Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson

by Ben Burgis

Populism and PC (the left-liberal political correctness) practise the two complementary forms of lying which follow the classic distinction between hysteria and obsessional neurosis: an hysteric tells the truth in the guise of a lie (what it says is literally not true, but the lie expresses, in a false form, an authentic complaint), while what an obsessional neurotic claims is literally true, but it is a truth which serves a lie.

don’t fall in love with your suffering: never presume that your suffering is in itself a proof of your ethical value, or your authenticity.

The very term ‘postmodern neo-Marxism’ reminds me of the typical totalitarian procedure of combining the two opposite trends into one figure of the enemy (like the ‘Judeo-Bolshevik plot’ in fascism).

‘Put your house in order before you want to change the world,’ my reaction is: OK, but why the choice? What if, in trying to achieve the first, you discover that your house is in disorder because of what is wrong in the world?

what should interest us is the legitimization of this brutal military intervention: free trade is the basis of civilization, therefore China’s prohibition of opium import was a barbarian threat to civilization. Imagine such a similar act today: Mexico and Colombia acting to defend their drug cartels and declaring war on the US for behaving in a non-civilized way by preventing free opium trade.

But their overall intention is to help people find meaning in their lives, albeit without drastically changing the social or political conditions in which they live. Especially if they happen to be citizens of a liberal capitalist regime.

Peterson is convinced that if these self-described radical utopians come to power, then their real motivations will become clear through an endless will to destruction.

(did God himself merely repurpose the themes of Capital, then?).