I read some of a Jordan Peterson book because people on the internet were making fun of him and I wanted to know what his ideas were really about. He wrote a segment about becoming a good cell-mate with your own mind. You’re trapped with yourself in your own head; it’s in your interest to make that little prison community run smoothly. Be polite. Trade with your neighbors. Crack jokes.
I might not broadly recommend Jordan Peterson but I feel fundamental liking and solidarity with him when I read him. Life is hard. Someone who’s thought about how to really make your way through is an ally.
A poster I want to make that I haven’t figured out a satisfactory design for is “WE HAVE BEEN WHERE YOU ARE NOW, BUT WE CANNOT LEAD YOU OUT”. You can read it in different ways, but if I put it on my wall, I’d usually read “we” as “the subset of humanity that has been through whatever I’m going through now”. Sometimes I look at a friend and think this sentence, and in that case “we” means “I”.
I like it because it evokes a mass of people, not unfriendly, patiently waiting, rooting for me, but not lending a hand. I’ve read about 40% of 12 Rules For Life and I think Peterson’s main deal is trying to get you to believe this viscerally. That is – he’s trying to get you to internalize the attitude you’d have if you woke up every day and read that poster and thought of that mass of humanity waiting for you to call upon your own will, and move forward to join them.
I like how “WE HAVE BEEN WHERE YOU ARE NOW, BUT WE CANNOT LEAD YOU OUT” makes me feel the… devastating duality of togetherness and solitude – I am not alone, but I am also alone, completely.
It’s really sobering – not in a bad way – just in a… I step back and go, oh. That’s the nature of the problem.