Jordan Peterson Comes to London | Sunday Evening Talk Review

Wow, what to say.
He’s an inspiration. He really is. And that can be seen in the enthusiasm his fans have for him. He walked in to a standing ovation. And he started to tear up. Its was really touching. He seemed so humbled to see so many people so enthusiastic to hear what he has to say. And its testament to just how influential he is. And it not just the typical “young white male”

I was there on the Sunday evening and there was such a great mix of people. It was pretty diverse. I’d say it was probably still 2/3rds men but its also nice that the women that were there weren’t just dragged along by their boyfriends.

The first person we met was a woman who had travelled, on her own, from Hungary! And there was a girl sat in front who looked like she was on cloud 9. Forced her friend to stand up and get a photo of her in front of the stage with her copy of the book. It was great to see.

As for the talk, there wasn’t a whole bunch of new material, but Dr Peterson connected the dots between the concepts really well. It just connected. And it was inspiring. Plus, its really beneficial for learning to hear the same concept explained in different ways. Its how we abstract the core message out of it.

Dr Peterson started off by explaining this book is essentially the love child between evolutionary biology and fiction. And then he spent the next hour discussing some of the major concepts of the book.

A general through line could probably be summarised as “embody the hero archetype”

Dr Peterson started off by explaining the evolutionary development of our fears and how they lead to the development of The Dragon surfacing across virtually every culture. Essentially back when we were little rodents in the forest we had a few main predators: snakes, cats and birds. When combined with the fact we lived in trees and fires where incredibly dangerous it becomes quite easy to see the dragon as an amalgamation of our primal fears. The dragon is the abstraction from the set of all the worst fears.

So now we have the representation of the dragon, why do they hoard gold? And princesses? Well essentially, there is a lot of value to confronting your fears. And If you become the person that can protect society from the worst of all dangers then the princesses will want to be with you. Because you can protect them.

Essentially life is about survival, and to survive we must learn how to defeat the things we’re scared of. If we can’t overcome our fears, we will crumble in the face of them. And this means death. Physically AND spiritually. We have to be confident enough to either fight or flight. But what we realise is there are snakes in the hearts of our enemies. So, we erect a little fort, just for our friends and family. But then we realise there are snakes in the hearts of friends and family. So, we close ourselves off to them and this is where the real pain is. We realise we can't outrun the most insidious and dangerous snakes of all, the ones that sit in OUR heart. how do we deal with that?! Well, we can crumble and refuse to accept it. Or we can stand up and fight it. We can do what ever it takes to overcome it.

Dr Peterson brought in a great reference here. He talked about Harry Potter and how Harry is the last horcrux. He literally has a part of Voldemort in his soul. He who must not be named. The worst fear of all. Harry had to confront this part of him before he could finally protect the world from evil.

Dr Peterson then went on to talk about Taoist philosophy and the need to bring balance to chaos and order. And he used the word “balance”. I honestly couldn’t get this image out of my head.

Dr Peterson argues that we should “straddle the line between yin and yang” We cant escape this dichotomy. Its essentially a natural structure to the world. Even the safest places are at risk of danger. And the most orderly places are at risk of descending into chaos. There’s a give and take. Death gives meaning to life. And we should live our lives with reminders of our mortality.

This is why extreme sports are so exhilarating. They remind us of our mortality and this allows us to appreciate life all the more. And so we should straddle this line between dichotomies. Order and chaos, safety and danger, the expected and the unexpected. And this ties in with the concept of Flow. We need to be placing ourselves just outside of our comfort so that its challenging and not boring, but not so far that we cant cope. the moments of pure bliss are found here. Time dissipates. We’re essentially creating order out of chaos. And its wonderful for the soul. But this act of sorting also benefits those around us. And it elevates us in competence hierarchies.

So the talk laid out the view that we must overcome the snakes in our own hearts so we can overcome the set of all possible fears and begin to sort chaos into order.

We should aim to become “the abominable challenger to the tree cat snake bird”.

I’ve done my own little bit of sorting here, the talk probably wasn’t quite as well structured as I’ve made out. The talk was quite free flowing, and it had a loose structure. Dr Peterson joked that he doesn’t like to give the same talk twice and he had given the ordered talk in the morning, so this was his chaotic talk.
Order in the morning, chaos in the evening.

He literally straddled the line between chaos and order.

Oh, and we also have to talk about the venue. I mean, it was in a frickin CHURCH!! I genuinely couldn’t think of a better venue. Its adorned with religious quotes and iconography. Like this photo:

I found it quite humorous to see Dr Petersons face under the quote “thou shall have no other gods before me” there was a slight tone of idol worship with this event, but again that’s just absolute testament to just how much influence Dr Peterson is having on people’s lives.

There was also a Q and A afterwards which was pretty interesting. Ill do a video about that soon as well. But for now, its time to get stuck into his book.

Thanks for watching,

I’m the Doubtful centrist,

And remember
Strong ideas, Held loosely!

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