and confidence in one's own ism. With these changes in place, perhaps inter-tribal war over competing isms can be prevented in the future.

As I have long noted, groupists are passionate, extremist and worship their ism, and wish to spread it across the planet, and their opposite numbers are the same. Note how individualists are far less inclined to be passionate, intemperate, and insisting on advancing their value system by force and the sword.

Let me continue quoting Peterson: "In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion- and even nation-centered cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict. But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement at all."

My response: Another way of expressing my axiom that the middle is the way is to state that it is our hope and duty to have our cake and eat it too. For example, we need value systems to live and survive, but we must refuse to reduce and twist them into cults or isms that we worship and are willing to fight and die for. We refuse to join tribal mass movements as true believers that go to war against equally fervent and sincere, corrupt true believers embedded in and joyously fighting to the death in the neighboring tribe's mass movement and army.

We must enjoy our value systems without them sickening us with power lust to force everyone in the world to think and worship just like we do.

Jordan Peterson And Being

 Let me quote from Page xxi of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS: "Being is also, finally, something that is brought into existence by action, so its nature is an indeterminate degree of consequence of our decisions and choices--something shaped by our hypothetically free will. Construe in this manner, Being is (1) not something easily and directly reducible to the material and objective and (2) something that most definitely requires its own term, as Heidegger labor for decades to indicate."

 

My response: Being is for sure influenced, even altered by our movements, our decisions, our actions, but Being is also much larger than any attempt to alter it by any human. Being is infinite in many ways, so what we do is significant, but it is not the whole story about Being.

Can Being be reduced to the material and the objective? My moderate answer is that it can and it cannot. Epistemologically, we can know the external world and its objective, those physical, do define for us what material reality is; simultaneously, we cannot know the external world, we only know the subjective world insider our heads.

If Jordan declares that Being is not reducible to the material and objective, then it must be Absolute Mind and spiritual energy and God exist as parts of Being.

Without An Intact Value System: Jordan Peterson

 Jordan Peterson, in one of his lectures, paraphrases Nietzsche who stated that he who knows why can stand anyhow. My interpretation of this quote is that pain, suffering, malevolence and existence are bearable if people know why they live and suffer. 

Therefore, a cultural or personal value system is essential to our survival, our sanity, our chance to lead a good, happy life. Let me quote Peterson from Page xxxi of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS: "Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence. We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being. We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Them, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair."

Jordan is correct that we need positive values and a meaning system to have hope, a reason to live, a reason to get up in the morning. It is less important that our value system is objectively true or not, but it is vital that we believe it is, or hope that is.

Humans encounter and are part-absurdity, but it cannot be their value system of valuelessness and meaninglessness.

What Jordan Peterson Says

 This man is so smart, so wise, and so good--here are a few snippets from a recent video: truth is the antidote to evil (That tells us that God, love and truth are aligned and Satan, hatred and lying are connected; it also reveals to us that objective morality, or nearly certain objective morality exists, is identifiable and communicable.).

We can't get away with anything (God and the Good Spirits are always watching.).

We have the power to make a difference in the world--everything you do matters. (As a sovereign individual you must apply your power to make the world a better place, and you do or do not make a difference depending how hard you try.)

The Choice

 You can have friends or love and serve God, but, in this fallen world, you cannot do both, so choose whom you will side with, and whom you will offend.

If you are ethically or spiritually very, very good, you will be shunned by your ex-friends.

The Responsible Citizen

The responsible citizen evolves into supercitizen; he is not minimally informed and minimally, politically involved. Politics is his responsibility.

He and other citizens are to agree to a contract for America, and, they the bosses, need to boss around politicians and force them to obey and pass what bills that are needed, and discard bad bills. 

The country is to be run by the citizens from the bottom up and they will run the country.

The Pros And Cons

 What are the pros and cons to group-living and individual-living?

  First, let me define terms.

Group-living is that primary social mode of living where, familially, socially and at work, one either spends more time with and willingly spends more time with or is physically, psychologically, electronically, and emotionally connected to others, more than spending time alone with oneself. Of course, the asocial mode of individual-living is secondary in the lives of each group-liver, whether that quality and quantity of time spent alone is intentional, accidental or just necessary--for example one drives to work alone or may sleep alone in a one-bedroom apartment.

Individual-living is that primary but asocial mode of living where, familially, socially and at work, one either spends more time or willing spends more time apart or is physically, psychologically, electronically and emotionally divorced from others, spending more time alone than with others.  Of course, the social mode of living is secondary in the lives of each individual-liver, whether that quality and quantity of time spent with others is intentional, accidental, a mere habit, or necessitated by factory work or riding a commuter train home from work or shopping.

In general, even an individualistic people like American are in a country where group-living is the norm and individual-living a atypical. Also, the categories are vague and deliberately fluid, because the degree, to which each person elects to group-live versus individual-live or the other way around--this proportion varies for each citizen. And at various times in life, one is more group-oriented (children) and more individual-living as one ages.

And, one can artificially adjust the degree to which one group-lives or individual-lives by consciously making the adjustment, as intentionally and artificially as setting out to diet and lose weight.

These lists are not exhaustive, but what now occurs to me.

What are the advantages to group-living?

1. People are herd-creatures by instinct, so group-living instinctively seems appropriate.

2. There is strength in numbers.

3. Groupists are less lonely.

4. Group-living is emotionally satisfying, and pleasurable.

5. Life is automatically meaningful. One just adopts the group customs.

6. Humans suffer naturally from low self-esteem, and group-living gives people approval, social ranking, a enjoyable level of popularity all make one feel okay most of the time.

7. If one works, is basically decent, moral, and sane, then one is ordinarily well within side the group's norms for behavior, and such conformity guarantees group-approval and a sense of guaranteed belonging.

8. God's call to each person to be exceptional can be suppressed in group-living rather effectively. The individual lives with so many layers of lies and illusions surrounding her that it is difficult or impossible for truth to penetrate such a protective hide of consciousness.

9. To the degree that people possess moral sense and feel sympathy towards others, joiners may care for the less fortunate among them, and unite to complete huge projects. At its best, group-living accentuates cooperation and minimizes competition among insiders.

10. When people run in packs, they feel powerful as a unit, and they are. Each member is a nonentity, but gains pride and the group power built on personal powerlessness of its faithful members, by serving their pack faithfully, even willing to die for their pack and its ideology.  What irks mob members is not the sins they commit, but how unbearable they find being weak, and as a unit they wield power, and each member identifies with that status and soaks it up.

What are the disadvantages of group-living?

1. To the degree that the culture rewards group-living for its people, altruistic, law-of-the-jungle fighting for mates, power, position, and one's share of the pie, is maximized, as ruthlessness, lying, dishonesty and selfishness are daily practiced, even enjoyed.

2. God calls each of us to live as exceptional individuals. To the degree that each group-liver wields free will, then he will be punished in this world and in the next for disobeying and defying God.

3. The joiner is deprived of chances to develop her personality, to think and learn to think, to make up her own mind, to do her own thinking, to strike out on her own, to test her talents against the hostile world, to live as an independent person.

4. Jordan Peterson is completely dismissive of self-esteem worries--as are other conservatives like Dennis Prager--but I like this psychology. We are naturally depraved, which means we mostly do not like ourselves and loathe ourselves. When one hates oneself, one is filled with anger, bitterness, and ineradicable unhappiness, and that drives one to act out this resentment in the world to gain ineffective but short-lived relief by attacking the self and others verbally, emotionally, sometimes physically or sexually in various sadistic and masochistic roles of misbehavior. I recommend individual-living wherein one self-realizes and is close to God and the Good Spirits in a mood of joy, love, optimism, inner peace, merited self-respect based on performance, and healthy self-esteem rooted in self-discipline.

5. Peterson wants us to live meaningful lives by taking responsibility for ourselves and all that we do. Self-realizing in the asocial mode of individual living is the best way to lead a meaningful life.

6. Individual-living can leave one depressed and horrified by encountering Being itself, but, if one gains courage and a love of embracing the bracing truth, then there is a deep emotional reward of satisfaction and accomplishment that one no longer runs away from one's existential duty and divine destiny.

7. Individual-living can be quite lonely and there is nothing more terrifying, punitive and empty to most people, but if one gives it a go, and maverizes and learns to live peacefully and calmly with the isolated self while maverizing and serving God, then divine energy entering one's soul and whole person will do much to end feelings of loneliness.

8. For most people individual-living is not natural, but the asocial mode of living can be taught as an ethical mode of living, taught like other virtuous habits practiced until they become second nature for the good adult. Even those that are nature or nurture prefer to live alone, individual-living as an individuator is a mode of living that they will have to acquire.

9. The person alone is vulnerable, but a society of millions of people that individual-live but cooperate via their anarchist-canton constitutional republic would be a most powerful group of people to attack or make war on.

10. One disadvantage to individual-living is that the loner may be overwhelmed by mobs around him as they denigrate his social ranking, ostracize him, attack him, thwart his career, isolate his friends from him and even plot to kill him.

What are the advantages to individual-living?

1. When the individual learns to individual-live, he is defying his natural inclination, but the reward is that he becomes better, smarter, and more alive, a living angel.

2. There is great strength in being alone. He must rely on himself to make it. There is no one (the Good Spirits are there of course) to lean on. He will learn to be smart, tough, creative, and versatile, or he will perish. He must swim or sink, and most of the time he will prevail and flourish because he did not previously understand how resourceful he could be if he pushed himself, really extended his range.

3. Once he maverizes, coming to know God, being, others and reality without pretense, objections, or rationalizations, he will be at the point where he accepts the world as it is, and then decides what to tolerate as it is and to change what is wicked or unworkable. He will not be lonely because God, truth and love are so much a part of his heightened sense of self.

4. Emotionally, at first, he will be horrified and manic, but, with time and self-training, he will learn to temper passions and feelings, so that he feels, but his sentiments do not rule him. That state of existence should be emotionally satisfying.

5. The Father and Mother are Individuators, and we are made in their image and likeness. As we love, grow, maverize and create, our lives will be suffused with purpose and incomparable meaning.

6. As an individuator and an individual-liver, he will learn to be good morally and spiritually as he loves himself and others in an enlightened way. His self-esteem will be high without becoming vain, pretentious, smug, or self-obsessed.

7. As more and more adults, in the future decide to individual-live as their primary social mode, then joining or not joining, affiliating or not, or to whatever degree preferred will not be a socializing burden or impediment. If the individuating loner is good and kind, she should be popular and welcome in most group settings, and her herding instinct drive will thus be met and nourished without her abandoning the preferred way to live.

8. Once she is individual-living, living a life of lies and self-deception become almost impossible to sustain as repeated interaction with the Good Spirits compels one to own the truth.

9. No decent, sensible, ethical individuator will ever forsake the obligation to deprive those in real need from receiving charity. His love of others will include his encouraging them to bootstrap themselves into a position of prosperity, self-development, and self-reliance to the degree that they in terms of ability, sanity and competence are able to fend for themselves. Each person nees liberty, means and power to maverize.

10. As the joiners in a pack revel in its power of powerlessness and enjoy their pride of tribalism, the power of self-empowerment and pride of personal powerfulness are abandon, and these latter traits belong to the followers of God. Tribalists do not belong in heaven.

What are the disadvantages to individual -living?

1. His natural herding instinct is repressed, and he must do what he does not innately prefer.

2. He is isolated, so he does not easily feel safe and protected by lots of others around him. He is exposed.

3. His loneliness is so overwhelming that it staggers him. He wants to die, to go insane, to suffer no more. Meeting God and Being face to face is a brutal awakening and he has to be made of some sturdy stuff to get over the initial introduction.

4. Individual-living is extremely difficult and painful, but afterwhile, once she is used to so living, her pain has become an intellectual pleasure for her, so she now enjoys how she lives and is proud of what she has done.

5.  She must engineer a framework of meaning for herself to work and live in, and, if she fails, she turns to Satan or goes mad, or hides inside some cult.  If she survives, her meaning will sustain her through anything new that crops up.

6. If she tries and makes it as a maverizer, her self-esteem will be solid, high, and genuine, but the gaining of it was not automatic nor for certain, and it may require 15 to 20 years for her to reach the point that she is comfortable with herself and whom she has become.

7. Nothing scares people more than being deprived of peer approval and that warm sense of belonging. We are emotional creatures and the groupist feeling of warmth is the most powerful of motivator for humans. Both Satan, Lera and the Evil Spirits manipulate this natural herding impulse in humans to bind these poor souls to the Dark Side. If humans journey over to the Light Side, maverize, individual-live and serve God and the Good Spirits, the rejection and punished from former group members comes crashing down on these new nonconformists, and most timid groupists are unable to non-conform to such cruel, powerful pressure: they just surrender and stay members of the pack.

8. The individual-liver or loner is now without excuses. If she makes it, the awards, accolades, and rewards are hers, and will be given her. If she fails, lapses, backslides or goofs up her assignments, the blame and assignation of being a failure will be promptly assigned to her. She cannot run or hide from what she is or is not, or what she has done or not done.

9. As she grows in the asocial mode of existence, her love of self will grow and grow. The more she loves herself, the more she will love God, the Good Spirits, other people and being itself.

10. As an individuator and individual-liver, the citizen has the chance to make the world better and no longer make it worse, He replaces the groupist pride of powerless with person pride of powerfulness, and this real pride allows him to forego scheming to erect a class system with those above that he kowtows to, and those below that are to bend a knee to him.

Selden Osborne

 Eric Hoffer regarded his friend and competitor, Selden Osborne as the prototypical, virtual signaling intellectual that self-ascribes to himself the moral stance as compassionate, reforming, a tireless worker in the vineyard of social justice.

 

Here is what Calvin Tomkins wrote in the biography that he wrote, Eric Hoffer, Page 39: "Largely as a result of Bridges' enmity, Osborne had been thwarted in his ambitions to win election to union office and to rise in the labor movement. Hoffer did not have a very high opinion of union intellectuals. He thought they were far from understanding the true nature of the working masses, and he suspected that what they really cared for was power."

This quote is rich with implications about Hoffer's take on common people and the elites so eager to control them.  

First, he accepted that all people and workers are created roughly equal in talent and ability.

Second, because they could achieve just about anything that they set their minds to, American workers--or workers anywhere-do not require much supervision and direction. A democratic workplace in which workers have great say in running the company and allocating the work is a company that will be innovative, durable, successful, and profitable.

Third, unlike the wise Jordan Peterson, Hoffer and I vehemently disagree with Jordan, on the subject of human talent. Unlike Jordan states, we do not regard talent as rare or as the province of only the very brightest and gifted. All people, on all levels of ability, are overflowing with talent, and God calls each of us every day to self-realize and bring that marvelous potential into actuality.

Fourth, intellectuals like Selden Osborne bring to bear a deadly, vicious presupposition of their own: people are inferior to the natural elite that should rule them, and without a firm, stern, permanent  oligarchy to run the workplace and all of society, all will devolve into anarchy, chaos, disorder and wretchedness.

Fifth, all people, average or naturally more gifted, are basically evil. People are naturally lazy, fatalistic and run in packs. People naturally seek to submit to authority, to conform and to be told how to work and live. Natural humans, untrained, do require elites to rule them. Where people are existing under the umbrella of traditional values, how people naturally are innately impels people to end up in stratified structures: the few that are smarter, better, more industrious and more energetic end up ruling the hierarchy.

Under this unjust and wasteful scenario, the huddled, crowded masses at the bottom of the hierarchies are ruled by elites for thousands of years, leading their lives of quiet desperation, yet, in their altruistic self-loathing, they require and desire to be ruled by elites, not because they are inferior to any member of that elite, but because they believe they are, and have no instruction in Mavellonialist values to help them learn how to live, mostly free of rule by elites and other intellectuals, and largely within flattened hierarchies.

Sixth, Hoffer realized that the American experiment was a wondrous social experiment, run by the little people that made lives for themselves as individuals. He just required introduction to the philosophy of Mavellonialism to take this train of thought to its logical end.

Seventh, another aspect of this complex realization is that intellectuals were naturally craving power and naturally, actually believing that they were superior to the masses of lower class, institutional rank, education and material standing. Intellectuals and members of the ruling class are not superior or inferior to anyone—they are just people, period.

These intellectuals naturally rise to the top of any hierarchy, but, lacking Mavellonialist values, they did not know how to live, so they, like all other ruling elites in history, crave and acquire power over others and ruin the lives of all in their roles as oppressors, exploiters and victimizers.

If Selden had opted to self-realize and become a great soul like Hoffer did without being addicted to and yielding to his power-craving, Selden like Hoffer would have declined and been disinterested in gaining union office.

A profound, committed and arrived self-realizer craves his own power and liberty with zero desire to have power over his neighbors. Until elitists and intellectuals like Selden come to recognize and accept their limitations regarding ruling their neighbors, human suffering will not be alleviated as their dangerous men prowl the earth, seeking out niches of people to rule.

Stephen Hicks of Non-Contradiction

 Stephen Hicks is a realist, rationalist, and Objectivist. He follows the Aristotelian law of contradiction scrupulously. He does not approve of Hegels' rejection of that law. Let me quote from Hick's book, Explaining Postmodernism, Pages 49 and 50: "Hegel thus explicitly rejected Aristotle's law of non-contradiction: Absolutely everything depends on 'the identity of identity and non-identity' . . .  2. Contradictions are built into reason and reality."

My metaphysical claim, that the ontological substratum of reality is something like the principle of moderation coursing through the veins of the universe, may be somewhat similar to Hegel's view that everything depends on the identity of identity (personal or objective essence) and non-identity, the denial of essence in the core of each being or thing.

To restate it, moderation is reality constituted by a balance of principles, the law of consistency and the law of contradiction, and more the former than the latter--that is the ultimate one or Fate.

Self-Reform

 Reform begins and mostly ends with self-reform. As the Golden Rule is presented in Luke 6:27-38: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Under altruist ethics, this can be translated as treat others with love and respect as you would want them to treat you in return, and that translation is laudable.

I would offer a slightly superior translation under egoist ethics: reform, discipline and seek to development your talents in a mode of self-reform, anticipating that if other adults in society are so self-reforming, than social issues and problems largely dry up and blow away.

Metaphysically Speaking

 It appears thatphilosophers doubt that thought and language are the same thing for there are conscious processes and apprehension not verbally translatable into language. Language is a subset of consicousnes.

It is obvious that God or Logos or some rational principle permeates and perhaps created, ordered or administrates the comings and goings of beings in Being and Being itself, but Being is more than just thought.

The similarities, differences, the meshing, the blending, the intermingling and parallel but distinct existence of thought, language and Being are much more metaphysically rich than it appears at first glance.

The Wise Dennis Prager

 I have often commented on how wise Prager is, but view again his November 22, 2017 5-minute video ws amazing and inspirational. 

Prager identifies gratitude as that attitude that delivers people access to happiness and goodness. Now, I have recommended that people are essentially depraved, and admit that a tragic view of life is necessary to knowing wisdom and happiness. However, it is a first glance, not the long view.

We are born in sin; the world is run by Satan and Lera; people are beasts filled with sin, low self-esteem, selfishness, violence, lust and passion. They run in packs and packs are where evil altruistically is centralized. Jordan Peterson piles on withhis gloomy view that life is suffering tainted by violence.

All of us are correct, and should be heeded, but this is not entirely how the world is constituted. But, there is hope, real hope.

This is where Prager comes in. If we are grateful, we can become good and happy; of we are grateful, we will count our blessings and build a better world from where we are at. Prager advocates that all that is good grows out of gratitude.

Attitude may not be everything, but it comes close. Prager warns that almost everythng bad flows from ingratitude. Ungrateful people are neither good nor happy, and they cannot find relief for their unhappiness and self-loathing. They do not take personal responsibility for their failures: rather they blame others, scapegoats, God, nature, even Being itself. As their hatred, resentment, anger and selfishness grow, so does their temptation to act out their frustration by taking their discontent out onto others, their victims, whom they are convinced are victimizing them, the aggressors and abusers.

Prager advises that none accept that they are victims, because once ungrateful and angry,  they will seek to hurt others.

We must not allow anyone, especially children, to be spoiled, feel entitled, to feel that they are victims because these roles make them ungrateful, unhappy, bad people, and thus evil grows in society.

It could be that feeling grateful, happy, at peace and good are captured by the word love, and feeling, cheated angry, ungrateful, unhappy and cruel are generally described as hatred.

Prager is onto something important here.

Survival Of The Fittest

 There may be a kernel of truth to be gleaned from the now discredited ideology of social Darwinism--that the smartest and fittest rise to the top of any hierarchy and end up with most of the wealth and power. This seems to be a natural trend for all people everywhere.

Now Jordan Peterson does favor individual effort and meritocracy, and he does insist that the smartest and most conscientious seem to rise to the top of any hierarchy that they work in. This seems acceptable and obvious, but Peterson, though a businessman and capitalist, as well as a psychologist, is no social darwinist.

I would propose that the young be taught to self-realize, individual-live and make a good living within our capitalist, constitutional republican system. We would still have the natural trend that the smartest would go a bit ahead of the more average in intelligence, but the bottom performance of an individuating person with an IQ of 94 would be so advanced and wealth-creating that the lead performance at the top of the hierarchy by a superachiever with an IQ 162 would not be a spread in wealth and power that should bother anyone.

Why? If the average individuators and achievers are individuator anarchists, they will reason well, be quite resourceful and willful, and competently run their own affairs, firmly rebuffing and rejecting any attempt by anyone on the top of any hierarchy seeking to run their lives for them, tyrannizing them and interfering with their self-sufficient independence.

Also, the superachiever on the top of the hierarchy will continue to seek his own wealth, power and amazing achievement, but not to rule those lower down in the hierarchy. 

 

With these two considerations included, hierarchies should remain small, powerful, relatively flattened and kept to a needed minimum for the good of society and all of its citizens.

 

Now I want to quote from Calvin Tomkins biography, Eric Hoffer, Page 38 (He quotes Hoffer.): "You see I always had the impression that there wasn't a single idea that I couldn't convey to these people. These men are so ingenious, so skilled, so highly intelligent--they can do anything. Look at the way they worked out that dispatching system all by themselves. Nobody helped them. They didn't need experts.  I believe the way to measure the vigor of society is by its ability to get along without outstanding leaders; any organization that can get along without outstanding leaders is a good organization. Once, a few years ago, a professor at Berkeley told me I was wrong there; he said the vigor of a society should be judged by its ability to produce outstanding leaders."

Now, under Mavellonialisim I propose to blend the best of Peterson and Hoffer, and add in my own unique elements. From Peterson, we accept that hierarchies are natural and inevitable, and that caste systems and ranges of merited performance will be stratified. Jordan advocates individualism so that is critical. 

Hoffer adds his experience-based observation that the average people, from the bottom up, can run businesses, corporations, organizations, and countries, without outstanding leaders.

To this I add Mark Levin's emphasis on constitutional republicanism, capitalism, limited government, personal obsession with getting and keeping personal liberty, an inalienable, natural, God-given right.

I add individual-living, a society of strong but small federal overlay of canton existence, ordered anarchy run by individuator supercitizens.

This would not be utopia, but it would be largely workable. The people run the hierarchies, the organizations and the government on all levels, and the leaders, politicians, bureaucrats and judges get their orders from the citizens, and rule with the consent of the governed. 

Under this system, Peterson and Hoffer can be reconciled.

 

Hoffer And Social Darwinism

 Tom Shactman is a smart, smart man but I believe that he is a Leftist. Earlier biographers, friends, and followers of Hoffer’s, like Calvin Tomkins and Eric Sevareid were quite glowing in their praise for Hoffer as a genius and fresh, untutored voice. Still, Hoffer was a total conservative, and, once the clerisy realized this, outraged were these really irked the Progressive intelligentsia in America. They started denouncing Hoffer in the 60s until today he is mostly forgotten.

Shactman, as a Progressive, would likely, sincerely wonder how Eric Hoffer could be a conservative, and still be a good person. I sense that this hesitancy about Hoffer's alleged brilliance and good moral character indicates that Shactman has some deep reservations about Hoffer.

He imputes Eric Hoffer's character, as far as I can discern, in three ways. First, he decries Hoffer for having fathered Eric Osborne, and, yet not seeming to pay child support to Lili, but I do believe he gave them money when the children were growing up, and left them his estate. Still, it could be that Hoffer was the insensitive, selfish bachelor, that did not support or care for his child, Eric, as he should have. That criticism has some basis.

Shactman labels Hoffer a racist or with racist views about blacks, referring to them as Negroes long after everyone else migrated over to the politically correct term, blacks. Hoffer, as I have written elsewhere, is not a racist, or much of one: he wants race to be irrelevant, he wants us to be colorblind, he wants blacks to be individuals, not worrying too much about group identity, and that by work hard, perseverance, and shedding any concept of being a victim of racism or any other actual or alleged discrimination, each black has the ability to bootstrap his way to success like all Americans can and should being doing.

Hoffer's presupposition is that blacks are equal to anyone else, but the values of racism, groupism, victimhood, learned helplessness and dependency upon government assistance is killing this America ethnic group. Only as self-disciplining and ambitious individuals, like the great Larry Elder and Thomas Sowell, can blacks come into their own, and advance, really advance. Only as conservatives, capitalists and Republicans will they find their salvation, liberation, and prosperity. Anything the Left tells them is race-baiting lies. Those that preach Communism to American blacks are pure racists.

Before I defend Hoffer's character against the third charge that Tom Shactman imputes him with, I would like to quote Shactman from Page 26 in his biography on Hoffer, American Iconoclast: "In Depression America, Hoffer's view of what government should refrain from doing was a contrarian one; jobs were so scarce that even many so-called individualists conceded that the government must step in, at least temporarily, to assist people in finding work, food, and shelter. Hoffer disagreed because his experience taught him otherwise; despite coming from a terrible background, from the 'gutter' in Los Angeles, and yet completely without schooling, he had always managed to find paying work--therefore, he concluded, everyone else could and should be able to bootstrap themselves to survival without governmental assistance, interference, or coddling.

Decades later, Lili Osborne would contend that Hoffer's worldview--the belief in Social Darwinism, the fierce insistence on the need to make one's own way, the lack of feelings of entitlement, and the expectation that one's efforts would result in adequate rewards and would not be reasonably swept away--were common to that first-generation immigrant to the United States, rather than to that of a native-born American. Yet Hoffer thought of himself and quintessentially American."

My response: It could be that in the Depression times it was acceptable for government to step in and assist people, but Hoffer was spot on correct: he was a capitalist, a rugged individualist who believed that he had to make it on his own, to support himself so that he could self-actualize as a writer and philosopher in his spare time. He denied himself material wealth, marriage, family and social life and group-living so that he could live his spartan, ascetic lifestyle in a one-bedroom apartment with no phone, no TV and no car. Hoffer was pure American--and so self-regarded--whether he snuck in as an illegal immigrant or not.

He was not interested in class envy and Marxism, but he was pro-capitalist, pro-liberty and pro-American, but he did not care for the rich—he noted that some of whose spoiled brat sons led the student revolt in the 60s.

Shactman imputes Hoffer with espousing Social Darwinism. Hoffer is no Social Darwinist, and that label is unfair at best, and at worst is a smear on Hoffer's noble character.

 

Now, I will paraphrase and entry on Social Darwinism from the Oxford dictionaries. Social Darwinism is a theory that Americans are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. It is now discredited but was used by rich and ruthless capitalists to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform. The rich, strong, and powerful, nature’s fittest, end up and should end up with most of society's wealth and power, whereas the poor, weak, impoverished masses, nature’s majority of least fit humans, weak and inferior, get what they deserve at the bottom of the heap.

Eric Hoffer did want people to make it on their own, not depend on government handouts. He was a capitalist and promoter of rugged individualism but that is not at all the same as being a Social Darwinist, who do not seem like very nice people. I think Shactman is careless with his labeling Hoffer a Social Darwinist, and I hope I have defended well and honestly Hoffer's reputation.

 

Free Will

 I just watched a Prager U video presented by a Frank Pastore (spelling?). he claims that our free will is not the same as our physical/electro/neurological/hemical/biological brain. He agrees that we have a brain but that our free will or consciousness or soul is a personal/spiritual identity or self that is immaterial. If our mind is immaterial, and in control of our brain, then it implies that God exists, and that the spiritual world exists, and that God, an immaterial mind and will, created our mind or consciousness, and strict materialists do not want to agree with this point of view, but I accept it largely without qualification.

Eric Hoffer On Tribalism

 Eric Hoffer, 50 years ago, worried greatly about rich, bored, affluent Americans that used to find meaning and a healthy sense of pride, if not happiness, in their work and struggle just to put food on the table. He foresaw that the time would come when people would be so rich, bored, no longer challenged, so privileged, so smothered by comfort and lack of material need that it redounded to a huge social crisis: a people without the ability to find meaning in the struggle to provide for their families and themselves, are a people deficient in solid personal pride of contribution and purpose.

Set adrift into meaninglessness, without a chance to earn proper pride as individuals, they would likely make a desperate resort to that false, unsatisfying but dangerous pride in their cause, their tribal group, their mass movement.

Read what he wrote on Page 218 in The Syndicated News Articles: "The pride at present that pervades the world is the claim that one is a member of a chosen group--be it a nation, race, or party. No other attitude has so impaired the oneness of the human species, and contributed so much to the savage strife of our time."

My response: this collective pride is that false pride in one's tribe and it is the source of historical and current conflict, and Hoffer was warning about this 50 years before Jordan Peterson admonished us about the deadly tradition of tribe versus tribe, which is why both men advocated real pride built on personal achievement, individuation and just making a living, to provide needed meaning for people in their lives.

Hoffer continues: "If affluence is not to set in motion social dissolution we must change our conception of what is worthwhile, useful and efficient. Now that the new industrial revolution is on the way to solving the problem of means and we can catch our breath, it behooves us to remember that man's only legitimate end is life is to finish God's work--to bring full growth to the capacities and talents implanted in us."

My response: implicit in the social worrying about keeping people stable and happy or at least contented--in the worrying shared by Peterson and Hoffer alike--is the presupposition that without meaning in their lives, people will destroy the whole world because pseudo-meaning and nihilism to provide them with a bad but workable form of meaning, their ideology is a substitute for their just cause, their reason to keep on living. Here Hoffer anticipates the rise of Mavellonialism for indivdidating Americans and other to maverize and finish God's work growing their natural capacities and talents.

Hoffer continues: "A population dedicated to this end will not necessarily overflow with the milk of human kindness but it will not be likely to spend its time and energies proclaiming the superiority and exclusivity of its nation, race or doctrine."

My response: His genius is his divine knack to see how things are and where they could lead. He knew that people without a purpose to give them proper pride will find something to replace it with, an ideology that they embrace with true believer enthusiasm, with a collectivist  answer for all problems.

Good pride is finding meaning in self-realization, working hard, or serving God and that is an individualistic effort and lifestyle.

Bad pride is finding relief and a reason to continue in a false narrative like an ideology. There the fanatical advocacy of the one true cause leads to spreading it by the sword, as its adherents, collectivist and for unlimited government to back the spread of their cause as group affiliation is what they worship as they seek to seize power everywhere.

Be Prepared: Hoffer Advises

 Calvin Tomkins, on Page 24 of the biography he wrote, Eric Hoffer, notes: " . . . That's how I do research. I go to the library, I pick up the thing s that interest me, I use whatever comes my way. And I believe that if you have a good theory, the things you need will come your way. You'll be lucky. You know what Pasteur said: 'Chance favors the prepared mind.' Take one of the chanciest things in the world, like war. Both Kitchener and Frederick the Great , when they were considering a general's qualifications, would always ask, 'Is he considered lucky?' It was a perfectly legitimate question, because if he was considered lucky, it meant he was prepared to take advantage of chance. I depend on chance to help me find what I need and most of the time I've been lucky."

Eric Hoffer, above, was describing his research method: he just browsed the library. He has his philosophical framework in his said, so he could fit many of the books or articles that he encountered within his meta-narrative. He had a prepared mind, a theory, based upon years of reading, thinking, conversing, pondering.

If a young maverizer would read, think, live, love and grow is a fashion not dissimilar to Hoffer, he would be prepared to make his big move or creative breakthrough once reality favors him with its flashes of insight.

What He Wrote

 On Page xxvii of his book 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson writes this: "I proposed in Maps of Meaning that the great myths and religious stories of the past, particularly those derived from an earlier oral tradition, were moral in their intent, rather than descriptive. Thus they did not concern themselves with what the world was, as a scientists might have it, but with how a human being should act. I suggested that our ancestors portrayed the world as a stage--a drama--instead of a place of objects. I described how I had come to believe that the constituent elements of the world as dram were order and chaos, not material things."

My response: I think Jordan is onto something vital here, and it will be a challenge to unpack it. As a Jungian psychologist, one would expect Peterson to zero in on the great myths and religious stories from long ago. I am intrigued and impressed that he interpreted their intent as moral not descriptive. If humans are to dramatize their lives and their actions are implicitly overflowing with moral implication, then it would seem likely that an existent set of engaged, rival deities were clashing and vying, each seeking to direct the earthly play among millions of actors. These directors are duking it out: the malevolent Satan and benevolent Father Sky God. God or Fate created the physical and biological world, but those aspects of the world grow into moral significance with each human decision and action.

He then goes on to describe the constituent elements of the world as drama were order and chaos, not material things. This metaphysical stance seems ripe with spiritual application by the actors on the earthly stage.

The Vacuum

 Nature abhors a vacuum. Where all is ethically relative, and youngsters are brought up with no objective morality, no values of right and wrong, the danger is society will be torn apart by vice, crime, violence, anarchy, and lawlessness.

Two vicious and perhaps simultaneously occurring overreactions could occur. Authoritarian or totalitarian strongman or oligarchs can inflict martial law upon society because tyranny ultimately is preferable to people than lawlessness and anarchy.

Second, the people will opt for some ideology and mass movement to find something drastic to believe in, that offers them meaning, answers, an escape from their insufferably blemished selves, etc.

We are better to live in a republic with just law and order under a constitutional system with a reasonable objective morality believed in and practice by the majority of the citizens. Such ordered liberty int he public arena and in private lives will prevent the people from resorting to such drastic measure as mentioned above.

Jordan Peterson On The Mythical Hero Quest

 Dr. Norman Doidge, in the foreword to Jordan Peterson's book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Pages xvi and xvii, write this: "Jordan showed his students how evolution, of all things, helps to explain the profound psychological appeal and wisdom of many ancient stories . . . He showed, for instance, how stories about journeying voluntarily into the unknown--the hero's quest--mirrored universal tasks for which the brain evolved . . . In all these triumph stories, the hero has to go into the unknown, into an unexplored territory, and deal with a new great challenge and take great risks. In the process, something in him has to die, or be given up, so he can be reborn and meet the challenge."

That sounds a lot like the call to become an individuated adult, the hero's quest for every young boy or girl.

Jordan Peterson Is A Good Man

 Dr. Norman Doidge wrote the introduction to Peterson's book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE, AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS. Here is what Doidge a Jew and psychologist wrote about Peterson on Page xv: "To understand ideology, Jordan read extensively about not only the soviet gulag, but also the Holocaust and the rise of Nazism. I had never met a person, born Christian and of my generation, who was so utterly tormented by what happened in Europe to the Jews, and who had worked so hard to understand how it could have occurred. . . . I relate this, because years after we became friends, when Jordan would take a classical liberal stand for free speech, he would be accused by left-wing extremists as being a right-wing bigot.

Let me say, with all the moderation that I can summon: at best, those accusers have simply not done their due diligence. I have; with a family history such as mine, one develops not only radar, but underwater sonar for right-wing bigotry; but even more important, one learns to recognize the kind of person with comprehension, tools, good will and courage to combat it, and Jordan Peterson is that person."

I like this testimony and I believe it is accurate and apt.

Far too often Leftsts get away with such ad hominem attacks against us classical liberals.

A New Race Of Gods

 Should our efforts at perfect AI succeed fully, and, sooner or later, they will, then we will have invented or created a race of smart robots that are another intelligent life force. At that point humans will have become a race of minor gods, and our AI neighbors will be afforded full human rights, afforded sentient beings, and each of their lives are now sacred. To exterminate one of them is full criminal murder.

Eric Hoffer And Individual-Living

 Anyone, that follows my brand of egoism and my Mavellonialist philosophy, will quickly discern my advice that each person is to adopt a mode of living that will optimize her journey of self-realization. 

This mode of living is replacing natural desire for primary group-living and secondary individual-living with a reverse pattern of living--artificially arranged and cultivated, one taught to young people, taught to individual-live as their primary mode of living, and to consign their penchant for group-living as their secondary mode of living.

Now, I want to point how existing and budding great souls like Eric Hoffer instinctively and/or consciously knew that they had to protect their personal independence to make room for a life of self-realization and self-development.

Let me quote from the biography Eric Hoffer by Calvin Tomkins, Page 31: "It was while he was actually on the job that some of his best ideas came to him. He could be totally absorbed in the work he was doing, and yet, in the back of his mind, there would be a quiet place where ideas formed. Anything could start the process--a chance remark, a gull flying past, a partner's way of working. It was Hoffer's custom to work with a different partner each day, rather than with a 'steady; or a four-gang crew."

In his 25 years of the docks as a longshoreman, he never arranged in so that he worked with the same partner or three guys every day. My speculation is that this constant turning over new partners each day was his work ritual to assure that he did not get pulled into a group or clique that would smother him and deprive him of his independence.

He needed to remain solitary and lonely as the price paid to self-realize, for he travels fastest that travels alone.

It is emotionally comforting to group-live as one's primary mode of living, but it almost guarantees that one will lead a life of conformity, personal mediocrity and nonindividuator status as a private person. That is not morally desirable; nor it is acceptable to the Father and Mother, those most brilliant individuators, that call us out of the pack to realize our potential over a life time.

As I have done and as Hoffer likely did, we individual-live while keep groupists at bay or psychologically slapping down their grasping hands or tentacles that are extended towards us each day to pull us back into groupthink, conformity, uniformity of thought and average living.

As individual-livers, we are to get free and stay free, allowing none to control us, and we dominate no one else in exchange, allowing all the power, space, time and opportunity to do their own thing in a most significant, impressive manner.

 

Hoffer And The Old Testament

 Tom Shactman, an Eric Hoffer biographer, wrote on Page 22 of American Iconoclast The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer, about Hoffer's being fascinated by and impressed with the Old Testament: "The Pentateuch was a revelation, though not a religious one. 'What grandeur, vividness, and freshness of perception,' he later wrote, using terms he also employed to praise Dostoevsky. The Old Testament's pages reflected 'a primitive mentality, naive, clumsy, yet bold and all embracing,' and a Jewish people that imagined a lone God who made mankind in his image--a God that gave man the tasks of acting as He had, to create, to subdue nature, to build cities, and to live fully in the present."

My response: there was something unique about these people, their holy book and their lone God. Their creator God that was separate from nature, and made humans, half-angel, in God’s image and likeness. God the creator expects us to create, and as Mavellonialist individuators, we are best trained, equipped and empowered to meet that calling and divine command. It is so Western to teach humans to subdue nature, to build cities and live in the present. There is a secularness and worldliness about the Jews that is wisdom, and can be transmuted into empirical and scientific researches.

Shactman continues: "Hoffer was impressed that ancient Jews had been so involved with the present that they did not bother to imagine a hereafter; and that several thousand years since the Old Testament had been written; its character still came across as very 'real' . . . Hoffer thrilled to the Old Testament's acceptance of the bad with the good, with no 'touching up to lend a false appearance of perfection.' 'The imagined truth' of the Jews, Hoffer concluded, was 'more alive, more true, that truth.'"

My response: The emphasis on the importance of getting it ride while in this world is contrasted against the extreme otherworldliness of ancient Christians. Somehow the Bible seems real, existentially authentic, and relevant--part of its universal appeal as relevant today across much elapsed time. I admire his point that imagined truth is more alive and more true than literal truth.