Peterson, Weinstein and Drawing Culture Warriors to the Church

corruption, culture, authentic

Much of the culture war is being fought by a militia that is well-intentioned and capable, but disorganized and ill-equipped.  They need the spiritual and intellectual fire power of the Catholic faith.

Take Professor Jordan Peterson and (former) Professor Bret Weinstein, for instance.  Peterson and Weinstein are two of the sharpest cultural commentators today.  Peterson became broadly known for his powerful and carefully-considered resistance to the ideological tyrants attempting to compel him to use transgender pronouns at the university where he taught.  Weinstein faced a similar head-on with cultural elites when he pushed back against certain critical race theory policies at his university.

Their insightfulness cuts through the relativistic and intellectually impoverished landscape of woke culture.  This has earned them distinguished standing in what has become known as the “intellectual dark web.”

Peterson and Weinstein have complex world views, and both men are steeped in classic Western thought.  While Peterson seems to lean toward conservatism, however, Weinstein is a self-declared progressive.  And neither man is Christian, though Peterson is hopefully on his way.

Like these two men, many of the people leading the culture war are not Catholic, or even nominally Christian.  The result is their efforts suffer unforced errors for want of Truth.  And that is the focus of this article.

As an example, in February 2021, Peterson and Weinstein paired up for a two-hour conversation on Peterson’s podcast.  Much of the discussion orbited around the implications of our younger generations being socially formed in an online environment.

This is a giant social experiment playing out real time.  And it merits serious consideration.  Peterson and Weinstein have many illuminating insights to share about this experiment.  If you’ve not listened to their discussion, it’s a better use of time than 99.9% of what’s on YouTube.

As good as their discussion is, what is notable, and lamentable, is the omission of God – and Satan.  Two items from their conversation typify their secular views and that a Catholic worldview has much more to offer.

Example #1:  What is Sanity?

At about the 24-minute mark, Jordan Peterson offers this observation: “Sanity is in large part outsourced.   What I mean by that is that if you’re fortunate and well socialized other people find you acceptable enough to include you in their networks and then all you have to do is pay attention to the functioning of that network and regulate your behavior to the feedback you receive and you more or less stay sane.  And so if you have a family and you have friends they’ll help you make sure your jokes are funny and not mean…”

Peterson is operating from a secular definition of sanity. As such, everything in his statement, while insightful of the workings of the world misses the mark.

In the language of evangelist Frank Sheed, sanity is to see as the Church sees. It is seeing God, as He has revealed Himself in the Catholic Church, in all things.  In Theology and Sanity, Sheed explains how this relates to our individual sanity, “And that God is not only a fact of religion:  He is a fact.   Not to see Him is to be wrong about everything, which includes being wrong about one’s self.   It does not require any extreme of religious fanaticism for a man to want to know what he is:  and this he cannot know without some study of the Being who alone brought him into existence and holds him there.”

And then there is the commonplace definition of sanity as “being in touch with reality.”  This begs the question, “what is reality?”  God is reality.

Jordan Peterson’s characterization of sanity as something that is formed by our community isn’t sanity.  It may accurately describe the formation (or deformation) of our personality, but that personality won’t necessarily be sane.  There are plenty of communities that will affirm your belief that you are a cat.  Truly.

Back when essentially the entire country was Christian, we could, to an extent, outsource our formation without everything going off the rails. But those days are gone.

A Catholic worldview instructs us that a sane person is a person who knows God, who understands what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God.  Sane people know how to go about their personal missions in life – which is to work out their salvation by knowing, loving and serving God in their vocations.

Example #2:  What Is Reality?

At about the 1-hour mark, Weinstein presents a hypothesis on the source of such things as transgender ideology and the cancelling of anything opposed to this ideology.

“I’m wondering if we are not in effect in a kind of civil war between those for whom the real world has primacy and those for whom the online world has primacy, and if that’s not the fundamental nature of the battle” he says.

As they discuss this hypothesis, the two men touch on the deeper question of the nature of reality and the laws that govern how we interact with reality.  They do not, however, shovel down to the foundation – which is God, who is reality itself.

Laws and Reality

We live in a world of laws (I have the speeding tickets to prove it).  But some laws are more permanent, which is to say, more real than others.

There are societal laws, which can be changed with the whim and whimsy of the people.  And there are also physical laws of nature.  These can only be changed, or more accurately suspended, if God chooses to.  That’s why we’re all fascinated with miracles as reminders of God’s omnipotence.

There are also spiritual laws – the Natural Law written in our hearts (thou shall not kill) and the revealed moral law. The Catechism refers to these as the Law of the Gospel (encapsulated in the Sermon on the Mount).  These spiritual laws are the most “real.” They are unchanging because God is unchanging.

We need laws.  They make life orderly and meaningful (try playing a card game with no rules).  But at the same time human beings tend to rebel against laws because our fallen nature is, well, rebellious.

The bottom line is that we don’t much like laws.  And this brings me back to Weinstein’s hypothesis.

The Laws We Think We Can Break

As a Christian society, it took us until the 20th century to truly muster the “courage” to break from the spiritual laws, and thus break from God.  We sometimes followed the spiritual laws out of superstitious fears.  But mostly we followed the spiritual laws out of a proper Fear of the Lord.

Society steadily overcame its Fear of the Lord and tested the waters of life without the moral law.  The experiment went so far as to prompt Time Magazine, on April 8, 1966, to emblazon its cover with the stark question, “Is God Dead?”   And because the world wasn’t instantly immolated, society convinced itself the moral law wasn’t really a law after all.  At best it was a collection of quaint suggestions.  At worst it was a bunch of tyrannical decrees cooked up by a prudish patriarchy to spoil everyone’s fun.

Of course, just because the moral law isn’t written on parchment and kept under glass somewhere, doesn’t mean that immorality doesn’t have real consequences.  The devastation of our culture is Exhibit A.  Be that as it may, secular society continues to sally forth under the delusion that it can progress without the moral law.

The Laws Not So Easily Broken

The key to the situation is that the secularists are having a harder time ‘imagining away’ the physical laws of nature.

Here are just a few examples of pesky laws of nature that can’t simple be ‘imagined away.’

  • biological laws dictating that only women have children;
  • biological laws combined with entropy that result in very few of us becoming centenarians;
  • physical laws of the universe that tell us it’s highly unlikely there is alien life;
  • physical laws that say we’re never going to travel through time;
  • and physical laws that say we’re not going to be able to explore much of our solar system, and that we’re not going to have anti-gravity suits.

When you get right down to it, the laws of nature ruin everyone’s fun as much as many think does the moral law.

But the laws of nature happen to be laws that are not subject to our free will.  Gravity pulls us back to earth whether we choose to believe in it or not.

Enter Transhumanism

Society dispensed with the moral law through unbelief. However, Society cannot so easily dispense with the laws of nature.  Thus the appeal of transhumanism.  So one by one, society just imagines away the laws of nature.  Technology provides the “special effects” that make the delusion seem almost real.

But transhumanism is actually a spiritual trap.  Transhumanism is Satan’s plan to deform humanity into something that can no longer commune with its creator. Satan is incapable of creating so he attempts to deform God’s creation.

Satan’s ultimate goal is to separate us from God for eternity.  To do that he must fracture our relationship with God.  Atheistic ideologies, drugs, violence, comfort, “entertainment” – Satan uses all these things to separate us from God.

But technology has become his delivery method of choice.  And transhumanism may be his magnum opus.  Transgender ideology and the online world are just the opening phases of transhumanism.

Returning to Weinstein’s Hypothesis

The ultimate question is not whether the real world or online world has primacy, or whether your transhuman self is your real self.  Those are important distinctions and discussions to have, but they’re not the basic thing.

A Catholic worldview brings everything into focus.  The further we move from God, the further we move into madness.  Moving away from the reality of the moral law was our greatest step into madness. Attempting to thwart the reality of physical laws of nature through transhumanism, aided and abetted by life on the internet, is just the next logical step.

Thus, the answer to the question is to return to the moral law.

Take the example of transgenderism.  Simply moving from an online reality to a physical reality won’t resolve the problem.  The answer is bound up with Christian anthropology and the fact that we sanctify ourselves in our body.   Accepting our body, flaws and all, is part of working out our salvation.

Of course it is a daunting task to “sell” a secular world on that premise, but the war is lost before the first shot is fired if we don’t understand that is the reality we fight for.

Conversions Needed…

I’m not belittling Peterson or Weinstein.  Far from it.  They are intellectual giants, giving the best of themselves to keep society from tearing itself to pieces.  And they are being ridiculed, cancelled, deplatformed, and demonetized for their efforts.

Even worse, however, and they probably don’t even realize it, is that they may be under hellacious spiritual attack, because they are fighting on the side of Team Reality.  Many of our protestant brothers and sisters are also fighting with Team Reality.  And many other people of goodwill are fighting with Team Reality as well.

But without the wisdom of the Catholic faith these people are all going into battle without armor, without weapons, and without a commanding general.

We need to pray for these allied forces to be awakened to the Truth and beauty of the Catholic faith.

…And a Strong Church to Lead Them

Conversions will only come if they are attracted to Christ and His Church.  That requires a strong Church.   But right now, as evidenced by the nuttiness of the “synodal way,” that is not the case.  Until the Church gets its act together the world will flounder.

But there is hope, in the Bishop Stricklands and Bishop Schneiders and the many orthodox apostolates and lay leaders in the Church.

Conversion will come through the people who boldly proclaim and live out the authentic power and beauty of the faith.  Trying to morph it into something that bends to woke sensibilities won’t work.

Pray that our fellow culture warriors will see in the Church not just a field hospital to bind their wounds, but a boot camp to arm them for battle and a home worth fighting for.

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4 thoughts on “Peterson, Weinstein and Drawing Culture Warriors to the Church”

  1. Pingback: 4 Quick Observations on the USCCB Elections, New Film Brings Us Man Who Paved Way for John Paul II, and More Great Links! - JP2 Catholic Radio

  2. Pingback: VVEDNESDAY EDITION – Big Pulpit

  3. There is indeed a culture war going on, but the Church is on one side with certain issues and on the opposite side with other issues.

  4. an ordinary papist

    You need to be ‘woke’ if you believe in angels but that ” it’s highly unlikely there is alien life;”

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