Jordan Peterson

I don’t know if Canadians have the interest or the patience to submit themselves yet another time to another chapter of the interminable saga of the conflict that I have been embroiled in for what seems like forever with the relatively newly renamed Ontario College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts. I know I’m sick and tired of the whole affair, having moved out of the country in no small part in consequence of the prejudice, ideologically-motivated shenanigans, false morality and petty power mongering of that august body.

Canadian Psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson has announced he has officially moved to the United States, citing a list of reasons.

Peterson’s daughter, Mikhaila Peterson Fuller, during a podcast with her father said offhandedly, “Welcome to moving to America formally.”

“Wrestling With God,” Jordan Peterson’s latest book, is an unusual bestseller: It is a tome dedicated to the study of Scripture. In a wide-ranging interview last week, Mr. Peterson told me, “The book that you have is one-third of what I wrote.” When I laughed and said I was envisioning his editor receiving a 1,500-page draft, he responded: “That’s actually what happened.”

More striking than the book’s success is the intellectual journey of its author. Mr. Peterson, a Canadian psychologist, tells me he was a “casual attendee” at a church whose denomination has since been “absolutely laid waste” by the trends of postmodernity. When he was unimpressed as a teenager with a clergyman’s inability to reconcile Scripture and science, he stopped going to services.

h/t Yaacov

What has fame done to Jordan Peterson? Eight years ago he was a clinical and research psychologist at Toronto University, highly cited but publicly little known. Today he is a conservative mega-star, a YouTuber with 8.3 million subscribers and two best-selling books, (including his 2018 book 12 Rules for Life) that push self-improvement, of the “make your bed” and “stand up straight” variety.

He promotes a rugged and self-confident masculinity. Many young men love him. A fellow in my gym couldn’t name the chancellor, but he knows who Jordan Peterson is.

It may amuse all of you who have become somewhat cynical in recent years to hear what has most lately become of my battle with the tyrants of compassion and masters of incompetence at the Ontario College of Psychologists and (more recently) Behaviour Analysts — a recent unnecessary change and extension of name that appears all-too-convenient to my cynical eye, hiding them as it does from easy online search and the no-doubt horrible pressure of international public opinion regarding their actions in my regard. Remember if you will, or be now informed that I have been scheduled for an indefinite course of professional education by appointees of that institution for expressing my opinions in a country that apparently no longer considers that acceptable for its professionals (depending, of course, on the opinions). I appealed that decision, to the highest court in the land — a legal entreaty that was rejected as of Aug. 27.

It is certainly possible that Canadians are bored already by the endless saga of one contentious and “controversial” psychologist’s battle with the college that “regulates” his profession. But on the off chance you are still interested — as you should be, perhaps, if you are a member of such a profession, as is the case with one fifth of Canadians, or are or will be served by one (everyone else) — here is the latest.

Alone in my home office, I feel unprepared to be wrestling with the death of God.

On my computer screen, Toronto-based psychologist turned conservative culture warrior Jordan Peterson paces and points and gestures as he begins his eight-hour deep dive on Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German poet and philosopher whose career burnt brilliantly but short. Nietzsche famously declared God a fiction and, as Peterson tells it, predicted an unravelling of meaning and morals from which we’re still trying to dig ourselves out.