Why Tell the Truth: An Introduction to the Basic Ideas of Jordan B Peterson

by Tylor S. Lovins

This, of course, begs the question: how is it that we understand religious people better by learning about religious history, if it does not factor in to the lived experience of religious people?

In its functional account of truth, pragmatism tells us that our theories, our truths, are tools for adapting to reality, marrying our old selves with an environment that demands us to adapt to its novel conditions. “The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for ‘to be true’ means only to perform this marriage-function.”

For an idea to work does not mean that it makes us happy, induces sensations of pleasure, or merely coheres with previous beliefs. That which works is that which allows us to adapt to the reality that in every moment may change unpredictably:

For Peterson, the method of the sciences, and the reduction of truth to fact, may be like the linguistic version of a disease. As it makes truth about disembodied objects, it forgets the natural framework in which it is actually housed. To gather facts we have to reduce and exclude, to strip motivational significance from objects in the world.[61] It forgets that some things work within the confines of the rules of an experiment, but not in the real world.

“On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it.”

Our primary mode of perception has to do with discerning things in the environment we can use: with our hands, ears, eyes, and the like.

We might say, here, that, whereas science systematizes the separation of functional significance from objects, religion systematizes functional significance until everything comes under its purview.

To imitate the hero is to view life as larger than the demands of any given hierarchy.

Tradition tells us already what we will fail at because we are historical creatures.

For Reed and Herrmann, as for Jung, God is a symbol of individuation. The power of faith comes not in its rational explanation of the universe, but in its functional significance: the creation of the self as response-able to the world as a whole.

The very idea of the transcendent is operative in our everyday lives when we act in the world as if it is full of potentials rather than final realities; and when these realities are reduced and simplified into basic, unchanging objects like doctrines or codes of conduct, the possibility of change, and therefore growth, development, and progress, is excluded at the outset. This is how the transcendent is removed by order.

This is an interesting solution to the problem of suffering. If we act toward existence as if it is good, then we will be willing to sacrifice for it.

A fundamental characteristic of biological organisms is that they must move forward, toward those things that satiate biological needs and away from those things that render life impossible. This encapsulates two basic motivational drives: approach and avoidance. Yet, as people, we are not motivated simply to fulfill biological needs or avoid natural predators; we desire and move toward those things that make life worth living in the first place. We seek not just the maintenance of life but the grandeur, the beauty, and the meaning of life. And it’s these things which make life worth living that we value. Therefore, as humans, we always live within a framework of value, composed both of biological and psychological necessity.

To “manipulate the world into delivering what you want” guides the rational ego, and it is not inherently pernicious. But to want what cannot sustain life, to aim at it, is to live the lie.