Debunking Pederson For Fun And Profit

 Right now I'm getting a plague of Jordan Pederson ads for his "Academy" - really just a video channel, not any better for learning than a curated youtube channel, but much more expense.
In these ads he and his minions make various silly claims. Let me collect debunkings as an exercise.
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CLAIM:

"You are the salt of the earth." You've heard it a thousand times. You think it means a decent, dependable sort of person. It means something far stranger—and far more demanding.
Rome paid its soldiers in salt. That's where the word salary comes from: men marched years for a mineral you now scatter without thinking. It earned that price by doing two jobs at once. Salt keeps meat from rotting. And salt makes food worth eating. Your body can't survive without it, but nobody ever craved it for survival. They craved it because bland food is a kind of slow death too.
One sermon. Eight lectures. Every line. Now at Peterson Academy.

MY COMMENT
This ad is a PERFECT example of Jordan Peterson's style: he speaks with assurance about something he knows nothing about.

The Latin word "salarium" does not mean “payment in salt.” It originally referred to money given to soldiers so they could buy salt, or more broadly, an allowance for necessities.

It’s like calling your paycheck a “payment in mortgage” because you use part of it to pay your mortgage.

Over time, salarium just meant salary or money.

Not a Roman Costco membership.

Anyone who spends a minute thinking about Pederson's theory has a good laugh. Salt is bulky. When you go to the vegetable stand, do you carry around a teaspoon to measure it out with? When are the chests of salt found by explorers in ancient tombs?

Rome paid soldiers in coin, because coin is portable, countable, taxable and does not dissolve in the rain like Jordan Pederson when confronted with a fact. ----------- NOTE: I could have gone on about the incoherence of Jesus saying "You are the means of paying for an army" but ...another time.

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CLAIM:

Nietzsche saw it coming. The death of meaning. The rise of the herd. The slow seduction of comfort. In Nietzsche: Further Down the Rabbit Hole, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson spends ten hours inside Beyond Good and Evil, and shows you the way back out. Now available on Peterson Academy.

MY COMMENT

Nietzsche did warn about the “herd,” but he wasn’t predicting the rise of people who buy ten‑hour personality‑brand lectures. He was critiquing moral conformity, not forecasting a future where every crisis comes with a merch link.

This ad works because it follows the classic Peterson formula:

* Invoke a famous thinker.

* Declare that thinker foresaw our current DOOM!!!

* Announce that Peterson alone has spelunked deep enough into the text to retrieve the secret meaning.

* Offer to guide you “back out,” as though Beyond Good and Evil is a minotaur’s labyrinth and not… a book.

It’s not Nietzsche.

It’s Nietzsche‑themed self‑help cosplay.