Jordan B. Peterson
His theories about mythology and religion examined by Stefan Stenudd
Before switching to psychology he got a BA in political science in 1982. Soon after that he started to study clinical psychology, earning his PhD in 1991 with research on the predisposition to alcoholism. His thoughts are controversial, to the extent that many praise them and many dismiss them categorically, but few who are familiar with them are in between. His refusal in 2016 to accept a legal mandate in Canada to use personally preferred gender pronouns caused calamity at the University of Toronto campus and far beyond it. In 2021 he resigned from his teaching position, becoming Professor Emeritus. Already in 2013, he started a YouTube channel with videos of his university lectures. Later the content switched to lectures aimed directly at the YouTube audience. The channel now has close to six million subscribers and his videos have a total of over 460 million views (September 2022).[1] He has also been interviewed on several other major YouTube channels and podcasts. With his modest literary production of only three books so far, but an overwhelming and highly noted social media presence, Peterson is the first psychologist to rise to world-wide fame in this manner. Furthermore, it is completely independent of his academic achievements, which seem not to be as prominent. It is an interesting path, likely to be followed by others in the field. Meaning and BeliefIn more ways than the above-mentioned Internet prominence, Jordan B. Peterson deviates from his peers. His first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief from 1999, starts with a twelve pages long preface of an autobiographical nature, and a daringly frank one at that. He tells openly of his personal anguish and torment when working his way towards the discipline of psychology and his Jungian take on it.Peterson is quite dramatic about his experience, which is evident already in the Latin title he has given his preface: Descensus ad Inferos. It is usually translated as Descent into Hell, though the Netherworld would be more accurate. The expression is mainly connected to the Christian tradition that Jesus went there after the crucifixion to liberate souls held captive, and ascended from it at his resurrection.
Jordan’s OrdealJordan B. Peterson took the first significant step in his search for meaning at the age of 12. While participating in the confirmation classes of his church he realized, “I could not swallow what I was being taught.”[2] Concluding that religion was “for the ignorant, weak and superstitious,” he stopped attending church.At about the same time, he developed an interest in political issues, bothered by social injustices and the Cold War. A question that stood out to him was, “how did evil — particularly group-fostered evil — come to play its role in the world?” That led him to start as a volunteer for a “mildly socialist” political party. “Economic injustice was at the root of all evil, as far as I was concerned.” His political engagement continued into college, but with growing doubts. He saw a flaw in the attitude of his socialist friends, which he found confirmed in George Orwell’s book Road to Wigan Pier: “Orwell said, essentially, that socialists did not really like the poor. They merely hated the rich.”[3] That is not exactly what Orwell stated, though. According to him, the socialists were no lovers of the working class, though claiming to be. And their hatred was aimed at the class they themselves belonged to — the bourgeoisie. He wrote about the socialist:
But he did not stop pondering the problem of the Cold War and its threat of total nuclear destruction. To find what caused it, he began to study psychology. As a psychology student, he visited a prison where he met men who had committed brutal crimes. It made him wonder if he would ever be able to do the same. He had a recurring compulsion during university lectures: “I would unfailingly feel the urge to stab the point of my pen into the neck of the person in front of me.”[5] Although resisting it, he found the urge disturbing. He had never been aggressive, which he explained by mostly having been smaller and younger than his classmates — a strange argument from a psychologist, since it would rather imply suppressed aggression. And he did indeed come to a similar conclusion: “I was not much different from the violent prisoners — not qualitatively different. I could do what they could do (although I hadn’t).” Also, he began to have trouble conversing, because of a sort of voice inside his head, critically commenting the opinions he expressed. It repeated, “You don’t believe that. That isn’t true.”[6] He wondered what part of him this voice was, and decided to experiment: “I tried only to say things that my internal reviewer would pass unchallenged.” It made him more confident, which led him to conclude that he was that criticizing part, and the thoughts it approved were truly his. Reading Jung about the concept of persona, “the feigned individuality,” he found an explanation. But his ordeal was far from over. He was getting terrible nightmares, mostly on the theme of nuclear war. He had those apocalyptic dreams two or three times a week, for a year or more. In search for their meaning, he read Sigmund Freud’s book on dream interpretation. Contrary to Freud’s theory, he could not regard those nightmares of his as wish-fulfillments, nor as sexual in nature. He experienced them as more religious.[7] His point about wish-fulfillment is clever. It can hardly be applied to nightmares. His dismissal of the sexual content of his dreams, though, might have been hasty. In an apocalyptic dream described in the book, his cousin, who was “the most beautiful woman I had ever seen,” had been butchered by dogs offering the meat to him and other survivors, but he discovered the truth before eating it.[8] That could be interpreted as a dream treating a forbidden wish of his, a sexual attraction to his cousin. Of course, I do not suggest this was the case, but such a Freudian interpretation is possible. Another episode, though not a dream, was when he came home from a college drinking party, self-disgusted and angry, and started to paint: “I sketched a harsh, crude picture of a crucified Christ — glaring and demonic — with a cobra wrapped around his naked waist, like a belt.”[9] It disturbed him, as he found it sacrilegious. He didn’t know why he painted it or what it meant, but again a sexual interpretation is not unthinkable, considering the party he came from and the naked demonic Christ with a serpent around his waist. It can be seen as an image of desires he felt were sinful. The symbolism gets even more suggestive by the fact that he hid the painting in his closet. Still, Peterson found it all pointing at myth and religion, which made him start to study Jung’s writing, although having trouble understanding it at first. In spite of that, this study made his nightmares cease, and he reached a revelation:
Whether they have managed that is another matter. Prejudice spreads easily in those who think they are immune to it, and emotions roam freely in those who deny them. By being transparent about his own emotional roller-coaster ride, Peterson admits to the intricate role the psyche plays also in a psychologist. Nevertheless, his conclusions about the power of beliefs are debatable.
BeliefsPeterson’s claim that beliefs make the world is so general, it has to be interpreted figuratively, which is also what he seems to indicate. But he gets concrete when stating that beliefs are the reasons for wars and their cruelty.It is true that beliefs, religious or ideological, have often been used to justify wars, and such justifications might have escalated the cruelty of them. As causes of war, though, beliefs are rarely sufficient explanations. Wars are initiated by rulers, and not by the people they rule. Accordingly, the reasons for war are those of the rulers — such as the pursuit of power, fortune, and glory. Peterson must surely have learned that from political science. Rulers are rarely driven by beliefs, although they often claim to be. The soldiers, too, are usually driven by other things than beliefs when they march to war, if they at all have a say in it. Mostly they do not. They are simply commanded, whatever they think about the reason given to them by their rulers. True, their morale is increased if they believe the war is just, and deteriorates if they do not. But very rarely, if ever, is their conviction the cause of war, though it can have a great influence on its outcome. Basically, war consist of an attacker and a defender, and the strongest argument for waging a war is being the latter, or pretending to be. It is not always clear. Both sides want to claim to be the defender — of their land, their religion, their well-being, their way of life. The attacker claims there was an imminent threat to those values, blaming the defender and thereby trying to switch their roles. It has been known to succeed. The sad truth is that many wars are started as precautions, a defense in advance. Sometimes it is pretense and sometimes accurate. In any case, it is a vicious spiral, hard to escape. Peterson reported his anguish since youth about the Cold War, which was an escalation of two sides preparing for defense. The nuclear arms race was called the balance of terror, where peace between the two sides was kept by the threat of total annihilation. A risky business, but it managed to keep a third world war off, and maybe still does. Until it doesn’t. Anyway, the Cold War had very little to do with belief.
Science and MythPeterson’s book has the subtitle The Architecture of Belief. It may not be the most adequate description of the book’s content. He ends the preface summarizing the arguments he is to present in the book, and there is no mention of belief. Instead, he describes a polarity of things as opposed to narrative, where the former is connected to science and the latter to myth, literature, and drama. The difference is one between objects and action.[11]It is an oversimplification that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Science deals with things as well as action, where the latter is definitely given the most attention. It is the activity of things, their internal and external movements, that science focuses on. Newton and Einstein calculated how celestial bodies move, Darwin explained how animals and plants evolve over time by natural selection, and so on. Without action, without change, there would not be anything to examine. Nothing in the universe is static. Science is a narration of the processes of nature, i.e., how things came to be and how they proceed. Of course Peterson is right about myth, literature, and drama describing a series of events, but that is not different from how science describes reality. It is all action. He continues by calling science the objective world, and the other one the world of value. That makes more sense, though both objective and value need to be defined, especially the latter. Science strives to figure out the laws of objective reality, which has through history proven to be a tricky task, but the aim is clear enough. What value means to myth, literature, and drama, on the other hand, is much more of a handful. Peterson explains it as “what is and what should be, from the perspective of emotion and action,” which is not very clarifying. He probably refers to emotional attitudes towards reality and how to deal with it. Some events are wanted and others are shunned. Value is subjective, of course, and when we attach it to things as well as actions, we are definitely leaving objective reality. Still, it is very real to us. Since we are part of the world, we relate to it by how it affects us. A scientific description of the world that succeeds to be truly objective has little relevance to us. We need the subjective perspective, whether fictional or realistic. That is very likely to be an essential ingredient in the formation of our mythologies. They are tools to turn the world we live in into our world. Science is not different. We explore and explain the world so that we understand it. Whatever we do, it is always about us. Peterson continues by dividing the world “as a forum for action” into three parts, which “tend to manifest themselves in typical patterns of metaphoric representation,” and here he enters the domain of myth, as well as Jungian interpretations of it:
When he speaks about unexplored and explored, he probably means exploited. Nature is largely explored, but not yet completely exploited — well, we are rapidly getting there. One could also use the concepts of nature versus civilization. That makes the third entity, the mediator, some kind of balancing factor between them. An ideal, like the image of Christ.
Personal InterestTo Peterson, the devilish threat is when group identification is made absolute, whereby civilization turns tyrannical, and the antidote is loyalty to personal interest, which he also calls subjective meaning.That is what the hero archetype represents:
That is probably true, up to a point. But if the individual is regarded as more important than the group, which is what loyalty to personal interests indicates, then that person is more likely to be detrimental to it — and definitely so if all members have the same priority. The collective would cease to function and break apart. On a larger scale, society would crumble. Both Jungian and Freudian psychology have distinct individualistic characteristics, already in their premise that personal psychological issues mainly have internal causes and should be treated accordingly, by individual analysis. Freud went so far as to describe the conflict between personal needs and social demands as something akin to war. Jung had a less dramatic view, where his idea of the collective unconscious instead formed sort of a bridge between the individual and the collective. But he did stress the importance of individual self-discovery, symbolized by the archetypal hero’s quest. So, Peterson’s insistence on loyalty to personal interests may be tendentious, but it is not that far-fetched as an interpretation of depth psychology. It is provocatively expressed, which is probably quite intentional. His autobiographical account, with the significant title Descensus ad Inferos, shows disgust at what society can be at its worst and how this brings out the worst in men. Loyalty to personal interests and resistance towards group pressure as a model for the hero implies personal responsibility. The malady of society is no excuse to submit, but a call to rise and resist. No doubt, that is one kind of hero, and Peterson seems eager to follow that path. To apply his own definitions, his text is not aimed at being objective, but at value.
What Is and What It MeansThe polarity of object and action, or science and myth, boils down to the two perspectives of what is and what it means, whereof the latter dominates in the human mind. According to Peterson, we are practically unable to relate to things without assigning some specific meaning to them, and that meaning is inseparable from the thing itself. In other words, it is what it means. This thinking is established already in early childhood:
This is probably true for all animals, as an effective way to deal with the complexity of reality, such as the division of things into edible or not, other species into predator or prey, and members of its own species into friend or foe. It is a survival instinct, so we keep it into adulthood, and by time it gets increasingly intricate. Yet, as a behavioral process it is quite transparent. Peterson uses other words for this: “The ‘natural,’ pre-experimental, or mythical mind is in fact primarily concerned with meaning.”[15] Calling it natural is so uncontroversial that the quotes are redundant, and mythical depends on its definition. If he suggests that this basic behavior is a kind of personal myth-making, he is going too far. It would be enough to describe it as symbolic representation — or better yet, classification. We sort things into categories according to how we need to relate to them. But it is the concept pre-experimental that is the most questionable. Experimenting is not something exclusive to modern science, nor is the mental process involved in it. It is safe to say that people have experimented for ages, also applying the trial-and-error procedure. Animals do it, too. The cat lightly touching an unfamiliar object with its paw, and jumping away if it moves, is experimenting. It is the curiosity that famously killed the cat. A toddler puts strange things in its mouth to check if they are edible, children test how long they can hold their breath or who runs the fastest, and so on. The experiments of our distant ancestors led to the use of fire, flint tools, and clothing. There never was a pre-experimental mind. Peterson limits the experimental mind to what goes on in modern science, which he calls objective, but that is a question of method and not of mental capacity and inclination. People have always made research, with the quality of the results depending on previous knowledge and technical resources. Also the scientific demand of being evidence-based is just as old. What has changed is what our increased knowledge allows as evidence, and the sophistication with which it is applied. The underlying thought process is the same. Peterson’s narrow definition of scientific thinking leads him to dismiss the possibility that it exists in mythology. He states, “Myth is not primitive proto-science.”[16] Instead, he defines it as “description of the world as it signifies (for action)." In other words, myth describes the world as what it means to us and how we should act in it. But that doesn’t exclude it from also being scientific. Nor do the rather elaborate definitions he gives science:
Nevertheless, his definitions of science can be applied to myth as well. Their description of the world is consensually apprehensible, and was so even more when they were formed. That doesn’t mean they are correct, which is anyway not demanded by Peterson’s definition. When the myths were formed, they were at least plausible, or they would have been quickly dismissed — unless they had a significant entertainment value, which is the main reason for their persistence to this day. His second definition is so vague that it can be applied to much more than science. The most effective mode of reaching an end can be running in a straight line from start to finish, the fall of the curtain in the theater, or for that matter a swift suicide. Peterson might refer to the scientific principle of Occam’s razor, which is to find the solution reached by the fewest steps. If that is what he suggests, then mythology has an abundance of examples of it. For example, an almighty deity creating the world is at least as direct as the Big Bang theory, also considering the question of what preceded it. Among creation myths in particular, there are many instances of evident rational thinking showing that they were composed from deep pondering of what the beginning of the world might have been like. The results were often quite ingenious, considering the few facts known at the time. Peterson gives the account of a Sumerian creation myth, which leads him to the above statement about myth not being protoscience, i.e., ancient science with insufficiently developed methods. He makes an odd choice, since his source is a modern reconstruction of the myth, because of the lack of primary sources.[17] A better choice would be the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish, which is preserved on clay tablets from that distant era, and it carries a lot of Sumerian influence. When examining any myth, it is crucial to get a trustworthy source, the older the better. In the book Peterson uses, Mircea Eliade’s A History of Religious Ideas, volume 1, Enuma Elish appears just a few pages after the Sumerian example, unfortunately also retold by Eliade, albeit with several quotes from translations of the original text. Peterson actually treats Enuma Elish extensively later in his book, and there he quotes big chunks from a translation of the Babylonian text.[18] It is an unfortunate choice of translation, though, namely that of Alexander Heidel, originally published in 1942 and revised in 1951. His interpretation of the text is admittedly focused on comparisons with Genesis of the Bible, and for Christian scholars and priests: “This little study is intended primarily not for the professional Assyriologist but rather for the Old Testament scholar and the Christian minister.”[19] Such sources should be used with caution. That being said, the reconstruction of the Sumerian myth still shows evident signs of rational thinking when describing the forces at work in the creation of the world. In the beginning is the goddess Nammu, who represents the primordial sea. This is a very common starting point in creation myths, which can be explained by the vastness of the sea to the beholder. It seems to have no end and be eternally the same through time. Nammu gives birth to the first couple, An and Ki, representing the sky and the earth, who in turn produce Enlil, god of the atmosphere, separating the sky from the earth. This is as far as the quote in Peterson’s book goes, and it is enough to conclude that rational thinking was involved in putting the myth together. It all makes sense. Out of the primordial sea come the sky and the earth, and the atmosphere holding them apart. It is a cosmology that was very plausible to people who had no knowledge of the universe, which is why this pattern can be found in many ancient creation myths. But Peterson objects strongly to the idea that this is a sign of any kind of scientific thinking:
Peterson states, “The mythic universe is a place to act, not a place to perceive.” But of course it can be both. It has to be, or action would be blind. Science is to Peterson about what is, as opposed to myth, which is about what should be, or value, as he also calls it. This value is to him nothing but moral. With such a polarity, he needs to claim that myth is not about what is, and science not about what should be. It is doubtful that any of those claims are valid. Firstly, all values are not moral, nor can it be said that moral values are the most important ones. We also cherish survival, pleasure, humor, intellectual stimulation, and so on. If he wants to claim that moral is the only significant value, he should simply call it that, i.e., replace value with moral. Otherwise, he is mistaken. He states that “no functioning society or individual can avoid rendering moral judgment,”[22] but whether true or not, it doesn’t exclude other values. As for what is as opposed to what should be, creation myths have many components of what there is that cannot be changed, such as the sea, the sky, and the earth. Also, the many deities of mythology, with their different powers, indicate vast areas out of human control. That is even a functioning definition of deity — an invisible power to explain what is beyond human control and comprehension. It would in most religions be absurd, even blasphemous, to state what the deities and their actions should be. In science, what should be has very often been part of the equations and still frequently is. Some examples are monstrous, like the theories of racial biology and eugenics, which flourished at the universities quite recently in our history. Others strive to be globally benevolent, like ecology, climate change research, and gender studies. Science is rarely as objective as many of its proponents claim. Behind a lot of research lies an idea of what should be. The whole discipline of medicine is an obvious example. The research is all about how things can be improved. Viruses are not studied solely to understand what they are, but also to find how they can be fought. Still, that can hardly be regarded as unscientific. So, Peterson’s model doesn’t hold, at least not as he defines it, which is partly quite fuzzy. In spite of that, he uses this model to explain the major function of mythology as an aid for us when making choices in life, also when we lack sufficient information to do it comfortably:
For example, the immoral behavior of the deities in Greek mythology was a gripe already among the philosophers of that time. Still they were worshipped. Also the deities in Norse mythology were known to use deception to get what they wanted, not to mention brute force. The pantheon of Indian mythology is so complicated, as are the ancient texts about them, that it is difficult to come to any general conclusion about their messages. Mythology is about so much more and so much else than good and evil. Nevertheless, Peterson is convinced that the study of “mythological commonalities might comprise the first developmental stage in the conscious evolution of a truly universal system of morality.”[24] It may seem like a good thing, but is actually scary. Very scary. A universal system of morality means one single moral code to be applied to all. It has been tried again and again in history, and the result has never been a thing of benevolence. Instead, it has been an instrument of oppression and cruelty — just the things that terrified Peterson in his youth. When based on religious beliefs it has allowed for even more oppression and cruelty. We would all like to see the world become a better place, but moral is the wrong word for what we need. Moral is the forceful application of rules, where the force is not concerned with the suffering it brings, nor does it invite criticism or even discussion. The words that indicate a positive and genuinely healing direction are compassion and empathy, which are in essence opposites to moral. Where moral is constraining, compassion and empathy are liberating. Where moral is vindictive, compassion and empathy are forgiving. The former leads to blame and persecution, but the latter to tolerance and mutual understanding. It cannot be stressed enough — a universal system of morality should be avoided. It has proven to lead to immense suffering and injustice. Jordan B. Peterson, who is evidently familiar with and sympathetic to Christian values, should contemplate how Jesus treated the woman brought before him, who had been caught in adultery. Those who brought her said that the law of Moses demands that she should be stoned. He replied that the one without sin could cast the first stone. When they had left, he told the woman that nor would he condemn her.[25] That surpasses moral. The morally based quest that Peterson proposes involves three subqueries:
Apart from that, it is a straightforward three-step procedure for just about any situation: observe it, evaluate it, and improve it. Easier said than done, especially the second and third phase. Scanning mythology for optimal moral solutions is hardly going to do better than it has done in the past. If our predecessors did not succeed, although they put faith in their myths, we are not likely to do any better. New definitions of what should be improved and new ideas on how to do it are needed, but they are surely hard to find. If they were not, it would have been fixed long ago. Peterson’s vague recipe contains nothing new and gives no workable instruction. It just says that we should solve the problem. We already knew that. He points to “proper analysis of mythology” leading to the solution by showing what should be and what should be done, but he doesn’t specify what that is. We are just to trust that the solution is there, and go search for it. He should at least tell us what he has found.
MetamythologyPeterson lists four classes of myths, which he clams to provide a more complete answer to the three questions mentioned above. These four classes are:
Then he speaks of metamythology and metamyth, which he doesn’t define, but the term meta indicates that he means myth about myth, i.e., a myth that comments on itself. Also, his metamyth concept is similar to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, discussed in the chapter about him, which he applied to hero myths. Campbell used the concept for the general pattern he claimed to exist in all hero myths. Peterson seems to suggest that his four classes, or stages, form a pattern that is also universal. That may well be, since what he describes is very close to the structure in any plot, according to dramaturgy, which is based on Aristotle’s Poetics. First, there is an initial situation, then something unexpected happens that needs to be dealt with, the drama intensifies into a crisis, and finally there is the resolution. This structure is found in just about every drama and myth, for the simple reason that it is how, as Aristotle put it, a story gets a beginning, a middle, and an end. The dramaturgical perspective is extremely useful, even necessary, when analyzing myths. They are stories and must be understood as such. Peterson uses his four classes of myth to describe what he calls the Metamythological Cycle of the Way, which starts and ends at the same point, with the “establishment of conditional, but determinate moral knowledge (belief).”[28] Some things about this are unclear. Does he mean that belief is synonymous to moral knowledge? But belief can consist of so much more than moral. Also, what part of it is conditional and what is determinate? He probably means that any condition has its determinate moral, but that would lead to a vast number of different morals, which makes a universal system of morality so complicated that it must be close to impossible to utilize. If he means that this moral is a formula of sorts that can be applied to any situation, then he should present that formula. He is yet to present his conception of the universal system of morality. What are its principles and rules? The way of which he speaks, he connects to the Chinese concept Tao, and gives it a definition: “The ‘way’ is the path of life and its purpose.”[29] That is a clear definition, which also fits the Chinese concept quite well, provided that the perspective is not individual. The Tao Te Ching, which is what Peterson refers to regarding Tao, does put demands on the individual, but the purpose is for the world as a whole. Humankind should adapt to what is natural, and not interfere with it. Peterson mentions chaos in the third of his four classes. It is what happens when a system of belief, which he calls its “stories,” is shook by something unexpected to which the proper response is not known. That induces fear:
This fear of the consequences of change is where Peterson sees a significant cause of social unrest:
Also, loud calls for change are often propagating the return to a real or imagined previous state, which is referred to as the good old days. The past is regarded as known, but the future is not. As Hamlet in his famous monologue concludes, the unknown is why people fear death, which “makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.”[31] Another example is xenophobia, the fear of strangers, which has caused a lot of animosity, even hatred and horrific brutality. Indeed, Peterson is right about the fear of the unknown as a strong and often destructive force in humankind. What is less convincing is his roundabout way of reaching this conclusion. The fear has little to do with mythology and beliefs. It is more about instinctual behavior, relating to the threats we know as opposed to the ones we don’t. The latter makes our imagination go wild. That is the trigger in just about every horror story. It is about what we can expect. When we don’t know what that is, we tend to expect the worst. That is why we avoid being exposed to the unknown, individually as well as socially. It is not about holding on to what Peterson calls our protective cultural stories, though they may be used as excuses for our actions. It is about fear. Peterson’s concept of the cultural story is still interesting. There is definitely such a thing as cultural identity — and it is fiercely protected in any culture. Its power lies in its tradition, which is a value continuously increasing over time. The older a culture gets, the more firmly its components are cherished and protected. Any change will be opposed by most members of that culture. In this identity, mythology plays a role, as does just about every other aspect of the culture, such as language, customs, and history. Protection of the cultural identity, its heritage, is not mainly based on fear, but on habit. We humans are habitual creatures. As a cultural component is repeated it becomes habitual, a tradition by which the culture identifies itself. A drastic change of it risks damaging that identity and thereby the bonds of commonality the members of the culture share. A culture consists of countless components, on the individual as well as the social level, which have been established by time. It is traceable through its history. Therefore, it can be seen as a story — the history of the formation of a cultural identity. Of course, the mythology and religion of that culture are important parts of its story.
Enuma ElishExamining mythology in greater detail, Peterson applies the three “constituent elements of experience” he calls the unknown, the knower, and the known. Those three basic components can be creative as well as destructive. There is also a primal source, “the precosmogonic chaos,” for which he uses the ouroboros symbol, the serpent biting its own tail.[32]It is a neat set, in which the knower is the process of exploration, which sort of mediates between the unknown and the known. The chaos existing prior to creation is the primal source without which there would be nothing out of which anything could emerge. But it gets complicated when he continues by applying it to the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, where he sees four main characters: Tiamat, who is both the ouroboros and the Great Mother, which contradicts his model and yet he says that combination is frequently the case; Apsu (also spelled Abzu), who is her mate; the elder gods he calls their children, which is true for the first four of them; and Marduk, who is the hero deity:
Tiamat, a name that means ocean, is the primordial sea so common in creation myths, and Apsu is a lake. One water is salt, the other fresh. When these waters met, deities were born, marking the beginning of creation. Those deities also represent main entities in the world. About the first two mentioned in the myth, Lahmu and Lahamu, nothing is known for sure. They may have to do with light, since some translations say that they shone, or they may be connected to mud. Both are possible and make sense — light would appear at some point, and mud is found where water is. The next deities, Anshar and Kishar, represent what is above and below the horizon, i.e., heaven and earth. They gave birth to Anu, a sky deity, who in turn gave birth to Nudimmud, a deity of fresh water, also called Ea, or Enki in Sumerian. After that, the story of the battle between those primeval beings begins, which is something often seen in polytheistic mythologies. A number of such powerful creatures is bound to trigger rivalry. The primordial deities, Tiamat and Apsu, clash with the younger ones. Apsu is swiftly killed by Ea, but it takes his son Marduk to defeat and kill Tiamat, on the condition that this will grant him supreme power. Out of her corpse, he builds the world. Finally, he lets Ea create humans to serve the deities. Humans entering the story late is also typical for polytheistic mythologies. All those deities are busy interacting with each other, before even thinking of creating humans. Another characteristic of those myths is that humans have a lesser role in them, since they can’t measure up to the magnificent deities. It should be noted that Marduk is a deity of Babylonian origin and worship, whereas the previous ones are connected to Sumerian mythology. So, the story is also one of how a Babylonian deity became the ruler of the Sumerian deities. His sovereignty is emphasized at the end of Enuma Elish, when the other deities praise Marduk and give him fifty names describing aspects of his might. One character is missing in Peterson’s short summary, also in his longer treatment of the myth. It is Mummu, Apsu’s vizier, who is present at these primeval events, maybe already when the waters of Tiamat and Apsu are mixed. He may have been a mist connecting them, like rain from a cloud. He is both eager and instrumental in Apsu’s efforts to kill the other deities, but while Ea kills Apsu, he just imprisons Mummu and holds him with a nose-rope. It is unclear what his fate is. These are traits of the mythological character called the trickster, active in many creation myths, sometimes benign and sometimes causing misery — to the deities as well as to humans. The trickster has his own intentions, often unknown to others, and his own clever methods. It is definitely a figure to examine when analyzing myths, and an archetype frequently discussed in Jungian discourse. Considering this, it is odd that Mummu is completely absent from Peterson’s treatment of Enuma Elish. Jordan B. Peterson insists on a symbolic interpretation of the myth that is closer to his psychology than to the minds of the Babylonians. He rejects emphatically the possibility of creation myths being in any way scientific:
One would expect Peterson to argue for his view by pointing out the limited intellectual abilities of our ancestors, but he goes in the opposite direction. He claims that they were wiser than that: “Our ancestors were not as simple-minded as we think they were, and their theories of the generation of the cosmos were not merely primitive science.” He has a point when he continues:
As for meaning, it is a word with several possible definitions. Our ancestors would assume that what happened in the world was intentional, like their own actions, or nothing would happen. Invisible powers had intentions with their actions, and it would be advantageous for humans to understand those intentions, so as to predict and adapt to them. Again, that was rational, if not to say scientific, in the time of our ancestors. Myths are stories, which means there is a narrative with characters interacting, and the Aristotelian beginning, middle, and end. That is true for creation myths as well, but their beginning takes us all the way back to the birth of the world. Those speculations about that utterly unknown time usually have a cosmological perspective, telling how the earth, the sky, and the heavenly bodies appeared. They are quite logical, in the sense that they were at least plausible to their original audiences. Once the fundamental components of the world are at place, the creation myth leaves its beginning and enters the middle, where distinct characters engage in all kinds of drama. Deities get personalities and conflicting aims, whereby calamity ensues. Additional creatures may appear on the way, but they are incorporated in the character driven drama, which is the main thing. The plot thickens. The end of the story comes when the world reaches the state it had at the time of the original audience. This pattern can be seen in a vast majority of creation myths, including Enuma Elish. They start with cosmological events, continue with an anthropomorph drama, and end in the world familiar to the original audience. Accordingly, the beginning of Enuma Elish is the birth of the first few deities. When they start to interact, we have entered the middle part of the story, and when they have settled their differences to unite under Marduk’s reign, the end is reached. The drama is over and the story completed. This structure of myths is age-old and still very familiar to us. Otherwise, we would not be able to connect to them.
OuroborosA central figure in Peterson’s perspective on creation myths is ouroboros, for which he uses the alternative spelling uroboros, the serpent forming a circle by biting its own tail. He applies it to Enuma Elish, as discussed above.In another chapter he expands the meaning of the concept considerably:
Other Jungians have also stressed the importance of this symbol, as discussed earlier in this book, and it can be found in several mythologies — but far from as many as should be expected if it had the grand significance Peterson ascribes to it. The image of the serpent forming a circle is not far-fetched in human fantasies. The mere fact that this animal is devoid of any limbs makes the image near at hand. That has certainly been used as a symbol for mythological and cosmological concepts — but again, far from globally, and even less so with the meaning Peterson gives it. The risk with this attitude is that any circle or serpent in myths, dreams, and ancient symbolism is explained as representing ouroboros, which is what Peterson tends to do in his book and several other Jungians in their writing. But a circle can be just a ring, and a serpent just a snake. That’s most often the case. Even in mythology, the appearance of a serpent biting its tail is not necessarily of central importance and significance. For example, the Norse myth about the Midgard Serpent growing so big that it encircled the whole world and bit its own tail, does in no way point to its primordial sovereignty. It is the child of a deity and a giantess, so it could not have been present from the beginning. Its role is more important at the end, since when it releases its tail, the final battle of Ragnarök begins. Making generalizations about myths and their components leads to misconceptions and negligence towards their differences. Although similarities are easy to find, so are differences, and it is a mistake to allow the former to overshadow or even discard the latter. Still, it has been a favorite pastime among Jungians, as well as many mythologists.
InconsistenciesIn his wordy and partially inconsistent text, Peterson makes some strange statements, which give the impression that he jumps to conclusions in the eagerness to present arguments for his theories. In some cases it gets rather amusing.For example, he says about creation myths: “Primordial myths of creation tend to portray the origin of things as the consequence of at least one of two related events.”[36] Well, how else would processes of creation, or any process, advance if not as consequences of events? Regarding theories about myths in general, he states:
Occasionally, Peterson also contradicts himself, which easily happens in a text as long and complex as the well over 500 pages of his book. To give one example, he says about our attitudes towards similarities and differences, “We seem peculiarly aware of our differences, however, and not of our similarities.”[38] Just a few pages later, he makes what is in essence the opposite statement: “We cannot see the unknown, because we are protected from it by everything familiar and unquestioned.”[39] Are we blind to the familiar, or does it blind us from seeing what is not familiar? It can’t be both, or we would be completely blind. As a matter of fact, we would be unable to see our differences if we could not see our similarities, and vice versa. The one is dependent on the other. As for the unknown and the familiar, or simply the unknown and the known, it is like saying that we can’t know what we don’t know. That may be true in some sense, but it is also meaningless. The words are conditional. What is definitely accurate, though, is that we can get to know what we don’t know, or we would never have been able to expand our knowledge.
Yin and Yang and TaoPeterson is, like several other Jungians, prejudiced towards the material he uses, so that he sees what he wants to see in it, even when that is doubtful or just wrong. Comparing mythological cosmologies, he states:
Then there is an illustration with an extended description of yin and yang.[41] Here he has added characteristics that are even farther from the meaning of those two concepts. He correctly gives yang the characteristics of masculinity and day, but wrongly adds order, the known, authoritarianism, and fascism. Yin represents femininity and night, but not his additional suggestions chaos, the unknown, decadence, and nihilism. Apart from his misunderstanding of yin and yang, how could Western concepts of the 19th and 20th centuries at all be contained in this thousands of years old cosmology from China? When comparing ancient phenomena to modern ones, it is first of all necessary to assure a proper understanding of them, and not just twist them into what fits a favored model. One source Peterson uses for his understanding of yin and yang is Richard Wilhelm’s explanation in his famous translation of the Chinese ancient classic the I Ching, where yin and yang are fundamental. But Wilhelm doesn’t use any of the descriptions criticized above. He states instead that “speculations of a gnostic-dualistic character are foreign to the original thought of the I Ching; what it posits is simply the ridgepole, the line.”[42] The line in question is the basic component of the I Ching trigrams and hexagrams. As for chaos, the Tao Te Ching describes it as a primordial state out of which Tao, the Way, rose and caused order. Chapter 25 states that Tao, born before heaven and earth, finished chaos. Therefore, “it can be called the mother of the whole world.”[43] The chapter ends:
IdealismJordan B. Peterson’s attitude towards mythology can be categorized as idealistic. He is a knight in shiny armor fighting the dragon of the evil in the world, which is the suppression of individualism. That is the trap of group identification, and it has to be overcome for society to be rejuvenated:
It is highly doubtful that glorified individualism will save the world. Some of the misery seems instead to be caused by just that, when personal interest rules over the collective. Tyranny, for instance. In any case, this credo is not a suitable formula for understanding mythology, which relates to a collective and not an individual.
Rules for LifeAfter the above discussed book, Maps of Meaning from 1999, it took almost 20 years before Jordan B. Peterson published the next one — but it became a big international bestseller, selling millions of copies, mainly due to his Internet fame and the media debacle caused by his refusal to use personally preferred gender pronouns.In 12 Rules for Life from 2018, he gives his advice on how to improve one’s life quality and be successful. Contrary to what was the case with his previous book, which is quite a demanding read, this one is aimed at the general audience. Still, it contains a lot of the same claims regarding mythology and religion, as well as Peterson’s stand on the individual and social functions of morality. In the introductory chapter, which is titled “Overture,” he presents the central theories of his first book, insisting on the dubious claims discussed above, such as that of the original intent of myth:
Also Peterson, in his twelve rules, mainly propagates some kind of order — as his subtitle suggests. He admits to it in his explanation of the subtitle, “It indicates clearly that people need ordering principles, and that chaos otherwise beckons.”[49] The same is shown by his sixth rule: “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.”[50] He seems close to obsessed with order, or more accurately discipline. You should ?stand up straight with your shoulders back, akin to a soldier on guard; not let your children ?do anything that makes you dislike them, which is an odd perspective on parental attention; be precise in your speech, as if everything to talk about is, and so on. He even prefers that people share a belief system in order to understand one another, and live by the same code so that they are mutually predictable, and thereby they can act together to “tame the world.”[51] That is so orderly, the ancient Chinese philosophers would applaud. To Peterson, it is the “heroic path” and he insists that we should all follow it to save the world:
The LobsterIn the chapter of Peterson’s first rule for life, “Stand up straight with your shoulders back,” his use of the lobster as an argument has caused some buzz in the media, including some amusement.In a fight between lobsters, the winner gets an increased ratio of serotonin over octopamine, which makes it able to extend its body to look bigger and thereby boost its potential to win additional challenges, kind of like a natural internal doping. The loser suffers the opposite effect. Thereby, the winner is prone to keep on winning, and the loser to keep on losing. Peterson sees the same phenomenon in human interaction: “It’s winner-take-all in the lobster world, just as it is in human societies.”[54] And not just in fights. In most things in life — for lobsters as well as humans — the winners continue to triumph and the losers to fail. He refers to it as a dominance hierarchy. So, we should follow the lobster’s lead, by standing up straight to look bigger and prouder. Why the life of lobsters should at all be relevant to us humans, Peterson explains by pointing out that they have been around for at least 350 million years. He concludes:
While lobsters are solitary, humans are social. That fact alone should have warned Peterson not to compare the two, especially since he confirms it clearly in another chapter of his book:
The societal form that has been with humankind for the very longest is that of hunter-gatherers. It lasted from way back in prehistory to the introduction of agriculture a mere 10,000 years or so ago. That means we are still genetically programmed mainly for the former, since evolution takes a lot of time. As far as we can deduct from archeological findings and from present day hunter-gatherers, their society was egalitarian, and very much so. No dominance hierarchy, but a sharing of power as well as of resources. This is what comes naturally to us — well, to most of us. Agriculture changed a lot of that, mainly by the establishment of property of cultivated land and the emergence of organized force above the level of the local community. But that has not yet had the time to reprogram our genes. We remain willing social creatures, more prone to share than to hoard, and to cooperate rather than compete. It is those deviating by doing the opposite who preach that we are all like them, and they still need some kind of added force to get their way. They are the problem, not those they aim to subdue. Jordan B. Peterson suggests instead that we should grow to intimidate others into submission, to avoid them doing it to us. That can only become a vicious spiral, where the strongest and most aggressive person has a moment of triumph before an even stronger and more aggressive person comes along, and so on, like an eternal game of king of the hill, but with devastating consequences. Whether accomplished alone or in alliances, such victories can never last, since the vast majority of our species denounce and oppose them. We don’t want to be lobsters.
ShameThe second of Jordan B. Peterson’s twelve rules for life is “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping,” which has a sympathetic ring to it. Help yourself as you would help others. It is the age-old Golden Rule, albeit reversed. The most famous expression of it is that of Jesus in his Sermon of the Mount, commonly worded “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The same principle is expressed in a multitude of religious and philosophical ethics. It is the ideal of reciprocity, which was practiced already among hunter-gatherers in Paleolithic times.Peterson’s take on it is individual instead of social. Help yourself like you would someone in your care. It presumes that you have the compassion to care for others, at least those you deem to be responsible for, but the focus here is you. Don’t neglect yourself in the process. In other words, take good care of yourself. That is important, too, no doubt, as expressed in the Christian decree to love your neighbor as yourself. You need to love yourself, as well. This is what Peterson finds lacking — we don’t love ourselves as we should. He gives the example of how we treat our pets with more concern, which he finds evident by the common negligence to take prescribed drugs for our own sake, but not so when it is for our pets: “People are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves.”[57] To Peterson this shows that people love their pets more than themselves, and he concludes that it is because of shame:
But do we really put our pets before ourselves? Some might, but Peterson’s argument about prescriptions is not definite proof of it. Any animal shelter can give numerous examples of neglected and mistreated pets. Also, the mere fact that a pet owner visits the vet shows the care that surely includes following the prescription. Some pet owners do not. So, the statistics may have a huge flaw right there. The general attitude is that humans are more important than animals, A better test would be to inquire what pet owners do if their pet causes them serious health problems, for example an escalating allergy or being repeatedly bitten by an aggressive pet. Would they suffer for the sake of the pet? Some probably would, up to a point, but I doubt that it is a majority. To explain the self-sacrificing priority of pets that Peterson claims to exist, he turns to the second creation story of Genesis, with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When they eat of the forbidden fruit, they realize that they are naked and feel ashamed, hurrying to cover themselves. Their nakedness reveals their weaknesses and flaws. Peterson finds this shame to be the key:
He has also found a conceivable definition of evil, but it is not without gaps. What it describes is sadism. Evil deeds can also be for personal gain, indifferent to, but not necessarily wanting, others suffering. That would be cynicism. Then there are the concepts of vengeance and punishment, where suffering is brought on someone who is believed to deserve it. Those who execute such acts probably regard them as good, and others may agree on it. They would call it justice. Evil is a difficult concept. There are many cases where the word can be applied without controversy, but also lots of cases where the jury is still out. One important distinction to make is evil as a character trait as opposed to an action — evil persons or evil acts. In the former case, it is a judgment made by others, and it is a very difficult one to make. It has been debated just about forever if there are evil persons or just evil deeds. The Christian credo is rather the latter, since there is always a chance of forgiveness. An evil deed can be forgiven, but hardly a truly malevolent mentality. If there is such a thing as a genuinely evil personality, it can probably only be defined by its intent to be just that. Then, evil are those who commit acts that they themselves regard as evil. Anything else is open to debate. Peterson seems convinced that there are such persons, even that we all have that streak in us. It makes him consider if we should exist at all:
So the question is why he still persists with that dark image of the human psyche, tormented by shame and prone to evil. It seems that he is far from convinced of it. He confesses that in his own periods of darkness he sees admirable traits in fellow humans:
Do what You CanIn his text about the fourth rule, “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today,” Jordan B. Peterson expresses a concise view on the content of religion, emphasizing with italics that it is about proper behavior.[63] In other words ethics, but “older and deeper.” It is a dogmatic value system promoting stability and order, demanding of people to be obedient, or “properly disciplined.”To Peterson, that is what we need, whether we are religious or not. In fact, he claims that we are all religious, even atheists: “You might object, 'But I’m an atheist.' No, you’re not.” He means that your deepest beliefs are not what you think they are, but what you show in your actions:
But Peterson neglects that contrary to the lion, the god of the Old Testament is a thinking and reasoning god, who speaks and acts in terms of justice, defending his actions and sometimes even allowing human arguments to influence him. The comparison of him to a lion is what’s nonsensical. As for the belief of atheists and belief in general, it depends on how it is defined. Here Peterson seems to speak about conviction rather than belief, i.e., ethics without the need of a divine source. Of course it is possible to have ethical principles and still be an atheist. Environmentalism is one example of this, as is altruism and so much more. Even in religious doctrines it is easy to extract god from the equation and still find convincing reasons for most of their rules on proper behavior. Peterson suggests treating the Old and New Testament gods, the stern and the loving god, as if they could be one and the same, which leads him to conclude:
TheodicyThe sixth chapter in Jordan B. Peterson’s book, “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world,” is basically a repetition of the previously discussed chapter four, which in turn is a variation on Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer. It can be summed up into the advice do what you can.In this chapter, though, Peterson gets there by involving one of the most discussed problems in Christian discourse, which is that of theodicy. The term was invented by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 book Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal (Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil). The question it raises is how an omnipotent and benevolent god can allow evil and suffering in the world, and that was discussed long before Leibniz, even in the Old Testament of the Bible. Carl G. Jung wrote extensively about it in his 1952 essay on the Book of Job, discussed above in the chapter about Jung. He found the story of Job to reveal flaws in the psyche of God. Peterson pursues another line of reasoning, which must be regarded as more religiously pious. He presents the problem quite precisely:
He claims that this is particularly true for Judaism, but that is questionable. The Old Testament has more examples than Job of a frustrated relation to God and his rule, sometimes even bordering on condemning him. And in Christianity the question has been frequently discussed ever since Jesus on the cross exclaimed, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”[71] Still, the conclusion within Christian theology has always been one or other argument for God either being innocent or having a masterplan justifying all the human suffering. Of course a religion would not dismiss their highest deity for any reason. That would be the end of it. Peterson is on the same track. He means that the fault is ours, since we have become complacent and neglect to pay attention, which causes our misery. For example, when the hurricane hit New Orleans, the damage was utterly severe because the city had failed to complete precautions already decided in 1965. He concludes:
There are plenty of dreadful diseases for which we have yet to find a cure, but it is hardly a sin of ours that we haven’t. We are trying. There are natural disasters that we cannot protect ourselves against. What is significant is that our society has become so resourceful and advanced, the misfortunes we are helpless against have diminished tremendously from the time of the Bible — and they continue to do so. No thanks to any deity. This is because we don’t settle for what Peterson says, “If you are suffering—well, that’s the norm. People are limited and life is tragic.” That is defeatism, and hopefully not what Peterson proposes. We get nowhere by accepting suffering, either individually or socially, and life doesn’t need to be tragic in any other sense than that it has an expiration date — which, by the way, we have managed to extend by medical research and social reform, just about all over the world. In regard to the theodicy problem, natural disasters have been an argument against the idea of a benevolent god, since he would be their cause or at least have the power to stop them. For individual hardship, it could be argued that the suffering was deserved or was for some ultimate good. But when a catastrophe struck thousands of people indiscriminately, it could not make any such sense. It proved that God was either indifferent or incapable. The earthquake of 1755 in Lisbon became a symbol of just that among the Enlightenment philosophers of the time, Voltaire being the most noted of them. It had a death toll of tens of thousands of people. Also, it struck on All Saints’ Day and destroyed a number of Lisbon churches, which gave additional cause to question God. Of course, humankind is not only able to diminish suffering in the world. We are also known to introduce new threats and disasters of our own making, whereof some are humongous. We can’t blame any deity for those, nor can we expect one to save us from them. On the other hand, it would also be wrong to share the blame between us all, since few of us have the capability to do anything about it.
Suffering for Future GainIn spite of Jordan B. Peterson’s education and profession, his book deals less with psychology than with theology. Arguing for his twelve rules, he repeatedly uses his own theological interpretations of the Bible and its meaning, especially the second creation story of Genesis and the story of Jesus in the Gospels.It is a brave venture. How to understand the biblical texts has been a major subject as long as those texts have been around, involving thousands of minds and producing thousands of texts. Within Christianity, the discussion about its message and meaning is at least as old as the letters of Paul, which were written before the Gospels. Through the centuries, the Bible has been interpreted in minute detail by numerous clerical writers, such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther. There is little about it that has not already been proposed. What Peterson finds in the Bible is a message about human suffering, due to our flawed character and unwillingness to accept that message. It is a dark view, where pain is unavoidable and pleasure all but completely absent. Good is merely the struggle to restrain evil, “The good is whatever stops such things from happening,”[73] and the meaning of life is discipline. Where is the joy? In the chapter “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient),” Peterson begins with this grim statement:
Peterson continues by suggesting what he regards as the only way to lessen the suffering:
As examples of great sacrifices he mentions the crucifixion of Jesus and Abraham willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. But for us regular folks, he recommends learning to sacrifice in the meaning of postponing — refusing ourselves something good now, to get something even better in the future, since “the future can be made better if the proper sacrifices take place in the present.”[76] He calls it the delay of gratification, and makes a bold claim about it:
The added complexity of gratification suggests that it was not what first made us aware of time. But it was a way to make use of that awareness. As for causality, it is also something familiar to all animals. Predators know that if they bite their prey, it will soon cease to resist, and the prey knows that if it succeeds to flee from the predator, it will not be food that day. Humans and animals alike are aware that there are consequences to their actions. Otherwise they would not flee when threats appear or even jump out of the way when a boulder rolls towards them. What may be particularly human, though, is the ability to plan for a causality far ahead in time. We do something now to gain something else much later — after days or even years. Agriculture is evidence of it, and so were the flint tools long before that. It seems that other animals live more in the moment, like Zen masters. When they do some elaborate preparation, like building a nest, it is regarded as instinct, which might mean that they don’t really know why. Or they do. We should not take for granted what goes on in the heads of other animals, and what does not. Peterson is certain, though, that the animals don’t know that sacrifice in the present can lead to a better future: “No other animal has ever figured this out.”[78] I wonder how he can be so sure about it.
Glimpse of LightThe world described by Jordan B. Peterson is a dark place, where we must accept that we will suffer and make sacrifices. He repeats it over and over. His description of our species is equally depressing. He sees serious flaws and few redeeming qualities, except in the small number of outstanding individuals of our history, geniuses, whom he praises just about as often as he dismisses the rest of us.He states, “Each human being has an immense capacity for evil,”[79] but he has little to say about our capacity for good. That doesn’t bring much hope or consolation. Still, he insists that we should not be bitter:
Even when Peterson has a positive tone, it tends to backfire. In the eleventh chapter, “Do not bother children when they are skateboarding,” he tells about his delight watching skateboarders outside his university building enthusiastically struggling to improve their skills, which involves a good deal of courage and significant risks of injury. Obviously, the boys on their skateboards are enjoying themselves. Peterson thinks that they should be allowed to continue, though not because of their joy, but for the important lesson the boys learn by it. They get daring and tough, so that they have a better chance of persevering what torments life inevitably has in store for them. Boys should be allowed to be boys, in order to become men — the kind of rugged men portrayed by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. He quotes another movie he-man, “Don’t, in the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, be a girlie man.”[81] This is obviously Peterson’s ideal. He thinks it is also what women want:
Certainly, the capacity for aggression is within us, but so is that of compassion. Boys occasionally fight, but most of the time they do not and have no urge to do so. There have been countless wars through history, but between them are exceeding periods of peace. We all prefer the latter. We don’t seek conflict, but agreement. It comes much easier for us to love than to hate. Peterson’s world is a dark fantasy, a nightmare. The real world is much lighter, fortunately, and humanity kinder and more benevolent. Otherwise our species would since long have been extinct. As for Jordan B. Peterson’s gloomy perspective, one cannot help but wonder what causes it. Not that ad hominem is ever a valid argument, but he invites it by openly using his own life experiences as examples in his arguments. As a clinical psychologist, he must be aware of what can be assumed about him from those generous personal glimpses. His life has not been easy. He grew up in the small-town Fairview of Alberta, Canada, four hundred miles from the nearest city, where the freezing cold winters lasted for five months, during which daylight hours descended to their minimum.[83] That’s not the ideal setting for developing a positive mentality. Also, he had skipped a grade in school and was small for his age, while the boys around him were quite rough.[84] He doesn’t say so explicitly, but that would have made him vulnerable, maybe even bullied. In his adult years, with a wife and two children, his daughter developed a severe and painful illness already as an infant, which kept its grip on her as she grew up. The whole family struggled with it as her suffering varied in intensity and she went through different treatments.[85] It is a heartbreaking story that he tells over several pages in the chapter on the last of his twelve rules for life, “Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.” The header is paradoxical, considering its main content, but also perfectly reasonable. Sometimes life strikes as hard as Mjolnir, the hammer of Thor, so it is of crucial importance to grasp the pleasant moments appearing, no matter how insignificant they may seem. We cannot handle pain at all if we are not open to pleasure. Contrary to dogs, cats are particular about their preferences. They don’t want to be petted by just anybody, and choose the moments even with those they accept. They can’t be tamed, but keep their integrity. As Peterson says, “They are friendly on their own terms.”[86] He explains:
Soon after the publishing of his book, his wife was diagnosed with cancer, which she survived through surgery. He, too, had serious health issues already at the time of writing his book, with several complications in the following years. He recovered to write a sequel, published in 2021, with twelve more rules for life.[88]
[1] youtube.com/c/JordanPetersonVideos. [2] Jordan B. Peterson,Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, New York 1999, p. xii. [3] Ibid., p. xiii. [4] George Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier, London 1937, p. 212. [5] Peterson 1999, p. xvi. [6] Ibid., p. xvii. [7] Ibid., p. xix. [8] Ibid., p. xviii. [9] Ibid., p. xix. [10] Ibid., p. xx. [11] Ibid., p. xxi. [12] Ibid., pp. xxi f. [13] Ibid., p. xxii. [14] Ibid., p. 2. [15] Ibid., p. 3. [16] Ibid., p. 9. [17] Ibid., p. 8. Quoted from Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 1, transl. Willard R. Trask, Chicago 1978 (first published in French 1976), pp. 57f. [18] Ibid., pp. 108-136. [19] Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation, Chicago 1963 (first edition 1942), p. v. [20] Peterson 1999, p. 8. [21] Ibid., p. 9. [22] Ibid., p. 10. [23] Ibid. [24] Ibid., p. 12. [25] John 8:3-11. [26] Peterson 1999, p. 13. [27] Ibid., p. 16. [28] Ibid., p. 17. [29] Ibid., p. 16. [30] Ibid., p. 18. [31] Act III, Scene I. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, edited by John Livingstone Lowes, New York 1914, p. 68. [32] Peterson 1999, pp. 89f. [33] Ibid., p. 108. [34] Ibid., p. 141. [35] Ibid., p. 142. [36] Ibid., p. 110. [37] Ibid., p. 98. [38] Ibid., p. 94. [39] Ibid., p. 99. [40] Ibid., p. 100. [41] Ibid., p. 338. [42] Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes, transl. Cary F. Baynes, Princeton 1971 (originally published in German 1924), p. lv. [43] Stenudd 2015, p. 123. [44] Ibid., p. 182. [45] Peterson 1999, p. 447. [46] Ibid., p. 469. [47] Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Canada 2018, p. xxvii. [48] Ibid., p. xxviii. [49] Ibid., p. xxxiv. [50] Ibid., p. 147. [51] Ibid., p. xxx. [52] Ibid., p. xxxiii. [53] Ibid. [54] Ibid., p. 8. [55] Ibid., p. 11. [56] Ibid., p. 39. [57] Ibid., p. 33. [58] Ibid., p. 53. [59] Ibid., p. 54. [60] Ibid., p. 55. [61] Ibid., p. 60. [62] Ibid. [63] Ibid., p. 102. [64] Ibid., p. 103. [65] Ibid., p. 105. [66] Ibid., p. 107. [67] Ibid., p. 108. [68] Fred Shapiro, "You can quote them," Yale Alumni Magazine 2010 (yalealumnimagazine.org/articles/2709-you-can-quote-them). [69] Peterson 2018, p. 151. [70] Ibid., p. 156. [71] Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46. It is a quote from the beginning of Psalm 22 in the Old Testament. [72] Peterson 2018, p. 157. [73] Ibid., p. 198. [74] Ibid., p. 161. [75] Ibid., p. 172. [76] Ibid., p. 195. [77] Ibid., p. 164. [78] Ibid., p. 195. [79] Ibid., p. 197. [80] Ibid., pp. 346f. [81] Ibid., p. 328. [82] Ibid., pp. 331f. [83] Ibid., pp. 67f. [84] Ibid., p. 290. [85] Ibid., pp. 339ff. [86] Ibid., p. 352. [87] Ibid., p. 353. [88] Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, New York 2021.
Jungians on Myth and Religion
This text is an excerpt from my book Archetypes of Mythology: Jungian Theories on Myth and Religion Examined from 2022. The excerpt was published on this website in January, 2023.
MYTH
IntroductionCreation Myths: Emergence and MeaningsPsychoanalysis of Myth: Freud and JungJungian Theories on Myth and ReligionArchetypes of Mythology - the bookPsychoanalysis of Mythology - the bookIdeas and LearningCosmos of the AncientsLife Energy EncyclopediaOn my Creation Myths website:
Creation Myths Around the WorldThe Logics of MythTheories through History about Myth and FableGenesis 1: The First Creation of the BibleEnuma Elish, Babylonian CreationThe Paradox of Creation: Rig Veda 10:129Xingu CreationArchetypes in MythAbout CookiesMy Other WebsitesCREATION MYTHSMyths in general and myths of creation in particular.
TAOISMThe wisdom of Taoism and the Tao Te Ching, its ancient source.
LIFE ENERGYAn encyclopedia of life energy concepts around the world.
QI ENERGY EXERCISESQi (also spelled chi or ki) explained, with exercises to increase it.
I CHINGThe ancient Chinese system of divination and free online reading.
TAROTTarot card meanings in divination and a free online spread.
ASTROLOGYThe complete horoscope chart and how to read it.
MY AMAZON PAGE
MY YOUTUBE AIKIDO
MY YOUTUBE ART
MY FACEBOOK
MY INSTAGRAM
MY TWITTER
STENUDD PÅ SVENSKA
|
Archetypes of Mythology
Psychoanalysis of Mythology