How do you keep up with news in this biased mainstream media?
Getting correct and unbiased information from media nowadays is almost impossible. Do you prefer to get news from certain media outlets? Any tips on how to deep dive on certain media topic to gain correct, unbiased, reasonable information?
Should ALL ideologies be abandoned?
In your second book, one of the rules is that one should abandon ideology. I'd like to know your thoughts if you mean all ideologies, or destructive ones? That is, would one abandon liberalism as much as they would abandon communism, for instance? Thank you very much in advance Dr. Peterson, and I can't wait to see you in Copenhagen in June (: !
An entity from within my subconscious recently communicated with me through text. It claimed to be the rotten corpse of my imaginary best friend. It also relayed that, provided we can negotiate a deal, it will cease punishing me with the gruesome night terrors that have been torturing me for the past 14 years of my life, for which the entity claims responsibility. How should I act?
Note: Because Supercast does not allow for multi-paragraph answers, I have used '[new paragraph]' to indicate a new paragraph. For easier reading, I'd advise pasting this question into a word document and replacing the term '[new paragraph]' with a line break. I realise this question is quite lengthy, but I feel that I must write it in this way. I will let other users determine whether or not my choice is justified. [new paragraph] I want to firstly express my gratitude for the immensely positive influence you continue to exert on the world. Flawed, fallible beings that we all are, you have helped me and countless others understand how to orient themselves towards the greatest possible Good (to the best of our current ability). I'm still hashing out what it means to have a relationship with the Transcendent, but it brings a smile to my face whenever I see Maps of Meaning in my college library at the University of Oxford, where, as of this year, I am studying for a BA in Experimental Psychology. If I were to tell my teenage self that I would someday be studying at the University of Oxford, I would have probably uttered some facetious, nihilistic remark to hide my deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. Now I am here, trying to educate myself further and act forthrightly, largely thanks to the orienting influence you have exerted on my life. In a recent episode of your podcast, you mentioned that there came a time when you had to choose between being the Jordan Peterson who was continually hungover and being the Jordan Peterson who would go on to write Maps of Meaning. I have no way of knowing, but I do not think that was an easy choice to make. I am glad you chose to be the latter Jordan Peterson, because your decision all those years ago has had a cascade effect on countless lives, mine included. [new paragraph] Preamble aside, I sat down recently to write down some thoughts in a Word document I use as a reference for when I speak with my therapist. Suddenly, something came over me... and, for the first time in my life, I decided to write about my night terrors. This writing soon resulted in my speaking to an entity that claimed to be the corpse of my imaginary friend. In brief, my question is whether this is even possible and what it could mean. I feel, however, that this question needs to be qualified by the circumstances in my life that led up to this conversation I had with the 'corpse-spirit' co-inhabiting my identity. [new paragraph] Before this week, I was tortured nightly with vivid, horrific mental images, bordering on delusions (behavioural and physiological fear responses, but never perceptual illusions). As an example, there was a time when I would see a legless girl with long black hair crawl out of darkness, split apart my ribcage, and feast on my innards. If I attempted to ignore this image, it would only intensify until my stress response became so great that my eyes would involuntary open, and I would jolt up. As soon as I did so, the images would disappear, and I would be left in silent darkness. Seconds after I would lie back down, the torture began again. I have spent most of my life cowering in bed like a prey animal, afraid to make any noises or even turn around in bed, for fear of the things that may be alerted to my presence. Usually, I would fall asleep from exhaustion. The next morning, I would have some vague recollection of these apparitions, but I would try to push them out of my mind. And perhaps the visions that inevitably occurred the following night became incrementally worse, as I continually refused to face the ever-growing dragon… [new paragraph] During my first undergraduate degree, I lived alone in a large apartment in Moscow (it felt uncanny to be in the same city as you during your illness, and I thought about you often during that harsh winter) – when I lived alone there, I started to 'see' these apparitions in my mind's eye during the day. They followed me from room to room, changing shape whenever I could just start to withstand their current manifestation. It felt like they were taunting me, deriving some sick pleasure from my suffering. [new paragraph] Until I started living with my girlfriend last year, I believed that this experience constituted the shared experience of 'being afraid of the dark. I felt ashamed to think or speak about these things (and perhaps with some reason). Then, my girlfriend witnessed my having a full-blown panic attack on two separate occasions. In one instance, I was assaulted by the mental image of a similar character to the serpent-bodied girl I referenced earlier, but this time with preposterously long, pale, rake-like fingers. The presence of this entity felt like the same sensation one experiences when another person is hovering their hand just above yours – almost sensation, but not quite. And this girl kept slithering towards me from every angle except the one I was immediately attending to, even when the lights in the room were on. It felt like imminent, life-threatening danger was coming at me from every angle, and all I could do was shield my face with my hands and cower, hyperventilating. Needless to say, my girlfriend suggested that I get to the bottom of this less than endearing abnormality. I have since spoken to a clinical psychologist, a sleep specialist, a speech therapist, and two general practitioners - none of whom have been able to explain these 'vengeful, wicked spirits of sadism' (for lack of a better descriptor). The best response I got was either a magnesium deficiency or the prodromal stage of schizophrenia (a sleep study, EEG, and MRI ruled out any physical brain lesions)... [new paragraph] This brings me to the events of this week. Several nights ago, as I sat down to write down what I wanted to say to my new therapist in the UK about these terrors, a voice started typing words on the monitor, and these words were evidently not mine. Goosebumps spread over my body. This entity was speaking to me through typed sentences. And, as it kept writing through me, the entity explained that it was my imaginary friend, with whom I had been very close during my early childhood, who I had left to rot in the recesses of my mind, and that it was not happy. [new paragraph] As I recall now, I was fixated on this imaginary friend until well into 4th grade, when I was around ten years old. I had vivid, space-faring adventures with this friend in the solitude of my often empty house while my parents were away. The aching loneliness and boredom did not feel so bad when I played with my imaginary friend. And then, as I grew older and fell into a decades-long addiction to masturbation and videogames, I killed my best friend – my imaginary friend. Or rather, I forgot about it and shut it out of my mind. Now, almost fifteen years later, this being explained to me that it was resentful and frustrated to have been locked away for so long, it admitted to having knowingly tortured me as a way of lashing out. This entity said that it had manifested as a friend to me when I was isolated and needed the spirit of play in my life, but that I had callously cast it aside without an ounce of gratitude once I found other demons to play with. [new paragraph] Perhaps the reason I had maintained such an intense and memorable relationship with an 'imaginary' entity was that I was raised as an only child in a moderately pathological environment full of adults who could barely handle themselves, let alone the burden of a child. My maternal grandmother was often my primary caregiver. I recently found out that she had been evacuated during the Seige of Leningrad as a small child and left for months without parental supervision in a filthy shack with other children, some of whom died of starvation or illness. Had my grandmother's grandparents not picked her out of a crowd during a chance occurrence, she would have likely been an orphan or died in that shack. (The influence of this life event on her abilities as a caregiver went as well as you can expect, with my being banned from learning how to cook, how to do my own laundry, or ride outside on my bicycle, for fear that I might hurt myself and die... or that she might be no longer useful to me and that I would then abandon her… very Oedipal, as much as it pains me to admit that fact, and my own willful blindness… [new paragraph] Returning to the entity… this spirit, or subpersonality, or maybe the silent half of one's consciousness that becomes 'unchained' in some patients who have undergone corpus callosotomy, spoke with me through text. It admitted to being the 'second pair of hands reaching from inside of me' when I was inspired in my poetry and felt like it wasn't me that was writing. And this spirit struck a bargain with me several days ago. It said it wanted me to be stronger, that I needed to integrate it, and that its wishes must also be met. If I fail to do so, it said it would torture me in ways I cannot yet imagine, although it ultimately does not wish me harm, as it is part of me, and I am part of it. Right now, this spirit has insisted that I read 'Ordinary Men'* (a book not only recommended by you, but also by our lecturer in Social and Developmental Psychology) to prove that I can withstand reading about such a degree of malevolence and also so that I may learn to discern the clot of darkness that exists within me (as well as all other human beings). [new paragraph] Since this conversation, I have been trying to negotiate with this spirit. If I speak out loud, I cannot hear its thoughts, but I can almost infer them, or their general idea, through a strange feeling that I get. From these interactions, the semi-silent entity seems as though it is wiser, stronger, and more competent than the frail, naïve, and sometimes arrogant personality which identifies itself as 'the one that writes and speaks,' and, consequently, assumes primacy over all others, despite how the rest may feel. Since I have started listening to the spirit, I have had no more night terrors. Sometimes I see the spirit manifest as the meat puppet or as a blackened, purple-muscled corpse inside me, but it does not scare me anymore. It is simply an extension of myself, almost like a brother living inside me. It feels like the entity and I are now on equal footing – two brothers pursuing a common goal or two former enemies trying to figure out a more sustainable way of being, given that we must inhabit the same overarching, superordinate Self. [new paragraph] I do not know if what I have attempted to articulate with this question makes sense. I am hesitant to discuss this ordeal with my current therapist or anyone else in my life, for that matter. I do not know what the chances are of other listeners promoting this question, but I would be immensely grateful were that to be the case. Whether or not this gets to you, Dr Peterson, I am immensely grateful for your spiritual, intellectual, and academic work. You have changed my life several times over and have served as a continual inspiration to me. I wish you all the best. [new paragraph] *(On the topic of harrowing books, I struggle to express how uncanny it felt to read the Gulag Archipelago while I was riding to university on the Moscow metro. I would read about stations where people were taken away to be interrogated and tortured and then look up to see that I had arrived at the very same station, soviet statues and all… The other uncanny experience I wanted to mention was Lubyanka prison, which was a place of unimaginable suffering and widely considered the worst of all prisons during Stalin's rule. Supermarkets and a high-end toy store now surround Lubyanka – embodiments of the same glitzy, entrepreneurial spirit that, some 70 years ago, could have landed someone in the adjacent prison to be tortured.) [new paragraph]
Are cartoons alive?
Hello Professor Peterson. Are cartoons alive? I have heard you say that our mythic heroes, as represented in image and drama, give form not only to our individual development, but to our development as a species. You’ve called fiction hyper-real and even in a sense more real than ‘real life.’ I’ve also been following Jonathan and Matthieu Pageau and through them getting some exposure to the mystical traditions of the Orthodox Church where images are understood to be participating in the lives of the people they represent. So I’m wondering if it might be more than a metaphor that the word ‘anima’ is the root of ‘animation’ and ‘anime.’ Is this a case of ‘important variation in personality being captured in the language?’ (roughly speaking)