Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

THREE INTERESTING QUESTIONS

Dr Peterson,

I have three of questions about your combined use of mythology, literary analysis, personality psychology, and self-authoring for the purpose of education, diagnosis, and transformation.

The three questions are:

1) Are you, through your research, restoring our lost discipline of Stoicism (and have you considered that parallel? Do you have any thoughts on the subject?)

2) What is the current scope of your ambitions? Where do you see your work leading? Especially now that you have captured so much attention.

3) Given that the technique of employing suggestion that is common to abrahamic religions, marxism, postmodernism, and ‘political correctness’, if not all propaganda, is the use of the chain of myths from zoroaster, through the middle east, through the abrahamic religions, through the postmodern literature. Whereas the animistic myths common to all peoples, and the anthropomorphic myths common to most peoples do not make pretenses to truth instead, only wisdom, the authoritarian myths communicate utility (the monomyth>archetype>plot>virtue hierarchy) with what appears to be tragic externalities. While the other traditions and in particular the chinese and western do not produce tragic externalities. So what is your position on the use of fictionalisms? (meaning the use of hyperbole and exaggeration for the purpose of education, versus the use of ideals, utopias, and the supernatural – particularly the problem of conflation.).

If you can answer these as is, that’s it. The rest below, merely elaborates on these three questions in some detail.

—-ELABORATION—-

QUESTION 1) ARE YOU RESTORING STOICISM?

It certainly appears to me that between your use of the structure of myths, their correspondence with psychology, and self authoring, that you are advocating a modern, and scientific version, of Stoicism. I would venture that Stoicism, because of its action-orientation, was far superior to buddhism, and buddhism far superior to every other method of education in what we call ‘ mindfulness’ – regardless of whether it was taught by prophets, priests, philosophers, professors, or ordinary teachers, and whether taught as religion, spiritualism, ritual, or skill.

Now setting aside that stoicism was a far larger program than its self authoring component, is it possible to scale your work on ‘self authoring’ institutionally and restore it as a central skill. (FWIW: my objective is restoring grammar logic, testimony, and rhetoric to central skills requirements for similar reasons)

QUESTION 2) WHAT IS THE SCOPE OF YOUR AMBITION (CURRENTLY)?

Here are three choices that represent a spectrum of possible ambitions I can imagine given the potential reach of your combination of cognitive science, psychology, literary analysis, and politics.

1) Providing a clinical solution to the problem of modernity: meaning the suite of problems that arises when due to the complexity of the civic order, cause and consequence, are often out of our perception and cognition. This is how I might classify your research.

2) Producing a reformation of civic religion, by similar means to the Augustinian integration of greek thought, by combining evolutionary biology, psychology, literary analysis, and the inventory of parables, myths, legends and histories.

Note that I doubt that this is your intention, but as far as I am able to determine, of the myths, civic festival, civic ritual, and personal ritual that constitute civic religions, the rational use of the monomyth, archetypes, possible literary plots, and virtues, appears to provide wisdom (decidability) in successful navigation of one’s life, and either resistance to or vulnerability to ignorance, bias, wishful thinking, and deceit.

3) Success in filling a market demand for means of opposing the forms of fictionalism: including (a) fundamentalism(meaning the conflation of history literature, wisdom and truth, advice and law), (b) marxism(meaning pseudoscience)/postmodernism(meaning pseudo-rationalism), (c) idealism, such as mathematical platonism, utopianism, universalism, and (d) political correctness (meaning outright lying).

QUESTION 3 ) USING FICTIONALISM VS LITERARY ANALOGY

Now, I have no idea how you will feel (or what you will think) about the this question, but I recognize that it’s sensitive, because it questions the utility of religions because of the myths they depend upon.

In simple terms, the question is “what are the limits to the contents of portfolios of myths?”

Across all civilizations, our myths rely on the monomyth, a limited set of archetypes, a limited set of plots, and limited set of virtues to provide us with wisdom – where wisdom, if operationally described, provides us with a continuous means of identifying opportunities to pursue, and hazards to avoid, and a continuous means of choice in their selection or avoidance.

But, aside from the myths themselves, different mythic traditions include (a)statements about the universe, (b)our relationship to it, (c) our polity’s ambitions within it, – our polity’s competitive strategy for persistence and (d) the means of communicating all of the above.

So, “what properties of myths produce externalities, the cumulative effect of which is destructive to individual, polity and mankind?”

Because as far as I can tell, while the myths teach us many lessons, the techniques by which myths are conveyed, are perhaps more consequential, than the statements about the universe, or the lessons we learn about life from the myths themselves.

Or rather, while the monomyth,archetypes,plots and virtues all teach us the same lessons about ourselves, they say very different things about the world itself. Or worse, there are sources of both knowledge and ignorance.

You have spoken with no small passion and elegance about what we can learn from time tested lessons of history, and how those lessons map to both literary analysis, psychological experience, our brain structure, evolutionary necessity, and actions in reality. The scope of this correlative and apparently causal set of relationships serves to suggest that over the long term, wisdom literature – at least in cases of uncertainty – provides by survival in the market for application, if not scientific experiment, an effective method of learning about the world, our place in it, and how successfully survive in it.

You have spoken a little less frequently but just as eloquently about the difference between a voluntary and involuntary mythos. Where in the voluntary mythos, man and god are bound by the laws of nature, and wherein the gods, demigods, and heroes (saints) provide advice but not command, and wisdom but not law. And where, we may trade with those gods — and if we are cunning and virtuous, we may not only outwit or defeat those gods, but rise to join them in some lesser manner. … And where in the involuntary mythos, nature is bound by the gods as is man, and we are not given wisdom and advice, but threat and law, and we do not trade but appease.

You have participated in an uncomfortable argument where you conflated the true, the good, and the preferable, against an opponent for whom preference is a choice of the individual, the good is achieved by cooperative discovery and agreement, and the true provides decidability in matters of dispute regardless of one’s preference, or our agreement upon the good. (Although it appears both you and harris lacked the vocabulary for bringing that discussion to conclusion)

You have talked about heroism(the direction of aggression to the service of the commons) and truth(the use of deflationary truth – as in military ‘reporting’ free of embellishment or opinion) regardless of it’s effects on the dominance( status ) hierarchy, but not talked about sovereignty(meritocracy).

I have not seen you mention deflationary truth as unique to western civilization, where deflationary truth ( testimonly that is free of opinion, suggestion, obscurantism, and fictionalism). When it is the combination of both deflationary truth AND its use regardless of hierarchical consequences that is unique to the west.

I believe I have seen you mention historicizing myths but I have not seen you discuss the problem of fictionalism in myth. In other words, the difference between the aristotelian descriptive(history), the literary analogy, the platonic and ideal, the animistic, and the abrahamic supernatural that conflates the real and ideal, good and true, wisdom and law.

action rituals vs internal rituals.

Not at all about how internal rituals appear to produce addiction behaviors.

And this is where I am troubled, and where I ask my question. That is, the use of mythical literature, the archetypes, the plots, the virtues, the metaphysical relationships between ourselves, nature, gods, as wisdom literature appears to compete effectively with science, reason, and law. But whenever

And the reason I ask, is that…

…the techniques of Abrahamic religions: obedience, monopoly, and fictionalism, (meaning: denying truth by supernaturalism and idealism)…

…and the techniques of Freudianism, Boazianism, Marxism, Scientific-Socialism (meaning: denying truth by pseudoscience), …

…and the techniques of Postmodernism(meaning: denying truth by pseudo-ratioanlism), …

…and the techniques of Political Correctness(meaning: just outright lying), …

…all make use of the same process: conflation, loading, framing, fictionalism and overloading, to bypass reason and appeal to the genetic biases of our intuitions – or at least a subset of those intuitions.

All transfer of meaning requires the art of suggestion. The value of myths, legends, parables, fairy tales, or any narrative at all, is in training us in general rules or collections we might call models, by suggestion, through the use of sympathetic analogy, and our increase in suggestibility under the narrative process.

The problem is that just as we can be taught by suggestion, we can be deceived and harmed by suggestion.

You are on the way to restoring our ancient literary ‘Religion’, but he seems bent on preserving the ‘fictionalism’ (lies) of Abrahamism.

My question is, why preserve the lies of Abrahamism, if is is the use of the techniques of Abrahamism – fictionalism as a means of deception by suggestion – that the marxists (pseudo-science) and postmodernists (pseudorationalism) used to defeat the west in both the ancient and modern eras?