I believe, following the logic of my reductive Three Peoples theory, that the tripartite nature of our modern society requires that the elites realize that each of the Three Peoples really does live in a different world, and that the essence of wise governance is to respect that different People will want and need -- and deserve -- the right the live their lives according to their lights.
Of course if you believe, as I do, that the fundamental nature of the creative person is that they must follow the Hero's Journey, first into the underworld of the unconscious and then into the sacrificial role of exploring the boundary between Order and Chaos, between the known and the unknown, then you will understand this. The Hero is the sacrificial Christ-like figure, reprising the role of the Son, like Marduk, Horus, and Co.
The antithesis of the Sacrificial Hero is what John Ralston Saul in Voltaire's Bastards calls the Egoistic Hero. You can see what is going on here. The man that works on the border between Order and Chaos, discovering new knowledge and power, is a very dangerous person. So it is bad enough if he is a modest sort of chap. But if he has delusions of grandeur, then it is Katy bar the door.
And, if you didn't get the point, the 20th century has produced magnificent specimens of the genus Egoistic Hero, from Lenin to Stalin to Hitler to Mao and beyond.
Our problem today is that the more influential members of our ruling class, as People of the Creative Self, have institutionalized the Egoistic Hero as the best and most wonderful thing in the world, unless he is a businessman or a right-wing politician.
Creatives of all kinds: artists, writers, intellectuals, activists, politicians, gurus; these are celebrated as the highest and best of all humans and deserving prizes, accolades, pensions, and human material on which to experiment. Every youngster from an educated home dreams of a life of creativity; that is what he has been carefully taught.
But I think the opposite is true. I think that young people should be discouraged from a life of creativity. The truth is that most people should just do the right thing and live lives of wiving and thriving. The whole creativity thing just encourages people to shortchange their life on the wiving and thriving front, and this is a great social danger, because Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
You can see the result of the celebration of the creative life. People are encouraged to think contributing to the economy, finding a life partner, and having children is not all that great shakes. They are encouraged to dream up some creative sexual identity for themselves that is a lot funner than the dull routine of selecting a life partner and being true to her through thick and thin. They are encouraged to spend their twenties "finding themselves" in some yeasty urban safe space rather than getting a job.
The truth is that the creative Hero's Journey is, in great part, an anti-social path, which will probably end in failure and misery. Because many are called but few are chosen. He who descends into the underworld of the unconsciousness will probably disappear forever, mourned only by his mother. Only he who can get through the descent into the underworld and learn its lessons can hope to return to the social world and bestow on his fellows the benison of the wisdom he learned in the darkness of the underworld.
In other words: you really don't want to try out for the Hero's Journey. You have no idea what you are signing up for.
The truth, I think is contained in the notion expressed in my latest American Thinker piece:
Of course if you believe, as I do, that the fundamental nature of the creative person is that they must follow the Hero's Journey, first into the underworld of the unconscious and then into the sacrificial role of exploring the boundary between Order and Chaos, between the known and the unknown, then you will understand this. The Hero is the sacrificial Christ-like figure, reprising the role of the Son, like Marduk, Horus, and Co.
The antithesis of the Sacrificial Hero is what John Ralston Saul in Voltaire's Bastards calls the Egoistic Hero. You can see what is going on here. The man that works on the border between Order and Chaos, discovering new knowledge and power, is a very dangerous person. So it is bad enough if he is a modest sort of chap. But if he has delusions of grandeur, then it is Katy bar the door.
And, if you didn't get the point, the 20th century has produced magnificent specimens of the genus Egoistic Hero, from Lenin to Stalin to Hitler to Mao and beyond.
Our problem today is that the more influential members of our ruling class, as People of the Creative Self, have institutionalized the Egoistic Hero as the best and most wonderful thing in the world, unless he is a businessman or a right-wing politician.
Creatives of all kinds: artists, writers, intellectuals, activists, politicians, gurus; these are celebrated as the highest and best of all humans and deserving prizes, accolades, pensions, and human material on which to experiment. Every youngster from an educated home dreams of a life of creativity; that is what he has been carefully taught.
But I think the opposite is true. I think that young people should be discouraged from a life of creativity. The truth is that most people should just do the right thing and live lives of wiving and thriving. The whole creativity thing just encourages people to shortchange their life on the wiving and thriving front, and this is a great social danger, because Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
You can see the result of the celebration of the creative life. People are encouraged to think contributing to the economy, finding a life partner, and having children is not all that great shakes. They are encouraged to dream up some creative sexual identity for themselves that is a lot funner than the dull routine of selecting a life partner and being true to her through thick and thin. They are encouraged to spend their twenties "finding themselves" in some yeasty urban safe space rather than getting a job.
The truth is that the creative Hero's Journey is, in great part, an anti-social path, which will probably end in failure and misery. Because many are called but few are chosen. He who descends into the underworld of the unconsciousness will probably disappear forever, mourned only by his mother. Only he who can get through the descent into the underworld and learn its lessons can hope to return to the social world and bestow on his fellows the benison of the wisdom he learned in the darkness of the underworld.
In other words: you really don't want to try out for the Hero's Journey. You have no idea what you are signing up for.
The truth, I think is contained in the notion expressed in my latest American Thinker piece:
The Jungians, guys like Jordan Peterson, say that the crux of all religion is the hero, the Christ-like figure, that sacrifices himself exploring the border between Order and Chaos, between the known and the unknown, so that the rest of us get to the Promised Land.
But our lefty creative friends think that they get to go to the Promised Land, and the deplorables get to be sacrificed.
No, no. True religion is not like that, lefties. Trouble is that, so long as you chaps live like Alice in your Wonderland, so long will millions suffer and die for your conceit and your folly. Because that is what happens when an egoistic activist organizes millions of victims and then fails to deliver, as Lenin and Stalin and Hitler and Mao and Castro and Chávez and Maduro failed to deliver.
Oh and don't forget Barack Obama. He went down to South Chicago for a year to organize the laid-off steelworkers. Only he discovered it was too hard. So he went to graduate school instead.
Oh and don't forget Barack Obama. He went down to South Chicago for a year to organize the laid-off steelworkers. Only he discovered it was too hard. So he went to graduate school instead.
If you want to be an activist and save the victims; an artist to discover a whole new vision; a writer to describe a whole new world, you should understand that this is hard, much harder than you can possibly imagine.
And at the end of it you must submit to the Sacrifice and become a scapegoat. Because that is the fate of he that toils at the border between Order and Chaos, between the Known and the Unknown.
Notice how that updates the notion of the scapegoat in Rene Girard's Violence and the Sacred. In Girard's notion the community chooses a scapegoat as a sacrifice to heal its divisions. In the Jungian Peterson vision the scapegoat offers himself to be sacrificed.
Until you understand that, you understand nothing.
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