Today I’m publishing my new documentary, “A Glitch in the Matrix” — Jordan Peterson, the Intellectual Dark Web & the Mainstream Media. It’s about the relationship between truth and reality, the ideological blind spots of the mainstream media and the existential threat of polarisation — all seen through the lens of Jordan Peterson’s recent viral interview with Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News.

I have a fairly unique perspective on the clash as I have worked at Channel 4 News (and its offshoot More 4 News) since 2006 as reporter and producer, and also made the first full documentary on Jordan Peterson — “Truth in the Time of Chaos” — released just over a month ago.

I also attempted to liaise between Jordan Peterson and Channel 4 News in the bad tempered aftermath of the interview.

I believe this interview resonated so much (over 7 million views at the time of writing, with hundreds of online analyses and responses) because it’s a cultural watershed moment, and in my documentary I try to unpack all the deeper levels of why that is — from the political all the way down to the psychological and archetypal.

The infamous interview on Channel 4 News

This blog post accompanies the film, where I try to explain why I’m making it — and why I think the issues it covers are so important, timely and essential for the broadcast media establishment to understand and integrate — if they are not to speed their way to obsolescence. It is meant to add to, not replace watching the documentary.

I still have good friends at Channel 4 News and a huge amount of respect for the programme, so this post is also an attempt to contextualise and explain to them why I’m publishing this film, and why I’m risking the charge of disloyalty to do so.

It feels uncomfortable to publicly comment on a programme that has given me so many opportunities and support, but — to paraphrase Jordan Peterson — there are consequences to speaking out, but there are also consequences to not doing so — and if the thesis I put forward in the documentary is correct, then the consequences for us not moving through the levels of polarisation and miscommunication we are currently experiencing — and were glaringly obvious in the interaction with Cathy Newman — could be fatal.

I also believe that the perspective I’m putting forward in the documentary is essential for the wider broadcast media to assimilate — too many organisations are operating with a set of ideological filters that are increasingly out of step with the world as it is — and this is an existential threat to the broadcast media itself as the digital shift continues and the opinion formers of the future vote with their eyes and desert them.

The new documentary is influenced by the thought of the psychologist Carl Jung, as is Jordan Peterson, and particularly his concept of the shadow — those things about ourselves we repress or deny. In fact I believe that what we are seeing right now in culture and politics is the eruption of, and the necessity to integrate, that shadow on a vast cultural level — and if we can’t own our own tendencies to anger, reactivity, judgementalism and so on — particularly ‘liberals’ who cloak their shadow in an ideology of ‘inclusivity and tolerance’ — then we won’t survive.

Another of Carl Jung’s concepts was that of synchronicity, how meaningful coincidences that have no causal relationship are related on a deeper level. This was actually the subject of much of my interview with Jordan Peterson in Toronto — we talked a lot about how when you are ‘aligned with yourself’ (having integrated the shadow, for example) — that things start to line up. So it was ironic (synchronistic) to say the least that of all the places that he could have had the interview that went viral — it happened to be Channel 4 News, the programme I worked on for ten years — and I am, as far as I know, the first person to make a documentary about him.

So the task then was to work out what I should do about this. My first thought — especially in the aftermath when C4N and Cathy felt under attack, and Jordan seemed to be feeling that this was part of a media conspiracy by C4N to spin the aftermath as ‘journalist under attack from alt-right troll army’ — was to try to connect them up privately so Cathy could explain what was going on in reality, and they could have a conversation out of the public spotlight.

Without revealing the content of private messages, Jordan was keen to do this, Cathy and Channel 4 News were not.

Intellectual Dark Web

The documentary also looks at the emergence of a new group of thinkers, their prominence made possible by the internet, that have been dubbed the “intellectual dark web” by internet discussion show host Dave Rubin.

The clash between Cathy Newman and Jordan Peterson was not only a clash between two worldviews, it was a conflict between new and old media, and in particular a clash between the assumptions of the mainstream media and the new emerging and evolving perspective of the intellectual dark web and their growing band of followers.

“The mainstream media is based on an old dying model that is being replaced by new media and new technology so quickly that its faults are becoming glaringly obvious. Fortunately thanks to YouTube, podcasting … the mainstream media’s stranglehold on information which really is a stranglehold on your ability to think clearly about the issues of the day is crumbling at an incredible rate. Now the question is who and what will replace it. A few months ago Eric Weinstein came up with the phrase intellectual dark web to describe this eclectic mix of people from Sam Harris to Ben Shapiro to his brother Bret Weinstein, Jordan Peterson — all of whom are figuring out ways to have the important and often dangerous conversations that are completely ignored by the mainstream.” Dave Rubin: What is the intellectual dark web?

One theme that nearly all these thinkers have in common is a conviction that the chaos of the times is because the structures that have run western society for decades are breaking down — and this is a reflection of a deeper ideological — even spiritual crisis.

They also understand that we are facing existential threats due to the way we interpret the world — the way the human mind rarely deals with reality as it is, and instead relies on oversimplifications and abstraction — which can lead us into catastrophic error when the world changes and our assumptions and beliefs don’t.

And that the evolutionary traits that are hard wired into us — in particular our tribalism — in the age of social media, nuclear power and exponential technology, is more likely to lead to us exterminating ourselves than surviving.

“We’re now on too crowded of a planet and the toys we’ve been able to produce from science are too powerful. Evolution gets you here and it almost certainly will end in a self-extinguishing event if you keep playing the evolutionary game — and there is no thought and there is no proof that there is a way to use evolutionary building blocks to avoid the fate of having unlocked the twin nuclei of cell and atom, they’re just too powerful as tools.” Eric Weinstein — Rubin Report

They all recognise that we have created an ultra fragile world — and that the tools we have built are too dangerous. Particularly social media’s tendency to create filter bubbles around us means that polarisation is increasing to the point where we’re likely to act it out.

And they argue that it’s now essential to have much deeper conversations than we are used to if we are to get through the next few years.

“I think the reason that this is a tumultous time is that it is a time for discussion of first principles — and first principles are virtually at the level of theology — because they are the things that you assume and then move forward, so what should we assume?” — Jordan Peterson, The Rubin Report