Jordan Peterson is incredibly wise and insightful on many subjects, but he is hopelessly misguided in his opposition to egoist morality. To shed light on this claim of mine, I took notes on a video clip I encountered online, entitled Destruction of Ego, by Jordan Peterson in 2021, and it seems to be part of a program referred to as Choose Truth.
Here are my lightly edited notes on this brief clip. I will comment as needed.
Jordan (J after this): “Jung described the fool, the archetype figure of the trickster, as the precursor to the savior, to the redeemer. And that’s an unbelievable bit of wisdom because what Jung meant was to put yourself together, which is to follow the path of redemption.”
My response: My immediate and initial , interpretation is that the raw, immature, disintegrated youth, commences as the fool, and if she would become whole and integrated, she must pull herself together, and put herself together, following some role of self-redeeming and her self-redeemer, though Christians usually, emphatically deny that the individual can do this on her own, that only Jesus’s grace and blessing can save her, and, as a Mavellonialist, I assume that redemption is somewhat self-inaugurated, and thusly, the developing self can become an integrated adult, and redemption is somewhat perhaps mostly a blessing and divine gift from Jesus or some other benevolent deity.
J: “To follow the redeemer, if the redeemer is a type of personality, you could in fact be inhabited by or manifest, then this first step towards this is to allow yourself to be a fool, right.”
My response: I take umbrage with Jordan here. Why should one play the fool, put oneself down, degrade what little veridical self-esteem one naturally possesses, to make way for receiving redemption?
He wants the masses to attack their own egos and self-esteem as the only way they can be redeemed. It seems to be that the primary path, instead, to redemption is to esteem the self more, to build up the ego as a self-realized, growing consciousness, and that personal transformation will appeal to any good deity, an individuators himself or herself.
J: “It’s because you don’t know what you are doing. You have to admit that and there’s going to be a loss of ego, or destruction of ego, of arrogant ego, that necessarily accompanies that, but you need that loss of that arrogant ego because it’s precisely what’s interfering with your movement forward. It’s part of the adversarial process mythologically speaking that stops moral progress.”
My response: It is true that to grow morally and intellectually, one must admit one’s fault and ignorance, but that step taken, does cause a loss of arrogant ego, but the arrogant ego which Jordan identifies here, is actually the arrogance of an insecure, egoless, selfless joiner and nonindividuator, so self-blind and insecure, that it would destroy her to admit personal fault, that hers is a flawed nature, that she reeks of personal stupidity and ignorance.
The person that faces up to their imperfections and flaws is one that strengthens her ego, and that ego is confident but strangely humble in a way, for it is the selfless and altruistic joiner who is arrogant and selfish.
The point, which Jordan misses wholly, because he is a pure altruist, is that one is not to be rid of personal ego per se, only to rid herself of the version of the personal ego that is self-loathing, without self-esteems, and yet is selfless and arrogant.
By stark contrast, the self-esteeming ego of an individuator and individualist, recognizing and openly admitting her faults and her realistic virtues with objective, unsentimental self-assessment achieved, is a strong ego, the only kind of ego that makes it possible for her to progress morally.
J: “You are too proud of who you think you are to notice what you are like so you can change properly. You don’t want to sacrifice that part of yourself. It’s probably associated with some delusion that helps you maintain, in what would you say, a positive although very fragile self-image in the absence of genuine effort.”
My response: Those persons too proud to admit their flaws, clinging to some fake, delusional sense of self, are not strong egos, the healthy ego of an individuator. Rather, the arrogant fragility is indicative of a selfless failure too weak to be able to face the self, whereas a strong egoist has no phony, or fragile self-image; he is tough, flexible, versatile, rather fearless about facing who and what he is and then taking the necessary steps to clean up his act. He is the opposite of what Peterson is referring to.
J: “Um, it’s not to be recommended, so you know yourself by watching and paying attention. That’s why the Egyptians worshiped Horus. The eye as a God. They knew that attention was important. And the Mesopotamians did the same thing with their god Marduk.
It’s thinking exactly. It’s not imagination. It’s just watching like you are a snake. A snake you know is a symbol of wisdom in part because a snake is a symbol of many things, but wisdom is one of them.”
My response: Socrates long ago exhorted the individual to know himself, and that would entail being watchful and paying attention. Person experience constantly reviewed and commented on, and share with others, in communication modes of thinking out loud, would spur the self to come to know the self better.
Snakes for me are no symbol of wisdom, but of demonic temptation of humans to beguile them to betray God and thus lose their immortal life to come.
Stephen Hicks reviews human nature in quite a different light than does Jordan. Hicks wants each person to practice enlightened self-interest as a rational egoist. Hicks explains that the individual requires being rational, wielding free agency, requiring democracy and liberty to function, seeking to find meaning and happiness for oneself—what an alternative view of the ego than that bleak take against egoism mounted by Peterson.
J: “I suppose it’s because encounters with snakes, that if they are not fatal, makes you wise because a snake watches like cold-bloodedly with no emotional reaction, just to see what is there.
It doesn’t allow, symbolically speaking, doesn’t allow what is wanted or desired to interfere with what is observed.
So, you watch yourself like that, as if you don’t know who you are. Well, that like the beginning and then you challenge yourself continually.”
My response It is a worthy suggestion that you grow in self-awareness through studying the self impartially and with minimum bias, and if you do so continually, you can grow, but this is compatible with egoism and self-esteem, indeed without the latter two, then self-awareness and conscious truthfulness about the self from the self is not possible to gain.
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