The Fall of Jordan B. Peterson
Michael Ebbinghaus • April 25, 2024
Fallen Idol, or Fallen into Idolatry?
I found the work of Jordan Peterson in 2018 while working as the personal assistant to the CEO of Onnit at the time. My good friend and mentor Erick, a mutual devotee of Carl Jung, introduced me to his work. I watched his biblical lectures over the course of the next year and was greatly intrigued by the nuance and curiosity he brought to bear on complex topics. He was and still is notoriously methodical and detailed in his analysis, as he spends the first of the lectures extrapolating on what exactly the idea of God is and how stories utilize the collective imagination and analytical functions of vast numbers of people.
Peterson used to be able to speak to the mysterious aspects of existence, that source from which all manifestation springs. Now he toutes statistics as if they have any bearing on the ontological underpinnings of reality and minimizes or otherwise completely overlooks the effect of any biases, something as a clincial psychologist he should be trained to eek out. He seems to have fallen from a genuine explorer of the Mystery to idolatry, vehemently defending his position and holding it up as the “right one.” Increasingly over the last few years his worldview has become wedded to the Christian mythos, which I have not heard him say directly, but which is evident in his choice of programs, courses, groups, and advertisements running on his podcast.
Here we give serious consideration to the phenomenon of self-righteousness, mob (un)consciousness, martyrdom, and the mongrel horde’s need of a Prophet or Savior. First we will explore where Peterson has devolved into a demigouge, utilizing his past and current interpretations of the Cain and Abel story to illustrate this transformation as his popularity, fame, wealth, and power have all grown. Second, we will discuss his participation in the culture war that he claims to despise. Finally, we will end with a riveting discussion of the archetype of the Savior in the forms of Christ as well as another prophet shaking our zeitgeist, Paul Muad’Dib Atreides.
"He seems to have fallen from a genuine explorer of the Mystery to idolatry, vehemently defending his position and holding it up as the 'right one.'"
When Peterson gave his initial lectures on the Genesis stories, he wore a plain black suit. He had already cleaned up his health and had hair plugs put in. I highly recommend these lectures, as they go into deep layers of Western civilization with a genuinely curious eye. It is my position here that Jordan has lost some of that curious eye. His countenance appears altogether different these days, wearing a coat of many colors, adorned in religious iconography. The notion of his psychic inflation should be a point of considerable thought for many, most of all Peterson himself.
7 years ago, when Peterson gave his first analysis of the Cain and Abel story, he said pretty much the exact same thing that he said on that Tuesday evening, with a crucial difference. The story may not be familiar to some of you, so I will summarize it here:
Cain and Abel are the first humans, born of human flesh (Adam and Eve were directly created by God). Abel is a shepherd, Cain a sewer of plants. Each is called upon by God to make a sacrifice of their fief. Abel gives the best of his animals to the cause, and Cain gives his offering. God finds Abel’s sacrifice more pleasing, and lets the brothers know as such. Cain is inflamed with hatred of his brother, and slays him with a stone.
This is a rich story. In his initial analysis, Peterson does indeed highlight that Abel’s sacrifice seems to be of a higher quality than Cain’s. He gives his absolute best effort and is therefore rewarded by God. There is perhaps something of the half-ass in Cain. But in the 2017 lectures Peterson brings his brilliant curiosity to bear on this ambiguity – was Cain’s sacrifice really of lesser quality, or was the favoring in some way arbitrary or beyond conscious effort? He goes on to say that one can indeed sacrifice a great deal and still not be rewarded for it, that even in the face of our best effort, of doing everything within our realm of agency, there are still many things, in fact the majority of things, which lay beyond that agency. We can only hope that some of Jordan’s next explorations include the story of Job.
Any of that curiosity or sense of exploring the ambiguities was not present in Jordan Peterson that evening. It was clear from his rhetoric and from the baying of the crowd that he has been influenced by public opinion to take a more unilateral stance, as we can be sure that the mob is not concerned with nuance and shades of grey. The problem cannot exist in me, but in them! No longer is there any sense that Cain may have just been unfortunate. We can derive differing but useful interpretations that perhaps you could sacrifice more or do better, and perhaps also you did your absolute best and chance has not favored you, as is so often the case. Joan of Arc certainly offered her greatest sacrifice, and like Abel was similarly slain for it by the demagogues of her day. There are two useful interpretations here: we can hold that we can offer a greater sacrifice and we are prone to keep the best for our little s-selves, for our ego. But it is also a lesson in not taking things personally. There is so much that gets wrapped up in the idea of righteousness.
"There is nothing more dangerous in this world than self-righteousness..."
I’ll offer that Peterson thinks himself and his group Abel and those who oppose him (leftists, post-modernists, LGBTQ, etc.) Cain, and he has grown increasingly disdainful of these groups. While these groups are not beyond reproach and are in many ways problematic, the culture war of which Peterson speaks and claims reprehension towards is clearly inflamed by his polarization. He has betrayed the wisdom of our mutual teachers such as Dr. Carl Jung, who insists that any rising in the tension of the opposites will only increase the force of their inevitable collision and reconciliation. He ignores the warnings of the mystics that the crowds are no source of wisdom. He betrays even the wisdom of his own Savior, who proclaimed “I come not to bring peace but a sword” (Matthew 10:34-6). Read that as: I have come to set asunder any ideas you have about the Almighty, because any idea that you or anyone or any group comes up with will fall hopelessly short of describing It. It cannot be described; It must be awoken to and directly experienced. Instead Peterson has promulgated Judeo-Christian morality, which has ever been in the self-righteous service of saving the souls of others, crystallizing their own lack of faith in their ardent desire to convert the world, a jihad
under a different name.
No, Dr. Peterson secretly loves this culture war because it confirms his limited ideas about God and morality, and it is the same for the mob that finds credence through his authority. Abhorrent clashes and cataclysms would even be welcomed, as it would confirm their putting up the good fight against an evil tyrannical force. They have not yet sought to locate the Cain and Abel within themselves. There is nothing more dangerous in this world than self-righteousness; no perpetrator of great evil has ever considered themselves evil. We can look to the recent historic examples of the Nazis, the Russian and Chinese communists, etc., who created Hell on Earth in the name of their holy leaders and creeds, but Christians are among the greatest perpetrators of evil throughout the last two millennia. We can look to the Inquisitors, whose compassion and fear of heresy and damnation led them to contrive sadistic tortures of unimaginable cruelty, all in the name of saving souls. We can look to any colonial force which has looked upon the indigenous land-based traditions and thought to themselves “My God, these poor heathens! They have no idea their ways will land them in an eternal pit of Hell! We must save them and give them our ways (religion and economics)!”
Here we have the vital crux of our argument. I will quote our aforementioned teacher, Carl Jung, who said “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” This is vitally true for any contact of differences or opposites, and here we may consider these groups as personalities: The Jordain Evangelists on the right(eous) hand, the Gender Asunderists/Post-Modernists on the left (yet both part of the same body). Those on either side consider contact with the other abhorrent, and will not even rest to digest their ideas. Make no mistake, those on the other side do not escape my critique, but they are not the focus of the present article. If there is to be any reconciliation, the crystalline walls which prevent the entry of such ideas must come down. Again we can look to the wisdom of the opposites to show us that if you are afraid that such ideas might change you, then you really have no faith in your own ideals.
I say this as I left my comfortable surrounds of Austin, TX, to go and study clinical pyschology in the heart of Leftist mania, San Francisco, CA, in 2019. Armed with my sharp wit and ideas honed by Dr. Peterson’s lectures and books, I met with people whose ideas differed sharply from my own and was able to find commonality in them. I did not adopt their ideas, but neither did mine remain ultimately unchanged. They morphed into something sturdier, something that could represent a more complete picture, as my faith continues to grow.
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” - Carl Jung
This is all to say that Peterson benefits implicitly from a proliferation of the culture war. Any act, no matter how disastrous or abhorrent, that may prove his underlying assumptions and those of his followers will be celebrated and used as further fuel for derision and schism.
We will now turn to the final phase of our argument, one that I hope will shake the foundations of each of our ontology. Because the greatest threat to the highest in Humankind, to the Savior, is human beings who are in need of a Savior, i.e. those who do not recognize that they and the Father are One.
We only know so little of the person of Jesus of Nazareth, as so much of him is bound up in mystique and myth. It is clear from his teachings that he meant to be no Savior, and the scripture is hesitant to paint him as anything but “pure” in their puritanical sense. It is unlikely that Jesus of Nazareth died a virgin or even as a celibant. His injunction is not to bow down and worship him as the Savior of Humankind but for everyone to awaken to the fact that they are God in flesh. This is the true Savior of which Christ is our greatest cultural blueprint. Because even Christ himself, while he ultimately accepts his fate, does not go to his death without dissent. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). It is interesting to imagine what would have happened had Christ not been crucified, but he conflicted with the people’s image of God. Of the many miracles he performed, he spoke that: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). One can take this as an injunction to follow the Christian impulse to “accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior” and thus shall you be redeemed, but my word what considerable misery and unconsciousness such a childish interpretation has led us to. Christ is instead the instruction to arise to the full awareness of both Cosmic origin and consciousness as well as the real limitations of our incarnation.
Lest we forget that Christ aligned himself with and spent time among the rejects and outcasts of society – the prostitutes and the lepers. Ultimately he is bound by prophecy to die upon the cross, and it is difficult not to see this as a mistake, as a sign of our collective myopia, though I withhold any final judgments on this.
A new story of the Savior has taken a hold of the collective consciousness at present, that of Dune
and the legendary figure of Paul Muad’Dib Atreides. Paul is very much in the position as a savior and messiah, the one who will lead the people of Arrakis to paradise and freedom. He, like Christ, finds himself at grips with this, and resists the strictures of his fate until at last he drinks the Water of Life, the raw spice mélange, in which he awakens fully as consciousness Itself. Thus awakened, he sees that he can do nothing but to take up the mantle that has been sewn for him by the Bene Gesserit, the dark feminine force secretly pulling all the strings, otherwise it will be inhabited by another tailored for that role, such as the insidious Feyd Rautha. Like Arjuna in the Baghavad Gita, he must accept his place in the great drama. Without spoiling the greater story beyond the portrayal of the current films, it suffices to say that it does not go well for Muad’Dib in much the same way that it does not go well for Christ, for their message is ultimately one of disruption of all ideas and hierarchies of being. And I will admit that this may also be exactly what Peterson is doing, accepting his place in the great drama of things.
I have been able to somewhat divest myself of any certainty or moral high ground in these matters. I seek only the reconciliation, and this essay, this message, as my part to play in the great world stage. I will not deny the utility, beauty, and wisdom of any religious teaching, because I agree with Peterson in that they are reflections and technologies which span great generations of time and persons, a way for us to think with one another, those who have come before us, and those who will come after. But there is so much that is out of our control, and to assume that if one does things the “right” way that everything will turn out peachy, and it is only those who do not follow the “right” way that inhibit the full coronation of Heaven on Earth, is a dangerous foray that inevitably maintains and accelerates the motion of the wheel of Samsara, and secretly binds us in alliance with those we would call our enemy.
Peterson actually noted this famous saying of Christ to love our enemy in the lecture which is our current subject. But he notably shrugged it off and offered no further elaboration. Like most Christians, he cannot bring himself to internalize the deepest of Christ’s teachings, lest he be revealed to his true face.
Because if we are to bring about the kingdom of Heaven on Earth, it will not be through conquering of the wicked. We have tried this for millennia, and reap what has been sewn. No, Heaven will not come to Earth by elevating the human spirit, but by demystifying and dirtying our image of God in the putrefactio,
by seeing that there is nothing in which the divine is not present, least of all ourselves, and certainly those whom we would call our enemy.
The Sentient Soul
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