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Jordan Peterson: celebrity storyteller. Credit: Chris Williamson/Getty
Almost every conversation about Jordan Peterson starts and ends on his controversial politics. But to me, a storyteller, his politics are the least interesting thing about him.
As a writer, I am haunted by the tremendous impact that stories — particularly myths and folk tales — had on me as a child. That’s partly why I became fascinated with Jordan Peterson, long before he came to public attention and when he was still lecturing in small, shabby classrooms to handfuls of students.
I discovered his “Maps of Meaning” lectures five years ago. I dipped into them and was hooked, watching hours of his talks one after the other. They thrilled me; not only was Peterson charismatic, witty and erudite, but he was addressing an issue that has obsessed me since a very young age: why do people believe what they believe, and how is this connected to narration and storytelling?
That may sound like a curiously innocent query, but the truth is that it has very dangerous implications. Each of us, after all, needs our beliefs emotionally. We often fiercely defend them, to the death in some cases. But if these convictions are merely part of a story — fundamentally flawed or incomplete — what value can we place on them? This, to me, explains a lot of the hostility to Peterson; he touches on nerves we find too uncomfortable to lay bare. He reminds us that our psychological houses are built on sand — that our most cherished beliefs are just stories, not absolute truths.
As Peterson’s fame started to grow, I had a chance to interview him on zoom and met him in person on several occasions. Our conversations were electrifying. I had never come across an interviewee so attentive, at both listening and speaking. Over almost four hours, he talked about his personal vulnerability (he cried more than once as we spoke ), about the inevitable political element of his work, but also religion — in particular Christ’s story and the motif of death and rebirth. He mentioned, for example, that one meaning of INRI — the Latin inscription on Christ’s cross — was “through fire all nature is renewed”, before explaining about the constant renewal of life through suffering and death.
He talked about how some of these mythological motifs appear in popular culture. Star Wars, for instance, has a lot in common with many of the other mass cultural phenomena of the last 50 years, including Harry Potter, ET and Sleeping Beauty — in particular, the prominence they give to death and rebirth.
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Subscribe“Almost every conversation about Jordan Peterson starts and ends on his controversial politics.”
Actually I find him very apolitical. He doesn’t discuss his politics at all. It’s probably why he appeals to people across the political spectrum. Name one rule in his 12 Rules that is in any way political.
Is it the concept that for some people everything is political? So even saying you think that people should turn up for appointments on time means you probably think the borders should not be open to anyone who wants to wander in.
The intolerant political element in Western Society is the agenda driven end justifies the means Left.
It seems more likely that the concept is that you can divine Peterson’s politics from him saying that turning up on time for appointments will be very helpful to you in life. Which is pretty silly.
“Almost every conversation ABOUT” not WITH.
The author did not say conversation with Peterson usually starts and ends with politics. He said, most discussions ABOUT Peterson starts and ends with politics. I agree with this.
Well, actually, your quote snippet is out of context. the author said that Peterson’s politics are controversial. Since Peterson is, as I said, apolitical, this statement is odd. How would you know his politics?
I agree with you Annette. I’ve watched him many times and he doesn’t talk about politics. However, he is “controversial” in that the left seem to perceive him as a “far right” proponent and they throw lots of hatred and abuse his way because of that. It seems to be some sort of mass psychological projection by a group of people. To get a flavour of that, read the Sunday Times article from a few weeks ago
As best I can figure, his broad take-responsibility-for-yourself ethic probably does not resonate with the hive mind on the left. And his constant acknowledgment, not to say insistence, that life truly is hard probably sounds like an insult to their utopian ideals.
You hit the nail on the head there. His idea that you are responsible for yourself and that parents ought to bring up children so that others don’t dislike them, probably give of what to the left is a bad smell. To me, the value of these ‘insights’ is absolutely obvious, but then I was born in 1951, and everyone I knew as a child held to ideas like that.
The left’s perception has nothing to do with reality though. What he says isn’t controversial in least. Show up on time, stand up straight, clean up your room, fix your own house first, there’s no controversies there. It’s what parents have been telling kids forever.
Yes – long held attitudes and absolutely obvious to most of us here, but there is another tribe out there with a different set of beliefs who find ideas like taking responsibility and old fashioned self respect anathema. They would rather grasp at victimhood and sloppy self indulgence. I suppose that many of my parents and grandparents generation had been in the forces during WW2 – both my parents actually were.
It may be a generational thing. Contrast the stoic attitudes of the old Duke who died last week and those of his ‘mental health’ obsessed grandsons. The two approaches are utterly incompatible. I know which set of attitudes I prefer.
Peterson described his politics as ‘Classic British Liberal’ in an interview.
Which makes him most likely a conservative.
That could mean anything really. But it’s beside the point since that isn’t what he writes about.
He has been attacked professionally and personally because he believes in personal responsibility.
Yes. Is that political? Are there people who don’t believe the individual has any responsibility for themselves?
c.f. Thatcher: ‘there is no such thing as society.’
That doesn’t appear to be saying that people have no responsibility for themselves.
I think that Mr Lott is referring to the discussion of identity politics that JP seems to have become a focus for.
I agree with Mr Lott that JP has much more to offer than that issue. His lectures are always engaging and he is a terrific communicator
Heres a possible modern fairy story. A young(ish) woman ( who actually prefers girls ) meets a young man ( who actually prefers boys ) in 2016 and says Would you like to make hundreds of millions and stick it to your mother’s family? & they did. Could call it The Prince & the Showgirl.Unfortunately the rules Peterson is talking about only apply in a fair world-one that plays by the same rules.
You can tell how much Peterson someone has read by how quickly they veer into his “politics”. Maps of Meaning is completely apolitical. 12 Rules for Life is pretty apolitical as well.
The people most vocal about Peterson’s “politics” are the politico-theocratic — those who derive their transcendental purpose from politics instead of religion, myths, or stories.
Great observation. Thank you.
I agree. I am still working my way thru his magnum opus synthesis Maps of Meaning. It is a heavy read and intellectually very stimulating material.
… most vocal is the racialist/industrial complex .
Peter, did you coin “racialist/industrial complex?” It is most apt. I believe Eisenhower coined “military-industrial complex,” and it so perfectly described the existing relationship that we learned to use it for other symbiotic relationships. Somewhere recently I read about the “victimhood – industrial complex”
Most left wing beliefs have fairly extensive and granular academic underpinnings (eg Marx, Postmodernism, Feminism, Critical Race Theory). Conservative beliefs do not have the same level of academic rationale.
Petersons value / popularity is that he has articulated an intellectual basis for conservativism. Little of what he argues is fundamentally original, but he brings together a whole number of different disciplines into a relatively original synthesis. His main contribution is to argue from a ‘social scientific’ perspective. Something that has been the preserve of the Left for sometime.
That is why the Left hate him (and make no mistake, they do hate him). He uses the tools of social science to discredit left wing political theory and justify conservatism. Jordon Peterson is kryptonite to the Left and they know it.
Not bad for the most part. It would be helpful to me if you could briefly articulate what you mean by “conservatism”, so as to fully grasp the import of your comment.
It’s not conservatism but anti-progressivism which many moderates also oppose.
. The “progressive” tendency is to replace traditional ideas and institutions with modern, enabled by new technologies. They see flaws in the old and existing and believe they can do better. Peterson asserts that if types of belief and customs existed in culture and societies over centuries or millennia and those civilizations that adopted them flourished over time you should consider there is probably some utility in that even if we don’t fully understand why. He has spent much time and effort exploring and examining myth and theology, making a case for their relevance to the modern world. It presents an argument for conserving or a least giving serious consideration to long standing social patterns and behaviours before dismissing and replacing them out of hand with something that was thought up yesterday in historic terms and has just now become fashionable.
That’s a caricature of progressivism. Progressivism in the context of conservatism means developing and building upon earlier progress. Evolution rather than revolution. Left wing politics is often about radical solutions that wipe away the previous order. Revolution rather than evolution.
Peterson has made it clear in his arguments that he believes progress is the outcome of a discourse between left and right. Between liberals and conservatives. And the optimal solution depends entirely on the circumstances and changes over time, there is no one definite solution. Which is why the discourse needs to be an ongoing discussing. He believes the problems with the far left and far right is they are not prepared to engage in this discussion and / or compromise on their position in the right circumstances.
Conservative beliefs do not have the same level of academic rationale.
They often have a real-world rationale, a practical application that trumps any academic hypothesis. The left-wing beliefs that you cite have real-world results, too, that often contradict the stated intents.
Conservative beliefs suffer in two respects, 1 they are based on religious morals and 2 they are based on religious morals.
In a post religious world there are many conservative thinking people who appreciate the concept but don’t accept the origin. Therefore they are unable to stand up to the think and feel logic the left uses.
Simon, that is written by someone who has never listened to a word Peterson has said (or read anything he has written).
I’ll give you a hint, even the morals which you believe are based on secular beliefs are ultimately based on religion.
Post-religious world? Only our little bit of it. Most of the world follows some form of religious faith. Check out the PEW data. But JP has brilliantly uncovered the way our modern Western world still bases its assumptions on beliefs that make or break us.
Thank you JJ. I’ve been trying to understand why the left hate him so much. How you describe it makes perfect sense to me know [disappointed in myself for not making the connection before!!]
Agree with the general point you ae making – but not this. A lot of conservative orthodoxy was just orthodoxy until the cretinous 60s where people of sub-optimal intelligence thought deconstructing everything would get them laid.
So while I get the point you are making I would adjust it.
Modern left thinking has a few, select, easy to point to texts as reference. Whereas there is a less centralised rubric that makes up conservative thought. Certainly since a lot of the postmodern and left wing texts have rendered anything that not theirs to be “conservative”. It’s now a much broader church.
As an afterthought, it’s amazing the modern left texts are popular at all. They are awfully written, barely researched drivel for the most part. The Communist Manifesto for example is so painfully unsophisticated and weak for such a famous text – whether you wish agree with its message or not
I think we are in agreement. The academic rationale for conservatism is not a singular self contained theory. That’s what I meant when I said ‘Conservative beliefs do not have the same level of academic rationale’.
I think the attractiveness of left wing ideology is that it is both simple and complex. The simple version is: ‘your life is hard because you are a member of a group that has been unfairly oppressed / exploited by another.’ It’s very seductive, as it means you are no longer responsible for your own pain and suffering. The burden is lifted (ultimately, as Peterson points out, to your profound disadvantage)
If you are more intellectually inclined, there are thousands of convoluted academic texts available. The convoluted nature of these texts gives them a status which many mistake for intellectual rigour. As you’ve indicated, the opposite is often true.
JJ, as a card carrying economic socialist, one who believes in equal OPPORTUNITY for all, democratic republics, free education through university or trade schools, etc, I don’t hate JP. Very much admire him, to be sure. There’s nothing in his writings which I find either liberal or conservative. Being on time, cleaning and organising ones space, responsibly for oneself… These are not conservative or liberal values… just applied common sense.
‘equal OPPORTUNITY for all, democratic republics, free education through university or trade schools’
With all respect, you are not a socialist then. You are a classical liberal. There is no difference to what you believe and the current governing Conservative Party of the United Kingdom (and the Governing Parties of most other Western nations)
Well, my socialist views go much deeper than the few points I listed, of course, but to be clear I’m in the Bernie Sanders Liz Warren arm of democratic socialists, starting with a serious attack on international tax havens and a much steeper progressive taxation curve on both individuals and corporations. But to the point, among all my progressive friends, I’ve not even one who dislikes, much less hates JP.
Your statement to that issue is, in my own lefty personal experience, false.
Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. He is however an idiot 🙂
Again, the Conservative Party in the UK is probably to the Left of Bernie Sanders on economic policy, so I do not consider him a socialist. He is a social democrat.
Sorry to be offensive about someone you probably admire, but even though he is not a socialist, Sanders has enabled the destructive woke Left in the USA.
I am somewhat surprised you have taken Roger Scruton out of the equation. Scruton is without any doubt the most important and prominent thinker of conservatism, possibly in the last 50 years or so.
I agree about Scruton. However most people have no idea who Scruton is. Everyone knows JP. That’s partly to do with social media, but Peterson is also a fantastic speaker. He is actually a gifted performer.
The fairy tales became children’s stories only fairly lately, post-enlightenment. Before that, they were just stories. Tales. And fairly universal for that, with the same handful of archetypes and storylines. The best crop of grown-up literature is just that too; the same stories told and retold in many variations to various audiences. That’s how we figure out the basics of life, by reading those stories (or having them read to us as small children).
Not surprising that children’s literature is such an important battleground for the woke bookburners.
“He reminds us that our psychological houses are built on sand — that our most cherished beliefs are just stories, not absolute truths.”
In Anna Karenina (which is the greatest achievement of “grown-up” literature, in my opinion), Tolstoy imagines that life is a process akin to reading a book:
“And the candle by which she had been reading the book filled with trouble and deceit, sorrow and evil, flared up with a brighter light, illuminating for her everything that before had been enshrouded in darkness, flickered, grew dim, and went out forever.”
Nice!
I’m not terribly well-read, and too many of the books i’ve read fell out of my head long ago. Sometimes i wonder if they left any residue, or they just vanished into oblivion without a trace.
If i had to pin down one book still making the rounds in my head it would be The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton. Re-read it a good few times, first as a teen in translation then in the original English. I think i regard it as some sort of a manual. (Now i have to dig it out again, it’s like chocolate.)
For anyone wishes to read ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’ online
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1695/1695-h/1695-h.htm
Oh yes, that’s an extraordinary book! Crazy and yet wonderfully sane.
One good reason to join the Mark Steyn Club is access to his audiobook readings. He read TMWWT last year: excellent.
There’s nothing controversial about Peterson’s politics. He challenges the nostrums of the academic sheep and their intellectually conformist hangers on who have no defence apart from deplatforming him which I bet Cathy Newman wishes she’d done.
Sadly, the majority of today’s intellectuals would indeed reject anyone who advocated for minorities/womxn/BIPOC in terms of working to control their own lives and to change the world one small step at a time.
The entire basis of the woke belief system is that all of life is political, and that all of politics is humanity divided into groups of oppressor and oppressed. The “oppressor” groups control absolutely everything and the oppressed groups are powerless as individuals. Only by radical group action to completely up-end this power dynamic can the necessary social justice change place.
And that’s why they hate Peterson. He fronts the primacy and the dignity of the individual. This emphasis on the individual in turn necessitates a focus on what we as individuals can and should do to live a life of meaning and purpose. Peterson also focuses on being humble and forgiving, so that the ego doesn’t inflate you into a monster. All of this involves taking responsibility for your own life, which is diametrically opposed to the always-wrong oppressor/always-helpless and blameless oppressed foundation of wokeism/Critical Social Justice/cultural Marxism.
This reminded me of a refrain in a poem:
Who wrote this please ?
F.T. Prince, from his collection Soldiers Bathing
A fine poet, underrated nowadays, although I think that the title poem in “Soldiers Bathing” is still anthologised.
Born and grew up in South Africa….
Putting a line in quotation marks (eg. “I touch your eyelids that one day must close” ) and googling it usually tells you.
Ok. Please explain his controversial politics.
I’d love to hear this.
What exactly are these controversial politics? I’ve listened to hours of JBP as well – if people hear fightin’ words in goal setting, personal responsibility, and making your bed, their conflict comes from within.
he refused the left’s effort to have govt mandate pronoun usage in common conversations. To some, that is heresy.
Conspiracy theories are in the same category as myths and legends, fairy tales, stories from the Bible. Aspects of them can be proven as literally untrue and yet they contain great truth.
The stories we tell ourselves about George Soros, Bill Gates and other rumours about people who rule the world, contain many fantasy elements, but have at their core a central truth which is sufficiently compelling to influence our thinking and make us act with caution and use our wisdom, when such people start making grandiose proposals about the future of the world and how society should be organised. Our conspiracy theories, like our myths and legends, should not be ridiculed they should be revered in the same way as other legends as central to our wisdom and understanding of the world. People who believe stories are merely stories which once revealed as such lose their power and allow us to all get along in some ideal world are the real fantasists.
Peterson does not argue that all stories / myths are of equal value. He suggests there value is predicated on there utility. I would argue the utility of most conspiracy theories are not only zero, they are negative. If anything they emphasize a desperate / lazy attempt by frightened people to try and impose order and structure on an essentially unstructured and disordered life.
For example, it’s easier to believe that the covid pandemic is not real, than to believe humans are at the mercy of phenomena we cannot control (infectious diseases). It’s oddly comforting to believe the pandemic is manufactured by George Soros to make himself richer. Although no one ever explains why the richest man in the world wants to be even richer.
Those of us who are wise know a dangerous, megalomaniac nutter when we come across one. The specific ideas contained in conspiracy theories about Bill Gates may be wrong, but our innate prejudice in the Burkean sense will keep us safe from his maddest schemes. Even the green loonies are beginning to see where his type of madness ends:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-white-sky-thinking-of-bill-gates/
Far better to accept the
protective wisdom of the conspiracy theory than to get so bogged down arguing over petty details about what is literally true, that mad men are allowed to destroy the world while you are busy defending them against specific allegations.
‘It must be stopped. We’re talking about a technology with the potential for extreme consequences that could alter hydrological cycles, disrupt monsoon patterns and increase drought.’
That applies equally (apart from the word technology) to climate change. The question surely should be, would SAI produce worse effects than unchecked global warming? Research so far suggests not.
Politics assaulted Jordan when he was cornered into an argument with with the Canadian government about gender pronouns.
The world trivializes such controversies in a manner similar to what Twitter did to public discourse.
What is important to Jordan is each person’s search for meaning in the context of the nation, the society, culture, ethnicity into which they were born. The search for meaning, harkening back to Moses,Jesus, Buddha, Greek philosophers, then manifesting as institutions. . . the Church, the Universities, governments and empires . . . then humanizing via Descartes, Hegel, Darwin, then philosophating via Nietzche, and literatating through Dostoevsky while psychologizing via Freud, Piaget, Kant, Jung and economating through Marx, then degenerating into manipulative Hitlerian fascism and Stalinist communism, then descending contemporarily into valueless existentialism through Sartre, Camus and a modern dead-end . . . Jordan’s thesis is simply that having fallen into a hopelessly deep pit of postmodern hell, we must somehow grasp some meaningful foothold to climb up and return to the light of belief, faith and an appreciation of what has happened in ages past that actually provided meaning, purpose and hope for our forebears and ourselves and our children.
So the first thing that each man and woman should do is find something that needs to be done and, instead of waiting for someone to do it . . . Just do it.
A good way to begin is by cleaning your room.
yes
From what I’ve picked up from recent interviews Jordan Peterson is beginning to see that the Bible is more significant than a stock of narratives illustrating the possibilities of inner healing and growth in human beings.
Christians don’t call the Bible the Word of God for nothing. It is His main way of communicating with humanity about Himself, us and how we can relate to Him now and for eternity. Mr. Lott however doesn’t seem to see the difference between the Bible and fairy tales. Certainly there are different types of literature in the Bible, but we must understand that there is a bedrock of history in its pages. In fact it can be said that it’s major theme is God’s activity in the events of this world over a specific period of time with a specific people(Israel), leading to His own historically verifiable, in-the-flesh involvement through Jesus Christ, moving forward to the foundation of the Church and culminating in the future with His Second Coming and the end of the world as we know it. The Bible is rooted in history , not in our imaginations.
There is always a danger of reading into the Bible our own agendas. Christian preachers and teachers call this eisegesis and we try to avoid it. Our job is to let the Bible speak for itself and let it share its agenda with us (exegesis). I think Mr.Lott is approaching eisegesis when he talks about “Christ’s story and the motif of death and rebirth”. The word rebirth is usually associated with the cyclical eg. the changing seasons, the idea of reincarnation etc. But Christ’s historical reality (not story) is about death and Resurrection, not rebirth. His Resurrection is absolutely a one-off event in the midst of history,2000 years ago, which inaugurated the beginning of a new Creation which will have its fulfilment when He returns. That really will be the end of History. Nothing cyclical about that.
There is almost no history in the Bible, because very little history of the time is actually known. That includes the identity, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, (whose Hebrew name – Yeshua – is normally translated as Joshua). And translation itself is a major problem, from the virgin birth (which the original texts don’t claim) to the idea that everyone had to return to his home town to be taxed (a logistical and financial nightmare which never happened), to the release of a criminal at Passover (of which there is no historical record in Palestine or anywhere else).
You seem to have a different notion of history to Michael Whittock’s: “His own historically verifiable, in-the-flesh involvement” and “culminating in the future with His Second Coming.”
You are entitled to your oppinion. but it is just that – an opinion. You can choose to disregard the evidence that opposes your point of view.
The bible contradicts itself in a lot of places, which is just reality, not an opinion. Believe in god or not, Robert has just told us some of the historical facts that we do know.
To pick just one point as an example, the returning to his home town. We know this to be inaccurate because the Romans were very good at record keeping, and recorded when and where there were censuses and what was required.
It’s true that we don’t have the preserved, detailed history of Biblical times that we’d like to have, but I wouldn’t say that we have almost no historical verification of Biblical texts. There is a lot of confirmation available from various writings and disciplines such as archeology, and new discoveries are still happening. For example, a recent excavation found what appears to be King David’s palace in the place where the Bible indicates. And I just read an interesting article about the names referenced in the New Testament—we have a good amount of historical and archeological knowledge of the specific frequency of names given in 1st century Palestine. When the lists are compared to the N.T. texts, the texts reflect these exact names in the expected proportions.
The assertions in the first 2 sentences of your response are wrong. The historical books of the Bible have been dissected endlessly by scholars for nearly 200 years and although they include some editorial insertions and legendary accretions their basic underlying historicity is not in doubt. Furthermore as far as Jesus is concerned there are extra-biblical references to Him which most scholars find trustworthy. These include writings by Thallos, Josephus, Tacitus and Mara bar Serapion. Of course there are also the 4 Gospels all of which have a reliable historical base.
You also mention a number of issues regarding some linguistic and historical details. Scholarly debate continues unabated about these and many others. I’ve checked with the commentaries I possess on the 3 examples you’ve given and see no reason to question the biblical text as it stands.
The Bible is historical fiction, a stringing together of myths and tales at the Council of Nicea in the 4th century designed to standardize dogma for the emergent power in an aging Roman empire.
Like most serious fiction, the reader interprets it as it best suits and supports their previous views, finding allegory and allusion in every word… or nor… which explains the argument about the “facts” the Bible supposedly presents.
Peterson uses it as others might use Shakespeare.
I think you make an interesting point.
it seems a lot of the woke culture movement assumes that we white people live fully fulfilled and rich—both figuratively and literally—lives.
Currently, I am staying in one of the dying coal towns in the US. One of the homes, one might say, of the “deplorables.” Here, the largest group of unemployed are white males between 30 and 45, at a rate bordering on 40%. The desperation in town is palpable.
Move out into countryside that is quickly being filled with the Zoomers from NYC and Philly, life is great, the houses huge, and and prices spiral upward.
The poorer men in the towns need something and many do not want to find it at the bottom of a glass in the social club—think pub if you are from the UK. If Peterson gives them something else to grasp onto, I simply cannot see the problem.
It’s the end result of market forces — effectively, of people saying, “if the city is too expensive for you, here’s a thought— don’t live in the city and take some personal responsibility for your situation rather than complaining about rent.” So, relatively wealthy Zoomers who prefer to leave the city and save money are attracted to the cheaper surroundings, and the housing market responds to demand by driving up the prices because landlords and realtors know that someone will pay for it. Which then makes the cost to live rise faster, especially for those unemployed men. Resentment is not only understandable but inevitable.
Schuylkill Haven.
Allentown? I’m in the Philadelphia area myself, but originally from coal country in southwestern PA. I thought I could stay here after I retire in a few years, because our house is in a pleasant safe neighborhood near a forested park, but after the jaw-dropping horror of the government-allowed riots in 2020, I am NOT trusting my future to a major city. Not sure where to go from here that would be safe and sane. Our daughter is moving to Texas and it’s got a lot to do with the politics and social disadvantages of living in a very Left-liberal area.
As to the woke cultural take on the alleged advantages of being white, they sometimes acknowledge that some white people lead difficult lives. It doesn’t change their absolutist categorization of white people as oppressors and advantaged at all.
To them, everything in America is part of a system designed and perpetuated by the group “white” to maintain all power and to oppress all those in categories that are non-white or otherwise marginalized, such as non-cis, non heterosexuals. I’ve never seen a deliberate refutation of the idea that deplorable white working class men are having their own problems now, but I assume that in addition to dismissing their concerns because these men are still a member of the oppressor group, they would also fall back on the idea that minorities can face all of these problems too, but every minority has at least one MORE obstacle on their plate to deal with than a white male will ever have.
Sheryl, I see your point that every minority has at least one more obstacle on their plate than a white male.
I do struggle with it however. Poverty is poverty and, to my mind, is itself a great equalizer. And I like to believe I understand the counterpoint to that position that black poverty is different from white poverty. There certainly is evidence that it is.
Much to think about. And I’ll keep thinking.
Your math is strange and unsupportable. A white man could have 7 obstacles and a Black man could have 6 obstacles and only ONE of them is race. There is no way on earth you can do the calculus of one person’s obstacles and compare the to another person’s. Maybe the white man has one leg. How does that fit into your obstacle calculus. What’s worse in America — being Black or having one leg? What if the white man is hideously ugly and the Black man is very handsome. Who wins the “obstacle” Olympics.
What’s more comical arguably is that he doesn’t direct his empowerment at any sex, race, creed or colour. It’s free to anyone who wants it. Or doesn’t.
Yet people seem so very angry that it has resonated with a large number of people.
Says more about them than J Peterson really
Peterson’s greatest danger is his ability to explain extremely sophisticated psychological concepts to the average person. This is why critics, usually of the mushy-left, always get caught by his deceptively simple commandments; “Make your bed,” or “beautify one room,” are easy targets–until he teases apart the deep concepts encapsulated within these anodyne truisms. That’s where the intellectual magic begins.
Dr Peterson expresses well thoughts similar to the late Prof Northrop Frye, a very original thinker.
The US of A, as most egregious attention getter but not alone, has a serious intellectual Northrop Frye deficiency, probably made worse because the residue of drugs and damaged attention spans do not permit close reading.
Dr Peterson is attacked where Prof Frye is ignored, should any break through the crust of general ignorance. Frye cried while teaching lessons to undergraduates about Milton. Perhaps there is a clue here, to those that can see.
The rabidly ignorant need most what is almost impossible to receive. But Dr Peterson tries.
Tim, nice piece. I was a huge fan of your writing in the Guardian for many years so very glad to see your name pop up here.
“There are no truths, only perspectives” – Frederich Nietzsche
“There are infinite perspectives but only a tiny proportion don’t end with you dying horribly” – Jordan Peterson
What a wonderful article. I could not agree more. As Carl Jung said, ‘symbol is the lost language of the soul,’ and myths are written symbols – images constructed in words, which speak to us at various levels, mind, body, soul.
In the beginning was the word…….
There is a powerful reason why humankind needs a “fairytale” world. H.P Lovecraft observed: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” So – in the beginning – if humankind did not develop a way of dealing with the terrifying and crippling unknown, humankind would not have survived. We need to make the unknown into a satisfying known. The evolutionary emergence of this survival faculty is offered in my book: “We’re Here Because We’re Not All There.”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Were-Here-Because-Not-There/dp/1073073688/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=william+Kenneth+Jones&qid=1617030670&s=books&sr=1-3
Nice. Thanks.
TBF it’s a great schtick
“Peterson’s central point is this: we do not know what we know.”
Fail’s Hitchen’s Razor and allows anyone limitless confidence in their views cos they know more than they know? You’re wrong with your facts and empirical observations cos I know more than I know?
Some of it reads like sub Zen I once practiced on life and death renewal etc.
Not sure this piece will make me care to find out more.
This.
Ironically I don’t find anything particularly objectionable in Peterson’s politics and life advice. People should take responsibility for their life and try to improve it through work and education if they are not satisified with it and not seek to blame others or society. Mainly because this is the only route to a sane, balanced life. Most of this is common sense that has been lost by an increasingly shrill culture that devalues individual excellence.
But his philosophy and “psychology” – a fake academic field rich with over a century of pseudoscientific nonsense peddlars that is the modern day equivalent of medieval scholasticism – is a hot mess of neo-Jungian gobbledegook and new age woo.
I think Tim Lott is angry that Jordan Peterson mopped the floor with atheists, especially those like Steven Pinker and Sam Harris who tried pretending that their ideology wasn’t responsible for the gulag state which they clearly were. I think high school history courses need to actually teach what the bolsheviks did and include what preceded that, Trotsky and Lenin’s trips in 1916 to bankers in New York, London and Germany in NY, the bankers Kuhn, Loeb and Company who gave millions, and Jacob Schiff gave $20 million, the Rothschilds in London and Germany gave untold tens of millions more to finance the bolshevik revolution and to kill the 60 million Christians the bolsheviks starved and slaughtered. Those truths have been censored from our children’s history books. We can pare down reading about the holocaust and educate our children about what actually caused WWI. Those who oppose that can go to Israel, Russia, Latin America, Africa etc
Is that true – what the Bolsheviks did raising money – it is news to me. How could it have escaped the Journals? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but can you tell me how I can verify this?
Quote:
In his book ‘Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution’ economist and historian Antony C. Sutton concluded that wealthy international interests invested in many movements leading up to the Second World War in order to profiteer and maintain a monopoly on the global acquisition of wealth. Sutton cites J.P. Morgan, T. W. Lamont, John D. Rockefeller, Chase and Manhattan banks, and Kuhn, Loeb and Company as the Bolsheviks’ benefactors. One central figure of finance of key members of the Bolsheviks is Jacob Schiff head of the Wall Street firm Kuhn, Loeb and Company, who was thought to have given loans and paid the expenses of Leon Trotsky.
Evidence of such financing is present in the writings of Trotsky, he wrote of receiving sizable loans and “travel expenses” from “wealthy friends” [1]. Such claims were corroborated by the grandson of Jacob Schiff, who in 1949 told the New York Journal that his grandfather had given $20 million to the triumph of communism in Russia. The Russian Revolution was largely sponsored by outside influences from Wall Street to British Ambassadors. Wealthy financiers from Britain, America and Germany backed the revolutionary socialists in an effort to destabilise the Russian Empire. By destroying Russia as economic competition, these benefactors could enable the exploitation of a Russian corporate socialist system by international interests.
What never gets talked about also is the ‘soviet holocaust’ which went on long even after Stalin was gone. The Jews were just as persecuted by the communists as the Christians. And all those small shamanist Siberian peoples, the soviets did their best to wipe them out.
If we are to prevent such things happening again, we need to discuss is the Jewish influences in the Bolsheviks and their Revolution. And following on from that, the horrors felt around Europe, and the fear of the Bolsheviks, which in turn played a part in the horrors committed in the Second World War against followers of Judaism.
Nothing happens in a vacuum and all participants in the play, have a part in what happens, whether consciously or unconsciously. That does not mean that Russians can be blamed for the Bolsheviks and their atrocities, nor does it mean Jews can be blamed for the Bolsheviks, but simply that, in this ever-brewing soup of life, we are all connected in ways we do not understand and actions will have consequences far beyond what we may imagine.
“Nothing happens in a vacuum…”. Amen.
Good piece, thank you. My experience as a working artist is that, as the head of sculpture told me on my first day at art school, talking about your work is always post event rationalisation.
So agree. I paint and when I’m asked about what my paintings are I can only respond ‘I don’t know where they come from’ and hope that line of conversation ends.
If all we have is stories, this includes the narratives of Jordan Peterson. I distrust on principle the narratives of guru figures.
It’s worth giving what he writes a go, before dismissing him. There is much to irritate. For example I find his stereotyping of “male” and “female” grating. And his tentative, very tortuous style. But there is one incredibly important job he is doing – reminding us of the need for a spiritual dimension to our lives and helping us interpret the ancient wisdom that has guided our society for the best part of two millennia. I have long felt we needed to treat the Bible as a “to be continued” narrative work. Times change. Religious needs change and need reinterpreting. The Bible could do with some new books, interpreting the message, as St Paul long ago did in his Epistles. Paul too was only human. Much of what he tacked on to the Christian message was wrong headed. But some was invaluable. Peterson is performing a similar huge service, by reinterpreting these old sacred stories and showing us how desperately we still need them to make sense of our lives today. We have abandoned our faith because we thought we had to believe in the literal truth of what was written. He is showing us that we need to read these stories as psychological/spiritual truth about the human condition, the miracle of our existence, our purpose and how we need to live. His perspective too won’t last. It will need revising. Future generations will see the flaws as well as the insights. But he’s doing something that desperately needs doing and that no one else is bothering with. I have no idea why “the left”, whatever that is, finds him so threatening. I am three chapters into Beyond Order and it seems a very appropriate read in Holy Week.
After listening and reading a lot JBP I got over that by realising the source of the irritation was what was happening in my head and not in what he actually meant. As a Jungian he uses masculine/feminine in the same way as Yin/Yang etc., it is a terminology shorthand. He does talk about stereotypes, what average behaviour is like in general, but at no point does he say that any particular man or woman will be stereotypical or that we should be constrianed to type. So simply do some live edits to what you hear/read, and replace “male”/”female” with either Yin/Yang (if discssing the duality of the cosmos) or “in general the statistical average behaviour of…” (if the context is statistical human behaviour).
Interestingly, many of Peterson’s mythic tropes mesh very directly with topics discussed in Maud Bodkin’s *Archetypal Patterns in Poetry* …
Truth, is rigth ,all are stories, but is one that are not finish,,life&consciousness ,stories come from there& for the things we see & witness .
Philosophy & sciences ask us to be sceptics, upto when truth comes.
Advice to any aspiring novelist: “Show, don’t tell.”