The Second

Brilliant minds chew on the great human questions: how should we find meaning? How should we order our lives together? What are the essential and real qualities of being human, and what does that imply for what we do?   And, although answers vary, one dominant, modern idea informs most of the modern answers: Human beings emerged through time on a continuum with everything else, from non-life to life, from non-consciousness to consciousness, from practical survival behaviors to morality, from awareness to self-awareness, from awe to religion, from irrational to rational.   In short, to say that man evolved from the lower animals is to say something mundane, like saying the earth is round. This now commonplace theory of origins has found renewed energy in the teachings of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, whose essential message is that of acquiring virtue.   Unlike traditional treatments—ancient wisdom, religious teaching and practice—Peterson’s is grounded in a remarkably broad...

Just about everyone knows what a tax form is.  I remember one had a box which, if checked, would give $1 of my taxes to some presidential candidacy fund.  And just about everyone has filled out a form answering whether he (or she) was male or female, providing two little boxes to choose from.  Equally famous (and infamous) is the multiple choice exam where significant results hang in the balance, being settled by filling enough of the correct boxes.   These and many other examples have this in common:  that by simply checking boxes, big things can happen.  Such big things happen because it’s usually some authority—the IRS, a legal institution, a professor—who hands out a form to be completed, completion of which can set the institution in motion for our benefit.  Tax money returned, passing grades, admission into a club, and so on.  This way of interacting is so commonplace that we come to expect to be given a form, a list, something to fill ...