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.”
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