But finding that these two extremely intelligent, very educated, and highly accomplished men have so many ideas which are so very like my own has breathed fresh inspiration and hope into me. Especially because they not only hold these ideas, but are speaking them publicly, and are fighting the good fight against the Ideological Inquisition and the Thought Police so successfully. And what really impresses me, with Peterson in particular, is that he does so with such grace, sensitivity, nuance, and composure, rather than being simplistic and polemical like Limbaugh or Coulter.
I love what Dr. Peterson is saying here about being "dangerous", living one's life heroically, and integrating the shadow-self or one's own potential for darkness. I've spoken about all these things here before. I especially like when he describes our educational systems as being imposed and overly-domesticated, and by implication, emasculating, although he doesn't use the term. He does talk, though, about how they have been intentionally trying to socialize boys as girls to make them less dangerous. He describes many friends he knew who dropped out of school at 15 or 16 because they were already maturing and becoming men and were "Just done with raising their hands to go to the bathroom". That is exactly what I experienced. I felt, from the time I first started to form my identity as a boy becoming a man, like the culture in general (as expressed chiefly through media) and the school system in particular, were trying very hard to "demasculinize" me (and everyone else who showed any signs of genuine masculinity).
What I mean is that, if one has that air of being "potentially dangerous" as he calls it, which people can sense, then one is marked by the feminist "testosterone is poison" types as a threat and an evil, and treated accordingly. But being dangerous, in that sense, is an essential part of being a man. It's who we need to be in order to be self-fulfilled. And it's who we have to be, in order to be what women and children need us to be. In fact, it's the primary thing that women find most attractive in men: that elusive quality which draws women toward "bad men" and leaves "nice guys" wondering why they're always alone. Although I think that it's generally poorly understood by both men and women. Being a real man, a true hero, means neither giving in to nor denying that side of ourselves, but struggling with and mastering that potential for being dangerous, and using it for good. The self-actualized man is the knight: capable of astonishing violence, but completely in control of it, and only using it in the right cause and context. But also capable of great gentleness, sensitivity, and vulnerability.
I use "dangerous" here in the sense that Tolkien meant when he wrote:
"Dangerous!" cried Gandalf. "And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord. And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Gloin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. Certainly the forest of Fangorn is perilous - not least to those that are too ready with their axes; and Fangorn himself, he is perilous too; yet he is wise and kindly nonetheless."And that Lewis meant when he wrote:
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”and:
“He'll be coming and going" he said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”Anyway, to it:
part 1
part 2
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