9 Comments

I have been noticing like everyone else that JBP has been being political and ranting at times but I also remember Paul saying he may change Daily Wire from just a one sided conservative platform. I went to Columbia with a lot of guys like Ben Shapiro in 1960 - and came to respect and love them for their intellectual honesty and persistence. Most of them were on the left but, like Ben, they were the real deal. As he will tell you, he's got telos and knows it. Likewise I enjoy Klaven because I find him funny, but both are predictably ideological. I don't know how Peterson will end up at DW but he has already changed that ideological predictability with his Rep. Dan Crenshaw interview where both of them seriously took the right wing ideologues to task. Crenshaw even used the term 'right wing Woke' for those on the right who want to tear our institutions down as much as the Woke on the left do. That self critical move is what Jung called owning your own shadow. It involves the exceedingly unpleasant task of admitting one's own faults and seeking to correct them rather than constantly projecting one's own unadmitted darkness and, yes, evil outward on others. From Solzhenitsyn, Peterson knows that the line between good and evil runs down the center of each and every human heart. Mine. Yours. So too do Calvinists in their way, but Jung was the son of a Swiss Reformed pastor. I think that fact is a clue to the connection between the world before and after Nietzsche. So it is clear to me that Peterson is capable of real change and development because he understands the dynamic of shadow work. I agree he is in transition and bit all over the place, but like he said to Lex Fridman he is constantly aware of death as an absolute motivator. He also said he was ready to die last year, and, well, he almost did. I believe he is a lot like Jung who understood the implications of Nietzsche's death of God in his own times, and repeatedly asserted that where there is the will to power there can be no love, and where is love there can be no will to power. Jung, like and unlike Peterson, also gave those who had lost their connection to faith and the pre-modern world a way to experience the Sacred and God in modern terms without reducing that experience to intellectual ideas. Jung wrote "Esse in intellectu (being in the intellect) lacks tangible reality, esse in re (being in the thing) lacks mind........What indeed is reality if it is not a reality in ourselves, an esse in anima"?(being in the soul)" Peterson's work is not done and he must know it, and he is clearly not giving up, but like Jung he stands as a key contrarian figure of this time and I hope and believe there is more and better to come from him - should he live. On a lighter note I would point out that he has been hounded out of his job and his profession and had unscrupulous hit pieces from both Murdoch's Times and Sulzberger's NY Times and countless other bannings and outrageous treatment. I'd say the charming college professor we all liked so much is learning to be disagreeable in big 5 terms although he is not that way by nature. His son Julian is, so at least he has a role model. ;-)

Expand full comment

I have not seen any of the Daily Wire with JBP, but I watched some of his talk with Jonathan and Greg. I would say that Greg seems to be trying to bring JBP back to the Democratic party fold for his own benefit, not Jordan's.

I agree that Jordan is best when he's analyzing the meaning crisis and how to help young people as individuals. Given that many young people have just struggled through two years of lockdowns with no access to school, sports, church, parties, and the real knowledge now that the government could do it again, I think that needs to be addressed because it's created even more of a crisis, not just of meaning, but of believing in a future for them at all.

Expand full comment

Wasn’t he planning to do his own version of online university or something? Do you think that could help?

Expand full comment

After having met Tom Holland, what would it take to drag him into the sort of confusion JBP is caught in? How does he avoid it?

Expand full comment

All very good points. Though remember that Peterson entered the public sphere through politics, with his stance on Bill C-16. He has always had a political streak.

But I agree that he does his best work when addressing the meaning crisis.

Expand full comment

Totally agree Paul and a good observation about the fact his career change and setting may. Be the root of the change in tone among some content.

I went to see Jordan speak in Dublin on Sunday with my sister who is less plugged into his current content and I was saying on the way down I'd been a bit worried he was ranting too much and was getting hard to listen to in those recent Daily Wire videos. It had given me hope when he realised his An Apologia video but then he reverted back to ranting at the Twitter CEO video. I wonder to what extent Daily Wire are pushing him to make that type of content. It made me wish his son or daughter might try to rescue their father from the belly of the beast.

The talk in Dublin was interesting though and not all ranty although covered a lot of well walked ground. He handled a tricky question on "What are your views on a united Ireland?" with sense and sensitivity and I totally agree having Tammy asking him some questions was a good vehicle for a positive set of answers.

Expand full comment

Just my thoughts but the whole show on DW+ seems way overproduced. The set is just far too extravagant. It almost brings about an air of self-importance that detracts from the messages he's sharing. It's becoming far too easy to peg him as just another far-Right pundit blaming those damn millennials rather than the serious professor attempting to enlighten a younger generation on a better way forward. My 2 cents I hope he gets through the contract and goes back to independent work. Separate yourself from Shapiro, you guys are not the same.

Expand full comment

That hits close to home.

Is the next quest then to begin building a liturgical institution, in the ethic of a hospital or place of healing, for these exiles?

Expand full comment

The first wave JBP was multifaceted but with a centralizing telos - to help struggling individuals build a meaningful life through responsibility. It feels like his scope as broadened to the point where I don't even think he knows what his telos is. He may be tempted by the ripe dangling fruit of power. He's changed from a therapist to an influencer.

Ecclesiastes 12:12 comes to mind: "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh." Before it seemed that knowledge was a means to JBP's end. Now knowledge is an end in itself. He wants to know things for the sake of knowing things. Hopefully, JBP will stop stretching and start focusing on his main thing. Many thousands of lives linger at the crossroads.

Expand full comment