I teach Plato’s Meno. I emphasize that, despite it being a hard dialogue, Meno, the guy, isn’t hard to size up. ‘Virtue’ is success. Meno is a get-ahead guy. Are some guys born with it, do you get it by practice, is there intellectual secret sauce? I talk to my students about self-help books. What good, do you think, can a book like How To Win Friends and Influence People do you?

You can read my commentary chapter on Meno here. There’s quite a bit of self-help stuff in it. (You can always buy my book on Amazon! [Associates link.])

Since this is my angle, I should keep up with the self-help scene, shouldn’t I? But, I confess, I didn’t keep tabs on the meteoric rise of Jordan Peterson. At first, when I heard folks complaining, I thought: stern Canadian Jungian? Sweet Tiamat in Toronto, sounds Abzulutely fabulous! Like the premise for a Guy Madden film.

Recently I tried to find time to familiarize myself better. Let me share with you a bit from one exchange that struck me as especially … well, yes, funny. It’s from a 2-hour episode of the Rubin Report, from November 30, 2018. It’s Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin talking “religion, trans activism, censorship, the IDW and more.” (Hey. I study the metaphysics of self-help literature. I gotta dance with the one what brung me.)

Round about minute 52 it runs sort of like this. (Very rough transcript, not word-for-word. but I’ve tried to be fair, not omitting anything that changes the sense. You can check it against audio. If I have made transcription errors or left out any detail that changes the sense, I will correct.) [click to continue…]