Jordan Peterson and the Second Religiousness: Explaining the Jordan Peterson Phenomenon

There are those who say we are at some great spiritual "moment" in the West's history. In fact, we are at the moment when the West's death knell has been sounded.

Humanity is not entering any "Great Awakening". The exact opposite is true. Humanity is embracing the Second Religiousness and the Great Endarkening predicted by metahistorian Oswald Spengler in his masterwork "The Decline of the West".

Tragically, because humanity is so excited to be escaping nihilistic and atheistic scientific materialism, it imagines something numinous is taking place, some glorious paradigm shift and change in consciousness to a higher state. In fact, it is a change for the worse that is now engulfing the world: the rejection of rationalism in favor of superstition, faith and mysticism.

People are increasingly credulous and astrological. New Age nonsense is spouted everywhere. The educated are shouted down and trolled. Idiocy floods from both liberals and conservatives. There are countless absurd conspiracy theories. Flat Earth theory has returned - what could be a greater symbol of the Second Religiousness than that?

This is not the beginning, this is the end. This cycle of Western development is now on life support. Death is imminent. Unless the West wakes up, it is finished. No one ever believed the Roman empire would fall. It did. When the end comes, it comes incredibly fast.

The meteoric rise of social commentator Jordan Peterson can be framed in terms of Oswald Spengler's Second Religiousness, set against David Riesman's sociological framework of five social types: the tradition-directed, inner-directed, other-directed, anomic and autonomous. These types are now at war with each other. In the USA, the other-directed are the liberals (Democrats) and the inner-directed are the conservatives (Republicans). These two types have ceased to have anything in common and are engaged in a cut-throat, zero-sum game. Any victory for one is an autonomic loss for the other. Neither side can bear loss. They are totally loss averse, and react with hysteria to any possibility of loss.

This book is neither for nor against Peterson, although it advances a degree of critical appraisal. His precise views are not the central subject of this book. Nor are his biographical details. Instead, this book concerns the historical forces that are now at play, which, for the conservative wing of the political spectrum, Peterson crystallizes perhaps better than anyone else, with the single exception of Donald Trump. Where Trump is an active executive agent of the spirit of the times - actually taking critical decisions and directly shaping events - Peterson may be viewed in more passive terms as providing an intellectual justification for Trump and his base.

Peterson is an extraordinary cultural figure because he encapsulates the great struggle of our time. What is at stake was best framed by Nietzsche: does humanity wish to pursue the path of the Last Man, or the Superman? This question revolves around whether God should be resurrected (if you imagine his influence has disastrously waned), or killed (if you imagine he continues to exercise an undue and disastrous influence over humanity).

God: Wanted Dead or Alive?