All the Wisdom That's Been Discarded

How Dr. Jordan Peterson is saving civilization.

Oct 12, 2024

I am frequently asked why the Canadian psychologist, Dr. Jordan Peterson, has become such a superstar among young men. The answer, it seems to me, is self-evident. In his talks and interviews, he offers a concrete and clear presentation of all of the wisdom of Western Civilization—going back to the Old Testament and ancient Greeks—that’s been discarded.

Wisdom is a body of lessons that enables us to go through life with a map and a compass instead of stumbling around in the dark, falling into ditches, and getting lost in the woods. A smart man learns from his mistakes; a wise man learns from the past mistakes of others. Young people who are not equipped with wisdom will pay huge prices for their ignorance.

As Peterson himself often states, he is not an especially original thinker, but he is very skilled at taking all of the hard won lessons of mankind and communicating them in a way that is fresh, vivid, and easy to understand. In other words, he is a great teacher. Indeed, in terms of his reach and the clarity of his lessons, he may be the greatest educator in human history.

Thinking about Peterson reminds me of the 1995 bestseller, How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill, about St. Patrick—a 5th Century Romano-British missionary whom he credits with preserving classical learning as Roman rule collapsed and Europe was taken over by barbaric tribes such as the Huns, Visigoths, Franks, Angles, Saxons, and Ostrogoths.

Recently I heard a Generation X comedian making fun of his parents’ Baby Boomer generation. Though hyperbolic and not altogether fair, he nevertheless made the cogent point that the trouble with many Baby Boomers is that they don’t have a vision of life and civilization beyond their desires, careers, money, and power. This is why (in his view) we have so many Baby Boomer politicians in Washington who seem content with making huge messes and assuming trillions in debt.

For a long time I thought that Baby Boomers in power are sort of like the French King Louis XV, who purportedly quipped, “Après moi, le déluge”—”After me, the flood.” Lately I’ve been thinking they’re more like the gangster Hyman Roth in the Godfather Part II, of whom Michael Corleone remarks:

It was Roth all along. It was Roth who tried to kill me in my home. He acts like I’m his son, his successor, but he thinks he’s gonna live forever, and he wants me out.

This brings me back to Jordan Peterson, who strikes me as the figure of paternal wisdom whom millions of boys never had. While the mother is the nurturing figure of a boy’s infancy and childhood, the father plays a much stronger role in guiding the boy into manhood.

If the father is absent, drunk, or an idiot, the boy will be cast adrift and prone to getting into all kinds of trouble and making himself miserable. If he is an intelligent boy, he will, at some point, ask himself, “What in hell am I doing wrong?” and start seeking wisdom. If he goes to the typical American university to seek it, he won’t find it there.

And so, if he is like millions of other boys, he eventually stumbles across a Jordan Peterson YouTube video and in an instant he recognizes that this man with a funny Canadian accent is offering him the lessons that no one else ever presented to him.

As strange as this story sounds, it is also remarkably simple. It’s a testament to the astonishing stupidity of Peterson’s critics that they consider his lessons “dangerous” or “extreme right wing.” For readers unfamiliar with Peterson’s message, it can be summarized was follows:

Seek meaningful work and relationships instead of impulsive pleasure.
Tell the truth or at least don’t lie.
Put yourself in order before you try to put the world in order.
Instead of resentfully thinking about what you don’t have, get to work on building your character, education, and skills.
Sacrifice lies at the heart of the human condition. You cannot gain or achieve anything without making sacrifices.

Only an imbecile would regard the above lessons as “dangerous” or “extreme right wing,” but Lord, there are so many of them out there.

I’ve often thought the Dr. Peter McCullough is, in the realm of medicine, what Dr. Jordan Peterson is in the realm of psychology. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has consistently presented the following message.

Adhere to your Hippocratic Oath to treat your patients to the best of your ability and judgement.
When faced with a novel illness, a good doctor cannot wait for NIH treatment guidelines, which have been corrupted by pharmaceutical interests.
When confronted with a novel illness, carefully consider risk stratification in formulating one’s response to it.
When presented with a novel vaccine product, carefully perform a risk-benefit analysis in deciding to whom it should be recommended.
If data emerges that a novel vaccine product is injuring and killing people, take it off the market.
Never ignore or conceal the truth of a medical matter in order to protect commercial interests.

None of the above is even remotely controversial, but this hasn’t stopped the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex from relentlessly persecuting Dr. McCullough. The guys who run this Complex are, like the guys who run most American universities, rapacious, philistine fools.