If Gad Saad is an interesting supporting character in the Culture War-saga, Jordan Peterson is not merely a hero of the anti-PC side, he is the eternal champion incarnate.
And, considering the reach and interactivity of 21st-century media, he might be the man receiving the largest volume of unfair criticism in human history (I have no idea how to quantify it, and if it's possible, I might be off by orders of magnitude, but I'd be surprised).
He started with a one-man rebellion against government-imposed mandatory use of pronouns, but in the following years, he's widened his message to cover Wokeism, gender-relations, postmodernism, myths, and religion. There is a lot to like and a lot to criticize in what he says. I have a very positive view of his character and a very mixed one on his views. I find him spot-on on social issues and left-wing ideologies, questionable on the territory of myths, and dead wrong on religion.
The Peterson-story started when the professor of psychology at the University of Toronto took a public stance against Bill-16. The bill the Canadian government planned to introduce was meant to provide protection against gender-discrimination, which at first sight has little to find a problem with. According to Peterson, however, it could be used to impose a mandatory speech-code to force citizens to use arbitrary pronouns (of which there are around 70, and anyone can demand to be addressed as any of them). A failure to do so can cost one his job or can even mean prison time. Peterson likened the justification of the bill to the Marxist-ideology and claimed that it can be the first move of the rising totalitarian state. That raised some eyebrows even among Peterson-sympathizers. On the other hand, people soon started to get publicly shamed, fired, or forced out of their jobs for similar and mostly imaginary offenses (see Brett Weinstein and his wife from the Evergreen College, or Nicholas Christakis from Yale, just to name the most prominent cases). Lindsay Shepherd, a Canadian graduate student was formally censured by her university for simply presenting a public debate featuring Peterson to her class, thereby "creating a toxic atmosphere". Five years later the state of affairs reached a point when J. K. Rawling is called transphobic simply for suggesting that "people who menstruate" might be called simply "women". There is a call for censoring her books.
At this point, Peterson is vindicated. He called attention to something which he described in hyperboles. He deserves credit for his courage and foresight, which doesn't mean he is right about where the bill leads to. Obsessive gender theorists bringing about a totalitarian government that sends rebelling citizens to Gulags? Not likely. But getting fired and shamed publicly because you don't agree with the mainstream view on race, gender, and sexuality (the mainstream that was massively different only 10 years ago)? That is happening right now with real people, every single day.
Peterson has opined on other left-wing topics as well, most famously on gender inequality, most famously in the Kathy Newman-interview. This I recommend watching in full. It features Peterson at his best. He is extremely calm, composed, articulate, and sincere but not humorless. This was a character-assassination attempt disguised as an interview, which backfired badly on Newman. Peterson was eloquent, respectful, and approachable, whereas Newman conducted the interview in such obvious bad-faith that she almost made a parody of herself. If their genders had been swapped, she (he) wouldn't get a job again at any prominent news outlet. Just imagine a male reporter posing this question to a female interviewee: "So you have written a book to help troubled young women finding their place in the world. But why should we, men, care for this?".
In a nutshell, Peterson rejects the idea that different outcomes by gender or race are the result of an oppressive, patriarchal, white society. Women and men - statistically -, have different personality traits and different preferences in life. Many more women are attracted to being a modestly paid kindergarten teacher than men, and much fewer women than men want to be petrol engineers. Achieving social status is more important to and expected from men. He also points out the men are overrepresented both at the top of society and at the bottom as well. They are the overwhelming majority among the victims of suicide, drug addiction, violent crime, mental disorders, or occupational accidents. And the fact, generally accepted as the normal state of the world, thus no one ever thinks about it, is that men do almost all the physically demanding, dangerous, or just filthy jobs from fire fighting to sewer cleaning. Without going into further elaboration, which I did elsewhere, I share his view.
However, he has more to say about gender relations than an opinion on income inequality, and some of them are pretty controversial. At one point, addressing the #MeToo movement, he mused that maybe men and women should not work at the same workplaces, as the last 50 years is too short to draw conclusions on the experiment. That sounded one harebrained idea, that could be (and had been) interpreted as further proof of his misogyny (I was simply wondering that he might have gone nuts). But if you watch the full segment on the topic in that interview (approximately 15 minutes), the picture changes completely. Here Peterson was thinking out loud about something he admittedly didn't know the answer to. His whole body language and the context paints a very different picture as the soundbite did. It also seems to me that Peterson likes to provoke, and today it's really not tolerated.
Labelling Peterson as a misogynist requires the complete refusal to consume anything he says or writes in full context. He opines on things that are very much up for debate by our current understanding, so he is bound to be wrong in a number of cases. Like everyone else.
All things considered, I think Peterson has some very good observations on gender-relations and society, even if some of his more radical theories don't resonate with me. I find much less to agree with him once he starts talking about myths. As far as I understand, he claims that ancient myths and stories are vessels of distilled and deep human wisdom, and their mere survival through millennia is the proof of their "truth". Which sounds at least worth thinking about. But when he says that the story of Cain and Abel is so profound that an individual simply couldn't come up with it? Well...I don't think so. I'd expect to find countless stories with more insight by wandering in a random bookstore. But he is a psychologist who has spent decades thinking about these kinds of things, so maybe he has a point. But those also have a point who think that if one searches for patterns and hidden meanings hard enough, he can find them almost anywhere. During one of their public debates with Sam Harris, Peterson was talking about some ancient myth in which the hero faces his own father in the bottom of a pit, and he emphasized the tremendous significance the father-figure and the pit as a location have. Upon which Harris remarked that if it had been the mother on a mountaintop, people like Peterson would eagerly jump in to explain how profound that arrangement is.
One area related to myths where I find Peterson confused and confusing is what he calls "archetypal truth". He rejects the idea of objective truth (like 2+2=4) and instead thinks that a belief is true if it helps our survival. At least, that's my understanding. The discussion of this idea resulted in a tortuous 2-hour discussion between him and Sam Harris, to the exasperation of both Harris and the listeners. I'm sure false beliefs can be useful in certain situations (e.g. belief in a benign God and the future reward can help to endure periods of suffering), and literary geniuses (like his beloved Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche) can offer genuine insights into the nature of reality which cannot be confirmed by science, but I don't understand why Peterson insists on conflating these with "truth" in the normal sense.
Peterson reminds me of the protagonist of a novel by the 19th-century Hungarian writer, Kalman Mikszath. In Beszterce Ostroma (The Siege of Beszterce), the wayward noblemen, Count Pongracz, refuses to accept modernity and lives his life as a medieval lord in his imaginary world. In the prologue, Mikszath explains the motivation of his hero something along the following lines (which I paraphrase from memory): "The past is a bottomless well, and looking into it deeply can befuddle those who don't have a strong head. Count Pongracz didn't have a strong head, and he gazed into the well very deep indeed." I think Peterson does have a strong head, but by temperament and professional curiosity he is both susceptible to see patterns in semi-randomness and willing to go great lengths to uncover hidden meanings in obscure things - real or perceived.
Which is probably a good explanation for his infuriatingly vague attitude to religion. He's not Christian in the common sense of the world (or in any meaningful sense), but he is just unable to give a straight answer for dead simple questions like: "Do you believe in God?" or "was Jesus physically resurrected from the dead?". His answers are "it would take me 40 hours to answer this question" and "it depends what you mean by resurrection". This is just hemming and hawing that is hard to interpret another way than intellectual dishonesty, but my opinion is that Peterson tries to convince himself as much as his audience. But even self-deception is an insufficient explanation for occasional statements like "secular humanism was tried by the Soviet Union" - as he put in a debate with Matt Dillahunty. In the best interpretation, it was a poor attempt at provocation. Otherwise, it was just moronic. A similarly asinine opinion of his that ditching religion will lead to "rivers of blood". He should look up from his books of Nietzsche and take a quick look at Northern-Europe.
In 2018, Peterson published his first book intended for the general public, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, in which, as the title suggests, he laid out his "rules" to live a meaningful life. It's a decent self-help book undergirded by the current understanding in cognitive science (so the scientists I listened to say). For me, it was a bit too long and too philosophical in places, but not a bad book at all. It gives some generally-accepted advices ("Set your house in order before you criticize the world"), some conservative ones ("Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them"), and there even are a couple of surprising items on the list ("Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street"). They are heavily supported by Biblical-stories, but this is what you'd expect from Peterson. What you don't find at all is any reference to support patriarchy, or white supremacy, or transphobia. It's a conservative book emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility, discipline, but also compassion.
The book I believe also gives a key to Peterson - which wasn't very hidden in the first place. In one of the chapters, he explicitly writes that our life exists in the thin layer of order over the depths of chaos, which is the natural state of the world. In our daily lives, we think we understand our place in the world and the rules by which events unfold in it. But a single accident or unexpected situation can push us completely out of our element into unfamiliarity and danger and suffering. We need rules to carve out a habitable space in the universe, and myths and religion contain time-proven tools and guidelines - some rare gems under their pile of rubbish - for the job.
This is the standard conservative attitude to life, which some people are probably born with, but Peterson is someone whose life almost predestines him to see the world in dark colors. As a clinical psychologist he works with people with serious issues. He has a decades long fascination with the history of totalitarian ideas. His daughter has been suffering from physical problems from her childhood, his wife has terminal cancer, and he himself is just recovering from a recent, very serious mental and physical illness - during which liberal media poured out a disgusting volume of schadenfreude.
That is one of the reasons why I find the usual criticism against him - that is, he is just a snake-oil man - unfair and unjustified. He is genuinely someone who fits the description of a tortured soul. The other reason is simply his behavior in a conversation. Peterson has always impressed me by being such an attentive listener. Even in a conversation with someone really not on his level - like with the disgraced troll, Milo Yiannopoulos - Peterson visibly concentrates on his partner's words and tries to learn from them - which is something conmen never do very convincingly. He is also very emotional, often to the point of weirdness. All in all, I think Peterson is an honest, very brave, very smart, and very articulate person. With some very serious troubles.
Having said all this above, which part explains his meteoric rise to prominence and his controversially? I think, instead of a single trait or message from him, there are multiple factors reinforcing each other - which is not a very original idea, as this is the case for most things. Nevertheless, I think the reasons for his prominance are the current cultural and political climate, Peterson's physical and intellectual charisma, the relevance of topics he engages with, and the rise of podcasts.
We live in a highly politically polarised time, when the arguments on the Right but mostly on the Left have gone so far to the extreme, that very few people are indifferent to them. Most people are sick and tired of the idiotic overreach of political correctness, and they love to hear a fearless, charismatic, eloquent figure speaking their mind on their behalf. And Peterson is charismatic, extremely articulate, and - maybe more importantly than generally realised - telegenic. I don't say physically unattractive people can't gain followers (Hitler), but they start with a big handicap. And besides refuting things publicly that most feel need refusal, Peterson engages in other topics in a very interesting way. When he is not carried away by his own voice and the rhythm of his thoughts, he is very hard to stop listening to.
And, most importantly, he points to a very significant issue that doesn't get the publicity it deserves, but is of interest for many - the changing role of men in society. What I have no idea about is that how many of his fans are attracted to him for his obsession with myths and religion - which seems to be the center of everything to him.
The last factor contributing to his popularity is the recent but huge interest in long-form conversations satisfied by an infinite number of excellent podcasts. I think it would be justified to recognize the notion of the "Joe Rogan number" equivalent to the "Erdős number in Academia" and "Bacon number" in the world of movie-stars. Maybe as a counterbalance to the declining attention span and constant multitasking, people crave for listening to long and deep conversations between smart people. This is a perfect medium for Peterson (he has a good voice too), and once someone made one podcast part of her daily diet, following the chain of connections, she have inevitably bumped into Peterson, or people discussing Peterson, probably many times.
Where will the Peterson-phenomenon evolve from here? It's anyone's guess and it's not a very deep insight to assume that it will mainly depend on two factors. One is the middle-term trajectory of the cultural climate, and the other is how his personal life will unfold in the future. Being treated as a guru has never improved anyone's personality, and I doubt the public hate he receives from the other side will either. Peterson will never be a lighthearted, happy man, but I hope if things cool down a bit, the antagonism toward him abates to some extent. If that happens, more people can recognize that he is not the monster he is often portrayed, but essentially is one of the good guys. In the darker scenario, if the polarization continues, I can envision him cocooned into his bubble of obscure mysticism and becoming the liberal boogey-man for decades to come. That would be a personal tragedy and a public loss.
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