https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=wzaUvjGGd2s
Hello there. I’m on the road, but I thought I’d do a video anyway, if I could manage it, and I think I can. And what I’d like to talk about is, what did Jordan Peterson do? Now, I’m not gonna cover everything he did. I think he did a lot of things, and I think people are getting caught up in focusing on one or two things, when in fact, there’s a lot there. And I think people are relying on those one or two things that they noticed or that they think as the whole picture, right? Of, well, Jordan Peterson did this, and therefore, right? But I don’t think that’s a good way to think about it. So what I wanna do is just break down one piece of what I think Jordan Peterson did. I’ll refute a couple claims. I don’t think he’s charismatic, for example, so I’m gonna refute that. And then we’re gonna go into one thing that I think he did and show you how that’s important, why it worked, and if you like that, we’ll do more. One of the things that I think is important about Jordan Peterson’s work and what he’s doing when he’s doing his Maps of Meaning lectures, and you always have to consider audience when you consider lectures, I wouldn’t classify as charisma. In fact, I think it would be wrong to try to classify any of him as charisma. What I see people mostly doing is saying, well, he led people to a place, and therefore, he must have been charismatic because leadership works through charisma. But I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s many types of leadership, and charisma is not his thing. He sounds like Kermit the Frog. He’s very dry. He focuses on what I would call the intellectual side, right? He focuses on propositions, right? I’ve talked about propositions before, right? He focuses on giving you a framework, right? And he doesn’t speak most of the conclusions that he makes as an authority, right? So he may give you a framework as an authority, but he doesn’t speak as you should believe this or this is what the data says, right? He usually talks about what’s indicated, right? He talks about frameworks. He talks about what could be this, right? There’s some indication of that, right? So there’s not a lot of certainty talk, certainly not aimed at the students. And the best example, I think, for understanding one of the interesting things that Peterson actually does, and this is one of many, there are many, many things that he’s doing at various points in Maps of Meaning and in general in his speaking. So I wanna focus on audience first, I think. His audience is materialists. And by materialist, I mean people who primarily believe that material, physical things move the world. That’s what I mean by material. And so he’s focused on those people. If you’re looking at the world in a material frame, right, this is the message that you need. I think it’s deliberate. I think he’s worked on it over years to try and perfect it and get it to work the way he wants, right? Those people who think primarily the physicality of the world is what determines most of the world, they’re the materialists, that’s who he’s speaking to. And the tools of the materialist, roughly speaking, are logic, reason, and rationality. So you’ve got those three things, the logical, the reasonable, and the rational. That’s how you understand the world. That’s how you intelligence the world. That’s how you sense make in the world is you use logic, reason, and rationality. Those are the people he’s speaking to, the people that are doing that. So what he first does is he introduces you to Pinocchio. And he says, this is a cartoon. Why would you watch a cartoon? Why do you relate to a cartoon? And it’s not just any cartoon, right? But the cartoon, even though it’s a cartoon, gets your interest enough to engage with it. And he says it’s a cartoon about a wooden boy. How can you relate to a wooden boy? That makes no sense whatsoever. And I think that’s a very good point that Peterson makes. If your framing is the rationalist framing, why are you engaging with this cartoon? And then I think he goes a lot further. So one of the ways in which he goes further is he says, well, let’s forget for a moment, let’s just forget about the fact of this cartoon and this wooden boy. Let’s just put that aside. It makes sense. Why would a wooden boy make sense? Why would that even be a thing that you could engage with? Why is this story something that keeps your attention? And so that’s weird all by itself, right? Because those are things. Getting your attention is one thing. Keeping your attention is something entirely different. And yet you also relate to it. And it makes sense to you. And how? It’s not logical, it’s not reasonable, and it’s not rational. None of it is. And your interaction with it is also not logical, reasonable, or rational. And then he appeals to the fact that this is not arbitrary. There’s a story there, and that story matters. And there may be more there than you first understood, but there is something there that you can understand. And so that breaks the postmodern narrative that stories are arbitrary. They’re clearly not arbitrary. And interestingly, the way he does this is he doesn’t tell you that. He doesn’t say, I know this, I’m a psychologist, and this is the way your brain works, and this is the way you’re working when you’re watching this movie. He doesn’t say any of that. He appeals to your own personal experience, to your phenomenology, to your felt sense. That’s what he does. You’re the authority. And so you don’t need some person, some professor out there telling you that stories are arbitrary. Because your experience of story, of that story in particular, is not arbitrary. And so it destroys the thesis, the idea, the postmodern idea, that stories are arbitrary. They’re not arbitrary. They may have arbitrary components. There may be aspects in which there’s potential, but they’re not arbitrary, which is totally different. Now, because it’s just proven with your own experience and not with his authority, you follow him. Because he’s pointing something out about you and your phenomenological experience, which is different from telling you how things are. And it’s significant, because you’re the authority, not him. And that’s why you follow him. That’s why he’s a leader. Because he’s telling you something you already know, but couldn’t articulate. And he says that all the time. And he appeals to phenomenology. And the next thing that he does after doing all that, so he’s destroyed the postmodern ethos. He’s destroyed the idea that logic, reason, rationality are the tools that you can use to understand all of the world, right? They’re clearly not. And then he drops in these other myths and the way that they’re related. And maybe they’re not arbitrary. Maybe they’re not just silly stories that people told to keep people in line. Maybe there’s something more here. He justifies the fact that they have a meaning by appealing to science, Carl Jung in particular. There’s a science behind this. We know this. It’s been tested experimentally. He doesn’t justify the meaning. He justifies the fact that the meaning exists. So he’s pointing at this scientifically without explaining it scientifically, without trying to explore it scientifically. But he’s definitely using logic, reason, rationality to show you that there’s a there there, that there is something to myths. And then his sort of final move is to introduce the biblical stories and imply that the Bible is maybe consisting of the ultimate stories that allow you to frame everything. And that’s very much part of his trick. And so I think just doing that is why people follow him. And telling you things about yourself that you didn’t notice in some cases, once you noticed them, you couldn’t articulate in almost all cases. And then tying that into your experience, your phenomenological experience, I think that’s really where his power lies, at least in that particular instance. He does this elsewhere too. I’ll point that out. He also points out some of the ideas that I talk about. Like, for example, one of the things he points out is trade-offs. And I have a video on trade-offs. He points out that there is this give and take in the system and that it’s important that you realize that that happened. And I go over that in my video. And he does that by opening the door to all these other concepts. And he opens that door in a deliberate order for a deliberate reason. And that causes the leadership. And that leadership may look to you like charisma. But again, I don’t think it is. I mean, he’s not James Dean. He doesn’t have a particularly lyrical voice. He doesn’t lay things out in a resonant fashion. It’s not like he’s using rhythm or something or rhyme to get the point across. Not that he doesn’t employ those occasionally. But he really kind of rambles off in the distance a lot when he’s talking. And that works for him. But I think it works because of these other reasons. So I hope that that explains things a little bit. I wanted to do that to point out that there’s a lot more going on with Jordan Peterson than charisma or than one factor. There’s a bunch of factors. If you want more factors, tell me in the comments. We want more of this. What are the other things you’ve seen Jordan Peterson do that maybe I missed or maybe are interesting or maybe can be expanded out? And if I see interest for it, I will do more videos. And I want to point to the power that Jordan Peterson has. And you can use sort of my definition of power, which is the thing that he’s able to rally around or rally to himself and use to get his message spread further. And that is the thing that I am the most grateful for, which is your time and attention.