So this is the second video in which I tackle
a pillar of Jordan Peterson’s religious
beliefs, and so if you haven’t already watched
the first (which is dedicated to his epistemology),
then I’d highly recommend that you do, if
only because, not surprisingly, his concept
of truth is tightly intertwined with his other
religious beliefs, including those regarding
archetypes.
Now, just before we get to business, as it
were, the winner of this month’s giveaway
has won this signed copy of AronRa’s Foundational
Falsehoods of Creationism (you lucky heretic!),
and so if you’re a patron be sure to stick
around till the end to see if you’re the
lucky winner!
Anyhow, back to business: this is Jordan Peterson’s
Archetypes – Debunked.
So I’m going to begin by laying down a bit
of groundwork, and I’ll explain precisely
why in just a moment.
The word ‘archetype’ has existed for millennia,
and its etymology is rooted in Ancient Greek;
the prefix ‘arkhe’ means ‘primitive’
or ‘origin’, and the suffix ‘tupos’
means ‘pattern’ ‘model’, or ‘type’,
and so the word originally meant ‘original
model’.
These days, however, it's generally used to
describe a very typical or perfect example
of a particular kind of person or thing, and
it’s primarily used in reference to books
and films.
For example, characters that are archetypically
‘the mentor’ tend to be old, wise, parental
figures (to especially hero archetypes), and
they tend to teach others, reveal a larger
world, and are removed before the end so that
the hero can face the leviathan (or villain
archetype) alone.
And so, in a nutshell, archetypes are stereotypes.
Carl Jung’s perspective of archetypes, however,
gets a little deeper.
As many of you already know, Jung was a contemporary
and adversary of Freud, and while both men
recognised what Freud called the ‘unconscious’
and Jung called the ‘personal unconscious’,
Jung additionally insisted that we have a
‘collective unconscious’.
The ‘unconscious’ or ‘personal unconscious’
refers to feelings and information that was
once conscious but has since been forgotten
and/or repressed, while the ‘collective
unconscious’ refers to innate, inherited,
psychological instincts and patters of thought
and behaviour.
The key difference being, in the words of
Jung, that “The collective unconscious is
a part of the psyche which can be negatively
distinguished from the personal unconscious
by the fact that it does not, like the latter,
owe its existence to personal experience and
consequently is not a personal acquisition.”
“Is it quite certain that, eh, man is born
with a certain functioning – a certain real
functioning, a certain pattern of behaviour
and that is expressed in the form of archetypal
images or archetypal forms.”
Now just before we move on, I want to clear
up a major misconception regarding Jungian
archetypes.
Or more accurately, he does: in his last book,
Man and His Symbols, he wrote that: “My
views about the 'archaic remnants', which
I call 'archetypes' or 'primordial images,'
have been constantly criticized by people
who lack a sufficient knowledge of the psychology
of dreams and of mythology.
The term 'archetype' is often misunderstood
as meaning certain definite mythological images
or motifs, but these are nothing more than
conscious representations.
Such variable representations cannot be inherited.
The archetype is a tendency to form such representations
of a motif – representations that can vary
a great deal in detail without losing their
basic pattern.”
And so that’s Jungian archetypes – it’s
the name given to evolved, instinctual patters
of thought and behaviour, which are often
expressed unconsciously through our stories
and myths (with the latter being where religions
reside).
Just as turtles are born with the psychological
instinct to reach water (which can be seen
as a rendition of their ‘mother’ archetype),
humans are born with the psychological instinct
to avoid snakes (which can be seen as a rendition
of our ‘monster’ or ‘villain’ archetype).
In short, we’re not born with a clean slate.
Anyhow, what exactly does this have to do
with Peterson?
Well, Peterson takes Jungian archetypes and
claims that very specific variants of archetypes
(that being very specific Christian variants)
are ‘true’… but we’ll get to that
in just a minute.
For now, here’s an example of Peterson both
endorsing and eloquently explaining Jungian
archetypes in reference to snakes: “I believe
that the fundamental myths are… they’re
evolved.
They’re deeply rooted in us, like… and
the right way of thinking about that is over…
really, it’s like the myth of dropping a
stick on a snake (that’s St. George, right?)
and the world-creating hero very frequently
creates the world out of the parts of a reptilian
monster.
Well that’s a story that’s like, I don’t
know how many millions of years old – it’s
old, old, old.
You know, snakes were eating us when we lived
up trees, they were one of our primary predators.
And the first tree- dwelling primate precursor
who dropped a stick on a snake was pretty
popular with the ladies.”
And here’s him illustrating how the serpent
archetype, among many other archetypes, manifests
itself among our most beloved stories, such
as Harry Potter: “You know, look, the second
Harry Potter volume, with the basilisk.
Okay, it’s a magical kingdom, that’s the
school, the kids are in it, Harry is a rule-breaker,
he’s touched by evil, that’s what makes
him a hero.
The basilisk is a predator, it’s a snake,
it lives underneath the school, it can shake
everything to pieces.
If you look at it, it freezes you – why?
Because that’s how a prey animal responds
to a predator… frozen.
It’s a snake, it lives underneath everything,
that’s right, because the snake can shake
everything to pieces at any moment.
And the magical school’s built on chaos.
Harry has to go underneath, down, way down,
to find the source of the basilisk.
He actually gets into it through a toilet
or through a bathroom, right?
He goes to the dark place.
A place of refuge and rejection, down into
the bowels of the substructure to face the
basilisk.
What happens?
He frees Ginny (Ginevra), virgin, and he’s
half-killed doing it.
What happens?
A phoenix comes along and cries in his wounds.
The phoenix is a symbol of rebirth.”
Now in my estimation that’s a pretty awesome
analysis – in fact, it captures one of the
things I find valuable about Peterson.
He’s very good at delving deep into the
psychology of our stories and indentifying
their biological underpinnings.
That is, he’s very good at illustrating
that Jung was right – that it’s very easy
to understand why stories and myths, such
as Harry Potter, are loved the-world-over.
They’re not just made up, they’re expressions
of our biological substructure; they reach
deep down into the very core of our psychology
and because of this they’re extremely valuable…
“Yes, it goes to the deepest that there
is.
That’s what makes an archetypal story.
There isn’t anything deeper than an archetypal
story.
That’s it, that’s what makes it archetypal.”
But why does Peterson put such emphasis on
very specific Christian archetypes?
And how on earth does he conclude that these
certain variants are ‘perfect’ and therefore
‘true’?
Well, in his own words: “Well, okay, so
let me, let me tell you why (briefly), why
that story is archetypically perfect.
Okay, so here’s the reason – it’s because,
as has been agreed upon by the sages of the
ages, let’s say, the fundamental reality
of life is suffering and infinitude, and you
can layer on top of that from an existential
perspective malevolence and injustice, and
that’s the lot of human beings, and so here’s
an archetypal story...
The most perfect, innocent, sinless person
possible is betrayed by his friends, his countrymen,
and the foreigners simultaneously; for no
crime whatsoever, in the most torturous possible
way, and also abandoned by the creator of
being himself – and he accepts that all
voluntarily.
You see, the reason it’s an archetypal story
is because you can’t get beyond that!
You see, it hits a limit!
It’s the limit of tragedy – and so that’s
where the perfection lies.”
And to provide but one more example, here’s
how he put it on the Future Thinkers Podcast:
“So, here’s an example – so, why is
the story of Christ an archetypal story?
It’s because you can’t tell a more tragic
story.
Okay, so why?
What’s the basis of tragedy?
The most terrible set of possible things happens
to the least deserving person.
Right, and so that’s what happens – and
so what happens to Christ?
All his friends reject him, betrayed, tortured,
killed.
That’ll do it, that’s pretty good.
You get social rejection, you get betrayal,
you get tortured, you get death.
Okay, plus mental confusion, terrible mental
confusion, about destiny (that’s the Garden
of Yosemite).
Right, okay, so that’s on the tragic end.
And then on the innocence side?
He’s the perfect man.
And why is he tortured?
Because he’s good… archetypal story.
You can’t push past it, that’s what makes
it archetypal.”
Okay, so Peterson is of course correct when
he says that the story of Christ is archetypal,
and I’d go so far as to say that it’s
a pretty decent one too, but it’s not perfect
(that is, unless you redefine the word).
One could easily make the story more perfect…
to quote Sam Harris: “We can go incrementally
here, because I don’t even buy that it’s
the limit of tragedy…
I mean first of all, the thing is anchored
to a belief in human sacrifice.
This is what is so weird about Christianity
from my point of view, is that, this is not
a religion that disavows human sacrifice,
this is a religion that claims that human
sacrifice is real and important... but there
was only one that was in fact necessary and
effective, and that is the sacrifice of Jesus.
[…] I mean, to go back to what you were
saying, this is not the ultimate tragedy because
he did take it on voluntarily.
It’s more tragic if someone really gets
screwed by the cosmos.”
But despite this, what if Peterson was right?
What if the story of Christ was really archetypically
perfect?
What would this mean?
Well, this would mean that it’s of immense
value, because it would necessarily contain
a great deal about our evolved psychology…
but it wouldn’t mean that it actually happened
or that it’s ‘true’, would it?
“Now you might say, is it true?
And the answer to that is ‘it depends on
what you mean by true’.
Is Dostoevsky true?
Well, it’s fiction… yeah, but it’s more
true than real – it’s meta-true!
It’s more real than real.
A great novel is more real than real.
And, eh, and eh, a collection of stories like
the bible, that’s more real than meta-real.
It’s more real than fiction is.”
So as I was saying earlier, here’s where
things get really messy, and it’s largely
because of Peterson’s etymology, and more
specifically because of the definitions he
uses for words such as ‘true’, ‘real’,
‘perfect’ and ‘fact’.
But as I said in the previous video, while
this makes things confusing, it’s not flawed
– but what is flawed, is that he goes on
to assert that this ‘metaphorical truth’
supersedes ‘literal truth’, and that therefore
if a fact is metaphorically false it’s also
literally false, “The fundamentals of truth
are those that guide action, and then the
objective science is nested inside that […] The
ethical pursuit supersedes the scientific
pursuit with regards to truth claim”, but
I’ve addressed this in the previous video
and so won’t do so again here.
But what I will say that, no, works such as
Crime and Punishment, the bible, and Theogony
are not more real than real… unless, of
course, you redefine the word ‘real’...
But you know what?
If you want to redefine the word ‘real’
so that someone literally being murdered is
less ‘real’ than someone being murdered
in a novel, then as far as I’m concerned
you’re intellectually masturbating on the
graves of ‘real’ murder victims.
You’re playing a language game.
Now you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t
declared, let alone demonstrated, that Jungian
archetypes are in anyway flawed, and that’s
because, if I haven’t made this clear already,
I’m not convinced that they are.
While I think Jung made many unfounded assumptions,
I’m convinced that his central claim regarding
archetypes was, and still is, solid.
He’s right, if we want to know what makes
a good story, and to understand the deepest
parts of our nature, then we need only consult
our evolution – there’s real value in
archetypes, but the problem, again, and this
is where Peterson starts to sound new-agey,
is when he claims that certain very specific
expressions of archetypes are ‘true’…
or as Harris puts it: “I will grant you
that there are means that would amount to
a kind of costume party, where you can think
in terms of myth.
If you said to me, “Sam, I want you to think
of the rest of your day in terms of the hero
archetype - what are you doing today to slay
the dragon and bring back that hoarded wealth
to your community?”
that's a pattern of thought that I have no
question could have some utility, right?”
"Well that's what we were doing today, Sam."
“Right, but again, the crucial bit is that
in doing that, I'm not making claims to knowledge
about the ethereal existence of archetypes
- there's no, you know, Akashic record or
collective unconscious...
I'm not making claims of that kind at all
in order to find this way of thinking useful.
And I'm not aligning myself with any provincial
tradition of myth-making, i.e. a religion,
and claiming that my religion is better than
others - which is, you know, as we see every
time we open the newspaper, a divisive game
that we have to figure out some way of unravelling.”
The last point I want to make is that Peterson
himself is an embodiment of an archetype…
he’s the embodiment of the sacred lobster
archetype… okay, I’m joking – calm down.
For tens of thousands of people, who’re
mainly young white males who’re being unfairly
rejected by society, he’s the archetype
of the loving father.
He protects, directs, disciplines, and gives
conditional love.
He tells his children how to figure out what
they value “This is a process of soul-searching
– what are you orientated towards?”
how to sort out their life “Clean up your
room… that’s a good start – organise
your local landscape” and how to improve
themselves “Stop saying things that violate
your conscience”.
Hell, he’s even just released a book that’s
purpose is to advice people on how to live…
and you know what?
That’s fantastic!
People need loving parental figures, and in
the lives of many Peterson is doing a great
service.
But this explains, at least to a large extent,
why so many of his children won’t accept
me (the serpent) criticising him, even if,
really, deep down, they know that at least
some of my criticisms have solid merit.
This isn’t Jordan’s fault, of course,
but it’s an archetypal irony that’s worth
noting.
Anyhow, as always, thank you kindly for the
view, and an extra special thank you to my
wonderful patrons and those of you who’ve
donated via PayPal.
Without your support, videos such as this
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Oh, and as for the winner of this beauty,
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I’ll message you on the back-end of Patreon.
Until next time my fellow apes, until next
time.
