On 4/15/24. Jordan Peterson was interviewed by Michael Malice on the Liberty Vault program, I took notes on this 7.58 minute-long video, and then will slightly edit it and comment on it. Its title is, Jordan Peterson: My Problem With Ayn Rand.
Here is the video: “My Problems With Ayn Rand: Jordan explains his problems with Ayn Rand’s political ideas.
Jordan (J after this): “I reread Ay Rand’s books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I think this is the third time I’ve read both of them. And I read them within the last couple of months.”
Michael Malice (M after this): “Oh yeah.”
J: “Now and then I’m looking for, I don’t know, a romantic read, maybe, that is somewhat intellectually challenging. Now and then I pick up one of her books. Anda she is a curious figure to me because Ayn Rand had every reason to despise the Soviet Union. And it was a very good counter-voice to their machinations.”
My response: Jordan seems to be implying that she is fiercely ant-collectivist due to bitter, vicious treatment of her family by the Communists, and I’m sure that was a factor, but I believe Jordan is deliberately underestimating her positive reason for loathing collectivism of all kinds, because she was such a pure, staunch individualist and promoter of individualism.
She knew in her bones that egoism was morally superior to wicked altruism. Jordan is a staunch altruist, so, if he can discredit and devalue Rand’s egoist ethics, he is striking a blow for the altruist cause. He seeks to defeat and diminish her influence with the public as a way of suppressing and discrediting egoist morality.
J: “But, but, well and you know I got introduced to her books. It was quite interesting. I worked for the Socialists when I was like 14 until I was 16.”
My response: It is my impression that Jordan spent decades flirting with approving of approval of individualism, but in the past few years, he is going back to his collectivist and altruist past, the values of his youth, values which likely were his genuine values all along. He never was really pro-individualist, I believe.
J: “before I figured out that I didn’t know enough to presume that the way I wanted to arrange the world in a utopian fashion wasn’t credible. And I figured that out by the time I was 17. Well. What do you know? You don’t have a job. I had little jobs. You don’t have a business. You don’t have a family. You don’t have any education. What the hell do you know? Really?”
My response: I like this critical self-appraisal, the suggested incredulity towards the facile preachy and easy idealism of the young who have not lived, suffered, worked, shouldered tough responsibilities, or done the world’s work. There is nothing wrong with idealism, but it is better applied by the self to the self, rather than bother the world of other individuals, whom one is clueless to actually help.
The irony is that the more individualized and individuated an individual becomes, the harder it becomes for an outsider to know what they need, or should even interfere. For the maverized self, only God, the Good Spirits, and the self-know what the self needs, and may offer productive help. Only she knows what she needs and is right for her, once became an evolved individualist.
Youths too often seek government coercion involuntarily inflicted upon those adults that resist outside pressure, to force these people to submit and obey those who are their “betters”, and know what is “good for them.”
J: Right, okay. So anyway, so the person that gave me Ayn Rand’s books was this woman, Sandy Nowthey (sp?). She was the mother of one of Alberta’s recent premiers, a socialist premier. She was the wife the only elected socialist official in Alberta. I asked her—she gave me Solzhenitsyn, and Huxley and Orwell. She was an educated woman.
And she gave me Ayn Rand’s books which I read when I was about 13. And I found them compelling. They’ve got that, they are romantic adventures, fundamentally,”
Michael Malice (M after this): “Yes.”
J: “with an intellectual bent and I liked the anti-collectivist ethos embedded in them. And I’ve read them a couple of times since then, so here’s the problem I have with (Rand), and you can help me sort this out.
Like I certainly agree with you that a society that isn’t predicated on something like the intrinsic and superordinate worth of the individual is doomed to catastrophe.”
My response: Does Jordan really accept that the intrinsic and superordinate worth of the individual being prioritized above collective needs, most of the time, is the way to go forward?
J: “Right, so here is the rub as far as I am concerned, and this is what I really have a problem with is especially this time when I went through Rand’s books.
Her Galt, John Galt, for example, and Francisco d'Anconia, and who’s the architect, Howard Roark, her heroic capitalists essentially. They are not precisely heroic capitalists. They are heroic individualists.”
M: “Yes.”
My response: I think they are both simultaneously.
J: “who compete in the free market. Okay, that’s fine. And you can see the Libertarian side of that and I’m also a free-market capitalist.”
My response: Jordan’s morality is very Christian, and he and they are altruistic more than egoistic, but they allow each Christian enough individualism, to partake in the free-market capitalist system, and this contradiction is one that they seem little cognizant of, Jordan too. Nor do they have an answer to this internal contradiction; I just think humans are complex creatures with the primary duty being to the self, but the community requires other-care be undertaken by each individual, also.
J: “Partly, I think the distributed decision-making is a much better computational model than centralized planning, obviously.”
M: “Right.”
My response: Amen. Jordan would be astounded to imagine, as I have done, to realize the immense gains for humans, once distributed decision-making is augmented by the majority of American adults becoming individuators.
J: “Not obviously.”
M: “Well, it should be,”
M: “Sure.”
J: “It should be. It’s not obvious to utopian Luciferian intellectuals.”
My response: Here, Jordan is confused or self-contradictory. It is the fanatical, elite altruistic, hyper-collectivistic, elite, intellectual true believers, pure joiners, who are Luciferian, and not because they are individualistic or egoistic. Arrogant yes, but that rarely is a trait of egoists.
J: “But it is obvious even if you just think about it from a computational (perspective).”
M: “Even the smartest person is ignorant of 99% of knowledge.”
J: “Yes, exactly. That’s exactly it. Precisely why you want to distribute it. That’s partly what I want to go into so the Randian heroes identify themselves as fervent individualists. And they—stop me as soon as I get any of this wrong, or in some way you don’t agree with they’re pursuing their own selfish ethos.”
Okay, so that’s the rub to me. And I’m going to think about this psychologically just to make it complicated.”
My response: Does is seem like Jordan is showing off here, trying to impress Malice with his psychological brilliance?—which is actual—but Malice is not awed in the least.
J: “So okay, the first question would be, Well, what exactly do you mean by the individual and the self?”
My response: I assert that the individual is a separate human being, a unique consciousness, a singularity if she maverizes. Her self can be defined fairly well (The linguistic and epistemological moderate, partial skeptic in me, avows that terms and definitions are never completely precise, completely articulate, completely capturing the essence of what a term means, but, we, as definers, semantically can come pretty close to practical certainty, and that allows us to live, define terms, discover truth, and know how to live, and make vital moral judgments about the character and actions of others and ourselves.
Another term which is hard to define is free will, but humans have it and most or all people know what it is and wield it, even if they cannot specifically define what it is, and Rand is right that we enjoy incompatibilist free will, even more so as we maverize.
We all know what the individual, the self and free will mean so we can gain knowledge, live, and get on with our busy lives.
J: “Okay, when a child first emerges into the world, they are essentially a system of somewhat disconnected primary, instinctual sub-personalities, right, and so they exist with the nascent possibility of a unitary ego, personality, something like a continued, continued continuity of memories across time.
But that has to emerge as a consequence of neurophysiological development and experiential maturation. And so, the child comes equipped into the world with the sucking reflex because its mouth and tongue are very wired up so that’s where the child is most conscious.
That’s why kids when they can’t put something into their mouth, so they can feel it and investigate it.
Far before they have control over their eyes and their arms because their arms sort of are floating around. So, what happens is they are born as a set of somewhat independent systems and the independent systems partly under the influence of social demand, integrate themselves.”
My response: Sounds typical and realistic early childhood development patterns.
M: “Right.”
J: “Now, so by the time that child is two, that child is still mostly a disintegrated emotional system. So, if you watch a two-year-old, and I use two for a specific reason, what you see is they cycle through the basic motivational states.
So, a child whose demand-motivated emotional states are satiated with play, right, play and explore. But then they will get tired, and they will cry. Or they will get hungry, and they will cry. They’ll get angry and they will have a tantrum. Or they will burst into tears. They’ll cry or they’ll get anxious.
So, they are cycling through these primary motivational states. Now, we understand that to some degree neurophysiologically because the older brain system, the more likely the brain is to be operative in infancy.
Like, so the rage system or the system which mediates anxiety, the system that mediates pain—those come into being pretty early.
Like so the rage system or the system which mediates anxiety, the system that mediates pain—those come into being pretty early. But it is hard for them to get integrated.
Okay, so now, here’s the problem. And I don’t know how to distinguish individualism from hedonism, how to distinguish hedonism from possession of one of these lower order, motivational states.”
My response: Individualism, especially individualism as self-realization, is all about self-sacrifice and self-disciplining one’s preference for temporary, immediate pleasures, desires, needs and whims, for the sake of a nobler, longer terms goal, or set of developmental, long-term personal objectives.
This is closer to Rand’s take on rational selfishness (I wish she had not used the word selfishness—it is radioactive.) that mindless, self-gratifying pursuit of hedonic pleasure, the reductionistic account of Jordan’s which actually exists and is prevalent as the primary motivation of joiners, crude altruists and nonindividuators.
It is these selfish, arrogant, pleasure and fun-favoring groupists who favor hedonism over hard work and delayed gratification, irresponsibility, and living stunted lives at some lower order motivational state.
Rand specifically refers to the numerous slugs that drift through life half awake and without purpose, and they are the majority, second-handers, whereas Howard Roark is a first-hander, for whom short-term self-gratification is hardly an issue.
Second-handers or groupist nonindividuators exist at a lower, less, integrated state of developed, balanced consciousness, and first-handers exist, at more integrated states of developed consciousness as they grow in self-realization, and these egoists with their egoist morality are in that integrated state of consciousness which Jordan attributes to joiners and altruists.
J: “So, when Rand says we should be able to pursue our own selfish needs, she’s kind of taking a class—”
M: “She did not say selfish needs. She said self-interest.”
My response: Michael is emphasizing that chasing after personal needs, desire or pleasures is selfish in some trivial, sordid way, not at all what Rand was driving at; she views selfishness as moral especially when it is rational self-interest, amounting to something, building a productive life—and I go farther and suggest it is creative and self-actualizing, but Rand anticipates all of that, and it is hard work, hard grinding work, not hedonic at all. Jordan is out to lunch here.
J: “Okay, okay, so fine. Okay, okay. No, I would say she moves between those two.”
My response: She is not much interested in whimsical, or subjective, hedonic motivational thinking for the individual, and selfishness for her is rational, a sensible, higher-end self-interest, far more than taking the easy way out, all self-indulgence and gratifying what pleasure desire comes into the individual’s mind at any moment of being conscious and alive.
M: “She never says needs, I’m positive.”
J: “Okay, she never says needs.”
M: “She attacks that word all the time.”
J: “Right, right. Fair enough. Okay, okay, so I’ll back off on needs. That was ill-chosen. She makes absolutely bloody sure—now wait a second—”
M: “She says your needs are not a blank check on my (unintelligible word—Ed says).”
J: “Okay, but she uses the word selfish.”
M: “Yes, but in a very idiosyncratic way.”
J: “Okay, fine, okay, right, absolutely.
I just want to make sure that we’re proceeding on grounds we both regard as appropriate. So, the liberal types, the Scottish types, believed that if people were encouraged to pursue their self-interest, that would lead to a self-regulating system. Now Rand seems to accept that as a proposition, yes?”
M: “Yes.”
J: “So, if people are freely able to pursue their self-interest, then a system of free exchange will emerge out of that. It has the appropriate qualities of governance.”
M: “Yes, she says it explicitly on Donohue. She’s saying if people pursue their own self-interest, there wouldn’t be any oppression, there wouldn’t be any war, or there wouldn’t be any Hitler because there would be less, there wouldn’t be anything.”
My response: Malice is pointing out that Rand had concluded that evil in the world grows out of altruism-collectivism, and that good, prosperity, freedom and peace are grounded in egoism-individualism, and Jordan is saying the exact opposite of what Rand concluded.
Rand is a purist and sees egoism-individualism as pure goodness—which it mostly is but is not entirely good—and altruism-collectivism as pure evil—which it is not, but mostly is, and these are my moderate metaphysical and ethical conclusions.
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