Egoism And Moderation

 

God works in mysterious ways. I feel I have a handle on morality, with this Mavellonialist-Egoist moral system, that is going to revolutionize everything for people, for the good.

 

God talks to me every day, but there is likely little or nothing I think or write which I did not learn from (perhaps subconsciously) Eric Hoffer, though this atheist’s not fully explicated moral system, fully displayed, would likely be very similar to mine. God did not talk to Eric every day, but somehow God did talk to him.

 

I go for months without a new idea, and then, out of the blue, ideas just well up in me. This is my third blog entry today, so let me lay it out.

 

I have long argued that good and evil are real, universal, eternal forces at work in the world, that they are metaphysically or spiritually real; they are not just social constructs. Good and evil operated in the natural world and in the supernatural world long before humans evolved, and will operate long after we as a race do vanish.

 

The Good Spirits have assigned to each of us, the job to self-realize and build love, cosmos, art, and more philosophy, while alive.

 

This divinely inspired duty, our telos, our calling, demands humans adopt egoist morality, the ethical system best enabling each person to do her thing as an individuator. Her primary but not sole moral motive and duty is to chase after her enlightened self-interest, but, her secondary but vital moral motive and duty is to serve others and their interests, to sacrifice herself for the good of the whole.

 

An ARI Objectivist would accuse me of self-contradiction by offering conflicting and mutually negating moral motives as one integrated ethical code; the result: I am, according to him, talking inconsistent gibberish and spouting irrational garbage, and his criticism has some bite, some merit.

 

My defense is that humans are complicated, complex creatures, born half-angel and half-beast. The nature of the world is such that mixedness and hybridization are real and of highest ethical and intellectual undertaking is to wend a middle way through all of this contradictories and contraries.

 

The black-and-white thinking of the uncompromising Christian or Buddhist altruist or the absolutist ARI Objectivist-egoist are not how the world works, and these lopsided, out-of-harmony worldviews will lead their proponents to espouse moral codes that are pure, one-dimensional, wrong, morally unproductive, stupid and increase evil in the world, the consequence they claim to wish to decrease, but cannot help contributing to the explosion of wickedness in the world.

 

Here was my flash of intuition. Humans are born wicked—mostly not entirely. Humans are born with low self-esteem and lots of self-hating. Hating is evil, so the agent that hates herself, born evil and addicted to sin, will if she refuses to become moral, will grow corruption and malevolence in the world, as she grows in hatred of herself and others, all while claiming to love what she is, addicted to what is killing her spiritually, intellectually, and even physically.

 

She is born sinful; she runs in packs and groups are evil, and the social scene is the locus of lying and wasted lives lived inside complexes and games riddled with illusion, deception, pain, and manipulation, all socially reinforced. When she group-lives and promotes group-pride, and she and others practice altruism-collectivism, they grow evil in themselves and each other. The joiner is demonic more than angelic, emotional more than logical, and fanatical or ultraist more than moderate and self-calibrating, her behaving is measured response.

 

My flash is that moderation, not in all things, but in most things, is the Good or Love or Truth or Beauty or Liberty. The avatar of free agency, of moderation, of loving, or reasoning, of ego-centeredness is the individual, the loner, not the groupist or joiner.

 

Satan, Lera, and the Evil Sprits will rule this world as long as basically evil people (naturally altruist, selfless and collectivist) group-live, practice altruist-ethics, preached at them by parents, the church, the government and the institutions. When the elites run government and business, and tyranny, class systems or stratification and communist economic systems prevail, the people must fail, suffering needlessly and excessively, though they convince themselves that they love what they secretly hate, and praise the status quote as liberating and enriching, when subconsciously they realize that it stifles, sickens, and kills the masses putting up with this rotten, dispensation.

Self-Esteem Is The Best Love

 

Self-Esteeming is the best and highest form of love. I have been looking for ways to justify me advancement of egoist ethics, and a flash came to me the other day, an insight which might be fruitful.

 

It occurred to me that egoism as a moral system is built on the principle of veridical self-esteeming and positive self-loving.

 

 Now all words, all concepts, all definitions are never 100% cqpture the whole gist of a concept: linguistic clarity is never perfect or final. My near final word about self-love, on describing or defining any idea or term of self-love, it seems to me, that positive love, whether focused on the self, on others, on nature, on animals, or towards God or one’s family, is likely the intellectual and emotional way to regard the object of affection, and nothing can be more wholesome than loving. This is spiritual and moral goodness. If one loves the self, then love will be one’s good will in action as the self operates in the world and interacts with others.

 

The counterpart of positive loving is negative hating, where the self-consciousness is focused, determined, and systematically attacking, deconstructing and destroying, perhaps even physically killing off the victim, be that victim the self, one’s spouse or partner, one’s dog, one’s nation, one’s God, or nature itself. This is the essence of spiritual and moral evil enveloping the hater’s consciousness.

 

When I promote moral egoism, I am urging the self be the primary but not sole focus of attention and interest for the individual. It is acceptable for the self to hate what is flawed, wicked or in error about the self, while working to improve these defects.

 

Beyond this point self-hatred or other-hatred turns vicious, ugly and counterproductive. One is not to love one’s self-indulgent, hedonistic, short-term chasing after pleasure, that is a negative loving of the self.

 

Healthy self-love of the egoistic individuators who esteems the self and has pride in the self and his intellect, grounded in his actual accomplishments, is desirable, even obligatory, but bragging and strutting are not good for the self, and irritates the neighbors.

Enlightened Self-Interest & Peterson

 

In a video recently, Jordan Peterson the altruist and collectivist, offered that enlightened self-interest is the same as living a life of self-denial and service to others.

 

Actually, it is the other way around. When one is an egoist and individualist, one announces that pursing one’s own interests are one’s primary (not sole ethical obligation) moral obligation. But self-interest is best served when the goals are self-realizing, serving God and creating love and cosmos in the world.

 

This is not so much a life of service and self-sacrifice in serving others, but individuators, if the majority of adults in a free country, will be reasonable enough and temperate enough to compromise with neighbors, usually working out disputes to most everyone’s satisfaction.

 

Paradoxically and perhaps the only successful way to serve others occurs as adults maverize as enlightened self-actualizers.

 

Sorry, Jordan. Your insights amaze, but your conclusions suck.

The Workplace

 

I have long been an advocate of workers’ rights. I have long worked inside of union shops and in non-union shops. There are real differences between them, and distinct advantages and disadvantages to both, but those I will not mention here.

 

This article is about what they have in common. I seek to democratize the workplace. This does not mean that owners, managers, and supervisors do not continue to call the shots. They do.

 

 But a workforce of individuating supercitizens, so smart, independent-thinking, radically individualistic, outspoken, and unwilling to be tyrannized, exploited, disrespected, abused, ignored or tyrannizez, do contribute to real consternation and paralysis of operation and decision-making for the angered, exasperated, owner or manager not trained to work with such an excellent, strong-willed work force.

 

If we can democratize the workplace, and democratize managers and supervisors, and flood the workplace with individuating supercitizen workers, this peaceful revolution would transform the workplace for the better. It would morally bring excellence to the workplace, wherein workers’ rights as human rights.

 

Once Management accepts and implements this reform, it would generally experience the pleasing outcome that happy, motivated employees treated with dignity and respect, work hard and better, and the company will make more money, provide better services, manufacture superior products.

 

My dream is that individuating supercitizens, as average and yet exceptional citizens, taxpayers, consumers, and workers, would revolutionize all institutions to which they belong and participate in.

 

Individuating citizens and citizens involved in political processes have the potential to democratize the country on the or macro-level or national level, and if the workforce in a company or college is of individuators, it will transform and democratize the workplace on the micro-level or local level.

 

I believe that the social relations between individuating supercitizens have the great promise of changing substantively social arrangements, for the better.

The Priest's View Of Human Nature

 

Two of my sisters from outside the state of Minnesota traveled to our lake cabin up north to help my family and me celebrate my 71^st birthday, and that was very pleasant.

 

When we were eating a delicious dinner made by my wife, my sister from North Dakota reported that her parish priest, a native American, 73 years of age, had told her that he believes people are basically good, because they are made in God’s image. 

 

That intrigued me that he argued that God is pure good and pure perfection. We are made in God’s image and likeness, so we may not be perfect or purely good, but we are basically good, otherwise we would not be made in God’s image and likeness. Not a bad argument.

 

My take is that we are partially made in God’s image and likeness, that part of us is innately good, but our original sin is biological and spiritual: we are mostly id, born beasts, filled with demons in our subconscious.

 

Children need moral training to civilize them, to individualize them (A moral person of free agency is a person who individuates and has learned to love herself, and through self-love and accompanying self-esteem, she is able to love others and love God, and thus esteem them too, and wish veridical self-esteem for them also.

 

We are not much made in God’s image and likeness, but if we apply ourselves and work hard, and become holy and virtuous, then we can grow much closer to being in God’s image and likeness. The similarity is created, not natural, and God orders us to make the effort or else.

 

My sister agreed that children are not born good; as a mother, grandmother, teacher, and speech pathologist, she has deep experience with toddlers. She described how selfish, violent and asocial 2-year olds are: they are born innocent, but not good, as Dennis Prager noted. They become good when trained with manners.

Peterson--Destroy That Ego

 

 

I have taken notes and done slight editing on these notes from a Jordan Peterson video clip, dated 2023, about 10:45 minutes long, and entitled Destroy Your Ego.

 

I will comment on this video periodically. Here is the video.

 

Jordan (J after this): “Pride is the opposite of humility, and humility is the precondition for learning, and you might say that’s partly why humility is something that was practiced, say, by genuine religious people as a virtue, because the idea would be to open yourself up like a child.”

 

My response: I buy little of this: yes, pride, the negative pride of a groupist, blocks learning and growing, and this vice is the opposite of positive humility, an individualistic worldview.

 

Positive pride allows the individual to be humble and self-humbling enough to know and admit that he is ignorant and unskilled, that he has to face and deal with his existing shortcomings if he would seek to improve himself.

 

Those—the majority who are groupist--that actually are humble (negatively humble)—lacking self-esteem—they feel so insecure that they must strut and act proud; it would shatter them to consciously accept and admit ignorance or fault, so they cannot learn and grow.

 

As a rational religionist, I counter-argue that a person can be genuinely religious as a virtue most easily when he is an individuating adult. Children are sweet and loveable, but they are not developed enough to learn and grow very much, especially ethically on the level of a maverizer. A moral and holy religious believer is more adult-like than child-like. Adults are good, rational, and more individualistic, while children are less noble, emotional and more groupist. An adult is open to self-improvement if she wills to be.

 

J: “You know how open a child is to learning. Well, the child doesn’t assume he or she knows everything already. They are just looking around all the time, which is one of the things so remarkable about children. They’re looking around all the time at everything.”

 

My response: Children are naturally open to learning as part of growing up, but, on balance, they grow out of their intellectual, curious state of consciousness too early, too easily if adults do not reward them for individuating.

 

if an adult can extend this childhood love of learning as an adult, learned plan to individuate one’s talents and personality over a lifetime, then adult learning can amaze, and be splendid, productive, and prolific.

 

J: “They don’t know and with it with us like an infant that’s just they’re just like this, all the time wondering what the world’s going on and trying to learn. So, pride stops learning. Alfred North Whitehead said the reason we think is so that we let our thoughts die instead of us.”

 

My response: I think it is the other way around, that humility stops learning and that proper pride inaugurates the learning process.

 

It just occurred to me that Jordan is anti-intellectual, that he equates the individual of free agency and thinking for himself in a conscious, realist state of awareness as sinful, defying God, faith, the community, his group, his traditions.

 

Some pride and intellectual pride of one’s own ideas and thought processes is limitedly acceptable for geniuses and the talented, but the masses turn stupid, cruel, and sinful, when they are individualistic, egoistic, rational, and proud of their own thoughts and accomplishments.

 

The masses must be humble, group-oriented and submissive to elites and traditions—this is where Jordan is headed, and that is anti-Western, anti-humanistic, and not what the Mother and Father, the great egoistic Individuators, the Divine Couple, want and expect from humans.

 

Healthy, merited pride or self-esteeming is humble, and the self-pride of the humble groupist, by contrast is capable of tremendous arrogance, unable to grow, adjust or exhibit intellectual curiosity.

 

J: “So, imagine you have a stupid idea.”

 

My response: Let us identify that many, perhaps most stupid ideas originate from the prejudiced opinion held in common by group-thinked, childlike adults, egoless joiners whose group pride and memes prevent them from seeing individualists or rival groups as they are, or not to treat them with contempt.

 

J: “Which is highly probable. Right, it, it doesn’t matter. You might have 50 of them a day so then you think, well, let’s go act out that stupid idea which is what you do when you are impulsive. And so, you act out the stupid idea and you just get walloped by the world and maybe you die. Well, so well, why don’t you throw your stupid idea out on the table?”

 

My response: It is true that we all have stupid ideas, and that we need to look before we leap, and impulsive executing a bad idea is almost always disastrous. I will grant Jordan this criticism. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

 

But the most damaging and dumbest ideas can be deliberately held and fearlessly executed by systems, governments, large groups of people ideologically motivated. Their lethal, malevolent, dysfunctional, stupid ideas become entrenched social traditions.

 

Thus, the tyrannical and bloody plans of socialists and true believers inflict their ideas upon the unfortunate, suffering world.

 

Jordan: “To a bunch of other people and say, I have this idea. I’m kind of thinking about acting it out. It is stupid and maybe you are prideful about your idea because you know you’re attracted by it, and you thought of it up, whatever that means, and so now you’re glued to it—plus it tiles something for you, so you’re invested in it, and you don’t want it to be a stupid idea.

 

But, then like yeah, fine. Do you want to die? And so, a lot of what we do in dialogue is kill stupid ideas.”

 

My response: Because, even on his own, the individuator is ordinarily, sufficiently realistic and  rational enough--and largely fantasy averse enough—that he is able to live in the objective realm, dialoguing with himself in his prideful, reasoned confidence and practical grasp of consequences: therefore, he is also adept at killing off most of his stupid ideas.

 

Still, Jordan is correct is urging that receiving input from others is another useful way of gaining information and perspective so that one is operating in the realm of objectivity, where stupid ideas are often more easily detected, isolated, and killed off.

 

J: “And we do that, so we don’t have to act them out because then we die. And this even works biologically so the part of your brain that generates thought grew out of your brain that you use to voluntarily control your actions.

 

So, you could say a thought is a potential action. People think a thought is a representation of the world. It’s like yeah, not fundamentally. Fundamentally a thought is a potential action, so then in your imagination, you make avatars of yourself.  So that’s you and your image. What if I did this? It’s a little avatar of yourself. You think what if I did this? Here’s the world I walk: I act like these good things happen. That’s my vision.”

 

My response: A thought is a potential action, so bad ideas can have terrible consequences in the world, and good ideas can yield worldly benefits for the self and others, so the trick is to know which is which, and always move forward cautiously and carefully.

 

J: “Then you throw your vision on the table and say I have this vision. And you say, well, that’s a stupid vision because you didn’t take this into account, and how are you going to do that? And you think, oh, that sucks because I had this vision. Well, thank you because I didn’t see these snakes right, and then it’s tricky because maybe your mad because I had a vision and you didn’t have one, so you’re pissed about that, so you’re just attacking my vision because you don’t have anything better to do.”

 

And the other voice interrupted, talking to Peterson: ‘I’ve had this conversation with someone before where a kid told me he wanted like a million followers on social media.”

 

J: “Yeah.”

 

My response: Others in dialogue can curb our executing our ideas, but we can do it for ourselves as individuators, or by listening in prayer to the wise Good Spirits.

 

Other voice: “And I was like, yeah, but that’s going to happen though like not for you because.”

 

J: “Right.”

 

Other voice: “I knew because I had the experience you know and then I had that moment where they basically freaked out.”

 

J: “Right, well, yeah, you shatter a dream, aye.”

 

Other voice: “Absolutely.”

 

J: “Well, so a dream is a tile of the future so you say what’s the future? Well, you don’t know. Well, here’s a vision, so that’s now a tile and then it covers the future. And it also covers it in a pleasing way. Then you come along and say you knows it’s a little low resolution, well you could say to someone who wants that, are you sure you want a million followers?

 

Because people say I would be happy if I had 400 million dollars. It’s like you think you could handle that responsibility, do you? Like you are so sure of that, that all of a sudden, you, you would like all this money dumped on you. You can’t even control your household budget. You live from paycheck to paycheck. “

 

My response: Jordan repeatedly sets straw men, which he then easily defeats: he takes foolish young joiners and parades them around as avatars of proud egoism and Luficerian pride. This erroneous attribution of individualism to groupist young adults, is his general mischaracterization—this is his description not mine, and what he is describing is naïve, complacent young groupists both selfish, arrogant and self-deluding, ready, eager and willing to implement fearlessly their stupid ideas.

 

 They are arrogant, selfish, and mistaken not because they are egoistic and proud, but because they are negatively humble, altruistic collectivists, not sturdy egoistic individualists. They know not who they are, how the world works, and what are the consequences of their acting on their stupid ideas.

 

  It is easy to make them look foolish because they are. Jordan keeps providing foolish young groupists as stupid individualists: he provides these misguided youths as an exemplars of individualism and pride, and he sets up the these naïve, presumptuous, arrogant young, inexperienced, and hype-confident boobs, doomed to fail, and they will because their actions grow out of stupid ideas.

 

But these are joiners, not individualists, so this argument though true in criticizing the foolish youngster, has no standing as a legitimate criticism of egoism. Such foolish overconfidence and easy optimisms are group imaginings of the selfless and humble.

 

J: “Now someone is going to dump a treasure on your steps and that’s going to fix your life. It’s like okay how much are you going to give your relatives? Like none, that’ll work out really well. Too much so then so you’re going to take away their responsibility from them, are you? And you’re going to get that balance exactly right?

 

And what are you going to do with that money because as soon as you got the money the parasites are going to come in and take your money?

 

There’s an element of corruption around everyone who, who isn’t what you would say walking hand in hand with God in the Garden of Eden, yeah right.

 

Look, there’s an old mythological trope useful in understanding this. Presume that most people watching and listening have watched the Lion King. The Lion King has a very solid narrative structure. It’s a very smart movie, like many of the Disney movies. And people criticize me because I am so interested in Disney movies, but I’m interested in anything that many, many, many people watch for a long time, because, well, what’s going on there, and why is that so attractive?

 

And often a movie is attractive because it gets the story right and the characters right—whatever that means. Well, the Lion King was a very, very successful animated movie.

 

‘Everything the light touches is all king.’ Right there, I can tell you exactly what that means. That’s, that’s a brilliant line. That’s also and notice I use the word brilliant. And Brilliant is associated with the idea of the light. Okay, so now when the light touches something and you see it, then you establish a relationship with a thing that you see because now you start to understand it. And the more lit up something is the more you’re, the more you can understand it, and explore it, and so when you shine a light into the dark crevices, then let’s say then you start to see what’s in the dark crevices.

 

And if you go around your apartment building, let’s say, and you pay attention to every nook and cranny, you start to, it starts to become yours (Ed says in agreement, it becomes your kingdom of light and cosmos.) in a very fundamental way.

 

And so you could say light is the equivalent to consciousness (Ed says: or the equivalent of good consciousness, individual consciousness, not the equivalent to evil consciousness, group consciousness, Ed says.).

 

That’s a good way to think about it. Now, why? Well, we’re very visual creatures, human beings. Our brains are organized on vision. Most animals are organized on smell by the way. But not us. A huge part of our cortical activity is devoted to sight, so we think of sight as Enlightenment, light. We think of it as illumination, right. When we bring something into the light, we improve it. And we associate the day with consciousness and illumination and Enlightenment.

 

And so, if you attend to something by shining a light on it, then it becomes yours and so your kingdom is actually everything that the light of your consciousness is shone on. And all that is encapsulated in that statement and that’s why it’s stuck in your imagination.”

 

My response: Whatever share of the earth which comes under the light of your benevolent consciousness is your share of the kingdom of God on earth, and your developing it and caring for it is your lived gift back to God as a maverizer.

 

J: “Yeah, you remember he is up with his son on a mountain right, on a cliff, so now think about that. That means he can see a long way and then he sees the circle of this world, and the light is shining on it. And he says everything the light shines on is our kingdom, and that also implies and he says that next. That outside the light, there’s another kingdom of darkness, and that hasn’t been explored.”

 

My response: Jordan said earlier in the video that one cannot learn until one is humbled and humbled by one’s own agency, by others, or by circumstances. Being humble is the acceptable  adjective applying to the learner if it is identical to an individuators fielding his veridical self-esteem and clear awareness of his strengths and of his errors, sins and deficiencies, which he works assiduously to improve, and the egoist is the most successful human kind at self-improving. He is strong enough to see himself as his is, warts and strengths.

 

It is the collective-living joiner and selfless nonindividuator of low self-esteem who is inclined to exaggerate his virtues and ignore his deficiencies.

 

If he practices individuation and egoist morality, eventually he will confront his faults and deal with them, and afterwards he can regard himself with some level of self-pride which is meritorious, earned, and applicable. He remains eager and open to receive new information, and to receive God’s instruction.

 

J: “And if you remember in the movie that’s where the fascists and the hyenas are predatory. And so, when Simba goes out past the domain of light, he enters the unknown, and he enters the underworld, the demonic underworld, and that’s Scar.

 

Back to Scar. Okay, so Simba has Mustafa as his father. And Mustafa is the positive aspect of the patriarchy, and he’s wise and he’s tough. He’s got a tough face. He’s no pushover, but he has an evil brother. That is Scar. And Scar has been scarred and that’s why he is resentful, right. He’s a victim because his brother gets all the attention like Cain in relationship to Abel. And he’s a victim for some reason we do not quite understand.”

 

Other voice: “He is smaller.”

 

J: “He is smaller but he’s intellectual too, right, so he’s got the pride—he got the Luciferian pride in intellect and Jeremy Irons, who is that character play, played that extremely well with that kind of unctuous voice that”

 

Other voice: “’kind of a snaky sound”

 

J: “Yeah, well and contemptuous and presumptuous and narcissistic. He did a lovely job of that.

 

And so, you might say why does the king have an evil uncle or brother? Well, the answer is, this is the mythological answer, is that, well, the king will always have an evil brother, always, and the reason for that is if the king is the emblem of the state, which, or even of the stable state of being, because you can think about it psychologically or sociologically.

 

He always has a counterpart, and the counterpart is the proclivity of that state to be overtaken by willful blindness, so failure to shine a light on things, right. To turn your head away when you know you shouldn’t.

 

And also, by this corrupt will to resentful power and that is chronic. Now the Marxists would say and do in some real sense there’s nothing but Scar. There’s nothing but the evil uncle.

 

It’s like that’s a hell of a worldview. I can tell you in some real sense its kin on the Christian front to making the statement that the true ruler of reality is the satanic spirit.”

 

My response: I agree with Jordan that Marxists and evildoers regard the world as nothing but evil uncles, but there is also hope, love and happiness available in this Vale of Tears.

 

J: “It’s the same idea and that’s a hell of a claim, man, to, to make, literally speaking. And so, but it’s the case that almost every institution and almost every person has a touch of the evil uncle as part of their structure One of the things I often recommend to my clinical clients if they’re having trouble with a family member is number one, shut up.”

 

My response: Jordan is a contradiction: his altruistic ethics and collectivist predilection are socially, psychologically, and ethically catastrophic but conventional as ARI philosopher Onkar Ghate points out.

 

Yet, when Jordan sticks to psychology, he is brilliant and wise. Wisely, he recommends to his patients that, when afflicted by gaslighting and narcissistic-sadistic family members, he advises that the patients shut up, sharing neither good news nor bad news about themselves with the enemy within, who weaponizes that information against the victim. Self-care is disallowing anyone, anywhere, at any time to disrespect and gratuitously hurt one. Part of self-care is in turn abusing and enslaving no other, and thus liberating both parties in a social transaction, and this is altruistic practice, mutualism, at its finest.

 

J: “Don’t tell them anything about yourself. Just, and I don’t mean in a rude way, it’s just like no more personal information.

 

Number two, watch them like a hawk. And listen and if you do that long enough, they will tell you exactly what they are up to. And they will also tell you who they think you are. And then you will be shocked because they think you’re something that’s not what you are.

 

And when they tell you, it’s like a revelation to both of you but attention is an unbelievably powerful force.

 

And you see this in psychology too because a lot of what you do. And in any reparative relationship is really paying attention to that other person. Pay attention and listen, and you would not believe what people tell you, or reveal to you if you watch them as if you want to know, instead of watching them so will have your prejudices reinforced.”

 

My response: AGAIN, JORDAN THE CONTRADICTORY: when he is on, he is on, and in his moral conclusions, he goes into the ditch.

 

Being alert, paying attention, seeing, and hearing oneself and others as one is, and they are—this conscious and intuitive sense of withitness is vital for gaining an understanding of the human condition, about interacting with others, and to discover what the self is up to. Well said Jordan.

 

J: “That’s usually how people interact. It’s like I want to keep thinking about you and so I’m going to filter out anything that disproves my theory.”

 

My response: I have long complained that people mostly live in a world of lies, and their subjective prejudices are impossible to penetrate because they cling to them so desperately, so deliberately, so willfully.

 

Jordan of course attributes this unenlightened way of characterizing others and the self as prideful, individual arrogance, while, in near stark disagreement, I attribute subjective prejudices and a dishonest way of viewing people as misbehaviors and mental errors growing out of group-thinking and group-living. Herd-living produces social life and relationships as the world of the lie.

 

J: “That’s not what I’m talking about at all. It’s I’m going to watch you and figure out what you are up to, not in a rude way. None of that. Just want to see what is there.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peterson--Kill Your Ego

 

Jordan Peterson has gone full collectivist, full altruist: he wants and insists that the moral person can only be moral and progress if he first kills his ego, and lives to serve others, to sacrifice his personal interests and happiness for their sake, to be an egoless adult, who necessarily is purely and solely a group, herding, herded creature, yet there is only tyranny, hate and malevolence there.

 

Below, I took notes on a 4-minute video by Jordan which aired in 2024, and its title is: Why Every Man Needs To Kill Their Ego. I lightly edited the video and will comment on it.

 

Here is the video which commences with a woman asking Peterson a question: “Would you please talk about what Jung refers to as the psychic death, also called an ego death?”

 

My response: Psychic death or ego death could be beneficial if not taught or implemented in some obscure, cumbersome manner. In a sense Jordan and Jungians calling for spiritual or psychic death of the corrupt, savage part of the self is beneficial, in the sense that one must be reborn and take on a new identity to heal, to love, to grow ethically and spiritually. I would argue that one should abandon or sensibly scale back group-living, group-identifying, group morality and nonindividuating, and that, that transformation will cause the self to be reborn and one’s natural egolessness-otherness ego will be killed off, so that the self can be born again or reborn as an egoist and individualist that individuates.

 

Jordan (J after this): “Now there are variants of that because you can have a voluntary or involuntary ego death. And a voluntary ego death is when you learn a bunch, and you’re willing to let go, that you be your own immolation.”

 

My response: It often seems as if the self is born in a state of illusion and self-delusion, without experience, innocent in a ways of the world, though a baby is born innocent in the good sweet sense, but is not born good, but will have to willingly be reborn to individuate as a person of good will and character.

 

This inexperienced, naïve self, from Jordan’s point of view, is a smug, complacent, egoistic/ egotistic (He would not likely distinguish between being egoistical and being egotistical, as I firmly maintain.), selfish brute concerned only with his hedonic pleasures and meeting his short-term desires.

 

The voluntary ego death occurs when the morally ambitious child chooses to grow morally and thereby gains a conscience, becomes mature, other-centered, other-interested and unselfish, because she has voluntarily to immolate the egoistic portion of her consciousness—I assume this is Jordan’s point of view.

 

J: “It’s like you are a phoenix, and you are lighting yourself on fire. That’s a much better idea even though it can still be very harsh.”

 

My response: Jordan’s crusade against individualism and egoist morality leads him to conclude and promote the campaign that a mature, honest child, by voluntarily killing off her ego, like a phoenix, burning itself to the ground, that allows her to be reborn as a healthy, moral, considerate adult with a future.

 

J: “The involuntary ego deaths: they are really hard on people. People will do almost anything to stop that from happening. That ego death is a journey into the underworld, or it’s a collapse into chaos.”

 

My response: We are born naïve and inexperienced, and life happens to us, and the world keeps changing. If we do not consciously, willingly grapple with what is coming at us, however falteringly we try, the mere act of facing the world and adjusting our consciousness to all that it throws at us, then our child ego will not die voluntarily; then reality and others will smash our callow, untested ego, and trample it into the ground for us, and we will be left with a crippled, limping consciousness.

 

As a failed, disintegrated adult ego, we may seek such poor solutions as to kill others, kill ourselves, rush into a mass movement or go insane to cope with our shattered, battered ego husks. We may turn vicious and live a life of no growth, and no moral or spiritual advancement. The journey into the underworld is most unpleasant and disconcerting, and one may so damaged as never to recover, never to lose being determined by the forces of chaos around and within one, which dominate one now.

 

J: “That’s not so bad if you do it purposefully. But in the Pinocchio story, for example, that’s exemplified by Pinocchio going down to the depths to rescue his Father from the whale.”

 

My response: Jordan here recounts how voluntary ego death is not so bad if it is purposefully undertaken and self-managed. The young person about to self-immolate her ego is going down into her subconscious to inspect, battle and defeat, if she can, the innate evil which controls her, and she will rescue her Father or superego, so that her conscience is her guide, so that her Father is plucked by her out of chaos, and, as her quiet inner voice, as a moral new adult, it and she will grow cosmos, order and love internally and out in the world.

 

J: “Now he does that voluntarily but it damn near kills him, right. I, me, first of all, he hardly gets out of the whale. Second, it’s a journey to the underworld. It’s the consequence of a collapse in previous personality and the disintegration of that personality into a chaotic state prior to rebirth.”

 

My response: Whether the ego death of the immature, naïve adult is voluntary or involuntary, Jordan suggests we need to kill that juvenile ego off before it kills us spiritually, leading a life of discontentment and quiet despair felt by most stunted adults, ripe for joining a mass movement, should the times expose them to such risky solutions.

 

Jordan’s grievous, great, and perhaps deliberate error is to teach the young that killing off one’s immature ego is the critical first step to make way for personal rebirth and being reborn as an experienced, mature, realistic adult ready to assume adult duties is a necessary transition to undertake and complete if one is ever to be happy and healthy.

 

 But Jordan wants and characterizes the replacement adult ego as moral, sane, and noble, but that is not what occurs. By murdering the callow ego and replacing it with an adult egoless ego or consciousness, this selfless, humbled, low self-esteeming, disinterested egoless, groupist, altruistic, replacement self-lives for the collective over and against personal happiness and self-interest. This adult is a sick, immoral self, better than the immature version was sick, collectivist, immoral and not quite sane, but it sells short what humans can and should evolve into.

 

 We are not to kill the immature unhealthy egoless self by replacing it with an adult egoless self only slightly less sick, so that the mature moral adults stagnate, but long-lived but immature, militantly sinning adults.

 

Jordan believes that individualism, egoism, and individuation are only for the few geniuses like himself smarter the dull, because these geniuses are and the only ones with talent. The dumb and talentless masses can only seek moral excellence, especially the self-sacrificing kind where they give everything, get nothing back, do not pursue their own interest, do not seek personal reward, enjoyment, or happiness. It is their lot in life, just grim martyrdom and endless giving to others, for the self is to be murdered and selflessness is the lot for the masses, to keep their heads down, properly humbled, and never to esteem themselves or be proud of themselves, practicing only very  limited self-care, and even that modest self-care is barely acceptable ethically.

 

Even the elite, though allowed to be somewhat more individualistic than the selfless masses,  able to pursue some happiness and self-realization for themselves commensurate to their exalt status, and to which they are entitled as an authentic elite of supermen and superwomen-even they’re also to be groupists, self-deprecating, and mostly sacrifice themselves for others.

 

The masses are so inferior that all they are allowed under collectivism and altruism is to seek moral excellence by maximum give till it hurts and give more, live for others and the group and group interest. Only a genetic elite of geniuses are allowed to seek intellectual or creative excellence for that is their genetic and natural destiny, only they are worthy to seek to be smarter, to think, to develop their innate gifts, it is their lot in life, it is their destiny.

 

J: “And so then what that would imply is that if you go to the point where you could look at the darkest things so that would be the abyss, right, that would be the deepest abyss. If you could look at the harshest things, the most brutal parts of the suffering of the world, and the malevolence of people and society, if you could look at that straight and directly, that would turn you on maximally, because imagine that you’re like the potential composite of all the ancestral wisdom that’s locked inside you biologically.”

 

My response: Jordan is correct on two points here, stated, or implied. First, he and I accept that people carry original sin in them, just be being born, that we are mostly evil from birth, and require extensive moral training, which, if we at some point choose to internalize it and work earnestly permanently to lead a virtuous life, then our natural depravity can be transmuted into something admirable and beneficial, or at least innocuous.

 

One cannot become a good person unless one fearlessly elects to encounter and embrace the harsh truth about human nature, discovering and accepting that all of us are teeming with demons swimming around and lurking in our subconscious, just waiting to break loose and wreak havoc in the world.

 

I, an egoist, and Jordan the altruist, both admit that each person is a born sinner, that we must look at ourselves and accept our flaws, faults, errors, and deficiencies. Only after loving truth for its own sake, and learning how nasty we naturally are, and then conclude that we disallow indulging our id while referring to its fulfillment as our self-interest set forth into action in the world out there, now we know what our problem is (We are the problem unless and until we clean up our personal room, and set our house in order.), then we can morally progress.

 

Where Jordan fails is assuming the basic self is selfish, arrogant, and smug (The basic self is selfless/selfish, arrogant to compensate for deep inner uncertainty and self-doubt, and smug because the self is too fragile to set aside rationales which protected that fragile self from brittlely blowing up into a million pieces because the self cannot deal with the truth.)

 

 

 

 

Jordan has concluded that attained self-truth will lead to rebirth as an adult that is other-interested, selfless and altruistic.

 

By contrast I know the basic self is evil or self-hating, so if the self is reborn as an individuator, then the love of self will make the self-whole, integrated personality filled with optimism love, joy and gratitude, and that self will serve his self-interest, and feel generally so generous, genial and content, that his good will towards others will result indirectly in others’ interest and needs being met , so the social needs will be cared for.

 

J: “But that’s not going to come out at all unless you stress yourself, unless you challenge yourself.  And the bigger the challenge you take on the more that’s going to turn on, and so that as you take on a broader and broader range of challenges and you push yourself harder, then more and more of what you could be turns on, and that’s equivalented to transforming yourself into the ancestral Father.”

 

My response: My quick, superficial internet reading of what Carl Jung signifies with his ancestral Father archetype may have several interpretations, but, for Peterson here, it seems likely to me that the Father is the voice of reason, order, authority and responsibility, an ideal for a young man to emulate.

 

As the self develops morally—and I would say talent-wise and intellectually—the more the self-approaches self-perfection—obviously never quite attainable—coming closer to achieving personally the adopted ancestral Father role model.

 

J: “I think, I think you can think about it religiously too, so you can think about it this way so in, in the Christian story, for example, you have Christ does two things that are messianic.

 

One, he takes the suffering of the world onto himself because that is a weird idea, so what does that mean?”

 

My response: In part, Jesus, a divine god, takes on the role of Messiah to save the world, and to open the way to heaven for humans. None of us should aim so high, for we are puny humans and we cannot save the world: rather if we maverize, we can at a minimum remove ourselves from the list of troublemakers. Positively speaking, we might even make the world a little brighter and safer, lessening evil a bit—that is enough. Mostly people should handle their own suffering by individuating, and that will greatly and perhaps most effectively reduce needless suffering in the world.

 

J: “Let’s think about it psychologically. Well, maybe, that, well, that’s your job in the world full of suffering. And you should accept that as your responsibility past, present and future. You are supposed to do something about that, as much as you can about it.”

 

My response: We should clean up our own lives, and interfering in the lives of others in the name of noble giving usually cannot make their lives better but will make them worse. Only the individual can save herself—which is why enlightened egoistic morality is so appealing to me.

 

J: “And maybe you start with your own localized suffering: you know so you accept that as a responsibility so that’s part of taking on a load, that’s part of bearing a cross you could look at it that way.

 

The cross is sort of a symbol of the place of maximal suffering. So, you could accept that as a challenge., not as something you’re victimized by. Maybe you accept that as the price of being.”

 

My response: I do not intend to be censorious about Jordan’s view that life is suffering, and that we do not try to reduce our suffering, but that we should load ourselves up with it, and then serve others to make our suffering meaningful and directed.

 

He is a bit too gloomy for my taste: life is suffering, but it is not only suffering. I do agree that we start cleaning ourselves up by reducing or at least converting and sublimating our suffering into art or philosophy as we maverize.

 

The price of being is that we accept and deal with our suffering, and never play the victim, but the price of being is made even more lovely and exhilarating if we maximize our noble pleasure of self-realizing, and that is pleasing, enjoyable, thrilling and most fulfilling, and we can take quiet pride when we have made something of ourselves and our lives. We are all blessed with great talent and intelligence, so we should seek not maximal suffering, but maximal savoring of the miracle of living when we create cosmos and order with our intellectual, emotional, artistic, ethical, and spiritual creations, new ideas and wonders.

 

J: “Okay, so that’s one’s responsibility. You’re responsible for addressing the suffering in the world so that could give you some meaning, it seems to me.”

 

My response: Assuming moral responsibility for fighting evil in the world is one’s duty, and that would give one’s life meaning and direction. We should enjoy life too, and appreciate beauty and loveliness, for the sake of balance in our lives.

 

J: “Then the next thing is there’s a story of course that Christ met the Devil in the desert, so that is the encounter with malevolence.

 

So that would be the other thing because the major problems that people face obviously are suffering, tragedy and malevolence. So that’s the other thing you are responsible for is that you’re supposed to look the capacity for human evil as clearly as you possibly can.”

 

My response: Jordan wisely believes we are born wicked, and firmly adjures the individual to face clearly and openly the human capacity for and addiction to evil, that oneself is as guilty of this natural proclivity as any other human being. Then, one must work to be good, do good, and fight for God and goodness all of one’s life: that is one of our primary duties as children of God.

 

J: “It’s a very terrifying thing you know that causes post-traumatic stress disorder in people that aren’t accustomed to it. And, but the idea would be that if you can face that malevolence, and you can face the suffering then that maximally opens the door to your maximal potential.

 

And then the optimistic part of that is that though the suffering is great, and the malevolence is, is deep, your capacity to transcend it is stronger. So, what you get out of the most negative viewpoint is the most positive, possible consequence, because one of the things you would like to know, if you wanted to know something deep about yourself, you could face the worst that there was and prevail.”

 

My response: Jordan is right in encouraging young people to face the world’s malevolence inside themselves and out in the world, and the willingness and courage to encounter malevolence forthrightly might well maximally open the door to your maximal potential, but this is best and most lastingly achieved and undertaken as an individuating ego, not by killing the ego and depriving the individual of individualism, for that is a terrible idea doomed to failure.

 

J: “I believe that people are capable of that. I think that despite how tragic life is and how malevolent things are that fundamentally our spirit let’s say has the capacity to confront that and fix it, like psychologically to confront it courageously, to be able to bear up under that.

 

If you do it voluntarily, but also to address it, not only to deal with it psychologically but to deal with it practically and that we could make things much better.”

 

My response: Again, Jordan is too pessimistic, and this from me, who is gloomy enough. Yes, suffering and malevolence are a big part of the human and universal story, but they are not the full story.

 

We should and can face it psychologically and practically and fix it, but as individuating egoists, we are best equipped to withstand suffering and malevolence and thereby make the world and ourselves better.

 

Jordan is too bleak—all there is is duty and self-sacrifice and an egoless adult altruistically, disinterestedly dedicated to serve others.

 

There is little or no room for pleasure and enjoyment, and there are no tangible rewards, and the is a sever motivational obstacle, I think. Life is not as grim as Jordan assumes it is. Life is not easy, but there is hope.