An interview with Jordan Peterson, who believes in witches and dragons

Here are some quotes from the NYT interview

Sorry, no. An NYT hit piece is hardly credible of any actual description. You have to look at Peterson’s quotes and ignore the crazy hitpiece commentary.

  1. In fundamental mythology, the chaos is represented by the feminine and order is represented by the masculine. So blame Peterson for pointing out something exists. Not only that, but it looks like the people who haven’t done their homework actually don’t know what he means by chaos, because it isn’t mayhem. In Peterson’s theory, chaos is that which we don’t know, that which is unfamiliar and outside of the guided patterns we like to operate our lives around. Peterson think chaos is essential, and that one must live on the fine line between chaos and order and take the “heroic path” of fundamental mythology. I’ve yet to see any critic produce any evidence that Peterson means anything bad against the feminine here. They cannot produce this for the life of them, Peterson just isn’t that kind of person.

  2. Forced monogamy. This is the only thing worth discussing. So, what is forced monogamy? Forcing women to get with men? No, that’s a crazy, absurd extrapolation from ‘monogamy’, I mean seriously. In an explanation of Peterson’s views that he himself has recommended, the following explanation is given. First of all, Peterson never invented this term, it’s been around in academia for a while. Of course, the media hitmen don’t know this. “Forced” monogamy is really just a societal pressure on people to only have single partners. That’s really all it is. Peterson thinks something like polygamy is bad for both men and women – women for obvious reasons, men because some portion fo men will actually not even have the opportunity to find women.

Well, that’s what all this is about. Is this a “role model that I could [n]ever endorse”? Of course not, Peterson’s ideas have helped thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands make their lives better. They’re true, they work, Peterson really cares. But, of course, all this comes at the expense of the radical left, their ideas against free speech and their political correctness and their collectivism, etc, etc, etc. So Peterson has to be removed. But he won’t. I think Peterson’s recent debate alongside Stephen Fry versus Michelle Goldberg and Michael Dyson reveals the logical gap between Peterson and his critics.

I think it’s clear at this point. The views of the “intellectual dark web” are inevitably going to attain victory. They’re just right. They tell the better story.

@Shuck

I’m sorry - in what, now? What’s “fundamental mythology” supposed to be? There’s no Ur-mythology; there’s thousands of mythologies that agree with one another on exactly nothing. That Peterson perpetuates the Abrahamic myths by treating them (and cherry-picked related, similar myths) as universal just shows he’s willing to abandon even the pretense of academic rigor to prop up his personal prejudices; he’s barely disguising it. If the “views of the ‘intellectual dark web’ are inevitably going to attain victory,” it’s only because they appeal to lazy fuckwits who just want someone to tell them they’re right so they don’t have to actually think about anything.

Since you don’t know what fundamental mythology is, let me explain it for you. It isn’t something that appears in EVERY MYTHOLOGY. No, it’s just a recurring motif throughout human tales. And Peterson’s explanation that chaos is represented by the feminine has nothing to do with the Abrahamic stories (thus exposing your severe misclaim that he’s doing some sort of (fictional) cherry-picking), it has to do with the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy. The yin represents chaos, and the feminine, and the yang represents order, and the masculine. See the Ancient History Encyclopedia on this. I did some research, and apparently, even the Huffington Post got this right. Sorry, but your enormous misunderstanding of some of the standard claims about mythology, and your willingness to use this ignorance to deride Peterson, is exactly why Peterson and the intellectual dark web are winning.

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