Discipline

 

They carry online Facebook snippets of insights shared with the public by Jordan Peterson. I saw one that was posted on 1/27/24 which I took notes on and will comment on below. Here are the notes.

 

Peterson (P after this): “Before you are disciplined, you are not free, you are just chaotic.”

 

My response: This simple sentence is rich with implications: Mark Levin argues that the healthy, happy citizen in his republican, constitutional polity, is a creature that is rational, possesses natural liberty rights which he exercises, but he enjoys his liberty without being libertine, lawless, negatively anarchistic. He disciplines himself, not trampling upon his neighbors’ rights, property, moral/legitimate power-wielding or happiness. He limits himself morally, and society limits his unreasonable, illegal, and majorly sinful behavior with laws of various kinds in place to regulate human interaction, and to make society function as smoothly, regularly, and civilly as possible.

 

Levin refers to living this way in civilized, civil society as ordered liberty. For each human to flourish, and for society to prevail, we need not too much restriction of personal liberty (state tyranny oppressing people), nor too lax a social or legal restraint on liberty: negative anarchy lawlessness, and the law of the jungle being the law of the land out in the streets.

 

The universal axiom of moderation in most/all things applies to liberty. Ordered liberty, a true contradiction, seems to be that sweet spot where human function and built a personal identity that is connected with God, and is fitting, sufficient and complete.

 

Levin is defining the proper, ideal role for the citizen to play in our constitutional republic, but that is downstream from how each person is to live as a moral agent, and, it seems to me that what Peterson is hinting at in this first sentence is ordered liberty is the ideal ethical role for the individual to exert upon himself, and thus he will enjoy and practice lving this balance of ordered liberty, in both his private and public capacities, as a functioning citizen that makes a contribution to his political order.

 

Before you are disciplined (by yourself upon the self), you are not free but are just chaotic. You have a natural right to preside over your own affairs in as much liberty—as you can handle morally and efficiently while being a good, reasonable neighbor--as a limited state legally can and should allow, without society falling apart or clashing individuals or factions declining into civil war on the streets.

 

As moral private persons, and as good citizens, the individual must discipline himself in a mode of personal responsibility and duty to act lawfully, rationally, peacefully; if the average citizen were trained up as an anarchist-individuator supercitizen, he could handle well such a responsibility, maximizing his personal power and liberty, without inflicting himself upon a similarly authorized and equipped neighbor, nor allowing her to inflict her ambition or aggression upon him without pushing back—socially or legally if possible.

 

Where moral agents as private, ethical entities, and as citizens, do not discipline themselves to lead maverizing lives as supercitizens enjoying their ordered liberty, then chaos and barbarism fill the homes and streets, and authoritarian, governmental forces will and must step in to quell the chaos.

 

The paradox of ordered liberty, that both Levin and Peterson are analyzing and defining, is sensible, self-discipline, which makes each person’s well-managed freedom possible and allowable.  Where unchecked chaos, (manifested socially as excess, radical liberty, or as muted (ever ready to burst out like excess steam in an overheating boiler) chaos in disguise, crushed liberty smashed by rigid authoritarianism, which leads to the death of liberty for the individual and for society.

 

We must know and live in freedom predicated on self-discipline, for liberty, when not individually managed, always leads to tyrannical, external forces brought in by power-greedy elites to make society function in some way.

 

We must act, both privately and publicly, to ensure that chaos will not and should not prevail and abide. Chaos will be controlled either by the supercitizen internally and socially as he lives his wonderful, happy life in ordered liberty and freedom, or chaos will be brutally and unsatisfactorily established and maintained by the police state. Liberty and order must be simultaneously balanced and maintained, and it is much better for all and for society too.

 

P: “And so you have to practice some set of routines, some rituals. You can say they don’t necessarily have to be religious. They could be secular. You could become a lawyer, a carpenter,  a plumber.

 

I would say that is better than not becoming anything. But the problem with an identity that is not rooted in the archetypes—it leaves you incomplete the archetype is the root of the identity.  Your identity is what you grapple with as you work through the fundamental, existential problems of life—whether you are a carpenter, plumber, or lawyer.”

 

My response: To preserve and grow the self, Peterson advises that you cultivate a personal identity that is genuine (and self-esteeming based on merit I would add), duty-oriented, ethical, functioning, competent, industrious, strong, orderly, religious, and archetypal.  This disciplined, ethical way of life around which one builds one’s identity or sense of self, and which becomes one’s identity, is not structured just around practical goals like being a carpenter, etc.

 

Peterson presses his audience to agree that one’s identity or structure will not be completely satisfying or fulfilling if it is just practical, secular or occupational, though a job or career are beneficial for material survival, as well as building a life-story or role that one enjoys and is uplifted by.

 

 

P: “You, your soul is still going to hunger for some deeper form of identity, and you are not going to get that without having your practical identity encapsulated in something greater like a philosophical perspective—perhaps even deeper than philosophy, which is where the archetypal stories are.

 

They are the structure in which philosophy is embedded. Outside of that is a behavior structure. We talked about how those evolved. There is a behavioral evolution or something like a consensual morality that is a story about that consensual morality. All of this emerges from and is inside that structure of philosophy, and there are nested. All these issues have to be addressed or you are weak.”

 

My response: The maverized individual has an identity that is integrated and multilayered in the way that Peterson recommends: one must deal with oneself as one is. If one religiously works, lives and experiences so that the disciplined self faces reality, and seeks to encounter what is true, beautiful, divine, eternal, and good, then one’s archetypal signals from God and Being are encountered, willingly received and responded to, self-deciphered, so, concomitantly, one’s life quest is made known to the self, articulated by the self, and lived by the self as one’s role here on earth.

 

One’s religious core is the base and upon it are built other structures of meaning and purpose—first the philosophical, the behavioral, then one’s social relations, and then one’s practical plans like being a lawyer.

 

The sense of sense or personal identity is not complete unless that practical set of routines—a career or a job—is embedded in a deeper connection to the core essential self, a religious expression of the self as lived action by an actor on the stage of life is nested and nestled inside one’s archetypal or spiritual core, which is where the soul meets God or the universe.

 

One’s identity is found there and more completely built, recognized, defined, lived, and played out as a disciplined, strong smart adult when one’s archetypal concerns, ambitions, and roles to be played and personal story to be told are rooted in that known, experienced, enjoyed core self.

 

I would add that living as an anarchist-individuator supercitizen is the superlative way to tie together all the interlocking, hierarchical structures and routines that make up a mature, complete, personal identity.

 

The maverizer is connected to his deepest religious instincts, linked directly to the Good Spirits as he lives his telos, his life as the knight on an adventure, his quest to slay the dragon, to get the kidnaped maiden, and take home the pot of gold to share with the villagers whom he has saved. If he can be a carpenter, a father (the father with the rescued maiden, his future wife, and mother of their children), creator, engineer, artist, and philosopher while on that journey. Now that is an identity that creates a moral, holy, virtuous, competent self-identity, a living angel, a great-soul living out his fascinating, asymptotic story and adventure.

 

I would conclude that the richest, most affirming, holiest, most virtuous sense of identity would be the one held, lived and practiced by each maverizer of high self-esteem, as she enjoys her best version of herself, her arranged, ordered liberty operated by her, while the engine of control and order in her life and personality, is internally run by this disciplined, enlightened self.