Evil Is Real

 

Yesterday, (12/19/24) I found a clip from online, which was a snippet of a video on Jordan Peterson, and I copied it out with light editing, and then will comment on it: “The only reason that I ever got convinced that good and evil were real, more real than anything else, wasn’t because I learned that good was real. That’s hard. It’s hard to learn that you have to find examples of transcendental good. They’re rare.

 

Evil: all you have to do is look, read history a bit.”

 

My response: If one was an ideal optimist, and a certain type of uninformed, naïve liberal, one would assume that people are born good, and that goodness and good will are the norm. If one such person reviewed the Peterson clip above, he may reflexively reject it out of hand, averring that that is now how the world operates; that is not the human condition.

 

Peterson the therapist and keen reader of history encountered evil in human nature, the Jungian shadow that both he and Jung knew was the norm for human thinking and acting. Because Peterson was shocked by what he encountered, he likely has been a little gloomy and depressive ever since, though his outlook is fundamentally realistic.

 

 

In his clip above, he is declaring that his reading of history, his observation of and treatment of patients, made his encounter with evil in these people so detectable, that he knew evil was real. Then by the principle of logical enclosure, he knew that if evil was real (Does Peterson believe the devil exists?), then its opposite force, goodness had to exist too, and that conclusion seems realistic to me also.

 

Though he did not specify here, I believe he is suggesting that evil in people—and good too—are spiritual forces at work in the consciousness and choices made by each person. I go farther, and regard good and evil as objectively factual and real: their characteristics are ontological, psychological, social, biological, ethical, natural, emotional, and rational facts.

 

Peterson is suggesting that human nature is basically and mostly, innately wicked from birth, but that there is a weak but present residual goodness in people any person can elect to make the learned, habituated, adopted good nature belonging to a good-willed self that acts morally most of the time.

 

Evil is everywhere, prevalent, and easy to detect. Goodness is rare and transcendental. This is Peterson’s take and again I believe he is correct.

 

I think good is rare in this world only because we are born evil, we live by altruistic-collectivist morality (Satan’s moral system), we live in groups, values group identity and pride, practice low self-esteeming which grows hatred (evil) in one’s soul, we do not self-realize, and the Evil Spirits rule this world right now.

 

The miracle is not that evil exists, and is discernible for the awake, or that Satan and Lera rule this earth currently, but that things are as peaceful, orderly and ethical as they are—at least in most of the West.

 

Goodness need not be rare or just transcendent, as has been the historical norm that Peterson has brilliantly identified.

 

If enough of children, in the future, learn to love themselves, to serve the good deities as individuators and living angels, then evil will recede in society from its historic position of prominence and dominance, as spiritual and moral goodness spread and increase, making the detectability of goodness at work among people in society more common an obvious to any alert perceiver.

 

Goodness will be present and real as soon as people dedicated their lives to God as rational egoists, and invite the Good Spirits, and even to good deities to visibly walk among us.