This post is to coincide with the appearance of Jordan Peterson in London this Wednesday as part of his global tour.
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This transcript of an interview with Jordan Peterson was one of four I carried out in the early years of Doctor Peterson’s rise to global fame. I am posting it because Peterson is appearing in London next week and so it seems to be an appropriate moment. At the time I recorded it, I found it astonishing that the night before he had sold out the 5000 seater Hammersmith Apollo. Next week he is appearing at the at the O2 Arena - capacity 20,000. So his popular appeal has clearly not diminished ( although he receives a lot less publicity than he used to).
My own position of Peterson has changed somewhat since this interview. I have been taken aback by his weakness for Internet soundbites and culture war clickbait. He seems to have more and more embraced the Alt-right as he came under more and more flak from the social justice left, so much so that he now seems to have started to resemble in the minds of many sympathisers, the folk-devil those commentators originally ( and unfairly in my mind) portrayed him as.
Interestingly I start out the interview talking about the dangers that fame could have on his personality. He claimed to be aware of the dangers then, but whether he was ever sufficiently aware is now open to question. I still think Peterson is a remarkable man and one of the smartest people I have ever met. But I find it hard nowadays to relate to him emotionally and understand more and more why people took against him. We stop being in communication sometime after this interview, when in a piece on the website Rebel Wisdom, I questioned the wisdom of letting his daughter, Michaela, piggyback on his fame at a time that she appeared to be in danger of becoming a Svengali figure to a Peterson much weakened by a year of severe, almost fatal, illness. I am pleased to say that by all accounts he seems to have fully recovered.
We talked of his history of depression, why creative people are rare, the dangers of fame and much more. I started by asking him about how he felt appearing at the Hammersmith Apollo in front of so many people.
Tim Lott: What the hell was it like last night? I was there. I was astonished. 5,000 people! The last time I went to the Hammersmith Apollo was to see Bob Marley and the Wailers and now it’s Jordan Peterson. It’s surreal beyond belief. What is it doing to you? It must be hard to hold on to reality. For you it must be like being taken into the desert with Satan and being offered all these treasures. From being a relatively obscure Toronto academic, you went to being the toast of the town across the world. What’s it doing to you? Are you immune?
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