Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your thoughts on Jeff’s talk on Jordan Peterson. I have published some thoughts here on Medium, too. I am very happy that Peterson has reached so fully the integral world — I was promoting him since October 16 and at first had only few responses by my integral friends. Now it is easier to talk about him.

As I mentioned in my article: getting to know Peterson had a similar effect on me as 20 years ago when I met integral theory: a huge AHA, a feeling of recognizing the world I noticed but couldn’t understand or find words for.

Like you I have watched almost all videos available, especially the psychological lectures and the biblical stories and I so much appreciate what he has to say there. I think that our general knowledge about the psyche of human beings is VERY low, even among integralists.

As for the post-modernism topic. I think the problem can also be because of missing definitions. We integralists use “postmodern” in the Wilberian way and know about healthy stages and pathologies on all stages. Peterson doesn’t seem to use this term in the same way. I am sure that getting to know Integral Theory would be a huge benefit for Peterson and his message would become more clear and consistent with the integral map. I do think his endeavour is to include and transcend as much as possible and I would position him at the integral level — though not with the Wilber criteria (yet).

I also want to differentiate between the mission of Peterson and his person. I don’t think it appropriate to claim that “his heart is in amber/blue” as his personal stage of development, but his mission in the world is certainly directed to healing that stage. And, regarding post-modernism, he is playing Kassandra by pointing out which psychological mechanisms are at work and how easily they can be abused and turned into catastrophe and eradicate what we have already gained so far. We are actively changing world-conditions by what we do. And the dangers have increased completely out of proportion regarding to our collective psychological growth which is lagging behind centuries and more. Only because we, the few of us, can THINK integral ( and in some aspects also BE integral), we are still conditioned by thousands or even billions of years old mechanisms which determine life and living creatures. We are still bodies, despite of all attempts to cancel our biology from the equation. And, as I said, the psyche is developing in much slower paths and we, collectively have no idea how it works, let alone about our being embedded in what Sheldrake calls Morphogenetic Fields”. Past, present and future is determining us to a good degree and we have no idea and no willingness to really take this into account.

For me, all attempts to create a better world on ALL levels are important. And Peterson helps us with that by re-enchanting the world and by giving us guidelines to find meaning in our existence. There might be some things which he doesn’t see or include. So what?