A personal story of Salvation:

From Marx to Rand to Peterson

I was born 54 years ago in a leftish family in Argentina where my parents had a huge and beautiful black and white portrait of the Che Guevara smoking a Cuban cigar hanging in their bedroom, which they had to bury in the backyard together with books and other “forbidden” stuff when the last and most sanguinary military dictatorship came into power thru a coup d'etat in the mid 70’s

My aunt lived many years in Castro’s Cuba as an active militant in the Communist Party and all my brothers were and still are militants of socialists or populist parties in Argentina

I was myself an activist of different Marxist oriented political and cultural movements until my 40’s when by blessing of the Providence I got in contact with a professor teaching some training course in communication at the company I was working for, who first introduced me to Ayn Rand and Objectivism

(and I said blessing of the Providence as Ayn Rand is absolutely and completely unknown in Argentina)

Thanks to Ayn Rand I made a 180 degrees turn in my life and decided ten years ago to move to the US with my family (for which all my relatives in Argentina casted me out as the black sheep who came to live in the capitalist “Evil Empire of the North”)

As a somewhat unorthodox Objectivist I have read almost all Rand’s book including her philosophical novels and non-fictions essays and work about Philosophy, Epistemology, etc.

But some years ago I began to have the uncomfortable internal feeling that Objectivism was not the final philosophical answer I was looking for as I began to realize that Rand completely missed the point when it comes to consider more in depth what we as humans really are and behave

I think the closest Rand came to know better human nature was thru the Psychologist Nathaniel Branden her partner and co-writer in some books who became years later a best-selling author on self-help focused on Self Esteem

Rand was a fierce follower of the Aristotelian maxim “A=A” meaning that everything has a specific nature and fighting against reality is a lost battle from the get-go. Another of her favorite sayings used to be “Nature to be commanded must be obeyed” but I don’t’ thing she followed her own advice when it comes to human nature, we are much more than just our intellect and our Reason which for Rand was almost everything there is to man, or at least the most important feature that should be in complete command of everything else. See picture 1: Objectivism in a nutshell

                          Picture 1

Objective ethics: Can a completely objective morality exist?

Rand did try to find an objective morality based in objective values: "The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics—the standard by which one judges what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that which is required for man’s survival qua man."

But “Man Qua Man” is still a blurry concept which need to be specified much more if we want to get more clarity on the following question: Can moral value or good and evil, be directly derived from objective facts? (watch interesting debate between Psychologist Jordan Peterson and Philosopher Sam Harris here: Debate Peterson-Harris (part one)-  Debate Peterson-Harris (part two))

What I believe is that as a fierce atheist Ayn Rand didn’t realize or didn’t want to admit that the concept of Man Qua Man is actually based on thousands of years of “subjectively evolved” social life among humans and in the case of the western capitalist culture Man Qua Man currently means the moral code, values, myths and archetypes based in religious traditions specially Christianity who revealed more strongly than never before the intrinsic divine value of anyone and everyone, the sovereignty of the individual that Rand liked to honor so much and on which are based western culture and capitalism

So in the cited above debate between Peterson and Harris I agree with Peterson in the sense that the ultimate source of values can’t be objective, meaning values can only come from a “valuer” thus there are no objective values standing outside in the world by themselves unless mediated by a subject, a human being

I also watched the debate between Peterson and Yaron Brook and Greg Salmieri two hard core Objectivist at the last OCON Objectivist Conferences (organized by the Ayn Rand Institute ARI): Philosophy Discussion at Ayn Rand Conference (OCON)where it was clear for me as a sort of former objectivist that being philosophically in a “box” which is in this case the immutable legacy of Ayn Rand and the pressure of a group (ARI) greatly constrains what one should think or say in order to stay politically correct inside the group and keep a hard earned position…

This was even more evident when I listened afterwards to Brook’s radio program The Yaron Brook Show: My thoughts on Jordan Peterson  where he made a desperate effort to conciliate his newborn sympathy with Peterson who talks quite a lot about religion and myth with the requirement of gatekeeping the Objectivist immovable atheistic rules while his audience calls into the program looking for his guidance in mundane and philosophical affairs as some sort of “Pope” of the orthodox Objectivism

And then it came Peterson 

In my looking for new answers I have read over the last few years a lot about ancient Eastern and Classical/Modern western Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, History and Archeology, and even Quantum metaphysics and mystic Esoterism

In my search for enlightenment I stumbled a while ago on Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life” and recently finished his Magnum Opus “Maps of Meaning” a book that I truly consider one of those works that can produce a leap forward in human thought and history as many other great minds like Peterson did before: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Hobbes, just to name a few…

The extremely solid background of Peterson in Psychology and Philosophy allows him to formulate hundreds of brilliant and novel insights thru a privileged intelligence and many years of hard work 

The Man’s version he presents in Maps of Meaning is a much more complex and at times mysterious creature of which the Rational Mind is just the latest feature in an extremely long evolutionary history that goes back hundreds of thousands years in some cases, millions of years in others. He uncovers the fact that our Reason is rarely completely in charge of our decisions and behaviors and in some cases not at all: myth, religion, personality traits, emotions, primitive instincts and dozens of other deep structures and archetypes  in our brains and bodies play a much larger role in our seemingly modern and civilized lives that most people are willing to admit: we don’t know ourselves as we think we do. See picture 2: Peterson’s view of Man (not an exhaustive graphic)

In this graphic on purpose I included the Objectivist view of Reason as a part nested inside a much larger and complex interior universe of the Real Man, Peterson would probably agree at least partially as he is also an intellectual that promotes for solid and well thought reasons pro-western traditional values which at this point inevitably  include capitalism as the system that offers people around the world by far the best opportunity to prosper and have a better life and in fact is lifting since the last couple centuries more people out of poverty than all the previous systems and ages in the history of humanity combined together. A self evident fact which of course the extreme left and the politically correct postmodernists will never recognize, perhaps because as Peterson says they don’t really love the needed and the poor, the just hate the rich and successful out of resentment and envy without realizing that they are an essential part of the motor that moves western civilization forward

Picture 2

What Peterson probably wouldn’t like too much is the Self Interest as cornerstone for Ethics as he emphasizes more the role and interaction of the individual with the group and prioritizes responsibility over happiness 

As for the importance of reason and objective reality he would probably recognize them a high value but in some way moderated by more primitive interactions in the brain and the subconscious with ancient myths, stories, emotions, instinct and archetypes

Finally what I also like about Peterson’s approach is something that I always intimately suspected in the past, that knowing and accepting yourself in deep as you really are with your animal side and all your politically incorrect or even socially forbidden and more primitive instincts, feelings, reflexes and emotions is not only necessary and fascinating but also potentially very useful in non-usual environments specially if you find yourself in any extraordinary or dangerous situation outside of the protective walls of civilization when you may be able to count with your more primitive side to better defend yourself and even help save your life or the people you love