The Learning Brain
What is the impact of listening to psychology lectures and podcasts on the human brain?
Listen to copious hours of Peterson –with his complex topics, masterful vocabulary and distinct style — and, after the first 40 hours or so, you might become curious about the effects. What happens to your brain when you binge listen to psychology-oriented lectures?
Talking to a young man whose life, and thinking, has been transformed by Peterson’s content, I confirmed what I suspected: listening to Peterson is ‘calisthenics for the brain’. Beyond accessing content, you learn how to think.
A case in point: Da’ud (not his real name), a 23-year-old fellow in Bangladesh, discovered Peterson two years ago. Initially he tuned in to ‘hate listen’; to confirm his negative perceptions of the psychologist. Then, a turning point:
“A video came on about Dostoevsky — a favorite author of mine. I thought: if he likes Dostoevsky then there must be something worthy in this guy. I started listening to him and discovered all sorts of ideas which I felt were already in me but inarticulately so, dormant. He spoke to me.”
Da’ud also gravitated to Peterson’s energy and style:
“The way he spoke, his energy, the way he liked to push people, his push of the edge, that energized me to be more active and electric instead of a dull everyday dude. When you are in this electric mode, you want to do something good, it compels you to ‘go forth’!”
With plenty of time at home because of quarantine, with access to hundreds of hours of Peterson talks and content, he rediscovered himself. After all, there wasn’t that much else to do. He tells us:
“Jordan Peterson helped me diagnose my problems. I found the things that were barriers for me. I began to analyze how to change them.”
What problems did he identify? Da’ud’s past included a factor that shaped his trajectory. When he was nine, his father enrolled him in an Islamic school with a curriculum that prioritized memorizing Qur’an . . . and excluded secular studies. For Da’ud, this type of schooling was “a heavy burden to bear.” He rebelled. Two years later his dad conceded. The boy was transferred back to his original school.
Now, though, he was out of sync with his peers. Devoid of secular studies for two years, out of the fray, socially and academically, he did not make friends. He was hardly passing. He saw himself as a “backbencher,” a failure:
“I took for granted [I could look forward to] a life of an average Joe, just living to be alive.”
He saw no path forward.
Interestingly, the first help came via literature and films. Given a whiff of a different kind of life, he decided to work for better grades. That worked! He got into university, a significant accomplishment in Bangladesh. He was more optimistic, but still a loner, detached from society, still imprinted by his difficult history.
And then: university. In the new environment, disoriented, dealing with online classes because of COVID, his marks went down. And this is the moment that he came upon Jordan Peterson. And the rest is history!
What has binge watching Peterson done for this undergrad?
“Two years ago, I was just a lost freshman. Now I find myself quite articulate in my thinking, I know which way to step when I begin something, I figured myself out and developed my ideas, my worldview is now broader and I am able to distinguish right and wrong in a more nuanced manner.”
He describes how listening to Peterson required him to work up his comprehension skills, telling us,
“Listening to Jordan, I had to learn his language, I had to understand what he is saying, which led me to strategize to understand him. And as soon as I began to see what he is saying, I began to connect the dots, I now had to store them [the concepts]. So I had to build a coherent thinking pattern where I store everything in an orderly way. And all of this was done instinctively so it was very effective…”
Da’ud reports wide-ranging benefits he has accrued and shows how working with Peterson’s content could help virtually any freshman to achieve better success in school:
“Now that I am more orderly in my head, I am more confident and decisive. I know what I am doing and I am free from confusion.
You know, in academic life, mostly in university, the biggest problem is confusion. Since the education is all your responsibility now, you have to know what you have to study to pass each semester. And also you have to know how to do better. If you are confused, then you will just ask one friend after another in social media wondering what they are studying and at the end you end up studying nothing.
So coherence is really important. Being well organized gives you an advantage in academic life. I know this now because after I forced myself instinctively to follow Jordan, my academic success converged with it. Thus I found a new way.”
Then, other areas of progress - academic, functional, psychological and social:
“My grades have improved, I can now recognize, store and evaluate ideas well and I have learned to write. I figured ways to discipline myself, one way was by writing daily. What is most significant is my personal development: I have learned the psychological aspect of life, I discovered the Big Five indicators that [explain my behavior]. In my social life, I am now more connected with people and people find me more extroverted than before. I used to think I was an introvert but I figured a way to bypass that.
Not bad, right? He continues, sharing the higher degree of self-insight he has accomplished:
In a broader sense I have become more conscious. And from a personal point of view, I am a very open person as indicated by the Big Five test, so I had more nihilistic ideas in the past, I was more melancholy and hopeless and I didn’t care about conventional ideals. Listening to Jordan, these issues are very changed. I’m now more equipped to maneuver my life in the complexity of society.”
As a psychotherapist, what can I say to all this? How’s this: “Wow!”
In retrospect, Da’ud reflects that his Muslim tradition has been an important anchor, but, given the complexities of modern life, he needed something else to get past the early challenges he had experienced. In Muslim society, he reflects, there is less openness to secular wisdom for those struggling with modern culture, materialism and the secular values that lead people adrift. He addressed the problem he sees:
“Nihilism comes from the crowd around us. People are busy with their lives. We hardly get guidance today.
In most Muslim or eastern societies, there is a social and cultural gap between the parents and children, the modern youth operates in a different social landscape than their parents since today’s society is changing more rapidly than it was 20-30 years ago. Parents could not keep up with this rapid shift and thus find themselves unable to fully guide their children. Modern youth are left to figure out the world on their own. You are lost in the vast ocean of materialism, everything is happening all at once.”
In response to these circumstances, a person needs a frame of reference, an anchor. And that’s where Peterson comes into play. Da’ud explains: Peterson provides a way of thinking that integrates different types of wisdom. His frame speaks to Muslim males who want to bridge their faith with modernity:
“Integration of modernity in life as well as in the religion, there has to be balance, or one wins over the other. But you can go farther: instead of seeing modernity fight religion, you can synthesize both with more understanding. This is where nihilism begins to wear out. And listening to great thinkers helps in this process, to fight the chaos and bring balance between chaos and order. I think this can be relatable to many Muslim followers of Jordan Peterson that are my age.”
When thinking about what Da’ud has achieved in the past couple of years, I find myself reminded of a quote by an educator, Frances Perkins, who said,
“The undergraduate mind should concentrate on the scientific courses, which temper the human spirit, harden and refine it and make of it a tool in which one may tackle any kind of material (Brooks, 2015).”
It seems that Peterson’s opus, spanning scientific, cultural, moral and spiritual teachings, might be helping young people landscape the undergraduate mind in a way that hardens, refines and makes it a better tool. In times characterized by chaos, I take hope from the progress reported by our friend, Da’ud. One by one, we can tame our respective dragons, clean our rooms and sort ourselves out. The world will be saved - one life at a time.
Annette Poizner, MSW, Ed.D., RSW, is a Registered Social Worker & Psychotherapist working in Toronto. Through her imprint, Lobster University Press, she has explored the opus of Dr. Jordan Peterson, having published a range of books: summaries, commentaries and even a Jordan Peterson coloring book.
