Jordan Peterson: A Caricature of His Own Making
A Pesky Progressive Graduate Student Reflects
I’m to blame for what I feel should be written, but I must confess, I think Jordan Peterson should take a share in that blame. Here, I’ll share my truth (while doing my best to stand up straight with my shoulders back), because it might just get us closer to the truth, and, as Peterson has said, what greater adventure is there than telling the truth? I’ll begin with last night, though that’s certainly not where this story begins.
I consider satire an essential hermeneutic for my life. Like Camus’ Sisyphus finding meaning in the absurd, I find meaning in self-derision. I’m not just happy with my absurd disposition of rolling this boulder up a slope for the rest of my life, I think its thoroughly hilarious.* So, in what I see as irony, I attended Jordan Peterson’s lecture at the Tabernacle in Atlanta last week.
I should’ve known from the conversations I overheard while waiting in line on the downtown street corner surrounded by sky scraping buildings outside of the venue that what I was about to experience was a satire written by God. If I had turned the amount of times Joe Rogan would be name dropped into a drinking game, I would at least have had a nice buzz by the time security was patting me down.
As my accompanying friend and I walked into the building, an eerie classical music played. It sounded inspired by the gothic tradition, but I won’t pretend I’m an expert in classical gothic music. Either way, I liked it, so finding it for my pretentious playlist is my first priority.
Having found our seats, we left immediately to grab some whiskey’s from the bar. My friend went with a Canadian whiskey which was just on the nose, but I couldn’t lower my standards in that regard, not even for irony. We returned to our chairs after sliding awkwardly past the finely dressed fellows in the seats beside our own. My knees pressed into the backrest in front of me. I blame Jordan for this as well.
Jordan’s wife, Tammy, walked out around 8'o clock to announce the topic for the night, sharing what it meant to her. She subtly implied a religious impulse to the way she embodied the principle, which I admired. Then she introduced the man we were all there to see. The slender giant strolled out in a suave suit that apparently doesn’t come in a size for a man of that height.
I barely caught a glimpse of him from behind the standing ovation. I did not stand because he taught me to abandon ideology, so I found it most important not to treat him like an idol. It was the first time I had seen him in person, the man that had become one of the most significant father-figures of mine spanning the last few years.
He began the lecture by re-iterating the topic. It was rule IX from the new 12 rules of Beyond Order:
If Old Memories Still Upset You, Write Them Down Carefully and Completely.
So, that’s what I intend to do.
The same friend that attended the lecture with me introduced me to Dr. Peterson. It was January of 2019 and he surprised me by gifting me a copy of the bestselling 12 Rules for Life. I took to reading it immediately and finished it that week. Since it was the first week of the new year, it inspired me to set a goal of reading 100 books that year.
I should say, I was transitioning out of a job as a youth pastor to return to my small Christian college. At the time, I was a conservative evangelical Christian on the verge of fundamentalism, but I had left my role of youth pastor because I was beginning to have questions that couldn’t be reconciled with my position.
Peterson’s use of scripture often struck me the wrong way and made me uncomfortable, but I knew there was something to what he was trying to say so I didn’t just throw him to the side as a secular heretic. I began listening to his Genesis lectures because I was taking a course on Genesis where the professor made it clear that we would only be considering Genesis as literal history. Jordan’s lectures were a salve to the boredom induced by that class and I began to understand the psychological significance of the Scriptures I held dear.
I branched out even more. I listened to his podcasts, watched his other lectures on YouTube, and even played those horribly edited motivational videos that were just clips from his lectures, free-use footage of eagles flying and people smiling while shaking hands, and that powerful synthesizer that gives you goosebumps no matter what’s being said.
There was cognitive dissonance that went with my engagement with Dr. Peterson. I felt I was betraying my conservative values by listening to this classically liberal Canadian (this is by far the most humorous thing I’ve written). He didn’t support Trump, talked about psychedelics, and he would not say he believed in God. But he was opening my mind to new ideas. I no longer agreed with my old ways of thinking.
Of course, I knew about the bill c-16 drama that had given him his eminent rise. Yet, I didn’t hear him as anti-trans, instead I saw a man deeply committed to free speech. He criticized the left because he leaned left and wanted better for her, at least, I thought.
I had worries early on. In one conversation, I told my friend, the same friend, I was concerned Peterson was allowing the far-left to push him further right. And the attention the Right was giving him seemed to have a pull on him too. I feared this reactionary tendency would affect the contents of what is now the published Beyond Order.
I found the conservatism of the first 12 rules to be appropriate. It was a book about cultivating order in a chaotic world. That is by definition conservative (sans the ideology). If one followed it in an appropriate manner for their life, they would find that personal responsibility is an antidote to chaos. It was a conservatism even liberals could benefit from.
The next 12 rules, however, he went soft on cultivating chaos (that world of possibility) against “tyrannical order,” often taking jabs against the left in a book that should have highlighted the virtue of liberal ideals. The principle of the Yin & Yang that he holds so dearly, he failed by slipping off to the right of the way. He continued his message of personal responsibility, neglecting communal responsibility; a responsibility just as important for the flourishing of culture and society. And he missed an opportunity to help unbalanced conservatives incorporate liberal sensibilities without abandoning the principles most important to them.
Flash-forward to a post-2020 world and my fears have come true. He posted a tweet just a few weeks ago exampling my concern:
(Sure, he’s probably not admitting to a shift in his own position, rather a shift in the political spectrum as a whole. As in, he himself might not care to define as a conservative but that is the label given him by society. Only I find the opposite to be true. Though, maybe I’m just as wrong as Jordan here.
I consider myself a moderate (not that kind of moderate), yet, by society’s definition, I don’t just lean left, I am firmly planted on the left. And why? Because it seems deeply apparent to me that conservative politics (U.S.) are in need of serious reform before they become a viable contender in the future of our policies. Because of their asinine approach to critical race theory, LGBTQ+ rights, and, most recently, the childish displays during the confirmation hearing of Ketanji Brown Jackson, conservative policy-makers seem to be destroying any support they could muster from young people who are principled in basic human dignity.)
So, this leads into the problem this essay has been bent toward from the beginning. Jordan Peterson has a flaw not uncommon to white men like us (& if him or his groupies were reading this and hadn’t stopped yet, they likely would here). This is something I’ve come to learn as a by-product of my studies of western theologians in the Christian tradition (for example, John Calvin’s insistence on pride as being the paramount sin, which we might say is an inappropriate love of self, whereas some people need to hear they are worthy of love so that they can begin to love their selves appropriately) and reading critiques from Black theologians like James Cone. This is the problem:
We tend to universalize principles as if they were as applicable to people unlike us who don’t share the privileges we carry.
Of course, Jordan hates that word ‘privilege’ and seems perfectly content to mischaracterize its definition, just like he thinks the left wants white people to feel guilty. I don’t feel guilty, but I do feel responsible. And isn’t responsibility his message?
Jordan knows the left has made a caricature of him. I’ve heard him say, on multiple occasions, liberals aren’t against him but who they think he is. Fair enough, to some degree.
However, what Jordan seems to overlook is the caricature his supporters have made of him, the caricature he has made of himself. This is what I find myself against.
So, I return to standing outside on that street corner in downtown Atlanta amongst a group of well-dressed, mostly white, mostly male attendees discussing Joe Rogan’s podcast, Jordan’s rules, and his message of pursuing meaning, all the while ignoring the unhoused fellow with his elderly mother, holding a sign revealing the mother had breast cancer and included his Venmo to make it all the easier to help someone put down by a harsh suffering of life.
I had to wonder, where is the disconnect? How could someone preaching the amelioration of suffering through pursuing what is meaningful not lead to an extrospective desire to alleviate others’ suffering, even in a small, practical sense?
Truth be told, I’ve benefitted heavily from Dr. Peterson’s rules along with the group of people I waited in line and sat down with in those cramped auditorium chairs. I do need to clean my room in order to take responsibility for my life, I do need compare myself to who I was before, not to who others are today, I do need to tell the truth, and I need to risk being a fool that I might learn, grow, transform. I need to pursue what is meaningful so that the suffering of existence might be worth it.
Most importantly for this essay, I do need to stave off resentment, deceit, and arrogance, so that what I have to write is precise (though, I hope it has a somewhat humorous levity, too).
So, I’ve rambled on for a while now in a way that’s hopefully somewhat intelligible, and, though there’s much to explore, I’ll wrap this up with just a few more thoughts.
I don’t consider myself an intellectual equal to Dr. Peterson. That should be the least ignorant thing I’ve written. Despite my disagreements with him, I have listened and payed attention to him with my eyes and ears wide open because that’s his due as another human being. And, truth be told, I want the left to listen to him, because his concerns are valid, and he’s one of the few who has taken the risk to articulate those concerns in a deeply thought out way. The problem is he’s often inappropriately harsh. His message isn’t palatable to many audiences, and I wouldn’t recommend everyone listen to him. He misses ‘the gospel’ in the sense that his message is not good news to everyone, only a select few. And, unlike Jesus, that select few receiving priority is rarely the marginalized.**
Though my liberal graduate school hasn’t taught me to be a post-modernist, like Jordan might think, I have been taught postmodern sensibilities, especially to listen to the voices on the margins because they bring a perspective on truth to the table that only they know and one we need to hear.
My cognitive dissonance still stands with Jordan Peterson, though from a new angle. I know I have friends on the left who won’t understand why I’ve given him the time of day. This is especially hard for me to reconcile when I think of the groups of which his and his listeners’ lack of self-reflection have caused further pain. Then, I think of my friends on the right who will have all the more reason to write me off for being a pawn of the left, indoctrinated by the liberal university.
But I’m just attempting to do what Dr. Peterson taught me, writing down my frustrations, trying to understand why I care so much, and facing the bitter truth so I can move forward.
As I look at the white tulips sitting in a vase on the table where I’m typing (these flowers, which I’ve bought in attempt to make my room as beautiful as possible, per rule VIII of Beyond Order), I recognize I have a respect for Dr. Peterson because I wouldn’t be who I am today without him. My life does have more meaning because of him. He gave me the fatherly advice I needed when I needed it. Maybe the lesson I’m learning from him now is the need to recognize the faults of our ‘father’, so we can grow past them and become our own person.
* Though, unfortunately, I am more of a Kierkegaardian absurdist, as I am predisposed to believe there is something to all of this, and the crucified Christ of Christianity is the key by which I interpret our human situation.
** I will give credit where credit is due in two examples: 1) Concerning the environment and climate change, he notes that lifting people out of poverty allows them to care about the environment. This should not be overlooked if we want to care for the environment and for the poor. 2) He often points to the “oppression” of men in their being statistically more likely to end up in prison. In a recent podcast, he notes that this disparity disproportionately affects Black men in particular and this is a problem that needs to be resolved imminently. It does. His explanation for why, however, was budding on critical race theory, but don’t tell him that. ;-)
