Jordan Peterson

[Vegetarian Marshmallow]

Hey guys, I've been very interested in this guy - Jordan Peterson - recently. He's a Canadian psychologist and he has a channel on Youtube which has many videos I think would be interesting to depressed and anxious people.

He talks a lot about the meaning and symbolism of religions (mostly Christianity) as they relate to life, and ties it in with his psychological knowledge. I'm not religious, but I appreciate that religions were made up and contributed to by many many people over a very long time, and all those people have injected their wisdom into the religions. So I think there can be useful messages in religions, even though none of them are literally true. Anyway, check him out.

[JessF]

Hello Vegetarian Marshmallow, thank you for the recommendation. I will have to look into him a bit more, my first encounter with him was on the Sam Harris podcast, where he has been on a couple of times. Their first encounter was a rather frustrating one where they argued about the definition of 'truth' for several hours. It made my head spin a little. The next encounter was a little more productive.

I am very intersted in the place of religion as a source of wisdom, and how we can take the good and leave behind the bad bits that have caused much trouble over the centuries.

[Vegetarian Marshmallow]

Haha, yes! I also discovered him through Sam Harris. I'm definitely on Sam's side as far as that first conversation went. Peterson also says some stuff about postmodernism that I don't agree with entirely, or which strike me as nonsense at first glance but I have to read more to figure out what I think. He's got lots of cool ideas about the religious stuff, though. Things about dominance hierarchies, the unknown/known / chaos, Jungian shadow, archetypes. I haven't read any Jung but I have the feeling it'd be much less accessible than Peterson (which isn't something I have time to delve into at the moment).