I spend several hours a week watching Jordan Peterson. This week, it's an interview with a repentant ex-Mafia boss from New York. There's so much I get from watching the way Peterson thinks, and the open and accepting, yet sharply discerning way, he relates to his interviewees. And the sheer amount of evidence he has to back up what he says.
And yet there's something in me left unsatisfied. I try to rule envy out, because I'll never have the intellectual fireworks that he has to hand. Envy, as Peterson points out, is the first sin in the Bible (Cain and Abel), and it's often what I think of when I see people criticising eminent people, when their criticisms seem to me superficial. It's like, get down to it, do your work, don't just take down others who have done their own work over decades. Don't fault-find just to make yourself feel OK about yourself and your anti-establishment stance . Appreciate these guys, make a practice of it.
I haven't quite nailed it yet with Peterson. Maybe I approached it today when he was talking about getting every area of your house sorted in the way you want it, or it won't feel like home. I appreciate the sensibility behind that. And yet... you have to leave some room for chaos (which he makes a thing of)... you have to leave a place for the spirits to make their own, outside of your intervention. That just seems like respectfulness to me. I couldn't live in a house where everything had been deliberated on. I would feel trapped.
There is something about surrendering to the universe, to the cosmos, to the mysterious Great Spirit, which I don't feel that Jordan can quite do. I feel that he wants to, but his way is to rehabilitate Christianity and the Bible. Don't get me wrong, he pulls up some profound stuff when he does that. But it's like, as a rational academic, he is reaching after faith while trying to keep it respectable. He wants to have his cake and eat it, and you can't do that. There is a point at which you have to chuck Science overboard and just surrender to the mystery that is the universe.
I think it is telling that he won't criticise Christianity - a religion that puts the figure of a tortured human being at the centre of its story. That is not OK, it is really not OK, and sure you can draw stuff about suffering and the shadow from it, as Peterson does, but really it's not a good starting point in the quest for a meaningful life.
This is why I am Shamanic, in the sense of attempting to recapture the attitude of early peoples towards life, which is pretty universal, and which therefore gives me grounds to trust it. The starting point of indigeneity, as far as I can ascertain, is that we are a part of the natural world, that the natural world is alive at all points, that she takes care of us, and that our purpose is to live in balance with her. That just seems really right to me, it is where I can breathe.
Something else I appreciate about Jordan is his acceptance of humanity as it is, it's like we are technological and urban and use lots of energy, so how do we live within that, and what are the pragmatic solutions to our problems? Too often, it seems, shamanic people take up an oppositional attitude, like there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we live, and we need to get back to something more like our fantasy of the Garden of Eden. Well that just isn't going to happen, and there is no point speculating about what might be, because humanity is going to do what it is going to do, and that is almost certainly high tech, in fact that is where part of our genius lies, so let us work within that. That is very much Jordan Peterson's attitude.
Something else I like about Peterson is his political conservatism. Before I lose you, let me just remind you about the Shamanic quest for tradition, that gets taken to ridiculous lengths sometimes, with people scrabbling around in the scraps of the past, looking for a 'Celtic' tradition that they can identify with; or putting jobbing healers from South America on a pedestal because they come from a long tradition. We long for tradition, and we venerate people who appear to carry it. Just look what happens when an 'indigenous' person walks into the room, it's like the Pope has turned up.
Politically, most Shamanic people belong to the liberal consensus. But in our heart of hearts, we long for tradition. That seems so obvious to me that I don't mind being called out for speaking for others. And of course most people will say they appreciate tradition, but stand apart too and have their own take. That is largely bollocks. It's like the Americans who are proudly Republican, yet go into full-on celebrity mode as soon as a member of the British Royal family turns up. Think Diana.
I have stepped outside most of this. That is quite a claim to make. But I have spent over 40 years engaging with traditions - Buddhist, astrological, shamanic - and that engagement has kept forcing me towards the guidance from within, that is outside of any tradition. As I say, nearly everyone will claim that is what they are doing too, but I look slightly askance at that, for it is generally something that has to be earned, incrementally, over a lifetime, and not many people get there. But it is the best of aspirations, and I appreciate that in people.
But precisely because I have earned my way out of traditions, I appreciate them too. There are depths of meaning woven into them than I can never have, coming from a culture that, uniquely, has no extant spiritual traditions. We need traditions and even rules. Without them, we would come apart psychologically. We need shared beliefs. We saw under Covid the way people get scared and will follow rules - or mindlessly rebel against them. I had my own mindless rebellion against masks to get through, this is all work in progress for me.
So, back to Jordan, it seems to me that he is reaching after tradition; for all his brilliance, he yearns for a sense of something ancient and outside of himself to tell him who he is. That is why he puts such effort into trying to rehabilitate Christianity, and why he refuses to criticise it. And why he sets such a premium on orderliness in his own life. He can't fully let go. And that is a big ask. It is the 'hollow bone' thing. We need to keep aspiring to it.
Abandon all personal plans and ambitions, and allow Spirit to put life your way. Trust what is happening, and trust what isn't happening. Jordan is furiously sharp and intellectual, and I love that. But he also needs to drop it, and just be a mess too. I think that is what I would like to see in him. Maybe the serious illnesses he and most of his family went through in recent years points to that also. But look up the Peterson podcast on youtube. There is a lot to be gained from it. He will show you the way out of much of modern groupthink, including wokeness (rooted in what he calls 'narcissistic compassion') and apocalyptic environmentalism. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzKM-VwriK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzKM-VwriK0
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