Both Dennis Prager and Jordan Peterson believe that morality, the study of good and evil, is descriptive and prescriptive about aspects of human behavior and choices so existentially really and primally important that metaphysically and spiritually, good and evil are the very deepest wells of Being from which we draw buckets of experience or living. They are wise and correct.
On Page 54 of his book, 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE FOR CHAOS, Jordan eloquently describes his original insight that evil is vulnerability to suffering that humans, creatures of sophisticated self-consciousness, now self-conscious, awakened, intelligent beings realize that, by inflicting unnecessary suffering upon equally vulnerable others (an to oneself unintentionally I add), evil was invented or at least introduced into human society. He is never so brilliant as here; this is a magnificent and momentous discovery and rings true to me. All humans suffer, but avoidable suffering which is malevolence that we voluntarily heap upon each other, that is evil in the world as an existential reality.
Let me quote Jordan on the bottom of Page 54 and over onto Page 55: "Only man could conceive of the rack, the iron maiden and the thumbscrew. Only man can inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have been able to formulate. Animals can't manage that, but, humans, with their excruciating, semi-divine capacities, most certainly can. And with this realization we have well-nigh full legitimization of the idea, very unpopular in modern intellectual circles, of Original Sin. And who would dare to say that there was no element of voluntary choice in our evolutionary, individual, and theological transformation? Our ancestors chose their sexual partners, and they selected for --consciousness? And self-consciousness? And moral knowledge? And who can deny the sense of existential guilt that pervades human experience? And who could avoid noting without that guilt--that sense of inborn corruption and wrongdoing--a man is one step from psychopathology?"
My response: Jordan does an excellent job of defining evil, of showing it exists in us all, that we feel existential guilt for it, and that is good so we can at least try to be moral and do good and avoid psychopathology.
I recommend one buy the book and read the rest of Page 55, too long to quote. He asks there our capacity for viciousness is so powerful and recurrent that no wonder people do not care for themselves, or even desire that the race should continue to exist. Others are so sickened by malevolence that they want to destroy themselves, others, God, Being, to wipe out the whole world for their having been born. These are some very scary, perilous people.
On Page 56 Jordan assures us that all is not lost: "In Genesis I, God creates the world with divine, truthful Word. generating habitable, paradisal order from the precosmogonic chaos. He then creates Man and Woman in His Image, imbuing them the capacity to do the same, to create order from chaos, and to continue his work."
My response: here we have our human mandate: each of us is called by God ethically, intellectually, existentially, and spiritually to live as individuators, mini-creators like God was, to continue God's work as accomplished, active, practical, effective doers, living angels--that is Mavellonialism, though Jordan has never heard of that concept.
Jordan on Page 57 advises his readers to forgive themselves, to consider themselves worthy of forgiveness (a most Christian message paid for by Christ's death and resurrection) and then, to choose freely to walk with God in spite of the evil and weakness that is much of what we are, but it is not all of what we are or can become.
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