I believe that evil is real and is a spiritual and
occasionally physical presence in the world. Demons usually are invisible
spiritual presences haunting and roaming the earth. I believe that there are demons that are
actual embodied beings who prowl the earth, though most of these demons look
like regular humans, because they are humans possessed by an evil spirit whom
they have invited into their hearts and minds.
Jordan Peterson, like me, does not believe that people are
basically good, though they have some goodness in them that can be strengthened
and made that person’s adult, acquired nature.
I pulled down a short video snippet from YouTube, entitled,
What Is Evil? and it is a clip from one of Peterson’s college class lectures,
perhaps in about 2008. This clip, 6.22-minutes long, was posted back in 1919,
but is much earlier than that in origination.
I will copy out the clip with some light editing and then
make responses.
Jordan (J after this): “You have a rigid belief system and
that is what an ideology is because the axioms are such that it encompasses all
reality.”
My response: It seems to me here that Peterson, as brilliant
and good as he is, is not laying out a song and dance to dazzle his students;
no, he actually has insightful points to make, and he is onto something in his
quest to understand, bring to public attention, and find ways to thwart
evildoers in the world.
Sometimes, I think he is close to encapsulating what evil
is, and under which circumstances it is the most virulent and damaging, but then
he falters: his analysis and solutions to lessening evil in the world is
wanting. I feel my Mavellonialist heuristic would help him find his way. We
both seem to believe that what is good is moderate, and what is evil is
extreme, and this moral axiom is critical to accept and utilize in an analysis
of evil and finding ways to fight evil.
Note that he starts this quote off referring to adherents of
a rigid belief system, an ideology, whose axioms are such that they encompass
all reality.
One orientation to evil (Eric Hoffer’s entire first book,
The True Believer, is a study of evil.) analysis, which Jordan seems to be
lacking entirely is no background in Hofferian search into how the mass
movement, and holy cause, foster in its passionate true believers, a pernicious
darkness, both wicked and extreme.
What Jordan refers to as rigid ideology is what Hoffer
refers to as a holy cause. Jordan rightly points out that the fanatic supporter
of his ideology insists that that holy causes’s axioms encompass all reality.
The fanatic is radically if mistakenly, epistemic optimist.
He insists that his creedal bullet points are infallibly correct and encompass
all reality. He and his cause convey the absolute, final truth about
everything, everywhere for all time--he asserts and insists.
He claims that his axioms encompass all reality, but that is
a lie, for his sweeping generalizations explain almost nothing about how the
world works.
Jordan and Hoffer both imply that rigid ideology and its
fanatical adherents are somehow, integrally wrapped up in evil in the world,
and that perhaps that these the practitioners of evil in the world sin at the
upper threshold of potential misbehavior.
I write often that Hoffer is an implicit ethical proponent
of egoism-individualism, and that evil is collectivism, mass movements, holy
causes, true believers, whether in their revolutionary phase, or in the settled
face as a totalitarian government and empire building. There people are swept
into and live in tightest cliques, wrapped up in the most repressive
institutions and exist somewhere along the socio-economic ladder, as hierarchical
living is their destiny.
Hoffer preferred America with its freedom, capitalism,
democratic institutions, and rule of America by masses not elites. He was for
individualism (Though his brand of individualism is rather mild, not as radical
as my ideal about most American individuals becoming paragons of virtue,
excellence, and intelligence as individualting supercitizens.), but also, he
was for community and trade unions (mild collectivism) He was a moderate
conservative. And he though America gave the world goodness and as about as
good an answer to evil on earth as any system or set of values could provide.
J: “And then there are details outside that don’t seem to
fit that reality. Well, you ignore them. But what if they are embodied? What if
there are people objecting to the way. Well, the equivalent of repressing
evidence that runs contrary to your theory is the murder of the people who
object to what you say.”
My response: The horrifying circumstances, which surround
ideologues in mass movements and those in power running a totalitarian
government, is that their whole cultural and ideological bent is a tissue of
lies; they brook no opposition at all and kill their opponents and dissenters.
This is pure, violent, wickedness in its purest form, and
its empowering morality is radical altruism-collectivism.
Jordan independently and perhaps without realizing that he
is describing the nature of true believers, mass movements, holy causes, and
the holocausts inflicted on citizens and the world by totalitarian governments,
the nightmare 20th century political catastrophe so richly and aptly
identified by Eric Hoffer.
J: “And these two are linked much more than you think.”
My response: Peterson years ago grappled with the nature,
roots and outcomes that grow from embodied evil in the world and he did so in a
forthright manner. He was linking a fanatical ideologue’s ruthless willingness
and desperate need to banish truth and counter-opinions at all costs with his
inclination for including liquidation for those that offer criticism or
alternative views.
Jordan knows evil is real, and that ideological totalitarianism
in the form of a mass movement challenging a status quo, or a Maoist type
Communist Party ruling a massive Communist state, is reified, pure evil on
earth where all its primary attributes are shown openly when the true believers
are unafraid to be openly cruel and violent. The suppression of truth, the
total unwillingness to tolerate from others independence in speech or thought,
the suppression of human rights, mass murder of citizens and foreigners alike
is sanctioned. Evil is at its most concentrated and most harmful when
government and the economy are collectivistic, where its morality is a fierce,
ardently held brand of altruism-collectivism, where fanaticism, lying, mass
conformity, and lethal punishment are effective tools in the hands of the elite
who inflict upon the masses such horrors are for any real or imagined infraction.
Jordan’s analysis of what evil is, roughly matches Hoffer’s
and mine, but his offered solution of gentler Western style altruism with a
smidgen of individualism and egoism tossed into the recipe will not prevent
ideological and totalitarian evil from reemerging later in this century, many
times more lethal and bloody than the wars and atrocities of the 20th
century.
Only a world built
upon American legal, political, and economic traditions, plus egoist-individualist
morality lived and practiced by 300 million American individuating
supercitizens can prevent global one government which likely will end human
life on earth.
J: “You might say I would never do something like what the
Communists did in the evangelization of my beliefs. But the truth of the matter
is in general people will do such things if they are granted the opportunity
and provided with the proper apparatus.”
My response: Here Jordan is at his best, his most insightful
reading as to what evil is. Given the chance to commit mass murder, anyone and
likely most people would participate willingly in mass murdering.
J: “This is a paragraph from Paradise Lost. Milton wrote
Paradise Lost just before the rise of the nation state. Milton also had the
intuition that there was something wrong with rationality, and he identified
rationality with the mythology of Satan.
And in the mythology of Satan, Satan was represented as the
highest angel in God’s heavenly kingdom. So, you can think of that is the
highest psychological function. He rebelled against God and cast down into
hell. And there is the idea being expressed by Milton.
He was one of the foremost poetic geniuses of the English
language, Milton and Shakespeare. And what Milton was trying to understand is
what is the nature of evil, and his representation gathered up the dream-like
theory of evil that had been collected all around Western civilization for
thousands of years.
And his hypothesis was this: evil is the force that believes
its knowledge is complete and that it can do without the transcendent. As soon
as it makes that claim it instantly exists in a place that is indistinguishable
from hell. And it could get out of it easily just by admitting its error and it
will never do that.”
My response: Here is the earliest instance (that I know of) under
which Jordan condemns rationality, individualism and overweening pride as
Luciferian pride, utter rebellion against and rejection of God.
Rationality, individuality, secularism, healthy pride
(merited self-esteem) and egoist morality, have something wrong with them, but,
more so, they have something right about them that is linked to heaven.
Irrationality—especially as passionate, irrationality and
excessive emoting or enthusiastic action and crowd-rallying--group-living and
group-identifying, satanic secularism and ideological sacerdotalism, these are
the groupist sources of Luciferian pride (the binary-thinking), the absolute
epistemological certainty grounded in intellectual claims mostly erroneous and
bogus that accompanies a psychological state of negative humility (low
self-esteem and high selflessness) in the service of one’s pack most matters to
the selfless, arrogant true-believer.
This self-loathing,
wholly frustrated individual compensates with supreme arrogance about his
worth, claiming moral superiority, proclaiming his intellectual brilliance and
his smug conviction that he is always right. This chauvinistic irrationality,
whose rationality is self-justifying and usually mistaken, is accompanied by
overweening pride and insurgency or warring against God, the transcendent and
divine rule of humans, and that originates from the groupist-self which is the
psychological existence of each true believer. None are more militant and proud
than irrational emotional self-compensating for his emptiness, and that is expressed,
demonstrated Luciferian pride in action.
The true-believing irrationalist is convinced that his
knowledge is complete, and he can never admit error or he would just go mad,
and catatonic, and would likely never be able to move or recover. He cannot
change his thinking or ways, nor repent, nor admit error and that is the
Luciferian pride that God loathes and attacks.
J: “Solzhenitsyn describes the reactions and actions of
Communist Party members who were devoured by the system because that often
happened. The prison system, the gulag system, was very indiscriminate. You
could land there for good reasons or bad, and the bad reasons were probably
better because the punishments were more severe if you were imprisoned for your
innocence.”
My response: Both Jordan and Solzhenitsyn were prescient
here as they detected and articulated that one of the hallmark behaviors of
evil people, especially those in power, is their consistent, instinctive proclivity
and eagerness to treat far more harshly the innocent than the guilty. There is
no justice dispensed to the innocent victims of evil people and this occurs
especially under dispensations ruled by evil elites running corrupt,
totalitarian institutions.
Where the victim is innocent and blameless, because they are
or potentially could belong to the Good Spirits as children of light, they
received the most vicious mistreatment that evildoers can dish out to them.
When outlaws and wicked people are punished by wicked
people, their mistreatment is less harsh, sometimes totally so because evil
authorities intuitively recognize and reward their allies, their kin folk, other
evildoers, so the kingdom of the Evil Spirits can be extended as far as
possible.
Those that are innocent are slain, tortured, and abused
horribly, to warn others not to work to join or stay in the kingdom of God on earth, a minority position
anyway at any time, those who are not yet converted to the ranks of the
children of darkness, are threatened with the real possibility of being
martyred in real time, if they do not get on board with the children of
darkness, and work actively and openly also to betray God. Either they besmirch
themselves by selling out and joining the children of darkness, or they will be
severely penalized.
The injustice of the wicked against the innocent is one of
the salient signs that wicked people are running the local dispensation be it
social, institutional, or governmental.
J: “And Communist Party members often got vacuumed up and it
was ontologically and existentially intolerable for them because they committed
their whole soul to the ideological dogma.”
My response: These disgraced, fallen, and imprisoned
Communist Party members were utterly discombobulated when their holy Communist
Causes elite snapped them up and spit them out, they had no one and no divinity
to turn to for comfort of explanation.
J: “And then its tyrannical aspect picked them up and
destroyed them like they were worth nothing. The existentialists of the last
century attempted to diagnose the pathologies of the human psyche at a deeper
level than anyone had ever attempted. And their fundamental conclusion was that
the destruction by rationality of the whole systems of meaning that people had
previously lived within, had undermined the psychological strength of each
individual and divorced them from their own history that led them to gravitate either
towards nihilism or as a counter-position to gravitate towards totalitarianism.”
My response: The current unleashed mass movement, of
postmodernist Marxism, rampaging through the West, classically evinces atypical
mass movement in being characterized these seemingly opposed but actually, tightly
linked opposites, of lost masses opting out for either nihilism or
totalitarianism, but they are but difference sides of the same coin.
When the mass movement is a going concern, but not yet
victorious in overthrowing the existent dispensation, its laws, customs, mores
and culture, the radicalized true believers deny that there are any objective
truths or moral certainties embedded in the existing narrative, so they promote
nihilistic skepticism about and totalistic rejection of existing values and
established mythology.
They espouse nihilistic valuelessness for two reasons: if
they can wean the masses away from the narratives and mores that prop up the
status quo—by gaslighting that traditional way of life until the people abandon
it, then they have created the intended values and political vacuum required
for their own mass movement and its holy cause and supporting creed to rush in
to fill the void, for as we well know, people must believe something, to have
meaning in their lives, to stay sane and function.
The second reason that the guru and true believer followers
of a mass movement espouse nihilistic valuelessness is because they actually
believe in nothing substantial, sensible, true, beautiful or good.
Because these resentful, unhappy revolutionaries believe in
nothing, have lost what truthful values and uplifting narrative which they
formerly held, and which gave their lives genuine purpose and fulfillment, the
substitute creed and ultraist, false narrative which they now push is defended
and praised by them as the one true faith, and the best answer, because they
would cry and decline personally, into supine bundles of sobbing, trembling
hulks moaning on the floor, if they do not hyper-steadfastly champion their
holy cause.
Their absolute epistemic certainty and hyper-passionate,
violent, and terroristic defense, of their creed and holy cause is communicated
internally to the members of the mass movement, and is exported external to the
group, to the world via blaring loudspeakers and megaphones, are not indicators
of their accuracy, decency or veracity, or self-confidence. These exhortations
and threats are an extroverted, aggressive campaign to make everything of
nothing, because the masses within the movement will collapse if this nothing
called everything is uncovered as the nothing value system that it is, were it
to be pathetically shown to so be by any gently, critically thinking,
articulate skeptic, logically studying their ideas and logic, based on their
merits, of which there are none.
Thus, the nihilistic, postmodernist revolutionary, denying
that there is any master narrative that defines or captures the nature of
reality, maintains this fraudulent lie while he is seeking to acquire power. And
once his holy cause is the official narrative of the ruling, victorious
Communist Party, running the country which was under attack, both the cause,
the creed, and its narrative, now front and center, are worshiped officially
and universally in that society as the one truth-faith and the last word on
everything. Thus, we see how postmodernist nihilism is aligned with and
produced totalitarian rule and a most absolutist groupthinking, one voice and
one mind about the regime’s narrative and creeds.
I will try briefly to once again tie together how
deracinated, anomic, frustrated populations of misfitted people seek to find
negative, unfulfilling but substitute meaning either in nihilism or
totalitarianism. Jordan’s instinct to tie this two together is a significant
discovery on his part.
When a noninindividuating, normal, sane adult, functioning
fairly well and normally, as an altruist-egoist grown up, in, say any
democratic Western democracy, in about 1954, the altruistic, Christian morality
professed, and often lived up to as a moral perhaps pious adult, if asked if
she thought her moral system was the best in the world, and the last answer on
everything, she would likely smile and assent that it was very useful and
helpful if that were the case, but she would soon caution the questioner, by
remarking that her moral system though admirable, saying it was perfect or the
last word on ethics might be too grandiose.
Her temperate modesty
would serve her well, for she is not a noncognitivist or moral nihilist denying
that object moral facts are just conservative fantasy and verbal wandering. Nor
is she a militant absolutist, demanding and commanding that all obey her moral
code to the last inch, or they are outlaws, or moral monsters, that her code is
the final word in ethics, the best ever presented, and infallible as written.
The postmodernist Marxist true believer, like true believers
in any other holy cause, is postmodernist about values, that there are no
objective moral facts whatsoever, when his revolution is stirring.
When his cause is seeking to set up the new totalitarian
government, this fanatic, who seems to have miraculously changed his mind, who previously,
loudly insisted that values are but vapid, unrealistic opinions, of no value.
Once his revolution is place, he does a 180 degree reversal, and touts his
value system as the one true value system, the only one to adhere to, the only
one to follow, and, because it is so perfect, it will be demanded by the
government that people adapt to and adopt this code hook, line and sinker,
objections be damned, and nonconformity is unacceptable, to be harshly put down.
The fanatical, ideological mine preaches that either there
are no moral values, or that they are just mere person opinion, when he is out
of power. Once ruling the people as one of the elite, now his values are
upgraded by him to state of moral perfection.
The fanatic, the postmodernist, will one day come and show
that he was but an absolutist all the time, and mass murder is his desire and
telos.
Eric Hoffer well explained that no human being can last more
than a day or too unless she esteems herself, is not at war with herself, not
suffused with self-loathing, is competent, confident an adept at fitting in
with the social, familial and workplace arrangements in her life and generation.
She craves group approval and acceptance above all else, and all these
favorable conditions for making her survive are what will fill her with meaning
and narratives that make her life as a moral altruist at least bearable and
making some kind of sense.
Historical change and the rise of classical liberalism,
Modernism and scientism did undermine the traditional meaning systems of
comforting, warm group-oriented cultures, and ways of life around the world,
making many people misfitted, going from being discontented but minimally
functioning in the old ways to being adrift, cold, lonely, and unsupported, and
rationality is not to blame for that. Reasoning people asked the questions but
the sentimental, groupist, passionate anti-intellectual, altruistic masses were
not trained to be quick, rational, strong, tough, able to fit into the changed
world as a way of life, so radical change turned them into frustrated misfits.
They had little self-esteem naturally and lots of
self-loathing. They are ill-prepared to fit with the tide of change, for they
have group-lived, and group-valued and group-identified to such an extent that
they function in a traditional society, supported by steady, meaningful if somewhat
false low self-esteem. They were asleep and fit in, in traditional society that
kept them basically functioning. Once that was disrupted and disappeared, they
were shattered when their compact groups, their ways of living, and their
narratives, myths and meaning systems were blown to pieces. They then has no
self-esteem left: before they were discontented but quiescent, but now they are
devastated, awakened, frustrated over not being capable to adapt and fit into a
changed world, not able to adjust or cope with their new world which they had been involuntarily
tossed into, to they seek fake hype-high exuberant militant pride (substituted
empty, contrived, mendacious self-esteem)in their new pack and cause and guru
as true believers in a mass movement.
Their self is gone,
their self-esteem usually low at the best of times, is vanished, they solved
that problem by fleeing into a mass movement. Now they never feel doubt or
frustration again because they are part of an elite ism and holy cause which
they evangelize with the sword and musket as the one-size-fits-all solution to
all the world’s problems: they have donned a new if fake self-esteem. They fit
in completely and their ideology provide them with more meaning and purpose
than any sane, alert, awake, rational, reasonable prudent person could ever
muster. It comforts them to conduct themselves with the psychological edge,
accepting that their values are the best, and they are heroic in pedaling this
holy cause and its values to the entire world.
These intellectual midgets, emotional tyrants and
ideological myrmidons are the very evil children in their generations who
spread darkness across vast stretches of the globe either as moral and
spiritual evil (nihilism) or satanic values now are the creed of the
totalitarian state run by fellow ideologues now in power and unopposable and
unopposed.
I have long known Jordan had existentialist leanings, but existentialists
may seem individualistic (subjective individualism) but real, powerful,
uplifting individualism is more in line with Randian individualism, egoistic
and objective individualism, and reason more than feeling.
Through a dose of lived and applied Randian individualism is
how we build a better world. Jordan is so brilliant, but deep down he is
against reason (though he is a genius and brilliant reasoner), and
individualism. He wants to confine high end or any individualism for the few
geniuses and individualists capable of creativity at the top of and ruling
society as an elite directing the dim, uncreative masses unable to flourish as individualists,
as individuators, as creators, as demonstrating their products from talent and
original thinking to an appreciative world.
All that is achievable and is therefore good enough for the
average-witted, untalented, these dull-witted masses, is moral perfection, a
life of duty-bound, selfless drudgery as all that they have to look forward is
endless suffering, and grim self-sacrificing for the sake of the collective
will and good.
Via selfless
group-living and service to others as required by their altruistic morality, this
morality is good enough for them, but too limiting and unsatisfying for geniuses,
experts, technocrats, and superior rulers at the top of society. Jordan
ultimately comes across as the predictable, typical professor, arguing that the
masses are naughty children requiring eggheads and PhDs to direct and manage
them to keep them out of trouble.
The masses must accept their lot in life, to be deprived of
their freedom, their independence, their property and even their lives for the
sake of the state when it demand the ultimate sacrifice from them. They are to
be grateful for being re-enslaved, to be happy, grateful slaves, keeping their
heads down, and be pushed around willingly the elite on top, smarter and better
than the masses.
Jordan does identify where evil is originating or at least
manifesting itself, but his solutions are terrible and he will seek to defeat
evil (fanaticism, violence, tyranny, groupism and altruist morality, humility
and proudlessness) with slightly less vicious, traditional but failed
moralities like altruism, collectivism, and irrationalism/existentialism, but
it will not and cannot work for bad totalitarian and nihilistic evil will arise
again.
Only moderation gained through benevolent gods-centeredness,
rationality and individualism as the masses are individuating supercitizens in
a capitalist, constitutional republic as self-realizers and living angels, who
are egoist moralist can bring up more lasting goodness on earth.
J: “The whole 20th century played out the
pendulum between nihilism and totalitarianism. And in the background the
existentialists and psycho-dynamic theorists were putting forth a theory that
was if people lived up to their own possibilities, and held onto their own experience
as if it were true and did not substitute for that ideological and consensual
beliefs that it would be possible for each person to find a wellspring of
meaning that would be a sufficient replacement for what was lost historically,
without having to fall into the pitfalls of nihilism and totalitarianism.”
My response: Yes, the 20th century was a century
of hell on earth as the pendulum swung between nihilism and totalitarianism.
Yes, people should live up to their possibilities, and hold onto their own
experience as if it is true and not substitute for that with ideological and
consensual (radical group beliefs where agreement is universal, and dissent
does not exist or be allowed at all).
Only as self-esteeming healthy rational/emotional
individuating supercitizens will each of the masses be able to find a well
spring of meaning and creative rewards as self-realizers able to remain calm,
confident, compete, talented, adept, veridical self-esteemers, who are tough,
composed, and not rattled by incoming change, not matter how rough or how many
changes the world throws at them. And they can survive and thrive all of this
on their own and thus not seek to escape from freedom for a ruined self into a
mass movement, the membership backing an ugly, unholy, holy cause, which is the
societal product and manifested nihilism and totalitarian twosome being
collectively lived, expressed and suffered from in a society where everyone has
lost their way and lost their souls and minds.
Again Jordan sharply delineates the issue, but is confused
and lost in his solutions, and his hatred of the self-esteem movement and
egoism are conclusions disastrous should they be implemented.
J: “So you might well say, well nihilism, well that is one
thing because it mostly that affects you though you are nihilistic, then
everyone around is going to be pulled down as well.
But totalitarianism is a whole different issue because we
know now is once things become ideological totalitarianism, the next step is
mass murder in a manner that makes it appear that the purpose of the
ideological rigidification to begin with was the opportunity to participate in
mass murder.”
My response: I differ from Jordan a little here, because the
mass movement and its guru that give birth to totalitarian systems, and the general
chance for the evildoers to participate in mass murder—their intent all
along—earlier were those same nihilists who were nihilistic when it was
convenient (To fool the traditional masses enough, to demoralize and defeat
them so that they would abandon support of the status quo, its narrative and
values.). Once the masses joined the mass movement, then true believers and
their guru openly share with the captured public, their actual values and
narrative, which always was, from the beginning, cunningly disguised
ideological absolutism of the most militant kind.
The mass movement overthrew the status quo, then the former
skeptical nihilists now running things, are fanatical and ultraist in their
claims, and their bottomless bloodlust for mass murder and mayhem is their joy
that they can now indulge with no hesitancy, no opposition.
J: “So, you know how Hitler died. Hitler lost faith in the
German people because they were losing the war so he concluded in the waning
stages of World War II that Germany should be destroyed in fire and everything
else he could consume should go with him, so he died in a bunker underneath
Berlin.
When it was in flames, he committed suicide. When Europe was
in flames and Hitler was a worshiper of a kind of fire that purifies. He used
that mythology of cleansing fire to enter into a terrible pact with the entire
nation that he followed and led.
And Stalin didn’t just kill individuals that he pulled off
the street. He killed all the engineers and all the doctors because he believed
they were wreckers. They killed six million Ukrainians. They moved whole
nations of people into Siberia and let them die.
And there is evidence that suggests that what Stalin was
practicing was murderous genocide on an ever-larger scale and hoping in a
thermonuclear war.”
