Jordan Peterson Remains the Unauthorized Exorcist

Peterson reliably confuses watchers as tries to haul science beyond modernity and save the Sovereign Individual

Got a bunch of requests to comment on the @jordanbpeterson prayer/actor combo videos last week as well as the Hans-Georg-Moeller response video.

Some of the video can be summed up in yesterday's substack https://paulvanderklay.substack.com/p/im-not-a-prophet-im-a-clinical-psychologist

Many points in my video are some standard points I've been making for a while. Modernity and the Enlightenment are receding. One way to understand them was the desire to re-calibrate the relationship between the story-verse and the physical world.

The trick of modernity is to exclude the observer from one's view of the physical world. I call this the "monarchical vision". View from no-where, lots of ways people have said it.

What is often called "post-modernity" is one attempt to re-integrate the self into picture. Wokism (standpoint epistemology) is an example of that. This comes as a threat to much good won in modernity.

"Blue church" was the "end of history" matrix of Western thought, culture and institutions that dominated the post WWII world. Like many such hyper-objects it is undergoing a split between "classical liberals" and the arising wokism.

New Atheists arose as a response first to realization that God #2 theism couldn't be killed and smacked the world in the face on 9/11. New Atheism split with the rise of Atheism plus over emergent wokism.

Categorizing @jordanbpeterson is complex. He's a "classical liberal" but his Jungian journey makes him feel more "religious" to many secularists who get anxious about things that get close to the Enlightenment natural/supernatural line.

In his Wave #1 6 part attempt to talk to Sam Harris you could see the New Atheist anxiety because they saw JBP as giving aid and comfort to their historic nemesis.

It's always tough for many to see just how Darwinian, liberal, pragmatic and scientific @jordanbpeterson is. His interest in what the Enlightenment calls religion IS because he's so much of all four, and because he's a Jungian.

Unlike many anti-theists @jordanbpeterson sees the role of religion as crucial for the success of the West and therefore it is dismissed at our peril.

At the same time he'll line up as anti-woke in all the various civil wars, both in Blue church and historic Christian churches that is raging, scrambling the old lines of allies and enemies.

HGM is right to try to analyze much of this through the lens of "civil religion" (Robert Bellah) but suffers from a common blindspot of not understanding "religion" as inescapable verb.

He understands that JBP embraces "the sovereign individual" like a classical-liberal but his embrace is not naive. JBP has long wrestled with the scientific challenges to this view but in many ways sees it as inescapable.

IMHO one of the people that best understands @jordanbpeterson is his friend @PageauJonathan . JBP is trying to straddle two land masses moving away from each other.

.@PageauJonathan has been through the pomo-rabbit hole and emerged in a decidedly radical ancient-modern place. We are patterns seeing patterns. @jordanbpeterson is trying to see if science can make the leap. Not a small task.

Even as most celebrity atheists have abandoned their trenches along the theist/anti-theist lines, JBP has confused many with respect to his "personal faith". I find his answers to these questions remarkably stable over the years I've been watching.

.@jordanbpeterson is a reliable modernist in terms of his manners. The public square is for science. Personal piety should be kept at home. He often responds to questions about his piety as though they are intrusive and inappropriate.

Pre-modernish Christians don't recognize these lines and given @jordanbpeterson quest for resolving the beyond-modernity transition and the woke wars he's become a fascination.

Pre-modernish church-going Christians shouldn't buy the Youtube hype until @jordanbpeterson makes something that the @CRCNA calls a "public profession of faith" in a church.

.@jordanbpeterson a complex guy and I suspect he's going to continue to fascinate and confuse. In my book he remains "the unauthorized exorcist".

Mark 9:38–41 (NIV)

“Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.