Maggie's Farm

It'd be somewhat more useful that before leveling narcissism at a target - potentially in the left's mold of instinctively projecting at opponents - that we use the word correctly. A narcissist may be a loud showoff but as a clinical disorder, there's way more to it than that. That's not to say that plenty of leftists do not suffer from disorder - leftism arguably is a disorder - but unless we're ready and willing to really connect the clinical dots there's a good chance we'll get it wrong.

The right counter-signals like crazy and 90% of the time it does it's either structurally or literally wrong. Simply projecting back is, using Peterson's own logic, not having your bed made. The right lost a nation - gave it to the left while sitting smugly on its morally-superior hands - because it didn't get out and do something with all that intellectual and ethical and philosophical horsepower it thinks it's on about. Cultural rightism is easily at as much risk of this "narcissism" as leftism is.

Peterson-thought is the natural and entirely needed remedy to the west's intellectual and cultural malaise however he routinely leaves money on the table - like bowing to King and global warming in this interview. The other link he leaves undone is the one that actually does go to the heart of the matter clinically.

Even Peck, writing in the Seventies, went to the wall demanding that mental health was, as he rightly put it, the relentless and absolutely uncompromising pursuit of objective truth (about self) regardless of cost; regardless of any and all cost. Link that sentiment to Peterson and link both to a real movement and the right's job of pushing this torrent back uphill might stand a small chance. Counter-signalling and codependency and simplistic cultural bordering - the common right's talents - won't cut it. In fact, they'll invite even more resistance.