I like Jordan Peterson. Like a lot of people in post-Soviet countries did.
The first time I saw him was on the Joe Rogan Experience, and then I started digging his lectures, his debate with Sam Harris. What struck me wasn’t what he thought, but how he thought. He showed me that symbolic thinking can exist without naivety, tradition can exist without obedience, that myth doesn’t have to mean regression and critique doesn’t have to crumble into nihilism.
This was fresh for me. Not because I’d never encountered these ideas at all. What was new was realising how deprived Western public discourse seemed of these modes of thought and how allergic it was to them.
Later, when I moved to Europe, a lot of things disturbed me. Like trying to talk to people about Peterson and discovering that many of them had absolutely no idea what he actually said, what he stood for, or what intellectual tradition he came from, but they already had a fully formed opinion about him. Honestly, it was fucked up.
I have not encountered him but your, “He showed me that symbolic thinking can exist without naivety, tradition can exist without obedience, that myth doesn’t have to mean regression and critique doesn’t have to crumble into nihilism,” really has me nodding in agreement. It resonates with my own life journey. Thanks
I'm happy to read this. I'm not a fan, and I'm not a hater but I went through a 2016 whirlwind of loathing him for a few sound bites (his stance on pronouns that was my introduction to his work) and wrote him off entirely because knee jerk EW. I tried to watch a few other clips on YouTube because a young guy who cooked at my restaurant said he thought I might enjoy what a shit stirrer he was. I appreciate that sort of thing and he knew it and we often had amazing debates working in the kitchen together- he was a philosophy major, smart and thoughtful and complex- didn't fit neatly into any box, like all my favorite people (including myself, minus the formal philosophy education; and this case "him" for clarity's sake is my cook, not JP)
I reported back that I couldn't get past the entitled whiny crap about his dismissiveness about pronouns. He agreed and we didn't discuss further beyond him saying "I didn't think you'd LIKE him, just find his approach interesting" meh
2 years later, I'm at my now husband's house. I spot a printout of JP's 12 Rules taped up next to his workstation. Oh boy, I thought. Then he mentioned a recent Joe Rogan podcast 🚩🚨🚩🚨
I hadn't yet begun to identify as an anarchist (because wow is that word/philosophy misunderstood) but I was beyond liberal, no bleeding heart on my sleeve hand wringing NIMBY and I took a lot of pride in identifying as a disrupter and standing up for/with the underdogs. But it was then I realized that I was just as guilty of writing people off without actually engaging beyond sound bites. At the time I was also disillusioned by feminism and the online cult behavior of it all, especially younger women, but I kept my flag in that hill in some hopes that discourse would mature. It would be a few more years before I embraced anarchism and animism as ecosystem thinking and not isms with dogma. But who we associate with *matters*
So I really liked this guy and decided to practice what I preached about actually being open minded. I furiously listened to a smattering of Rogan episodes. Not for me, but I gained insight beyond the clips and adjusted my stance. Was I fan? No. But I softened and started to see why he was so popular and it's not just toxic bro culture stuff. Same with JP. They're case studies in media manipulation from many different angles, and I maintain they wield their influence irresponsibily, but like anything popular, it's not necessarily the icon that's terrible- it's the fan base and interpretations that skew the reality
Fast forward a year later and I'm sitting in a theater (nervously, like an interloper) waiting for JP to take the stage. I had a long list of suppositions about the audience, mostly younger white men. But I was surprised at the number of women and non-white people in attendance. It was orderly, people were kind, patient, earnest and eager- the energy was reverent. Peterson took the stage and was genuinely a rambling delight to listen to. He corrected himself as went, he changed course, he was nimble and charming. What the hell 😂
Again, still not a fan. But I get it now. He's so much more that a few sound bites but I find his authoritarian/authoritative stance to be deeply at odds with my values. Yet I also see his *archetype* and how young men, in this day and age, would find that appealing. And it opened much more empathy and understanding for the wide gray expanse between incel and "ideal" man. My husband is more of a fan than he'll admit, and one spell where I couldn't effectively get through to him I addended JP's 12 Rules with a (anarchist animist) wife version. Because the man was onto something- but it's so incomplete. Yet I also have that man to thank for inspiring my work in system roles and making space for complexity without complicity.
And now that my response is as long as your essay... I'll stop there 😂 thanks for being a great example of holding multiple truths. Oh and, I came across re-enchantment via Craig Chalquist in his essay about why he no longer teaches the Heroes Journey, before I knew about JP (such a hipster move! Ha!)
“Fast forward a year later and I'm sitting in a theater (nervously, like an interloper) waiting for JP to take the stage. I had a long list of suppositions about the audience, mostly younger white men. But I was surprised at the number of women and non-white people in attendance. It was orderly, people were kind, patient, earnest and eager- the energy was reverent. Peterson took the stage and was genuinely a rambling delight to listen to. He corrected himself as went, he changed course, he was nimble and charming. What the hell 😂”
Thank you for sharing. I wish everyone had the opportunity to see Jordan Peterson lecture in person. His character and perspective on life defy a lot of assumptions people make about him.
Just went and read through your "teasers" and the comments and I gotta add that I realize I may be doing the too cool for Peterson thing here myself, but I hope what I'm actually trying to convey comes through: talking about him conveys different things to different demographics, and I'm suspicious of both people who adore him and those who loathe him. Making room for the nuance of influence is close to my heart. Like my boss who would tease me for loving the oldies station "there's so much better music from that time" Yes, and, some accessible boppy pop is sometimes what brings people together. (And we could get into how "problematic" artists of that time were and draw some parallels 😂)
I came into this as a new follower (your Rocky piece shared by a friend) and have appreciated the way you tweak the lenses of modernity.
Bee, I just wanted to thank you for the little life-way history. At 62 I read Substack in part to get a sense of the millennial and younger thought-value trajectory. This is how I encountered and befriended JT (having much earlier encountered JP). So just know that no need to apologize for long personal story notes (I am also inclined to do the same). I will stop there, though I will say at my age and history I see a Good trajectory for you and your matrimonial life mate. I would speculate on where an metaphor-following ecological animist is heading (carrying an -ist backpack and bumper stickers) but that might fire you up in an unkind way. (🚩🚨). 🙏🏼
Well received, sir, thank you. I like being fired up clearly, but I appreciate your restraint as well as the blessing 😂 but I'm no spring chicken at 48, and the joys of being curious about life have brought me to a deeply integrated faith, and while I'm not Christian, I'm a big fan of Jesus and his teachings. Which makes it all the more exciting to be interacting in this space, as I'm not likely the "target audience" for James's work, it's inspiring and proactive to me in ways my own usual circles (labyrinths?! 🌀) don't tap into much. I was a bit nervous leaving the comment for multiple reasons, then embarrassed a little that I jumped in without more of a grasp of the work James has put out here, but I've found this all invigorating and have been sharing the conversation with my husband. He's a keeper ;)
Funny, I just returned from a couple of days with my ski buddy who is also your age. (My ski and surf age is much younger than chronological age). Perhaps that is why I detected your generational range within the thoughtful seeker genre. And agreed that “usual circles” can become corrals if we allow them to be. I’m embedded in a small hippie arty academic non-profit science ecology design professional context (and the same town) for 32 years. Very few of my mostly lovable compatriots realize there is a hole in the fence, let alone a potential better adventure beyond the enclosure. Those of us who venture in and out under our cloak of invisibility can occasionally sense it in one another but are careful to confide carefully and over time. We want to share but there are consequences to consider and little utility or kindness in uninvited boosterism. “Cause” in extreme = caustic. Erosion is not a motivator for me; yes to Good preferable to no to bad. Etc.
My ski and surf age is, uh, probably toddler range 😂 I have all the energy but lack coordination (but make up for it with a comedic and optimistic outlook)
I appreciate the reflection on caustic, I'll be borrowing that. Several sentences here have my brain and heart cranking, thanks for your generosity in engaging with me 🙏🏼
Having discovered him at the same time (2016) but having the opposite impression regarding his stance (the government cannot, should not force an individual to say anything) I wonder if you’d even have disagreed with him then or now if you dug into what he was saying then.
Then again maybe you heard some clips that I missed in 2016 😅
I can appreciate the stance on principle about the government not telling him what he could do, but his unkindness about it was the turn-off for me plus the way so many fans glommed on to his clips positively just as superficially as his detractors; but ultimately that's the space where I leaned into wanting to know more because that era was peak "outrage machine" for me on the Internet in general as the algorithms were really honing the siloed thinking into the razor sharp weapon of division and advertising revenue generation it is now 🙃
Short but not with you; Substack needs to save comments if you accidentally swipe away and are four paragraphs deep in being thoughtful and nuanced. 😡
Anyway, he was defending everyone’s rights to free speech, including those who were protesting against him.
I saw the context in full so I don’t remember any unkindness but did see how things were clip farmed for outrage even then.
Something something about being a white straight male and JP being one of the very few forces working to keep me and other from reacting ourselves into the far-right.
Something else about; I wonder if we could agree that *Truth exists.*
Oh man, I hear you on the lost comments shenanigans in Substack (I also can't edit most of the time?!)
Feel free to reach out in messages, I'd love to chat more deeply sometime about this! I came out here in this thread because I wanted to share a perspective from someone who was borderline tribal feminist and learned the errors of most of my ways 😅 but it's a lot for a comment thread, on someone else's (very friendly, much appreciated!) turf.
Nice! I took one of his courses/workshops and got a lot out of it, I'm always happy to spread his name around. I realized a lot reading this piece about the many intersecting interests I often discuss are unwitting signals to Jordan Peterson's work, which has never been my intent but it makes sense now realizing he's probably responsible for more people delving into Jung than the MBTI 😂
I liked Craig’s personality. I couldn't say the same about Peterson. Something is very rigid, harsh, strict, and disturbing in his energy. Hitler vibes I’d say 😀 Anyways, thanks again for pointing out Craig's work, it feels very organic and true. I’ll check a bit more of his work.
James, your prose is unusually alive. The opening dream sequence,“His household down below,” the gap you must cross, the fear of falling into full association, and the pull toward “your own house” in the darkness, I could not have dreamed of a better way of saying how this is exactly how the post-2016 Peterson ecosystem feels when it’s being honest with itself. You managed to say the quiet part out loud without making it brittle or mean. I compliment you for your restraint. The dogwhistle point is also painfully accurate. In public, people say “Jung” and “archetype” as a kind of safe proxy, and I am definitely guilty of this all of the time. In private, although, to be fair, more so in public, nowadays, I admit that Peterson was the gateway. I’ve noticed the same dynamic in myself to qualify and to emphasize faults more than I would with colleagues, in particular.
Where I resonate most is in the arc you describe at the end, when the door opens, and then you move on. That’s been my experience too. Peterson pointed the way, but he never quite followed it through to its native depths. He keeps writing that he "discovers" sources that were always there, but often stays in the register of psychological utility or cultural critique, as if the thing could be indefinitely approached without being entered.
I couldn’t wait at that crossroads either. I went looking for the older sources on their own terms, the ones that don’t merely gesture toward meaning but demand method and transformation of the subject. Either way, like you, I suspect I wouldn’t have made the journey without that first provocation. Whatever his limits, he functioned for many of us as the disruptive permission slip that you’re allowed to take the past seriously again and that you’re allowed to admit that the consensus isn’t a sufficient ontology.
So, yes, I certainly am grateful, and I made sure to say that from the start in my forthcoming book on Peterson's thought. And grateful for the clarity and courage of this piece.
This essay does a better job of explaining the Peterson phenomenon than anything else I've read. Really well articulated.
I also never understood how guys like Harris could so fully misunderstand Peterson - maybe those guys are just missing something that, as you said, relies on experience rather than ideology for beliefs. Harris's entire worldview is based on a utilitarian foundation which simply does not find value in stories or myths. I find that completely out of touch and frankly anti-human. I mean, what the hell kind of human being doesn't learn from stories?
You've reminded me how ungrateful and cowardly it would be to spurn him in public. He does plenty of things that bother me, in a very visceral way, but he did after all help me finally get off the launchpad into classical thinking and reading. And for that he is a hero and will always be.
The Upton Sinclair quote about men having difficulty understanding things which their paycheck relies on their not understanding explains a lot of the hate JBP receives from "public intellectuals".
Harris is interesting, it's hard to put my finger on exactly why it seems he is able to draw such strange conclusions. He does seem trapped in his left brain, whereas Peterson has a much richer and wholesome understanding and interpretation of things. He tempers that with 20 years experience as a patient-facing physiotherapist. Harris' tilt towards meditation, and it's unavoidable aspect of introspection, indicates to me that he has an inclination, perhaps latently, that there's something more underneath...
Reading this has me feeling pretty ashamed of myself. I’ve clowned on JBP. Even outright rejected his worldview. But if I’m really really honest, my philosophy education, my geopolitical awareness, heck even my Christianity, all of it can be traced back directly or indirectly to him// that whole cultural moment around 2016. I was not the personality type that had an interest in ANY of that stuff before those conversations started to really break open in the media. And he was the face of that moment.
Idk what that impulse is exactly. Like identity through negation. A ‘thumbing the nose of the father’ type thing I guess. Kinda like having to distance yourself from something to develop your own identity.
The Canadian frog man really is like a father figure for a generation and a half. Not the lovingly adored father. The one you respect but also find annoying and don’t want the other kids seeing you being dropped off at school by.
I ‘outgrew him’ a long time ago, but I don’t know. He won’t be around forever. I don’t check up on him as much as I should. Whether I agree or disagree with a lot of his current positions. You’re right. We owe him. He’s done a lot.
This is outstanding: “Not the lovingly adored father. The one you respect but also find annoying and don’t want the other kids seeing you being dropped off at school by.”
I’ve watched all of JP’s lectures. I even paid for a month subscription to the DW to watch Exodus. I find him oddly comforting, even when I disagree thoroughly. We share a favorite book - Denial of Death- and I wrote a masters thesis on Jung long before I engaged with JP. I honestly feel no shame saying I appreciate him, and would love to talk with him. Jordan, with open mind and heart, posted YouTube lectures after penning an answer to a Quora question that resulted in the 12 Rules, and was met with an online mob at the peak of cancel culture. His X behavior made me ache for him, when I was still on there. I watched a YouTube video of Greg Hurwitz having an intervention with him. I do hope he’s going to be okay. I miss his podcast. A progressive friend of mine tells me “Jen, you can’t possibly like JP. You are a college educated gay person!” But alas, i do. JP provided me with a doorway to step back into Christianity when i needed it most. Thanks for this compelling and beautiful essay.
I’m not taking my poster down out of principle, and probably even some affection for the man, not because the man was right about everything, and who is, but because if you watched Michael Jordan in the 90’s, you just kinda had to be there to understand… To understand why LeBron can never be Jordan and I’m not gonna try to argue why anymore.
Would love to talk more about the feelings that drive this piece. And why the sons of Noah either scoff or cover their father’s shame…
Another friend of Paul here. Thanks for the great essay. Reminds me that I made a video about how much JP helped me, out of a desire to be brave and say how I felt even if it might become a source of humiliation someday.
The world should be profoundly grateful to Jordan Peterson. Full stop.
That would be where someone would normally throw in some “despite his flaws” or “despite being wrong about X” - but of course he has flaws and things he is wrong about. He’s human! So I love that you mostly kept those caveats at bay. Great essay.
I didn’t come to JBP from the same angle as you - in 2016/2017 I was a 30-something mom who had formerly been a devout Catholic but found myself spiritually lost in a morass of doubt and confusion. Peterson helped me think about things I had known and believed in a totally fresh way without being afraid of where the ideas would take me. He was only one of the means God used in my life, but he was a big one.
I will go out on a limb and say that I think the illnesses he is experiencing are spiritual warfare. Whether it’s purely external attack, or whether he’s fighting some internal battle, whether there is some knee he won’t bend to God, that I couldn’t say.
Last thought - while most of this essay is really insightful, I will admit to not being aware of the main thesis. I knew JBP inspired split opinions, both on the left and the right. But I didn’t realize that even those who owe him a debt were keeping quiet about it. I guess it’s true? I hadn’t noticed and if I had, I maybe chalked it up to the short life of trends in our modern world - “how much more can be said about Jordan Peterson” - that sort of thing. I personally am willing to admit his role in my life - but I also don’t talk about him as much as I used to - maybe there’s something natural about that? Like you said - he was a doorway for me, but I’m already in the room. I don’t need to keep focusing on the door.
Ok, last last thought! I know this is a much more recent phenomenon, of maybe only the last year (at least openly) - but I wonder how he is/will be dragged by the split on the right due to the Israel question? His alignment with the Daily Wire and his stance before falling ill put him clearly in one camp. There are those who were pupils of his who will now find themselves at least questioning that stance, if not fully disavowing him because of it.
Thanks so much for the comment. It's good to hear from someone who enjoyed him "from the other side" so to speak. My wife and I are in OCIA classes now, so we're criss-crossing it seems.
Maybe more intersecting? I’m pretty ensconced in the conservative Presbyterian world now, but I’m confessionally just a Nicene Creed Christian with a lot of open mindedness about theology, ecclesiology, and liturgical praxis - not in a liberal way, I’m literal in my interpretation of Scripture and the central tenants found in the Creed. But I’ve given up on having epistemic certainty about litigating the differences between denominations. I’ve landed on - whatever church is one you’ll faithfully attend and brings you closer to Jesus - go there. And if your church is causing you to sin, go elsewhere.
Blessings on you and you wife in your process of becoming Catholic!
"whatever church is one you’ll faithfully attend and brings you closer to Jesus - go there" -- couldn't have said it better - Jesus is truth and light and life. Forget compromise - let's meet at Him. Thank you, Bitter Beloved.
I agree. We should be grateful to JBP. He radically changed our eldest son for the better when he started listening to him in high school. He grew up in the church but was disconnected from the meaning of it all. Jordan gave him scaffolding and stones. I started following JBP a bit after that to see what the fuss was about. I had never read, much less heard of, many of the things (for lack of better words) he talked about. I was a narrow, highly-gaurded Presbyterian who didn't have the mental wherewithal to handle history, philosophy, psychology, AND theology. It was too much. Then one day, it all started making sense. The scaffolding was erected. The stones of a new building could be laid. It's dramatically enhanced by life.
While I will not put JBP in the place of Christ, I do believe he has been made an instrument on Christ's behalf, even if faulty at times. There are many within history/Scripture who fall into this category.
So, I too rarely talk about Peterson any longer. The work has been done. I do owe him much gratitude for helping a middle-age mom get out of her mental confinement. I owe him for being able to speak into a lost boy's life when his own family and church just didn't have the right language to communicate with him.
Now, if his brain would get out of the way so his heart can receive the gift of grace. ☺️
Thanks for including your dream in this. I really appreciate the subtext of leaving, (or not falling into), your cultural/intellectual father's house and the necessity of building your own.
I had a feeling he would fall eventually in public esteem and made a vow to myself back then that I wouldn’t ever badmouth him (barring some extreme circumstance). Wish I could find the meme I made, ‘leave Britney alone’ with JP’s name pasted over hers. I can say he’s not right about everything; as a religious person, his views on religion leave much to be desired. But I have a lot of affection for him and feel a certain sense of loyalty. I also, like you, feel it would be cowardly to totally renounce him.
Well, ya know, essay means “attempt” but what you did here James wasn’t simply an attempt. It was a tremendous achievement.. and I’m bloody serious about that.
I’ve never read anything that so perfectly encapsulated the love, embarrassment, and confusion I feel toward Jordan Peterson.
I’ve been trying to write about him for years but never have the words. You had them.
Thanks for writing this! You are clearly a young man oriented toward the truth and willing to bear your cross!
When I came across Peterson first, I was intrigued enough to read 12 Rules. I didn't find it awful, indeed some of it seemed good common sense, some seemed a necessary embrace of more mythical imagination and approaches to life... But where it fully annoyed me was when it kept veering off into ressentiment and anti-Woke whining. Now I do believe for a second that the "Left" is immune to criticism, but his was sloppy, knee-jerk, simplistic stuff, and crucially did not seem to proceed necessarily from his actual arguments. Whenever I saw or heard him interviewed I found his persona to be annoying and obfuscatory, to be tangled in nets of badly digested mythology and psychoanalysis: to be histrionic and weepy. However, I was in an interesting position to judge, as I had _already_ made the transition away from the atheist existentialist materialism of my teens and early twenties. I had long been enamoured of Romanticism, of fin de siècle Décadentisme and Symbolisme. In my academic studies, I had encountered PoMo and Post-Structuralist Critical Theory, and while I found it, at best, playful and thought-provoking, most of the time I really struggled to grasp it, though I think in the end I did (most of its proponents, especially in North America, clearly DON'T actually grasp it. Kind of an epic troll by the French, who even in the 90s found "French Theory" to be desperately passé). The critics I most vibrated with were people like Eliade, Edmund Wilson, Carlo Ginzburg, Northrop Frye (who could take on Joseph Campbell and Jordan Peterson tag-teaming him and knock them both into a cocked hat). I enjoyed like Peter Brook, Frank Kermode, Susan Sontag, Linda Williams, Bruno Bettelheim, Marina Warner... Intellectuals of the 60s and 70s (and beyond) who were still working with the very serious JOY of literature, culture, art, cinema. As my studies progressed, so did my worldview and cosmology, to become a sort of Anarchist Animist Druid-Magician. But I do not consider myself remotely Conservative, nor do I believe in the supremacy of "Progress". The study of myth, fantasy, the weird, the obscure, made of me a Pagan and Occultist Scholar. I think anyone who sees through the materialist-rationalist orthodoxy of the Western world and decides to flee and take shelter in Christianity and Neo-Reactionary Conservatism is weak and a coward.
James K.A. Smith introduced me to Charles Taylor before the Peterson phenomenon through his Cultural Liturgy series. This caused his wave to be more curiosity than personally helpful.
I love the perspective in this. Causes me to ask, where am I still playing status games when it comes to group pressure and the wish to seem sophisticated?
Interesting you bring it up. I did find that turn surprising. While I'm not interested in reading his future work I didn't notice overt political learnings in any of his other work (much of which I've read). I guess those who know more about the philosophers he sites may have had a heads up.
Especially when one is already suffering from affluenza and would rather plan what others should give up than personally consider Christ's call to sell all you have and give to the poor.
Funny thing about Dostoyevsky is he spent much of his youth in the liberal circles only to repudiate some of those beliefs as he got older. I was struck by some of the similar arguments he described in Crime and Punishment from the nihilists and how they would have been right at home on tumblr. Eh well nothing new under the sun
I'm stunned by how deeply I relate to this! My best friend and I discovered JP's lectures online around 2016, first about the Bible and later about Jung and were completely arrested. We've both always been contrarians, but I was pretty deeply ensconced in post-modern thought and liberal academia at the time, while also undergoing a very intense personal spiritual crisis brought on by my struggle to conceive, and it was in fact Peterson who helped me connect the dots and make sense of my personal struggle in light of a much larger one—and as a woman!
It was Peterson who introduced me to both Eliade and Neumann, whose thinking on religion and feminine consciousness respectively were entirely formative and life-altering for me. Eliade's "The Sacred and the Profane," and Neumann's "The Origins and History of Consciousness" and "The Great Mother" never leave my desk. I also discovered Camille Paglia through Peterson (anyone know what she's up to??), and she was one of the most refreshing voices I'd heard in years, even if we disagree on certain points.
But we definitely felt like we couldn't reveal our admiration for Peterson to people. It was, and in many ways still is, a dirty secret. Even my husband, who is pretty moderate on most things, hated him. The public smear campaign was so effective, it made it so that people felt like they couldn't even listen to him in his own words without betraying the common good.
I do think that all the time in the spotlight, especially as the subject of such vitriolic discourse, and the various ways in which people sought to sabotage his career, compromised him in many ways, but I'll always be grateful for the thinkers he introduced me to, as well as the general courage he inspired in me to dare to displease the mob in the service of one's truths.
That said, a statement like “The polar opposite of Hitler is not Jesus, though - it’s Stalin.” is not self-evident.
Hitler and Stalin were both malignant narcissists, and pathologically deeply similar. To not recognize this is to be pretty wildly reductivist, as you are using them for metonymic standins for Capitalism and Communism.
Perhaps I misinterpret, but a big statement like that without justification does open the door.
Peterson is a tool, by the way, because he offers myth and metaphor as a device for understanding (which I am wildly in favor of), but he ends up in treacly historicism and reductive lessons from nature. Claiming we need dominance hierarchies because lobsters have them betrays a lack of understanding of both dominance hierarchies and lobsters.
Real lobsters are among the most cannibalistic animals on the planet. Like they cannot resist eating each other as they spread like roaches on the ocean floor. The rubber bands on their claws are literally to keep them from consuming each other.
I acknowledge the void that he is filling, and I think society has done wildly wrong by young people. I also am a huge proponent of balanced right and left brain thinking.
But Petersen is less smart than he thinks he is, and he is acting out childhood trauma himself. You and your friends are consuming his trauma.
I am really grateful for this. I was a huge fan of Peterson back in 2016, but over time my appreciation has waned. You helped me remember just what a profound legacy he has.
I like Jordan Peterson. Like a lot of people in post-Soviet countries did.
The first time I saw him was on the Joe Rogan Experience, and then I started digging his lectures, his debate with Sam Harris. What struck me wasn’t what he thought, but how he thought. He showed me that symbolic thinking can exist without naivety, tradition can exist without obedience, that myth doesn’t have to mean regression and critique doesn’t have to crumble into nihilism.
This was fresh for me. Not because I’d never encountered these ideas at all. What was new was realising how deprived Western public discourse seemed of these modes of thought and how allergic it was to them.
Later, when I moved to Europe, a lot of things disturbed me. Like trying to talk to people about Peterson and discovering that many of them had absolutely no idea what he actually said, what he stood for, or what intellectual tradition he came from, but they already had a fully formed opinion about him. Honestly, it was fucked up.
Very close to my experience.
I have not encountered him but your, “He showed me that symbolic thinking can exist without naivety, tradition can exist without obedience, that myth doesn’t have to mean regression and critique doesn’t have to crumble into nihilism,” really has me nodding in agreement. It resonates with my own life journey. Thanks
It's still fucked up.
I'm happy to read this. I'm not a fan, and I'm not a hater but I went through a 2016 whirlwind of loathing him for a few sound bites (his stance on pronouns that was my introduction to his work) and wrote him off entirely because knee jerk EW. I tried to watch a few other clips on YouTube because a young guy who cooked at my restaurant said he thought I might enjoy what a shit stirrer he was. I appreciate that sort of thing and he knew it and we often had amazing debates working in the kitchen together- he was a philosophy major, smart and thoughtful and complex- didn't fit neatly into any box, like all my favorite people (including myself, minus the formal philosophy education; and this case "him" for clarity's sake is my cook, not JP)
I reported back that I couldn't get past the entitled whiny crap about his dismissiveness about pronouns. He agreed and we didn't discuss further beyond him saying "I didn't think you'd LIKE him, just find his approach interesting" meh
2 years later, I'm at my now husband's house. I spot a printout of JP's 12 Rules taped up next to his workstation. Oh boy, I thought. Then he mentioned a recent Joe Rogan podcast 🚩🚨🚩🚨
I hadn't yet begun to identify as an anarchist (because wow is that word/philosophy misunderstood) but I was beyond liberal, no bleeding heart on my sleeve hand wringing NIMBY and I took a lot of pride in identifying as a disrupter and standing up for/with the underdogs. But it was then I realized that I was just as guilty of writing people off without actually engaging beyond sound bites. At the time I was also disillusioned by feminism and the online cult behavior of it all, especially younger women, but I kept my flag in that hill in some hopes that discourse would mature. It would be a few more years before I embraced anarchism and animism as ecosystem thinking and not isms with dogma. But who we associate with *matters*
So I really liked this guy and decided to practice what I preached about actually being open minded. I furiously listened to a smattering of Rogan episodes. Not for me, but I gained insight beyond the clips and adjusted my stance. Was I fan? No. But I softened and started to see why he was so popular and it's not just toxic bro culture stuff. Same with JP. They're case studies in media manipulation from many different angles, and I maintain they wield their influence irresponsibily, but like anything popular, it's not necessarily the icon that's terrible- it's the fan base and interpretations that skew the reality
Fast forward a year later and I'm sitting in a theater (nervously, like an interloper) waiting for JP to take the stage. I had a long list of suppositions about the audience, mostly younger white men. But I was surprised at the number of women and non-white people in attendance. It was orderly, people were kind, patient, earnest and eager- the energy was reverent. Peterson took the stage and was genuinely a rambling delight to listen to. He corrected himself as went, he changed course, he was nimble and charming. What the hell 😂
Again, still not a fan. But I get it now. He's so much more that a few sound bites but I find his authoritarian/authoritative stance to be deeply at odds with my values. Yet I also see his *archetype* and how young men, in this day and age, would find that appealing. And it opened much more empathy and understanding for the wide gray expanse between incel and "ideal" man. My husband is more of a fan than he'll admit, and one spell where I couldn't effectively get through to him I addended JP's 12 Rules with a (anarchist animist) wife version. Because the man was onto something- but it's so incomplete. Yet I also have that man to thank for inspiring my work in system roles and making space for complexity without complicity.
And now that my response is as long as your essay... I'll stop there 😂 thanks for being a great example of holding multiple truths. Oh and, I came across re-enchantment via Craig Chalquist in his essay about why he no longer teaches the Heroes Journey, before I knew about JP (such a hipster move! Ha!)
“Fast forward a year later and I'm sitting in a theater (nervously, like an interloper) waiting for JP to take the stage. I had a long list of suppositions about the audience, mostly younger white men. But I was surprised at the number of women and non-white people in attendance. It was orderly, people were kind, patient, earnest and eager- the energy was reverent. Peterson took the stage and was genuinely a rambling delight to listen to. He corrected himself as went, he changed course, he was nimble and charming. What the hell 😂”
Thank you for sharing. I wish everyone had the opportunity to see Jordan Peterson lecture in person. His character and perspective on life defy a lot of assumptions people make about him.
https://infovores.substack.com/p/partial-q-and-a-transcript-from-jordan
Just went and read through your "teasers" and the comments and I gotta add that I realize I may be doing the too cool for Peterson thing here myself, but I hope what I'm actually trying to convey comes through: talking about him conveys different things to different demographics, and I'm suspicious of both people who adore him and those who loathe him. Making room for the nuance of influence is close to my heart. Like my boss who would tease me for loving the oldies station "there's so much better music from that time" Yes, and, some accessible boppy pop is sometimes what brings people together. (And we could get into how "problematic" artists of that time were and draw some parallels 😂)
I came into this as a new follower (your Rocky piece shared by a friend) and have appreciated the way you tweak the lenses of modernity.
I really enjoyed your comment and I don't think it falls it that category - it seemed earnest. Thank you so much for reading.
Bee, I just wanted to thank you for the little life-way history. At 62 I read Substack in part to get a sense of the millennial and younger thought-value trajectory. This is how I encountered and befriended JT (having much earlier encountered JP). So just know that no need to apologize for long personal story notes (I am also inclined to do the same). I will stop there, though I will say at my age and history I see a Good trajectory for you and your matrimonial life mate. I would speculate on where an metaphor-following ecological animist is heading (carrying an -ist backpack and bumper stickers) but that might fire you up in an unkind way. (🚩🚨). 🙏🏼
Well received, sir, thank you. I like being fired up clearly, but I appreciate your restraint as well as the blessing 😂 but I'm no spring chicken at 48, and the joys of being curious about life have brought me to a deeply integrated faith, and while I'm not Christian, I'm a big fan of Jesus and his teachings. Which makes it all the more exciting to be interacting in this space, as I'm not likely the "target audience" for James's work, it's inspiring and proactive to me in ways my own usual circles (labyrinths?! 🌀) don't tap into much. I was a bit nervous leaving the comment for multiple reasons, then embarrassed a little that I jumped in without more of a grasp of the work James has put out here, but I've found this all invigorating and have been sharing the conversation with my husband. He's a keeper ;)
“and while I'm not Christian, I'm a big fan of Jesus”
Big smiles. Don’t know how folks can bear to blame him for all that.
Please pardon my breaking in. Wonderful thread
Funny, I just returned from a couple of days with my ski buddy who is also your age. (My ski and surf age is much younger than chronological age). Perhaps that is why I detected your generational range within the thoughtful seeker genre. And agreed that “usual circles” can become corrals if we allow them to be. I’m embedded in a small hippie arty academic non-profit science ecology design professional context (and the same town) for 32 years. Very few of my mostly lovable compatriots realize there is a hole in the fence, let alone a potential better adventure beyond the enclosure. Those of us who venture in and out under our cloak of invisibility can occasionally sense it in one another but are careful to confide carefully and over time. We want to share but there are consequences to consider and little utility or kindness in uninvited boosterism. “Cause” in extreme = caustic. Erosion is not a motivator for me; yes to Good preferable to no to bad. Etc.
My ski and surf age is, uh, probably toddler range 😂 I have all the energy but lack coordination (but make up for it with a comedic and optimistic outlook)
I appreciate the reflection on caustic, I'll be borrowing that. Several sentences here have my brain and heart cranking, thanks for your generosity in engaging with me 🙏🏼
Having discovered him at the same time (2016) but having the opposite impression regarding his stance (the government cannot, should not force an individual to say anything) I wonder if you’d even have disagreed with him then or now if you dug into what he was saying then.
Then again maybe you heard some clips that I missed in 2016 😅
I can appreciate the stance on principle about the government not telling him what he could do, but his unkindness about it was the turn-off for me plus the way so many fans glommed on to his clips positively just as superficially as his detractors; but ultimately that's the space where I leaned into wanting to know more because that era was peak "outrage machine" for me on the Internet in general as the algorithms were really honing the siloed thinking into the razor sharp weapon of division and advertising revenue generation it is now 🙃
Fourth time is the charm…
Short but not with you; Substack needs to save comments if you accidentally swipe away and are four paragraphs deep in being thoughtful and nuanced. 😡
Anyway, he was defending everyone’s rights to free speech, including those who were protesting against him.
I saw the context in full so I don’t remember any unkindness but did see how things were clip farmed for outrage even then.
Something something about being a white straight male and JP being one of the very few forces working to keep me and other from reacting ourselves into the far-right.
Something else about; I wonder if we could agree that *Truth exists.*
Oh man, I hear you on the lost comments shenanigans in Substack (I also can't edit most of the time?!)
Feel free to reach out in messages, I'd love to chat more deeply sometime about this! I came out here in this thread because I wanted to share a perspective from someone who was borderline tribal feminist and learned the errors of most of my ways 😅 but it's a lot for a comment thread, on someone else's (very friendly, much appreciated!) turf.
Forgive me that I won’t have a private conversation, nothing personal!
Maybe we cannot agree on Truth being real or having existence. It would not be the first nor I suspect the last! And maybe you would agree either way,
God bless you.
Thank you for mentioning Craig Chalquist. Spent a day studying his approach. Resonates a lot, also very insightful.
Nice! I took one of his courses/workshops and got a lot out of it, I'm always happy to spread his name around. I realized a lot reading this piece about the many intersecting interests I often discuss are unwitting signals to Jordan Peterson's work, which has never been my intent but it makes sense now realizing he's probably responsible for more people delving into Jung than the MBTI 😂
I liked Craig’s personality. I couldn't say the same about Peterson. Something is very rigid, harsh, strict, and disturbing in his energy. Hitler vibes I’d say 😀 Anyways, thanks again for pointing out Craig's work, it feels very organic and true. I’ll check a bit more of his work.
You're not an 'anarchist'. No one is.
James, your prose is unusually alive. The opening dream sequence,“His household down below,” the gap you must cross, the fear of falling into full association, and the pull toward “your own house” in the darkness, I could not have dreamed of a better way of saying how this is exactly how the post-2016 Peterson ecosystem feels when it’s being honest with itself. You managed to say the quiet part out loud without making it brittle or mean. I compliment you for your restraint. The dogwhistle point is also painfully accurate. In public, people say “Jung” and “archetype” as a kind of safe proxy, and I am definitely guilty of this all of the time. In private, although, to be fair, more so in public, nowadays, I admit that Peterson was the gateway. I’ve noticed the same dynamic in myself to qualify and to emphasize faults more than I would with colleagues, in particular.
Where I resonate most is in the arc you describe at the end, when the door opens, and then you move on. That’s been my experience too. Peterson pointed the way, but he never quite followed it through to its native depths. He keeps writing that he "discovers" sources that were always there, but often stays in the register of psychological utility or cultural critique, as if the thing could be indefinitely approached without being entered.
I couldn’t wait at that crossroads either. I went looking for the older sources on their own terms, the ones that don’t merely gesture toward meaning but demand method and transformation of the subject. Either way, like you, I suspect I wouldn’t have made the journey without that first provocation. Whatever his limits, he functioned for many of us as the disruptive permission slip that you’re allowed to take the past seriously again and that you’re allowed to admit that the consensus isn’t a sufficient ontology.
So, yes, I certainly am grateful, and I made sure to say that from the start in my forthcoming book on Peterson's thought. And grateful for the clarity and courage of this piece.
This essay does a better job of explaining the Peterson phenomenon than anything else I've read. Really well articulated.
I also never understood how guys like Harris could so fully misunderstand Peterson - maybe those guys are just missing something that, as you said, relies on experience rather than ideology for beliefs. Harris's entire worldview is based on a utilitarian foundation which simply does not find value in stories or myths. I find that completely out of touch and frankly anti-human. I mean, what the hell kind of human being doesn't learn from stories?
You've reminded me how ungrateful and cowardly it would be to spurn him in public. He does plenty of things that bother me, in a very visceral way, but he did after all help me finally get off the launchpad into classical thinking and reading. And for that he is a hero and will always be.
Thanks, Justin. I also find Sam to be baffling - but he seems well-meaning enough. I also like Dawkins. He's funny, at least.
Agree fully on the last bit.
The Upton Sinclair quote about men having difficulty understanding things which their paycheck relies on their not understanding explains a lot of the hate JBP receives from "public intellectuals".
Harris is interesting, it's hard to put my finger on exactly why it seems he is able to draw such strange conclusions. He does seem trapped in his left brain, whereas Peterson has a much richer and wholesome understanding and interpretation of things. He tempers that with 20 years experience as a patient-facing physiotherapist. Harris' tilt towards meditation, and it's unavoidable aspect of introspection, indicates to me that he has an inclination, perhaps latently, that there's something more underneath...
Reading this has me feeling pretty ashamed of myself. I’ve clowned on JBP. Even outright rejected his worldview. But if I’m really really honest, my philosophy education, my geopolitical awareness, heck even my Christianity, all of it can be traced back directly or indirectly to him// that whole cultural moment around 2016. I was not the personality type that had an interest in ANY of that stuff before those conversations started to really break open in the media. And he was the face of that moment.
Idk what that impulse is exactly. Like identity through negation. A ‘thumbing the nose of the father’ type thing I guess. Kinda like having to distance yourself from something to develop your own identity.
The Canadian frog man really is like a father figure for a generation and a half. Not the lovingly adored father. The one you respect but also find annoying and don’t want the other kids seeing you being dropped off at school by.
I ‘outgrew him’ a long time ago, but I don’t know. He won’t be around forever. I don’t check up on him as much as I should. Whether I agree or disagree with a lot of his current positions. You’re right. We owe him. He’s done a lot.
Probably my favorite comment. Thanks for being honest.
This is outstanding: “Not the lovingly adored father. The one you respect but also find annoying and don’t want the other kids seeing you being dropped off at school by.”
I’ve watched all of JP’s lectures. I even paid for a month subscription to the DW to watch Exodus. I find him oddly comforting, even when I disagree thoroughly. We share a favorite book - Denial of Death- and I wrote a masters thesis on Jung long before I engaged with JP. I honestly feel no shame saying I appreciate him, and would love to talk with him. Jordan, with open mind and heart, posted YouTube lectures after penning an answer to a Quora question that resulted in the 12 Rules, and was met with an online mob at the peak of cancel culture. His X behavior made me ache for him, when I was still on there. I watched a YouTube video of Greg Hurwitz having an intervention with him. I do hope he’s going to be okay. I miss his podcast. A progressive friend of mine tells me “Jen, you can’t possibly like JP. You are a college educated gay person!” But alas, i do. JP provided me with a doorway to step back into Christianity when i needed it most. Thanks for this compelling and beautiful essay.
Wow, this is awesome. Thanks for the comment, Jen.
I’m not taking my poster down out of principle, and probably even some affection for the man, not because the man was right about everything, and who is, but because if you watched Michael Jordan in the 90’s, you just kinda had to be there to understand… To understand why LeBron can never be Jordan and I’m not gonna try to argue why anymore.
Would love to talk more about the feelings that drive this piece. And why the sons of Noah either scoff or cover their father’s shame…
“I write essays for God’s sake” lol
Thanks, dude. Would love to chat more about it sometime.
Christian, since I see comments from both you and Ethan here, I'll assume someone has already brought this piece to PVK's attention?
I need to talk to Paul at some point.
Another friend of Paul here. Thanks for the great essay. Reminds me that I made a video about how much JP helped me, out of a desire to be brave and say how I felt even if it might become a source of humiliation someday.
The world should be profoundly grateful to Jordan Peterson. Full stop.
That would be where someone would normally throw in some “despite his flaws” or “despite being wrong about X” - but of course he has flaws and things he is wrong about. He’s human! So I love that you mostly kept those caveats at bay. Great essay.
I didn’t come to JBP from the same angle as you - in 2016/2017 I was a 30-something mom who had formerly been a devout Catholic but found myself spiritually lost in a morass of doubt and confusion. Peterson helped me think about things I had known and believed in a totally fresh way without being afraid of where the ideas would take me. He was only one of the means God used in my life, but he was a big one.
I will go out on a limb and say that I think the illnesses he is experiencing are spiritual warfare. Whether it’s purely external attack, or whether he’s fighting some internal battle, whether there is some knee he won’t bend to God, that I couldn’t say.
Last thought - while most of this essay is really insightful, I will admit to not being aware of the main thesis. I knew JBP inspired split opinions, both on the left and the right. But I didn’t realize that even those who owe him a debt were keeping quiet about it. I guess it’s true? I hadn’t noticed and if I had, I maybe chalked it up to the short life of trends in our modern world - “how much more can be said about Jordan Peterson” - that sort of thing. I personally am willing to admit his role in my life - but I also don’t talk about him as much as I used to - maybe there’s something natural about that? Like you said - he was a doorway for me, but I’m already in the room. I don’t need to keep focusing on the door.
Ok, last last thought! I know this is a much more recent phenomenon, of maybe only the last year (at least openly) - but I wonder how he is/will be dragged by the split on the right due to the Israel question? His alignment with the Daily Wire and his stance before falling ill put him clearly in one camp. There are those who were pupils of his who will now find themselves at least questioning that stance, if not fully disavowing him because of it.
Thanks so much for the comment. It's good to hear from someone who enjoyed him "from the other side" so to speak. My wife and I are in OCIA classes now, so we're criss-crossing it seems.
Maybe more intersecting? I’m pretty ensconced in the conservative Presbyterian world now, but I’m confessionally just a Nicene Creed Christian with a lot of open mindedness about theology, ecclesiology, and liturgical praxis - not in a liberal way, I’m literal in my interpretation of Scripture and the central tenants found in the Creed. But I’ve given up on having epistemic certainty about litigating the differences between denominations. I’ve landed on - whatever church is one you’ll faithfully attend and brings you closer to Jesus - go there. And if your church is causing you to sin, go elsewhere.
Blessings on you and you wife in your process of becoming Catholic!
Thank you muchly!
"whatever church is one you’ll faithfully attend and brings you closer to Jesus - go there" -- couldn't have said it better - Jesus is truth and light and life. Forget compromise - let's meet at Him. Thank you, Bitter Beloved.
I agree. We should be grateful to JBP. He radically changed our eldest son for the better when he started listening to him in high school. He grew up in the church but was disconnected from the meaning of it all. Jordan gave him scaffolding and stones. I started following JBP a bit after that to see what the fuss was about. I had never read, much less heard of, many of the things (for lack of better words) he talked about. I was a narrow, highly-gaurded Presbyterian who didn't have the mental wherewithal to handle history, philosophy, psychology, AND theology. It was too much. Then one day, it all started making sense. The scaffolding was erected. The stones of a new building could be laid. It's dramatically enhanced by life.
While I will not put JBP in the place of Christ, I do believe he has been made an instrument on Christ's behalf, even if faulty at times. There are many within history/Scripture who fall into this category.
So, I too rarely talk about Peterson any longer. The work has been done. I do owe him much gratitude for helping a middle-age mom get out of her mental confinement. I owe him for being able to speak into a lost boy's life when his own family and church just didn't have the right language to communicate with him.
Now, if his brain would get out of the way so his heart can receive the gift of grace. ☺️
Thanks for including your dream in this. I really appreciate the subtext of leaving, (or not falling into), your cultural/intellectual father's house and the necessity of building your own.
Thanks, man. I actually didn't fully understand what it meant until just now, haha.
I had a feeling he would fall eventually in public esteem and made a vow to myself back then that I wouldn’t ever badmouth him (barring some extreme circumstance). Wish I could find the meme I made, ‘leave Britney alone’ with JP’s name pasted over hers. I can say he’s not right about everything; as a religious person, his views on religion leave much to be desired. But I have a lot of affection for him and feel a certain sense of loyalty. I also, like you, feel it would be cowardly to totally renounce him.
That's hilarious.
Well, ya know, essay means “attempt” but what you did here James wasn’t simply an attempt. It was a tremendous achievement.. and I’m bloody serious about that.
I’ve never read anything that so perfectly encapsulated the love, embarrassment, and confusion I feel toward Jordan Peterson.
I’ve been trying to write about him for years but never have the words. You had them.
Thanks for writing this! You are clearly a young man oriented toward the truth and willing to bear your cross!
When I came across Peterson first, I was intrigued enough to read 12 Rules. I didn't find it awful, indeed some of it seemed good common sense, some seemed a necessary embrace of more mythical imagination and approaches to life... But where it fully annoyed me was when it kept veering off into ressentiment and anti-Woke whining. Now I do believe for a second that the "Left" is immune to criticism, but his was sloppy, knee-jerk, simplistic stuff, and crucially did not seem to proceed necessarily from his actual arguments. Whenever I saw or heard him interviewed I found his persona to be annoying and obfuscatory, to be tangled in nets of badly digested mythology and psychoanalysis: to be histrionic and weepy. However, I was in an interesting position to judge, as I had _already_ made the transition away from the atheist existentialist materialism of my teens and early twenties. I had long been enamoured of Romanticism, of fin de siècle Décadentisme and Symbolisme. In my academic studies, I had encountered PoMo and Post-Structuralist Critical Theory, and while I found it, at best, playful and thought-provoking, most of the time I really struggled to grasp it, though I think in the end I did (most of its proponents, especially in North America, clearly DON'T actually grasp it. Kind of an epic troll by the French, who even in the 90s found "French Theory" to be desperately passé). The critics I most vibrated with were people like Eliade, Edmund Wilson, Carlo Ginzburg, Northrop Frye (who could take on Joseph Campbell and Jordan Peterson tag-teaming him and knock them both into a cocked hat). I enjoyed like Peter Brook, Frank Kermode, Susan Sontag, Linda Williams, Bruno Bettelheim, Marina Warner... Intellectuals of the 60s and 70s (and beyond) who were still working with the very serious JOY of literature, culture, art, cinema. As my studies progressed, so did my worldview and cosmology, to become a sort of Anarchist Animist Druid-Magician. But I do not consider myself remotely Conservative, nor do I believe in the supremacy of "Progress". The study of myth, fantasy, the weird, the obscure, made of me a Pagan and Occultist Scholar. I think anyone who sees through the materialist-rationalist orthodoxy of the Western world and decides to flee and take shelter in Christianity and Neo-Reactionary Conservatism is weak and a coward.
James K.A. Smith introduced me to Charles Taylor before the Peterson phenomenon through his Cultural Liturgy series. This caused his wave to be more curiosity than personally helpful.
I love the perspective in this. Causes me to ask, where am I still playing status games when it comes to group pressure and the wish to seem sophisticated?
Great question...
Smith's book on A Secular Age was nice summary. I'm not that surprised by his Marxist turn, but it makes me question my previous affection for Smith.
Interesting you bring it up. I did find that turn surprising. While I'm not interested in reading his future work I didn't notice overt political learnings in any of his other work (much of which I've read). I guess those who know more about the philosophers he sites may have had a heads up.
Status games are gonna status game, smith was not immune
Especially when one is already suffering from affluenza and would rather plan what others should give up than personally consider Christ's call to sell all you have and give to the poor.
Jesus would never ask a professor to give up tenure.
Funny thing about Dostoyevsky is he spent much of his youth in the liberal circles only to repudiate some of those beliefs as he got older. I was struck by some of the similar arguments he described in Crime and Punishment from the nihilists and how they would have been right at home on tumblr. Eh well nothing new under the sun
The entirety of Demons could have taken place in 2020 Discord.
I'm stunned by how deeply I relate to this! My best friend and I discovered JP's lectures online around 2016, first about the Bible and later about Jung and were completely arrested. We've both always been contrarians, but I was pretty deeply ensconced in post-modern thought and liberal academia at the time, while also undergoing a very intense personal spiritual crisis brought on by my struggle to conceive, and it was in fact Peterson who helped me connect the dots and make sense of my personal struggle in light of a much larger one—and as a woman!
It was Peterson who introduced me to both Eliade and Neumann, whose thinking on religion and feminine consciousness respectively were entirely formative and life-altering for me. Eliade's "The Sacred and the Profane," and Neumann's "The Origins and History of Consciousness" and "The Great Mother" never leave my desk. I also discovered Camille Paglia through Peterson (anyone know what she's up to??), and she was one of the most refreshing voices I'd heard in years, even if we disagree on certain points.
But we definitely felt like we couldn't reveal our admiration for Peterson to people. It was, and in many ways still is, a dirty secret. Even my husband, who is pretty moderate on most things, hated him. The public smear campaign was so effective, it made it so that people felt like they couldn't even listen to him in his own words without betraying the common good.
I do think that all the time in the spotlight, especially as the subject of such vitriolic discourse, and the various ways in which people sought to sabotage his career, compromised him in many ways, but I'll always be grateful for the thinkers he introduced me to, as well as the general courage he inspired in me to dare to displease the mob in the service of one's truths.
Thank you for writing this, James.
Cool article.
That said, a statement like “The polar opposite of Hitler is not Jesus, though - it’s Stalin.” is not self-evident.
Hitler and Stalin were both malignant narcissists, and pathologically deeply similar. To not recognize this is to be pretty wildly reductivist, as you are using them for metonymic standins for Capitalism and Communism.
Perhaps I misinterpret, but a big statement like that without justification does open the door.
Peterson is a tool, by the way, because he offers myth and metaphor as a device for understanding (which I am wildly in favor of), but he ends up in treacly historicism and reductive lessons from nature. Claiming we need dominance hierarchies because lobsters have them betrays a lack of understanding of both dominance hierarchies and lobsters.
Real lobsters are among the most cannibalistic animals on the planet. Like they cannot resist eating each other as they spread like roaches on the ocean floor. The rubber bands on their claws are literally to keep them from consuming each other.
I acknowledge the void that he is filling, and I think society has done wildly wrong by young people. I also am a huge proponent of balanced right and left brain thinking.
But Petersen is less smart than he thinks he is, and he is acting out childhood trauma himself. You and your friends are consuming his trauma.
I am really grateful for this. I was a huge fan of Peterson back in 2016, but over time my appreciation has waned. You helped me remember just what a profound legacy he has.
Thanks, Jameson.