I half agree with the criticisms of Peterson towards the end of this video, in that everything that was criticized is technically true. But I'd give him more credit in the sense that I think he's aware of that. I think Peterson is giving people who feel totally lost and overwhelmed a simple, easy to understand, already culturally-ingrained interpretation of the world that is beneficial and gets them to start thinking more deeply about myth, archetypes, and their relevance to our lives. I haven't found anyone else who does it so clearly as Peterson; in fact, Peterson is the reason I'm now getting more into Vervaeke's work and trying to get to the "next level" so to speak, three years later. It'd be interesting to ask Peterson about that directly, but that's my impression... I don't think he's being misleading, just purposefully simplifying things, and I think it does much more good than harm.
The critiques are fair enough... ...though, whenever I see people offering their criticisms, it is like listening to someone sitting on a bleacher bench shouting at a quarterback for throwing the ball 2 inches too high, while being rushed by 5 300 pound defensive backs trying to break his neck.
In that vein, I think what Peterson means when he says "You know what to do" is targeted at young people who haven't "cleaned up their rooms" yet. I don't think he means it as unilateral advice for all times and all places, like "Use the Force."
Should Dr. Peterson decide to jump back into the fray, and should he manage to avoid the trap of political commentary, these are the kinds of conversations I'd love to see him be part of.
@adsfafad dude you dont need to knight so hard for him anymore. Most people generally know what his about. Put down the word-sword, and pick up the books.
I totally resonate with Anderson's description of trudging through Jung's corpus and periodically bumping into those deeply affecting gems that justify the whole endeavor.
I have spoken with Anderson and he has agreed to make himself available for a live Q&A on Fri Feb 7, 2020 at 1500 EST here: th-cam.com/video/BsUquRO-70w/w-d-xo.html
I don't see a further discussion of whether JP is sufficiently Jungian in any particular dimension as being fruitful whether or not you feel he does the same to his critics. The point is what he has to offer that can assist in abating the meaning crisis. Everyones character and work is insufficient in mutiple dimensions.
@@GCU-GreyArea I don't think the problem is criticism per se, but the response it generates spirals out of control, thwarting the purpose of the criticism. Peterson haters generally can't resist an extra twist of the knife and that triggers many who find it undermines the self- stated noble intent of the original criticism. Emotions are just too high at this moment, and I think Prof Vervaeke's best course is to just stay on message and let things sort out on their own, for the time being. Otherwise, would be to strap on a sword and let conflict derail his argument. I think Prof Vervaeke is looking for but will not find a middle ground in the polarized salience landscape in which Peterson operates.
@@GCU-GreyArea I think you are quite right too, but in the non-ideal world we live in, timing and circumstance matters. This is the first comment thread of Vervaeke, Pageau, Vander Klay et al that I have seen "go off the rails" and it was not an accident.
@@lawrencedavid9728 One of the things we had to learn in my family, and sometime in my church, is how to fight. And how to fight hard. Without losing our minds. I got a nephew who went to college, and one of the best things he said he learned was how to deal with issues and people you disagree with in a non - judgmental way. Is it possible to separate this Peterson fellow from his beliefs? Or anybody? Maybe Vervaeke has a way of providing a way of dealing with "contentious concerns". Maybe he can provide an example of "how to fight". Isn't he in the martial arts or something? Maybe he has a way of suggesting what's relevant, and what's not about all this.
What a brilliant conversation. I sometimes wonder if what Jordan is doing is intended to be compensatory and 'of the moment.' Much of what he says seems to square with Anderson's presentation of Jung. Peterson looks to be less concerned with presenting a fleshed-out theoretical model than he is with making an impact and filling certain cultural voids. For example, I think that he 'overemphasizes' logos over eros because the generation he's speaking to has largely lost an appreciation for logos. People in my age range, myself included, often see rules and order as arbitrary, and as a result we drown in chaos. Jordan's overemphasis of certain parts of Jung are only 'overemphasized' from a neutral theoretical vantage point, but it may be just what the doctor ordered, from a cultural standpoint. Similarly, I think that his defense and presentation of Christianity ends up revising Christianity while updating it with some Gnostic insights. I see this all as analogous to Jung and how careful he was with managing his image and avoiding accusations of mysticism. It lays the groundwork for changes down the road by shifting the window of discourse.
Yes, this was exactly my feeling while watching this video. My understanding from watching Peterson is not that he believes that is the whole of Jungian psychology or even the most important; he only believes that's what's most important at this moment in time. I think what Todd touched on (the media's overdosing on the hero myth) has resulted in a kind of tolerance to it. People are no longer really paying attention to it with any sincerity, it's become kind of a joke to many people or a status quo that needs to be fought against. It appears to me that Peterson simply saw this and is trying to patch up the hole, not that he actually believes the hero myth is all there is to someone's entire life.
As far as I see it, Peterson favors the practical over the theoretical, which means he's bound to misrepresent theory according to experts of the disciplines he touches. Of course his audience are not such experts--they're more like a mass of micro-clients. To touch on the final thoughts in the video, telling people that they have a conscience, know what is right, and should act on it, is far more useful to the average person than explaining why theoretically their choices are ultimately irresolvable.
I agree with that point that JBP overemphasises Logos over Eros, particularly in his compensatory-to-culture role. I suspect from listening to his lectures that in his clinical practice the process is much more nuanced in how those opposing orientations are weighted. I think "Maps of Meaning" is very much an attempt by JBP to present a fully fleshed out theoretical model however. And I suppose the attempt to reduce that edifice to a series of "Rules for Life " for a mass audience more unfamiliar with the cultural canon or scientific literature he draws from is going to see his position lose a degree of rigor also.
@@redtrek2153 for sure: and I think even comparing Peterson to Verveake, Verveake has a Philosophy degree and seems to me to be far more fluent in that canon than Peterson who doesn't.
As to Dr. Peterson's personal motivation, I thought that was eminent and obvious: his work as a clinician is never far from his mind, and one gets the impression that he really viscerally cares about helping improve the functionality and agency of others. Obviously there is no foundational basis for the myths he uses as a basis for his societal therapy. These are just myths that are sufficiently comfortable and familiar to him to permit him to use Jungian analysis to derive germane and Western-relatable interpretations of his core work, Maps of Meaning.
Individuation makes sense alongside Jung's quote that "“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” -- actually I was looking for a different quote that states something like, man's goal is to bring that which is unconscious into consciousness. In other words, until we become fully aware and can account for the entire scope of our facticity, "who we are" evades us and we cannot act as fully responsible persons.
In relation to the criticism of Jordan Peterson's discussion of shadow work, this quote from Rumi seems relevant: ""Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."
Circa 1:50 criticizing JP's approach to shadow because it's outward/heroic rather than reflective. 12 Rules 6) Set your house in order before you criticize the world. 9) Assume the person you are listening to might know something you don't. These 2 rules are specific injunctions to reflective shadow work. So there.
Re: 1:49:30 a very important distinction between signs and symbols. "Symbols are multiaspectual and inexhaustible ... A sign means a thing, a symbol means a lot of things and is endlessly disclosing; that is the point of it. That's why it's sacred, that's why it's useful."
I agree that Jordan Peterson is not beyond critique but also acknowledge his experience with actual people from his clinical practice. This gives him more insight then other academic intellectuals! So his messages when put in to practice are very effective and proven so by individuals so if his interpretation shadow is not fully “correct” is trivial in the goal of helping people to help themselves to practice responsibility and discover meaning as an offset to eminent suffering!
As David Fuller said in a very recent "My Journey with the IDW - JV is one of the emerging thinkers of the next decade. Great discussion, clarified a number of my concerns.
Our modern conception of the hero's journey too often puts the individual on a pedestal while forgetting ka tet. No hero ever succeeds on his/her own. They are *always* part of a group, or at least reliant on others. The hero's journey is more often about transformation through connection and relationship with each other and the world. There's no place like home.
yes, probably hero's journey is the story of inner transformation. applied to outside context (as is done by mass media) it is a story of extreme individualism on the border with narcissism
@@phiswe that's why I added 'at least reliant on others' as a caveat. Also, he has his mates(?) horn now, which seems to have something to do with successfully completing the journey, or getting a step closer to doing so anyway. (Sorry for the vagueness, my memory isn't the greatest.)
We also now know that luck plays a much higher role in our life outcomes than we like to admit. The hero's journey gives us a false sense of control in an often random environment.
I could use a couple more hours of this ... I'd want to quit the video, then they would get onto something that fascinated me. I liked JV's comment about criticism. Serious work requires some criticisms. I was glad to hear some counters to Peterson, as he is one of my heros. Heros require scrutiny else we become slaves.
Brilliant conversation to follow up finishing the meaning crisis before going through my second run through. And as someone who found immense value in Jordan’s work I feel the criticism of him was very fair and powerful, would like to see his response to it.
Two Canadians discuss a "mouse coming out from behind a couch" @ 20:00. Fantastic. Please make use of being "out in a boat fishing for trout" to continue maximising the Canadian accent.
If that’s the best critique a Jungian scholar who has been reading Jung since 12 years old could come up with, considering the sheer amount of materials JP put out there, I am relieved. With regard to that shadow critique, Todd himself seems to follow the same recipe Peterson subscribed to his audiences in his resentment example. He realized his projection, figured out what was it he was projecting - that’s internal shadow work, but then took actions and confronted externally to invite the guy for a beer. That seems like an internal external shadow work process.... to integrate shadow, just internalizing it isn’t enough, is it? Also regarding “you know what to do” critique, I don’t think JP said you know what to do to align yourself between order and chaos, however if you happen to achieve that perfect alignment , you know it. Nonetheless, I learned a lot from this video!!
Really valuable. Thank you. BTW this has reminded me of a discussion between JP and Sam Harris. At the end they were both asked what they fear the most or something. And when listening to their answers, you could see it like black on write where their great theories are coming from. This was actually the most fascinating aspect of the whole discussion. Points me right now to my own shadow work again and that is how I remembered the discussion. Sometimes you just create a theory or a whole paradigm to counter something deep inside you don't want to see, I guess. What I mean to say, it is interesting to discuss theories, but it's really mad how personal aspects can lurk in, even into science. Who were all these people? Plato, Nietzsche, Jung... Reminds me again of Jonathan Haidt, how you create arguments only after your opinion is already long formed...
Whew. So much to learn, so little time. Echoing Prof. Todd’s introductory statement on his early delving into some of this material; it’s tough but every so often there’s a nougat that gives one enough to keep pushing forward through difficult material. We inherently know it’s worthy of the effort even if we can’t initially see the forest for the trees.
I’m not as well educated as some lucky people but I have read the spread of thinkers from Nietzsche to Foucault (who despite being partly responsible for opening some dangerous paths is still a mesmerisingly fascinating thinker/writer). I search the internet to its edges and I truly believe you guys (and Peterson) are literally the best (at least western) thinkers in the world right now. It is truly a privilege to be able to simply listen in as if I were almost there and so am hugely grateful to be able to do so. It is your thinking and sharing that has helped me away from addiction and possibly death. My humblest thanks 🙏❤️
This was wonderful. I actually began reading Jung because of Jordan, but I found it difficult to square Jung's concepts totally with what Jordan was saying, and was using his interpretations as sort of a lens to read Jung with. This video helped articulate and map where Jordan's models seem to land relative to Jung's in a useful way.
finally someone speaking about Peterson's interpretation of shadow work. It never sat well with me that it was just "speak truth/courage to resentment".
@@6Unclesoh so you mean in short format, taken out of context, without explanation or expansion… got it. Get most of your info from tick-tock and 30 sec vids do you?
Profiling for Propaganda - describing the deep project of the NAZI party to destroy the AshkeNAZI people- an archetype war - the Americans needed to understand the cultural forces
The breadth and depth of JP's work deals with most of the criticism that Anderson and JV bring up, and I have little doubt that if Jordan was present he would round out his thinking on any particular controversial statement as, to me, he is holds his truth claims tentatively rather than absolutely. JP is not beyond criticism but it needs to be deeply considered not to come across as a some sort of resentment.
correct - which it does and questions as to the political leanings of these gentlemen being raised. The old, old gossip about Jung and Nazi's has been addressed in his own correspondence and those of his personal contemporaries - he was abjectly against totalitarianism and especially socialism. Watch the last 5 minutes - no dispute: th-cam.com/video/2AMu-G51yTY/w-d-xo.html
after processing this overnight I can more clearly articulate what I think about this. I have personally came to JV video series from a link in Jordan Peterson email back in February. And I love what John is doing - integrating pretty much everything which I found relevant in my personal journey. But without first encountering JP I probably would not be receptive enough to get into the level of analysis that JV offers. JP rose in popularity by offering arguably a strong and little bit dogmatic view of the world, but it was exactly what was in demand in that time - around 2013-2016. Trump and Brexit were part of the same phenomenon, but I do not want to get into politics. In my opinion that was (and probably still is) a period similar to Great Depression, but the economic statistics masked it because of creative central banking policies. The day to day experience for a sizeable majority of the population was very different than what was suggested by stock markets or mass media. And the most attacked and despised group was white males in developed world. The policy effecting this was 'political correctness' taken to the extremist ideology levels. So JP capitalised on the opportunity (as well as Trump and Brexit movement) and filled in the gap. JP gave lots of people a compelling view of the world, may be too simplistic, but good enough to basically start pushing back on mindless PC/victimisation by taking personal responsibility and starting to create meaning in their lives. Meaning that was lost due to economic and social changes. Yes, JP is using the same tools of propaganda and emotional messaging as the opponents (SJW, radical 'liberals' etc). But the messages he is pushing are actually helpful. Both for individuals and, i would argue, for the culture. As much as he is painted as a regressive figure he is a force for good. Of course JP can operate in a very different level, but he is a showman and responds to the audience level of life experience. What was needed when he was rising in popularity is leading people from the basic steps of taking responsibility of their lives, getting their room tidy, getting close relationships right etc etc. This was in stark contrast to 'change the world first'/SJW/narcissistic mentality pushed by mass culture. So he was going against 'spiritual bypassing', against 'self-transcendence from zero'. As a clinical psychologist he knows this is wrong to skip levels of self development. And of course JP was risking a lot by doing what he was doing at the time he was doing it. Lots of people before him ruined their careers by standing up against PC. He could be one of them. But he probably was lucky with timing/use of technology etc, in addition to being skilled to chose his messages and articulate them in the form that would be actionable by majority of his audience.
This is fantastic! Now how is it applicable to people that are in existential crisis? Does this depth of thinking we’re getting somewhere with all of this, Do you think it could’ve helped Nietzsche from losing his mind? Happy new to all... 🦋🕊🤔
@@SuperAlex512 this comment is damned eloquent! I love it. And I appreciated your point about JP working with people's spiritual needs instead of bypassing them. So important!
10:42 I believe Peterson mentions this in a taped U of T lecture back in 2016 or 2017. As I recall, Peterson expresses great relief having this data point with which to defend Jung (and himself, indirectly) against the wide-spread misconception that Jung was reprehensible.
When he says Jung went 'more cosmic towards the end' in some degree: you can see this 'simplification while still expressing the important details to get across the essence' · when looking at how painters or other artists that do highly detailed 'realism' tend to go very loose whole preserving the essence. It's a common 'Confucianist youth to Taoist elder' transition. Bruce Lee saying 'When he started: a punch was a punch and a kick was a kick... with more experience: a punch was no longer a punch and a kick was no longer a kick (because he was breaking then apart in analysis) - eventually with understanding/mastery: a punch and kick were once again just a punch and a kick'. - This is the development process phases seen through one particular lense worth note.
Regarding the first question in the description, whether Peterson has misinterpreted Jung or not is insubstantial. What matters is if Peterson's version is useful, and if its differences from Jung's are likely to cause trouble. The rest is only noteworthy for Jung-scholars.
I thought Todd’s expounding of the Shadow was rather useful. I don’t think JP would disagree either, or that he hasn’t explained it in a similar manner in one of his thousand and one mentions of it. I read a comment from someone on YT months ago contemplating their discovery of this concept as something that needed to be developed. Having JP as my primary exposure to “the shadow” my immediate response was exactly that of Anderson. It is already there, properly integrating it should be the work. Point being, JPs lectures have implicitly conveyed the distinction, if not to my recollection elucidated it as clearly as was stated in this video.
@@MrTTnTT just re-read your comment, slowly. It doesn't matter if someone misrepresented ideas as long as they are useful. Terrible idea, imagine if philosophers said that.
@@emmashalliker6862 Try re-reading it again, slowly. "and if its [Peterson's version of the shadow] differences from Jung's are likely to cause trouble." Got it covered already. :)
Thank you so much for pointing and reminding me of some of Dr JPB’s lack of efforts or shortages or omissions. I follow his teaching because he has been telling and selling stories that we can understand and relate. He sometimes says things that I already knew but I didn’t know I knew already; He is a great story teller and a Professor, and sometime he confuses which role should come first and when? If he is the Yang, I think you John is the Ying? He needs you now more than ever so thank you for being a great friend. Happy New Year! Looking forward to 2020 to see more works from you and your friends. Also looking forward to the next 12 Rules of Life. When you have some spare time, can you give 12 Rules for Life a book review sir? But I know you are extremely busy. Congrats on your recent promotion and welcome back from your sabbatical.
Emma Shalliker , Thank you for pointing that out! I do repeat what he says and that is a problem, I realize. I will try to use my own words. I am 51 and I left Vietnam when I was 14., and I am a Buddhist. I already knew so much about what it’s like to live under Communism and being a religious person. But I never knew what I knew about both until he put my experiences into words. Happy New Year!
@@emmashalliker6862 That's okay to repeat someone for a time when one is trying to find herself or is choosing someone to model herself after. We all do this at some point. Or did! We weren't born fi nished and we imitate those to whom we look "up"
I was out for run earlier today, listening to this again and got a realization. You mentioned that Jung became more inclined towards mysticism towards the end of his life, coming from a resistance to it. I was then thinking about Anderson, who is still young and holds on to the ideals of science, *for now*. I'll disclose right away that the point I'm making is that there might be an inherent difference between a younger person and a person who has reached a ripe old age regarding the attitude towards spirituality. It got me thinking of WHY that is, and why that is significant. We like to think that old age is related to wisdom, and wisdom is rarely and simply a manifestation of objectivity. It is a life long learning of what is important and what is not and how to synthesize that into meaningful words for others. So, is it telling that a man like Jung became more spiritual with age? Ok, I know I don't sell the point properly. The punch line of all this is that the function that religion might serve is the transfer of old-age wisdom from old people who have learned the important things in life THROUGH BECOMING OLD, to the young who will do the wrong things for 45-50-55-60 years before learning. How would you transfer the knowledge to the young? Through intricate meaning-weaving that transmits the wisdom of old age and "all" you have to do as a youth is to listen and adhere to the principles. That way you walk in the shoes of the people before you and do not repeat the faults that the old already know are faults. I don't know, religion became justified in my eyes through that realization. Perhaps the way to make it more accessible to people in this day and age is to get rid of the supernatural parts and just relay the information. We do not want to believe in anything today and it makes us weaker. We don't have to believe in anything supernatural, but we have to have a system of behavior to believe in or else we drift apart. We try find substitutes but fail miserably, which makes sense if Christianity really is several thousands of years of behavioral wisdom passed down from the old to the new.
This is motivating me to go read my thick dense Jung books again. I'm reminded of Alan Moore's assessment of Star Wars: a fundamentalist work of science fiction if there ever was one, that turned the clock back to the ideas of the genre from 50 years before. A pleasure to listen to you two gents, thanks.
I really enjoy Jung because it gives meaning to the seemingly absurd pain of existence. The idea that neurosis is a substitute for suffering hit me last year. True suffering is the experience of taking that heroic journey. If the journey happens then the neurosis is no longer needed because it isn't needed, it is teleological. Collectively the inability of the masses to carry their cross means we make ourselves and those around us more miserable. We lack the capacity take responsibility for ourselves and 'pick up a load' as Jordan says. Wokeism for instance requires the state to take over the individuals suffering, or find groups to take on this nebulous suffering of other groups. The individual is diminished and they regress into an infantile state, the population is infantilized and life loses meaning. You become nihilistic. That's been more or less my take away from reading Jung and listening to Peterson. If you can embody these things it is quite something.
Fantastic discussion, really puts your awakening lectures into direct relationship to one of the prophets. Do you have plans on covering the other prophets in the same way? 1:40:30: I am pretty sure JBP means that the person might have pushed the ability to be assertive and “difficult” into the shadow. This is often brought up by JBP in conjunction with the psychological profiles of for example sudden mass shooters, something he often talks about. In that sense, integrating anger from the shadow, and acting on it, before the resentment grows to an uncontrollable scale, is indeed shadow work. This, according to him, is therefore also important in order to mitigate growing collective resentment (which undoubtedly is his primary concern). In that sense, the hero myth becomes very important to mitigate collective resentment. But sure, resentment could also be mitigated (and shadow work made) by questioning why one feels resentment against something in the first place. Would also be great if JBP could be brought into the discussion next.
The statement that Peterson fetishizes certainty must just be the statement of someone who missed a great deal while listening/reading Peterson. One of the main admonitions Peterson makes is that we are faced with a terrible Unknown. He says there are things we do know, however, like utterly basic things like we shouldn't intentionally deceive (except in truly outlier situations) and that organizing our most immediate space is useful (clean your room) and that from those foundations we can proceed effectively into the unknown and ideally develop levels of certainty. This is possibly similar to what Vervaeke describes as participatory or procedural knowing. Of course, lecturing and writing is at the propositional level and in this way I could just turn and criticize Anderson and say "you seem to think you know that you don't know things" and he would be subject to the same critique in a way that would create a recursive loop, but that wouldn't maybe be fair to him but I don't think its fair to Peterson either.
I think you're right sir. Perhaps part of what Vervaeke presents as relevance realization is what helps deal with the circularity of "knowing" and criticizing you refer to. It does seem that Peterson wants to address the evil "that transcends human malice". At the same time he will switch focus to the individual ( responsibility, possibilities, etc.). There is an exercise like this that some perform to elicit a certain state of consciousness ( switching back and forth between something local and particular to a broad distant horizon, but I can't remember much about it.) Your comment made me recall poor Euthyphro in Plato's dialogue. I believe part of Vervaeke's project involves understanding how relevance realization begins the process of breaking the hermeneutic circle that binds everbody in these recurcive loops. Like a disengaged clutch: the engine is running in the red zone, but the wheels aren't turning. :)
Excellent conversation, thank you. Learnt a lot about Jung. And some very pertinent critiques of Peterson's weak spots e.g. his over-emphasis on the hero/warrior myth, allying Jung with Christianity, and his fetishisation of 'certainty' - as in "you know what to do" (1:55:00). Re. the latter, I was struck by John's remark that this was "decadent romanticism".
The archetypes are patterns of thought, behavior, and feeling. They have two poles--"spirit" and "instinct". As neo-Jungian James Hillman emphasized, thinking in terms of the polytheistic gods is an easy way to understand what the archetypes are. The gods have both an anthropomorphic (spirit) form and an animal (instinctual form). Take Ares for example. He is a representation of the fiery male aggression which can manifest as instincts to fight and attack, which lead to those aggressive behaviors as well as ideas about warrior culture. He is also represented by a wolf. That is an archetype: a pattern of instinctual aggression as well as the behaviors, thoughts and feelings that accompany it. In an individual case the dreams will show if the Ares archetypal pattern is too strong or too weak and adjustments can be made. Then there's Ceres, the nurturing maternal archetype. And Aphrodite, the archetype of female sexuality. seduction and fertility. Aspects of Aphrodite can overlap with those of Ceres. etc., etc. This is why Jungians have non-Christian mythological traditions so valuable in helping modern clients differentiate their own psyches.
Fascinating and helpful! Thank you both so much. I’m especially helped by that idea of the “golden shadow” -working to engage with those good yet unaccessed parts of myself. I’ve also had multiple dreams like the kind you mentioned: a threatening monster appears, but it morphs into something harmless or good when I approach it voluntarily. I didn’t know this was a common thing!
This is pretty awesome to witness. Insightful to say the least and above all driven by curiosity and courage through openness and epistemic humility. In the spirit of philo-sophia and - I suppose - in love of humanity. Thank you for sharing.
Appreciate the video...I’ll have to come back in 30 years though when I fully understand what they (mainly Vervaeke) are talking about, lol. Maybe if I had started reading Jung when I was 12....
I found that it was useful to read Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" in terms of Dostoevsky putting pieces of his consciousness into a dramatic space, and watching them interact. Honestly, I think that this is the point of most drama. Remember the scene in Endgame, where all the resurrected heroes came back and lined up for the final battle against Thanos? That was awesome.
I found interesting what you said about the resurrected heroes, what do you mean???. I remember dreaming about mercury the god, which in my dream was apocalypsis and vigo the carpathian (from ghostbusters 2), he had all the heroes trapped in a circle of energy, never understood what that meant, but the feeling was that the dream was very alchemical and archetypal.
@@yoganandavalle Mostly I was thinking that connecting with the human mind firing on all cylinders. Every hero is one aspect of a human personality, one form of awe-inspiring competence, each with its own background and story. When every lesson you've ever learned, every scar you've ever earned, even whne you'd half-forgotten them, comes back at once to help you triumph -- it's hard to express just how appealing that is.
Thank you very much for doing this. I am incorporating some of Jung's ideas into my own framing of the world and it helps me to understand and accept many of the dark and hurtful behaviours I see every day. Oddly enough it is this acceptance that gives me hope and direction to make changes in my own small circle that may tilt the world incrementally towards being a better place.
Excellent unbelievably high level discussion Interesting criticism, mostly I just take them for what they are. Although, not sure I agree that symbols must be taken as inexhaustible. There may be reason to believe that but there seems to be plenty of reason to not believe that. Depends if you want to go with Jung on it. Peterson's take would be that symbols are episodic representations of information, which makes them very highly interconnected but by no means literally infinite (although maybe technically infinite). As well, I don't think this discussion properly centered around Maps of Meaning like it should have--THAT'S Peterson. Value hierarchy determining salience, the heroic Logos as the principle-spirit that integrates anomaly thus updating moral-behavioral wisdom. Like, Peterson's claim isn't that certainty is right at hand if only recognized--it's that chaos can be explored by consciousness, courageously, to turn unclarity (emotion, eg.) into clarity. His recommendation is to play your own game by your own rules, whatever it is, but to use your imagination about what could be good (be conscious about your values, thus pushing them higher than the default mode of being), and to pay attention to your own emotions as signs that either you played your own game wrong, or anomalous information is manifesting itself that can be used to _straighten out the game_ thus changing your personality/morality and improving you. He's not for the praising of clarity as such, he's for the process that produces clarity. That is why he focuses so much on the heroic myth. I feel like your opinions about the Hero myth being "too central" for Peterson and the culture at large is directly connected to this misunderstanding of his idea of morality and clarity. Really, any discussion about Peterson should, as far as I can tell, be absolutely centered on Maps of Meaning, the book, first and foremost.
@@emmashalliker6862 That comment references Maps of Meaning, common Peterson sayings, and the video above. It's probably difficult to follow if you haven't seen or read all of Peterson's stuff, which, obviously most people don't have reason to have done.
Wonderful interview - you listen intelligently and intervene with insightful questions which move the discussion forward congruent ly. . You can feel the erudition in the room. Great start to 2020. Thank you very much.
I'm a Peterson fan but why is it so hard for people to accept legit criticism of the man? At what point are you not defending the man but a belief system? The very thing he warns against.
@@hgzmatt while I agree that's a fair point, I've seen some awful hit pieces on him, I still have to agree with Sam Harris when he says Jordan will say something profound and true then in the next breath say something so silly with exactly the same confidence. To many people think he's unquestionably perfect and every word he says is. It's boarders on really silly at that point. Jordan himself would tell people not to do that, there has to be some foam of transference and projection going on, has to be.
@@hgzmatt he's not a celebrity though mate, he's a clinical psychologist making serious and impactful truth claims and some of them are completely silly.
1:31:46 - Anderson just recaps on what Jung means by the shadow, and this for me accounts for the personae. Why mitigate your free expression if every vice and virtue that springs from it is met with warmth and validation? So I'm thinking that the masks we wear are the behavioural consequence of rejected parts of ourselves? So here's the rub for me. We suppress certain facets of who we are in order to be seen and heard in the world. This necessitates an evaluation of our free expression from which the personae is constructed. This mask wearing is re-enforced by our culture not because anyone who act's directly from their ego (uninhibited) poses a threat to our orderly structuring, but because it offers a shadow mirror back to those in positions of responsibility. So we are unconsciously supporting the continuing habit of creating shadows as a necessary measure to be seen and heard, while collectively undermining the civil substructure because of the unrest within our own being, which is being projected out as an enemy of some sort. So you could see ecological collapse as a manifestation of our unexamined (or unprocessed) collective shadow, and that the best way to tackle this existential super tsunami (metaphor!) is to reconcile our relationship with ourselves, which in turn brings clarity to our "having" and "being" needs, which would in turn generate greater fulfilment and far less consumption due to such clarity...
1:59:13 Jungian statement par excellence: "There are no demons" When I was a child I had monster dreams. Instead of destroying them, I converted them into allies. #wololo
John my man, you need to find some shirts that better fit your body. Talk about holding the tension of the opposites 😆 (Sorry, but I couldn't help myself. This was a fun conversation to listen to.) Regarding the questions around 44:00 there's an adage from James Hillman (that might have come from Jung), "Psyche isn't in you, you are in Psyche". Very much like the Atman-Brahman relationship. Individual soul as an aspect (and reflection?) of the universal soul. Also, for better understanding some of what you were wrestling with, check out Edward Edinger's model of individuation, which clearly describes the development of ego-Self axis relationship and it's fluctuations. Appreciate this conversation, keep 'em coming!
I feel like the divine double in neuroscientific terms is the beginning of an insight cascade, like flow is but on a completely different timescale. In a sense, I suppose, it's a state where you subconsciously access information about past states at which you have transformed, and then that information is used and mimicked so it can put you in an a state where transformation is possible. Symbolically - the divine double knows exactly how you learn best. (This is just a thought by the way, I have no idea what I'm talking about, any reply is appreciated)
Great discussion: in fact, it is so rare to hear an intelligent back & forth focused on Jung thought it can stop right there. Although I think if you asked the same questions to older Jungians you may get a more robust conversation: Murray Stein, James Hollis and Nathan Schwartz Salant - all neo-Jungians with extensive clinical experience you may get to a deeper dialogue. BTW for the Mind-Matter aspect of the Pauli-Jung dialogues, Harald Atmanspacher, editor of The Mind-Matter journal will also add important perspectives under current research. Lastly, given the importance of what you are addressing, having conversations who will readily understand your overarching intention, yet are not people who are part of your network of relationships may considerably further the conversation. In any case, good work and thank you for your considerable effort and courage in publicly working thru the inquiry you are conducting. LAD 6267
I think the models that we use to understand Jung's ideas are vital to comprehension of them. I interpret Jung to have a monistic, layered view of human consciousness; so if you think of each individual ego as comprising the boundary of the totality of the Self, then beneath that we have each individual person's family background and history, then we have cultural and linguistic specificities, then we have the archetypes of the mother, father, hero etc. and then there is the ground of being, the Self, which I relate to the Platonic Form of the Good/God which sits at the heart of consciousness and from which meaning derives.
His explanation to shadow work is also Jordan Peterson's explanation. I don't think he followed Petersons explanation well enough. He either didnt follow or just heard Petersons explanation from a very specific scenario/question. Like a Q&A or interview. He literally explains integrating the shadow. Not denouncing it. That's the dragons gold. So confronting yourself about something (usually something you've neglected or willfully blinded of) and integrating it in a "positive" manner.
Thank you. I spend a lot of time soaking up and chewing on ideas and just the experience of learning is almost ecstatic for me. Your dialogues with Jordan Peterson are wonderful, too. You challenge one another and that is good for him and for you.
Picking up on a minor point here. John mentions ‘right effort’ toward the end of the talk as the balance between too much and too little effort. How might this concept be related to Jordan Peterson’s stance on understanding things at various levels of resolution? For example, too much effort is when you are attempting to function at a level that requires an understanding at a significantly greater level of resolution than currently available to someone. Too little effort, might indicate the opposite.
What an excellent discussion - thank you both very much! This was a rich and insightful talk which I found really illuminating. I would like to offer a critique of one of the propositions that I heard being put forward. However I would also like to stress my humility in this effort as there is much I do not fully understand here... The claim I would like to critique is: "Jung is a non-theist". From reading Jung my sense is that he, like Jordan Peterson following him, was anxious to concern himself strictly with the "Imago Dei" (Image of God) in the soul as opposed to the question of God in itself. There is something Kantian about that as you both note. I think the influence of Freud and the rationalism / materialism of the 19th-century should not be understated here. The intellectual context within which Jung wrote was deeply sceptical of potentially religious claims in the domain of psychology. I think the same probably holds today with Jordan Peterson. This is tragic from my point of view, and Anderson rightly picks up on this, because psychology means "the study of the soul" - hence it is a discipline which is religious in essence. Anderson is right to stress how Jung, contra other psychologists, takes the soul seriously. Which is precisely what any "psychologist" should be doing. There is a fundamental ambiguity in Jung on the question of God (again, there is an evident echo of this in Jordan Peterson). Jung when asked whether he believed in God stressed his problems with the word "belief" and emphasised instead that he "knows". Which sounds very Gnostic, not Christian. However I am not so sure. It sounds to me like a stressing of the "participatory" modality as primary relative to the "propositional". Mircea Eliade for example thought that religion begins with a "hierophany" (a revelation of the sacred). This maps onto Jung's idea of the "numinous" I think. The idea that religion, first and foremost, has to do with the phenomenological reality of encountering the transcendent. It is participatory first and foremost. My point is that, for me at least, Jung's work forms a "bridge" to theism precisely by stressing the interior 'merely psychological' reality of the Imago-Dei (Image of God) and the phenomenology of religious experience. So I mean the "theism" / "non-theism" thing is something that I don't see clearly answered or addressed in Jung for understandable reasons. However in my experience, and I think this is what is curative and healing about his work, his ideas do 'open up', 'afford' or 'suggest' the possibility of an encounter with a transcendent reality. A lot of this you both touched on anyway. However the idea that Jung is a "non-theist" did not clearly follow for me. I think this is something we need to be agnostic about with respect to Jung. He is less "is there a God" and more "what happens to the soul when we experience God" - or something like that. That is my humble understanding anyway. Really appreciate your work John and thanks for bringing Anderson's fascinating perspective into the conversation too.
1:43 - very good, turn and face the fear. But I think JP is also right - sometimes the problem is “out there” : the other is acting out their problems and beating yourself up because “it must be me” is a way of hiding from that. Do not judge, yourself, or the other. Just be mindful, dispassionate, and try and see where “oh, this is me” and also, “oh, that really is them”, but with compassion, understanding, love. And then react appropriately. Simples 😂😂😂
Here is the follow up Q&A session with Anderson and I th-cam.com/video/BsUquRO-70w/w-d-xo.html
instablaster
I half agree with the criticisms of Peterson towards the end of this video, in that everything that was criticized is technically true. But I'd give him more credit in the sense that I think he's aware of that. I think Peterson is giving people who feel totally lost and overwhelmed a simple, easy to understand, already culturally-ingrained interpretation of the world that is beneficial and gets them to start thinking more deeply about myth, archetypes, and their relevance to our lives. I haven't found anyone else who does it so clearly as Peterson; in fact, Peterson is the reason I'm now getting more into Vervaeke's work and trying to get to the "next level" so to speak, three years later. It'd be interesting to ask Peterson about that directly, but that's my impression... I don't think he's being misleading, just purposefully simplifying things, and I think it does much more good than harm.
*ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT INTENSIFIES...*
The critiques are fair enough...
...though, whenever I see people offering their criticisms, it is like listening to someone sitting on a bleacher bench shouting at a quarterback for throwing the ball 2 inches too high, while being rushed by 5 300 pound defensive backs trying to break his neck.
@@wib6044
I never thought of it like that, but this is a perfect analogy for the feeling I had while watching this video.
Flash Trance / DESU-CHAN55 most criticisms I hear sound to me like people forget that he is a psychologist and want him to be a philosopher.
In that vein, I think what Peterson means when he says "You know what to do" is targeted at young people who haven't "cleaned up their rooms" yet. I don't think he means it as unilateral advice for all times and all places, like "Use the Force."
Should Dr. Peterson decide to jump back into the fray, and should he manage to avoid the trap of political commentary, these are the kinds of conversations I'd love to see him be part of.
Politics is where the rubber hits the road!
@@Frederer59 these conversations, are why we have roads.
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
@adsfafad dude you dont need to knight so hard for him anymore. Most people generally know what his about. Put down the word-sword, and pick up the books.
Funny as shit reading this comment now
I totally resonate with Anderson's description of trudging through Jung's corpus and periodically bumping into those deeply affecting gems that justify the whole endeavor.
I have spoken with Anderson and he has agreed to make himself available for a live Q&A on Fri Feb 7, 2020 at 1500 EST here: th-cam.com/video/BsUquRO-70w/w-d-xo.html
I don't see a further discussion of whether JP is sufficiently Jungian in any particular dimension as being fruitful whether or not you feel he does the same to his critics. The point is what he has to offer that can assist in abating the meaning crisis. Everyones character and work is insufficient in mutiple dimensions.
@@GCU-GreyArea I don't think the problem is criticism per se, but the response it generates spirals out of control, thwarting the purpose of the criticism. Peterson haters generally can't resist an extra twist of the knife and that triggers many who find it undermines the self- stated noble intent of the original criticism. Emotions are just too high at this moment, and I think Prof Vervaeke's best course is to just stay on message and let things sort out on their own, for the time being. Otherwise, would be to strap on a sword and let conflict derail his argument. I think Prof Vervaeke is looking for but will not find a middle ground in the polarized salience landscape in which Peterson operates.
@@GCU-GreyArea I think you are quite right too, but in the non-ideal world we live in, timing and circumstance matters. This is the first comment thread of Vervaeke, Pageau, Vander Klay et al that I have seen "go off the rails" and it was not an accident.
@@lawrencedavid9728
One of the things we had to learn in my family, and sometime in my church, is how to fight. And how to fight hard. Without losing our minds. I got a nephew who went to college, and one of the best things he said he learned was how to deal with issues and people you disagree with in a non - judgmental way. Is it possible to separate this Peterson fellow from his beliefs? Or anybody?
Maybe Vervaeke has a way of providing a way of dealing with "contentious concerns". Maybe he can provide an example of "how to fight". Isn't he in the martial arts or something? Maybe he has a way of suggesting what's relevant, and what's not about all this.
@@uncleelmer5090 I agree with you but the original pinned comment, since replaced, worked against that.
What a brilliant conversation. I sometimes wonder if what Jordan is doing is intended to be compensatory and 'of the moment.' Much of what he says seems to square with Anderson's presentation of Jung. Peterson looks to be less concerned with presenting a fleshed-out theoretical model than he is with making an impact and filling certain cultural voids. For example, I think that he 'overemphasizes' logos over eros because the generation he's speaking to has largely lost an appreciation for logos. People in my age range, myself included, often see rules and order as arbitrary, and as a result we drown in chaos.
Jordan's overemphasis of certain parts of Jung are only 'overemphasized' from a neutral theoretical vantage point, but it may be just what the doctor ordered, from a cultural standpoint. Similarly, I think that his defense and presentation of Christianity ends up revising Christianity while updating it with some Gnostic insights. I see this all as analogous to Jung and how careful he was with managing his image and avoiding accusations of mysticism. It lays the groundwork for changes down the road by shifting the window of discourse.
Yes, this was exactly my feeling while watching this video.
My understanding from watching Peterson is not that he believes that is the whole of Jungian psychology or even the most important; he only believes that's what's most important at this moment in time.
I think what Todd touched on (the media's overdosing on the hero myth) has resulted in a kind of tolerance to it. People are no longer really paying attention to it with any sincerity, it's become kind of a joke to many people or a status quo that needs to be fought against. It appears to me that Peterson simply saw this and is trying to patch up the hole, not that he actually believes the hero myth is all there is to someone's entire life.
As far as I see it, Peterson favors the practical over the theoretical, which means he's bound to misrepresent theory according to experts of the disciplines he touches. Of course his audience are not such experts--they're more like a mass of micro-clients. To touch on the final thoughts in the video, telling people that they have a conscience, know what is right, and should act on it, is far more useful to the average person than explaining why theoretically their choices are ultimately irresolvable.
I agree with that point that JBP overemphasises Logos over Eros, particularly in his compensatory-to-culture role.
I suspect from listening to his lectures that in his clinical practice the process is much more nuanced in how those opposing orientations are weighted.
I think "Maps of Meaning" is very much an attempt by JBP to present a fully fleshed out theoretical model however.
And I suppose the attempt to reduce that edifice to a series of "Rules for Life " for a mass audience more unfamiliar with the cultural canon or scientific literature he draws from is going to see his position lose a degree of rigor also.
@@redtrek2153 for sure: and I think even comparing Peterson to Verveake, Verveake has a Philosophy degree and seems to me to be far more fluent in that canon than Peterson who doesn't.
As to Dr. Peterson's personal motivation, I thought that was eminent and obvious: his work as a clinician is never far from his mind, and one gets the impression that he really viscerally cares about helping improve the functionality and agency of others. Obviously there is no foundational basis for the myths he uses as a basis for his societal therapy. These are just myths that are sufficiently comfortable and familiar to him to permit him to use Jungian analysis to derive germane and Western-relatable interpretations of his core work, Maps of Meaning.
Individuation makes sense alongside Jung's quote that "“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” -- actually I was looking for a different quote that states something like, man's goal is to bring that which is unconscious into consciousness. In other words, until we become fully aware and can account for the entire scope of our facticity, "who we are" evades us and we cannot act as fully responsible persons.
“You think I’m just a hill-god!? Snakes for you!” Damn, that made me laugh out loud.
In relation to the criticism of Jordan Peterson's discussion of shadow work, this quote from Rumi seems relevant: ""Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."
Circa 1:50 criticizing JP's approach to shadow because it's outward/heroic rather than reflective. 12 Rules 6) Set your house in order before you criticize the world. 9) Assume the person you are listening to might know something you don't. These 2 rules are specific injunctions to reflective shadow work. So there.
Re: 1:49:30 a very important distinction between signs and symbols. "Symbols are multiaspectual and inexhaustible ... A sign means a thing, a symbol means a lot of things and is endlessly disclosing; that is the point of it. That's why it's sacred, that's why it's useful."
This was glorious! Thank you both! I'm blessed by what you do.
The encounter with the Self is always a defeat for the ego.
Or the encounter with the Other defeats the Will
So true
I agree that Jordan Peterson is not beyond critique but also acknowledge his experience with actual people from his clinical practice. This gives him more insight then other academic intellectuals! So his messages when put in to practice are very effective and proven so by individuals so if his interpretation shadow is not fully “correct” is trivial in the goal of helping people to help themselves to practice responsibility and discover meaning as an offset to eminent suffering!
As David Fuller said in a very recent "My Journey with the IDW - JV is one of the emerging thinkers of the next decade. Great discussion, clarified a number of my concerns.
Our modern conception of the hero's journey too often puts the individual on a pedestal while forgetting ka tet. No hero ever succeeds on his/her own. They are *always* part of a group, or at least reliant on others. The hero's journey is more often about transformation through connection and relationship with each other and the world. There's no place like home.
yes, probably hero's journey is the story of inner transformation. applied to outside context (as is done by mass media) it is a story of extreme individualism on the border with narcissism
@@phiswe that's why I added 'at least reliant on others' as a caveat.
Also, he has his mates(?) horn now, which seems to have something to do with successfully completing the journey, or getting a step closer to doing so anyway. (Sorry for the vagueness, my memory isn't the greatest.)
We also now know that luck plays a much higher role in our life outcomes than we like to admit. The hero's journey gives us a false sense of control in an often random environment.
Brilliant stuff. The combination of knowledge and humility between the two of you is encouraging and awe-inspiring.
Oh wow. Anderson Todd is a treasure. Thank you for giving him a wider platform. Would love to see more discussion with him.
I could use a couple more hours of this ... I'd want to quit the video, then they would get onto something that fascinated me. I liked JV's comment about criticism. Serious work requires some criticisms. I was glad to hear some counters to Peterson, as he is one of my heros. Heros require scrutiny else we become slaves.
@@samgraham8430 I love seeing criticism without malice. It makes yeh think!
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Brilliant conversation to follow up finishing the meaning crisis before going through my second run through. And as someone who found immense value in Jordan’s work I feel the criticism of him was very fair and powerful, would like to see his response to it.
One of those conversations where I was clueless 75% of the time while desperately clinging the other 25%
Same here man. I'm Anderson's step brother...let me tell you... he's wicked smart. Lol.
It will come to you. And you understand what you need to know right now.
Two Canadians discuss a "mouse coming out from behind a couch" @ 20:00. Fantastic. Please make use of being "out in a boat fishing for trout" to continue maximising the Canadian accent.
If that’s the best critique a Jungian scholar who has been reading Jung since 12 years old could come up with, considering the sheer amount of materials JP put out there, I am relieved. With regard to that shadow critique, Todd himself seems to follow the same recipe Peterson subscribed to his audiences in his resentment example. He realized his projection, figured out what was it he was projecting - that’s internal shadow work, but then took actions and confronted externally to invite the guy for a beer. That seems like an internal external shadow work process.... to integrate shadow, just internalizing it isn’t enough, is it? Also regarding “you know what to do” critique, I don’t think JP said you know what to do to align yourself between order and chaos, however if you happen to achieve that perfect alignment , you know it. Nonetheless, I learned a lot from this video!!
Actualize internalization , you dont heal shadows you handle implicitly how to live well with them
I was thinking the same thing... he literally acted upon the realization of his shadow projection.
Really valuable. Thank you.
BTW this has reminded me of a discussion between JP and Sam Harris. At the end they were both asked what they fear the most or something. And when listening to their answers, you could see it like black on write where their great theories are coming from. This was actually the most fascinating aspect of the whole discussion.
Points me right now to my own shadow work again and that is how I remembered the discussion. Sometimes you just create a theory or a whole paradigm to counter something deep inside you don't want to see, I guess.
What I mean to say, it is interesting to discuss theories, but it's really mad how personal aspects can lurk in, even into science. Who were all these people? Plato, Nietzsche, Jung...
Reminds me again of Jonathan Haidt, how you create arguments only after your opinion is already long formed...
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Whew. So much to learn, so little time. Echoing Prof. Todd’s introductory statement on his early delving into some of this material; it’s tough but every so often there’s a nougat that gives one enough to keep pushing forward through difficult material. We inherently know it’s worthy of the effort even if we can’t initially see the forest for the trees.
I’m not as well educated as some lucky people but I have read the spread of thinkers from Nietzsche to Foucault (who despite being partly responsible for opening some dangerous paths is still a mesmerisingly fascinating thinker/writer). I search the internet to its edges and I truly believe you guys (and Peterson) are literally the best (at least western) thinkers in the world right now. It is truly a privilege to be able to simply listen in as if I were almost there and so am hugely grateful to be able to do so. It is your thinking and sharing that has helped me away from addiction and possibly death. My humblest thanks 🙏❤️
This was wonderful. I actually began reading Jung because of Jordan, but I found it difficult to square Jung's concepts totally with what Jordan was saying, and was using his interpretations as sort of a lens to read Jung with. This video helped articulate and map where Jordan's models seem to land relative to Jung's in a useful way.
finally someone speaking about Peterson's interpretation of shadow work. It never sat well with me that it was just "speak truth/courage to resentment".
I never heard JBP describe shadow work this way. Do you know where he says this?
@@wenzdayjane type in "shadow peterson" in the search and most short videos will have him talk about this in Q&As
@@6Unclesoh so you mean in short format, taken out of context, without explanation or expansion… got it. Get most of your info from tick-tock and 30 sec vids do you?
I especially appreciated Anderson's comments on Peterson. It came across as quite fair and informative.
Jung: Agent 488. Wow!
Profiling for Propaganda - describing the deep project of the NAZI party to destroy the AshkeNAZI people- an archetype war - the Americans needed to understand the cultural forces
The breadth and depth of JP's work deals with most of the criticism that Anderson and JV bring up, and I have little doubt that if Jordan was present he would round out his thinking on any particular controversial statement as, to me, he is holds his truth claims tentatively rather than absolutely. JP is not beyond criticism but it needs to be deeply considered not to come across as a some sort of resentment.
correct - which it does and questions as to the political leanings of these gentlemen being raised. The old, old gossip about Jung and Nazi's has been addressed in his own correspondence and those of his personal contemporaries - he was abjectly against totalitarianism and especially socialism. Watch the last 5 minutes - no dispute: th-cam.com/video/2AMu-G51yTY/w-d-xo.html
fantastic level of discussion! would be nice to pull Jordan into the discussion as well :)
after processing this overnight I can more clearly articulate what I think about this.
I have personally came to JV video series from a link in Jordan Peterson email back in February. And I love what John is doing - integrating pretty much everything which I found relevant in my personal journey. But without first encountering JP I probably would not be receptive enough to get into the level of analysis that JV offers.
JP rose in popularity by offering arguably a strong and little bit dogmatic view of the world, but it was exactly what was in demand in that time - around 2013-2016. Trump and Brexit were part of the same phenomenon, but I do not want to get into politics. In my opinion that was (and probably still is) a period similar to Great Depression, but the economic statistics masked it because of creative central banking policies. The day to day experience for a sizeable majority of the population was very different than what was suggested by stock markets or mass media. And the most attacked and despised group was white males in developed world. The policy effecting this was 'political correctness' taken to the extremist ideology levels. So JP capitalised on the opportunity (as well as Trump and Brexit movement) and filled in the gap. JP gave lots of people a compelling view of the world, may be too simplistic, but good enough to basically start pushing back on mindless PC/victimisation by taking personal responsibility and starting to create meaning in their lives. Meaning that was lost due to economic and social changes.
Yes, JP is using the same tools of propaganda and emotional messaging as the opponents (SJW, radical 'liberals' etc). But the messages he is pushing are actually helpful. Both for individuals and, i would argue, for the culture. As much as he is painted as a regressive figure he is a force for good. Of course JP can operate in a very different level, but he is a showman and responds to the audience level of life experience. What was needed when he was rising in popularity is leading people from the basic steps of taking responsibility of their lives, getting their room tidy, getting close relationships right etc etc. This was in stark contrast to 'change the world first'/SJW/narcissistic mentality pushed by mass culture. So he was going against 'spiritual bypassing', against 'self-transcendence from zero'. As a clinical psychologist he knows this is wrong to skip levels of self development.
And of course JP was risking a lot by doing what he was doing at the time he was doing it. Lots of people before him ruined their careers by standing up against PC. He could be one of them. But he probably was lucky with timing/use of technology etc, in addition to being skilled to chose his messages and articulate them in the form that would be actionable by majority of his audience.
This is fantastic! Now how is it applicable to people that are in existential crisis? Does this depth of thinking we’re getting somewhere with all of this,
Do you think it could’ve helped Nietzsche from losing his mind?
Happy new to all...
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Yes exactly this, Alexey
@@SuperAlex512 this comment is damned eloquent! I love it. And I appreciated your point about JP working with people's spiritual needs instead of bypassing them. So important!
10:42 I believe Peterson mentions this in a taped U of T lecture back in 2016 or 2017. As I recall, Peterson expresses great relief having this data point with which to defend Jung (and himself, indirectly) against the wide-spread misconception that Jung was reprehensible.
Dr Peter Kingsley's take on Jung is what is needed
JV you rocked 2019, keep it up!
He did indeed.
I cannot wait for the Socrates series
I have been waiting for this episode for some time. Thank you for putting this together.
When he says Jung went 'more cosmic towards the end' in some degree: you can see this 'simplification while still expressing the important details to get across the essence' · when looking at how painters or other artists that do highly detailed 'realism' tend to go very loose whole preserving the essence. It's a common 'Confucianist youth to Taoist elder' transition. Bruce Lee saying 'When he started: a punch was a punch and a kick was a kick... with more experience: a punch was no longer a punch and a kick was no longer a kick (because he was breaking then apart in analysis) - eventually with understanding/mastery: a punch and kick were once again just a punch and a kick'. - This is the development process phases seen through one particular lense worth note.
Regarding the first question in the description, whether Peterson has misinterpreted Jung or not is insubstantial. What matters is if Peterson's version is useful, and if its differences from Jung's are likely to cause trouble. The rest is only noteworthy for Jung-scholars.
No, no, no.
@@emmashalliker6862 Any arguments?
I thought Todd’s expounding of the Shadow was rather useful. I don’t think JP would disagree either, or that he hasn’t explained it in a similar manner in one of his thousand and one mentions of it.
I read a comment from someone on YT months ago contemplating their discovery of this concept as something that needed to be developed.
Having JP as my primary exposure to “the shadow” my immediate response was exactly that of Anderson. It is already there, properly integrating it should be the work.
Point being, JPs lectures have implicitly conveyed the distinction, if not to my recollection elucidated it as clearly as was stated in this video.
@@MrTTnTT just re-read your comment, slowly. It doesn't matter if someone misrepresented ideas as long as they are useful. Terrible idea, imagine if philosophers said that.
@@emmashalliker6862 Try re-reading it again, slowly. "and if its [Peterson's version of the shadow] differences from Jung's are likely to cause trouble." Got it covered already. :)
Thank you so much for pointing and reminding me of some of Dr JPB’s lack of efforts or shortages or omissions. I follow his teaching because he has been telling and selling stories that we can understand and relate. He sometimes says things that I already knew but I didn’t know I knew already; He is a great story teller and a Professor, and sometime he confuses which role should come first and when? If he is the Yang, I think you John is the Ying? He needs you now more than ever so thank you for being a great friend. Happy New Year! Looking forward to 2020 to see more works from you and your friends. Also looking forward to the next 12 Rules of Life. When you have some spare time, can you give 12 Rules for Life a book review sir? But I know you are extremely busy. Congrats on your recent promotion and welcome back from your sabbatical.
I suspect JV would never give '12 rules'. may be '12 practices'?
Did he tell you things you already knew or did he tell you he was telling you things you already knew.
Too many people repeat Peterson verbatim.
Emma Shalliker , Thank you for pointing that out! I do repeat what he says and that is a problem, I realize. I will try to use my own words. I am 51 and I left Vietnam when I was 14., and I am a Buddhist. I already knew so much about what it’s like to live under Communism and being a religious person. But I never knew what I knew about both until he put my experiences into words. Happy New Year!
@@emmashalliker6862 That's okay to repeat someone for a time when one is trying to find herself or is choosing someone to model herself after. We all do this at some point. Or did! We weren't born fi nished and we imitate those to whom we look "up"
@@tamdai5108 You can repeat some things JP says. I'd betcha he wouldn't mind at all!
1:07:08 Interesting that God feels remorse in the story of Job.
“You think I’m just a hill God? Snakes for you!” lol
Thank You, both! Very helpful, and full of insights. Particularly to one who feel affinity to Jung. Thanx again.
Wonderful conversions! You UFT folks are really doing amazing work! Thank you!
finally, Anderson with with the heavy weights. this is going to be great.
i had never come across Anderson before. I was really taken by his views. can you signpost me to more of his content? many thanks.
D M not much content that I know of. He’s friends with my brother, and always thought he deserves a large platform to share his views.
@@evantsiopoulos5115 I agree. He comes over very knowledgeable. Get your brother to encourage him to do more online content. Denis. Ireland 🇮🇪.
I was out for run earlier today, listening to this again and got a realization. You mentioned that Jung became more inclined towards mysticism towards the end of his life, coming from a resistance to it. I was then thinking about Anderson, who is still young and holds on to the ideals of science, *for now*. I'll disclose right away that the point I'm making is that there might be an inherent difference between a younger person and a person who has reached a ripe old age regarding the attitude towards spirituality. It got me thinking of WHY that is, and why that is significant. We like to think that old age is related to wisdom, and wisdom is rarely and simply a manifestation of objectivity. It is a life long learning of what is important and what is not and how to synthesize that into meaningful words for others. So, is it telling that a man like Jung became more spiritual with age?
Ok, I know I don't sell the point properly. The punch line of all this is that the function that religion might serve is the transfer of old-age wisdom from old people who have learned the important things in life THROUGH BECOMING OLD, to the young who will do the wrong things for 45-50-55-60 years before learning. How would you transfer the knowledge to the young? Through intricate meaning-weaving that transmits the wisdom of old age and "all" you have to do as a youth is to listen and adhere to the principles. That way you walk in the shoes of the people before you and do not repeat the faults that the old already know are faults. I don't know, religion became justified in my eyes through that realization. Perhaps the way to make it more accessible to people in this day and age is to get rid of the supernatural parts and just relay the information.
We do not want to believe in anything today and it makes us weaker. We don't have to believe in anything supernatural, but we have to have a system of behavior to believe in or else we drift apart. We try find substitutes but fail miserably, which makes sense if Christianity really is several thousands of years of behavioral wisdom passed down from the old to the new.
This is motivating me to go read my thick dense Jung books again. I'm reminded of Alan Moore's assessment of Star Wars: a fundamentalist work of science fiction if there ever was one, that turned the clock back to the ideas of the genre from 50 years before.
A pleasure to listen to you two gents, thanks.
I really enjoy Jung because it gives meaning to the seemingly absurd pain of existence.
The idea that neurosis is a substitute for suffering hit me last year. True suffering is the experience of taking that heroic journey. If the journey happens then the neurosis is no longer needed because it isn't needed, it is teleological.
Collectively the inability of the masses to carry their cross means we make ourselves and those around us more miserable. We lack the capacity take responsibility for ourselves and 'pick up a load' as Jordan says.
Wokeism for instance requires the state to take over the individuals suffering, or find groups to take on this nebulous suffering of other groups. The individual is diminished and they regress into an infantile state, the population is infantilized and life loses meaning. You become nihilistic.
That's been more or less my take away from reading Jung and listening to Peterson. If you can embody these things it is quite something.
This was excellent in every way. Thank you both!
Yes! I agree!
Thanks for providing this discussion.
I really liked Andersen’s “Spock Buddhist” example!
Perfect way to end the year, thanks for the insights gents.
Thanks for putting this together! A lot of us are listening and trying to piece this stuff together!
WoW, It was most deep critic of Jordan I have ever heard.
Fantastic discussion, really puts your awakening lectures into direct relationship to one of the prophets. Do you have plans on covering the other prophets in the same way?
1:40:30: I am pretty sure JBP means that the person might have pushed the ability to be assertive and “difficult” into the shadow. This is often brought up by JBP in conjunction with the psychological profiles of for example sudden mass shooters, something he often talks about. In that sense, integrating anger from the shadow, and acting on it, before the resentment grows to an uncontrollable scale, is indeed shadow work. This, according to him, is therefore also important in order to mitigate growing collective resentment (which undoubtedly is his primary concern). In that sense, the hero myth becomes very important to mitigate collective resentment.
But sure, resentment could also be mitigated (and shadow work made) by questioning why one feels resentment against something in the first place.
Would also be great if JBP could be brought into the discussion next.
The statement that Peterson fetishizes certainty must just be the statement of someone who missed a great deal while listening/reading Peterson. One of the main admonitions Peterson makes is that we are faced with a terrible Unknown. He says there are things we do know, however, like utterly basic things like we shouldn't intentionally deceive (except in truly outlier situations) and that organizing our most immediate space is useful (clean your room) and that from those foundations we can proceed effectively into the unknown and ideally develop levels of certainty. This is possibly similar to what Vervaeke describes as participatory or procedural knowing. Of course, lecturing and writing is at the propositional level and in this way I could just turn and criticize Anderson and say "you seem to think you know that you don't know things" and he would be subject to the same critique in a way that would create a recursive loop, but that wouldn't maybe be fair to him but I don't think its fair to Peterson either.
I think you're right sir. Perhaps part of what Vervaeke presents as relevance realization is what helps deal with the circularity of "knowing" and criticizing you refer to. It does seem that Peterson wants to address the evil "that transcends human malice". At the same time he will switch focus to the individual ( responsibility, possibilities, etc.). There is an exercise like this that some perform to elicit a certain state of consciousness ( switching back and forth between something local and particular to a broad distant horizon, but I can't remember much about it.) Your comment made me recall poor Euthyphro in Plato's dialogue. I believe part of Vervaeke's project involves understanding how relevance realization begins the process of breaking the hermeneutic circle that binds everbody in these recurcive loops. Like a disengaged clutch: the engine is running in the red zone, but the wheels aren't turning. :)
More of that please very helpful
Excellent conversation, thank you. Learnt a lot about Jung. And some very pertinent critiques of Peterson's weak spots e.g. his over-emphasis on the hero/warrior myth, allying Jung with Christianity, and his fetishisation of 'certainty' - as in "you know what to do" (1:55:00). Re. the latter, I was struck by John's remark that this was "decadent romanticism".
Excellent conversation. Thank you.
Excellent content John. Thank you.
Boy, the fur is going to fly when Vanderklay responds to this discussion.
The archetypes are patterns of thought, behavior, and feeling. They have two poles--"spirit" and "instinct". As neo-Jungian James Hillman emphasized, thinking in terms of the polytheistic gods is an easy way to understand what the archetypes are. The gods have both an anthropomorphic (spirit) form and an animal (instinctual form). Take Ares for example. He is a representation of the fiery male aggression which can manifest as instincts to fight and attack, which lead to those aggressive behaviors as well as ideas about warrior culture. He is also represented by a wolf. That is an archetype: a pattern of instinctual aggression as well as the behaviors, thoughts and feelings that accompany it. In an individual case the dreams will show if the Ares archetypal pattern is too strong or too weak and adjustments can be made.
Then there's Ceres, the nurturing maternal archetype. And Aphrodite, the archetype of female sexuality. seduction and fertility. Aspects of Aphrodite can overlap with those of Ceres. etc., etc.
This is why Jungians have non-Christian mythological traditions so valuable in helping modern clients differentiate their own psyches.
Fascinating and helpful! Thank you both so much. I’m especially helped by that idea of the “golden shadow” -working to engage with those good yet unaccessed parts of myself.
I’ve also had multiple dreams like the kind you mentioned: a threatening monster appears, but it morphs into something harmless or good when I approach it voluntarily. I didn’t know this was a common thing!
This is pretty awesome to witness. Insightful to say the least and above all driven by curiosity and courage through openness and epistemic humility. In the spirit of philo-sophia and - I suppose - in love of humanity. Thank you for sharing.
Appreciate the video...I’ll have to come back in 30 years though when I fully understand what they (mainly Vervaeke) are talking about, lol. Maybe if I had started reading Jung when I was 12....
I found that it was useful to read Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" in terms of Dostoevsky putting pieces of his consciousness into a dramatic space, and watching them interact.
Honestly, I think that this is the point of most drama.
Remember the scene in Endgame, where all the resurrected heroes came back and lined up for the final battle against Thanos? That was awesome.
I found interesting what you said about the resurrected heroes, what do you mean???. I remember dreaming about mercury the god, which in my dream was apocalypsis and vigo the carpathian (from ghostbusters 2), he had all the heroes trapped in a circle of energy, never understood what that meant, but the feeling was that the dream was very alchemical and archetypal.
@@yoganandavalle Mostly I was thinking that connecting with the human mind firing on all cylinders.
Every hero is one aspect of a human personality, one form of awe-inspiring competence, each with its own background and story.
When every lesson you've ever learned, every scar you've ever earned, even whne you'd half-forgotten them, comes back at once to help you triumph -- it's hard to express just how appealing that is.
Thank you very much for doing this. I am incorporating some of Jung's ideas into my own framing of the world and it helps me to understand and accept many of the dark and hurtful behaviours I see every day. Oddly enough it is this acceptance that gives me hope and direction to make changes in my own small circle that may tilt the world incrementally towards being a better place.
That is lovely.💛
Excellent unbelievably high level discussion
Interesting criticism, mostly I just take them for what they are. Although, not sure I agree that symbols must be taken as inexhaustible. There may be reason to believe that but there seems to be plenty of reason to not believe that. Depends if you want to go with Jung on it. Peterson's take would be that symbols are episodic representations of information, which makes them very highly interconnected but by no means literally infinite (although maybe technically infinite).
As well, I don't think this discussion properly centered around Maps of Meaning like it should have--THAT'S Peterson. Value hierarchy determining salience, the heroic Logos as the principle-spirit that integrates anomaly thus updating moral-behavioral wisdom. Like, Peterson's claim isn't that certainty is right at hand if only recognized--it's that chaos can be explored by consciousness, courageously, to turn unclarity (emotion, eg.) into clarity. His recommendation is to play your own game by your own rules, whatever it is, but to use your imagination about what could be good (be conscious about your values, thus pushing them higher than the default mode of being), and to pay attention to your own emotions as signs that either you played your own game wrong, or anomalous information is manifesting itself that can be used to _straighten out the game_ thus changing your personality/morality and improving you. He's not for the praising of clarity as such, he's for the process that produces clarity. That is why he focuses so much on the heroic myth. I feel like your opinions about the Hero myth being "too central" for Peterson and the culture at large is directly connected to this misunderstanding of his idea of morality and clarity. Really, any discussion about Peterson should, as far as I can tell, be absolutely centered on Maps of Meaning, the book, first and foremost.
Complete word salad nonsense.
@@emmashalliker6862 That comment references Maps of Meaning, common Peterson sayings, and the video above. It's probably difficult to follow if you haven't seen or read all of Peterson's stuff, which, obviously most people don't have reason to have done.
Wonderful interview - you listen intelligently and intervene with insightful questions which move the discussion forward congruent ly. . You can feel the erudition in the room. Great start to 2020. Thank you very much.
On a more serious note: this stuff is 10/10.
I would love to see Anderson Todd and Jordan Peterson in conversation
I'm a Peterson fan but why is it so hard for people to accept legit criticism of the man? At what point are you not defending the man but a belief system? The very thing he warns against.
I see a lot of people trying to find fault.. even when there isn't. I haven't met many that would openly tell me how much they like his lectures.
@@hgzmatt while I agree that's a fair point, I've seen some awful hit pieces on him, I still have to agree with Sam Harris when he says Jordan will say something profound and true then in the next breath say something so silly with exactly the same confidence. To many people think he's unquestionably perfect and every word he says is. It's boarders on really silly at that point. Jordan himself would tell people not to do that, there has to be some foam of transference and projection going on, has to be.
@@emmashalliker6862 Yes. But it says more about the people doing that than it says about Jordan. You will get that with any "celebrity".
@@hgzmatt he's not a celebrity though mate, he's a clinical psychologist making serious and impactful truth claims and some of them are completely silly.
@@emmashalliker6862 care to share the silly things you're thinking of
1:31:46 - Anderson just recaps on what Jung means by the shadow, and this for me accounts for the personae. Why mitigate your free expression if every vice and virtue that springs from it is met with warmth and validation? So I'm thinking that the masks we wear are the behavioural consequence of rejected parts of ourselves?
So here's the rub for me. We suppress certain facets of who we are in order to be seen and heard in the world. This necessitates an evaluation of our free expression from which the personae is constructed. This mask wearing is re-enforced by our culture not because anyone who act's directly from their ego (uninhibited) poses a threat to our orderly structuring, but because it offers a shadow mirror back to those in positions of responsibility. So we are unconsciously supporting the continuing habit of creating shadows as a necessary measure to be seen and heard, while collectively undermining the civil substructure because of the unrest within our own being, which is being projected out as an enemy of some sort.
So you could see ecological collapse as a manifestation of our unexamined (or unprocessed) collective shadow, and that the best way to tackle this existential super tsunami (metaphor!) is to reconcile our relationship with ourselves, which in turn brings clarity to our "having" and "being" needs, which would in turn generate greater fulfilment and far less consumption due to such clarity...
**Cracks open bag of popcorn**
Fantastic conversation. Only problem was it was too short! I’d like a couple more hours.
Love the phone/mouse/couch analogy
1:59:13 Jungian statement par excellence: "There are no demons"
When I was a child I had monster dreams. Instead of destroying them, I converted them into allies.
#wololo
Excellent discussion! It struck me how Anderson's advice for handling the shadow was strikingly similar to Jordan's.
Still great watch
Casually remarks that he could read Freud and Jung at 12 years of age.
without context of life experience which is substantive to understanding and comprehending
Yea dude, he read the words....i HIGHLY doubt he understood them 🤣
Yeah. I was reading The Wealth of Nations and The Origin of Species at age 15. I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand what I was reading to a degree
Marcus Newton I’d love to discover why/what was going on in his childhood that introverted him into escaping in THAT way? I can only guess.
Well, so could I.
John my man, you need to find some shirts that better fit your body. Talk about holding the tension of the opposites 😆
(Sorry, but I couldn't help myself. This was a fun conversation to listen to.)
Regarding the questions around 44:00 there's an adage from James Hillman (that might have come from Jung), "Psyche isn't in you, you are in Psyche". Very much like the Atman-Brahman relationship. Individual soul as an aspect (and reflection?) of the universal soul. Also, for better understanding some of what you were wrestling with, check out Edward Edinger's model of individuation, which clearly describes the development of ego-Self axis relationship and it's fluctuations.
Appreciate this conversation, keep 'em coming!
Thanks Anderson and John.
Thanks Lee.
Individual; in-di-vid-u-al; indivi-dual; in-divi-duality
In divine duality...very cool :-)
Thanks for your great work.
Well done. That was a good and honest conversation.
Honesty is refreshing to the soul.
Very useful discussion, thanks.
This was amazing and novel and fun. Thank you and more please.
Huge fan of JV and JP!
Both from UT
I feel like the divine double in neuroscientific terms is the beginning of an insight cascade, like flow is but on a completely different timescale. In a sense, I suppose, it's a state where you subconsciously access information about past states at which you have transformed, and then that information is used and mimicked so it can put you in an a state where transformation is possible. Symbolically - the divine double knows exactly how you learn best. (This is just a thought by the way, I have no idea what I'm talking about, any reply is appreciated)
I'm at the 60min mark tho
Great discussion: in fact, it is so rare to hear an intelligent back & forth focused on Jung thought it can stop right there. Although I think if you asked the same questions to older Jungians you may get a more robust conversation: Murray Stein, James Hollis and Nathan Schwartz Salant - all neo-Jungians with extensive clinical experience you may get to a deeper dialogue. BTW for the Mind-Matter aspect of the Pauli-Jung dialogues, Harald Atmanspacher, editor of The Mind-Matter journal will also add important perspectives under current research. Lastly, given the importance of what you are addressing, having conversations who will readily understand your overarching intention, yet are not people who are part of your network of relationships may considerably further the conversation. In any case, good work and thank you for your considerable effort and courage in publicly working thru the inquiry you are conducting.
LAD 6267
Great talk
I need to read more Jung to fully understand this convo
This is by far the most profound criticism of Jordan Peterson I've heard to date. Very insightful video! Excited for the Q&A!
I think the models that we use to understand Jung's ideas are vital to comprehension of them. I interpret Jung to have a monistic, layered view of human consciousness; so if you think of each individual ego as comprising the boundary of the totality of the Self, then beneath that we have each individual person's family background and history, then we have cultural and linguistic specificities, then we have the archetypes of the mother, father, hero etc. and then there is the ground of being, the Self, which I relate to the Platonic Form of the Good/God which sits at the heart of consciousness and from which meaning derives.
Of course we know what to do,.We just don't want to do it because we hate responsibilities that comes with it
His explanation to shadow work is also Jordan Peterson's explanation. I don't think he followed Petersons explanation well enough. He either didnt follow or just heard Petersons explanation from a very specific scenario/question. Like a Q&A or interview.
He literally explains integrating the shadow. Not denouncing it. That's the dragons gold. So confronting yourself about something (usually something you've neglected or willfully blinded of) and integrating it in a "positive" manner.
John Vervaeke is one of the more lucid and accessible of the deep thinkers.
Thank you. I spend a lot of time soaking up and chewing on ideas and just the experience of learning is almost ecstatic for me. Your dialogues with Jordan Peterson are wonderful, too. You challenge one another and that is good for him and for you.
Picking up on a minor point here. John mentions ‘right effort’ toward the end of the talk as the balance between too much and too little effort. How might this concept be related to Jordan Peterson’s stance on understanding things at various levels of resolution? For example, too much effort is when you are attempting to function at a level that requires an understanding at a significantly greater level of resolution than currently available to someone. Too little effort, might indicate the opposite.
What an excellent discussion - thank you both very much!
This was a rich and insightful talk which I found really illuminating.
I would like to offer a critique of one of the propositions that I heard being put forward.
However I would also like to stress my humility in this effort as there is much I do not fully understand here...
The claim I would like to critique is: "Jung is a non-theist".
From reading Jung my sense is that he, like Jordan Peterson following him, was anxious to concern himself strictly with the "Imago Dei" (Image of God) in the soul as opposed to the question of God in itself. There is something Kantian about that as you both note.
I think the influence of Freud and the rationalism / materialism of the 19th-century should not be understated here. The intellectual context within which Jung wrote was deeply sceptical of potentially religious claims in the domain of psychology. I think the same probably holds today with Jordan Peterson.
This is tragic from my point of view, and Anderson rightly picks up on this, because psychology means "the study of the soul" - hence it is a discipline which is religious in essence. Anderson is right to stress how Jung, contra other psychologists, takes the soul seriously. Which is precisely what any "psychologist" should be doing.
There is a fundamental ambiguity in Jung on the question of God (again, there is an evident echo of this in Jordan Peterson). Jung when asked whether he believed in God stressed his problems with the word "belief" and emphasised instead that he "knows". Which sounds very Gnostic, not Christian.
However I am not so sure. It sounds to me like a stressing of the "participatory" modality as primary relative to the "propositional". Mircea Eliade for example thought that religion begins with a "hierophany" (a revelation of the sacred). This maps onto Jung's idea of the "numinous" I think. The idea that religion, first and foremost, has to do with the phenomenological reality of encountering the transcendent. It is participatory first and foremost.
My point is that, for me at least, Jung's work forms a "bridge" to theism precisely by stressing the interior 'merely psychological' reality of the Imago-Dei (Image of God) and the phenomenology of religious experience.
So I mean the "theism" / "non-theism" thing is something that I don't see clearly answered or addressed in Jung for understandable reasons. However in my experience, and I think this is what is curative and healing about his work, his ideas do 'open up', 'afford' or 'suggest' the possibility of an encounter with a transcendent reality.
A lot of this you both touched on anyway. However the idea that Jung is a "non-theist" did not clearly follow for me. I think this is something we need to be agnostic about with respect to Jung.
He is less "is there a God" and more "what happens to the soul when we experience God" - or something like that.
That is my humble understanding anyway.
Really appreciate your work John and thanks for bringing Anderson's fascinating perspective into the conversation too.
Wow! Love this.🚲🚲🚲
1:06:05 is epic
Circa 1.40 in: the Jung quote is that psychotherapy can be replaced by supreme moral effort, not an act of honesty as is mentioned here.
This looks like a treat. Hopefully a talk about a non-New Age twaddlespeak approach to Shadow work.
1:43 - very good, turn and face the fear. But I think JP is also right - sometimes the problem is “out there” : the other is acting out their problems and beating yourself up because “it must be me” is a way of hiding from that. Do not judge, yourself, or the other. Just be mindful, dispassionate, and try and see where “oh, this is me” and also, “oh, that really is them”, but with compassion, understanding, love. And then react appropriately. Simples 😂😂😂