Self-Esteem Is Real

 

 

I declare that self-esteem is real, and I assert that Jordan Peterson is erroneous in identifying self-esteem as an empty, unverified concept. Peterson denies the existence of self-esteem, instead announcing that positive self-regard can be scientifically identified, evidentially corroborated, and explained better through being assessing a person’s psychological makeup through the lens of the Big Five Personality Trait Model.

 

Peterson is an expert in psychology, a respected authority, and I am a blue-collar worker, amateur, an amateur who claims to know more about self-esteem than does Peterson.  I do claim that, but I have my reasons. First, the Big Personality Trait Model seems largely applicable, but for me that would amount to describing people’s personalities as they naturally are, for undeveloped individuals as simple, nonindividuated group-livers, just passively accepting as limiting how they are born or bent the by social arrangement that they are born into.

 

Second, our basic personality assigned to us at birth is, should not be, and need not be our destiny, especially as we self-realize. That basic personality—which may be accurately described under the Big Five Personality Trait Model--is always there as our psychic foundation, but no one knows the upper limits of adaptability and possible personality self-fabricating that is achievable: the lived, self-created personality of an adult, advanced individuator might lead that individuator to invent, craft and alter her personality in ways not captured by the Big Five Personality Trait model. Indeed, the new traits grown and adopted by the individuator may flat conflict with, overturn and in some cases radically modify natural trait propensities, in ways not captured or identified under the Big Five model.

 

Third, I do not disagree with Jordan the psychological expert about his favorite personality model so much as insist that the Big Five Personality Model—or other personality models—like MBTI (Myer-Briggs), may apply, but they are not the final story in how people can invent the personality most conducive to their being able to fulfill their divine destiny to maverize.

 

Fourth, I like the concepts of high esteem and low self-esteem as useful, fruitful general personality descriptors, to be retained. Under my egoist morality, these descriptors are applicable to and helpful for allowing individuators to use these general psychological terms of orientation towards living to know how to live and excel, and how not to live and suffer needlessly in this world.

 

 

 

A.

 

I now want to dig into some Jordan Peterson videos on YouTube—clips actually—that I copy and respond to. I wrote notes on what I viewed and there is some slight editing to contact, but I tried to capture what was said, and tried to be faithful to what was said.

 

Here is my first Peterson clip, Why Chasing Self-Esteem Fails Every Time; this 4 minute and 42 second clip is from Episode 280, and was posted 0n 10/15/24.

 

Here is Jordan (J after this)): “So one of the ways I used to treat one of my socially anxious clients; so maybe they were going to a party. One approach is to treat them with relaxation exercises and to teach them not to focus on their own experience.

 

But when you tell someone not to think about something they tend to think about it more. I said go to that party and find a couple of people and make them comfortable.”

 

Dr. Keith Campbell (psychologist and K after this): “That is interesting. A little jiu jitsu there; it makes sense.”

 

J: “It worked like a charm. Well, first of all or most of these people that were socially anxious had some social skill. Not all of them. Some of them were very badly socialized and they were anxious.”

 

My response: If we are rationally self-interested, we are not self-conscious all the time, which is subjective and makes us unhappy. When we are individuating and involved in work and our creative projects, we are self-interested but actually, objectively forget ourselves in a beneficial mode that eliminates narcissistic, constant, morbid, self-concentrating and overly self-focusing. Enlightened self-interest moves our psyche generally to not be self-absorbed or excessively introspective in some unwholesome way, whereas group-living and nonindividuating makes people obsess about themselves in unhealthy ways.

 

J: “They didn’t know how to behave in a social environment. But some of them had social skills that they had shut off because of their anxiety. If they, and if they focused on being hospitable, they were not thinking about themselves; they were effective, and their anxiety went away, and they started to flow into natural conversations.

 

Another thing we are pointing out on the hedonism front is not only short-term gratification of your whims is a bad strategy because it is associated with self-consciousness because it is associated with what you want right now, so it is a direct link to high level negative emotion.”

 

My response: Self-consciousness, short-term hedonistic gratification of the self, and being other centered are linked to high level negative emotion, which I—not Peterson—define as low self-esteem, altruistic group-orientation and selfless nonindividuating. High self-esteem is equivalent to high level positive emotion, or feeling good about oneself—this Peterson would deny.

 

K: “Absolutely. Part of the definition of depression is self-confidence. It is that neuroticism. And thinking about yourself is not a recipe for happiness. Think about anything but yourself, and thus you are saying it is a manipulation to control social anxiety. It is also what you see that in social psychology work on egotism.”

 

My response: What Keith is criticizing here and realistically so is not individualism but is the selfish narcissism of the joiner.

 

K: “On self-esteem you say here is your new roommate or you can say go form a good relationship with your roommate. People that go out to form and try to form a good relationship with a roommate do get self-esteem.

 

The people that try to get self-esteem don’t get self-esteem, so the self-esteem is sort of a side effect or epiphenomenon of close relationships with people. But if you go direct . . .”

 

My response: I do not deny what Keith is describing above, but he wrongly attributes it to the egoist, not the selfish, excessively, unhealthily self-conscious altruist, joiner and nonindividuator. I do agree that both sought-after self-esteem and happiness are gained as epiphenomenal benefits of self-realizing, loving, working, creating, thinking, and staying busy. These effects are not goals to be directly sought and acquired.

 

J: “That is so important.”

 

K: “Yeah, yeah.”

 

J: “It is also important to say I am so appalled for 20 years about the self-esteem movement. You are teaching something like fragile narcissism.”

 

My response: It is almost like Keith and Jordan are attacking a straw man which they have created. A narcissist is someone that is in love with himself in some sick way: this pure groupist and joiner may pretend to be socially superior but his obsession with and incessant competing for higher social rank (a collectivist ambition) is undertaken so he can lord it over those beneath him in the social pecking order; this phony self-esteeming gives the lie to the criticism that he loves himself; he is so subconsciously feeling inferior about himself that he can only assign worth to himself by comparing himself to his neighbors and victimizing them. If he feels he is of inflated importance (he may be a big fish in the little social pond and hierarchy in which he swims) it is a cover for his real self-appraisal—he needs constant, permanent social affirmation to temporarily feel a little good about himself.

 

He may feel that he deserves his exalted status, but it is unearned exaltation, and his selfishness is the self-centeredness of those that run in packs.

 

 

I briefly read online that there are competing psychologists that disagree with Jordan and Keith that confident self-appraisal can lead to healthy self-regulation while operating in the world.

 

I am a maintenance engineer at a private college in the Twin Cities and I saw a bulletin board for the freshman in their dormitory which was covered with the shallow, superficial kinds of happy, empty self-talk that failed self-esteemed programs feed to entitled, narcissistic little groupists and nonindivudators so common today.

 

Let me provide a list of these posted bromides for the reader on my colleges “Words of Affirmation” board: I make life feel worth living; I give myself the purpose of continuing my journey of life; I am strong: After my tears drop, I will still try everyday, After a breakup I will grow within myself, After getting a D on a paper I will do better next time, After failing an exam I will do better, I will treat myself with kindness; I wake up motivated, I wake up to conquer the day, I wake up ready to learn, I wake up ready to have fun, I wake up ready to meet new people; You go this, keep thriving, keep pushing, keep breathing, keep the mindset that brought you here, keep going; I cried, I smiled, I ate, I breathed, I did so well today; From me: I am proud of you; Appreciation, I appreciate being here, I appreciate I’m able to make decisions, I appreciate I have access to food, water, clothes, I appreciate my friends and family; I have support, if I ever need support I will put myself first and receive it, I have resources, I am not alone; I am beautiful, everything about me is beautiful from my head to my toes; I am loved, I have support, I have people that care about my well-being and mental health; I am happy to meet each and every one of you; Inspire, I inspire my siblings; I love myself, I love my attitude; I am powerful, my presence will be powerful, I have the ability to leave a positive impact on others, I walk with confidence, I treat myself the way I want others to treat me.”

 

My initial impression is that these words of inspiration would inspire a self-realizing, individuating individual as that individual lives and enjoy high, merited self-esteem, thinking and feeling well about himself; but, most of these freshman, nice enough youngsters, spoiled, affluent, jaded, bragging youngsters of low self-esteem (suffering from unprecedented levels of depression and suicidal thoughts) are nonindiviudators and groupists being broken and brainwashed by this sick DEI Marxist university, inverting these young, unquestioning groupists into social justice activists in the ranks of the advancing postmodernist, Marxist mass movement sweeping across America. None are as unhappy, narcissistic, selfless but selfish and corrupt as self-hating, other-hating true believers of very low self-esteem that have all the answers.

 

Real self-esteem is what one would teach to a young individuator to suggest to her that she and her life are valuable, and she deserves a fulfilling life of discovery and developing her talents and mind. This requires self-esteem to impel her to will to undertake the individuation journey, and self-esteem is what she gains from and only from maverizing. She must love, work, create, bring order to the world, and achieve remarkably to merit feeling high self-esteem about herself; she cannot just say it to herself and about herself if she has not earned it; that is a pathetic, empty lie.

 

That is the unaccomplished, failed young person that Jordan is criticizing, but his mistake is to label them as selfish, prideful, self-esteeming individualists, when they are actually selfless—which is selfishness, paradoxically—prideful, low self-esteeming, bragging joiners and collectivists.

 

A person of high self-esteem is a productive, competent, accomplished person; thus, she is happy, emotionally healthy person. She is secure enough in her self-esteeming and her modest self-loving that she neither brag about herself, nor deprecate or attack herself without merit or kind intent.

 

J: “That is a very bad thing to teach kids. That is really bad. Your point is exactly right: what we call self-esteem is really regulation of negative emotions to a large degree. Positive personal emotion (a state of personal happiness and mental wellness Ed adds) is actually obtained by establishing long term reciprocal relationships. Because those are stable and reliable that decreases negative emotion.”

 

My response: Jordan and proponents of the Big Five Personality Trait model identify negative emotions with being neurotic, personally unhappy, and mentally unhealthy. Jordan is pushing that healthy regulation of one’s emotions is gained and sustained by long term reciprocal relationships, and I agree, but even more so from esteeming the self as a loving individuator. Low self-esteem/neuroticism/ negative emotional stances are associated mostly with altruistic nonindividuating and group-living.

 

J: “Most self-esteem measurements are mostly neuroticism. Like there is extroversion in there but it is mostly neuroticism reversed. So, it is so interesting. Psychologists could do this to teach people—we have done a bad job of this—the best pathway to emotional self-regulation is throughs service to other people. That is a great deal for everybody.”

 

My response: Jordan wants the masses to not pursue self-interest, self-esteem and maverization because they lack the brains, the talents, and the right to do so (only the elite few that are smarter and better are allowed to be individualistic, pursue their own self-interests or self-realize).

 

The masses must settle for altruistic, selfless service to others. What he defines as neuroticism as actually low self-esteem in action in the personalities and minds of practicing nonindividuating, selfless joiners. Low self-esteem is bad and leads to disregulation of one’s emotions.

 

While healthy reciprocal relationships are desirable, we gain self-esteem and emotional self-regulation first and primarily by what we do, not by our relationships to others, an important factor but of secondary significance and priority for the happy, moral individual.

 

Negative emotion is self-loathing exhibited as one serves others excessively and as one’s only reason for existing. Self-love is manifested in the individual when he lives for himself primarily as a maverizer and encourages others to so live too. Liberating them from him and him from them is kindness, a real service to others.

 

K: “A long time ago Jean Twenge and I wrote a book on this, The Narcissism Epidemic.”

 

My response: The Narcissism Epidemic was written by Jean M. Twenge, PH.D. (she the author of Generation Me) and W. Keith Campbell.

 

K: “We were looking at the cultural changes emerging out of the self-esteem movement and other things and that is exactly what we found. People need to give kids self-esteem so what we have to do is make them feel special. That is a disaster. The way you make people, you have positive, loving relationships and age-appropriate challenges so they can get some competence and a sense of connection.

 

Relationships are a long-term, durable source of well-being. I mean I can be close to my siblings for 50 to 70 years if we make it. Getting self-esteem from winning or being cool or attractive is a short-term game. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, and it is very hard to be relevant (popular Ed adds) for a long time in terms of the strategy that if you want to like yourself, focus on relationships. That is going to work.”

 

My response: Both Keith and Jordan peddle group-oriented living and self-sacrifice in service of others as the tickets to emotional well-being, but Ayn Rand and I would disagree. I would partially disagree, and Rand likely would wholly denounce their proposals.

 

The moderate in me would grant to Keith and Jordan that healthy, reciprocal, long-term relationships and service to others are ethically desirable and make people sane and happy, but it is the minor moral emphasis. The major moral emphasis must be self-realizing in pursuit of one’s enlightened self-interest.

 

Rand more boldly and baldly would pronounce that selfish interest pursued by the individual as a rational egoist is one only moral duty. I would mostly agree with her.

 

My view of self-interest varies from hers in two ways: I identify self-interest more directly as self-interest as self-realization, the lifelong struggle to produce personal excellence morally, materially, relationally, intellectually, and artistically. Still, her Howard Roark character is a great soul.

 

Second, I identify egoist morality as serving God, by existing and working as a living angel. Rand the atheist would scorn this line of thinking.

 

 

 

 

 

B.

 

 

 

 

I follow the good deities who are individuators more than nonindividuators, and they serve themselves more than they serve others, though as Christ-like good shepherds, they altruistically care for the sheep who they do attend to, and are responsible for. They want their human children to engage in enlightened self-interest more than other-interest as group-livers sacrificing the self in service to others.

 

Self-esteem or high, merited intellectual and emotional self-regard, is governed by the law of moderation, the godly love of truth about the self. Moderately, one does not rate oneself artificially high or unfairly low, but about where one should rate oneself. One seeks to know the truth about oneself with a fearless, illusionless steadfastness: then if one regards oneself with high self-esteem, it would reflect what one is: one would be a great soul in the making both spiritually and morally loving of the self, of the good divinities and other humans, and one will have produced plays, poems, inventions, and new theories which demonstrate in the world that one’s talents are brilliantly developed, expressed and instantiated in the world.

 

One only has self-esteem if one does not esteem oneself too highly or too lowly, whether one has earned the right to think well of oneself or not. If one is a good person, loving and an individuator, then one can take pride in oneself, more than one should be humble, but modesty in thought, word and deed are always advisable and prudent. And so acting about the self while self-imaging is the only way to stay sane, ethical and happy permanently.

 

One should love the self-more than one hates the self, and one should be self-interested in the enlightened way more than one is other-centered in the enlightened manner.

 

One should work more than one plays; one should create more than one destroys; one should seek duty over pleasure and sacrifice oneself (sacrifice as practiced self-discipline and delayed gratification) more than to indulge the self, but sacrifice for one’s own sake and gain, more than sacrificing for others in service to others.

 

 

 

 

 

C

 

 

 

 

 Peterson does not come right out and say so, but he will allow the brightest to be somewhat motivated by self-interest, original thinking and being creative because they are the rarely talented elite. Even they must be modest lest their intellectual arrogance lead them to assume the evil stance of Luficerian pride.

 

It seems that humility and service to others (altruist morality) is the ethics for the non-smart, non-creative, plebian masses for moral excellence defined as self-sacrificing the self in service to others is the only excellence available to the untalented, not-bright masses.

 

Jordan might have concluded that the intelligent elite are not only smarter they are morally superior to the masses dull and more evil-inclined, so they require firm control from above, the masses must be steeped in altruist ethics to keep them in line and orderly.

 

The elite rule masses all over the world and always have. An elite is a tight clique, so they are or end up being groupist. These selfless/selfish joiners on top will stay altruistic and stay with their evil ways which they are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

D

 

 

 

 

 

Jordan Peterson rails against bright people being guilty of Luciferian pride for they seek to put themselves above everyone and everything as rulers, and they want all knowledge, all power and to live forever as gods that usurp and have supplanted the good deities Their Luciferian pride is the cardinal sin.

 

We can be proud maverizers but serve God and not seek to overthrow God—like an impossibility for which we would be severely punished for by the angered good deities meting out divine justice to human sinners.

 

 

 

 

E

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This clip on Peterson is from 2020, and it is 4:10 minutes long and I took notes on it and will comment on it. This is from youtube.com and is entitled, It’s Better Than Self-Esteem.

 

J: “One of the things psychologists have pushed in the last 20 years, especially social psychologists, have pushed this idea of self-esteem. You should feel good about yourself.”

 

My response: You should feel good about yourself only if you are realistic in your self-assessment. You can only esteem yourself to the degree that you are worthy of esteem offered you from the self or others.  If you are lazy, vicious, godless, self-hating, evil, nonindividuating and undeveloped, there is not much there to be proud of.

 

I link positive self-esteem to conscience and motivation. If we train a young person to love himself, and with this right to so self-regard goes the responsibility to individuate and make himself moral, holy, very smart, and very creative.

 

My general counterargument to Peterson is that I wish to retain self-esteem as a technical word that is approximately synonymous with one’s general attitude towards oneself. This image that one has of oneself is a self-assessment and is more metaphysically than scientifically supported studies of personal type systems such as the Big Five Personality Trait model which can be made compatible with my traditional, less evidentially and researched based, concept of self-esteem. Self-esteem as a technical word for self-assessing is what I seek to retain and employ when referring to people self-imaging, for I wish to connect my ideas about self-esteem as a coherent extension of thinkers in the past 150 years that referred to self-esteeming or positive self-regarding.

 

The way that this two-word technical term, self-esteem, was utilized 100 years ago seem to apply and be serviceable and I do not want to lose that line of thinking, but to extend it into the modern period though my ambition conflicts with Peterson’s radical dismissal of the concept of self-esteem as an any longer relevant way to define and describe individual self-assessment.

 

I suggest that we continue to use self-esteem as a meta-psychological term and concept for describing individual self-assessment and underneath that overarching concept can be subsumed current, more popular, more evidence-based, more scientifically precise, and technical terms and concepts which clinical psychologists like Peterson use today to characterize individual self-assessing.

 

My mentor, Eric Hoffer, seemed to employ the concept of self-esteem to describe human self-assessment, a word defining how people form a picture of themselves, whether or not that imaged self is admirable or repulsive, truly or falsely depicted about the self by the self. I fear we will lose valuable insight from past thinkers in discarding this special, relevant phrase.

 

I would divide self-esteem or self-imaging into two general categories. The first I refer to as veridical self-esteem: high self-esteem would correspond to one’s self-image if one is of sterling character, a morally and spiritually loving person, a wage-earner, artistic maverizer and original thinker. One is worthy.

 

Veridical low self-esteem would apply whenever one came to the realization that one is lazy, selfish, mean, unjust, mediocre, and godless. One is unworthy.

 

The second category of self-esteeming is mendacious self-esteeming. Under this category, the self-imager is a liar, and his nonindividuating, his lying, his cruelty, his selflessness would be self-mischaracterized by him that he is entitled to rule, to take, to hurt, to arrogantly declare he is the best (he plainly is the worst).

 

More prevalent and more dangerous by far is mendacious, low self-esteeming self-assigned by the majority of people that are more sinner than virtuous, but not terrible, but they accept a communal, tribal or societal system of injustice, tyranny and groupist inter-cruelty as the norm to be not opposed, if not actively supported.

 

This majority of average sinners and average mediocrities assume they deserve to suffer needlessly and that they can never make it any better. Their capitulation and fatalism allow evil to grow in the world, and the damage they permit make malevolence stronger and more pervasive.

 

J: “And think why would you tell someone that is 20 that? It’s like you should feel good about who you are. No, you shouldn’t.”

 

My response: Jordan is correct in dismissing easy, glib, shallow application of self-esteem self-talk to upgrade a person. I would qualify his objecting that you should tell a 20-year old to feel good about herself, by suggesting that each child or young adult has the right to be told and reminded that she has the right to feel good about herself as her jumping off point,  but she immediately thereafter with speed, focus and resolve, devote her life to self-realizing, the moral ideal: she is to morally, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally and physically  ensure through effort and behavior that her ennobled personhood has grown to match these kind, extolling words that she has assigned to herself.

 

Jordan is correct in pointing out that most young people, born evil, born with low self-esteem, weak wills, reared as nonindividuators in a group setting with an emphasis on conforming to get along with other non-achievers, are a mess that should not feel good about themselves. They are without accomplishment or competence.

 

Then, Jordan goes off the rails. He wants them to clean up their room and their messy lives but as untalented, average-IQued member of the masses, their only way to feel good about themselves is as altruistic, selfless givers, living a life in service to others, enmeshed in long-term reciprocal relationships—no individual or solitary living allowed.

 

Instead, I suggest they should achieve personal moral excellence but intellectual and artistic excellence too, and they are all gifted individuals, no matter how average they are. Creativity and originality for even people of average IQs can produce wonderful art and originality, though the creator has not the words concepts to get to personal perfection, or to justify her excellent products.

 

Her brilliance can be unconsciously unfolded by her in action and perfecting output though she cannot linguistically express her patten of individuating in concrete, well-defined concepts.

 

Even average people can unleash their “super-IQ” while individuating and no one knows the upper limits of that wondrous internal unpacking of what each person has to offer, and such a person can then esteem herself highly without arrogance, without a loss of modesty, without a loss of gratitude in the good deities for giving her life, talent, and opportunity, without ever getting puffed up and taking herself too seriously.

 

J: “Why should you feel good about who you are? You should feel good about who you should be. That’s way better because you get 60 years to turn into who you could be. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have confidence.”

 

My response: Jordan is so anti-merited high self-esteem that his lack of belief in the potential of every young person does undermine their confidence in themselves, because the elders around them and their peers tell them they are nothing special, nothing to celebrate, with no future outside self-sacrifice to the collective need.

 

J:  “ . . .  but often people, you take young people, you say from 16 to 22 and they are not feeling that good about who they are because their lives are chaotic and in disorder. They do not know where they are going, and which way is up.”

 

Joe Rogan (R after this): “It is bad parenting, bullying (Okay, yes, Jordan agrees.). There could be a lot of abuse going on and I think that is one of the reasons the ideas people have is the idea to be happy with who you are and to feel good about who you are.”

 

My response: Rogan needs to realize that good parenting would teach the children that they abuse none, and tolerate abuse from none, and that they think for themselves and maverize as an individual and individuators, for only they have they a chance to be happy with who they are or are becoming, and then start to feel good about themselves.

 

J: “Right, but the thing is it has to be stated with precision. You should treat yourself as if you are valuable. Especially in potential. But you should concentrate on who you should become especially if you are young.”

 

My response: Jordan is correct but we need to remind the young that their potential to be pursued and developed by them of their own free will is potential to make money, have a job , get married and start a family, to worship God, but, at the higher end of personal development, it is also fulfilling one’s divine duty to become actual existing excellent in love, morality, as a mechanic, a philosopher, a mathematician, a painter, realizing that each person can do most of these things if she believes in herself and gets them underway, and that is when she can esteem herself highly and rightly so.

 

I want to cling to this traditional concept of high self-esteem as of worth to each person because the concept of self-esteem is historically and culturally valuable, and indicative of how people should be feeling about themselves. It hints however implicitly of support for egoist-individualist morality and the life of individuating. The concept of self-esteem must be retained.

 

As an aside I wonder why such bright psychologists like W. Keith Campbell and Jordan Peterson are so down on self-esteeming, downplaying it as leading to narcissism, selfishness, unhappiness and being tormented by an array of negative emotions.

 

I may not be far off in assuming that they could add that self-esteeming grows selfishness, narcissism and evil in the soul and inflated self-consciousness of each entitled, spoiled young person so that they are evil and even demonic in the end. Only those that are humble, altruistic, and spending lives in service of others, not even thinking about the self, are happy and good and godly.

 

Why are these psychologists and their ilk so down on lovely blessed, egoism and self-esteeming?

 

First, as secular scientists and intellectuals, and as Christians literally or culturally, both men favor self-regulation and humility over pride and self-esteeming of the self, and they urge altruism-collectivism as the way to behave so that one can become a good person. That is the ethical tradition they grew up in and wish to perpetuate.

 

Second, groupist intellectuals, and Campbell and Peterson may be of that ilk—are, like the rest of us mere humans-- born basically evil (which in my books means to be born selfless, self-hating, of low self-esteem, favoring group-living, group-identifying and supporting group ethics—altruism-collectivism), so, on some level that they are  unaware of, they wish to preserve the human cultural pattern of group-living over individual-living which is now coming to the fore. If they can depreciate the value of self-esteeming and egoist morality, they may be able to protect the collectivist, groupist status quo.

 

They wish to fight off instinctively, the arrival and spread of egoist-individualist ethics, and they may not even be aware of this deep need to maintain the group-living status quo with the culture and morality that undergirds all of that. The desire to be groupist and justify groupism is a subtle, powerful influence on people, more than even experts realize.

 

Third, most professors are aristocrats who favor egoism and individualism for the ruling few that are the elite rulers, and altruism-collectivism is plenty sufficient for the ruled, undeserving masses. Rulers want their follower submissive, uncritical, quiet, and compliant, meek, silent, with their heads down all the time.

 

J: “So let’s say you are miserable and nihilistic and chaotic and depressed; and enough of all that, and you have your reasons: terrible parenting, abuse, and all that. It’s like you should feel good about yourself? No, no, it’s not the right message. It’s more like you should understand how much potential there is within you to set that straight.”

 

My response: Jordan is correct here as far as he goes that moral excellence sought despite one’s suffering and setbacks is courageous and therapeutic. The aristocrat in him seems to confine the potential to the masses as perhaps achieving personal moral excellence, but individualism and egoism feeding high self-esteem also demands form each individual intellectual and creative excellence too. Each average person can and should maverize.

 

J: “And then you should do everything you can to manifest that in the world and it will set it straight. And that’s better than self-esteem (Ed disagrees: that is self-esteem in action.). It’s like you are in a crooked, horrible position. So fine, there is a lot of suffering and pain associated with that. You cannot just feel good about that because it is not good.”

 

My response: We take where we were beginning, as an existential mess, and we slowly bootstrap our way up through self-discipline via self-realizing, so we can come to the point that we can esteem ourselves, and there and then, the self-praise is real and merited if ever to be modestly expressed and modestly endured.

 

We must never lie to ourselves: we must recognize, understand, accept what a natural mess we are, and then resolve to change ourselves for the better. If one is taught an initial self of self-love, that one’s life and soul are unique, precious, and valuable, then one might have the premise upon which to grow and develop, shaping a beautiful life.

 

J: “But you can do something about it. You can genuinely do something about it, and I think all the evidence suggests that this is the case. So, I’m telling young people no matter how bad you situation is, I’m not going to pretend it is okay. It is not okay. It’s tragic, tainted with malevolence.”

 

My response: Jordan is a bit of a gloomy Gus, but he tells truth here when he reveals that life is hard, and suffering is universal, and that malevolence, or needless suffering are felt by and committed by all. Evil exists as a natural and supernatural force or intelligence, and it inflicts itself upon people every day.

 

J: “And some people really get hurt by malevolent people, you know, terribly hurt. Sometimes they never recover. But it is really awful. But there is more to you than you think. And if you stand up and face it with a positive, noble vision, with discipline and intent, you can far, further to overcoming it than you can imagine. And that is the principle upon which you should predicate your behavior. And one of the things which I think is really nice about being a clinical psychologist this isn’t just guesswork. Like one of the things we know—we know two things in clinical psychology.

 

One is truthful conversations redeem people. Because if you come to a clinical psychologist who is worth his salt, you have a truthful conversation. The conversation is: Here is what is wrong with my life, and here is what caused it. And it takes maybe a year to have that conversation and maybe both of the participants are doing everything they can to lay it out properly. Here is how it might be fixed. Here is what a beneficial future might look like.

 

And so it is a completely honest conversation if it is working well, and all that is happening in the conversation is that the two people involved in the conversation are trying to make things better. That’s the goal. Let’s see if we can have conversation that makes things better. Okay, so we know that works. And it does make things better.

 

And another thing we know is that let’s say there are a bunch of things you are afraid of that stand in your way, so you have some vision about who you want to be. So maybe you have to, you know, you want to learn to be successful in your career. So, you have to learn to talk in front of a group. Well, you are afraid of that, no wonder, you don’t want to be humiliated. So, what do we do about that. Well, maybe we first get you to speak in front of one person and then in front of three people for five minutes, and then for ten minutes.

 

Graduated exposure to what you are afraid of, voluntary graduated exposure to what you are afraid of is curative. So, if you tell people to confront the world forthrightly, if you speak the truth, and you expose yourself courageously to those things you are afraid of that your life will improve and so will the lives of people around you.”

 

My response: All this sage advice and therapy works but it is consistent with egoism, a search for increased, merited self-esteem, and it is self-interested growth, but it has much less to do with or is conducive with altruism, seeking low self-esteem and humility, and the life lived for life as a nonindividuator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

F

 

 

 

 

 

Here is another Peterson clip from Youtube, a 14.55 minute piece entitled Lies and BS: Jordan Peterson Destroys the Self-Esteem and Emotional Intelligence Concepts. I copied it out and then made comments on it.

 

J: “Here’s something I think doesn’t exist. To predict things in the real world, here are some things not to use. I don’t think self-esteem exists. There is really only one scale. There is a Roman Paparotti self-esteem scale that is pretty good. But the standard one is the Rosenburg. I can’t remember items it has, 15, I think, not enough items to really be reliable.

 

There were over 25,000 papers published on self-esteem. Figure ten grand a paper, so you can do the math: 25,000 by 10,000. That is the total amount of research funding that has gone into self-esteem. What is self-esteem? It is a word. Actually it is 2 words. It’s something you think you might have or not have but that is a figure of speech. That is not an empirical phenomenon, so most of extraversion is just neuroticism.

 

If you have a lot of negative emotion you do not feel that good about yourself. Well, isn’t that a surprise? You have a lot of negative emotion. You know if you want to fix it up a little bit, you can also subtract positive emotion from that, so if you have a lot of negative emotion, and not a lot of positive emotion. So that is neuroticism minus extraversion. Then your self-esteem is even lower. Now maybe over time conscientiousness starts to make a lot of difference because if you are conscientious and work hard you can see that it is starting to pay off and Tafardi (Ed: this word is unclear for spelling.) has done some wonderful work that seems to indicate that.

 

But, if you know, the first thing that happened is everybody went on a self-esteem bender, even though the measures were pretty appalling and even though you could, you know, model it with the Big Five.

 

And there are things that happened as a consequence of that was that the whole California school system started to teach students self-esteem. It’s like, what makes you think you should have high self-esteem? Maybe you’re a miserable little worm. God only knows, right? It not the case that you should have a good opinion of yourself in every bloody situation.

 

You know, what if you are a bully who pounds people out on the school yard? Bullies, by the way, have higher self-esteem than normal. So there because it is not like they are feeling bad about themselves.”

 

My response: First off, kids in the public school are little robots, conformist altruists so to surface teach student-joiners shallow, superficial self-esteeming strategies is a doomed plan which necessarily must fail, giving—unfairly--self-esteem therapy a bad name, because the root cause (selflessness and low self-esteem) have not be systemically rooted out voluntarily by each individual child agent to make way for his personal succeeding as a young maverizer maverizing his way to goodness, excellence and higher self-esteem.

 

Such misguided, shallow self-esteem programs are a straw man, easy for scientific, credentialed altruists like Jordan to put down because these poorly conceived therapies are doomed to fail, being the ill-conceived and poorly implemented therapies as they were and are. Such inferior self-esteem models give all egoist morality, with its potential for boosting self-esteem, a bad name. My sneaking suspicion is the altruistic, “experts” in psychology are secretly pleased to be able to denounce as unworkable and unscientific, existing shallow self-esteem therapies. The experts pontificate, offering that the evidence shows that self-esteem therapies make youngsters, already born evil, more selfish, neurotic, depressed, immoral, narcissistic, depressed, and psychotic than they need to be otherwise, if they were taught altruist morality and personal humility and service to others as the psychological standard for being happy and good.

 

A bully is a group creature that is a small time criminal in the making. He is not high in veridical self-esteem, but he is replete with boastful, mendacious high self-esteem--where he overrates his moral worth and underrates his sinning-- because one that loves the self, esteems the self, and this can only be true, real, and maintained, if he treats himself firstly, and then all others, secondarily with kindness, courtesy, and respect. The bully is atrocious, violent, dominant,  arrogant, militant and brazen is his overt selfish selflessness but he is no individualist, and he has not self-esteem, though his sick cockiness is the sadistic side of feeling worthless, temporarily relieved by  pounding on someone smaller and weaker. Ever a social climber, he may not be popular, but he has gained much group-power of an addicting kind as he is the king of the schoolyard hill.

 

 

 

J: “When they pound you they’re feeling bad about you. And the best work indicates the low self-esteem equals the bully hypothesis. Lots of people believe that. But if you read Dan Oliveus, who’s the world’s leading authority on bullying and who has actually done something about it.

 

He says bullies have an inappropriately high self-esteem which is why they think they are in a perfectly good position to pound you out if you happen to be on the playground. So, it’s not like they are suffering from a neurotic weakness of self-image. It’s quite the contrary. So anyways, in the California school system, they tried to teach kids self-esteem and there is no evidence that you can do that first, because neuroticism is quite hard to shift.”

 

My response: We likely can only shift predominant neuroticism in the individual to veridical high and low self-esteeming if we teach children to maverize.

 

J: “And second, there are people like Jean Twenge, who used to be a student of Roy Baumeister, who claims that all that self-esteem training has just made younger people, like you guys, more narcissistic.”

 

My response: Dennis Prager convinced me that to be moral, good, truthful, and happy, you must fight your nature, taking on your spiritual, godly nature as a good person. If you will to improve, you will get better. Veridical self-esteem or self-loving will motivate a sane person to grow as a moral person, and veridical low self-esteem is your honest embarrassment, your powerful awareness of your undeveloped state, your sordid state existentially, a state of deep, enervating sinfulness. The good news is that your self-esteem can grow, and veridically so, as you improve at maverizing.

 

J: “Yeah, because the self-esteem becomes disconnected from the actual accomplishment because you might hope you might feel good. How good should you feel about yourself? Well, you might say, well, you should grant yourself the right to exist like anyone else. That’s sort of a basic human right. As a human being you are valuable. And then maybe you should think you are about as valuable as people roughly think you are. That seems about right, Right?”

 

My response: No, the individual sets his value, not the group. Each is valuable and very talented and bright, laden with untapped potential. You have a right to exist but God gives you a duty to develop those talents to help yourself and the world be better.

 

J: “So the right amount of self-esteem would be your perception of your value within the context of the group. (No, Ed adds.) It’s got to be something like that. So, there should be a concordance because like maybe you need to improve. That could well be. And are you going to improve if you’re feeling really good about yourself.”

 

My response: When self-esteem is veridical and merited, you feel good about yourself because you know your self-realizing is wise action-planning put into action by you, by perfecting self-love and its emulating the good deities, Individuators all. Your self-esteem will motivate you to strive harder as long as you live to keep growing and getting better, and that is not group-inspired, but is group-repressed.

 

The good conscience is strongest in the living angel guided very veridical self-esteeming. He could not live with himself if his actions did not fairly closely match or exceed his ethical code.

 

J: “Well, the answer to that is that we don’t know. How much misery about yourself do you have to have before you are motivated to improve yourself?”

 

My response: If one knows one is miserable and is willing to finally do something about it to make things and oneself better, that veridical state of personal consciousness is an epistemic victory that is emblematic of rising self-esteem. One must experience via veridical low self-esteeming that one is a mess before one wills to improve, so that one self-esteem can justifiably and commensurately rise.

 

Nonindividuating children, or lousy little worms to quote Jordan, likely feel pretty good about themselves though they are abject messes and failures as human beings. Their mendacious self-esteem is high, and their veridical low self-esteem is so repressed that it is nonexistent. If these nonindividuating, groupist, selfless children were honest, they would not like themselves, but because they live in a world of denial and fantasy, they mendaciously think well of themselves, and their being popular in their phony, affirming peer group reinforces their ability to deceive themselves. They are fiercely proud of themselves, but this is pure Luciferian pride at its strongest, and it grows out of altruist morality and group-identifying.

 

J: “ None? Well, that doesn’t seem right. We also do not know if it is shame or guilt or anxiety or pain or these negative emotions that motivate you. Now it is clear that if you have enough negative emotion, than can paralyze you, but that’s like depression and psychiatrically high levels of anxiety. That’s not like low self-esteem.”

 

My response: It seems like quibbling to argue negative emotions about yourself that motivate you to improve you cannot be referred to as veridical low self-esteem. I would argue that negative emotions are wholesome when they are veridical (you now know you are a mess and must do something about it). Then this veridical low self-esteem is wholesome because you are ready to get better and make it happen and because you are now living in a state of truth about your own situation, and that is a vital prerequisite to being motivated to work to reform the self. You will esteem yourself lowly until you self-realize enough to think rather better of yourself.

 

Peterson seemed ten years ago to be for developing your individual talents, but he never embraced egoist morality, and he was all along the traditional, typical altruist, a point at which cultural Christians, actual Christians, and secular intellectuals like Peterson that selflessness is being good and sane.

 

J: “So that’s a problem. I don’t believe that working memory and executive function are distinguishable from IQ. Our research, we have done a lot of it, a factor analyzed the battery of of ten dorsolateral prefrontal tests given to 3,000 people. It’s a very big sample. We haven’t published this for a variety of reasons. But one factor comes out, you know when Carol’s rule for IQ was, you take cognitive tests, a bunch of them. You factor analyze them. You pull out the first factor that’s fluid intelligence.

 

It's like, well, that’s basically what we found. So, if you look at the correlation between each of the single tests and the first factor, it’s only .3 or .4. But that’s also what you find in IQ tests. Each individual test only correlates with the aggregate at about .3.

 

But if you aggregate enough of the you get fluid intelligence, and it’s just as solid as a rock. So emotional intelligence, ha. Not only does that probably not exist because it is agreeableness. You know you are told you always need emotional intelligence to thrive in the workplace. Like, turns out that is exactly backwards.”

 

My response: I would not quibble with Jordan over whether emotional intelligence exists are not, but it seems to be that it would be socially and morally useful to be emotionally intelligent, even if nice guys finish last in the workplace.  If managers lack emotional intelligence, or are emotionally insensitive, or are disagreeable, I do not automatically cede to Jordan that less precise, less technical adjectives alluding to the same adjective or nouns that are part of the Big Five Personality Model indicates that these older, less rigorous synonyms should be discarded.

 

J: “Disagreeable people do better as managers in the workplace. So, it is if you lack emotional intelligence, you’re more likely to be an effective manager. So, an emotional intelligence is a great indicator of a sort of pathology and psychology invented by a journalist.

 

You know you can’t just have some word invented by a journalist  and then go make a whole, bloody, you know enterprise out of it. You got to find out if it is really there, and there’s not a lot of evidence that it is. And what does it mean anyways? Emotional intelligence? What does that mean? I can infer what you are feeling.

 

Well, is that like IQ, like are smart people are better at that? Or, like, am I mirroring you in some way, or do I care for you? Like maybe I can figure out exactly what you’re feeling, and I just don’t give a damn, you know. Is that emotional intelligence. Well, I don’t know. How would you like to separate that from sympathy or empathy. And what if you are sympathetic to someone?

 

Is that emotional intelligence? Like maybe you’re feeling too sorry for your children, so it is like you are all empathetic, and all that, but you’re not doing them any good. Sometimes you would be. But sometimes you should say, you know, quit whining, go the hell outside because that is the right response sometimes.”

 

My response: We can feel, experience and act based upon emotional intelligence or sensitivity to what we feel and what others feel, and what each person requires in response, and it may be that tough love is the best response at times.

 

J: “These things are not straightforward at all. And, of course emotional intelligence is generally measured with questionnaires. And we know the rules for questionnaires. What is the rule for questionnaires? Measuring one or more of the Big Five, either well or badly. Okay, as far as I can tell that that doesn’t mean personality has a five-dimensional structure.

 

I’m not making that argument because who the hell knows? I don’t think it does likely although it’s very hard difficult to say. But what the Big Five theorists have really demonstrated as far as I am concerned is that if you factor analyze questionnaires, what you get looks a lot like a five-factor structure. And you can do that cross-culturally. So, I think we sort of nailed the question of how our questionnaire is structured.

 

So, you cannot just invent some new thing and term it something, and then pretend it is something new without testing it against. And I would test it against IQ, because that bloody thing. We know for example IQ eats of most of the variance in disgust sensitivity scales. You would think why would IQ be related to disgust sensitivity? The smarter you are, the less sensitive you are to disgust. Now, I don’t know if that’s because maybe your cortical inhibitor of underlying, like limbic cortical motivational systems are better. Who the hell knows?

 

We don’t know why but we know it is a major predictor of orderliness also predicts. But the thing about IQ is that it predicts things that you’d never expect. So, you should validate your scale against IQ and against the Big Five and not some trivial little ten item measure of the Big Five either. Then, if you use two questions per trait, you’re going to have a lousy measure of the Big Five.

 

And if your stupid questionnaire predicts over and above that, all that means is that you didn’t test it against you know, you didn’t set it up for a good challenge. You set it up for a weak challenge. There’s a problem with the measurement of self-esteem and that actually matters because self-esteem is a psychological concept, not a scientific concept if you like and you have to get the measurements right. And if you can predict self-esteem almost perfectly by measuring someone’s extraversion and subtracting from that their negative emotion or neuroticism. So, it (self-esteem, Ed adds) is actually just a measurement of a combination of Big Five traits.”

 

My response: Self-esteem may or may not be a scientific concept—I do not know what pro-self-esteem psychologists have for evidence to support that it is a scientific concept—but it is a valuable meta-psychological concept, a metaphysical and metaethical concept, an overall attitude conveying one’s orientation to interacting with, experiencing, and flourishing in the world.

 

Self-esteem as a meta-psychological concept is one’s global self-image as a measurement of how one is practicing what one preaches to be moral and self-realizing to have a tangible basis for feeling at least somewhat good about oneself.

 

The Big Five Personality Trait model is a scientific model subsumed under the meta-psychological concept of self-esteeming, the self-image of how one orients the self towards the world, while measuring constantly how one is succeeding or not.

 

My fear and suspicion is that Jordan is pedaling scientific research to deny self-esteem and egoist morality to maintain current dominance by lauding low self-esteem and altruism as morally superior and preferable for future generations.

 

J: “And so people are extroverted and feel a lot of positive emotion and who and don’t feel a lot of negative emotion, so they score high on scales of self-esteem. Okay, so conceptually it’s a nonstarter because you’re not going to move people’s levels of neuroticism, let’s say, by trying to get them to feel good about themselves.”

 

My response: The superficial therapies of self-esteem insertion attempts for students failed because you cannot just tell people to feel good about themselves without reminding them that they are born evil, born groupist, born without self-esteem, born lazy, born self-destructive, born nonindividuating and born to be group creatures, selfless, bitter, trapped and unhappy.

 

People must be told what their natures are, what they are up against, that they should esteem themselves initially so they are encouraged sufficiently to become motivate to believe and practicing self-reform to increase their veridical self-esteem, that they should they try to improve, to better themselves and to actualize their talents, should they will to live better and be the best versions of themselves. They then have a strong moral claim to feel better about themselves, increasingly as they develop.

 

I am displeased with Jordan’s identifying being extroverted with feeling a lot of positive emotion. Nor should introversion be linked to negative emotion, though the extrovert may be a bit more individualistic and confident than the introvert.

 

If the introvert or the extrovert loves herself, and self-realizes, she will live as an individualist, and then she will love herself and live her love by growing and working in the world, and self-love is what makes her enjoy positive emotions and positive thoughts as she esteems herself.

 

Be she an introvert or extrovert, if she does not veridically image herself as she is and how she needs to change and reform, then neuroticism, negative emotions and mendacious low self-esteem or self-loathing will be her lot and it will rot her out over time. She will become a hollow person.

 

I argue that self-esteem is that meta-psychological self-measuring and self-assigning of personal worth and it is constituted by positive emotions and positive thinking. One only esteems oneself if one loves, worships a good deity, creates, originates conceptually, and might write a lovely poem. One must also fight evil with resolve and purpose. One will mostly be a loner and non-groupist, but what socializing and relationships she enjoys with others likely will be solid, mutual, and lasting.

 

Low self-esteem belongs to the person of negative emotions and dark thoughts, where the self-image is poor and bitter. The one of low self-esteem is one that hates, rallies to the cause of evil, destroys and is groupist. This sinner and groupist of low self-esteem will be high on mendaciously imaging herself by low self-esteeming, and she will be low on a scale of veridically imaging herself by mean of positive, low self-esteeming because she is unwilling or unable to see herself as she is.

 

A good person can be an extrovert or introvert, and neurotic or not, but forthrightly deal with one’s psychological flaws without excuses made or by avoiding what one is.

 

A bad person can be an introvert or an extrovert and neurotic or not, but he inverts and reinforces his natural neuroticism so that it becomes malevolent and corrupts his entire being, then he is evil, psychotic and neurotic, but it is mendacious low self-esteem. He is seething with resentment and a lust to revenge himself upon the world.

 

My caveat: even the wise and good can fall from grace if their merited self-esteem becomes a self-image that they conclude is how they now are all the time, and they are morally superior even perfect, in comparison to their “lesser” neighbors. These formerly high achievers are now falling from grace.

 

Even if or when one enjoys merited high self-esteem, it is vital ethically and veridically that agent have internalized the law of moderation, which is a moral law to obey, constantly to restrain and remind this person not to think too much of himself, or too little of himself, for these mendacious self-appraisals will lead him to stray and fall from grace.

 

J: “Okay, now having said that, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t encourage people. Right, now there is this psychologist named Jerome Kagan, who is quite a great psychologist, a developmental psychologist. I think he is emeritus at Harvard at the moment. He studied temperamentally inhibited children. So, they’re basically kids who are high in neuroticism, probably low in extraversion. And he found that if these children, and you can identify them as early as 6 months, right. It’s very, very inculcated in their temperament. He found that if you can encourage them in the world, you could shift them into a more stable personality.

 

You could shift them into a more stable personality configuration. And what you basically did when they were manifesting signs of distress, instead of encouraging them to withdraw and retreat, which is what they might be attempting to do, you encourage them to go out and explore.

 

So, for example, if you have a temperamentally inhibited child, and you go to a playground, and there’s kids out there, like if you have an extroverted, emotionally stable kid three years old, as you put them on the ground, their feet are already moving, right. Like a puppy treading water, and you let them go and they just run to the kids and they’re there and then you have to drag them away.

 

But if you have a temperamentally inhibited child, the child will sort of stand around your legs and sort of peak out. And then what you do is wait it out, let them watch, encourage them to move a little bit forward and encourage them to take steps out into the unknown and strange land. And don’t let them withdraw, like you can do it. They’re slower to warm up. They’ll warm up, they’ll habituate.”

 

My response: Jordan--and apparently most psychologists--starts off with mistaken premises. Then he misreads his scientific evidence to  mischaracterize his findings. His mistaken premises are altruistic morality, group-orientedness, low self-esteem, selflessness and other-interestedness are noble and preferred while egoist morality, individual-orientedness, high self-esteem, selfishness or self-interest, and self-centeredness are evil, and grow into neuroticism, negative emotions and even psychoses in the proud and vain.

 

Then psychologists like Jordan make thingns worse, by adding a second batch of poor premises that grow out of the first set of mistaken presuppositions. Since they have concluded that selflessness and group-orientedness are noble and preferred, the extrovert (simply by being biologically born, so genetically determined as an extrovert) is defined per se as psychologically healthy and ideal and the carrier of positive emotions: he is sane because he is eagerly group-oriented and ready to join the group.

 

The introvert or the unstable, temperamentally inhibited child is more of a loner, less inclined to join in so he downgraded by psychologists as more selfish, more self-obsessed, more neurotic, way-too-self-conscious, and thus is sickened by negative emotion.

 

I contrast these views, off perhaps a majority of psychologists with my own take, by defining the child that is a loner more than a joiner through training (whether or not he naturally is an extrovert or introvert) as morally superior and higher in veridical self-esteem. The child that is a joiner more than a loner through pack socialization, be he an introvert or extrovert, is a sick child, of low veridical self-esteem and of high self-loathing. His negative emotions and negative thinking will sicken him and all that he encounters.

 

J: “And if you continuously expose your inhibited child to things that make them anxious in measured doses, then you can transform their psycho-physiological temperament.

 

Now if you are probably not going to shift them way the hell out onto the extroverted, emotionally stable end, but you can make a big difference.

 

That’s very different about making them feel good about themselves which is such a—BS. You need to curse. You need to curse when you discuss that concept, right? It isn’t improved through self-esteem. It isn’t how you feel about yourself, right. It’s how you act effectively in the world and how you are trained to do that. Okay.

 

Now then you were talking about negotiation, and you said, well you said something like, don’t people feel good about themselves, aren’t they able to negotiate better? And I know that’s a poor paraphrase. Excuse me.

 

Negotiation is actually a practical issue to some degree. Like, the first thing you have to figure out what you want, because you like you were saying, it’s not merely rational. It’s like, yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. You have to bargain from a position of authority, let’s say, not power. Authority is a better word but you don’t have authority unless you know what you’re talking about. And unless you can bring some, unless you can bring some, let’s say, force.

 

That’s not the right word. You can’t negotiate with anyone unless you’ve set yourself up with alternatives so when you go to your boss and negotiate for a raise you need to have this sort of CV that enables you to go find another job and you have to have your CV prepared, and you have to have looked for another job. And you have to be able to get one, because then you can go in there and say I’m not as productive as I could be at my current level of remuneration.

 

It's not reflective of what I am able to do, and I want this. And this is what will happen if you give me this. This will be the good things that will happen, and what do you think of that? The person is going to know--even by the way that you hold yourself—who you are; by just having the discussion with you, whether or not you are someone with options, and you can’t fake that. Well, you can but it’s not helpful. It just doesn’t work very well for very many iterations. You have to. It’s not rational: you’re preparing yourself for a battle. That’s what you are doing.

 

And you can’t be weak when you prepare yourself for battle, because if the person says no, I’m not giving you a raise, which is exactly what they should say. Because that is what they are going to do, just like sprinkle the money around?

 

You need to be able to say, okay then. There will be consequences you don’t like. And that’s what it means to say no to someone. No means if you continue to push this, things will happen that you don’t like. Know that it will be that I depart and take my talents with me. And if they don’t care, then you’re in the wrong business or you don’t have any talents to begin with, right?

 

So, in order to negotiate properly, and this is more difficult for people, who are agreeable for example, because they tend to be conflict averse. You have to put yourself in a position where you can push back as hard as you’re going to be pushed on. And that means you have to open up your space of available options because otherwise the person says no, and that’s it. You’re done. It is as straightforward as that.

 

Now with regard to the self-esteem part, what to do is practice on small things because you build skills. Forget about the self-esteem. (Ed disagrees vehemently.) It isn’t about feeling confident or feeling confident or any of that.”

 

My response: It is not all about esteeming oneself and feeling confident, but it is largely about that. Jordan is wise in warning that one had better have the talent (developed talents which all have in spades, I add), the skills, the competence, and options of another job lined up, if one hurls ultimatums at one’s boss.

 

J: “So you will notice there are things in your relationship in particular that aren’t the way you want them to be. And you see how it can be improved. Negotiate with your partner. Make incremental improvement. Keep doing that. You will get better and better at it, and then you will be able to go act and have the hardest negotiation in the world. So, it is a set of skills with an attitude behind it. It’s easier for some people than others. But fundamentally it is a set of skills.”

 

My response: Yes, one can never be too skilled or too competent, but learning to esteem the self and gain confidence is a skill we grow through disciplined practice too.

 

Jordan is a hard-core altruist, a classical Western altruist that is a modest hybrid, mostly altruist and group-oriented, but allowing a smidgen of egoism and individualism to be sanctioned too.

 

I am a moderate with the major emphasis on the egoism and individualism with my minor ethical outlook placing altruism and group identifying as minor but still significant ethical emphases.

 

In all of these video clips on self-esteem, it is clear that Peterson is an altruist and regards personal pride, pride in one’s intellect, and esteeming oneself as growing one’s neuroticism, one’s internal evil, one’s rebellion against God, one’s selfishness and baking into stone one’s festering resentment against Being itself.

 

His campaign is to rid Western thought of Objectivist egoism, and return to Catholic morality from the 1500s. He knows what he is doing, none better, and he is campaigning hard to arrange a return to medieval altruism, group-living and nonindividuating as the ideal Christian life to lead.

 

We are born wicked, joining, selfless, self-loathing and with low self-esteem. To have justified pride in ourselves based on successful effort and achievement is to grow our self-esteem, and this is a conscious, deliberate, artificial but noble endeavor to undertake. Via self-esteeming and behaving consistent with such aspiring will lead the masses to customize and express the deep talented nature as maverized, living angels.

 

 

 

 

 

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In one of his YouTube clips from 2020, as part of the Let’s Be Successful Series, there is a 4-minute, 11 second clip, which I copy and comment on. It is entitled: This Is Better than Self-Esteem. Some of this clip or perhaps all of it is already copied and commented on above, but revisiting this shorter version so fired me up, that I will recopy it and comment on it.

 

J: “One of the things psychologists have done for the last 20 years, especially the social psychologists, have pushed this idea of self-esteem. You should feel good about yourself, and I think why would you feel good about someone that is 20 it is like you should feel good about who you are.”

 

My response: We should speak too, teach, and act towards even babies a day old so that they learn to esteem themselves (and correspondingly act ethically to have earned the right to esteem themselves)—and through self-love, come to love and esteem others, to esteem and love the good deities, and to love the world itself for its own sake.

 

J: “No, you shouldn’t feel good about who you are. It’s like you should feel good about who you could be.”

 

My response: I agree we initially are a mess and need to spruce ourselves up. That can be undertaken as we esteem ourselves, while viewing ourselves as we are, not how we want to see ourselves. We must see ourselves early on exactly as we are, warts, and all, with a concrete, sensible, achievable plan of self-improvement underway and lived for a lifetime.

 

This plan should be self-realization; I never hear Jordan mention this as the possibility for or the destiny for all the people, including those with low intelligence and modest talent, as well as those of average talent and average intelligence. He thinks the masses are too dull-witted and without talent, so self-realization is not a possibility for them, let alone a journey and destiny which they can will to make their reality. Jordan allows that the masses can self-realize ethically and should, but that intellectual and artistic self-realizing are what they are incapable of.

 

And though Jordan allows the masses can achieve moral excellence as a form of self-realization, he further curbs the masses by insisting that they do so under altruist-collectivist moral standard, and not an egoist-individualist standard. This inferior moral standard which Jordan seeks to reinforce and reinstate is the traditional Judeo-Christian morality of the Western world.

 

Jordan—and perhaps W.Keith Campbell—genuinely believe that only the few who are geniuses are entitled to or are even able to self-realize not only ethically, but intellectually and artistically. Jordan is an elitist, and elitists eventually suggest that the masses need to be managed and curbed legally by the expert, superior betters running the government and all institutions, and the masses must settle for being altruistically excellent, self-sacrificing themselves in service to others, huddled together in groups and class stratifications, which is all they can create, deserve, or can manage.

 

It then will not take too long to return us to 1550 feudal conditions in Spain where only the priest and lord of the manor in that local district run things, in a political and class tyranny which any aristocratic professor or bureaucrat would be delighted of work under, as a member of the ruling elite.

 

 

 

J: “That is way better because you got 60 years to turn into who you could be. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have confidence but like often you take young people, say they’re 16 to 22, and they are not really feeling that good about who they are, because their life is chaotic and in disorder, and they don’t know which way is up.”

 

 Joe Rogan objects: “The cause for it could be bad parenting, bullying. There could be a lot of abuse going on and I think that’s one of the reasons why that (Why the self-esteem movement arose—Ed adds.) resonates with people. This idea of being happy about who you are and feel good about who you are.”

 

J: “It has to be stated with precision. You should treat yourself as if you are valuable, especially in potential. But you should concentrate on who you should become especially if you are young. And so let’s say you are miserable and nihilistic and chaotic and depressed—all of that now and you have your reasons you know: terrible parenting, abuse and all of those things. It’s like well you should feel good about yourself. No, no. It’s not the right message. It’s more like you should understand how much potential there is in you to set that straight.”

 

My response: I do not mind Jordan’s description of the problem of how messed up young people are, but his solution is very imperfect. We at best will rear up kids to be morally altruistic/individualistic, group-oriented nonindividuators like their great-grandparents from the 1930s, and that does not get it done. We need a generation of individuating supercitizens with justified self-esteem running America going forward.

 

Self-esteeming is my metaethical/metaphysical/meta-psychological technical term for a positive, upbeat attitude of optimistic self-imaging to carry blemished youths from where they start to where they can go and need to end up at.

 

I think my solution for messed up young Americans is more precise and more useful for helping young people than Jordan’s grim solution that the young improve themselves while making sure they keep their heads down and stay humble in service to others, giving pride of place to communal and personal relationships over self-realizing. He worries needlessly that if they develop their intellectual abilities and actualize their talents while esteeming themselves, they will be guilty of Luciferian pride, and will become entitled, narcissistic, neurotic, actually evil adults spreading malevolence across the globe, and he could not be more mistaken with this pessimistic and destructive conclusion.

 

J: “And then you should do everything you can to manifest that in the world and it will set it straight and that’s better than self-esteem. It’s like you are in a crooked, horrible position, okay, fine. There’s a lot of suffering and pain associated with that. Yeah, you can’t just feel good because that is not good, but you can do something about it.

 

You can genuinely do something about it and I think all the evidence suggests that’s the case.”

 

Rogan: “Yes.”

 

My response: Yes, we should communicate the following to a young person:  to see yourself veridically is to see that you are born depraved and quite flawed, but you must remain optimistic, esteeming yourself in terms of your innate potential to improve and get healthy, talented, sane, holy, moral, brilliant and loving as you activate your potential, so acting to get better, be better, and more gifted is to increase your self-esteem a lot for your deeds and character now match your self-image.

 

J: “So I’m telling all the young people: Look, there’s no matter how bad your situation is, I’m not going to pretend it’s okay. It’s not okay, it’s tragic, tainted with malevolence and some people really get hurt by malevolent people, like terribly hurt. Sometimes they never recover. It’s really awful. But there’s more to you than you think.”

 

My response: Yes, we are stronger than we know, if we love ourselves, have God in our lives and are determined to survive and thrive no matter what.

 

J: “And if you stand up and face it with a positive, with a noble vision, with discipline and intent, you can go farther to overcome it than you imagined, and that’s the principle upon which you should predicate your behavior. And one of the things that I really think is nice about being a clinical psychologist is that this isn’t guesswork.”

 

My response: Jordan’s evidence is impressive, but he misinterprets what to conclude about his solid research, because of his underlying, false premise of antipathy towards self-esteeming and egoist morality. Do not forget that, before he even commenced studying self-esteem as a psychologist and social scientist, he was a pure altruist. Remember his early instincts, this genius joined the socialist party in Alberta when he was 14 years old: is it not possible that he still retains socialist leanings?

 

J: “Like one of the things we know, two things in clinical psychology. Truthful conversations redeem people.”

 

My response: Yes, truthful conversation with others, with God and with oneself do redeem people.

 

J: “Because if you come to a clinical psychologist who is worth his salt, you’d have a truthful conversation. The conversation is: Here is what’s wrong with my life and here is what caused it. You know maybe it takes a year to have that conversation. And both participants are doing everything they can to lay it out properly. Here’s how it might be fixed.

 

Here’s what a beneficial future looks like and so it is a completely honest conversation. If it’s working well and all that’s happening in the conversation is that the two people involved trying to make things better. That’s the goal. Let’s see of we can have a conversation that will make things better.”

 

My response: The therapeutic counseling conversation works only when the therapist and the patient converse in good faith, and are truthful, and then the patient sees herself as she is, and is willing to reform herself along the lines made clear.

 

If she was an individuator speaking the truth to herself, and imaging herself realistically but optimistically in the modes of low self-esteeming and high self-esteeming, both veridically and ruthlessly aimed at herself, she would ordinarily have this honest conversation with herself, rendering requiring a therapist to engage in honest conversation about herself with her, a generally unnecessary interaction to engage in. Still, there are times when even individuators get stuck, and talking to a therapist might well be beneficial.

 

J: “Okay, so we know that works. It does make things better. Another thing we know is that let’s say there is a bunch of things you are afraid of that are in your way. So, you have some vision about who you want to be—maybe you want to be successful in your career, so you have to learn to talk in front of a group. Well, so you are afraid of that No wonder: you don’t want to be humiliated.

 

So, okay, what do we do about that? Well, maybe we first get you to speak in front of one person and then three people you know for five minutes and then for ten minutes.”

 

My response: Jordan’s professional techniques for helping fearful, anxious patients get better is laudable but they would go much further were they taught to maverize.

Jordan preaches self-help and then come out against self-pride, and he inconsistently dismisses self-esteem as a cardinal sin once a person is guilty of Luciferian pride.

 

I do appreciate his graduated exposure of the fearful so they can learn knew, well-adaptive behavior so they can flourish and overcome hurdles. This growth curve from natural stuckness out into new ways of living and coping is an unnatural process, not unlike and anticipatory of how self-esteem is a meta-psychological self-attitude that the agent tries on for size, and practices until this unnatural or foreign outlook becomes second nature.

 

J: “Voluntary, graduated exposure to what you’re afraid of is curative so tell people that if you confront the world forthrightly, if you speak the truth and expose yourself courageously to choose things that you are afraid of, that your life will improve and so will the lives of people around you.”

 

My response: As your life improves, your self-esteem will go up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Finally, from youtube.com, here is a 10-minute, 20 second clip of Jordan Peterson from 9/12/24, entitled How To Build Self-Esteem. I took notes on it and will comment below.

 

 

J: “If you want to know something about yourself, sit on your bed one night and say to yourself, you got to mean this, you got to be desperate. This is no game. This is like my life is not everything I want it to be and perhaps it is not everything I need it to be. By need, I mean my life is so unbearable that the suffering attendant on that is making me nihilistic, bitter, cynical, resentful, homicidal, genocidal, unable to have a good relationship, prone to publish 36 people for their virtues because of my jealousy, driving the proclivity to see evil everywhere but in my own heart.”

 

My response: Jordan ably reveals that humans are naturally a mess, and they need to get their house in order. It requires veridical low self-esteem to consciously conclude that one is a hopeless mess, and that one must reform oneself or die. Then, as one progresses as a maverizer, one’s veridical self-esteem starts to rise, turn positive and become higher if not yet merited but provisional (we can always stagnate or go backwards) high self-esteem.

 

J: “Like those are problems man, and you ask yourself as you sit on your bed and you say, alright, man I am ready to learn something like what is one think I’m doing wrong that I know I’m doing wrong that I could fix that I would fix.

 

You meditate on that; you will get an answer and it won’t be the one you want but it will be the necessary one you need, and it is often something that will point you toward small things. So, Karl Jung said people in the modern world don’t see God because they don’t look low enough. So, imagine you are in your messy bedroom: so, you are sitting on the edge of the bed trying to have an honest dialogue with yourself. A little voice says it is pretty disgusting in here, and you think I am way above such trivial niceties as organizing my room. That is pride, that is arrogance.”

 

My response: Yes, that is pride, Luciferian pride. That well exemplifies the spoiled, selfish stubborn of the modern young snowflake, too good to do humble, menial work. He is a perfect social justice activist in the making. With his liberal arts degree and his doctrinaire holy faith, cultural Marxism, he isready to, at the age of 21, to straighten out the world, before he has straightened out himself. He seeks to join the workforce as a manager, a member of the self-proclaimed elite, ready to ride herd on the struggling, downtrodden masses who clean their rooms, and likely would provide the housekeepers to come in and clean his room.

 

It is not his fault. He runs in packs and is selfless in his denial of his individuality; this groupist  joiner is arrogant and selfish, but these traits are typical of the collective selfless, not common among loners, individualists, self-realizers, business people, blue-collar workers and farmers, who, unintentionally or self-consciously—at least in free, capitalist America, live in accordance with an egoist moral code, or some hybrid form of it.

 

Jordan identifies the frustrated, unhappy, resentful youth very well. Jordan wants someone that hates themselves (so paradoxically they seek pleasure over duty, and usually are lazy and indulge themselves—unless called to die for their holy cause in the active phase of its attack on society) to forego seeking self-esteem, and hate themselves even more by being self-humbling; that will only make likely the pure, concentrated and total the take-over of their person and soul by evil and self-loathing. Again, Jordan is brilliant at diagnosing the problem, but his solution will lead to disaster for each individual, and for poor, suffering humanity.

 

Jordan has no precise language of self-esteeming: that the truth-loving, authentic individuator of good faith, will self-identify, expressing veridical low self-esteem where it is required, revealing to himself and to the community his flawed traits and sins with veridical self-esteeming, so he knows what he has to clean up and freely confesses to this.

 

This same individuator will self-identify with higher or high self-esteem, what he can be proud of about his achieved level of self-reform, and this self-esteeming is veridical. Under Mavellonialist suggestion, in order not to besmirch himself, or offend God, the Good Spirits, or others, he will remain stoic, calm, modest and polite in thought, word and deed, for one cannot esteem oneself or continue to esteem oneself, if one does not take care of the feelings of oneself, of others and the good deities.

 

It is the groupist, radicalized nonindividuator who is too proud too and too vulnerable to admit to his sins and flaws, and this leads to his mendacious self-esteeming, denying where he falls short and wanting. None is more arrogant than then frustrated, true-believing second-hander that Ayn Rand warns against.

 

And where the principle of closure or implication logically leads us to recognizing where the second-hander’s pattern of self-esteeming is headed, it becomes obvious that when he is lying to himself about his sins and errors and lies—practicing and verbalizing a false self-image, or mendacious, low-self-esteem, his high self-esteem is necessarily mendacious and crap. His Luficerian pride is raging.

 

Instead, was he an individuating first-hander, his low self-esteem about his defects is veridical and realistic, by entailment it follows that his rising or high self-esteem is veridical, realistic, and commensurate with his level of success at developing as a living angel. His love of God and the law of moderation and his acquired sense of gratitude towards the good deities for what he has learned and become will keep him, ordinarily from being swelled up by his success and self-accolading.

 

 

I was a janitor for 22 years, and have been a maintenance engineer for 25 years, so I have done a lot of humble work and nasty jobs. Before that I hauled manure on the farm for my dad to clean out his feed lots. I believe my self-esteeming, both high and low self-esteem, is realistic overall.

 

 

J: “If you are above organizing what is actually yours, how are you ever going to organize anything else of yours. Get on your knees and think it is time to take a brush to the toilet and maybe that is where you start. That works. That works.”

 

My response: Yes, it might be that a good or even great deity in heaven takes out the garbage Deself rather than delegate it to be done effortlessly by telepathically driven magic, or by having servant fairies do the work as seen in a Disney animation movie. The deity would personally take the garbage out of De’s house, rather than rely on a servant to do it. Jordan’s advice here can lead to moral excellence, but we also need this pattern of self-reforming to lead to intellectual and artistic excellence for each of the masses, willing to participate in the individuation process.

 

J: “You start making those micro-improvements, real micro-improvements. Real micro-improvements, real on the ground, actual micro-improvements to the things you know are wrong, you will improve, unbelievably rapidly.”

 

Interviewer of Peterson: “What you are talking about there sounds like an overdose of arrogance and the need for humility. Do you think the Western world suffers from arrogance because of our relative privilege are . . .?”

 

My response: No, I would argue that whatever privilege and luxury the West enjoys is what they earned and worked for; there is an overdose of arrogance and a need for humility loose in the West, but it is the altruistic, affluent, true-believing, cultural Marxists that are arrogant.

 

If a Westerner was an actual individualist, and perhaps an individuator, he would be similar to most successful individuators, pursuing their own best interests: individuators generally are rather modest, humble people, because they know anyone, of any race, of any orientation, can do as well or better as any Westerners can do, if they adopt Western values, and work hard.

 

An individualist that is arrogant and swelled up is not an egoist: he is a joiner, a wannabe member of the elite who can strut that he is superior to his subjugated audience. The braggart brags to cover his deep insecurity and self-loathing.

 

No individualist worth his salt ever need to be vain and haughty to anyone. It is uncalled for and forbidden.

 

J: “That is the temptation. Right, I mean when the Left, the radical Left types, go after people for their unearned privilege, they have a point. Now, the point is the existentialists call it thrownness. That’s a Heideggerian term. Thrownness is the fact that we kind of experience life as if we were thrown or tossed in it. You’re male and not female; you are Christian and not Hindu. You are tall and not short. You have an arbitrary range of talents, an arbitrary range of limitations, none of which in some sense you choose.

 

It is the cards you are dealt. Now some of these are cards of privilege. Maybe you were born intelligent. Maybe you are born symmetrical. Maybe you are born healthy. Maybe you are born into a culture where it is much easier not be absolutely deprived. Your parents are born rich. All of that is some sense is unearned. Now along with that comes a good dose of existential guilt.”

 

My response: “No, that is elitists crap that one should feel existentialist guilt, that is elitist crap so elites can continue to rule the masses. No one who is born fortunate (unearned privilege, a word I detest) is not born unfortunate in some other way. No one who is born unfortunate (unearned deprivation, a phrase I coin, but despise) is also born fortunate in other ways.

 

How you started out is your gift from God, and what you do with it is an expression of the privilege of being born, to self-realize your talents, using what God gave you to work with. This is egoist morality at its finest.

 

No more talk of existential guilt about being born with unearned privilege, connections, and luxuries. That is elitist crap, that those privileged in the West should feel guilty, and then give it all away to others “less fortunate.”

 

We need the rich and privileged to not feel guilty and thus obliged to help/interfere in the lives of the masses as compensation. The masses need to be left alone, neither pitied nor oppressed. They need encouragement, liberty, capitalist opportunity, and egoist morality to inspire them to work hard and bootstrap their way to wealth, security, full bellies and a maverized lifestyle.

The rich and the powerful need to leave them alone. The only cultural gift which the rich and powerful should provide the masses is training in Mavellonialist values so they no longer need elites in any way, and this would allow for elites to put themselves out of business, and that is real altruist compassion towards the masses.

 

We all feel guilt subconsciously, and it is existential guilt, but it is not for feeling guilty over one’s natural blessings of unearned privilege. The feeling of guilt stems from that fact that all of us are born sinful and self-hating, which distances us from the individuated and individualistic good deities.

 

We must admit we are filled sin from birth, in a mode of veridical low self-esteeming, and then accept that we are also inherently good enough, worthy enough, to become artistically, intellectually, morally and spiritually perfected enough to be classified by the Good Spirits as living angels, and then we can esteem ourselves highly because these Good Spirits esteem us highly—all of time fully, consciously realizing and accepting, that we still not perfect and never will be, but we ever keep striving upward and outward, becoming more perfected.

 

This realization that we are always still somewhat imperfect—though less so over time if we are self-realizing—is how our veridical self-esteeming keeps us properly humble, so we—if we now have arrived at the status of being a living angel--can be reasonably proud of ourselves, esteem ourselves, and love ourselves, without doing so disproportionately, which would sicken us, fill us with hubris, and make us hate ourselves, and we would turn evil.

 

We must always, repeatedly self-check, and ask God, others, and our guardian angels to warn us (then we should heed and act upon their constructive criticism, so we can return to and stay on the road to heaven), that we actually still are good and serve good.

 

We always run the risk as humans of falling away from godliness, deceiving ourselves that we still are esteeming ourselves highly when we have failed to earn self-regard, and fake-esteeming ourselves lowly when we have come up short in some insincere, virtue-signaling way to inform the audience that we are nobly humble, when in fact we are in a state of lapse and sin, and we still need to feel good about ourselves, so we lie: abusing ourselves and others, betraying the good deities, as we mendaciously esteem ourselves lowly, and also mendaciously esteem ourselves highly.

 

J: “Because some of the time this is true for anyone, regardless of their cultural background. The ground we walk on is soaked in the blood of historical atrocity. So that is on you.”

 

My response: Why is that on you? We are not responsible for the historic viciousness of our ancestors (We are responsible for the evil we do in this generation, by not fighting dark forces, by teaching our children to be selfless, who, being the born little self-haters that they are, they will be as eager as their equally foolish ancestors to perpetuate the pattern of lousy values which cause sin and malevolence in the world.), especially as humans forever have been trained to sin by their traditional cultures, as selfless, joining groupists, poisoned by altruist-collectivist ethics. It is no wonder that the world is a cruel, painful mess.

 

What is on each individual is to straighten herself up, be good and individuating, to serve the good deities by loving and creating, which is good for her personally, and indirectly improves the lives of all, as one less person is causing trouble in the world, and that small victory is significant, and God notes it and smiles.

 

J: “People think: who is the Nazi? That is the fascist. Or who is the radical Communist, the radical left-wing ideologue. The fundamental truth is that it is best dealt with as a spiritual matter. The adversary is within most profoundly.”

 

My response: Here I agree with Jordan. The adversary to human success, to a person living a moral, happy, free, and fulfilling life is personal failure. All or most human problems cannot be effectively addressed at the collective, communal level, or worse, and more doomed to defeat, at the collective, global level.

 

The individual failure to take up her cross and maverize is the source of human problems. To mavewrize and serve the Good Spirits is the only answer for growing good and reducing evil in the world, and this is a personal spiritual commitment to journey towards building heaven on earth through self-improvement, and there are no substitutes, no workable alternatives.

 

J: “You have to take responsibility for that historical atrocity (NO, ED ADDS.) onto yourself. I was talking to Guy Ritchie this week about his movie, King Arthur, which is quite an interesting movie in many ways. And Arthur who could be the hero who takes the sword. He is so overcome by visions of his murderous uncle that he can’t pick up the weapon. Well, think about that. Now you have weapons at your disposal. But they have been used by your murderous uncle.”

 

My response: The young do not need to take responsibility for the evil done by their ancestors, but, being born depraved, and delighting in being cruel, if not checked by personal moral self-restraint, the likelihood is that they will enjoy repeating and extending their ancestors’s evil ways which they inherited. In one sense, Jordan is correct: the evil of our ancestors does taint us, though we did not choose or do their evil, but we, biologically inclined to repeat traditional mores, will repeat and even make worse their sinning, most likely in our own day, and enjoy doing so and even justifying it.

 

What we should feel existential guilt over is if we give our future generations, born just as evil and nasty as we are, a bad set of altruist values, to they willingly will perpetuate and prolong our evil ways.

 

There is hope, though it is not an easy hope. Evil is, and always will be, and I do not think it will ever be fully, or finally vanquished in the universe, or the free will to choose will be deprived from future generations.

 

We can esteem ourselves veridcally; this capacity is sanctioned by God, and veridical self-esteem can be implemented and practiced by us in our daily lives as maverizing egoists, and, such a personal ontological commitment, will allow goodness and love to wax and increase here on earth and in the cosmos. Veridical self-esteem must exist as you and as an integral, permeating aspect of your consciousness if you are to serve God, be well, live well; veridical self-esteeming must become your existential and ethical reality.

 

J: “Dare you wield them? The answer is maybe it is just as easy to leave the sword on the ground because do you want to be responsible for atrocities going forward? And don’t think you couldn’t do that and don’t think you wouldn’t enjoy it, and so the way you pay for your privilege is with your virtue.”

 

My response: Again, there is no personal existential guilt to be felt for the sins of one’s ancestors, but one must live ethically to not prolong and extend evil, and to minimize the harm one personally commits while alive. That is what we should feel guilty about if we fail to do our duty as divine children of the Light Couple, but that is where our guilt ends—no collective guilt, no existential guilt for the past sins of our ancestors.

 

J: “I mean that most particularly. You have these opportunities and this existential guilt and the way you expiate that and atone is to live your best possible life that you can manage: to speak the truth, to treat people with respect, to abide by the dignity of the individual and put your house in order.

 

And that is how you pay for your unearned privilege. All of us: we all have our privileges and our curses. All of us. That is why it is not useful to be envious of people.”

 

My response: The altruist ethics which Jordan espouses drives him to warn us not to be envious of others, and of course we should envy no one, but nor should we look down on those less fortunate, by pitying them, which easily transmutes into hatred of them, demonstrated as a power-grabbing as elite do-gooders mess in their personal lives to set them straight—thereby making things even worse.

 

We want to move away from group-morality, which is what altruism is, which is the professed duty and right to interfere in the lives of others, by envying those with more than us, and by pitying or looking down upon those with less than us.

 

We need instead to support a communal and countrywide culture of each person, privileged or not, solving her own problems with her own resources or imaginative efforts and application, so she can work, make money, self-realize, and build a free, prosperous, brilliant life for herself, while inviting her neighbors to self-realize in their own way.

 

J: “So you see a young man: you see him drive by in a Ferrari with a blond. And you think, my God, he’s got everything. You know the woman in the car is a prostitute who has a cocaine addiction and her life is just one catastrophe after another. And he has to lie and cheat his way into this position. He’s afraid everything is going to come crashing down on him. This is what you are jealous of. And it is just not that profound. 

 

You don’t want someone else’s fate. Man, your fate is enough. And your adventure is enough. It is plenty. More than you can ever fully realize.

 

And that is also part of the reason that we all believe the individual has intrinsic dignity. Don’t be so sure that your position is so damn privileged. It might be that your attitude toward it is trivial. And if you are in dire circumstances and dire straits just look at how much opportunity you have to make things better. So not that it is easy. You don’t even want it to be easy.”

 

My response: Jordan is wise here: self-improvement, especially at the focused level of maverizing, is not easy and we do not want it to be easy.

 

Interviewer: “On that point that you don’t want it to be easy, I have really contended with this point that struggle and chaos in my life and the role it played and at one time I thought I was trying to rid my life of chaos and struggle. And once I understand, I thought that was why I was trying to get rich and get the Ferrari and the blond. I thought that would create a life free of struggle. But then I looked at some studies and I read about this thing called Gold Medal depression when Olympics came back from the Olympics and have lost their orientation. And the day when someone offered to buy my company for 8, 9 figures, and it filled me with emptiness, dread and I tried to understand the role that struggle would have to play for me to be a fulfilled human being for the rest of my life.”

 

J: “Well, the observation with regard to your company, that is a great observation. We are built to walk uphill. When you reach the pinnacle of the hill, you want to stop and appreciate the vision but the next thing is you want a higher hill and the distance. It’s the uphill climb, it is from the uphill climb we derive our value, and I mean this technically: most of the positive emotion we feel . . .”

 

My response: Positive emotion seems to be Jordan’s technical term similar or very similar to my concept of veridical, merited high self-esteem.

 

J: “ . . . especially the emotion that fills us with enthusiasm, and that means to be filled with the spirit of God, and that is what enthusiasm means. That is experienced in relationship to a goal. So in some sense and this is part of the religious enterprise. You want a goal you can never attain, right, so you can always move closer to the goal that recedes as you move towards it.

 

That is frustrating like the Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill, but it is not because as you pursue that goal you put yourself together and your life gets better and richer and more abundant.”

 

My response: Yes, as anyone of the people maverize, seeking personal excellence spiritually, ethically, intellectually, and artistically, the very effort helps her pull herself together, and her life gets better, richer, and more abundant. Her high self-esteem will increase proportionately to her degree of self-improvement.

 

J: “And that is why the highest level of virtue and goal are transcendent. You want them to be above everything you are doing so you can continually move towards something that is more sublime and better. That is what you are. You are here not to live not to sleep and the problem with the vision of Mai Tais on the beach—well, first that is a vision of drug-induced unconsciousness—second, it is only going to work for about a week. Third, you are going to be a laughingstock in a month, and depressed, aimless, and goalless.”

 

My response: Jordan is spot on that we do not want to exist is total ease, goalless, let alone in a state of drug-induced unconsciousness. There are mystical, irrational, unconscious ways of self-realizing and reaching God, but, ordinarily the mental state most conducive to self-realizing is conducted by the self in regular everyday reality here on earth: one think, feels and experiences in a conscious mode of rational, common-sensical, intellectually conceptualizing and yet intuitive interacting with reality inside and outside of us.

 

Jordan might regard the masses as capable only of ethical excellence and brilliance, but I also include intellectual, spiritual, and creative output to be included in the maverized self-expressing of her personhood, by the average person.

 

 

J: “That is not what you want—you want a horizon of ever-expanding possibilities, and it does happen to people. They have staked their soul on the attainment of an instrumental goal. It can be a pretty high order goal. It was in your case.

 

Then you think, now I am there, now what? The answer cannot be I am going to live in the lap of luxury and never have to leave the _____; what do you want to be? A giant infant with a gold bottle? You never have to do anything but lay on your back and suck.

 

Well, you see the problem with that as a conceptualization. It’s no, like you want to be like an active warrior moving up hill with a sword in hand. That is dynamic. That is exciting. That is why so many young men disappear into video games. That is all acted out in the video game. So, you have to act that out in your own life. Not that I despise video games because I don’t. They are not a substitute for life. They may be good training under some conditions for life.”