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| Dr. Jordan Peterson, reluctant provocateur |
Some people binge watch shows on Netflix, I employ a similar strategy with video clips of university lectures and interviews of all kinds on YouTube. One week it's everything scholarly about the Battle of the Bulge, the next its archival interviews of George Harrison, followed by a fortnight with Peter Kreeft. Lately I've been all about Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychologist and professor who has caused quite a stir north of the U.S. border for his defense of free speech, along with his sharp criticism of postmodernism and its popular offspring, political correctness. Specifically he's been critical of the expansion of the Canadian Bill of Rights to include sexual orientation and gender preference. It's not that he thinks that homosexuality or transgenderism should be prohibited, but that the provisions, to his mind, are vague, self contradictory and could lead to people being prosecuted for using the wrong pronoun, even inadvertently. Peterson not only posts interviews and talks, but publishes videos of his entire university course on personality, well over 40 hours of classroom instruction. I'm not sure how the University of Toronto lets him get away with putting all those credit hours out there for free, but I'm personally grateful. I haven't sat through an entire course, opting to click on the shorter clips, digesting the lectures in chunks.
What makes Dr. Peterson so refreshing is that he is more of a philosopher than a clinician, though he is that as well. He situates his psychological theory within the context of human and cultural history, drawing greatly on the theories of Carl Jung. He believes in God and by his own reckoning is a Christian, yet he references Nietzsche to back up his thought. He is critical of the Catholic Church, but nonetheless quotes the Magisterium approvingly. He takes into account the historical, mythological, religious and evolutionary factors that make human beings the the way they are, arguing that no one theory can capture what motivates us to act as we do. What on the surface may seem like contradictions are on closer examination simply Peterson’s ability to draw distinctions. The Church of Rome as an institution is flawed - he would say corrupt - but Her intellectual tradition has a lot going for it. Nietzsche and Freud may have been wrong in their ultimate conclusions, but it doesn't mean that their observations of reality were completely off, and in many cases were dead on.
An important idea Peterson points out is that when Nietzsche famously proclaimed that God was dead, he followed it up by saying that,
"And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?"
Far from being a declaration of victory he knew that what could very well follow was chaos and nihilism. Nietzsche, along with Dostoyevsky (from the Orthodox Christian perspective), understood that the fall of the Christian ethic would throw traditional western morality off it's foundations because it's truth isn't self evident. If care wasn't taken to formulate a new, compelling secular morality the results would be tragic.
Nietzsche, even more than a century after his death, remains one of the most enigmatic, as well as influential, figures in Western thought. Some say he was a proto-Nazi, supplying the intellectual fuel for the might makes right, will to power totalitarianism of Adolf Hitler. Others claim this is a distortion promoted by his sister after Nietzsche died. In reality he's more like a forefather of the hippies, who saw the rejection of traditional religious morality and subjection of Enlightenment reason as being a path to true human liberation. I agree that tagging him a fascist is a bum rap, but even if we accept the latter interpretation he comes off as terribly naïve. That God as the standard by which reality is judged has passed away is indisputable, but the consequences have been far from sanguine.
God, or more precisely religion as the vital, informing principle in society, effectively died in Europe with the French Revolution, and what resulted was the rise of political ideologies that replaced devotion to God with total loyalty to the state sponsored system and, in many case, the leader himself. Oppression and genocide came in turn. The United States has done a better job paying lip service to the centrality of God in our lives, but even Fulton Sheen as far back in the 1940's recognized that the United States had embraced a form of materialism that put economic progress and consumerism ahead of spiritual considerations. When our morality is rooted in something less than God we are left in a quicksand of ever changing values. We today have adopted a shallow social agreeableness that we've been able to skate by on, but it has no strength to stand up against the rising tide of extremism that is engulfing us from both without and within. To fill the void left by the death of God, ideology has rushed in. Ideology is our religion, whether we know it or not.
This ideology is rooted in a combination of Nietzschean radical self determination and Marxist dialectic. On the one hand we are freed from traditional morality to determine, not only good and evil, but our personal identity "liberated" from any external measure. The bridge between Nietzsche and Marx is this rejection of reason in favor of purely subjective feelings joined to the reduction of reality to a series of power relationships. History, for the Marxist is a struggle between oppressors and oppressed. According to Marx it was an economic struggle between social classes. For the postmodernist its a struggle between groups divided by race, gender and, sexual orientation.
This commingling of philosophies results in a murky soup of clashing, arbitrary ingredients. Sexual orientation is immutable but gender identity is fluid. Racial minorities are entitled to preference, and if a caucasian identifies as African American its all good as long as they feel that way, and are down with the struggle. If any of these assumptions are questioned then the offending party is at best accused of not getting it (the last refuge of an over matched sophomore) or at worst of one social phobia or another (in other words he or she is deemed mentally ill, the first refuge of the totalitarian). Above all the revolution is permanent and the rabbit hole of self definition bottomless. The result is that we are quickly dividing ourselves into atomized units disconnected from the whole with nothing in common but that we are offended.
There is hardly a person who isn't influenced, even unconsciously, by one ideology or another. Much like Lord Keynes observed that policy makers, no matter how independent of mind they think that they are, are invariably influenced by the thinking of some defunct economist, so even “common” people today are influenced by the secular dogmas of long dead ideologues or philosophers. Even those who are political conservatives, who see themselves as standing against the postmodern wave, have been influenced by an ideology rooted in the philosophies of Edmund Burke and John Stewart Mill, along with the economic theories of Adam Smith. We remain ignorant of these philosophical currents in large part because students are discouraged from studying philosophy in any meaningful way. It's thought of as being impractical or, worse yet, irrelevant to their experience. Whether we know it or not we are swimming in a cultural stream being directed by the thoughts of, not just Nietzsche and Marx, but David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, among others. Yet even the otherwise well educated usually have scant notions of who these people were, let alone the intellectual patrimony they have left us. We have promoted a utilitarian vision of education that has turned the university into a very pricey trade school, that leaves its students ill equipped to be active, informed citizens, though it does do them the favor of being saddled with a huge debt.
As Marshall McLuhan used to say, a fish is completely unaware of the water it's swimming in, and we are generally unaware of the intellectual currents that engulf us. Even those who are Christians swim along oblivious, not understanding that the principles proposed by Nietzsche and Marx are incongruous with the Gospel we profess, yet we drink them in anyhow. The Christian ethic may not be completely dead as a cultural force, but it has been minimized. It continues exercise a low level influence, even as the the intellectual class has rejected it, and the popular culture ridicules it. For the most part though we live under the illusion of being free, when we are actually slaves to the thought of two dead white European philosophers.
We have killed God in the form of rejecting religion, but have adopted ideology in its place. Rather than the Gospel, and more precisely the person of Jesus, serving as our guiding light, we follow secular messiahs with the ultimate doctrines of men. Rather than looking outward, to a standard beyond ourselves, we drive deeper and deeper into our own egos, making the self a god. Ideology replaces the intellectual, doctrinal component of religion, but there is still a desire within us for the mystical. Contrary to what many think, the rejection of God won't result in a purely reasonable, rational world, free of superstition. Ideology has filled in the human need to believe. As we shall see, the popular death of God hasn't meant the death of belief in the spiritual, because this belief is a part of our nature. In place of traditional religion we have seen the resurgence of paganism, and the rise of the occult. More on this next time.
Nietzsche, even more than a century after his death, remains one of the most enigmatic, as well as influential, figures in Western thought. Some say he was a proto-Nazi, supplying the intellectual fuel for the might makes right, will to power totalitarianism of Adolf Hitler. Others claim this is a distortion promoted by his sister after Nietzsche died. In reality he's more like a forefather of the hippies, who saw the rejection of traditional religious morality and subjection of Enlightenment reason as being a path to true human liberation. I agree that tagging him a fascist is a bum rap, but even if we accept the latter interpretation he comes off as terribly naïve. That God as the standard by which reality is judged has passed away is indisputable, but the consequences have been far from sanguine.
God, or more precisely religion as the vital, informing principle in society, effectively died in Europe with the French Revolution, and what resulted was the rise of political ideologies that replaced devotion to God with total loyalty to the state sponsored system and, in many case, the leader himself. Oppression and genocide came in turn. The United States has done a better job paying lip service to the centrality of God in our lives, but even Fulton Sheen as far back in the 1940's recognized that the United States had embraced a form of materialism that put economic progress and consumerism ahead of spiritual considerations. When our morality is rooted in something less than God we are left in a quicksand of ever changing values. We today have adopted a shallow social agreeableness that we've been able to skate by on, but it has no strength to stand up against the rising tide of extremism that is engulfing us from both without and within. To fill the void left by the death of God, ideology has rushed in. Ideology is our religion, whether we know it or not.
This ideology is rooted in a combination of Nietzschean radical self determination and Marxist dialectic. On the one hand we are freed from traditional morality to determine, not only good and evil, but our personal identity "liberated" from any external measure. The bridge between Nietzsche and Marx is this rejection of reason in favor of purely subjective feelings joined to the reduction of reality to a series of power relationships. History, for the Marxist is a struggle between oppressors and oppressed. According to Marx it was an economic struggle between social classes. For the postmodernist its a struggle between groups divided by race, gender and, sexual orientation.
This commingling of philosophies results in a murky soup of clashing, arbitrary ingredients. Sexual orientation is immutable but gender identity is fluid. Racial minorities are entitled to preference, and if a caucasian identifies as African American its all good as long as they feel that way, and are down with the struggle. If any of these assumptions are questioned then the offending party is at best accused of not getting it (the last refuge of an over matched sophomore) or at worst of one social phobia or another (in other words he or she is deemed mentally ill, the first refuge of the totalitarian). Above all the revolution is permanent and the rabbit hole of self definition bottomless. The result is that we are quickly dividing ourselves into atomized units disconnected from the whole with nothing in common but that we are offended.
There is hardly a person who isn't influenced, even unconsciously, by one ideology or another. Much like Lord Keynes observed that policy makers, no matter how independent of mind they think that they are, are invariably influenced by the thinking of some defunct economist, so even “common” people today are influenced by the secular dogmas of long dead ideologues or philosophers. Even those who are political conservatives, who see themselves as standing against the postmodern wave, have been influenced by an ideology rooted in the philosophies of Edmund Burke and John Stewart Mill, along with the economic theories of Adam Smith. We remain ignorant of these philosophical currents in large part because students are discouraged from studying philosophy in any meaningful way. It's thought of as being impractical or, worse yet, irrelevant to their experience. Whether we know it or not we are swimming in a cultural stream being directed by the thoughts of, not just Nietzsche and Marx, but David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, among others. Yet even the otherwise well educated usually have scant notions of who these people were, let alone the intellectual patrimony they have left us. We have promoted a utilitarian vision of education that has turned the university into a very pricey trade school, that leaves its students ill equipped to be active, informed citizens, though it does do them the favor of being saddled with a huge debt.
As Marshall McLuhan used to say, a fish is completely unaware of the water it's swimming in, and we are generally unaware of the intellectual currents that engulf us. Even those who are Christians swim along oblivious, not understanding that the principles proposed by Nietzsche and Marx are incongruous with the Gospel we profess, yet we drink them in anyhow. The Christian ethic may not be completely dead as a cultural force, but it has been minimized. It continues exercise a low level influence, even as the the intellectual class has rejected it, and the popular culture ridicules it. For the most part though we live under the illusion of being free, when we are actually slaves to the thought of two dead white European philosophers.
We have killed God in the form of rejecting religion, but have adopted ideology in its place. Rather than the Gospel, and more precisely the person of Jesus, serving as our guiding light, we follow secular messiahs with the ultimate doctrines of men. Rather than looking outward, to a standard beyond ourselves, we drive deeper and deeper into our own egos, making the self a god. Ideology replaces the intellectual, doctrinal component of religion, but there is still a desire within us for the mystical. Contrary to what many think, the rejection of God won't result in a purely reasonable, rational world, free of superstition. Ideology has filled in the human need to believe. As we shall see, the popular death of God hasn't meant the death of belief in the spiritual, because this belief is a part of our nature. In place of traditional religion we have seen the resurgence of paganism, and the rise of the occult. More on this next time.
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