My Descent Into Jordan World
Few figures in public life command the level of ire that Jordan Peterson does. There’s almost no social setting in which I want to hear his name spoken, so aggravating are the rants that ensue.
I have friends who are willing to admit they like him. But they’re few and far between. Almost every woman I know hates him with every fibre of their being. For many in my friend group, to pay for a Jordan Peterson product, or (gasp) see him live could result in permanent excommunication.
But when the news that he was doing a show in Ottawa was brought up by my journalism school classmates, I knew I had to go.
I’ve committed myself to the field of curiosity and explanation, and want to spend my life going to scary places and interviewing scary people. If I can’t handle a Jordan Peterson event, then I shouldn’t bother.
Make no mistake, I’ve never viewed myself as a Peterson fan. I consider my romantic life too successful and my father figure too competent for me to be lured into Jordan’s grasp. I’m aware of the controversies that surround him. But I consider the majority of his rhetoric to be harmless, and am not afraid to argue that. There’s something neurotic about the way people complain about him that rubs me the wrong way. An insufferable combination of fear and contempt, mixed with a profound lack of curiosity about who he is and the kind of people who like him.
So this past Monday, I wanted to come to my own conclusion. I got in my car in downtown Ottawa, and an hour and fifteen minutes later I was standing in line outside of the Canadian Tire Centre.
The outrage at Jordan’s visit had spread far beyond my program. Almost 30 local organizations signed a letter urging for the event to be canceled, and keyboard warriors from across the city pledged to show up and protest. The fact that the show was happening on the one year anniversary of the Freedom Convoy rolling into town heightened the drama even more.
Alas, there were no protestors to be found. Huge lines of people were gathered in the parking lot, but my entry into the stadium was uneventful. I tried catching bits of conversation from those around me. “I’ve been waiting to go to an event like this since like 2017” a male voice in line behind me said.
The man ahead of me in line was turned away at security because of an abnormally large knife on his keychain.
“Some free country” he grumbled.
I was a bit late, so after the pat down I headed straight for the lower concourse. There was a sign on the door to the main hallway. “No professional cameras. No audio/video recording devices, no ipads, go pros, selfie sticks.” Excellent, I thought. I wouldn’t expect anything less to protect the salacious opinions that Jordan is going to behold to us.
After snapping a photo of the sign I continued on. The first thing I looked for was a concession stand. One drink wouldn’t hurt, right? Make everything go down easier? I quickly found a booth. $15.50 for a Steamwhistle. Okay, on second thought, I should probably be as lucid as possible for this.
I had no idea how the event was going to go. Technically Peterson’s tour is to promote his new book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, but in light of the way he behaves on social media and his various podcast appearances, I anticipated that the aggressiveness he showcased online would be featured here as well. I half expected him to walk out on stage and scream “come out and face me, you pathetic cowards!” to no one in particular.
Inside, the Canadian Tire Centre had a strange atmosphere. Subdued. Surreal even. Like your high school when you visit it after hours. The typically lit and lively hallways were now oddly quiet, their lights dimmed. I couldn’t shake the sense that I was breaking some unspoken rule by being there. Like I was seeing something I shouldn’t be seeing.
The seating area itself was almost pitch black, illuminated only by the large screens on either side of the stage. The show hadn’t started yet but the thousands of people assembled there were hardly talking.
My seat was in the floor section, in the fourth row. I had chosen it because I wanted to see Jordan up close. I hadn’t traveled all this way for a wide shot.
As I sat down I assessed the people next to me. The man to my right was all alone, while on my left was a vaguely Hispanic couple. All three of them were at least 45.
I had been taking note of the demographics since arriving, and they largely did not line up with the stereotypical fanbase described by Peterson’s detractors. Disproportionately white, sure, but not overly so. Almost as many women as men. A lot of couples.
The man and woman ahead of me were wearing matching jackets branded with a local welding company, while the couple behind me was in a tuxedo and a cocktail dress.
There were indeed a few audience members who gave off manosphere vibes (tight haircuts, ill-fitting suits), but what was most striking was the average age. These were not young people. Most were well into their 40s.
I looked up at the screen in front of me. It was a promo for Peterson’s new set of courses. Oh nice, I thought. An upsell.
Before long the energy rose as a woman walked on stage. It was Peterson’s wife, Tammy. I stifled a laugh. Of course his wife would be the one to introduce him. This family, man.
Tammy told us that Jordan was almost ready, and would pass the time by reading an excerpt from 12 Rules for Life. After a few passages she segued into her personal journey.
“I took a yoga weekend course. I was a dedicated yoga practitioner.” A few cheers from the crowd. “But then I found God again.” Louder cheers.
I turned around to look again at the audience. It dawned on me that I was surrounded by a group that rarely gets much attention these days: Canada’s still large Christian plurality. That would explain the age.
Before I could reflect further, out he came. In an extremely expensive looking suit, suddenly there was Jordan Peterson less than 50 feet away from me. He looked exactly as I had imagined. Tall, thin and with an excellent head of salt and pepper hair. Healthy looking, but his expertly tailored suit still managed to hang off of him a bit.
And away we went. After a few jokes about how bigoted we all were for showing up, Jordan dove right in to talking about a lecture series he had been working on with Ben Shapiro, about the book of Genesis. There was no central focus to his speech, which was generally about bettering yourself and religious allegories.
If you could call it a speech. It was more of a stream of consciousness rant that he was having with himself. It could have started before any of us had gotten there, and kept going long after we had left. I pictured Jordan in the green room after the show, still chatting away about the book of Deuteronomy to his comatose wife.
It was torture. For almost an hour, Jordan climbed a rhetorical mountain. Every few minutes he would be on the verge of reaching the peak, only to lose his train of thought and go tumbling downwards again, to resume his point on a slightly altered path towards a slightly different mountain top. It was like hearing a story that’s permanently stuck repeating the second act.
Take this section. It’s verbatim from a recording I took with my phone. Read it in Jordan’s voice:
“…that’s actually your unified ego, which hopefully develops and becomes more sophisticated across time. That unified ego is a spirit, and the question is well what is that spirit and what should it be, and that’s part of our problem that the biblical corpus is trying to work out, and the reason it’s trying to work that out is because that’s what we’re trying to work out when we tell stories! And it’s a story. That’s what a story is. It’s a set of characters oriented towards a goal, in motion. It’s a description of that, and that’s what you are. So you’re in a story, and what’s the story? And what should the story be? Now there’s an idea in Exodus that the…the — what would you say? — the highest unity of spirit, so that’s Yahweh, is, — now you’ve got to think about this, you’ve got to think about whether you agree with this: it’s the spirit that proclaims that the tyrant is wrong. Now you might say…”
You just wanna go Jordan, what on earth are you talking about?
Within five minutes my eyes had glazed over. Besides a few flourishes, the speech was incoherent to me. The subject matter made sense, and Jordan isn’t unintelligent, but the guy ain’t no Tony Robbins. He sucked the charisma out of the room and my focus with it.
There’s something vaguely repulsive about him, I thought as I watched Peterson pace back and forth on the stage. Something about his obsession with epic things that he talks about so verbosely, as his voice constantly cracks. Periodically his tone would shift abruptly into an overly aggressive statement about someone or something. It all just came across as weird.
Besides a few offhand remarks about “the Canadian government” and “the WEF,” which the crowd cheered for louder than anything else, Jordan’s talk was completely apolitical. But aren’t the politics what we were all there for? You think I care about the Epic of Gilgamesh, Jordan? Say something crazy! Accuse Justin Trudeau of leading a global conspiracy! Dispute climate science! Bring up that dude from Oakville who wore those massive fake breasts to school!
But Jordan never took the bait, and I credit him for it. As I watched him, I decided that despite what people say, the man isn’t a grifter at heart. Real grifters sense the insecurities and desires of their audiences, and lean into them. In the rare moments where he did drift into political waters, you could feel the energy in the room rise. His audience was there for him, ripe for the taking. But Jordan avoided the storm and steered home every time.
I turned to gaze at the people watching. Imagine hearing this gibberish, and then looking at those around you. Surely they were feeling the same confusion and skepticism that I was?
They were not. You could have heard a pin drop in that room, so enraptured was Jordan’s audience. The woman next to me was periodically sighing approvingly. “Ugh, yes” she would whisper every few minutes.
I had a moment of self doubt. What am I missing here? Are these people better at focusing than I am? Are they getting this? Perhaps I’m just not deep enough into Jordan World to penetrate his sermons. I’ve read 12 Rules for Life, but I’ve never read the Old Testament.
I began to wonder if I should try reading more of his books. Maybe I need more God in my life, as it certainly isn’t perfect at the moment.
A feeling of vulnerability washed over me. My thoughts turned inward. I’m back to being single. Leaving my career and going back to school has been hard. Maybe I made the wrong decision. If I don’t land a good scholarship, I’ll run out of money soon. Am I one of the lost souls? Maybe I’m more adrift than I think I am. Maybe I do need Jordan.
The cheering of the crowd broke my spell. My eyes flicked back to the stage. Peterson had suddenly stopped talking. The Q & A section was about to begin. Thank god.
Tammy returned and sat down with her husband in the two seats that had been set up. She pulled out her phone and announced that she was going to read off questions the audience had submitted beforehand.
First question: “As teachers, how can we defeat wokeness in schools?”
My body perked up. That question was exactly what I wanted to hear.
It was at this moment in the show that the divide between who the audience wanted Jordan to be (the culture warrior) and who he wanted to be (the quirky self help psychologist) was most clear. After an hour of bible-gazing, all of the questions were overtly based in 2023.
Jordan handled the question surprisingly well. “Prepare your resume.” “Think long and hard before you dive into the arena. Be strategic.” Useful advice. And he did finally mention the Oakville teacher. Nice.
The energy stayed high with the subsequent submissions. Question number two: “What can unvaccinated people do to make sure that they have rights?” Jordan’s answer was to become politically engaged. Anyone can do it, and someone needs to stop the crazies from taking over the school boards, am I right?
At some point someone from the crowd yelled “run for Prime Minister!” Jordan ignored them.
The Q&A period went on for an hour. Someone asked about medically assisted dying and Jordan teared up a bit (mark that off my list) as he recounted his body horror phase, AKA the period after the release of 12 Rules for Life where he suffered all sorts of crazy afflictions in the aftermath of a benzodiazepine addiction. I couldn’t sleep for over a month! My liver doubled in size! I tried a new treatment in Belgrade and my skin stopped working for a week!
Finally someone asked why so many Millennials and Zoomers “are communists.” It was here that we received the best answer. Not only did Jordan disagree with that assertion, but he used it to call out the recent efforts by Florida governor Ron DeSantis to ban several courses related to critical race theory in the state’s schools. “Are we going to ban all discussion of left wing topics?” Jordan asked, after pointing out that critical race theory is difficult to define anyways. I took note of how he mentioned Christopher Rufo, a name that most people outside of Twitter or deep into American culture wars wouldn’t recognize. But the crowd seemed to know everyone he listed, and even cheered when he brought up Ben Shapiro.
“We need to tell a better story about our society. That’s how we win.” Not bad Jordan, not bad. Certainly on brand but significantly more straightforward and valid than what I was expecting.
With that the event came to an end. Abruptly, like the end of his speech. The crowd stood up one last time to applaud him, and I took the opportunity to snap a few photos of him.
As I returned to my car I felt frustrated by how little I could reflect on the experience. You would think that an event like a Jordan Peterson speech, for better and for worse, would be humming with symbolism and catharsis. Yet I felt little.
There was no denying that the man in person didn’t live up to his online persona. To his myth. On Twitter and Joe Rogan Jordan was angry and aggressive, but here he seemed meek, distracted even. Fundamentally nicer than his tweets.
For years I’ve dreamed about reporting on a Trump rally. I can’t help but think that experience would be similar to this. The energy and drama that you project into the story of these people can never be matched by their real life presence. It’s the social forces that propel them and the people who follow them that are what’s truly interesting. As they tell me at journalism school, “seek out the human stories.”
I thought back to the people who had protested his visit but didn’t show up. Funny how they too couldn’t live up to their online personas. It’s like everyone involved in this was a different person in real life. When the chips were down, they were all far more human.
