
JORDAN PETERSON — THE NEW MESSIAH?
Jordan Peterson is undoubtedly a very intelligent man. He is a clinical psychologist and intellectual that intertwines psych theory, Jung, Nietzsche, and Joseph Campbell, who wrote that wonderful and insightful book “The Hero With A Thousand Faces,” to name a few, into his lectures and books. He has brought order into young men’s lives, specifically through his latest book, “12 Rules For Life.” He is unshifting in a lot of his views, even dogmatically arrogant in many instances, in my view. He hates the radical left. I agree with much of what he has to say but critique and scrutinize him as much as I can with my lower intellect (at least compared with his). What’s confounding is that some commence to “Hero Worship” people like him, that he is holier -than-thou, that he cannot say nor do no wrong. People commence to forget that he is just human, and deeply flawed like all of us. Question: Does this occur because of the very mythology he speaks of in his lectures, of the hero our species continuously seeks, a “saviour” because we cannot save our own wretched souls? I’ve read certain comments on his FB page, such as “The greatest communicator in the English language; “The messiah”; “Undoubtedly the most important figure so far of the 21st century”, and other stuff that makes my face contort into knots. Furthermore, is he creating an ideological stance himself of the type which he so vehemently denounces? Peterson is but one “messenger” and I’ll agree a very important one at this time, but to exalt him to omnipotent status is to follow him blindly without any forethought or analysis, and that is dangerous.
Lastly, I wonder what he himself would make of all this. I recall him saying on a podcast to the effect, “I’m yet to work out whether this is the best or worst thing that has happened to me.” Well … so are we.
