“Tragedy, you can lay that at God's feet. But if we didn't bring additional evil into the world… we could tolerate the tragedy of Being without becoming corrupt. I think the answer to that is Yes, because I've seen people react quite heroically to the arbitrary burdens of their life. But malevolence, man, that lays them low. It seems to be nothing but a destructive force. The root of malevolence, and you see this in Cain and Abel, is the desire for revenge against God for creation itself. It's revenge against Being itself for the crime of Being.”

— Jordan Peterson

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Jordan Peterson 202

Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and profes… 1962

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“There is an idea of free will associated with it too. In order for there to be being, there has to be limitation. In order for there to be good, there has to be the possibility of evil. I think the right path is to exist such that the possibility of evil remains open, but that you choose the good. And I don't think that evil perse is built into the structure of the world. But I do think that it's human. I think that evil is human. And I think it's understandable. There is a difference between evil and tragedy. Tragedy does seem to be built into the structure of the world. But human beings seem to be equipped to deal with tragedy, but we are not equipped to deal with malevolence. That destroys people. I think that, metaphysically thinking, the world is structured such that humans have a choice between good and evil. Why do we have a choice? We don't know.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

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“Nature knows no tragedies or catastrophes. It knows no good or evil. It knows only creation and destruction. and one can never truly be happy and free, in the way we were as children before learning of our mortality, without at some point confronting our destruction. And all we can ask for, all we can hope for, all we can beseech God for, is to win a few battles in a war we will ultimately lose.”

Neil Strauss book Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life

Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life (2009)

“We are truly in a battle for our very lives not just in the sense that they will kill us if they can, but in the sense that life itself is being challenged, that it's life versus death, you either love life or you love death, creation versus destruction, love versus hatred, that's what this is about. And so, when we see the Islamic State (ISIS), we see not only that they embody Islam as I have explained here in this, that's all in the Quran what they do, but also that they embody what may be, the foremost evil force that the world has ever seen.”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

ACT for America chapter in Mission Viejo, California https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw9lG83lr0s#t=24m07s (9 March 2015)

“This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds — the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions… the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached.”

Stephenie Meyer book The Host

Wanderer, p. 141
The Host (2008)

“Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world. Human conflicts are life and death struggles—my gods against your gods, my immortality project against your immortality project. The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

Foreword
The Denial of Death (1973)

“Happiness, satisfaction, and success in life depend on making the right choices, the winning choices. There are forces in life working for you and against you. One must distinguish the beneficial forces from the malevolent ones and choose correctly between them.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 106.

“Cain is not the city and Abel is not the country; but the relationship between them also illuminates … the relationship between the city and the country. … The city was, from the day of its creation, incapable, because of the motives behind its construction, of any other destiny than that of killing the country, where God put man to enable him to life his life as best he could.”

Jacques Ellul book The Meaning of the City

Source: The Meaning of the City (1951), p. 8

“I've seen how a spirit of unity, born of tragedy, can gradually dissipate, overtaken by the return to business as usual, by inertia and old habits and expediency. I see how easily we slip back into our old notions, because they’re comfortable, we’re used to them. I’ve seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)
Context: I've seen how a spirit of unity, born of tragedy, can gradually dissipate, overtaken by the return to business as usual, by inertia and old habits and expediency. I see how easily we slip back into our old notions, because they’re comfortable, we’re used to them. I’ve seen how inadequate words can be in bringing about lasting change. I’ve seen how inadequate my own words have been. And so I’m reminded of a passage in *John’s Gospel [First John]: Let us love not with words or speech, but with actions and in truth. If we’re to sustain the unity we need to get through these difficult times, if we are to honor these five outstanding officers who we’ve lost, then we will need to act on the truths that we know. And that’s not easy. It makes us uncomfortable. But we’re going to have to be honest with each other and ourselves.

“Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

"The Death of Me", p. 150
Awareness (1992)
Context: Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that. The only tragedy there is in the world is unwakefulness and unawareness. From them comes fear, and from fear comes comes everything else, but death is not a tragedy at all. Dying is wonderful; it's only horrible to people who have never understood life. It's only when you're afraid of life that you fear death. It's only dead people who fear death.

“In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature - or go insane”

Charlie Chaplin book My Autobiography

Source: My Autobiography

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Jordan Peterson 202

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