I watched and took notes on a video clip on YouTube, wherein Jordan Peterson was answering questions from emailers or texters. I will write out my notes below, with slight editing for clarity. I will interject responses where appropriate.
This clip was produced on April 28, 2018, something called YouTube Philosophy Insights, entitled: Jordan Peterson, Egoism-Altruism: Jordan Peterson: Does Egoism Trump Altruism.
My take is that Jordan is an altruist, and that he likely holds that altruism trumps egoism. He has videos on great souls being quite alone and functioning, and years ago he had lectures on individualism as the sovereign assumption or Western thinking, but he really has been an altruist all along, and, as this video reveals, he only allows for some egoistic morality as the standard of the healthy, functioning individual, nested in a collective matrix, that we are to serve others and sacrifice ourselves to others as our primary mission and duty in life—none of which I buy.
Here is the video from Jordan, and he is answering a question sent in by a follower, and his answer is the 8.48-minutes long response.
Jordan (J after this)): “What is your view on psychological egoism? If we’re all ultimately acting out of self-interest than does altruism have any merit?”
My response: If one’s view of human nature, a view of psychological egoism, is that all people are motivated selfishly, naturally by self-interest, then if that were universal human nature and accompanying social reality, the asker is seeking clarification from Jordan as to if we are all selfish all the time, are humans even capable of being generous, or does it make any sense, or can it be an effective ethical recommendation that people should learn to act altruistically, to be motivated most of the time or all of the time, by sacrificing themselves to serve the interest of others, in direct conflict with their internal, overpowering inclination to seek what the self wants instead?
This is not an unintelligent challenge to the efficacy of altruistic morality, and Bernard Mandeville similarly argued instead that since people are psychologically egoistic, it is more productive and effective to promote ethical egoism, to come in line with what people are and what they have to work with. Mandeville’s criticism of altruism is not unintelligent either, and I support it somewhat.
Now, I will anticipate that Jordan Peterson believes people are born selfish, and they are basically evil, but that there is still, in each human heart, enough residual, if undeveloped but requiring development and strengthening, an inborn decency and ability to love others, and, if the young are taught to be loving as altruistic moralists, they can become good children and society may be a place where moral people keep things operating.
I believe, like Jordan does, that people are born depraved (selfish, aggressive, malevolent), but residually are still good enough in the potential to mature as unselfish, kind, peaceful and benevolent agents, who, when morally guided by a successful ethical code, they can become civilized decent adults.
For, me people are not born as psychological egoists: they are born psychological altruists, a phrase which I have coined, and which I believe is meritorious.
A psychological egoist—a natural, interest inclination per person which is theoretical but inapplicable to actually existing human beings--by my unique and revolutionary redefinition, defines each person as someone that loves herself more than she hates herself, that she esteems herself more than she downgrades herself--assuming her performance matches her self-assessment so that her self-assessment is based on merit not self-deluding—and that she pursues self-interest--enlightened and this is her telos of self-realizing over a lifetime as an individuators--before and more than other-interest, though serving other interest is still a significant priority for her.
Sadly, humans are not born as psychological egoists, but, they are born psychologically egoistic enough to, with training in self-esteeming and adopting egoistic morality, they can learn behave and be benevolent while having learned to make their enlightened self-interest, their primary moral motive and focus.
I assert that people are depraved because they are born predominantly to be and live as psychological altruists. They selfishly prioritize group interest over self-interest. People of pack-living and nonindividuating caliber, the vast majority of people, lack self-esteem (They hate themselves.), and when one loathes the self, one is filled with rage, hatred, despair and bitterness, and these people see themselves as victims, and then they will hurt others to export their inner frustration and sense of misery.
To preach the learned moral code of altruism of self-sacrifice in service of others’ interests is to grow evil in each human heart, and to grow evil in the world, and this is the moral code which Jordan mistakenly defends in this video. Remember, egoists are unselfish more than selfish, and altruists are selfish more than unselfish. Jordan and other proponents of altruism are accusing evil people of being naturally selfish, and then they offer altruistic medicine, a poisonous, crippling nostrum which is makes people ethically sicker than they were without it.
It is staggering to appreciate how someone as brilliant, good, wise and articulate as Jordan is to come to exactly the wrong solution on such a important, fundamental point—what moral code brings out the best in people. Jordan the influencer is doing great damage.
J: “I don’t think the question is well-posed, and that it’s one of these questions that leads into a philosophical dead end. And because it is not well-posed, it must be noted that there is no such thing as self-interest.”
My response: I am not a psychologist. Peterson the altruist moralist, would eliminate the concept of self-interest as a useful, metaphysically real and morally vital faculty of self-appraisal, because if he denies that it is real, getting the public to accept his superior knowledge of these things because he is a psychological expert and public authority of much prominence, then it is easier for him to gain his end, the total discrediting and defeat of the proponents of egoism, who advocate that one should pursue one’s self-interest as one’s moral good and moral duty.
J: “It’s not the right way to think about it.”
My response: It is not only the right way to think about it, it is the only way to think about it, if any individual would be moral, fulfilled and happy, and if humanity is to have any chance for a future.
J: “Because you are not alone.”
My response: Of course, we are not alone, for we are social creatures jam-packed together with 8 billion other people on this small, crowded planet. But, being that innately we hate ourselves and are addicted to what makes us hate ourselves, to propose group-ethics as the moral solution will force people to become much sicker than they otherwise are, and they will inflict greater and greater wounds upon themselves and each other. Selfless, group-oriented morality, as the anecdote to the naturally self-poisoning tendency which people already suffer from, the affliction of self-sacrificing the self to the pack, is to extract the active agent from that genetic self-poisoning, and to seek to inoculate people against being evil but giving them an ethical code or shot which pumps that poisonous vaccine into their veins, which greatly, further damages all.
J: “And so this is why I like Piaget, Jean Piaget. This is because he thought about this intelligently. Look. First, of all, whose self-interest do you mean? You mean your immediate self-interest in the next second? So that would be impulsive pleasure. We’re all acting for the gaining of impulsive pleasure and to hell with anything else. Well, obviously that is a stupid way to behave because you can do the impulsive route in the short-term, gratifying things like snorting cocaine now, and you can keep going down that path, and it’ll pay off real well in the extremely short term. And they’ll just auger you into the ground in the medium to long term.”
My response: Jordan so despises egoism, egoists and promoters of self-interest that he creates a straw man here: those believing in pursuing self-interest as their primary ethical aim are reduced to snorting cocaine, and impulsively gratifying immediately every short-term temptation arising in them: craving for candy and chemicals, letting lose all personal lust and impulse which they feel at that second, to be fulfilled right now, without any regard for self-control, for how such rash, even deadly indulging physically and ethically impact the self and anyone around one.
This is not enlightened self-interest which I promote under Mavellonialism, nor the egoism pushed by Objectivists. It is almost an ad hominem attack against us by Jordan, and it is very unfair and misleading. Even Randians insist that the individual self-sacrifice his short-term desires in favor of serving his permanent aim, to fulfill his potential as a living creature who should live, work, play and interact with others in manner which makes him happy and productive. That surely is not hedonistic self-gratification with no regard for the future, for others or personal accountability.
J: “So if you’re acting in your own self-interest—let’s take that apart. Over what period of time is your self-interest operating in—in the next second, your self-interest in the next hour?
Like if you’re impulsive and you want to gratify an impulse, you’re obviously acting in your own self-interest.”
My response: This is completely wrong and false: Usually, when a man, for example, gratifies immediately any impulse that wells up into his consciousness, a heeded temptation often with awful consequences for himself or others around him, when he without moral self-restraint indulges this desire or whim every time without thoughts of rightness or repercussion, he is a sick, moral monster, or an adult without modest moral training.
His pathetic, destructive self-indulgence is not in his best interest. An egoist always or should always presuppose that when he acts in his own interest, that his choice and action should be in line with his long-term, enlightened self-interest. He is deliberative, conscious, reflective, and sober, so impulsive, selfish, reckless whim acts of self-gratification are not in his self-interest—nor does he identify hedonic pleasure, instantaneous gratification as his self-interest-- but are against his self-interest. And what is not in his self-interest is what is selfish, hateful, mean, and destructive. This enlightened self-interest is consistent with other-interest.
Groupists are the ones most likely to engage in impulsive self-destructive ill-advised behaviors not in their interest or in any one else’s interest. Jordan’s caricature example of self-interest is actually other-interested motivation at its crudest revelation in action.
J: “in that next second, or in the next two seconds or in the next minute. But you know you pay for that. Maybe you slap someone because you’re so angry and then you know they knock you for a loop, and then they charge you with assault.
You know so well in your self-interest in that second but the future? Remember that Simpson’s episode. Homer drank a quart of mayonnaise and vodka, and Marjorie and all his kids are telling him not to. He said, well, that’s a problem for future Homer. I sure don’t envy that guy. That is one of the best Simpson lines ever. I think, well that’s it exactly.
It’s like well, there isn’t just you: there’s now you, and there’s tonight you.”
My response: No, Jordan there is just you, only you, one soul, one consciousness, one ego and one mind over a span of possibly 90 years, and that self is not a bunch of collective separate selves, and it not but a bundle of Humean successive, momentary, fleeting perceptions. It is the self like the Aristotelian oak nut that will grow into a mighty tree, and that ego over a lifetime requires an irreducible human consciousness acting egoistically in his own self-interest to make something of his life, to be an original thinker, crafter and produces to please God and this is how he benefits humanity.
J: “and there’s tomorrow you and there’s morning you. That’s the one that will have the hangover, by the way. And there’s next week you, and next month you and next year you, and old you. And so if you’re going to act in you self-interest, you have to take the collective of you across time into account when you make your decision.”
My response: I know of no reasonable, intelligent egoist who would deny that self-interest needs to be calibrated with the long view in mind, but they would not differentiate much between young you and old you as Jordan does. There is only one you over time, period. This if so, and it is an argument for enlightened self-interest and general denial of immediate self-gratification and pro-self-sacrificing immediate desires for long term person gain and self-development.
J: “And there’s morning you and there’s morning you. That’s the one that will have the hangover, by the way. And there’s next week you and the next month you and next year you, and old you, and if you’re going to act in your own self-interest, you have to take the collective of you across time into account when you make your decision.”
My response: This is crap. There is not collective collection of yous over time; it is but one unitary self, flowing through time on its life course, and the one self is the individual whose sole identity is the one you.
J: “And now here’s the cool thing about that. That would be acting in your self-interest writ large across time spans, but the thing is future you, and someone else you have to live with right now, that’s not you are pretty much the same people. And so, if you are going to act in your own self-interest, and you also have other people around you, then you also want to act in their own self-interest because otherwise they won’t like you.”
My response: If every adult pursued her own self-interest as a maverized individuators, that would best serve the interest of others and herself, and that would be her duty, and it is convenient and nice if others like her, but her duty to herself is her primary moral obligation, despite possibly not being liked or rejected as a social outcast.
J: “They won’t cooperate with you, and they won’t compete with you in a reasonable manner. And so that’s going to be a catastrophe, so you want to act out what is good for you next month and next year, and you want to do that in a way that’s good for you and your family, and your community, right now, next week and next year.”
My response: Jordan is too pessimistic here. If 85% of adults in the future adopt egoism or individuation as their moral code, they will be reasonable and figure out how to cooperate, compete and compromise with each other as sensible, mature, reasonable adults. It usually will work out with less needless fighting and strife as now routinely occurs in interpersonal relationhips among collectivized, group-living nonindividuators tanked up on the tea of altruistic, selfless morality.
J: “And you’re going to take all those things into account at the same time. That’s an equilibrated game from the Piagetian perspective, and it was his idea that that constituted the basis for proper moral judgment. It’s a brilliant idea. And that’s your true self-interest. There’s no difference between your interest and the interest of others.”
My response: This is all rationalized nonsense to convince the young people whom he is counseling that duty to others trumps self-interest, and again, I refute that wholly and yet qualitatively, that duty to the self trumps one’s duty to others, and that each pursuing her enlightened self-interest is her duty to herself, and, paradoxically fulfills and best fulfills her duty to others, a serious but secondary moral obligation which each of us carries.
I admire the Piagetian concept of the equilibrated game as the optimal way for humans to cooperate and live loving, moral lives with each other. I agree that it is the basis for proper moral judgment, but Piaget and Jordan have it wrong, by nesting individualism, self-interest, and egoism a within and subordinate to a moral landscape of collectivism, other-interest and altruist morality. I flip that around, by positing that individuating individualists egoistically chasing after their self-interest is the primary moral and social context, within with the subsumed, secondary but important interests of selflessness, group interest, altruism and sharing are positioned and stressed as important moral goals and behavioral guides.
The true self is not selfless but is self-interested most of the time.
J: “Not in any fundamental sense.”
My response: It is clear to me here where Jordan is steering the monologue: He declares that self-interest is not fundamentally different from other-interest or common interest, so the best and only way to be more and fulfilled as an individual is to sacrifice self-interest to a life of service dedicated to others, forgetting about the self.
This is not convincing, and I must challenge it. In a fundamental sense, self-interest is significantly and qualitatively different from group-interest, and the individual pursuit of self-interest as his primary aim is the only way to lead a moral life.
Once most adults in a community are directly individuating in line with egoist morality, then, indirectly, their impressive display of actualized self-interest will lead to a well-functioning, equilibrated community, and, in that sense serving self-interest improves and vitalizes the public good, and only then and only this way are the two interests fundamentally the same and merge.
J: “Even, even your enemies which is why you’re enjoined to treat your enemy as if he was yourself, because he is. You know, when well, you should wish well, you should wish your enemy well. Well, why? It isn’t that you hope they get a bigger house than you. It’s that let’s say you are being pursued and tormented by someone who is truly reprehensible.
That person is, they have a miserable life, man, in all likelihood. Let’s say they are truly malevolent. You know they live in hell, and what you might hope for them is that they would figure out how to get out of there because it is not good for them. And it’s not good for anyone else. Think well even your enemies. It’s like, wouldn’t it be good if they could get their act together?
And stop bring so unnecessarily malevolent? And that’s in your self-interest. So, the idea that your self-interest is somehow opposed to other peoples’, or that if you maximize your self-interest, you’re not operating in the best interests of other people is predicated on a poor idea of what constitutes your self-interest, because you’re not separate from other people in any real sense.”
My response: Here Jordan is spouting collectivist, psychobabble horse crap. One’s enlightened self-interest and an egoistic individuator are not tied to other people in opposition to them, or in conjunction with their needs and preference. The individuating individual is flexing his positive power of powerfulness and personal liberty to please himself for his own reasons as a separate independent person. Yes, he has neighbors, but so what? Their interference in his affairs is impermissible and irrelevant, and his individuating indirectly, in the long run, leads to public benefit and harmony, but that is a happy result, not his motivation for individuating.
If you are not separate from other people in any real sense, is because you are a nonindividuated self-hating joiner, a conforming groupist with stunted consciousness and an atrophied sense of individualism: as you self emerges as you maverize, then you cannot be identical to others in any real sense other than being a fellow human being.
If self-interest is not pursued by the individual individuating, then the concept that the sovereign individual is the Western ideal and core belief, is but an empty shell, empty rhetoric. It is in their interest that you and your neighbors first and foremostly personally individuate your talents, you are separated and that unites you best, and this is how it should be and must be.
J: “You’re maybe not separate from everything in some real sense you know. I mean Jung, Jung in his book, Mysteriam Conjunctionis, he had this idea: I’m going to go through it real quick. It’s a complicated idea that this is how you put yourself together.
The first thing you do is you join your emotions and your rationality, so that, so that your mind and emotions are one thing. He called that the first conjunction so that your motivations and your emotions and the way you think about the world are all acting in the same direction, okay.
So that’s the first conjunction and you get your act together that way, so that would mean incorporation of aggression and sexuality. From a Freudian perspective those parts of you that are difficult to integrate, come to be integrated into one thing, so you can use your anger when you need to, and you have your sexuality under control. It, it doesn’t have you, but you know how to use it and it’s a power for you, um, and you’re properly assertive in all those things. And so, you, you build yourself into one psychological unit. And then you embody that. That’s the second conjunction.”
My response: Here Peterson seems correct and sensible: it seems to me that the moral, sane, mature, average adult would integrate his aggressions, sexuality, passions, thoughts, and motivations into a self-restrained adult, and I do not see where this is incompatible with egoist morality.
J: “The second conjunction is take your mind, emotion, and motivation unity and act it out, acted out in the world so, so there’s no distinction between you and what you do, and the way you think about the world, your philosophy and how you act. That makes you a second kind of unity.
And then the final conjunction, which is the most difficult one, is to stop thinking that the world is different from you, different than you are.”
My response: Here is where I part ways, sharply and vehemently, from the moral assertion (the 3rd conjunction) from Jung and Peterson, demanding that the individual agent—if he would be a good person according to the lights of Jung and Peterson--accept and act out their assertion that one must stop thinking the world is different from you.
My egoistic counter-assertion is that people are born groupist and are evil (and made much sicker, more evil, unhappy, and crazy by toxic altruist ethics) because they cannot stop thinking the world and they are the same. ONLY standing apart from the world and others, as atomistic, isolated, self-interested individuals, by adopting and living out their telos, to individuate as a living angels of great, brilliant personal consciousness with full array of talents developed and presented to the good deities, to oneself and for public enjoyment and appreciation, only then will billions of human agents live happy, meaningful live of minimal suffering as mature, healthy moral adults.
I insist that each individual is separate from the world, and she must know this fact, her destiny, and she must believe it and act it out. Only as a separated, self-interested, self-sacrificing (She sacrifices her short-term, hedonistic desires in service to her long-delayed enjoyment of the fruits of maverized accomplishment.) individuating individual will she thrive. As millions come to live this way, paradoxically—if indirectly—this is how the authentically existing individual individuator of good faith is best, most intimately and most powerfully connected to the world, and makes the world a better place, and thus eases the burdens of others. A world of mental midgets of stunted consciousness, undifferentiated others, cannot help themselves, or anyone else, and they are no credit to the benevolent deities which they follow, or claim to work for. Jordan, so brilliant and wise, is completely out to lunch, here.
J: “This is why I ask people to clean up their rooms. It’s like your room is you. It’s you. So, you go in there and you clean up your room. You’re cleaning you up too.”
My response: Yes, what you think, plan and do inside, affects and influences the world outside, the well-being of oneself, of others, the boundary of the good deities kingdom on earth, and weaves the fabric of reality itself. And conversely, what is going on out there in the world deeply impacts the self in ways which can be explained, and which are also ineffable.
Jordan is correct in a way, demanding that one believe that the world is you and you are the world, but his conclusion that the conclusion of this argument is that you find meaning and nobility only in self-effacement, leading a life of utter self-sacrifice in the cause of others dominating needs and interests, is way off base.
It drives me to the opposite conclusion: The noble and meaningful life is best met by leading a life of self-sacrifice now for the sake of the enlightened, self-interested, and imaged self-vision of the self as a lived life as an individuator and individuated future self. So existing is the ethical lifestyle which ultimately benefits all, including the self and mediated primarily and generally through advanced, responsible self-care.
J: “the same way you’re developing discipline. You’re putting yourself in order. You’re developing a vision of the future. You’re figuring out how to dress. You’re figuring out how to take care of your things. You’re interacting with the microcosmos that you have in front of you, and learning how to balance chaos and order.”
My response: I like his suggestion that the sane, healthy agent, be she altruistically or egoistically oriented, cannot lead a balanced, profitable life until she learns to balance chaos and order.
J: “There’s no difference between you and what’s around you. (No, no Ed replies.) And that’s a very difficult thing to understand. And so, you want to act in a way that’s good for you and good for everything else at the same time. And that’s a high moral virtue, and that’s the right way to think about the relationship between psychological egoism and altruism.”
My response: To repeat, a believer in psychological egoism claims that people are born selfish and always seek their self-interest, even when they claim noble motives of working for the welfare of others. An egoist would suggest that since we are all born selfish, the best way to deal with it, socializing children to become civilized and not a drain upon society, we find ways to allow them self-interest in a way that helps the public good (Mandeville’s private vices leading to public benefit).
Altruists like Jordan, psychological egoists as their presupposition, define natural, universal human selfishness as evil, and this is the human original, genetic sin. Humans too have a weak, recessive, in-born sense of conscience, unselfishness and generosity, which can be trained to become their civilized self, if the person learns to serve others as his life goal, and if he downplays his individualism and sees himself as immersed in the crowd, and into the world itself: he is the world, and the world is he, so he has no separate self, no self-interest to emphasize and selfishly pursue.
I think Jordan is wrong here. We are not psychological egoists but are selfish (in the tradition sense of being unpleasant and grasping) because we are groupists, selfless, self-effacing, self-hating and low self-esteeming: we are evil born because we are joiners, psychological altruists.
Only through enlightened self-interest may we fulfill our destiny, our self-interest or happiness, all while meeting our obligation to care for the world around us and the people populating it.
J: “It’s like if you’re, as you move towards a broader conceptualization of things, you start to understand that there is no selfish self in there.”
My response: Jordan is inferring that, ultimately, there is no self at all, selfish (instinctively selfish, or operationally selfish during one’s life one earth) or otherwise. My argument is that we are meant by God to live as separate selves, be we selfish or unselfish.
There is a self in there, a selfless/ selfish self which, if the person would maverize, can grow into being a self-interested/generous self who is self-maverized. The psychologically altruistic self is still a self, though it is a crude, barbaric, primitive, savage self. This self is basically selfless, thereby badly selfish, made worse by immoral altruism, group-living and devil worship (deliberate or unintentional).
J: “There is no selfish, self-interest. It isn’t how life works.”
My response: Yes, there is enlightened self-interest which is self-loving but not selfish in the conventional negative sense. To be a maverizer is how life works: When we are healthy, doing as God intends for us to do.
J: “Like if you are married to someone for example, and you’re stuck with them for the next 50 years. It’s like you can’t win an argument with them. You can make peace because they’re you man.”
My response: He is correct that quarreling with a spouse, friends, family, or coworkers to win is counterproductive, but that is true whether one is an altruist and groupist, or an egoist and individualist. They are not you and you are not they, ever, if both parties are honest and self-developed, but living as individuators need not preclude seeking harmonious interrelations—indeed, without strong egoistic participants, harmonious interrelations are impossible to initiate, let alone extend and prolong.
Today, May 5, 2025, I saw a Jordan Peterson brief video clip on Facebook, and he was denouncing the horrible excesses and flawed trends promulgated by colleges of education. He is mostly correct, but it was telling when he decried excoriatingly educational experts in California, when, years back, they promoted self-esteem movement which did nothing but create neurotic narcissists. He hates egoism and self-esteem promotion, but that does not mean he is correct, let alone knowing what he is talking about.
J: “They are you. They are a huge part of your experience. You have to treat that person as if they are you. And that it’s not like, isn’t like I’m going to treat you well because you’re me because people do not treat themselves very well often.”
My response: Yes, people lack self-care and that is then how they mistreat and abuse others. If they took care of themselves first, then they will much less likely hurt others, or endure others hurting them. It all grows out of sensible self-care.
J: “It’s way more complicated than that. You just, you don’t want to defeat your wife, man, because then you live with a defeated wife, and if you think she isn’t going to take revenge on you, then here you’re not very bright.
So, you want to listen to her problems, and you want to help her solve them because she’s you. And you want to do the same with your kids. And then you want to do the same with the people around you if you can do it.”
My response: Other are not you and you are not others. This selfless model of human nature is too collectivist, too groupist, too altruistic—it holds the individual and all humanity down and back.
You are you and only you, but since you feel good about yourself, feeling good inside, it will be easy for you to act kindly and respectfully towards others because you are grateful to be alive, and you are almost without resentment and bitterness.
J: “So, and so the whole idea of like well, we’re basically wired to be selfish.”
My response: We are basically wired to be selfish because we are naturally selfless. And once we learn to act well, and veridically then can esteem ourselves then we will act much less selfishly in our personal lives, and towards others.
J: “Well, we are when we are not very wise and we act impulsively, but as your view of the world broadens, you start to understand that this is why in the Buddhist philosophy, Buddha attained Nirvana. So that meant he could stay in union with the gods, so to speak. So he attained the highest form of subjective experience which might be, which might be something like total immersion in bliss and meaning.”
My response: To lose the self completely, to see it eliminated, by totally immersing the self into Being, that irrational, purely subjective bliss by immersion of the self into the totality of Being, is one way to reach and live in heaven. And that is commendable.
Rather, I suggest a better and generally superior to experience God and heavenly bliss is experience and gained as a conscious individuator and individual, with God and apart from God, while God remains an and The Individuator and Individual, permanently a bit separate from while in communion with oneself. This rational experiencing of and communicating with and communicating with God, for the Divine Logos, is most enjoyable and comforting.
J: “But he rejected it because he went back into the world to help other people attain Nirvana, or at least move towards it because he realized that there was no individual redemption, without the redemption of all.”
My response: I would counter-argue that Buddha or God would preach and enforce for humans that without individual redemption first sought and gained, as a spiritual individuators, as a living angel, that there would be no redemption for that individual, and no redemption for all either. If one does not understand this, then one is not very wise, or at least has not been introduced to the wisest way to proceed in spiritual matters.
J: “And if you don’t understand that, then you’re just not very wise. And so you’re trying to be a force for good in the world.”
My response: Jordan, you mean well, but as Dennis Prager has often worried, the road to hell is paved by ideologues and idealists with good intentions. Your altruist morality promotes evil in the world, and by, vehemently and determinedly downgrading the egoist morality of Ayn Rand, you ae blunting the reach of egoist morality, depriving the young of its healing benefits, and that make the world a sadder, crueler place than it otherwise would have been.
J: “And that doesn’t just mean good for you. That’s just blind, because there isn’t any isolated you. That isn’t how things are. That is not how reality lays itself out.”
My response: The visionary quest to be a force for good in the world can only be lastingly achieved through the individual’s self-care as his first emphasis. When the individual makes things right for himself, then the whole society will heal.
We are responsible, ultimately, only for our own redemption. We cannot save others, for being saved and redeemed, does require God’s freely offered grace, but only the self and save the self, and she, of her own free will, must invite God in, and commence her salvational program of self-care.
What this indicates is that only she can save herself, should she dare to esteem herself. We may be able to destroy others by interfering in their lives so that they never learn self-esteem earned through productive self-care, when we make naturally evil, groupist, weak others more collective and more lost.
Again, there is no personal redemption unless it is individually self-chose, self-executed, self-made.
Jesus and Buddha can show us the way: they can and will lead the human horse to water, but they would never force us to drink: we must choose to quench our spiritual thirst: we must drink the healing waters of life by lifting the cup with our own hand and arm. Sorry about the mixed metaphor.
What we can do is to bring a child into the world, discipline her, set standards for her, and love her. We should build up her self-esteem, train her in the techniques of egoist morality and self-realizing as her life’s telos, and we can introduce her to a benevolent deity or deities, her Individuator or Individuators to dedicate her life to, and to worship.
If we take these steps with a child, there is a fair chance that, at some point in his development, he will elect to assume such responsibilities as his to be owned and dealt with forthrightly and maturely.
So oriented, he has chosen to path which will allow the good deities to offer human personal redemption, and God’s freely offered grace sure helps.
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