Jordan Peterson 2.0

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Jordan Peterson was never the polymath he was sometimes taken for. He was a guy who had done some eclectic reading outside the syllabus normally followed by people in his field and who had put together a worldview. We need people like him as a counterweight to the rank and file of academic specialists, most of whom are beige bureaucrats meeting KPIs rather than the kind of wide-ranging intellectual that used to be common in mid-twentieth-century culture. The intellectual dark web seemed to promise a return of this swashbuckling figure, but there’s a danger in the hero-worship Peterson received from people who needed a champion willing to say the things he said. It’s the danger of believing in your own myth.