Tea at Trianon: Jordan Peterson Tackles Cain and Abel

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, July 8, 2018

Jordan Peterson Tackles Cain and Abel

From Life Site:

In his safe space tilling the land near home, Cain does not develop self-reliance or skill in violent means of protection. "Abel is, by all appearances, dancing his way through life," writes Peterson. "Worse of all, he's genuinely a good person. Everyone knows it. He deserves his good fortune. All the more reason to envy and hate him." Cain's envy intensifies.

"In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions" (Genesis 4:4). Some modern readers might dismiss the idea of sacrifice as a superstitious practice of primitive savages, but Peterson offers a radically different interpretation. Our own suffering is undeniable, so what can we do about it? "If you want to make things better in the future," writes Peterson, "then you make sacrifices in the present." Human beings project their existence into the future, and so can work now to make their futures better. "It's our knowledge of the possibility of tragedy and suffering in the future that motivates us to sacrifice in the present, so that we can reduce the unnecessary anxiety, uncertainty, and pain that awaits us." Far from exhibiting primitive superstition, "the sacrifices that people were making to God were the dramatic precursors to the psychological idea of sacrifice that we all hold as civilized people in the modern world."

To sacrifice is human, and to sacrifice for the sake of the greater good is to act with human wisdom. "Modern people have by no means stopped making sacrifices to God, regardless of what they think," writes Peterson. "Our very belief that hard work and discipline will bring success is a precise but abstracted and refined restatement of the idea that God will shower his grace on the individual who makes the right offering."

"And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard" (Genesis 4:5). Like Augustine in the City of God, Peterson notes that it is unspecified why God prefers Abel's sacrifice. This nondisclosure in the story universalizes the message. We often do not know the reason why our sacrifices fail. We can set ort minds to achieve some end, strive mightily in employing all available means at great cost, and come out with nothing but ashes. (Read more.)