The Fall of Jordan Peterson

A cautionary tale from a tragic hero

I was a young man when I first encountered Jordan Peterson. It was in 2015, a time when the world felt fragmented and headed towards a tipping point. Conversations with friends and family about society felt either dishonest or too filtered by new speech dogmas to be meaningful or valuable. In that vacuum, Peterson, then a relatively obscure psychology professor from the University of Toronto, emerged like a rogue prophet. Armed with Jungian archetypes, Biblical metaphors, and an inexplicable obsession with crustaceans, he wasn’t your average academic. He was a thinker who spoke with urgency, conviction, and clarity about order, suffering, and meaning in an era that felt adrift.

For many young men, including myself, he was a lifeline. At the time, the concept of masculinity itself was considered toxic, something to be condemned, even eradicated. Peterson didn’t just reject that narrative; he torched it, and for a moment, the blaze illuminated a vision of masculinity to aspire to, rather than to endure. He told us to take responsibility and stand up straight with our shoulders back. He told us our suffering held meaning, and that meaning mattered more than happiness. He didn’t offer us platitudes. Instead, he provided structure, a philosophy rooted in existentialism, Christian morality, and analytical psychology. Life is suffering, he said. Confront the dragon, carry the cross, and aim upward. You are not a victim. You are an agent of change in your life. It made sense for a generation left behind by postmodern deconstructionism and academic invalidation. It made sense to me. The Canadian urged us to stop waiting for the world to change and start changing ourselves first. And yes, he brought up lobsters. A lot.

He was one of the only public intellectuals willing to confront the cultural chaos head-on. And he did so with razor-sharp analysis, emotional intensity, and a sense of depth. His opinions were far weightier than clickbait contrarianism, proposing a worldview grounded in classical liberalism, individual responsibility, and psychological integration. He fused Carl Jung with Christian ethics, warning of the dangers of collectivist ideology while encouraging people to strive for meaning over expedience.

A decade later, I watched the same man burst into tears during a recent discussion with Piers Morgan. But this time, the outburst of emotion wasn’t unusual. Peterson cries often now. He cries about young men. He has cried about Antifa. He cried when the actress Olivia Wilde criticized him. On this occasion, the tears came when Morgan asked him what it meant to be a role model for young men.

“I was in contact with thousands of people,” he told Morgan, voice cracking. “And they shared their experiences with me. I could see this demoralization, you know?” He went on: “It’s part of fatherlessness, broadly speaking, and sometimes specifically. I could see the pathway to rectifying that.” Then, visibly trembling, he added: “You embrace adventure by taking on maximal responsibility... That’s the symbol of hoisting your cross voluntarily and trudging up the hill.”

It was Peterson at his most raw, but also at his most incoherent. His metaphors collided mid-sentence. His ideas seemed to spiral. It wasn’t clear whether he was offering a roadmap or mythologizing his own self-pity.

Peterson should not be mocked. He has navigated the depths of what may be defined as a psychological hellscape —drug dependency, health complications in his family, public vilification. He is, I believe, someone whose intentions are pure. But being well-meaning isn’t enough when you’ve positioned yourself as a guide for millions of young men.

What we're witnessing is, to use Peterson-like language, the fall of a hero, a tragic story about the irony of fate. Not because external forces destroyed him, but because he crumbled under the weight of his own convictions. His view of masculinity was rooted in control, discipline, and responsibility. But what happens when a man who preaches stoicism becomes emotionally unhinged, and when the prophet of order loses the plot?

The cracks begin to show not just in his demeanour, but in his philosophical message. Nowhere is this more evident than in his refusal to answer whether or not he believes in God. That’s not a "gotcha" question. It’s a foundational one. If one has spent years creating multi-hour YouTube lectures on Genesis, Revelation, and Biblical symbolism, the question of belief is a fair one to ask, and one should be able to answer it. Yet, when asked directly, Peterson dodged it, insisting that he acts “as if God exists. That’s what I say”. It sounds clever, but it feels unfulfilling. It’s akin to claiming to live as if love is real, without having ever loved anyone. For many listeners, especially those of faith, it felt shallow and evasive. That sentiment reveals a deeper issue at play. Peterson no longer seems certain of what he believes, and there’s a reason for it.

He became the embodiment of a man trapped inside his own mythology, a teacher who has become his own cautionary tale. An example of how fate will test the courage of your convictions. He once warned about the dangers of becoming lost, irresponsible, and erratic. But today, his public persona feels just the same. He’s no longer the anchor; the boat is sailing without a destination.

Once a place for ideas and philosophical clarity, his X account turned into a punching bag for his most erratic impulses, replete with sarcasm, bitterness, and defensiveness. The deeper we tried to look for wisdom, the more we found grievance.

In short, Peterson became the figure he warned us against. A man consumed by chaos, no longer capable of clean, ordered thought. Part of this fracturing stems from Peterson’s hyper-individualist philosophy built on the idea that we are the sole architects of our destiny and that we must fulfill it without complaining. It left little room for human fragility, let alone failure. He lectured young men to carry the burden of existence with courage and conviction. To hold the line. But when his life began to spiral, he couldn’t follow the very code he had created. His benzodiazepine addiction wasn’t a footnote. It was the expression of a deeper contradiction. The drug that was meant to quell anxiety became the crutch of the man who once told others to conquer theirs.

Psychologically, it makes sense, in a tragic way, one that has created a myth of its own for our generation. The rigidity of his philosophy left no room for grace or fallibility. And when that rigidity cracked, so did the man. As many psychologists will attest, chronic suppression of emotion doesn’t produce strength. Instead, it produces psychosis. To his credit, Peterson appeared to recognize this, albeit briefly. In Beyond Order, the follow-up to 12 Rules for Life, he admitted that too much order can be as dangerous as too much chaos. It was his most vulnerable book. It showed a man beginning to see that his philosophy, while powerful, was incomplete. It lacked mercy. Yet, for all that insight, he failed to fully heed his own warnings.

This isn’t schadenfreude. Peterson once helped me think clearly. He introduced me to Jung, Solzhenitsyn, and even to life itself in a way that finally made sense to me. He made me believe that masculinity was not a curse but a calling. He inspired me to read more challenging books, to dare to hold deeper conversations, and ask better questions about the state of society around us. That matters, and it’s part of why watching his decline hurts.

Now, he seems lost in a role he helped create but can no longer control. And that, perhaps, is the final lesson the myth of Jordan Peterson has to teach us: that even the man who tells you to conquer the dragon can be devoured by it. In trying to save a generation of men from being consumed by chaos, he may have been consumed by it himself. Sometimes, the person who taught you how to find meaning can lose sight of it, too.

Now might be the time for Peterson to take a moment. To stop filming. To stop crying on camera. To stop dragging his half-answered questions across every available screen. And instead, to do what he once told the rest of us: clean up his own house first. That begins by understanding that there is more to life than pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. Maybe then we’ll be able to see the man at the center of his own mythos and show him the understanding he’s owed.

John Mac Ghlionn is an essayist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, the New York Post, The Hill, and others.

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