05.20.2018 08:59 AM

Jordan Peterson says witches exist. And they live in swamps.

From the mouth of the latter-day Father Coughlin, in today’s New York Times.

Mr. Peterson illustrates his arguments with copious references to ancient myths — bringing up stories of witches, biblical allegories and ancient traditions. I ask why these old stories should guide us today.

“It makes sense that a witch lives in a swamp. Yeah,” he says. “Why?”

It’s a hard one.

“Right. That’s right. You don’t know. It’s because those things hang together at a very deep level. Right. Yeah. And it makes sense that an old king lives in a desiccated tower.”

But witches don’t exist, and they don’t live in swamps, I say.

“Yeah, they do. They do exist. They just don’t exist the way you think they exist. They certainly exist. You may say well dragons don’t exist. It’s, like, yes they do — the category predator and the category dragon are the same category. It absolutely exists. It’s a superordinate category. It exists absolutely more than anything else. In fact, it really exists. What exists is not obvious. You say, ‘Well, there’s no such thing as witches.’ Yeah, I know what you mean, but that isn’t what you think when you go see a movie about them. You can’t help but fall into these categories. There’s no escape from them.”

Jordan isn’t alt-Right.

He’s just a nutbar with a thesaurus.

11 Comments

  1. Jay says:

    “Jordan isn’t alt-Right.

    He’s just a nutbar with a thesaurus.”

    There isn’t an “alt-right”, there’s just a plethora of different flavours of Nazi’s.

    And from Ben Shapiro, to MGTOW’s, through to Nazi’s, the so called “intellectual extremists” are just well funded gish gallop dispensers with on line thesourous and a limited ability to wikiquote.

    • Pedant says:

      Well. That’s the kind of nuanced, sophisticated argument we’ve all come to expect from the regressive, culturally marxist Left.

      Are there any conservatives who aren’t “Nazis” (a leftist political movement), in your esteemed opinion?

  2. Des says:

    I’ve read the New York Times piece on Dr. Peterson. The author calls him “Mr.” throughout which I think is a purposeful tactic in an attempt to discredit his academic achievements. The most recent NBC interview of him that was 60 minutes in length while only 20 seconds of it aired which was completely disingenuous. I’ve also read “12 Rules for Life”. It’s excellent.

    Many of the things that Dr. Peterson discusses are, to me, completely common sense ideas get dismissed in this day in age. The backlash against him is because it’s not “politically correct” to discuss such commonalities anymore. This is because Liberal academia wants to dismiss these very obvious things to justify their own failures. I feel that Dr. Peterson does an excellent job at correlating the fact that the simple “rules” that we as a Judeo-Christian society had adopted and written in various historical scriptures many years ago still hold true. They’re essential for a functional and law-abiding society even today.

    Also, pointing out the fact that current Liberal ideology suggests that women are inherently victims of something simply by virtue of being female is absurd. If you’re someone who is truly a misogynist and you hate women for whatever reason (inverse also for women who hate men simply for being men), then there is clearly something wrong with you. You’ve failed somewhere down the line and instead of being willing to accept your own failures, these people blame someone else (sounds like a certain current Prime Minister – Harper! Harper! Harper!). But we live in a society where there is equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome which is what allows our best and brightest to thrive in areas that make our society the most functional regardless of being male or female. Accepting this ideology will inherently make our society less functional. This type of radical ideology that keeps getting pushed by the Left is creating more and more neo-cons and will continue to do so once those on the Left (particularly younger Leftists) enter the real world and realize that everything isn’t like the utopia they’ve been promised by Liberal politicians and academics.

    Or are you just jealous his books sell more than yours 🙂 jk jk

  3. Peter says:

    I’ve tried, but I’m unable to understand either the adoration or anger this man has generated. He is a Jungian psychologist, so of course he believes witches and other things that go bump in the night are “real” in a psychological sense. He wrote a popular self-help book that combines the bizarre (the notorious lobsters), the banal (“sit up straight and put your shoulders back”) and the really quite interesting (archetypes in the Bible). It’s more quirky than subversive. He actually doesn’t say much about politics apart from a general distaste for political correctness, which hardly makes him unusual or a dangerous extremist. Popular psychology generally outsells political tracts for good reason. People who are confused and unhappy about the way their life is going don’t generally respond to a harangue about the patriarchy with a renewed zest for life.

  4. Kevin says:

    I remain unconvinced…

  5. Nasty Bob says:

    He’s a binary man living in a quantum world. He and his fellow binos seem to lack any sense of wonder. Hence the world is all scary and chaos. Hence nothing wonderful can be done with woman. They must be dragged from the swamp and married off to serve in the kitchen and bedroom and will be happiest for it. Makes me question- were they born without wonder or did they lose it somewhere along the way?

    ( a “Bino” is a rando who can only think in black/white , on/off , masculine/feminine, etc. When you see it pop up in buzzfeed or reddit in the future remember it was coined first here on this blo….em, musing thingy)

  6. Colin says:

    Sounds like a bunch of out of context hearsay. If you’re going to hate on Jordan Peterson, there’s plenty of public material out there to comment on that other people can watch and judge for themselves. This is really an illegitimate criticism.

  7. Karl-Milton Marx-Friedman says:

    Don’t Shoot The Messenger: that’s what the comments above kinda sum up to.

    I think trying to find errors in Jordan Peterson’s statements is going to be easy, he doesn’t seem to be too great on PR. Be open minded, question what gate keepers advocate because often they haven’t spent much cognitive energy to understanding the messenger. I give Peterson a B+

    Karl Marx slept on couches and said some silly things about the means of production, oh and took money from Engels. So like, all of his ideas are garbage? Don’t think so…

  8. rww says:

    So no need for witch burnings, just “drain the swamp”.

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