Jordan Peterson, Stephen Fry and Psalm 1

Chaff vs the Hope of being Tree Planted by the River

Today's video is a full commentary on the @jordanbpeterson @stephenfry conversation that dropped earlier this week. 3.5 hours but these take a long time because it includes most of the original.

I've still got the relationship between Psalms 1&2 and @jordanbpeterson stuck in my head from Sunday. I tried to process it in this video but it clearly lingered during my commentary.

I also got yet another "you seem like a thoughtful guy why so much attention to @jordanbpeterson comment" on this one. Why so much attention, now over 3 years into it about Jordan Peterson? Surely he’s played out for you by now. Isn’t he mapped territory? It’s forgivable for someone who doesn’t know me personally to not understand how dogged I can be.

It’s a fair question though. Here are some answers.

1. I think what has been happening around Jordan Peterson since Oct 2016 is important for the re-evangelization of the West.

2. Jordan Peterson has a knack for landing in inflexion points around many of the major seams of our time: Modernity vs what's next, Protestant vs Sacramental, Religion and Science, etc.

3. Since his collapse he's lost a lot of the decadence I saw in the "book tour" at the end of the first wave. He seems to be making progress again with these conversations.

Fry and Peterson bonded a bit at the Munk debate over political correctness in 2018.

He repeatedly expressed how impressed he is with Fry's life accomplishments. They began talking about the culture war stuff but things thankfully went deeper quickly.

Fry distinguished himself from Richard Dawkins with a template which he worked throughout the conversation. Dawkins is a rationalist while Fry an empiricist. The difference is sort of a bias. I liken it to the relationship between summary narratives and data. Dawkins biases the summary narrative (rationality) and Fry the empirical data. He's less idealogue in his own mind than flexible observer of the diversity of truth.

Part of what's been anti-decadent about Jordan Peterson's post-collapse second wave has been these interviews. He's clearly growing stronger again and he's a better interviewer than before. He retains an engaged excitement to share his thoughts, but he's been a better listener and questioner.

Peterson continues to offer his brand of Darwinian/Jungian/Christian ideas for Fry's consideration and this draws Fry out. Fry is witty, charming, incredibly well-read and well-spoken but the further in we go a poverty is revealed.

For Fry this life is a fascinating show which for the fortunate can offer a stream of impressive and meaning-feeling myths, stories, and relationships but there is no beneath or above. He feels himself an empiricist but struggles to resist rationalist summations.

Like many he resists an overt connection to Christianity, finding it morally wanting while once again (as Tom Holland’s work continues to expose) not realizing that he's using Christian scales to weigh his world.

As the conversation progressed Psalm 1 kept coming back into my mind. It's a beatitude (together with Psalm 2) that contrasts the chaff from the tree planted by the river that yields its fruit in good years and bad.

Jordan Peterson comes to his strange Darwinian fascination with Christianity via this Psalm 1 dynamic. If the traditional Christian picture of revelation is unavailable within the iron box of modern naturalism, how can you know the truth? How can you navigate without the stars to guide you?

Meaning for him is a gyroscope for navigation, but also endurance and flourishing are signs as well. That which endures the assaults of the age of decay (a tree planted by the river) must be more true than that which does not, like the chaff.

By the end of the conversation the world for Fry is increasingly chaff-like. Yes, there is pleasure, myth, humor, absurdity but beneath it all there remains ache of lament. Nothing lasts and perhaps nothing means anything. It's all a sometimes delightful sometimes tragic accident, this rush of empirical things but in the end it signifies nothing. Fry is a modern teacher from the book of Ecclesiastes without the summary chapter. It's all chaff and so are we.

One of the games surrounding the Truman-show-esq Jordan Peterson phenomenon is the "will he or won't he escape?" question. In his case it isn't escaping the sunny dome ruled by a manipulative Christof in the sky, but the box of skeptical naturalism.

JBP was a polite host but there were moments when he pulled his punches. He keeps intuiting, hoping that the gyroscope of meaning, and the endurance of an archetypal story might indicate there is something beyond the dome. One man crossed over his followers say.

One of the best summary videos of the @jordanbpeterson phenomenon was made by one of his more persistent critics. @RationalityRule

The center of Jordan Peterson meaningful mission is to be a bridge. He goes right to the edge, always pausing, while others use him as a bridge to walk beyond. Who really wants to be just chaff.