James Marriott: my long night with Jordan Peterson
james marriott #jamesmarriott
‘Is there an ultimate meaning to life?” Jordan Peterson cries. “Is there an ultimate good? Is there a God?” The famous voice — shrill, hoarse, reminiscent of Kermit the Frog — charges these abstract questions with an almost desperate urgency. Peterson is warmed up now, pacing the stage and talking with incredible fluency: God, western civilisation, marriage, sin, ultimate meaning. The audience at the O2, filled almost to its 20,000-seat capacity, interrupts regularly to applaud with the rapt unanimity of a North Korean Communist Party delegation. A friend seated right at the back of the arena texts: “This feels like a 19th-century religious revival meeting”. And it really does. It is one of the strangest nights of my life.
Peterson, 61, is the first philosopher