Juno News - We owe Jordan Peterson our gratitude

00:00:00.000 I humbly submit that there's no better place or time in human history to live than right here,

00:00:11.140 right now, for the vast majority of people, for the vast majority of folks out there.

00:00:15.240 Mostly in Western countries, yes, because we got it great here, but even in other countries in the

00:00:18.860 world, I mean, things fare better for them now than they did in past decades, in past centuries,

00:00:24.020 definitely in past millennia. Maybe, I don't know, Cleopatra had it good, but all of the different 0.97

00:00:28.520 regular folks and people and servants, not so much. I remember when I was touring Versailles and you

00:00:34.020 go through the castle, and it's a beautiful castle, then they go, oh, this is the little chamber pot,

00:00:38.780 you know, they didn't have running water, they didn't have plumbing and so forth, and then in the

00:00:43.800 middle of the night, you've got this, you know, pot of wretched stuff sitting by your bed, that sort of

00:00:47.500 stuff, that even the Sun King, King Louis XIV, couldn't escape the kind of inconveniences of the

00:00:52.900 century. It's great to live in 2020, who knows what the future will bring, but I think we're doing

00:00:57.600 pretty good right now, and yet there's a funny disconnect with all of this, where to some

00:01:02.700 degree, people act like, they seem like, they feel like, and they say that we are living in horrible

00:01:09.680 times, that we are plagued with the worst income inequality ever, that mental health crises are

00:01:15.180 through the roof, and that is true, that addiction issues are rampant, and that is true, that is

00:01:20.600 very unfortunate, and so forth. A lot of troubling things that have kind of beset us right now,

00:01:27.580 curious to Western culture, but also felt more broadly around the world, and I think solving

00:01:33.100 these issues, you know, they transcend political issues, they transcend political philosophy, or at

00:01:39.180 least partisan politics, and they get more into questions about the human condition and human

00:01:43.180 nature. Enter Jordan Peterson. When Jordan Peterson first became famous, when he hit the scene big

00:01:49.580 time in 2016, I think a lot of people who were looking at the world as we were inching in these

00:01:56.100 manic directions, and we've gotten worse since 2016, in many respects, all this wild, wild stuff you

00:02:01.700 see out there, that I don't even want to call it progressive, or left, or whatever, that's an insult

00:02:05.180 to all the reasonable people out there who have these views. Social justice warrior, I think, is even

00:02:09.500 too, too toned down to describe the sort of stuff that's happening this day and age. Jordan Peterson,

00:02:16.300 he enters the scene, and he's calm, he's collected, he's cool as a cucumber, and he's put a lot of thought

00:02:22.620 into these issues, and he sits down, and he articulates the problem, and he begins, he very

00:02:29.400 simply begins to articulate a solution, and he does it by going back to the old books, the old ideas,

00:02:35.900 the old thoughts, and tries to build step by step, laying the foundations brick by brick, having these

00:02:42.200 conversations with his fans, with his viewers, and his YouTube channels in person, and his books,

00:02:46.920 and so forth, really trying to build sort of a new stable foundation. I mean, a really remarkable thing

00:02:52.860 for one human being to take on, and yet he took it on, and the number of people, I've had people,

00:02:59.500 I wrote about in my column in the newspapers, and people have already written saying, this man changed

00:03:03.160 my life, this man has done so much for me, and people, when they saw him being batted about by these

00:03:09.640 hostile interviewers, and he just didn't take it. He was just relaxed, but he also swatted them away,

00:03:15.520 swatted away their sort of misunderstandings, or ignorance, their attempts to just attack him,

00:03:20.300 and ruin him, and mischaracterize him as evil this, and bad that, for no real reason, you know,

00:03:24.860 you don't even know the guy, you're already trying to ruin him, call him horrible names, why, why,

00:03:29.140 but he just, he managed it all, and it was truly remarkable what he did throughout the past few years,

00:03:35.120 and the number of lives he changed, and people who said, I was at risk of this, and that, being extremist,

00:03:40.900 having my life going this horrible direction, depressed, anxiety, and Jordan Peterson helped them

00:03:45.400 helped them really just, I think, grab hold of something, some sort of anchor, at a time when

00:03:51.640 so many people were feeling unmoored, and is he perfect? Do I stand by every single word or sentence?

00:03:57.400 He said, I don't know, not, probably not, but he really gave it such a try with so much gusto,

00:04:04.940 and we should be, be in his gratitude, we owe him thanks, we should be thanking him,

00:04:10.360 and rather unfortunate news has surfaced, we first learned about it, I think, last September,

00:04:14.180 but more information has come out, that he's not doing too well, that there were some challenges

00:04:17.960 in his family, his wife had a horrible cancer, she seems like she's in the clear now,

00:04:22.700 and Peterson had always struggled with depression, he actually talked about this,

00:04:25.900 there's video recordings of him before 2016, speaking about this issue, he had faced depression

00:04:30.520 himself, he battled it, and he had tried different therapies and medications, well, last year,

00:04:35.100 things got very rough, very rough for him, and he went on other medications, and he became addicted

00:04:40.920 to them, and he tried a facility in New York State, and I guess, sadly, that, that didn't work,

00:04:46.380 not completely, now he's in a facility in Russia, and he was in a medically induced coma, and it's

00:04:51.940 all this horrible stuff out there, now, when this news got out just a few days ago, there were a lot

00:04:57.100 of people who wanted to take to social media to say mean things about Jordan Peterson, I don't need

00:05:02.720 to acknowledge them, I don't need to repeat them, and I don't need to validate them, because quite

00:05:06.840 frankly, I think that those people heard about his challenges, and use this as an opportunity to say

00:05:13.860 bad things about him, well, that, that tells us so much, not about him, but about them, and where

00:05:19.060 they're at in life, and how they are unstable right now, who would do that, who would, who would try

00:05:24.580 and hit someone when they're down, sort of so aggressively, someone they don't actually

00:05:27.900 know, and whose understanding of him is probably through these mischaracterization, mischaracterizations,

00:05:33.580 libel, slander, that's been perpetuated against the man, I had the opportunity to meet with

00:05:38.080 him, speak with him a couple times, and a really remarkable person, a person who cares a lot,

00:05:42.580 a person who listens deeply, a person who's focused, a person who thinks before he speaks,

00:05:47.440 and all those few things I've just said, that's very rare this day and age, isn't it?

00:05:51.480 So, many people out there hoping Jordan Peterson will be able to make a return to public intellectual

00:05:57.700 life, as he had been for the past few years, but even if the situation changes for him moving

00:06:02.440 forward, we had his body of work, we had those years, and those people's lives were changed,

00:06:08.180 were bettered for him, and what an amazing thing for him to be able to say, I did what

00:06:11.980 I had to do, I did it my way, and I made life better for other human beings.

00:06:17.340 So, Jordan Peterson, I know a lot of people out there are saying thank you to you, and

00:06:21.100 they're wishing you all the best.

Juno News - February 12, 2020

We owe Jordan Peterson our gratitude

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