You will forgive me if today I am not quite up to writing a particularly detailed blog post. Everyone in my household has come down with a cold, and I feel terrible. The cold has merged seamlessly into my spring allergies, and I am basically using all of my remaining energy staying awake and getting work done. It has not been the nicest of weekends. While I am starting to feel better today, I am looking forward to finally getting over the congestion, sneezing, coughing, and general crummy feeling.
It’s a truism that when a cultural extremist starts ranting long enough, eventually he will reveal a belief in some bizarre fringe history claim. It was no different with Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who masquerades as a culture critic and philosopher. Peterson rose to prominence over the past few years as a darling of the alt-right, the men’s rights movement, disaffected white men in general, and conservatives. (Peterson claims that while he is against the “radical left,” his is a classical liberal rather than a conservative, though the distinction is slight. Classical liberalism is basically conservatism with even less concern for social justice, or libertarianism with less concern for equality. It’s individualism raised to all-encompassing ideology.) Anyway, Peterson is famous for his masculinist opinions, mouthing alt-right bromides about the evils of diversity, why women should be happy to be housewives, and currently trendy views about providing men with wives by reinforcing a culture of normative monogamy to prevent men from becoming sex-crazed and lashing out with violence. Society, it seems, is strong enough to shape the values of its members when it comes to sex, but not strong enough to shape their views of violence. If it weren’t for the fact that Peterson is Canadian, I’d have said that it was a quintessentially American view of the social contract. He is the kind of person who decorates his house with violent Soviet propaganda to keep himself in a constant state of rage.
Peterson holds a number of unconventional views that go beyond the standard conservative / alt-right set of ideas. He, for example, imagines that myths and legends are rooted in sexual frustration, adopting a Freudian reading that went out of fashion fifty years ago, even if he frames it in terms of his preferred Jungian archetypes—themselves a relic of the past century. “It makes sense that a witch lives in a swamp. Yeah,” [Peterson] says. “Why?”
He’s trying to say that witches are evil women who live in nasty, swampy, wet vaginas, while impotent old kings live in shriveled penises. Let’s leave aside the fact that in myth witches are not associated exclusively with swamps nor kings with towers—his knowledge of myth rarely goes beyond a modern encyclopedia overview. When he says witches are “real” he means that the myths symbolize dark cultural fears that have power. He just places all that power in an utter panic about not getting enough sex. No wonder disempowered men and misogynists are drawn to his interpretation of myth. His mind must do contortions to explain away Hermaphrodite, Tiersias, Iphis, and other gender-fluid figures. It’s probably also worth noting that Greek mythology and Greek culture were also fairly lax on the idea that men should rely only on women for sex.
The reason for his love of myth is in his biography, as such ideas often are. Peterson began life as a devout Christian and claims to have been driven to the brink of suicide when he lost his faith. He turned therefore to Carl Jung, whose dumbest ideas seized Peterson’s adolescent mind, and which he has never outgrown. He became obsessed with myths and legends, as Jung had been, and tried to discover the path to enlightenment through comparative mythology. Needless to say, he is a fan of Joseph Campbell. But unlike Jung and Campbell, who at least respected the humanity behind the stories, Peterson sought magic not in the meaning of myth but in the social values fossilized in them. Thus, for him, the fear of dragons and of witches is more important than the hero’s quest, because they speak to imagined social values that threaten the (performatively male) protagonist and which must be overcome. Comparative mythologists from the middle twentieth century were rightists because they wanted to find a new grounding for tradition in a world where old certainties had been undermined by science. Peterson debases them still further by purposely looking for the most negative parts of myth and foregrounding them as justification for conservative, reactionary, or regressive social policies. But myth is neither liberal nor conservative and does not map neatly onto contemporary political positions.
Peterson shares a lot with the fringe. He likes to cite out of date research from fifty, sixty, or seventy years ago—the heyday of bad ideas. He communicates mostly through YouTube videos and media appearances, and he has a rabid fan-base of true believers. And it turns out that he also believes that ancient people had secret knowledge of the DNA double helix, which they encoded in myths of entwined serpents. “I really do believe this, although it’s very complicated to explain why. I really believe that’s a representation of DNA. That representation, that entwined double-helix—that’s everywhere,” Peterson said in a lecture.
It’s not that hard to believe. He got it out of the crappy books of fake mythology born from Carl Jung’s efforts to rehabilitate mythology for the age of science. [Update: The hazards of writing while sick; I missed his reference to getting the claim from Jeremy Narby's The Cosmic Serpent, about which, the less said the better.] Dozens of fringe authors, many referencing Jung, have compared entwined serpents to the DNA double helix, as did Ancient Aliens on more than one occasion. Offhand, Ancient Aliens and its In Search of Aliens spinoff are the most prominent places I can think of where this claim has appeared, though a literature search suggests that it was briefly mentioned in some fringe books and books about Jung. None of these people have apparently ever studied snakes, who actually do entwine. When the ancients depicted lovers as having entwined serpent tails, they were referencing the reality of snake behavior, not the shape of DNA. But this raises a disturbing question: What does this guru of the regressive part of North American culture actually think happened in the wonderful past when men were men, and every man’s kitchen had a woman to stock it with sandwiches? How does he think ancient humans understood the DNA double helix? There are only a few possibilities—aliens, Atlantis, time travel, suppressed history. Which does he believe in, and why do conservatives think that fringe history can somehow unlock a key to marrying science and traditional social hierarchies by fantasizing a “great” civilization that had high technology, a relationship with the gods, and inflexible social hierarchies?
41 Comments
Scott David Hamilton
5/22/2018 10:14:48 am
I’m not going to claim to be an expert on Peterson, but I think his theory of knowledge of the double helix comes from none of Jason’s examples. As far as I can tell, Peterson’s version of the collective consciousness is so powerful that it’s also a race memory going all the way back to start of life, and therefore the double helix knowledge is the memory of our DNA itself.
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Dave
5/22/2018 07:00:33 pm
Ummm, not a big fan of Peterson, but I'll take his Jungian fantasies over the people who believe in 57 genders or "cultural appropriation" any day.
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Jan
5/23/2018 05:11:10 am
Hey there, false dichotomy. It's almost like there are more than two worldviews out there or something...
Palavan
6/13/2018 04:57:57 pm
Excuse me! How can you be so insensitive to the gender fascists? It is 64 genders and not 57! Otherwise, well said.
Shane Sullivan
5/22/2018 09:39:30 pm
"As far as I can tell, Peterson’s version of the collective consciousness is so powerful that it’s also a race memory going all the way back to start of life, and therefore the double helix knowledge is the memory of our DNA itself."
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Hal
5/22/2018 10:36:27 am
Utterly useless blog.
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Scott Hamilton
5/22/2018 10:44:25 am
Thank you for your valuable opinion.
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Palavan
6/13/2018 05:01:45 pm
This blog post - utterly useless hatchet job, and a 3rd rate one to boot. What's the problem? That Peterson doesn't believe in the gender baiters pseudo-science that genetics has absolutely zero bearing on gender identity? Why is that such a humongous crime not to believe in this pseudo-science?
Clete
5/22/2018 11:38:00 am
Utterly useless comment.
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Altright
5/22/2018 10:47:34 am
I wonder why basically all societies with leftist ideology are dying and need immigrants to survive? Take Sweden as an example. Even UN study projects it will become a third world country by 2030.
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A Nuddhist
5/22/2018 04:26:32 pm
It's because very few people have the good karma to be reborn in a nice place like Sweden so they need to bring in people with less good karma to do chores and bulk out the population. Ever wonder why there are so many more insects and fish than people?
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RobZ
5/22/2018 05:25:28 pm
I highly doubt you really want to know. Otherwise you would not ask that question, loaded with prejudice, on this blog, which has nothing to do with demographics of rich nations. Rich nations that try to provide their population with a certain minimum standard of living even for those who otherwise could not achieve that, are not dying. They are still the future. Each for his own and fuck everyone else, will be unsustainable in the end.
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Americanegro
5/22/2018 05:47:21 pm
"The US was made by immigrants."
RobZ
5/22/2018 06:35:53 pm
Sorry to burst your bubble, but every single human being ever anywhere was an invader at some point.
Americanegro
5/22/2018 07:09:38 pm
So since everyone did it, we call them all "immigrants"?
Altright
5/23/2018 02:50:03 am
_What scares you so much about people wanting to help build a better society?_
An Anonymous Nerd
5/22/2018 06:45:03 pm
Is this reference to the UN's Human Development Index, perchance? That's what comes up when I try to Google this claim.
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Altright
5/23/2018 02:58:23 am
Regardless of the specifics of the example given (I will not waste time discussing details) rich countries with white people are dying. One of the reasons is the leftist ideology of gender equality. It implies that ideal role model for women is a man. And so women try to have careers similar to that of men. But true gender equality is impossible until men will be also giving birth to children. Also it is obvious that countries where women concentrate on the most important task of raising the high standard next generation are growing and expanding, whereas leftist countries are dying as already mentioned.
David Bradbury
5/23/2018 04:02:34 am
These days, countries (Israel being perhaps an exception) don't expand ...
David Bradbury
5/23/2018 09:01:10 am
The precise source of the "Third World by 2030" claim is:
Americanegro
5/23/2018 01:04:01 pm
"These days, countries (Israel being perhaps an exception) don't expand ..."
Jan
5/23/2018 05:12:36 am
Don't engage, it's either a bot trained to look for Jordy McLobster all over the web, or some rabid fanboy.
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An Over-Educated Grunt
5/23/2018 08:04:24 am
No no, let him talk! This is tremendously entertaining. He doesn't like to talk details while he makes claims that can only be backed up by details, almost like he's making a series of unsupportable statements and knows it.
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Altright
5/23/2018 11:12:07 am
Read and laugh.
An Over-Educated Grunt
5/23/2018 11:40:19 am
I certainly will laugh. I can read Swedish, so I clicked through to the Swedish-language link. It describes one dark-haired man, in one district, with active police involvement, with the notable conclusion that when it gets warmer in a Nordic country, cringe goes up, because people aren't freezing their balls off.
Altright
5/23/2018 11:54:21 am
Good for you, keep laughing.
jim
4/23/2019 07:31:41 am
For the same reason societies with rightist ideologies are dying. People are well off so don't want to have a bunch of kids and wreck the finances. what affluent country isn't suffering a decreasing population? The US? Oh yeah, but Trump wants to change that. the only reason the US isn't suffering a decline in pop is the immigrants.
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Scott David Hamilton
5/22/2018 11:07:56 am
Jordan Peterson is like a really shitty Candyman. Mention his name three times and the stupidest people will magically appear in the comment section.
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Rapscallion
5/22/2018 04:03:58 pm
Or they right Leftist blog posts about him for the amusement of their equally Leftist mindless drones.
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Scott David Hamilton
5/22/2018 05:04:32 pm
Thanks for proving my point.
Palavan
6/13/2018 05:07:32 pm
Or that regressive and unhinged leftists fail to make a substantive argument against Peterson, and hence resort to character assassination and smears against people who may agree with Peterson about the fascist left cultural and political orthodoxy?
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Machala
5/22/2018 01:08:46 pm
Jason, get well soon. A couple of Irish slings will set ya right: Good sized dollop of Irish or Scotch whiskey, add tablespoon of honey, juice of a lemon or lime, a few cloves, a then mix in with boiling water to fill the glass. A couple of those and you'll forge all about your cold and allergies. More important, after a couple of those, you'll sleep like a baby - allowing everyone else in the house to forget about your cold and allergies !
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alex arana
5/22/2018 02:42:05 pm
He explicitly states in the full clip that he got the claim from jeremy narbys the cosmic serpant. for the record narby said nothing about the staff of asclepius or half his other examples so peterson is mangling narbys(a respected but controversial anthropologist) argument
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Tom mellett
5/22/2018 03:18:23 pm
Jasun Horsley just posted today a critique of both Jordan Peterson and Camille Paglia wanting to retrogress whatever progress we humans have made.
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Riley V
5/23/2018 02:26:07 am
Thank you.
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Murgatroyd
5/22/2018 03:59:35 pm
Sorry to hear about your family's colds, Jason - you'll be glad to read this:
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An Anonymous Nerd
5/22/2018 06:53:46 pm
I never have been all-that-impressed with Professor Peterson.
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Paul S.
5/22/2018 07:11:30 pm
Oh, I don't know if 50-70 years ago really counts as they heyday of bad ideas. You've documented plenty from both earlier and later periods - it seems like there is never a shortage of them!
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Joe Scales
6/4/2018 10:19:47 am
"Double helix in the sky tonight. Throw out the hardware, let's do it right..."
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Palavan
6/13/2018 06:01:57 pm
Peterson is threading the same path as Galileo who challenged the church - by challenging the evidence-free pseudo-scientific politically-correct orthodoxy that states gender identity is 100% totally determined by culture. He is saying that science has shown that genetics and biology have an impact on sexuality and gender identity.
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Masud
6/15/2018 05:07:28 am
Lie #1 by Jason Colavito: "currently trendy views about providing men with wives by reinforcing a culture of normative monogamy to prevent men from becoming sex-crazed and lashing out with violence." -- no JP never said such a thing. Read his memo on "enforced monogamy".
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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