How Nietzsche, Jordan Peterson, and The Incredibles Warned Us About Toxic Equality

(Warning: If you are a person who is not willing to read the full essay and actually think about what they are reading, this one is not for you. The equality discussed here has nothing to do with equal human rights, it has nothing to do with equal opportunity, and nothing to do with gender equality.)

"Today – is greatness possible?" (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)

We live in an age of participation trophies.

Or we could say that we live in an age of forced, toxic, and destructive equality.

More than 100 years ago, Friedrich Nietzsche, being the prophetic thinker that he was, predicted the rise of the "will to equality", which is actually, as we will see, resentment and revenge in disguise.

And today we have a contemporary thinker, Jordan Peterson, who was influenced by Nietzsche, criticizing and fighting against this same phenomenon, which is no longer something to be predicted but one of the strongest forces in modern society.

However, back in 2004, when our culture still wasn’t dominated by this will to equality, an animated movie maybe gave us the final warning of what was to come. A warning that we obviously didn’t pay attention to.

In this essay, I would like to take a look at Nietzsche’s and Peterson’s warnings and hopefully make them even more potent by relating them to Pixar’s "The Incredibles."

In one of his interviews, Peterson asks:

"If everyone possesses the exact same amount of every single quality, what do we have to offer each other?"

I personally believe that every human being has a certain capacity for being creative.

But to say that everyone is equally creative, talented, and capable of becoming a great artist is to diminish, or even destroy, the value of creativity and the skill of creative expression.

And if you look at some other virtues, like intelligence or physical athleticism, you will see that, in their nature, they are far less equal than creativity is. Some people excel in them to the point of looking like they are superhuman, and some have absolutely no capacity for them.

Today, we ignore these truths. Everyone gets a trophy. Everyone is a genius. Everyone is talented. Everyone is a winner.

Today, when children, and sometimes even adults, compete in something, the score is not kept.

At first, it seems like a noble thing to do. We do it to make "the losers" feel good. We do it to raise and empower those who are less fortunate, right? Wrong.

"Two kinds of equality. - The thirst for equality can express itself either as a desire to draw everyone down to oneself (through diminishing them, spying on them, tripping them up) or to raise oneself and everyone else up (through recognizing their virtues, helping them, rejoicing in their success)." (Human, All Too Human)

At first, you might think that what we have today is the second kind of equality that Nietzsche was talking about. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

There is no “raising up” or empowerment in today's forced equality.

Since you simply cannot make someone more talented than they are, and you cannot make them more skilled, at least not like this, the only way to create equality is to bring the winners down.

The only way for everyone to be equal at a specific thing is to take those who are objectively better at it than most people and devalue them.

Today, we make "everyone a winner" by making everyone a loser but then giving them trophies and calling that a victory.

If these "preachers of equality," as Nietzsche called them, wanted to really raise other people up, they would recognize the unique qualities of each person and encourage them to nurture those qualities and aim to excel in them.

But what they do is the opposite. They give out consolation prizes and bring everyone to the same level.

Imagine a person who is not the most physically attractive, but is extremely intelligent. If the preachers of equality wanted to empower that person and raise them up, they would tell that person that they have a unique talent which they could develop further and change the world with it. Instead of doing that, they insist that everyone is equally beautiful, but also that everyone is equally intelligent. So the price of creating forced and false equality in one area results in that person being devalued in the area where they are actually special.

"If everyone gets a trophy, it’s like inflating a currency. If everything is good, nothing is good. There has to be a distinction." (Jordan Peterson)

 For those of you who don’t know, The Incredibles is an animated superhero movie.

I won’t bother you with details that are irrelevant to this topic, but get straight to what makes this movie a brilliant metaphor for the world that we are living in today.

The main villain of the movie, Syndrome, has a rather strange grand plan.

In a world where superheroes exist, Syndrome was just another regular person.

However, his dream was to become a superhero. Trying to achieve his dream, when he was a boy, he asked his favorite superhero, Mr. Incredible, to hire him as a side-kick. Unfortunately, but justifiably, he was rejected. He didn’t have any superpowers and simply couldn’t become a superhero.

As usually happens with weak people, instead of focusing on his other qualities, this disappointment resulted in him becoming bitter and resentful.

As it turns out, Syndrome was actually a technical genius. He was able to construct "superhero gadgets," sort of like what Batman uses. However, being a great mythological representation of those weak people that Nietzsche was warning us about, he had a very interesting plan for using his talent.

So what was his grand, evil plan, then?

To start mass production and distribution of his gadgets so that everyone can become a hero.

"Wait, are you sure he is the villain?" you might ask.

Just like you might ask what is so bad about today’s insistence on equality.

Luckily, Syndrome was more transparent about his intentions than today’s preachers of equality are.

As he explains his grand plan:

"If everyone is super, no one is super."

He is mad at the whole world because he wasn’t born with superpowers. He is resentful because he was rightfully rejected when he tried to become a superhero. If he cannot be a superhero, no one shall be a superhero!

Or, as Nietzsche brilliantly explained the inner workings of resentful people:

"When some men fail to accomplish what they desire to do they exclaim angrily, "May the whole world perish!" This repulsive emotion is the pinnacle of envy, whose implication is "If I cannot have something, no one can have anything, no one is to be anything!" (Daybreak)

And since power and greatness cannot actually be taken away, the next best thing is to try to devalue them.

In a world where suddenly everyone is a hero, no one is a hero anymore.

In a world where everyone is great, real greatness doesn’t exist.

When one is unable, or rather unwilling, to raise oneself up, one plots revenge by making that which is unattainable to him not worth anything. Syndrome’s mission of creating equality was a clear desire for revenge. Revenge against the world and everything in it that is good and special. And it is not different with today’s preachers of equality.

"And ‘will to equality’ – that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and we shall raise outcry against everything that has power!’ You preachers of equality, thus from you the tyrant-madness of impotence cries for ‘equality’: thus your most secret tyrant-appetite disguises itself in words of virtue. They resemble inspired men: but it is not the heart that inspires them – it is revenge." (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

What do you think? Is greatness still possible today?

Was Nietzsche right in his predictions?

Or do you think that today’s insistence on equality in every aspect of life has nothing to do with resentment and revenge?

Let me know in the comments.

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