Francis Berger
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Revisiting Cringeworthy Posts

4/10/2019

14 Comments

 
The other day I took a little time to revisit some of my earlier blog posts, and I encountered a few cringeworthy entries from previous years. As I read these regrettable posts, I experienced a strange blend of embarrassment and amusement. On a few occasions, I paused and asked myself what the heck I had been thinking when I had written them.

After I had read the third or fourth awkward post, I felt an impulse to delete them, but I resisted the urge. For better or for worse, I decided to leave them as they are. If nothing else, I believe they serve as testaments to the wrong turns I have taken and the errors in judgement I have made. Deleting these wrong turns and blatant errors in thinking might help me feel better about myself, but the purpose of this blog is not self-therapy, self-promotion, or ego aggrandizement, but truth-seeking, spiritual growth, and self-discovery. Any honest pursuit of truth, spirit, and discovery is bound to have its share of missteps and stumbles. Deleting regrettable posts might make me appear better and more consistent in readers' eyes, but it would also present them with a skewed and edited version of my thinking over the years. More importantly, deleting my awkward posts could alter my perception of my own thinking over the years and prevent me from learning valuable lessons from times I was wrong, mistaken, or misled.  

Among the worst offenders by far are my posts lauding Jordan Peterson, but I have left all of these intact on the blog because I believe they provide valuable insights into the hows and whys of my errors regarding the Canadian psychologist.

My interest in Peterson began shortly after he had vehemently objected to Canada's gender pronoun legislation. At the time, he was still a relatively obscure university professor. Having lived in Canada's oppressive PC climate for many years, I viewed his opposition to the proposed pronoun bill as an immense act of courage. As time passed I also became intrigued by his Joseph Campbell-like philosophy of mythic and religious archetypes and his unorthodox interpretation of Christian tenets and symbols. My esteem for the professor was so high that at one point I wrote a post in which I declared my wish to have Peterson read my novel (I still cringe when I remember that post. Warning: it's a doozy).

The months passed and I asked a few bloggers I respected to provide their own opinions of Peterson. I was somewhat taken aback by the negative replies I received. Nevertheless, I took these opinions into consideration as I continued exploring Peterson's thought and ideas. During this time, Peterson began what can only be described as his meteoric rise to fame. Suddenly the obscure professor was popping up on everyone's radar. He stopped appearing on small, mostly right-leaning You Tube channels where he had found the majority of his small but sympathetic audience, and became a regular feature of large left-leaning You Tube channels and major media outlets. This immediately raised my suspicions, but I was still willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt.  

Then Peterson started pushing his online psychology course, his forthcoming self-help book, and launched what I can only describe as a magical mystery tour. His suits became fancier, his opinions less acerbic, and his ideas more mainstream. I finally recognized his professed religiosity for what it truly was - repackaged materialism. When he joined a California-based talent agency and the New York Times branded him a member of what it called The Intellectual Dark Web, my interest in Peterson popped like a soap bubble, and I was finally able to see him for what he truly was - a shameless self-promoter and a master of the soft-sell whose main interests reside almost exclusively in the accumulation of fame, influence, and wealth. 

As regrettable as my interest in Peterson seems now, I do not regret having gone through the process I described above for it taught me much about my own weak points and faulty judgement. I realized I had projected much of my own thinking and ideas onto Peterson rather than accepting his words at face value.

Part of this has to do with Peterson's rather slippery mode of communication, but most of it had to do with my own inability to properly and precisely process the ideas and opinions he spouted. As insincere as Peterson is, it would be unfair of me to blame my error in judgement solely on his chimerical verbiage. No, the responsibility for the error was mine and mine alone. My desire to support a champion for the Good overrode my ability to recognize Jordan Peterson as little more than a champion for his own good. Leaving my Jordan Peterson posts intact on the blog helps remind me where I went wrong. They contain insights I can use to avoid falling into the same trap in the future.

Overall, I am satisfied with the posts I have written over the past four months. Most contain decent levels of clarity and insight. Some are duds and misfires, but in their entirety, I believe my 2019 posts reflect a more stable and sound line of thinking, exploration, and inquiry. Of course, when I revisit these posts in two-years' time I might find some of them lacking or peculiar, but I doubt they will make me cringe as much as some of pre-2019 posts do.   

At least that is my hope. 
14 Comments
ClosetBased
4/10/2019 12:16:31

I'm glad someone has posted this up - I'm in the same bucket of being out of love with JBP. Some of his talks were really good however, in the sense that they opened the mind to look at things differently, but his conclusions kept differing from mine to the point of frustration. The experience he recounts is more informative than anything else. A great story-teller but utter charlatan.

Reply
Francis Berger
4/10/2019 12:23:13

@ ClosetBased - Thanks for the comment. Peterson has taken many for a ride. If nothing else, it reminds me how starved we are as a civilization. Peterson figured out how to tap that hunger and profit from it.

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Bruce Charlton
4/10/2019 14:33:18

I have experienced a considerably larger change of conviction, indeed a U turn. And I published hundreds of articles and several books before the change (which happened over 2008-9). Indeed, I was much more influential in my pro-evil days than since. So there is no possibility of my editing or correcting the record. I must just live with it, and hope that the old writings don't continue to do harm.

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Francis Berger
4/10/2019 16:10:32

@ BC - As far as I am concerned, the work you have completed since your U turn compensates for the harm you believe your past writings may or have caused.

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Gianni Francis
4/11/2019 05:08:45

Vox Day has written an entire book exposing JBP, very much worth reading. Appropriately titled Jordanetics.

Reply
Francis Berger
4/11/2019 08:47:12

@ GF - Thanks for the comment. I lost interest in JP before Vox Day published Jordanetics, but I have included a link to the book below for those who have not heard of it but might be interested.

https://www.amazon.com/Jordanetics-Journey-Humanitys-Greatest-Thinker-ebook/dp/B07JY9XV38

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palintropos
4/11/2019 21:05:10

" . . . Joseph Campbell-like philosophy of mythic and religious archetypes and his unorthodox interpretation of Christian tenets and symbols."

I thought Peterson's big thing was dominance hierarchy. Also, he seems to be taking on the fake-victim culture, mostly feminism and how it emasculates men. It all appears good to me. He does shy away from race realism of course but that's probably due to pure tactical reasons. He avoids that quagmire as something no sane person can argue over. Feminism is bad enough.

Reply
Francis Berger
4/11/2019 21:57:13

@ p - Jordan Peterson's big thing is Jordan Peterson. As I mentioned in my post, I had a great deal of respect for him for a while, but as I dug into his material, my respect waned considerably.

A commenter above suggests Vox Day's book Jordanetics. I haven't read it, but you could consider checking out if you're interested in an alternative opinion about JP.

Reply
palintropos
4/11/2019 22:01:06

Thanks. Vox Day creeped me out by making personal attacks on the appearance of Peterson's wife.

palintropos
4/12/2019 00:49:47

"Jordan Peterson's big thing is Jordan Peterson."

Come on, you (and I) would do the same thing. We'd be crazy not to.

Francis Berger
4/12/2019 06:00:49

@ p - You will no doubt consider this reply dishonest, but my motivations lie elsewhere. Hence, I would be unwilling or unable to make many of the compromises JP has made, And you are right, in the contemporary world, that does indeed make me crazy!

Reply
palintropos
4/12/2019 15:33:06

I think you and your friends have just impaled yourselves on the horns of a dilemma. If you think being successful is a sin then why are you publishing your work in the first place? Because you want to influence as many people as possible. But then if you did succeed you would be invited to speak at various venues, acquire fame and a lot of money – and be as sinful as Peterson. LOL.

And don't say you wouldn't do it if you acquire some sort of notoriety. When they start coming at you for being a racist, or sexist, or homophobe you will do exactly the same thing as Peterson. And you'd be perfectly right to use guile and to dissemble. You may be even worse than Peterson and grovel and beg forgiveness for being a "hater." LOL. His enemies, and yours, are utterly ruthless, lying trash and will slander you and gleefully drag you all into the gutter without the slightest hesitation.

So, ipso facto, you and your friends are being disingenuously naive. And, I might add, it is not flattering or adding to your luster. On the contrary, it detracts. You can't very well impugn another person's motives while avoiding the same treatment in return. Until you yourselves have had to face down the mob screaming racist, bigot, hater you really shouldn't engage in these types of totally unproductive and unChristian discussions. From what I've seen, Peterson has handled himself aplomb. Admittedly, I haven't seen that much, only read just now some creepy stuff at a place called Quora.com: https://www.quora.com/Is-Jordan-Peterson-a-racist-1

Imagine being the target of that. And the creeps got him fired before he even started for "hate speech" at I think Cambridge.

Reply
Francis Berger
4/12/2019 19:48:15

@ p - That's quite a laundry list of accusations and LOLS. We mentioned Vox Day earlier. If you had posted this comment at his site, he would have ridiculed you as a gamma and shredded your defense of JP to bits (especially since you admit to not really knowing much about JP), but I won't do that because I am not interested in the Greek alphabet stuff and I don't like belittling commenters.

For the record, I never said success was a sin. Judging by what you wrote above, your understanding of it is limited to egoism, materialism, and worldliness. As I mentioned in my previous comment, my motivations lie elsewhere.

I'm not sure what you were trying to achieve with this comment, but it would have been more sensible on your end to forgo writing it and simply write me off as dishonest and crazy.

Why waste your time on naive people like me?


Keri Ford
5/26/2019 03:06:53

Oh Jordan Peterson, I appreciated him for a while too, in fact my trajectory appears similar, I still do appreciate that he objected to Bill C16. One of the most apposite comments I have seen regarding him is that he is a post modern railing against post modernism. He inspired me to read some Jung again, I suppose Peterson is his successor. Peterson is what we the modern world has to offer as intellectuals. He visited New Zealand recently and it caused a stir, "such dangerous ideas", "such hate" "why are we letting him in?". The controversy would just love to draw you into its fold.

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