Rescuing the Boy
Hello friends,
I hope you are well.
Tomorrow we have a Let Us Maybe Get Triggered By Jordan Peterson Symposium. The full line-up is here:
2:00 PM ET: Theory of Enchantment: From Kendrick Lamar to Jordan Peterson w/ Chloe Valdary. RSVP here.
4:00 PM ET: Myth & Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson w/ The drjordanbpeterson.ca Team. RSVP here.
6:00 PM ET: The Rise of Jordan Peterson Screening & Sensemaking w/ Patricia Marcoccia and Maziar Ghaderi. RSVP here.
8:30 PM ET: The Meaningwave Party w/ Akira The Don. RSVP here.
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June 1, 2020
Last summer Camille and I were visiting Montreal, during the time when Epstein maybe didn’t kill himself, and I had the following dream:
I was the president of the United States of America, and it was during some kind of emergency, so I was ushered to this private room. In this room I discovered a hidden stairwell, which I walked down. It led me to this dirty basement and all these toys from my childhood were there. And so was the childhood version of myself. It seemed like he was stuck there and he could not leave. He was so happy to see me and he just wanted to play. I was cold to him and said no, I was too busy for that. I am the president after all. I walked away secretly heartbroken.
After I woke I could not stop crying. For two days, walking around the streets of Montreal, I was holding back tears. Every time I thought about that boy, locked in that basement all alone with no one to play with, I wanted to collapse in the streets and die of a broken heart. Retelling this makes me so tender, and raw, my heart wants to burst right now. He was a sweet little boy. A trouble maker for sure, but he was innocent. He had a very good heart, a very loveable heart.
I do not know why this is coming up now, but while the old world feels like it is collapsing around us, a desire is bubbling up for me to try to rescue this boy from the basement. It is so fucking cruel leaving him there. All he wants to do is play.
Yeah, this does seem like a ridiculous time to attempt a rescue. The memetic tribes are telling me I should be shouting at Trump, or pointing out gaps in mainstream narratives, or signalling some kind of virtue I did not earn. The daemon does seem fucking ridiculous at times, but he has deeply earned my trust, so I will listen and attempt a rescue.
At his sweetest and purest, this boy does not play any games, he just wanted to play, in the infinite way. Sometimes he liked to play by himself, for hours, but most times he wanted to play with others, and you need a friend in order to play with others. The best sort of play is when you are playing with a friend.
I do not know how I am going to rescue him, but just stating this intention, and feeling into its committedness, feels like he may already be rescued. I am feeling a lightness. I never want the boy to be alone anymore, I never want to be alone anymore. I do not think I will be alone if I allow myself to play.
There are riots in the streets, while a virus spreads, during a meta-crisis that seems to have a self-determining end. We may all be at the knife’s edge here, or maybe the dominoes are already falling, and we are too late.
The world may end, and that is okay, because right now I just want to play.
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