"I'm a Christian and a Marxist" | Jordan B Peterson

van Badham hoo-hoo-hoo describe was described not by me as a writer activist and Twitter Queen um which is I think like being the red queen in in Ellison Wunderland something like that I went on her Twitter site today to find out how many followers she has but apparently I'm not one of them because I'm blocked and it kind of surprises me because I didn't know that I'd ever tried to follow her but anyways she said and this was interesting she said I'm a Christian and a Marxist and I thought no you can only be a Christian and a Marxist if you well there's a couple of ways one is one is that you just want to be all things that are good at once regardless of their internal contradictions and so that would be one reason and another reason would be that you don't know anything about Christianity or Marxism and and and then the next would be that you're just compartmentalized you know like there's this idea that people can't hold 2 contradictory thoughts in their mind at the same time well that idea was formulated by someone who who's never met a human being because you can hold like 50 contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time as you know whenever you argue with someone that you love because you love them and maybe you even like them but you also hate them and you wish that you could just crush them right there and then and so like that's a lot of contradictory ideas and that's probably only like half the contradictory ideas that are running through your mind at the moment you know so man you're so full of contradictions that it's just beyond belief and the only time I mean I know this because I read undergraduate essays and what's what's interesting about undergraduate essays is it's so interesting because the undergraduate will make a claim paragraph one and then in paragraph seven we'll make the opposite claim and they won't notice that they're intellectually in commensurate and you know that might happen thirty times in the essay and and the reason that that that works is because well they haven't been called on paradoxes but also because they haven't had to live the paradoxes through because you're really only straighten out your thought when you have like impulse a and impulse B and they conflict at the same time right and you can either do one or the other but not both you know if it's a today and B tomorrow well then you can be you can hold those ideas simultaneously but if it's a or B right now then you have to decide is a more important or is B more important you have to put them in a hierarchy and then you have to act them out and you have to see what happens and so then you find out if you're full of contradictions and part of the way that you iron out your contradictions which is very very hard to do is that you won't and you do a whole bunch of things in the world like Socrates did you go you have your adventure in the world and you put your ideas to the test and those that work out in a paradoxical or counterproductive manner you dispense with or put lower on the priority list or something like that and that's how you discover that you know you can't hold in commensurate views simultaneously Carl Jung said that something like paradoxical views that are not made conscious will be played out in the world as fate and that's really worth thinking about too so if you have your let's call it your typical negative experience you know what this thing that just keeps them seems to just keep happening to you bad luck let's call it it's highly probable that there's a set of ideas that are occupying you preoccupying you possessing you that are driving you in this direction continually and that you you can't or won't work out the contradiction and as a consequence you know maybe you think every woman is your mother and you haven't noticed that you think that and that that you know and it is something that people think because women are mothers are women and it's not a bad initial template but you know you gotta you gotta modify it to some degree and you know if that's an unconscious idea that you have and you continue to play it out you may run into your continual habitual negative experience with women and you wonder what the hell is wrong with women but there it isn't the women that has the problem it's you and and you know if you run into problems with women all the time then it's highly probable that the problem is you so not always but generally so let's go into this Marxist and Christian idea here just for a minute so we'll start with we'll start with some of the ideas of marks while Marx believed that people were basically socially constructed so that we were blank slates and that whatever our nature was was given to us essentially by our surroundings but even more importantly by our social class right because Marx was a theorist of social class and believed that the primary dispute let's say the primary motivator of human history the primary driver of human history was something like the rich versus the poor the verge huazi versus the proletariat and that was a consequence of your social upbringing and that your group identity was paramount ok so there's nothing about that it's vaguely Christian that's not how the Christian worldview works know how the judeo-christian worldview works because in that world you you're fundamentally an individual your nature is fundamentally attributable to you by God you're fundamentally responsible to God and your and and history itself is something like the playing out of your relationship to the transcendent so those things aren't even those aren't the same they're not commensurate you can't believe both of them at the same time Marxism is a materialistic philosophy it's predicated on the idea that essentially an idea that Dostoevsky criticized in great depth was that if you just made people rich enough let's say if you deprived them of their privation if you equalize their economic status let's say that the Utopia would come to light upon earth and you know I I have a certain amount of sympathy for a view point like that because you know who likes starvation and and misery you know there's nothing positive to be said about that but I think Dostoyevsky was right too in his criticism of Marxism although he wasn't directly aiming this at Marx in notes from underground where he noted that you know if you gave people what they wanted in terms of let's say bread and circuses they had as he said nothing to do but eat cakes and busy themselves with the continuation of the species which is kind of a nice phrase that the first thing they would do is take a hammer and smash things just so that something improbable and strange would happen just so that we could have our way you know and it's kind of a recapitulation of the idea of original sin in in Dostoyevsky subtle manner is that were the sorts of creatures that you know what did he say we're ungrateful that's the thing that primarily distinguishes us from animals is we're ungrateful and that we can curse that was what he thought but he does different than animals and that if even if we got what we wanted materially that wouldn't satisfy us because we're not the sorts of creatures that can be satisfied with material possessions lets their material comfort because it isn't even obvious that we're after comfort I mean what do you want you want you want to just lay in a feather bed and eat peeled grapes all day I mean maybe for an hour or so that might not be a bad idea but you know it's gonna get dull pretty quick you're gonna go out looking for trouble and and it's certainly possible that the more material resources and the easier they were to get that you have at your disposal the more creative ways you're going to find to cause yourself trouble when you go out and look for trouble and so and that's a testament to the human spirit and dusty Eskie knew this is like well whatever we're here for it isn't the Utopia of it material distribution that's not we're not we're not we're not looking to be fed and asleep you know and I don't know what it is that we're looking for god only knows maybe what we're looking for is to continually keep looking something like that I mean that's the sorts of creatures that we are but but but the materialist philosophy is that well if you just provided for people economically problem over and no wrong I mean most of you are as given that you're you know you're going to be ill in one way or another and that you're still subject to mortality and and all of the terrible natural limitations that human beings are characterized by your mode is well off as you're gonna get you know the economic data already show that once you have enough money so that bill collectors aren't chasing you which basically puts you say at the kind of in the upper reaches of the working class or maybe the lower end of the middle class something like that that additional money has absolutely no effect whatsoever on your self-reported well-being which is something like a combination of positive emotion and absence of negative emotion so you might like to think that you know if you were rich your life would be better and maybe it would be somewhat better but it wouldn't be as much better as you might hope and that's because you'd still have most of the problems that people have you know you still maybe wouldn't get along with your sister and you'd still get divorced and maybe you'd even be more likely to and there'd still be illnesses that would be set you you'd be able to deal with them perhaps with some degree a more urgency but and you'd still have the problem with what the hell your life is for and what you're doing on the planet and how to conduct yourself in the proper way and so so we don't want to be too naive about materialism even though we don't want to be ungrateful for its advantages Marx also believed while I said this already that you know history was basically characterized by the war of socio-economic groups that's been transformed more recently into the war of identity groups which is the same damn thing and it's same old wolf in new sheep's clothing as far as I'm concerned that you know the best way to conceptualize human beings is well I don't know whatever your damn identity is maybe it's sex for you and it's ethnicity for you and it's gender for you and god only knows what it is for you and you know and that's who you identify with and all there is in the world and this is the postmodernist view is hierarchies of people in these identity groups struggling for Dominion you know and that's a quasi Marxist viewpoint it's just a variant of the bourgeoisie versus proletariat theory of history which is a foolish theory as far as I'm concerned and certainly not one that we need to take forward into the 21st century although we seem you know destined to insist that we do so he believed that the revolutionary overthrow of the oppressor class was necessary and morally demanded and that turns out to be a little bloodier than I would say the typical Christian judeo-christian ethic might require because it doesn't require you to take up arms against your evil overlords and well put them in gulags and kill them by the millions for example and that to me seems to be an important difference there's there's no in in the judeo-christian tradition there's no guilt there's no group guilt right you're guilty and you're guilty of different things right I presume and that's your problem but maybe you're also innocent who knows you know but whatever it's on you it's not a consequence of your racial heritage or your ethnicity or your gender any of those things it's it's between you and God let's say us between you and the state even but at least it's between you and the state or God it's not like well you know your father was a factory owner let's say your grandfather and so it was perfectly reasonable during the Russian Revolution and the Red Terror to vacuum you up along with your whole family and do away with you because you'd be the irredeemable tainted by your bourgeoisie past so that's another place where Marxism and judeo-christianity are then they're not just different like their opposite you know it's not just variant one invariant - these are like seriously different ideas and so there's another reason you can't be a Marxist and a Christian as if you and then there's the idea that you know that Marx had that religion was the opiate of the masses which doesn't exactly sound like I've always thought religion was the opiate of the masses but communism Marxism was the methamphetamine of the of the masses let's say yeah the meth of the masses we we had no idea with regards to opiate so here's what Marx has to say about religion the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for the real happiness to call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions it's interesting to me because it's not like the judeo-christian story was really a happy one as far as far as I can tell you know I mean there was heaven but the chance to see you were gonna get in man that was low and and and mostly it was fair bit of original sin you know and a fair bit of you wrestling with all of your inadequacies and your proclivity towards malevolence to pick up your cross to bear your suffering to understand that you know there was a war in your soul between the forces of good and evil it's like how that's an opiate is beyond me I mean if I was gonna design an opiate that made people feel better I'd certainly dispense with a fair bit of that it's like whatever you do is okay we could start with that there's certainly no hell that's something we're gonna get rid of right away little less guilt and shame would be it could be like a hippie cult in the 1960s you know with a little more marijuana and some free sex something something like that so I don't really understand the illusion idea there is Marxist my suppose of the belief of you know the great the Great Father in the sky hoo-hoo-hoo still doesn't seem to me to be that like me sort of still kind of a nightmarish creature All Things Considered since at least in principle he's keeping track of everything you do even more than you are and that's not such a good thing but whatever so it's a foolish criticism as far as I can tell it doesn't matter he's still criticized it the criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of that veil of Tears of which religion is the halo criticism meaning his has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower that's something that plenty of Marxists did that I can tell you the criticism of religion disillusions man so that he will think act and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses so that he will move around himself as his own true son s UN yeah well that's that's Marxism in a nutshell all right I mean that's like that's the fundamental definition of pathological merit narcissism so that he will move around himself as his own true son right religion is only the illusory son which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself and you know generally we don't use that as an insult he only revolves around himself isn't that an insult and isn't this a reason for that don't we assume that there's something that you should be revolving around that isn't just yourself you know it's it's it's and it could be many things you know it could be while someone you love that would be a start could be a child could could be your your partner in life it could be it could be your family in extension could be your community it could be some noble ideal that you're trying to serve should be something other than you as the primary center of the universe around which while you and presumably everything else revolves so I don't really see that as a particularly why what would you call it philosophy and as it manifested itself in the world you know I would say Stalin probably revolved around himself quite nicely since and don't you think I mean if you had to pick someone who was revolving around himself it would be a pretty decent competition between Mao and Stalin and and and and that didn't seem to be that didn't seem to be for the best so so that's something to consider as well the Marxists believed that religion hindered human development and the Soviets and the Maoists instituted state atheism apart from the worship of their leaders of course and then I'm gonna read you a poem by Marx this is a good one I found this a while back god it's a rough poem and you know you want it you want to let your imagination sort of I would say let your imagination loose with with this poem which is what you should do with the poem and imagine the sort of state of mind that you have to be in to write a poem like this and then also imagine as you should that poetry like dreams are the birth it's the birthplace of thought with my undergraduates often especially ones that are really obsessed with ideas they'll often put really bad poetry in their essays and and I'm not saying that in a in a cynical way because bad poetry can have good ideas in it it's it's hard to write good poetry you know but the thing is often an idea that's extraordinarily emotional in content will manifest itself as a poem before it is able to articulate itself out into a fully expressed philosophy and so I see this with my undergraduates they'll really be obsessed with something that's bothering them then the rights of some poem often about a personal experience and then as I help them shape the essay they kind of unfold the poem into an articulated statement about the structure of reality and so you could say well you know we're all embedded in the dream we know that you go to sleep every night and you dream you're embedded in your imagination if if you're if you're forbidden to dream if you're deprived of your dreams you will lose your mind that's been experimentally demonstrated quite nicely on animals but also on human beings you have to dream you have to enter that that realm of incoherent imagination and possibility in order to maintain your sanity which is extraordinarily interesting and very strange and I would say poetry exists on the border between the dream and the fully articulate wakefulness it's it's it's it's it's the place where the image of the dream meets the meets the meets the meets the articulated speech of full consciousness and so you can think about that with regards to this poem invocation of one in despair so a God has snatched from me all my all in the curse and rack of Destiny all his worlds are gone beyond recall nothing but revenge is left to me on my self revenge I'll proudly wreak on that being that enthroned Lord make my strength a patchwork of what's weak leave my better self without reward I shall build my throne high overhead cold tremendous shall at summit be for its bulwark superstitious dread for its Marshall blackest agony who looks upon it with a healthy I shall turn back struck deathly pale and dumb clutched by blind and chilled mortality may his happiness prepare its tomb and the Almighty's Lightning shall rebound from that massive Iron Giant if he brings my walls and towers down eternity shall raise them up defiant well I would say that's the sort of poem that would be written by someone who revolved around himself as own true Sun and I would also say that given what we know about what happened as a consequence of the instantiation of Marxist doctrine that this is a truly horrifying piece of literature to contemplate written by the way when Marx was rather young

Channel: Jordan B Peterson Clips

Views: 1,233,805

Keywords: psychology, philosophy, Jordan B. Peterson, Jordan Peterson, JB Peterson, jordanbpeterson, jordanpeterson, personality, understandmyself, selfauthoring, neuropsychology, christianity, christian, marxist, marxism, religion

Id: fvmn1wLglak

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2019