JORDAN PETERSON, CERTAINTY, AND THE POWER OF OUR STORIES

Professor of Psychology, Jordan B. Peterson, argues that we all have our life-stories and that our well-being depends on the nature of these narratives:

·       …ideologies had a narrative structure – that they were stories, in a word – and that the emotional stability of individuals depended upon the integrity of their stories. I came to realize that stories had a religious substructure (or, to put it another way, that well-constructed stories had a nature so compelling that they gathered religious behaviors and attitudes around them, as a matter of course).

According to Peterson, we all have our stories, which are integral to our being, whether we deny that we have such an ideology or not. They determine how we are to get from point A (where we are now) to point B (where we want to go and what we want to obtain). And all of us want to get to a point B, even if B simply represents finding a job or even a grocery store.

Our story is also like a roadmap instructing us how to drive from NYC to San Fran. We feel secure when we believe that we can trust our roadmap and insecure when we have doubts about it. Consequently, we might try to pull together all of the relevant facts to assure ourselves that we are going in the right direction. Sometimes, when we encounter discordant facts, we might modify or simply deny them in order to relieve the stress. If we arrive in SF, we will experience relief; if we get lost on the way, we are thrown into a state of crisis, loss, and frustration.

Point Bs also involve our values. Implicitly, we have to value finding a job or even getting to SF if we are going to undertake such an expedition. Our stories also involve our self-definition – who we are and what will give us a sense of value, meaning, and fulfillment. This is the final chapter of our story, because, ultimately, we need to feel that we are important, that we are a somebody.

Although our worldviews, stories, and roadmaps are necessary and inseparable from who we are, there are also many potential costs associated with them. They can produce a false confidence if they do not accord with realty – the roads we must navigate, the values will assign to arriving, and realistic expectations. Sometimes, our trusted GPS can lead us astray. Sometimes our faulty worldview can lead us into conflict if we think that our neighbor is a threat to our family. This might result in violence.

An idealistic narrative might even prove lethal. It might tell us that we can become a good, superior, and righteous person by cleansing the world of undesirables. The late poet T.S. Elliot had been understandably suspicious of idealists:

·       Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.  

Elliot perceived the potential dangers inherent in our stories. They provide us with a roadmap to find meaning. This narrative can be so compelling that we purposely overlook any considerations that might interfere with our desperate attempt to get to point B and to derive the significance and ego-lift that it promises.

This “endless struggle to think well of” ourselves is so necessary for our self-esteem that we might even be led to kill in order to maintain it, even to commit genocide. And once we commit ourselves to such a costly venture, we can no longer turn back. This would be to admit that we are genocidal maniacs, a truth that we cannot face. Instead, our cause must be defended at all cost.

Nevertheless, we need to be idealistic and to formulate a value-laden life-script containing a realistic point B.  However, reality is perceived through the eyes of wisdom, and wisdom requires work, patience, and courage. Why courage? Because wisdom is painful! It starts its work by exposing the seeker – the lens through which wisdom must be perceived – breaking him down and emptying him of his self-aggrandizing story. It is like sacrificing a sweet addiction. I think that this is why Peterson warns that “truth places a virtually intolerable burden of responsibility on the individual.”

What is the burden that truth and wisdom impose upon us? Self-examination! It begins by seeing our blindness and resistance to truth, especially when it conflicts with our comfort and self-aggrandizing narrative. However, wisdom only has value if it can lead to some degree of certainly, and this is something that our nature requires. Consequently, Peterson argues that:

·       …uncertainty presents a fundamental (and unavoidable) challenge to the integrity of any complex organism. (a) Uncertainty poses a critical adaptive challenge for any organism, so individuals are motivated to keep it at a manageable level; (b) uncertainty emerges as a function of the conflict between competing perceptual and behavioral affordances; (c) adopting clear goals and belief structures helps to constrain the experience of uncertainty by reducing the spread of competing affordances; and (d) uncertainty is experienced subjectively as anxiety…

While uncertainty about our stories is almost inevitable, periods of painful uncertainty and soul-searching are important, despite its cost. Uncertainty forces us to refine our life-script, values, and goals in order to bring them into a closer correspondence with reality. It is a matter of seeing clearly, like when we drive our car. In order to successfully drive our car, we must be able to accurately see the traffic and the lights.

This assessment is predicated on the fact that a false certainty is always costly when it doesn’t accord with reality. It can lead to a car wreck. Besides, if I am “certain” that my neighbor wants to kidnap my children, I will act in a counterproductive way. I might call the police to bring false charges against my neighbor. This kind of certainty is dangerous. Uncertainty, however, anxiety producing it might be, is preferable to this “certainty.”

However, reality is a controversial (and perhaps threatening) concept for today’s postmodernists. According to their thinking, there are no objective principles by which to critique our stories (or, at least, we cannot know them). Instead, we are told that everyone needs to find their own truth. This notion is expressed in the concepts of multiculturalism and religious pluralism. These postmodernists claim that we cannot judge other beliefs or religions because there is no objective standard by which to judge them.

This belief contrasts sharply with the bulk of classical philosophers who held that the good life is the virtuous life. These philosophers believed that there were objective principles even if they merely emerged from our common reality of a shared human nature.

In contrast, for postmodernists, there can be no search for a shared wisdom based upon our shared reality. At best, they are left to search for what works for them. Consequently, we are merely ships passing in the night. We have no compass to bring us to a common point B, since point B differs for everyone. We merely drift with the currents and winds until something feels right.

When I point out their uncertainty, they often respond that uncertainty is okay, and that they are at peace with uncertainty. If they don’t get to their point B, well, there is also point C, D, and E – whichever port they might drift.

However, according to Peterson, they are paying a steep price for their uncertainty – “a fundamental (and unavoidable) challenge to the integrity of any complex organism.” Are they in denial about this “steep price?” Meanwhile, they are resorting to substances and meditation to dissociate from their stress.

Is there any viable alternative to the dangers of certainty and the costs of uncertainty. The late psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck, author of “The Road Less Traveled,” wrote about a different kind of certainty. Describing his journey from Zen Buddhism to Christianity, he repeatedly observed that his Christian clients would improve, no matter how serious their psychiatric condition. He concluded:

·       The quickest way to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth…We cannot lose once we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us holiness…We are guaranteed winners! (“Further Along the Road Less Traveled”)

God is in control. We can relax. Peck realized that we do need certainty about our narratives, but this is a certainty based upon God’s plan not upon our control and GPS. Coming to such an understanding can be very humbling, and it inevitably comes with pain and disappointment, but it teaches us to let go and to entrust ourselves to the One who has died for our sins. This means that we no longer have to grasp for our place in life, focusing narrowly on our own story but instead, widening ourselves to confidently embrace His story – a story which includes a love for all the others who have been created in His likeness.