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Jordan Peterson is often called a rock star. It is a title he flatly rejects.

I am not a performance artist, states the celebrated clinical psychologist, I dont have fans, I have people who are listening carefully to what I am saying.

Petersons universal appeal is undeniable. His worldwide lecture tours routinely sell out and his bestseller 12 Rules for Life has been translated into more than 30 languages. Nearly three million followers subscribe to his YouTube channel, his lectures count a staggering 145 million views, and his podcast has been downloaded over 55,000,000 times.

The Toronto professor skyrocketed to fame in 2016, when he fiercely objected to Canadas C-16 bill, which mandated the use of transgender pronouns. Peterson became the traditionalists hero and his name soon became synonymous with the anti-PC movement.

But Petersons narrative does not concern politics or current events. His search is for eternal values virtues and themes that are common across all human experience, across all time.

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Moses was wandering around with the Israelites forever in the desert, Peterson tells the attentive audience. Theyre going left and going right and worshiping idols and having a hell of a time... getting rebellious, and Moses goes up on the mountain and he has this tremendous revelation, sort of, in the sight of God, and it illuminates him and he comes down with the law. Through mediating and trying to keep the peace, Moses considered what principles of peace would satisfy the people. Through Gods intervention he presented the Ten Commandments to the people to say, Look, this is already basically what were doing but now its codified. Thats all a historical process thats condensed into a single story, says Peterson. But obviously that happened, because we have written law that emerged from the bottom up.

LAW IS also touched on through the first chapters of Genesis, along with the idea that both male and female were made in the image of God.

The notion that every single human being regardless of their peculiarities, strangenesses, sins, crimes and all of that has something Divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role... in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. Its an idea that Peterson believes sits at the base of our legal system. We see how the archetypal Adam and Eve story represents a situation we are always in. Just like Adam and Eve, we humans live in a walled garden, explains Peterson, but there is always a snake. The garden is a place of paradise, warmth, love and sustenance, but its also the place where something can pop up at any moment and knock you out of it. Through Abraham, the father of nations who was ordered by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, we consider what sacrifice is. We realize how without sacrifice, modern civilization would not have come into being. It is our ability to envision ourselves in the future and the need to make a sacrifice in the present that allowed us to progress and thrive.

We follow Cain and Abels dramatic tale as they lead two different life paths. Abel pleases God while Cain becomes resentful and murderous. Through Peterson we see how Cains torment grows. Gods rejection of his sacrifices means that his attempts to give up something valuable in the present to ensure prosperity in the future are insufficient, and in consequence, he fails to prosper.

Every line is a passage to our past, loaded with illuminating insight into human psyche, behavior, evolution and even the origin of the text itself. The story of the Mesopotamian deity Marduk, for example, sheds light on what the Hebrew words tohu vavohu typically translated as unformed and void actually mean. Marduk, who had eyes all the way around his head, fought a deity called Tiamat. We need to know that, explains Peterson, because the word Tiamat is associated with the word tehom. Tehom is the chaos that God makes order out of at the beginning of time in Genesis. Petersons exploration of biblical stories is a journey filled with enlightenment and wonder.

More than 21 million people have tuned in and listened to Petersons gripping journey into the mysterious tales. We see the values and virtues upon which our entire civilization is founded, and the repercussions of neglecting them. We realize that values such as responsibility, humility, sacrifice, striving and courage have lasted for a reason, how they enabled the construction of our magnificent civilization, and the danger posed to our very existence if we lose them.

The idea is to see if theres something at the bottom of this amazing civilization that weve managed to structure, and that I think is in peril, says Peterson. Maybe if we understand it a little bit better we wont be so prone just to throw the damn thing away.

Originally posted here:
Jordan Peterson turns to Genesis for lessons on civilization in peril - The Jerusalem Post