I miss the old Jordan Peterson.

I miss the old Jordan Peterson.

You know, the quirky professor in jeans with his sleeves rolled up sipping on Pepsi.

I miss the man who came out of nowhere and blew up the internet when he decided to petition against the Canadian Bill C-16, a bill which would have legally compelled citizens to use language against their will. This no-name professor stood firm because he knew the implications of this bill, having read too much literature about life in the Russian gulags.

Dr. Jordan Peterson — psychologist, author, and educator

I miss the professor whose passion for important literature was second only to his real vocation, which was to help people in crises as a behavioral psychologist; the professor whose classes were so powerful that students would applaud at the end of his lectures; the professor who would simply shake his head sometimes during those same lectures as a way of implicitly saying I know too much.

Give me that Jordan Peterson.

This was the version of Jordan Peterson that fascinated me. His lectures — the fruit of a lifetime of clinical research and practice — gave unmatched value to those who listened.

Sure, he was into Jung and some other wacky stuff, but he wasn’t pretending to be some kind of spiritual authority, so I took the best and left the rest. Simple as.

This new Jordan Peterson is altered, and I am having a hard time with that change.

The commercialization of the Jordan Peterson brand is my first qualm. I don’t want The Jordan Peterson Podcast. I don’t care about his partnership with the Daily Wire, nor do I find his custom suits appealing. All of it seems to be an affected version of the man who took the world by storm in 2016.

I preferred the jeans

When he was simply a professor of psychology, Jordan Peterson was a superhero to me. Having discovered him during my college years, I will forever be grateful to the man who told me to make my bed, accept personal responsibility and do something meaningful with my life.

But beyond the commercialization of JBP, his talks have increasingly veered thematically into the spiritual. I know that this point has been beaten to death in Christian circles, so I won’t linger on it. I just want to point out that this shift is both dangerous and misleading. This is especially true given Carl Jung — an occultist — has had a big influence on the way Dr. Peterson thinks. While still giving credit to his brilliance and academic accomplishments, I have no interest in hearing Dr. Peterson wax philosophical about the Bible and proceed to fall into all sorts of errors.

Despite these changes I have noticed, I went to one of his lectures a few months ago and still got the sense that he cares deeply about the same things, and at the core carries the same message with him. He still has the same solicitous care for people who are struggling. I am simply pointing out that I miss the old guy.

I understand that Jordan Peterson is on a personal journey, but something about his projection over the last several years strikes me as bizarre. After riding his bandwagon for many years, I am thinking it is time to disembark.

You will find me, however, watching his lectures from 2017 when he spent all his time talking about Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. That’s the Jordan I love, and that’s the one I am happy to keep unaltered in my memory.

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Patrick Giroux is a Cincinnati native and holds a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University. Working in classical education, in his free time he writes on faith, culture, and the Great Books. Join his growing community of readers on Substack to follow his work.