Jordan Peterson in conversation with Joe Rogan (again!):

– a process that Peterson has described (elsewhere, of course!) as “like being interviewed by a vacuum cleaner”.

• Some interesting bits/highlights:

Starting around 58:00 Peterson addresses the fact that his goal was to come up with an approach or approaches that would work even under the worst of circumstances.  Highly commendable, in my book, since so many current therapies and self-help regimes leave one thinking something along the lines of: “That’s all very fine and well, but what about somebody who’s got a real problem?”

Shortly after that, from about 1:01 through 1:08, there follows one of the best discussions I’ve ever heard of the reasons/justifications for what, in the Fourth Way, we call Fly Efforts.  And who’d’ve thought such a small concept would have such a huge effect on the popular psyche?  Maybe the World is just ready for such things – they have been kind of floating around almost forever, and maybe time has come for them to move more to the foreground.  After all, although the image/term “Fly Efforts” is original to Gurdjieff, the concept is hardly unique to the Fourth Way, and is probably universal to wisdom systems, both esoteric and everyday.  For example: in mainstream US culture, they’re called “Baby Steps“; in Twelve Step Programs, participants are enjoined to “…take things one day at a time”; in Japan the related term is “kai-zen”…

Starting around 2:05 there is quite a long in depth discussion of the infamous Vice interview – with which, it turns out, Peterson is very far from pleased.  As noted in my comment on that interview (both posted below), it seemed to me that that interview went quite well, with Jay Caspian Kang asking very pointed and difficult questions, and Peterson fielding them admirably.   But Peterson seems to see things very differently.  For more of his reactions to the Vice interview, click here; for some further thoughts on the same subject – from Rogan, along with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying – click here.

• Also gleaned from this interview:

Peterson has been tapped to write the introduction to the upcoming fiftieth anniversary edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn‘s The Gulag Archipelago.

Further, included in the discussion of the Vice interview is Peterson’s admission of his problem with anger.  It was a great relief to me to hear him admit he’s at least aware of, and trying to address, this aspect of himself, which is one of several big problems I have with him; but more on all that later, if I can continue to develop and articulate a critical appreciation of this remarkable phenomenon…