Box #2
John Gray, Jordan Peterson, Larry David, Tolstoy, John Ashbery
Unpacking my digital library continues this week with Box #2.
John Gray reviews Jordan Peterson. “Jordan Peterson has confronted Nietzsche’s challenge, at some personal cost. Against all odds, he persists in asking the deepest questions. For this he deserves respect and admiration, even if – like Nietzsche– he does not in the end avoid the subjectivism that is the fatal sickness of the age.” The problem with turning God into a placeholder for an aspirational, fashioned self is that it’s still an idol. Only God is God. Secular critiques of nihilism, such as Peterson’s remain trapped in the horizon against which they rage.
Meanwhile, Jordan Peterson defends the existence of dragons in conversation with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. The question of whether dragons exist depends upon two definitions a) dragons and b) exists. The more interesting, to me, is “exists.” The Zohar clearly accepts the reality of myth, and is replete with vivid descriptions of divine and demonic forces. Dragons, in the literary frame of the Zohar, are real. But in what sense? I would argue our relationship to dragons is a litmus test for our relationship to rationality.
Tolstoy’s Three Hermits pairs well with any discussion of reason vs. magical thinking. As does the Danish film, Ordet, about a man who claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus.
Larry David on Anonymous Donations. “I didn’t know you could donate anonymous and still get the credit. If I did, I would have taken that option.” A remarkably honest, if parodic take, on faux-humility and the human pursuit of status and recognition. As Tyler Cowen says, “Solve for the equilibrium.”
John Ashbery, “I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.” A good life is one in which we find some things that are immortal and free. Enabling that discovery for others is, in my view, one of the greatest things we can do. So much is mortal and unfree.
Until soon,
Zohar