Sep 26, 2023 08:17 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 27, 2023 02:31 AM by C C.)
The problem is that Ayn Rand is never even mentioned in the video clip below. Nor it seems in the original, overall conversation (if going by a scan of that transcript). Where Peterson and Rand would obviously agree is in both disliking collectivism.
So via the following dialogue, I take it that one difference between them is that Peterson sees the Judeo-Christian tradition of the West as contributing to the "sovereign individual" concept. Whereas a [militant] atheist like Rand would probably have felt horror at the idea of that or ever acknowledging such an intellectual ancestor for it.
If one simply performs a mundane synonym search to see what words pop-up in association with Judeo-Christian, it is the W.E.I.R.D. acronym stuff that was largely alien to the rest of the world prior to European imperialism. Items like Western origin, capitalism, industrialization, (eventually) education for the lower classes, mature democracy, (classic) liberalism, and then negatives like colonialism, etc.
This is why Christianity (and its philosophical outgrowths) -- in contrast to other religions and native beliefs -- doesn't get a free pass in today's postmodern order; especially with respect to the ongoing decolonization of knowledge. In addition to ancient Greek thought, Christian influence fueled part of the West's development and legacy; and was a cohort in the sense of missionary and Church work paving the way for successful colonization slash subjugation of New World, African, Asian, and Oceanic cultures. The latter history serving as the backbone for grievances in the array of political offshoots stemming from Marxist cultural analysis and their simplistically medieval or binary oppressor/victim template.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
https://youtu.be/5k4qCk6E_GI
VIDEO EXCERPTS: What I'd like to ask you about is that is the connection between or the ways in which the collectivist thinking results in the annihilation of all human particularity -- whether its economic or familial or you might say it seems to me that what's going on in the collectivist thinking is the absolute enemy of human particularity and freedom itself.
The enemy of the idea of the individual, the sovereign individual, which is the central idea of the West. I mean that's manifested in the underlying religious structures, so if you think about Christianity for example, you think about Christianity psychologically stripped it of its metaphysics, at least for the purposes of the argument.
[...] First of all, the individual is the locus of suffering, and also the locus of responsibility. So those are really the two reasons for that. The individual has to be made primary, and the divinity element of the individual. This, I think, is coded in our deepest stories. It's really deeply coded in in Genesis, particularly in the opening chapters.
What human beings confront in their lives is akin to what God Himself confronted at the beginning of time, and so it's easy for us to believe that we're deterministic creatures like clocks and and that it's the past that drives us forward in a deterministic manner into the future.
But I don't believe that's the case, I don't think there's any evidence that that's the case, because people are so complex. You actually can't predict them as if they're deterministic, except in very constrained circumstances.
So it's a hypothesis, but it's not a very good one. And although it has its utility, what seems to me to be the case [...] is that human beings constantly confront a landscape of possibility.
[...] One of our fundamental ethical requirements is for you to confront that potential properly and that would be to live up to your responsibility. You have these gifts and talents and possibilities that have been granted to you, and if you fail to make use of them, your talents -- let's say then that's a sin of sorts. And that's a religious way of thinking about it, but it doesn't matter. Because that's how people treat each other.
If you have a child for example or a spouse or a friend brother to anyone you care about, you have the intuition that they could be making more of themselves.
[...] I think that all of those ideas are integral to the Judeo-Christian substrate of Western culture -- they're fundamental ideas. So if you put the group before the individual, then all of that disappears.
I guess when you're when you're debating with the radical leftist, postmodern types about free speech, you're actually not debating with them about free speech. Because they don't believe in free speech, it's not part of their conceptual universe.
Because for for speech to be free and therefore valuable, the people conducting the conversation have to be sovereign individuals capable of generating independent thought, independent of their canonical group identity.
And reach a consensus through that process of dialogue. None of that exists in the postmodern world. All of those preconceptions would be attributed to something like Eurocentric neocolonialism -- something like that...
Jordan Peterson explains his BIG DIFFERENCE with AYN RAND
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/5k4qCk6E_GI
So via the following dialogue, I take it that one difference between them is that Peterson sees the Judeo-Christian tradition of the West as contributing to the "sovereign individual" concept. Whereas a [militant] atheist like Rand would probably have felt horror at the idea of that or ever acknowledging such an intellectual ancestor for it.
If one simply performs a mundane synonym search to see what words pop-up in association with Judeo-Christian, it is the W.E.I.R.D. acronym stuff that was largely alien to the rest of the world prior to European imperialism. Items like Western origin, capitalism, industrialization, (eventually) education for the lower classes, mature democracy, (classic) liberalism, and then negatives like colonialism, etc.
This is why Christianity (and its philosophical outgrowths) -- in contrast to other religions and native beliefs -- doesn't get a free pass in today's postmodern order; especially with respect to the ongoing decolonization of knowledge. In addition to ancient Greek thought, Christian influence fueled part of the West's development and legacy; and was a cohort in the sense of missionary and Church work paving the way for successful colonization slash subjugation of New World, African, Asian, and Oceanic cultures. The latter history serving as the backbone for grievances in the array of political offshoots stemming from Marxist cultural analysis and their simplistically medieval or binary oppressor/victim template.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
https://youtu.be/5k4qCk6E_GI
VIDEO EXCERPTS: What I'd like to ask you about is that is the connection between or the ways in which the collectivist thinking results in the annihilation of all human particularity -- whether its economic or familial or you might say it seems to me that what's going on in the collectivist thinking is the absolute enemy of human particularity and freedom itself.
The enemy of the idea of the individual, the sovereign individual, which is the central idea of the West. I mean that's manifested in the underlying religious structures, so if you think about Christianity for example, you think about Christianity psychologically stripped it of its metaphysics, at least for the purposes of the argument.
[...] First of all, the individual is the locus of suffering, and also the locus of responsibility. So those are really the two reasons for that. The individual has to be made primary, and the divinity element of the individual. This, I think, is coded in our deepest stories. It's really deeply coded in in Genesis, particularly in the opening chapters.
What human beings confront in their lives is akin to what God Himself confronted at the beginning of time, and so it's easy for us to believe that we're deterministic creatures like clocks and and that it's the past that drives us forward in a deterministic manner into the future.
But I don't believe that's the case, I don't think there's any evidence that that's the case, because people are so complex. You actually can't predict them as if they're deterministic, except in very constrained circumstances.
So it's a hypothesis, but it's not a very good one. And although it has its utility, what seems to me to be the case [...] is that human beings constantly confront a landscape of possibility.
[...] One of our fundamental ethical requirements is for you to confront that potential properly and that would be to live up to your responsibility. You have these gifts and talents and possibilities that have been granted to you, and if you fail to make use of them, your talents -- let's say then that's a sin of sorts. And that's a religious way of thinking about it, but it doesn't matter. Because that's how people treat each other.
If you have a child for example or a spouse or a friend brother to anyone you care about, you have the intuition that they could be making more of themselves.
[...] I think that all of those ideas are integral to the Judeo-Christian substrate of Western culture -- they're fundamental ideas. So if you put the group before the individual, then all of that disappears.
I guess when you're when you're debating with the radical leftist, postmodern types about free speech, you're actually not debating with them about free speech. Because they don't believe in free speech, it's not part of their conceptual universe.
Because for for speech to be free and therefore valuable, the people conducting the conversation have to be sovereign individuals capable of generating independent thought, independent of their canonical group identity.
And reach a consensus through that process of dialogue. None of that exists in the postmodern world. All of those preconceptions would be attributed to something like Eurocentric neocolonialism -- something like that...
Jordan Peterson explains his BIG DIFFERENCE with AYN RAND