I appreciate the fact that Jordan Peterson gets Carl Jung AND religion. On both points, Richard Dawkins (et al) looks foolish and irrelevant.
It’s not an accident that Peterson starts this long ‘interview’ by referencing Jung. Some believe that there is no one like Jung today, even though he died in 1961 (in June, the same month I was born).
This talk, and Maps of Meaning, does a good job discussing the ineffable – ‘being’ and ‘existence’. On a specific point, I agree with him that Jung’s message is terrifying.
I think the reason is as follows: Many of us, perhaps all of us, from time to time, have moments when we are conscious of being lived. Let me say it other ways: I am Being lived. Or – I am Being lived. Or, I am. These experiences are unfiltered, and unmediated by language/culture, and are definitely rare, but they provide a powerful, unforgettable experience of transcendence when they do happen.
Another way to say all this might be ‘we don’t have the control of our lives that we might imagine’. There are other, larger, archaic, eternal, ??, forces at work – in and through us – that we hardly understand, merely because we are / in this creative destructive dynamic grip we call life.
Where are the intellectuals discussing good and evil today? The fact that Peterson takes Jung / Religion / Myth / Metaphor so seriously makes him relevant and worth listening to!
See more of his work at jordanbpeterson.com and his Twitter at @jordanbpeterson
Another great talk, with Joe Rogan, can be found here. My favourite part of that 3 hour talk is this 13 minute riff on how our souls get stuck in the past, in hell. See below:
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