The Madness of Jordan Peterson

He is a bit of a Youtube phenemonon with a large folowing,very prolific and oftentimes engaging but the social psychologist has a metaphysic and epistemology from hell which frequently manifests itself in mad extreme manifestations of near stream of conciousness psychobabble and gibberish delivered in a manic semi demented fashion quite alarming to behold.

Now this is a problem for the reason that most of his talks are lectures given to a class of young impressionable students and here I think there is a definite breach of academic standards and violation of codes of conduct and ethics for he makes no attempt to present both sides of any issue and  is engaged in naked outright academic activism and tendentiousness.

He majors in Jungian mysticism,forever alluding to archetypes and expressed in pseudo academic intellectual manner designed it would seem to bamboozle his listeners rather than to enlighten them.

Arbitrary unsubstantiated assertions trip from his tongue with rapid fire alacrity making it hard for the untutored mind to detect the logical flaws,apriori leaps of reason false assumptions and bizarre conclusions arrived at all at breakneck speed.

Peterson makes much of his contempt for the post modernist movement which is ironic since most of his conclusions are congruent with it and he is fond of name checking some of the worst suspects of that movement such as Nietzche who prefigured it and Piaget whose ambition we are told was to reconcile faith and science which is telling for Peterson's whole schtick appears to be just that a convoluted pretzelogical foray into circle squaring neatly disguised as an examination of mythical archetypes drawing heavily on biblical stories as templated for the human existential dilemna.

There is much dishonesty in this,much disengenuousness and when confronted directly with the question do you believe in God Peterson is unable to answer it prefering evasion instead,  declaring that such a question is designed to pigeonhole him.

There is much that is good and beneficial for the viewer in many of his videos not least his ability to instruct the lost and damaged bringing them back to individual responsibily and it is undoubtedly the case that his psychologicial insights and observations can at times be mesmerisingly brilliant and elucidating, liberating many young people from the spiral of depression,negative thoughts and destructive behaviours that can potentially ruin lives and blight aspirations and for this he is to be unreservedly commended.

Oh but the metaphysics and epistemology  are simply appalling! The biological determinism,the denial of free will implicit in his harping on the subcultural norms of ancient non civilisations,his drawing on the lives of semi barbarian peoples of the middle and dark ages and further back still -as if such monsters could possibly be a template for understanding modern man in any way shape or form - simply preposterous.

What of any value can possible be learned from such pre renaissance,enlightenment pro reason and scientific cultures,why dwell on their subhuman behaviours as if anything could possibly be extrapolated from them to shape and inform and throw any light whatoever on the modern mind with its sophistication and adherence for the most part, to reason and logic over mysticism and brute force? Blank-out.

The question is why go to such elaborate lengths to dwell on the pre renaissance cultures to emphasise the nihilistic Nietzchean view of the human dilemna and then attempt to transcend and negate  it all with positive thinking,self help inspirational talks? The setting up of a straw man followed by a Dale Carnegie pep talk -all very odd bizarre and contradictory.