19 May 2021
A few summers ago, I attended a series of lectures delivered by the U of T psychologist, Dr. Jordan Peterson. Seats sold out fast and a long line formed on the sidewalk at the west end of Charles Street in Toronto, as we awaited admission to the Isabel Bader Theatre each week.
Because I was in the midst of my late-in-life undergrad degree in philosophy and psychology, I had expectations of lectures that were linear in design, that is, directed toward a conclusion or proposition that the lecturer had worked out ahead of time. That wasn’t what we got.
Dr. Peterson, to his credit, warned us that this series of lectures did not represent a set of resolved ideas but that he was still working things out as he went. And that was what we got—the experience of witnessing a concerned, educated, well-dressed man at work as he paced—relentlessly—back and forth across the width of the stage, speaking in varied rhythms, long bursts, short stops, and thematic returns with projected images backlighting his travels.
During this recently expired winter, the National Post featured some excerpts from Dr. Peterson’s upcoming book. Some of these ideas seem well suited to the recovery community. This blog explores what Dr. Peterson characterizes as a crucial realization: There is no happiness in the absence of responsibility.
I am working from an excerpt, so it is unclear whether Dr. Peterson defined his terms. No such lexical ambiguity shall haunt this blog! Responsibility is (best) defined, for our purposes, as a noun: “A thing or person that one is responsible for; a duty, obligation, or burden.” Words like “accountability” are cited as synonyms. What is interesting about accountability is that it is one of the most cited synonyms for logos, the other synonyms being word and reason (logos, logic...).
I am not a fan of duty as it smacks of altruism, Kant, and dogmatic obligations but I am a fan of being accountable for your own values, actions, and relationships based on well-reasoned understandings. To rephrase Dr. Peterson’s proposition, if we are not consciously and logically accountable for our lives, eudaimonia—well-spiritedness—eludes us. How does Dr. Peterson defend that proposition?
Dr. Peterson argues that he has never seen a satisfied person who was not functioning at full capacity (“doing everything they should be doing”). While I would omit “should,” this is a defensible position based on the strands of philosophy and psychology to which I subscribe.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “flow” in the 1990s. By my reckoning, he was following up on work by Maslow, Frankl, Aristotle, et al. who conceived of humans as creatures with reason and directionality. Directionality, an inherent target-based motivation, requires a pilot. Imagine the disaster of getting onto a motorcycle for the first time, revving the throttle and releasing the clutch not knowing how to pilot such a machine. I would argue that creatures capable of reaching the moon and transplanting hearts have even greater horsepower than any motorcycle. As such, the skill in piloting requires more expertise, care, and maintenance. Let’s look at these thinkers with respect to Peterson’s proposition.
Flow is the idea of being so fully engaged in a task that time slips by as working on that task is more like challenging play than disciplined work. Your whole person is committed to and focused on that work which Csikszentmihalyi et al. have found to be one of the keys to living a well-spirited life.
Maslow is well known for the hierarchy of needs organizing what we all knew (but couldn’t have stated) into an easily remembered hierarchy. In broad terms, the hierarchy breaks down into two categories. At the bottom are deficiency needs—essential prerequisites to the upper half’s growth needs. Under deficiency needs are the human requirements of food, shelter, exercise, employment, stability, health, love, friendship, belongingness, recognized competence, respect…and these are in the more basic category! Under growth needs, the higher half of Maslow’s hierarchical pyramid, are understanding, beauty, order, balance, self-actualization, and self-transcendence.
Frankl (blogs 20 January-3 February 2021) was all about meaning. Let’s look at the claim that meaning begins at the base of Maslow’s upper triangle with understanding. After all, meaning is an individual interpretation of an understanding of one’s own experience and the forces bearing on one’s story. If we haven’t satisfactorily created such an interpretation, we are probably unsettled and in uncontrolled motion—which supports Dr. Peterson’s claim. (Controlled motion being responsible motion.)
What is utterly fascinating about this (at least to me!) is that Aristotle, 2,500 years earlier, claimed that the height of human achievement was the luxury of time and the capacity for contemplation. As his own work so overwhelmingly demonstrates, when Aristotle got to contemplating, it was about what the good life meant, represented, and consisted of. And in Aristotle’s case, that good did not mean material luxuries but moral virtues—the highest goods: love, understanding, integrity, compassion… But Aristotle was also a practical man. Like Maslow, he addressed the need for a stable financial life as the foundation for the time and means to contemplate. Is this what Dr. Peterson is saying when he claims that there is no happiness in the absence of responsibility?
Those answering yes must then agree that flow, meaning, and contemplation are the root of well-spiritedness. Further, well-spiritedness is only able to flourish because of self-responsibility. Those answering no question both the need for responsibility and/or the fruits growing on that tree i.e., flow, meaning, and contemplation as components of well-spiritedness. Either position is a great point of departure from which to understand one’s own life and its meaning. As is obvious, my position is that if we are consciously and logically accountable for our lives, eudaimonia—well-spiritedness, is us.
Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own understandings of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.
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