In the beginning, there were lobsters. Then there was man. And man, like the man-lobsters before him, was stronger than woman, who only liked the strongest of men. Then there was God. Then God died. Then there was ideology. Millions died. Then there was Jordan Peterson.

In the beginning, child Jordan Peterson went to church. There, there was God. Teenage Jordan Peterson abandoned God and joined a “mildly socialist” political party. There, there was ideology. No one died, but the group attracted losers: people without jobs or families who were motivated only by resentment of the rich. Peterson discovered that people — or “Homo sapiens,” as he sometimes calls them — are bad, and ideology is worse, allowing humans to hide their inherent badness from themselves. By “ideology,” Peterson means Stalinism and Nazism, and also Marxism, which includes postmodernism. All ideology tends toward the concentration-camp-gulag, a single entity in Petersonland where transgender rights activists, Pol Pot, Jacques Derrida, and Adolf Hitler are not always easily distinguishable.

After his misguided political dalliance, young man Jordan Peterson began a psychology degree. Bereft of his previous convictions, he felt anxious and was beset by apocalyptic nightmares. One drunk night he painted Jesus on the cross. Then he discovered the work of Carl Jung, whose descriptions of ancient belief systems subtending psychic life resonated with his experiences. Peterson narrates his encounter with Jung as personal, not professional — something between therapy and religious epiphany.