Jordan Peterson, Church And Despair

 Jordan Peterson makes some terrific points in this video.

My money quote:

It's like, "Well, here's the church and here's me. And I'm right." It's like, "Well, no, you're not." And first and second, you don't even want to be because that's a great place to be, like pinnacle of brilliant wisdom. It's completely solipsistic. No tradition for me. Thank you very much. You know, I've got it all right in my head.

Solipsistic:

1. Philosophy. the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.
2. Extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.

I thought about it in the context of our recent dinner party where everyone but wife kitteh and me were laughing at a group of evangelicals and their silliness. Ha ha ha! What rubes!

Yes, I know, I've been beating this particular deceased equine for a while now, but this blog is all about working out ideas and I don't have this one fully run to ground yet. Anyway, here's the relevant excerpt from that post.

If you're going to trash wacky Christian sects, progressive politicians or gun-toting libertarians who like to wear beekeeper outfits while engaging in sex fantasies, you've got to have something better, at least in the areas their worldview covers. It works best if your worldview covers even more topics than the people at whom you're pointing and laughing.

That's what gets me the most about some of our dinner parties with secular people who like to mock the unsophisticated. Yes, there are Christian groups out there who cling to silly ideas and all of us Christians are hypocrites. Ha ha ha. You got us, pardner. Right between the eyes. Oof, I'm dead.

So what do you have? What's your cosmology? What's the meaning and purpose of life? Please derive why slavery is wrong, from first principles.

Jordan cuts even deeper. By saying that you can dismiss the Church out of hand, you're saying that you've managed to come up with a superior and holistic construct in your idle time, one that is better than Christianity. Christianity is the result of 6,000 years of intellectual evolution. It encompasses philosophy, morality, ethics, science, theology, sexuality, culture and more. It's the product of generational geniuses like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Chesterton, Lewis and Popes John Paul II and Benedict.

These guys weren't dilettantes, either. They devoted their lives to the pursuit of Truth. Meanwhile, you, in between binge-watching Netflix series, smoking weed and searching for the best Thai restaurant in San Diego, have developed a theory of reality that blows away the product of their combined lives.

How lonely it must be to live in your world. What does it feel like to look around and realize that there's no one to talk to, no one smart enough to discuss life with you? After all, none of your friends can come close to the towering intellects of CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. As for me, I'm definitely a disappointment. I can't make heads or tails of Benedict's writing. He's clearly on a level above me you're smarter than he is.

I want to apologize for wasting your time. Hopefully the food I served makes up for my vapid conversation.

What despair this must cause! I can't even imagine what it must be like to know, with certainty, that you are surrounded by intellectual inferiors. You will never be able to have a deep conversation, not once in your life.

No wonder you turn to weed. It numbs you to the tragedy of your life, masking the horror of knowing that you are peerless in your brilliance.

To you, this is what I do in my spare time.