What do you know?? It worked! It was a great read, thank you.

I am still something of a critic about how the school system is set up, though. I think if they did treat it more like ‘practicing skills’, rather than gradient steps designed to separate out the calculus students from the rest, everyone’s attitude towards math might be more positive.

Change is slowly happening in that part of education.

In relation to tragedy vs. evil, I think Peterson provides a definition as an introduction to the topic, not as a point of insight. His actual point is more theoretical and it does actually take quite a bit of time to explain (and definitely more than 15 minutes to completely understand). I will do my best to briefly summarize what I understood from his lectures and writings. Just to note, Peterson draws heavily from existentialism and philosophers such as Nietzsche and to some extent Heidegger, the Russian writers Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky as well as the psychoanalyst Carl Jung. So these ideas are not entirely his own and are not unsupported in the wider community. To understand where he’s coming from completely, I recommend reading his book.

So anyway, back to tragedy and evil. I believe Peterson claims that tragedy is something that cannot be avoided, and is in fact, necessary for our existence as human beings. Evil, on the other hand, is something that comes from us (is intentional, like you said) and that can be avoided if we make moral decisions. Tragedy is a result of the fact that we are limited and therefore vulnerable. But being limited is a necessity of existence, or at least our existence as we know it. I personally can’t really imagine how some one thing can exist without limits, at the very least in time and in space. Anyway, I think he also mentions that tragedy can corrupt people, and in the extreme make someone evil (or at least commit evil acts). Therefore tragedy is also connected to evil.

I think an example would best illustrate the point: A kid crossing the street gets hit by a drunk driver ignoring traffic lights. Kid is badly crippled from the encounter. The tragedy here is from the kid’s side, that he got hit by the car. It resulted because we are limited (don’t have super senses to notice the car, don’t have super reflexes to jump out of the way, aren’t made of something powerful and unable to be broken by cars) and therefore vulnerable (able to be badly hurt). There is irresponsibility (and possibly corruption) on the side of the driver because he put himself in a position where he drank and had access to a car (not to mention he actually did take the car while drunk), so on the driver’s side this isn’t a tragedy as it could’ve been avoided. Continuing the story, let’s say the kid now grows up angry and resentful due to his inabilities (further vulnerability) to live a normal life and his envy of other kids who do. He spends his time on the internet successfully convincing suicidal or depressed users on a forum to commit suicide. This is an act of evil because the kid could have chosen a different life for himself: he could maybe have joined a charity to help victims of drunk drivers or participated in groups dedicated to prevention of drunk driving, etc. Of course, you can take a deterministic view of it and say the kid had no choice but to become the online murderer based on what happened to him, but that’s a whole different conversation which then also brings free will and determinism into question – and that requires extensive discussion.

About your comment that evil is a construct of the human mind. I think Peterson would acknowledge that as true on one level. If you look at it from an extreme rational view, yes, there is no evil because pure logic has no place for emotional and value-based judgments. But that’s exactly why we can’t rely on extreme rationality to survive. Not to mention that the way we normally act is not rational/logical – acting rationally would take an extreme amount of effort I think (e.g. we’re highly emotional, we have a strong sense of right and wrong, we do (and even like) things we objectively know are bad for us, etc). Eugenics is an example of how extreme rationality clashes with our morality. If you think about it from a pure logic perspective (which doesn’t allow for value-based judgments like right and wrong), why not get rid of the weak, sickly, extra vulnerable, ugly etc in order to make our society more ideal? (And ideal would of course be whatever the ruling majority considers ideal for whatever arbitrary reason). Plato makes a pretty logical argument for eugenics in the Republic if I remember it correctly.

Finally, I think Peterson definitely wouldn’t say that rationality is bad, avoid at all costs! Rationality is a tool that we use in order to survive. It is necessary and can be very beneficial (as you’ve pointed out, part of the reason we now live better than kings from the past is due to technology) but elevating it to god-like status as the be-all and end-all of all truth is dangerous (Peterson also writes extensively about how extreme rationality is related to nihilism, the inability to see good in life, corruption, bad decisions, etc). And on a quick related note, other than emotion and value-based judgments, rationality can’t really explain other large chunks of reality (which rely on emotion and value-based judgments) except by saying that they’re irrational (which isn’t an explanation)! e.g. the pull of art, drama, music.

I hope I’ve provided a satisfactory answer to some of your questions. I can see that there is a lot more I could add and clarify but it would require way too much time on my part. For example, in his book Peterson clarifies what he means by rationality, what he means by truth, how meaning is built and destroyed in everyday life, how people can become evil, etc etc. He also talks about the important role of mythology and narratives, as well as art. As you can see that’s a pretty wide range of topics, and the only way to understand them to a satisfactory degree is to read his book and/or published articles. Again, these ideas are not entirely his own (I don’t want to give him overdue credit) but more of a compilation of ideas from philosophy, literature, and science with his own views added in. If you’re interested in his ideas on evil, I would also recommend reading Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.