566. The Moral of the Story With JBP: There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon

·47 min·4 clips

Jordan Peterson reveals how a children's book about a small dragon explains our evolutionary fear of predators.

Jordan Peterson begins by introducing his analysis of children's stories, mentioning previous work on Pinocchio and Snow White. He focuses on 'There's No Such Thing as a Dragon' by Jack Kent, which he used in his Maps of Meaning class. Peterson describes a dragon sculpture from Mexico and references David E. Jones's book 'An Instinct for Dragons' for an evolutionary perspective. He defines the dragon as an amalgam of tree, cat, snake, and bird features, representing predators. The story involves Billy Bixby finding a small dragon in his room. Billy's mother insists dragons don't exist, leading to willful blindness. Peterson compares this to the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Seth, where blindness to evil causes downfall. As the dragon is ignored, it grows from kitten-size to filling the house. Peterson uses examples like ignoring tax notices to show how problems escalate. The dragon eventually runs away with the house, symbolizing family collapse. He connects this to the Exodus narrative where Israelites encounter poisonous snakes. God instructs them to make a brazen serpent to look upon for healing. Peterson explains this as voluntary confrontation with danger leading to strength. He relates it to Christ's crucifixion as the ultimate confrontation with poison. Billy finally acknowledges the dragon, causing it to shrink. Peterson concludes with the moral that attending to dragons early prevents disaster.

As heard by us

A growing dragon turns household denial into a sharp, simple case for noticing trouble early.

In Jack Kent's There's No Such Thing as a Dragon, a children's story becomes a quiet test of adult attention. The episode follows a household determined to act as if the dragon is not there, even as it grows large enough to fill the hall and disrupt ordinary life.

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Why you'd press play

You get a small dragon that grows until the household can no longer keep pretending it is not there.

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