Catching Jordan Peterson

 

Jordan Peterson is harder to catch than a greased pig but that doesn’t stop people having a go.  Professor Hans-Georg Moeller (youtube ‘carefree wandering)  has a go.  He declares that Peterson is the mirror image of the woke, an anti-woke as it were and is therefore as much of an ideologue as his opposite number is.  However, that is, I believe, to misunderstand what ideology is.  It is a world view supported by a very narrow band of the explanatory spectrum.  For instance - it’s all class war or you’re a victim in a rigged racist game or its up to you to decide whether you’re a man or a woman.  Peterson in contrast to this promotes the idea of a Logos, a natural law that is a broad spectrum response that draws on traditional wisdom, a meditation on archetypal forms, the Hero, the Pilgrim, the Seeker and the Delphic Know Thyself.  These are supple, skilful, adaptive strategies that admit the concept of Freedom as a project (Sartre) and not as a given.  As a practising psychotherapist he would know that everybody has elements of the shadow (Jung) within them that deflects from the goal of freedom.  Lewis Waller(youtube ‘then and now’) in a simplistic parsing of ‘responsibility’ as response - ability claims that Peterson does not take into account the blocks to perfect freedom.  Lewis, he meets them everyday, like the carpenter meets a hammer.   Which is why he starts out with the basics of creating your own world i.e. pick up your room.  I go into the workshop feeling slack.  O.K. sweep the floor, sharpen your chisels, adjust a plane and then you’re there.  Dirk Bogarde the actor said - ‘you do your best work when you don’t feel like it’.  My understanding of this is, when you absolutely feel like it then you are drawing down your rote capacity but breaking through a block brings creative freedom.

There is a greater force than any psychopomp.  When we were leaving the ashram of Jillelamudi Ama ( Rajah Rajeshwari ) we asked through an interpreter ‘Does Mother have any instruction for us’  She replied ‘the Mother does not give instruction’.

Lewis Waller's youtube video on Tucker Carlson's paranoid style (Then and Now)

 

You would expect someone who identifies as a postmodernist to recognise and understand irony.  Lewis Waller doesn’t.  He’s the man behind the youtube video channel ‘Then and Now’

then and now 

 which is very well subscribed to.  It’s nicely produced with lots of graphics and a good deal of Waller behind his desk delivering in a very clear and emphatic intense manner content which demands serious attention due to its complexity and duration.   Good, fine, splendid but don’t get him started on conservatives because his animus against them causes distortions.  ‘Jordan Peterson is wrong about Ideology’, ‘Jordan Peterson is wrong about Responsibility’, ‘Tucker Carlson’s Paranoid Style’ or Tucker Carlson is wrong about Everything.

The Pomo chaps think that they own irony so when its used by Conservatives such as Carlson they tend to miss it. In his summation at the end of a 50 minute video of Carlson’s works and pomps he quotes the epilogue to ‘Ship of Fools’ which he claims represents the true agenda of Tuckerism.  Strangely though he leaves out the last few paragraphs.

Before I quote the epilogue in full let me first offer you the succinct definition  of H. Fowler in ‘Modern English Usage’:

Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing  shall hear and shall not understand and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware of that more and of the outsiders incomprehension.

Here then is Carlson’s Epilogue to ‘Ship of Fools’:

Nothing that is happening in America today is unprecedented, or even unusual. A relatively small number of people make the overwhelming majority of significant cultural and economic decisions. Wars are fought, populations shift, the rules of commerce change, all without reference to what the bulk of the population thinks or wants.

This isn’t strange. It’s the story of all human history. Very few civilizations have operated in any other way. People naturally sort themselves into hierarchies. Those who have power defend it from those who don’t. Rulers rule, serfs obey. It’s a familiar system. We know it works, because it has for thousands of years.

The new ingredient, what makes our current moment so unstable, is democracy. Massive inequality can’t be sustained in societies where everyone can vote. In order to survive, democracies must remain egalitarian. When all the spoils seem to flow upward, the majority will revolt in protest. Voters will become vengeful and reckless.

They will elect politicians like Donald Trump as a sign of displeasure. If they continue to feel ignored, they will support increasingly radical leaders, who over time will destroy the ruling class, along with everything that made it prosperous. Left untended, democracies self-destruct.

There are two ways to end this cycle. The quickest is to suspend democracy. There are justifications for this. If your voters can’t reach responsible conclusions, you can’t let them vote. You don’t give suffrage to irrational populations, for the same reason you wouldn’t give firearms to toddlers: they’re not ready for the responsibility.

Nobody believes Jordan would become a happier country with free and fair elections.But there’s a cost to ending the vote. You can’t install an autocracy without widespread repression and bloodshed, especially in a secular society. Saudi Arabia doesn’t have revolutions because most Saudis accept that their royal family was installed by God. Nobody in East Germany ever believed that about their government. That’s why the East German regime needed machine guns and a wall to keep its citizens from fleeing. There’s no transitioning from democracy in America without civil war.

The other solution to the crisis is simpler: attend to the population. Think about what they want.

If they start dying younger or killing themselves in large numbers, figure out why.

Care about them.

If the majority is worried about something, listen. Give them back some of their power.

If they have strong feelings about an issue, don’t overrule them, even if (maybe especially if) their views seem reactionary.

You can’t force enlightenment by fiat. In a democracy, you can only persuade.

Go slowly. It isn’t easy to relinquish control to people you have power over.

But try.

If you want to save democracy, you’ve got to practice it.

Tucker Carlson is not proposing the suspension of democracy as Lewis Waller suggests but in fact recommending it as the antidote to chaos.

Jordan Peterson not talking about the war

 

I encountered two criticisms of Jordan Peterson yesterday.  One of them was from Lewis Waller :then and now on Peterson

and the other was from the indomitable John Waters on his substack account -John Waters Unchained.

johnwaters@substack.com

The former was no surprise given that he jerks and genuflects with a post modernist knee though he affected to find much of value in Peterson’s Rules books.  What he objects to chiefly is the supreme emphasis on personal responsibility.   He parsed it as ‘response-ability’.  If the deck is stacked against you culturally, societally, what can you do, your options are limited.   Indeed, but how much of the truth is it?  The  Hero, a theme of Peterson’s, can turn on a dime.  He makes a space in the thicket of obstructions and decides with a healthy irascibility that this game of soldiers is a dead loss or salvable.   The insight into the interior checks comes from a rigorous ‘agenbite of inwit’  and the sense of divine love that carries you through that lonesome valley which pace Woody Guthrie you do not have to cross by yourself.

What John Waters would probably aver is that there is a lack of congruence with the structure of the human person in the philosophy of post modernism, critical theory and the dismal mephitic swamp of identarianism, viewpoint theory and cancel culture.  There is no joy in any of their liturgy rather misery and ananda deficit.  What the sage said : satyam vada, dharmam chara - speak the truth, follow dharma.  Suddenly that constricted space becomes boundless because as we are told - Being and the True are convertible.

Like the droll Meath man said - You’d wonder’ .  Why has Jordan nothing to say about the Covid  panic barring an irritable bark - ‘take the dam vaccine’.  He puts that foot out and then draws it back claiming that I understand why one wouldn’t want to take it.  Look this won’t do Jordan, too much of your stock in trade has been about resistance to mass movements.  The Shorter O.D. has a beautiful definition of panic:

“A sudden  and excessive feeling of alarm or fear, usually affecting a body of persons, and leading to extravagant or injudicious efforts to secure safety.”

Not talking about the war is talking about the war.  John Waters expresses his disappointment and  his article is well worth reading.  May I offer a defense of Peterson which brings into focus another archetype not spoken of by psychology.  As well as the Hero there is the Saint.  Psychology leaves off its shoes on that holy ground.  Peterson is not a saint who is prepared to martyrise himself.  He knows very well that if he says a word outside the rubric of correctness on youtube, he will be demonitised  and very likely kicked out.  I would not be surprised if he is planning to move to another channel.  The path of the Hero requires cunning.  In my view he came back to the battle too soon before his wounds were healed. And there were wounds which were not patent before he was stricken by multiple hurts any of which might have defeated another.  He was a wounded healer and like the Fisher King needs to drink from the Holy Grail to become whole and hale.