The Spectator - February 08, 2018

dance of single purpose — the glori-
fication of a reality so that no matter
how good it has suddenly become, it
can get better and better and better
more and more deeply forever into
the future.’ Ah.
Yet amid all this stuff are several
genuinely moving moments — often
personal confessions or stories of Dr
Peterson’s clients illustrating the way
in which we can all too easily destroy
ourselves and others by choosing to
do or say the wrong thing.
There is also some good advice
for troubled, lost people, given by
a man who has had quite severe
troubles of his own, and whose face,
in some lights and attitudes, looks a
little like that of a sorrowing saint
on an Orthodox icon. Yet I am per-
plexed by the fact that Dr Peterson
has in the past taken ‘antidepressant’ pills.
Is he aware of the scientific and medical
controversy surrounding the claims made
for them, and the possible disadvantages of
taking them? They seem to me (even if they
work as claimed) to be a version of Aldous
Huxley’s soma, the drug that reconciled the
inhabitants of Brave New World to their ser-
vitude and ignorance.
Perhaps this is why I am so glad that the
whole nature of Dr Peterson’s work is alien

to me. I am too keenly aware of the good

things which have been utterly lost in recent

years to be comforted by what looks like an

attempt to reconcile us with the revolution-

ary order. I find it hard to applaud efforts to

help me adapt to a world which I think has

gone utterly wrong. His message is aimed

at people who have grown up in the post-

Christian West. I think it appeals especial-

ly to young men. And I think this is mainly

because those young men cannot

work out how to behave correct-

ly towards modern young women.

These young women’s minds have

been trained to mistrust masculinity.

But in their hearts they still despise

feeble, feminised men. The outcome

is that men are trapped in a mine-

field, in the midst of a quicksand.

Whether you stand still or move, it

will still destroy you. I do not know

how anyone copes with it, or ever

could.

I used to joke that my upbringing,

among warships and cathedrals, with

longish spells in chilly prep schools

surrounded by muddy playing fields

and ruled by bellowing tyrants, had

not done me any harm. In truth, I am

sure it did do me some harm, though

I was neither beaten nor subject-

ed to indecent assaults, as everyone else

seems to have been. But by comparison with

the world in which Dr Peterson’s poor, sad

admirers have grown up, it was a wise edu-

cation for real life, especially the hymns that

still echo in my mind, with their promised

nights of doubt and sorrow and their steep

and rugged pathways.

Peter Hitchens is a columnist at the Mail

on Sunday.

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Cult figure: Dr Jordan Peterson

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