Jordan Peterson, author of The Maps of Meaning, is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. While most famous today for his defense of free speech contra campus cultural marxists and collectivists, more than five hundred videos of his classes about psychology, religion, mythology, and how to lead a fully human life have been posted at his YouTube Channel. Even more clips of interviews he has done, public talks, and his testimony for civil liberties have been edited and posted by his admirers.
I was delighted to see that he is a Hogwarts Saga reader — and a serious reader at that. In the above video, Professor Peterson chose Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as his text, a book experience he knows he shares with his students, to talk about why mythic stories make sense and why they mean so much to us despite their seeming nonsensical.
Check it out. And, if you have a moment, compare it with my first look at the meaning of Chamber of Secrets in 2002. Scroll down that page to ‘Chamber as Morality Play.’ I think Peterson and I agree a lot more than we disagree.
What do you think?
Post posting discovery: An older, cooler, shorter version of the talk above —
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