I am amazed to learn that nothing bad occured before the 19th century. Apparently the Spanish sack of Tenochtitlan where hundreds of thousands were slaughtered and one of the great cities of the world was destroyed all in the name of Christ was not an act of barbarism. That the thirty years' war, in which millions died to determine which branch of Christianity some German dukes would practice, was not a big deal. Apparently all the vast improvements in science and technology that allow reactionary blowhards to broadcast their opinions across the world were all for naught because kids these days complain too much.
9
Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism? What nonsense! How many atrocities have been committed in the name of Christianity? How many pogroms, Crusades, Inquisitions? I have read many fatuous statements in Brooks' columns, but this one takes the cake.
A close second is the statement that we have decided to do away with values. Sure - the "values" that justified racism, sexism and homophobia during centuries of brutal oppression of women and racial and sexual minorities. Good riddance to them and to those who upheld them.
A common thread that runs through Brooks' columns is his inability to come to terms with the horrors of the past, a past whose "stability" and "values" he clearly misses. And who can blame him for missing those bygone days? In the past, no one questioned the wisdom and superiority of white men like Brooks. But now . . . .
A close second is the statement that we have decided to do away with values. Sure - the "values" that justified racism, sexism and homophobia during centuries of brutal oppression of women and racial and sexual minorities. Good riddance to them and to those who upheld them.
A common thread that runs through Brooks' columns is his inability to come to terms with the horrors of the past, a past whose "stability" and "values" he clearly misses. And who can blame him for missing those bygone days? In the past, no one questioned the wisdom and superiority of white men like Brooks. But now . . . .
1
Jordan Peterson literally has a banner hanging up in his house reminding him to beware the insidious influence of socialism. He got his army of Millions Of Young Men by claiming with a straight face that the government was going to put him in jail for refusing to call transgender students their preferred pronouns. He truly believes that Western Values (whatever those are) were handed down by God, and that the existence of LGBT people (and indeed anyone who wants to flaunt traditional gender roles) are a desperate, immediate threat to human civility. He also believes that feminists attend to avoid criticizing Muslims because they desire "brutal male domination." He hates postmodernism, and does not appear to know what postmodernism is.
I don't use this word lightly, but Jordan Peterson is a crackpot. He specializes in telling people exactly what they want to hear: the status quo is virtuous; everyone who wants to disrupt the status quo should not be taken seriously; and actually you Jordan Peterson fans are the ones fighting the status quo anyway, because the feminists and transgender advocates actually have all the power!
I shouldn't be surprised that David Brooks, who never met a pop-psychologist he didn't like, is taken in by this youtube ghoul, but I am disappointed.
I don't use this word lightly, but Jordan Peterson is a crackpot. He specializes in telling people exactly what they want to hear: the status quo is virtuous; everyone who wants to disrupt the status quo should not be taken seriously; and actually you Jordan Peterson fans are the ones fighting the status quo anyway, because the feminists and transgender advocates actually have all the power!
I shouldn't be surprised that David Brooks, who never met a pop-psychologist he didn't like, is taken in by this youtube ghoul, but I am disappointed.
7
“Constantly outperformed and humiliated by women?” Oh, the horror of it! At first glance, Peterson's nostrums sound to this reader like warmed over Alan Bloom and Camille Paglia. Relativism was going to be the end of us said Bloom, who, I may add, stole most of his rhetoric from Leo Strauss. And the idea that society is poised on the point between order and chaos sounds a lot like the first chapter of Paglia’s Sexual Personae. Indeed, the idea that the world comes down to any either or choice is rather banal, it seems to me.
it’s been about a generation since the The Closing of the American Mind made best seller lists. I guess it’s time for conservatives like Brooks to pine for the after shave virtues once again.
it’s been about a generation since the The Closing of the American Mind made best seller lists. I guess it’s time for conservatives like Brooks to pine for the after shave virtues once again.
3
Oh well, he was like the young Buckley - that absolves him. - I wish I could find that interview Buckley conducted on Firing Line with I believe a pacifist, who quietly demolished Buckley's smarm by pointing out that a cutting, cynical intelligence couldn't hold a candle to generosity of heart and soul. The only time I saw Buckley melt.
In any case, Buckley has always been Brooks' Achilles heel - he glazes over at every recollection.
In any case, Buckley has always been Brooks' Achilles heel - he glazes over at every recollection.
1
“she just distorted, simplified and restated his views to make them appear offensive and cartoonish.”
Who would do something like that? It’s like someone taking a perfectly sensible statement by Al Gore that when he was a member of the Senate he introduced the legislation that created the internet and distorting, simplifying, and restating it into a statement that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet.
What kind of people do things like that?
7
Petersons worldview is the unintended intellectual underpinning of the Anti Natalists who believe that bringing a child into the world is to inflict a cruel and unusual punishment on them...and therefore you should not have children for their sake. I sort of agree with both Peterson and the Anti Natalists.
9
David, sounds like you are in a funk and feeling a bit defeated, unknown (?) and unloved. Yes our society and culture are reeling from the horrors of the current political climate. We have a president and a Republican party out of control. We have women standing up and stating that they are unwilling to accept and go along with abuse. But the meek will inherit the earth, not the stoic macho men of Peterson.
24
I watched some of those Jordan Peterson YouTubes and was shocked to learn he is just another aggrieved-resentful man blaming women for his problems. Yes, he does make some essential points about the good life. But his arguments are undermined by his claims of victimization at the hands of women. Peterson is an intelligent man who uses erudition to express his misogyny. David Brooks embrace of him speaks volumes about David Brooks.
65
Based on no facts, Brooks paints an entire generation with the broad brushes of vapidity and self centeredness, and offers a repressed gym teacher charlatan as remedy. Meanwhile he ignores the truth that his supposedly realistic and well founded generation gave us Trump. This is beyond shameless, into that ugly region of pathetic, tragic irony.
26
Something is up with multiple comments in this thread. A number of commenters lavishes nothing but effusive praise on mister Peterson without a single iota of comment on the actual ideas of Peterson. Nothing of substance in those comments. In itself that is nothing out of the ordinary, but what is remarkeble is that those comments are getting tens if not hundreds of recommendations. I would wager substantial money that a fan-website is linking to the Brooks column.
20
Warped. Misogyny is born of the sadly warped view that life is a competition. How can the same man so brilliantly eviscerate Trump for having this evil world view then forward the same sick view? Disturbing.
27
What is this Christianity that you speak of and are so in love with, David? The one that sends missionaries to disparage others' indigenous religions? The one that helped create colonial slavery? The one that helped create the Inquisition and The Holocaust?
Religious people of all stripes, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, yes, and even some Christians. are capable of transmitting good values, as are atheists and certainly a close reading of the Classics may do that, too. Sounds like this Peterson fellow is perhaps part of the pendulum swing back to rigor. But of course, you, as you accuse Conor Friedersdorf of doing, "simplified and restated his views" and spent almost an entire column doing so.
12
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism. But God died in the 19th century, and Christian dogma and discipline died with him. That gave us the age of ideology, the age of fascism and communism — and with it, Auschwitz, Dachau and the gulag."
I guess some of us just imagined the Spanish Inquisition then. Also the genocide of the native peoples of North and South America, the enslavement of various peoples, most notoriously those from Africa who were exported to the "New World" and told Christian God required them to serve their European masters, and the Colonialist exploitation of the rest of the world.
You should expect better of yourself Mr. Brooks. What utter nonsense you peddle!
41
Jordan Peterson?
I know nothing about him, but I will say this: He either recognizes the following or he does not, in which case he is just more of the main problem of America: The main problem is vast breeding of humanity, quantity of people which cuts into recognition of quality humans, the recognition, elevation of individuality not to mention high genius.
In America today it is all about groups of this or that sort. Whether you want to speak of educational system or law enforcement or the mental health profession or any religious or racial or ethnic group or problem between the sexes and of course the political parties it's always the group over the individual, and by all possible means, bureaucracy, spying on people, coopting, heading off individuals at the pass and pretending to have seen what they see, getting into people's brains and messing them up, groups crush individuals, wasting high capacity, destroying quality, ruining genius.
Two ruinous trends: Sex drive out of control, the driving up of population, which increases power of groups, groupthink, and utter cowardice when it comes to recognizing quality humans and elevating them to their rightful status. My morality is simple: All which leads to production of genius, high quality humans is good. All which leads to overpopulation and groups, any group, over high genius is bad.
Naturally with such a view I expect to be silenced. And expect to be bored and frustrated by what any group has next to say...
4
I'm an older guy and this Peterson sounds like someone I don't want to hear, don't want to see, don't want to read, and don't want to know. It figures he had to be a pop psychologist with a big following (Trump has a big following too, and he too has a genius for spouting hateful nonsense). Not sure why Brooks paid any attention to this claptrap.
32
I listened to the interview. Some of what Peterson says is correct. But, I think if women every come to accept that, we'll just do what the Japanese women do: stop having babies and making sure that the few babies we do have are female. Maybe we are too biologically weak and naturally nice, and that makes us naturally susceptible to subjugation. If this is really true, then it is time to genteelly die. It is not a world for us.
9
Honor, Courage, Duty: The guiding triad for men at least since civilization began. It was so for the best of rebels, as for the best of the elite. Intelligence is a close fourth.
From the guiding triad it has become the ridiculed triad. For that matter, so has intelligence become ridiculed.
Instead, we have nihilism, Hegel's "night in which all cows are black".
Thus, race doesn't exist. It's useless to kick this rock to prove that it is in fact real: your stubbed toe is just a social construct. Facts don't exist. Reality is Interrogation (an awed hush falls over the cognoscenti). Respect for objective reality, as opposed to fantasy, is an underground virtue.
Grammar is descriptive rather than prescriptive: whatever illiteracies have evolved among the semi-educated become the rule, sometimes an enforced rule. An example is singular "their", the use of which is frequently a career requirement.
Objective standards are silly social constructs. Logic is a sin of Linear Thinking. Belief is a personal matter. And not just the political, but everything, is personal. And whatever you do, respect people's dingbat ideas: you don't want them to feel bad. Or otherized.
Niceness, Slickness, Networking. The new triad.
I haven't heard of Peterson. Thanks for turning me on to somebody who tells it like it is. With occasional excusable lapses.
16
Peterson sounds like a character out of an Ayn Rand novel; I wonder at what age he read "Atlas Shrugged." It's not surprising that this kind of "philosophy" has such power to engage people today, but suggests we'd better gird for the coming neo-Holocaust. Two more questions: , In what reworking of history can anyone see Christianity as having curbed the violence in human nature? and Why do these guys always cast elements of their world view like Chaos as female?
45
Another example of a misogynist and the misogynists who love them having their harmful views legitimized. While I haven't watched all of the video of Ms. Newman's interview, I've read Mr. Friedersdorf's article and the quoted excerpts. "'the claim that the wage gap between men and women is only due to sex is wrong'" - women just aren't assertive enough. Women are too agreeable. Women just aren't interested in high paying jobs. Seems like there's a common denominator here, but I just can't place my finger on it! A psychologist should know about social conditioning. And, gosh, as so many commentors have noticed, Mr. Peterson should leave history to the historians. Slavery, the Holocaust, pogroms, etc were all done at the hands and with the blessings of good Christians. Shame on you New York times for perpetuating these narratives.
27
399 years of slavery, post-slavery subjugation, and present-day governance by a Nazi-loving racist put in power by 63 million fellow cultists, and Brooks -- who's never suffered even one second of race- or gender-based oppression -- allows that the sole remedy is not for the monsters to stop their nonsense, but for their victims -- oops, there's that forbidden word -- to accept their unearned fate.
Remarkable. Re-markable. A stunning piece of work.
23
Robert Baden-Powell, who created the Boy Scouts, used to give lectures like Peterson's, and his organization promoted misogyny, racism and homophobia to unimagined heights. (Today's most famous Boy Scout is Mike Pence. a man who thinks gays are second-class citizens and believes eating dinner with a woman not his wife is a degenerate act.)
You can also hear similar hyper-masculine lectures at the Army Ranger School, or at Parris Island, the Marine Corps training center. Rangers & Marines are good at what they do--systematic killing in wartime--but anybody who believes their values should be duplicated throughout society belongs in either junior high school, or an institution.
Jordan Peterson, like William Buckley, like David Brooks, makes a living as a cultural showman. He writes, he lectures, he creates videos, and, like Buckey, he eviscerates his detractors--but not on a battlefield, or even on a playing field, but strictly in a TV studio.
That, of course impresses David Brooks, who alludes to Buckley's eviscertation of Gore Vidal (yay! a straight man savaged a gay man in a TV debate). Brooks, as selective as Peterson, doesn't mention the time James Baldwin eviscerated Buckley (boo hoo! a gay black man savaged a straight white man in a TV debate).
"Manly" men who fret about the feminization of the culture are taken seriously only by other "manly" men. Everybody else just laughs at them.
45
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism."
Once again David Brooks provides a sweeping nostalgic generalization that ignores the complexities of history. How sweet it was when Christianity restrained the violent nature of the human animal! How we long for the days of the crusades, of forced conversion, of antisemitism, of holy wars, of slavery and colonialism justified by religion, of Kaiser, King, Queen and President calling in god's name for the sacrifice of millions of young conscripts, the destruction of cities and of the civilian populations living in them! Oh, if only we could go back to those good old days!
You will never get to the truth if you ignore the complexities of the past. The challenges we face today or no different than in earlier times. People are just as bad or good as they always have been. Jesus may have been a pacifist, but his followers have always tended to use the power they gain under the pretext of religion for self gain; and they still do.
For any young person, the greatest spiritual guiding force to keep in mind is that standing alone for what you believe in will result in loss; but that loss will be the greater gain.
12
Oh, David, this sounds like covert, misogynistic, claptrap. Pity the poor boy held under the thumb of political correctness, feminism, and the threat of I-Thou relationships. All hail the conquering hero! Kipling's "If," provides a better guide for the sniveling to rise above.
19
The destruction of the planet is fueled by male hubris. Women are not choosy enough when they breed. Men need to get over themselves.
13
You are lost, Mr. Brooks.
You have been knocked sideways by the thump trump has dealt the core values you thought existed in conservative GOP politics. Now, you are searching for an intellectual to explain it all to you so you can rearrange all the same tropes and cliches you're afraid to give up. Jordan Peterson on young men: bad posture, political correctness, self-pity, fatherless, moral vacuum, constantly outperformed and humiliated by women, haunted by pain, self-contempt, victimhood and, oh, yes, emasculated snowflakes! You forgot carnage!
Show me what you focus on and I'll tell you what you need to believe. The young men of today are living in a world Mr. Brooks and Mr. Peterson do not understand. Like all generations, young men, and women, by the way, are growing and developing in the midst of all the chaos you claim is tearing them apart. The only real threat of explosive chaos exists in the GOP Congress and the White House.
Let Jordan Peterson have his "moment." Young people have their whole lives ahead of them and they'll do just fine.
12
Sounds like you misunderstood him as much as Cathy Newman. You are doing your readers a disservice with this description. I do not recognize at all the man I have seen on youtube.
12
Anyone that would argue that Jordan Peterson and his warmed over and derivative Social Darwinist determinism is "the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now" really needs to get out more. Or stay in more. Or at least look beyond the edges of a very self contained bubble.
14
I didn't realize this was all just an elaborate joke until I got to the punch line: "Christianity restrained the human tendency towards barbarism." I've been laughing about that all morning. Thank you for injecting some levity into such a serious conversation!
13
Isn’t this just a distilled Atlas Shrugged redux?
It works to “get you thinking” in your sophomore/formative years but if you are still using it as your strict and only “go to” life guidance as an adult, perhaps you somewhere missed or failed to understand the advanced courses?
31
My first reaction after reading the article was a profound sense of gratitude and relief that this Canadian-born charlatan can never make a bid for the U.S. presidency.
23
Joe Rogan has a bigger audience, and is exploring similar themes, yet more realistically.
4
Is this really new, something to be celebrated? "Play the ball, don't let the ball play you," is an ancient baseball axiom about fielding grounders. Said it better. And EST (please, no!) preached this years ago. Not worthy of your time, Mr. Brooks.
4
What Peterson denounces as the current status in the universities is, very unfortunately, the absolute truth. I am a professor in library science in a major public university. Several of my (self-styled Marxists) colleagues are now devoted to teaching students how to uproot white supremacy in our field —— yes, you read correctly, library science! A bunch of students love this stuff as it does provide, as Peterson points out, a one-size-fits-all analytical grid to our very complex world: just blame the white patriarchy (and call everyone who disagrees a racist/sexist).
What do these students do when they finish their degrees? Well, there is now a large industry of gender and racial diversity consultants charged with implementing the ever-growing policies that regulate our speech and behavior in these areas (it’s not a joke: this is what, for example, Cornell administrators do with tuition dollars:
https://www.facebook.com/share.peers/posts/1583087198424187)
As far as having learned anything about libraries, that’s a whole other story … but if they don’t find work, there is always the path of pursuing a PhD because the biggest employer of the professional oppressed is, you guessed it, academia. It is a well-oiled self-perpetuating machine, which Peterson rightfully denounces and he’s getting plenty of hell for it. If you don’t know his work, that alone should make you take notice that he’s actually saying something relevant and deserves some attention.
176
"....choose discipline, courage and self-sacrifice.....". The 9/11 terrorists did that. Nazi soldiers did that. We better mix in a little rationality, understanding, compassion and love too. They didn't do that.
24
I don't think Jordan Peterson's worldview is anywhere near as bleak as portrayed in this article. He does believe that hierarchies exist but that those tend towards competence as opposed to tyranny. He also argues, and I believe this is where his appeal comes from, that you can become more competent by taking responsibility for yourself and by taking responsibility for others. This permission to take responsibility is in strong opposition to the victimhood and rights narratives that frankly inflame trumpism. Do white men have the right to inherit their father's country... obviously not... but they can do OK if they take responsibility for themselves and loved ones and act accordingly. This message helps people who have been surprised by the harshness of the world find a better path and avoid bitterness and self pity.
There is a crisis right now. The richest country in the world is literally dying - the life expectancy of Americans is decreasing and that is largely due to deaths of despair. Peterson's response to this, which has been shockingly well received, is to induce people to improve themselves. It isn't to blame women. It isn't to blame immigrants. So why are so many trying to destroy him?
42
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism. But God died in the 19th century, and Christian dogma and discipline died with him. That gave us the age of ideology, the age of fascism and communism — and with it, Auschwitz, Dachau and the gulag."
So Native Americans killed themselves, African volunteered to be enslaved, and Asians sold themselves opium and just donated the profit to Europeans? This is beyond delusional, this is dangerous.
22
"We deny the true nature of humanity and naïvely pretend everyone is nice. The upside is we haven’t blown ourselves up".
How can there possibly be a downside??
3
I think the estate of Marcus Aurelius has a potential plagiarism suit against Professor Peterson
9
People will say Jordan Peterson is Alt-Right, which he isn't. What he is someone who doesn't dismiss the men being pulled in that direction and he speaks to them. I think more people need to realize having a cohort of young men feeling like they have nothing to lose by overturning the status quo is not a stable situation. People would be wise to take Peterson's approach of trying to reincorporate these men into society rather than further exclude them.
25
There are no quick or simple answers to what will emerge as our newly forming gender roles. Looking backward just sounds like so much Polonius blather.
4
Our prehistoric ancestors were tough as nails and had no illusions about how hard life could be. But they advanced out of the caves by building groups, then communities, then societies. These often fought and killed each other, but they also invented agriculture, writing, jet aircraft, and modern medicine. As Stephen Pinker and others have noted, the result is that the average human today is far less likely to die from disease, momma grizzlies, or someone with a war club than at any previous time in history.
This was not primarily due to young males steeling themselves to a harsh and chaotic world. It was due to the recognition by most humans—men, women, and children—that we’re in this sandbox together and can make it better for all through shared effort. That both small groups and large nations are only as strong as the treatment of their least powerful members. That political and economic systems only work when the playing field remains level and no one is denied a voice or a vote.
It won’t hurt for young people to strengthen their resilience and resolve. But positive engagement with those around them will be what matters in the long run.
12
100,000 years ago – survival of the fittest vs society formation.
60 years ago – selfishness vs altruism (Rand).
Today – proportionality vs equality (Haidt);
Jordan Peterson.
So what else is new?
2
Perhaps you did Nietzsche an injustice..."Amor Fati." People love to pick at his philosophy. I have never heard of Jordan Peterson until today but perhaps he is hitting on a discarded axiom. I bet Reinhold Niebuhr and Schopenhauer would find some value in this guy. I don't think he has discarded virtue, maybe augmented its meaning. Like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Niebuhr, he smells a little of the East. He seems to make a gumbo with clinical psychology, evolutionary psychology, and neurology. I think going forward these ingredients will play a major role in shaping our new myth.
5
The comments here represent the liberal's tendency for shallow and judgmental snap judgments. If you were sincerely interested in Jordan Peterson you'd at least listen to some of his YouTube videos first. The Bible series is pretty good. It has atheists admitting they too judged the Bible from a shallow judgemental point of view. What most commentators here miss is that Peterson urges people to go deep, to commit to something to really get a sense of meaning in life instead of filling you days with amusements and watching talking heads spew propaganda from the TV. Young people want meaning. They are rejecting the inch deep reflections of their elders who are addicted to virtue signalling and patting themselves on the back.
20
Any philosophy that seeks to indoctrinate men without taking into account that women are essential to their lives is bound to fail and create more of the same unprepared men who use violence to resolve life's problems.
8
The following pull quote is a facile toss-in, designed to “balance the piece,” but it hardly provides a critique of Peterson’s work.
“His recipe for self-improvement is solitary, nonrelational, unemotional.”
Sure, hard work begins by “starting with the man in the mirror,” (RIP, MJ), but the entire premise of this is relational — that a rising tide in one’s own life with raise all boats.
6
It was a pleasure to hear Peterson use words accurately. He attempted to answer complicated questions with the complicated answers necessary for deep understanding. The journalist did not deem it necessary to follow through on a current line of discussion, but when refuted factually or logically would change the subject. Discourse with this journalist would be barren as it seemed the goal is to make a point regardless of accuracy. And if one wants to understand Peterson from a gender perspective only it might prove difficult, given that his position seems delineated by a different sort, less binary, parameter.
There it is. Journalist did not listen well or stay on topic. Peterson listened and attempted to answer the specific question stated. His answers were generally interrupted or ignored.
17
Judging by the comments section, it seems fairly clear that a number of readers have had trouble distinguishing Brooks' views from Peterson's. A second, closer reading might be helpful.
9
"He reminded me of a young William F. Buckley. . ." Well, dear David, you may regret that comparison as I must remind you of the young Buckley's editorial in 1957--Boston Globe--he insisted that whites in the South were "entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, where they do not prevail numerically," because the white race was "for the time being, the advanced race." In 2004, asked whether he had ever taken a position he now regretted, he said "Yes, I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong: federal intervention was necessary." And do not forget that Steve Bannon's stated goal of advising Trump was to create and foment chaos, a scenario essential to white supremacy and "America First" policy. Bannon may be gone but his protege, Stephen Miller, the obnoxious high school student who, in his campaign for student body president as his posh California high school, inveighed against being asked to pick up trash in the hallways--we have custodians to do that. And of course, those custodians were Hispanic. Miller remains and is the architect of Trump's latest offer on DACA of severe restrictions on immigrants and 25 billion dollars for his indefensible wall.
6
“Shades of Robert Bly's Iron John! The emergence of the feminine in greater civic activism and “Me Too,” while reactive, represents the antithesis of the old bi-polar, dualistic thesis of existence that is so last century. A better myth is the Greek story of Tiresias, who must accept his dual nature by living for a time as woman, before again becoming a man. When asked to resolve a dispute between the goddess Hera and all powerful Zeus, about which sex experiences the greatest pleasure, he tells them the truth for which he is punished by Hera blinding him and by Zeus rewarding him with a synthesis, the gift of future sight, which for us is to see beyond a zero sum battle of sexes, races and nations to planetary cooperation on our "Blue Boat Home."
1
Thanks for this, David! We are being inundated with so much information and news lately, it’s becoming difficult, for even an intellectual to keep track! I never heard of Jordan Peterson till now!!!
4
In conversations with Marine Coprs officers and senior NCOs, they say they often wind up providing the first experience of fathering many of these young men have ever had. A lieutenant surveyed his platoon and found two thirds of them came from single parent households led by their mothers. Only a man can teach a boy how to be a man, but when the men themselves are lost in a society where their jobs are disappearing, where a simple traffic stop can lead to death, where communities are drowning in addiction and crime, how does anyone raise a child to become a decent adult?
18
I wonder, although the analogy is probably flawed, whether the two philosophies presented here relate to the Sparta vs. Athens approaches to life.
2
For many of us longevity is necessary to see the errors of our ways. Without the proper parentage honor is learned after missteps in life.
3
Continue on with the infinitely multiplying genders and mind numbing mandated pronouns of the post-modernist denial of objective reality. That new religion is exactly what’s needed to win the next election. Keep on praying.
7
What Peterson has is a cult of personality. He is a very charismatic speaker who often presents broad ideas as axiomatic without qualification. His popularity is, more than anything, indicative of the great void in intellectual underpinnings for conservatism.
7
"vague exhortatory banality"? I don't think so. The man is a solid intellectual, and absolutely no one can prove him wrong. THAT's the fun part.
15
"Life is perched between..." Order and chaos says Peterson. or was it MacDonald's and Burger King.? It's forever being perched between somewhere and somewhere else.. Brings Robert Benchley to mind. He once opined that mankind is divided into two camps: those that divide us into two camps...and those that don't
When God died, He wasn't replaced by socialism or fascism, but by Consumerism! Lok at our great monuments and tabernacles - shopping malls and box stores. Consumption is it, all the way down, David. Our creed are commodity fetishism and conspicuous consumption.
I think it's sweet and wholesome that Mr. B has some faith in social science. (truly)
4
Peterson seems to be a decent person, and well grounded in a way, as Brooks indicates. But his political and social views are not balanced, and he feels qualified to form extremely strong opinions on all topics. Really he's in the business of fighting straw men, which he does with visceral intensity, evidently sincerely unaware of his own blind spots. To him, the idea of white privilege is nonsense, and he'll explain why anyone who feels there is such a thing is both deluded and malicious. In his videos young audience members sincerely ask how liberals can think the way they do. Believe me, as a liberal, I can't recognize anything of myself in his explanations, which always mis-represent and mis-understand liberal ideas. If you're interested, look at the controversy over pronouns which really got him started addressing a larger audience.
4
Jordan Petersons come and go. A much more succinct version was Dr. Krakower, the psychiatrist with whom Carmela Soprano had one, very depressing - for her and us - meeting (Season 3, Episode 7, entitled "Second Opinion). Krakower tells her to take the kids and run - don't walk - from the life steeped in immorality that she lives with Tony; she re-phrases in a way that would allow her to stay with Tony while feeling better about herself. One way to interpret the scene is that Dr. Krakower (aka Mr. Peterson) sees black and white, while Carmela (like the rest of us) is weak and wants to negotiate. Which is easier? Letting Mr. Peterson tell us what to do - Great! Another "Leader"! - or suffering human dilemmas of everyday choices? As for me, I look at what people do, not what they say or write in their "12 Secrets to Whatever" ($29.95) or "Seven Steps to a Better This or That" (vol. 1, $19.98). Exhibit A? Our "socially conservative" President Trump!
1
this jordan peterson non-sense better stop soon--and not surprisingly Mr. Brooks has taken to publicly defending an alt-right youtuber since conservatives' definition of an intellectual has transformed into any sexually frustrated white man with a webcam... please read a book and stop watching youtube videos by a professor whose career has clearly been stagnating for the better part of two decades--his magnum opus that he advertises gaudily on his website is read by nobody and has no scientific credentials. poor peterson!
his new book, a self-help guide filled with such brilliant advice as stand up straight and keep a clean house, is the most banal pseudo-jungian garbage. and the real kicker is that peterson's quasi-christian quasi-archie bunker advice reproduces all of the values that his hero Nietzsche sought to criticize in his genealogical writings. the nihilist here is peterson, not so-called post-modernity or radical marxists: we live in a world of chaos and we need a strong father figure (judeo-christian values) to save the weak by appealing to "timeless" dogma (i thought peterson was an expert in the mass psychology of fascism?!). the chaos, we're told, is the fault of post-modernism, which peterson didn't bother to read. instead he cites a book on postmodernism written by a right-wing think tank. instead of actively creating a world and transforming it, struggling for new values and new ways of life, he became the very preacher despised by Spinoza and Nietzsche.
10
"The implied readers of his work are men [women] who feel fatherless [motherless], solitary, floating in a chaotic moral vacuum, constantly outperformed and humiliated by women [men], haunted by pain and self-contempt."
Welcome to our world, men!
5
After reading this editorial, I watched the video in question, and found that I agreed with this Peterson character. Identity politics, the hypocrisy of the far left (e.g. be tolerant, but only in the way I prescribe), and the corruptness of the right (Trump), make choosing sides an impossible task. Peterson fills a gap, it's true. He prescribes specific behaviors, what to do, how to do it. He makes sense and reasons well. He's kind of macho, but I think that's okay. I mean, nobody's perfect.
15
Chaos as the eternal feminine I take issue with from a Biblical standpoint. I believe one overarching literary critique of the Biblical narrative is bring order to chaos in nature, history, government, religion, ethics, and personal life. Genesis, "in the beginning", portrays God as hovering over chaos like a hen over her nest, and God separates light from darkness and so order comes to chaos. In the Biblical account it is the Feminine that brings order to the Masculine chaos. Think Venus and Mars. Another Biblical belief from Christians compliments this Creation story. It is from John 3.16. "God so loved the world". The religions rooted in the Abrahamic tradition believe the order wrought by God was through love, and not by accident as a by product of war among the gods. "We love because God loved us." Your description of Jordan Peterson's view of humanity and the human self, male and female remind me of the National Lampoon's satirical rendition of the "Desiderata", "You are the fluke of the universe." I am curious what would Jordan Peterson's reaction to Frederick Douglas's book, "My Bondage, My Freedom"? Also Hermann Hesse's book "Narcissus and Goldman", about two very different men, monks, their life and type of spirituality they practiced. The men Peterson addresses are like Robert Bly's "The Man Who Didn't Know What Was His". "This man will be like a lean-to attached to a house. It doesn't have a foundation." Other men live well by an ethos of love.
1
Yeah, rather than deal with facing your own inner prejudices and trying to understand women and people who don't fit the average majority by race or creed, just go whimper about how hard it is to be born with a leg up on the rest of 'em!
4
I think I'll take a pass on Jordan Peterson's whole "the floggings will continue until morale improves," bit.
Among other things, I already heard the Iron John routine, and then too I certainly already have a dad.
3
Jordan Peterson is the living parody of what happens when college freshmen misread Friedrich Nietzsche.
12
Jordan Peterson is clearly well meaning, but suffers from the typical lack of imagination and cognitive rigidity that characterizes all Right-wing thinkers. They can't help it, it's likely biological, but to the extent it helps others get a grip on their life in the face of science and postmodernism - good for them.
But don't parade this as something the rest of us should get on board with. It's ultimately a shallow redoubt of conservative reactionary cruft. Reality is complex, recursive, and ultimately slippery to the core. For those who require fixed stars to cope with this, my warning is - beware, it was never thus and never will be.
6
You're not even a little bit concerned that this intellectual YouTube sensation blithely associates Chaos with "the eternal feminine"? Because, you know, that seems a little alarming.
Cloaking sexist language in five dollar words and tweed jackets doesn't make it any less sexist...but I guess it does make it more palatable to the wine & cheese set.
15
Peterson is indeed more educated and articulate than most of the talking heads on TV and the internet today. But that's not saying much! In the interview with Cathy Newman he proves himself to rational, polite but firm, relevant and even interesting. That's because his foil is either deeply confused or not very bright (perhaps a bit of both). But in a video about Donald Trump Peterson asserts that the Ignoramus-in-Chief is "intelligent enough if he succeeded so well in business". There, Mr. Peterson is guilty of extreme sloppiness. He needs to do more research on Trump before making any comment.
5
An argument can equally be made that capitalism, with its corollary, individualism, is the root of modern rootlessness/chaos.
Weber showed that capitalism, individualism, Calvinism bred success in the sense of wealth and class, but not in what Catholicism calls the way of the cross. Inner chaos accompanied the rise of capitalism and was controlled by the false sense of success.
As industrialism and economic liberalism created a society in which the corporate family broke down, the family evolved into a fractured humanity that is now trying to tie things back together by progressive humanism.
Pope Francis has interesting words about mercy (God's identity), which is not to be confused with compassion (the identification of oneself with the afflicted), but such antidotes don't seem to occur to Peterson. He is espousing a nineteenth century, Tennysonian world view, mixed with some Herbert Spencer/social darwinism.
I think that to have a balanced perspective, one needs to know and understand both the classic masculine and the long-suppressed feminine perspectives, without viewing them as contested.
Yes, mama grizzly bears protect their young, as do all mammals. That shows how complicated life is on this planet. We will never resolve such paradoxes; but we can note and marvel at them.
Peterson needs to experience a little wonder, hue to his sense of honor and honesty, but leaven it all with a bit of laughter and love for all that is different from his neo Puritanism.
3
It all sounds a too rigidly creepy to me.
We've had enough of that in history, and it never ended very well.
7
This veered into complete uselessness with the complete and utter distortion of "western history". What about the centuries of war in Europe? What about the centuries of the transatlantic slave trade, the centuries of colonialism, the millions upon millions of people deemed subhuman by so called christians and slaughtered without any restraint? This Peterson fellow sounds another in the continuing mission to make white guys feel better about themselves.
5
Sounds like tweaked and warmed over Ayn Rand to me. I'm sure it is merely coincidence that the philosophy is one that the same set of post-pubescent males would glom onto.
And then you grow up.
8
When I watched the actual interview via the link you provided, I was struck by how much Cathy Newman (of Britain’s Channel 4 News) reminded me of ABC News anchor David Muir: a pretty face and a vapid mind. She wasn't *trying* to mis-state what Peterson was saying. She was trying to get her (limited) mind around it.
Dumbing down the news, another step on the great Coarsening of America, might be worth a column, David.
8
Half of what Peterson says is common sense but the man himself is a VERY dangerous utterly insidious individual; another plastic Nietsche of the type that gave us WW I, II, defense of slavery, racism, colonialism and wars without end all while being a relativist himself.
I agree that parents often fail their children by a lack of involvement which includes both discipline and taking responsibility for one's own lives. But all of this should be motivated by LOVE and concern for others while Peterson is only concerned with pushing a plausible defense of Social Darwinism (ironically while using relativist arguments; 'back then slavery was considered acceptable').
It is true his opponents are rarely any better intellectually and that MSM pushed identity liberalism (ie very UN liberal 'liberalism' as in hate speech laws and the present 'me too' movement) go too far in wishing to avoid the need for evidence in judging others etc but this is mixing up media campaigns with theoretical ideas of morality.
In the end Peterson is just the most well spoken and intelligent of the Alt Righters; a connection he muddies deliberately (judge by who his friends and followers are!) while in fact providing a moralizing and ignorant defense of IN justice and IGNORING those realities one does not want to see,
He is just a very clever hypocrit (think Goebbels) unlike his lowbrow 'buddies' like Milo, Molyneax and 'Sargon of Akkad' who lack his talent for intellectual smoke screening for bigots
4
What this sounds like is a bad rehash of Otto Weininger's "Sex and Character" which so enamored people like Wittgenstein and Adolf Hitler. The blame is always on the mother (this, of course, is Freud also). The WOMAN" with a capital W is always to blame. I suspect Trump (if he knew anything) would agree.
4
Peterson’s interview with Cathy Newman on Britain’s Channel 4 is very impressive. (It’s on You Tube: https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54 ) At least watch that before jumping to conclusions. Thanks David for bringing an important thinker to our attention.
12
I suspect that Peterson does not truly discount the value of love, compassion and social bonds, he is just choosing to emphasize the less easy, less cozy qualities of self-sacrifice, strength and determination because they are the qualities missing and being de-emphasized in our society today. The problem most young people face today is a lack of confidence that causes them to avoid problems and challenges, a feeling of weakness that makes them afraid of the unknown and wary of anything that doesnt provide immediate gratification. Technology makes this worse by making people passive and dependent and less in command of their lives, which is why someone like Peterson is becoming so vital in these times as a counterweight.
9
Cathy Newman's interview of Jordan Peterson was a terrible day in the dock for progressive journalists. It's not clear to me that she realizes that yet. (Note: I am not a Jordan Peterson follower/fan. But the choices she made in the interview were a tremendous gift to anti-progressives (I am not one those), illustrating the truism of human experience that we often get in our own way.
5
David, I know that you have been fishing for a conservative voice you can support in the age of Trump, but we in Toronto, who are exposed to him on a regular basis, know this one is a bad choice. He’s Trump with better grammar,
3
"The implied readers of his work are men who feel fatherless, solitary, floating in a chaotic moral vacuum, constantly outperformed and humiliated by women, haunted by pain and self-contempt. "
How many of these young men are even functionally literate? How many have any means of knowing the book even exists?
4
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism. But God died in the 19th century, and Christian dogma and discipline died with him."
Sheerest claptrap. Christianity (and other absolutist ideologies) have also promoted and traded in barbarism throughout history. It all depends on how you define your terms. But a basic premise of these worldviews is that humans are inherently evil and in need of coercive intervention to set things right. Consider the appeal: inflicting pain and cruelty with a clear conscience, in the name of compassion, historical necessity, et cetera.
Why this appealing con game began to fray in the nineteenth century is probably a curious tale. Perhaps "God" as a comfortable default simply became unnecessary or unbelievable at some point. Oddly, this might be true for those who profited from the idea as well as those who suffered under its millennial sway.
It seems to me that our present cultural malaise (in all its hideous ramifications) is itself unbelievable, partly because we can't adequately formulate the terms or the meaning of the debate, partly because we are disoriented and numbed by too much or too little of everything, and partly because we cannot grasp the extent of our suspicions and evasions. Collectively we are being jettisoned out of history since both past and future appear unreal and/or irrelevant.
Sorry this sounds garbled. I need more coffee.
Being a trained psychologist, he makes some interesting points. Sometimes I feel like he's very pedantic to an almost not fair level in the rhetorical context of the issues he discusses (he ventures deep into territory already rich in political memes). But I also think he could be even more pedantic, go farther and be more skeptical of himself as a scientist. If you see youtube space, there's lots of hero worship of this guy for "crushing sjws", stuff like that. I think a real debate with another psychologist from another point of view would be more interesting than pendantic scientist vs amorphous memes. In the Atlantic piece it covered how he argued that you need to do multivariate analysis when analyzing an issue like equal pay for women. He said only a small fraction of the disparity is explained by them being women. The rest is accounted for, according to JP by things like women being measurably more agreeable as a group and agreeableness is correlated with lower pay. I was a math major and I'm skeptical about this idea given that women are more than half the population. Maybe agreeableness correlates with lower pay because there is a hidden correlation with agreeable people being women. I'm not sure our stats can sort that out, especially when women are more than half of the entire population. Or he says women keep taking lower paying jobs. But how do we know if those jobs are not lower pay in the first place precisely because they are preferred by women?
3
It appears to me that this book would be an excellent book for my grandson and his mates to read. If they could ever get their heads out of their phones or stop shooting at zombies.
11
So God died in the 19th century. Precisely when? Was it before or after slavery was abolished? Was it before or after the victims of colonial rule began to fight for their freedom? Was it before or after the Crimean War? Was it before or after the Boxer Rebellion? Was it before or after the Indian Wars? From my vantage point, all the atrocities of the post-God period were mere extensions of millenia of genocides carried out in the name of whatever god was in fashion at the time. God never died.
4
We can only hope Peterson is successful in helping turn the tide of illiberal political correctness, which is already undermining our democracy. Indeed, true liberals everywhere should fear the next Democratic administration, which will be under significant pressure from identity groups to curtail First Amendment rights.
6
"Most men fail to meet female human standards". If so, then how did we get to 7.5 Billion people and counting. That amounts to an incomprehensible number of virgin births. Sexual selection works for all other life forms on earth. Humans seem to do a settle for, but, proliferate none-the-less.
The first time I told my boss what I thought I got fired. Thereafter, I learned that life is not what you say, it is what you think and do, especially for others.
5
There is a contradiction Peterson's moral philosophy, if Brooks is rendering it correctly. If life is about a struggle for power, then you ought to do whatever empowers you. That suggests that one should lie when it is in one's interest, tell your boss (or anyone with influence) what he or she wants to hear, and never help or sacrifice oneself for others unless doing so improves one's reputation, etc. (This is what "Trumpism" looks like to me.)
But Peterson says we ought to live honorably, which is of course true. One should never lie, treat others and oneself with respect, and help others in need. But don't be fooled into thinking that doing so will get you anything you want or make you happy. You will, however, be worthy of happiness.
2
Clearly the young men are not listening to him. But why would they, for centuries they haven't listened. Their lives are born from their own paths and experiences. Life is indeed hard and a perpetual struggle, my mother explained as much. Yet for many it can be a lot harder when taking advice from others especially when it counters one's own character. And if young men are going to be perfectly honest, and never lie to their bosses (thus never to suck up to the inane company ethos), they are going to be out of work in droves.
This reads exactly like the kind of thing that Peterson would "calmly and comprehensibly" correct and rebut, without breaking a sweat.
6
Celia Carnes writes, "You are really, really missing the current moment if you think the mantel of "the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now" belongs to a white man." First, Brooks didn't say that, Tyler Cowens did, as Brooks duly cited. Second, why couldn't a white man currently hold that position? I'm not saying Peterson is that person, merely asking why such a thing is impossible. Or is intersectional mind proud to be closed?
9
Just phoned my son, who is 19.
"ever heard of Jordan Peterson?"
My son's response: "Who??"
Must be a repentant Republican thing.
5
Embarrassing op-ed about an embarrassing public "intellectual". I know first hand; as a U of T grad I'm ashamed to associate with the school now that it's reputation is tied up with this clown. His arguments and principles sound like a high-school student who just read Genealogy of Morality for the first time and his "critiques" of "postmodern neo-Marxism" show no understanding of what postmodernism nor Marxism are, let alone how they have historically related to each other.
You know the real reason Peterson is famous? Because he tried to grandstand for the internet by publicly shaming trans and non-gender conforming students at his own university in a pathetic act of striking down at an obviously vulnerable group. It was videos of him condescending to undergrads over basic issues of respect and pronoun usage that propelled him to "viral" status. Not only did he make tired appeals to biological determinism that belie his psychology expertise, but he tried to position himself as the victim in the situation, citing potential legal action (that never came to fruition) over, surprise, hate speech! Is this the kind of alpha male dominance you hope he inspires in his disaffected male readers? Lashing out at marginalized people you yield power over and then whining about potentially being censured for doing so?
For a more thorough and intellectually rigorous deconstruction of Peterson's sloppy work, check out Shuja Haider's piece for Viewpoint: https://tinyurl.com/y8akrxk2
7
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism. But God died in the 19th century, and Christian dogma and discipline died with him. That gave us the age of ideology, the age of fascism and communism — and with it, Auschwitz, Dachau and the gulag" . Really, the Christian European who arrived en masse in the new world were "restraining barbarism"? More like they unleashed it. Just ask Bartolome de las Casas, whose unfortunate remedy for the genocidal decline of the indigenous population was to import African laborers.
1
His take on history is as distorted as most conservatives, imagining some glorious past, unsullied by human greed and desire. You know, we do have sources to tell us what life was like before the 18th century and I'm sure the peasants and serfs of those countless centuries might disagree with his rose colored version of their lives.
4
This opinion piece reads to me as being rushed. It seems to me that David Brooks has either, not thoroughly read or listened to Peterson's views, or is vaguely misrepresenting them intentionally. In my opinion, his views are the most profoundly compassionate I've heard in my relatively short life. The dissonance may come from his lack of flowery language.
6
Odd that people find Peterson such a threat but are completely unconcerned that President Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus openly associated with Louis Farrakhan and the media kept it secret for 13 years (they would still be keeping it secret but a photographer just released photos). Our media looks for the big bad alt-right, white supremist under every nook and cranny while ignoring the most powerful democrats in this country associating with black Muslim hate groups. The left has tried to make it taboo to like Peterson under the false narrative that many of his supporters and white supremists. Any word why it is provable that Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus openly associating with equally loathful people doesn't produce any backlash?
6
"Most conflict is over values..." That is so obviously wrong. Most conflict is over economics - ie, money and access to food, clothing, shelter etc. Religion (all of them) have historically been but another "rationale" for excluding others from economic benefits. And, "god died in the 19th century.." Really -- ever heard of the Crusades? The Inquisition?
Poor men ..... they never had anyone tell them they should not be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer because they were taking a job away from a man. This is drivel.
3
I must admit, I've never watched any of Jordan Peterson's videos.
But if his ideas are as you've described them, David, then I'm afraid you've also made him "appear offensive and cartoonish".
There are so many obvious weaknesses in his statements (as paraphrased in the article), but let's just take one. A person is simultaneously praising Christian society but decrying the "culture of victimization"?! I literally laughed out loud at that one.
4
I'm very much impressed! We need more people like Peterson! Nothing wrong with having strong morals and values! If we had more Peterson attitudes we wouldn't have opioiod crisises!
7
The effect (and maybe intent) of this piece, I fear, is that it will function as an "intervention" - that is, by mischaracterizing what Peterson actually says and making him seem not worth listening to or reading - the opinion will cause NYT readers unfamiliar with Peterson from ever checking him out first hand. Thus they will never learn what he actually has to say, which might be what the author of this op-ed is actually aiming for.
5
In 1970 I moved to a Toronto that was Jordan Peterson heaven. It was white sliced bread with all the taste and texture of cardboard. I moved from a Montreal where we left the house at the time Toronto was rolling up the sidewalks and everyone was getting ready for bed.
Today Toronto is cosmopolitan dynamic and reflects all the excitement and diversity this world can offer.
I am 70 years old and can only respond there is no such thing as one size fits all.
For people like myself the chaos of today is food and drink and this is the best of times except the Jordan Petersons run the world and the solutions to our problems are not higher GDP growth but acknowledging we need 100 year single child policies, right sizing not growth and rapid weaning off the race to oblivion.
4
Instead of reading Peterson, young men should watch some John Wayne movies.
2
“Since then we’ve tried another way to pacify the race. Since most conflict is over values, we’ve decided to not have any values.”
No, no, no David! We have not abandoned values because of conflict! Does our current political discourse appear to you to be disinterested and without strong opinions? In fact, the conflict about values has caused the shrill tone of our political discussions and inability to compromise. But, since no one can convince anyone to accept their version of values, we are left to support our beliefs by protest, outrage, victimization and manipulation. What is needed today is not the quack you have written about, but another Socrates.
3
It's easier to dislike a stereotype than a real person.
In the early '70s, I became a manager in a large financial institution. Among the early job applicants were "east African Asian" refugees from Uganda (Idi Amin) and Tanzania (Julius Nyerere). I had to really concentrate on their words and not their faces in the hiring interviews. Those Sikh and Muslim employees turned out to be two of the best people I ever hired. I also hired a Taiwanese woman for a financial analyst position.
That led to an invitation to the C-suite to be asked whether I was running my own personal "affirmative action programme". My reply was "no, I was hiring the best candidates - and the great part was that no one else was offering them jobs".
Today, too many people still live in a somewhat white (often Christian only) society - although no longer in the financial sector. So, it is relatively easy to stigmatize all Muslims as terrorist suspects. Or all refugees as "illegal immigrants" who didn't follow the immigration rules - just as Jewish refugees from Hitler's brutal regime were stigmatized in the 1930s.
My firm benefited substantially from diversity of hiring and I benefitted substantially during my career from close exposure to cultures other than my own.
Characterizing people from backgrounds other than our own as "rapists, thugs and terrorists" appeals to the worst in us. it may work in the ballot box; but it weakens the potential these maligned people can bring to our countries.
9
Life will be a ruthless struggle for dominance only if people believe this and act accordingly. Peterson’s approach may be good for restoring confidence to individual men, but a society full of such men would be a brutal place, with far worse problems than whatever anomie we have today.
6
Make Traditional Masculinity Great Again. We don't need this. We need men and women to live together in the world as equals.
6
My advice to young men: avoid leaders and avoid false work such as financial services and anything Silicon Valley.
Avoid excessive well being
Be constant and reliable
Look after your wife, your kids, your siblings and your parents
Pretty simple really
4
Mr. Peterson is rising for a reason. He is an independent thinker and his voice is resonating. He is reaching people directly via You-Tube and through his books. Critics and skeptics are trying to categorize him or rationalize his impact. But why not just listen to what he has to say and form your own opinions? For me, at this time and place, Mr. Peterson is far more insightful, interesting and relevant than anyone else. That includes Mr. Brooks.
12
This is an attack on progressive values and on women of today. For the first time, American women are gaining a sense of political power and duty to speak out and not accept the male world as Mr. Peterson and Mr. Brooks would envision it. young men today have the same opportunities as women. If they find themselves outperformed or ‘humiliated’ the problem might be lack application and initiative.
So God died. Nothing to do of course with repressive regimes and dogma of the churches. How did the Christian churches assist women up from powerlessness and degradation?
Attacks on identity politics and political correctness conjure up all the groups who have been kept down and excluded. The attack on identity politics smacks of bigotry white supremacy and sexism. The driving force behind political correctness is that nobody, no group gets hurt again that the playing field should be level. Shifting in time with societal values political correctness is in no way perfect. But without such ethical consideration, a government could feel free to put down whomever they wish. The right of transgender people to an equal place in society such as serving in the military for instance.
The purpose of government should be enforcement of civil rights, regulation of business, and protecting the health and welfare of the citizens. There is a phony moralism to the right today that says without such governmental purpose, we can get back to the society we deserve. Rue the day.
4
Young men who feel "outperformed and humiliated by women"? Virtually everyone is outperformed by someone; only a handful of people (Nobel Prize winners, founders of Apple or Amazon) always come out on top. But rarely do we think of men as "humiliated" when they aren't dominant––except if it is a woman who bests a man.
There is a reason for that: an ingrained belief that women are rightly subordinate to men.
If people like Peterson think men can overcome their angst by being harder, more stoic, and driving for ruthless dominance in a cold world, it is a recipe for continued misery. More to the point, it will foster an implicit or explicit hatred of women, as the figures made to represent everything weak and emotional and therefore to be despised in oneself.
Women as well as men will pay if these toxic ideas continue to circulate.
7
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism. But God died in the 19th century, and Christian dogma and discipline died with him."
I read this column just after reading Michelle Goldberg's column. If "Christianity" was part of the solution in the past, it seems to be far more of the problem today. The Franklin Grahams and Jerry Falwell Jrs. of the world are making Satan happy. They are doing his work and doing it very well. (I used to call myself a "Christian," but gave that up. My religious beliefs have remained the same.)
2
The "age of idealism" equals fascism and communism which is the gateway to "Auschwitz, Dachau and the gulag." I couldn't read another word due to my disgust at the lack of depth to this argument. I can see how a youtube artist might leave out slavery, colonialism, wars without end for financial gain because it does make the argument for Christian values a bit murky, but you? If awareness and consideration of our brutal past makes me a "snowflake", then so be it.
Now that I can finish the essay I find much of interest, but we will never succeed in creating a society that values anything more than short term gain and financial reward if we start with a convenient lie about our past.
3
We all know that the exposition of intellectual thought is not the same as results on the ground. It is most likely that in twenty years we will see another finely tuned "intellectual" treatise on what's wrong with our young men. It will make no difference though. None. Which brings me to that old saw, "...youth is wasted on the young."
The real question our society should being asking is: Does the neglect of a child create character?"
1
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism." Are you for real??? You think that the Christian world of the middle ages or even the ages of "Enlightenment" or "Renaissance" were peaceful and quiet and devoid of barbarism? Have you heard of the 100 year war? 30 year war? Pogroms? Crusades? How about slavery? Peterson may be right about some things, but Christianity was used to promote barbarism just as much as to suppress it. With regard to the rest of his ideas - Tough love certainly has merits, but the feminization of men is the eternal goal of civilization. The manly men of yore that we celebrate and extol as heroes and great military leaders would today find themselves in prison or dead (unless they could play football really well). The most successful men in a modern, technologically advanced, "civilized" society are largely feminine - collaborative, communicative, and in control of their emotions. That leaves the "brutes" with the excess testosterone behind, and that's a source of consternation. The solution will take a long time - the slow evolution of our species to become less violent and more benevolent. More "feminine," so to speak. I don't find Peterson's efforts to be particularly enlightening. They just state the obvious about this slow evolutionary transition that is civilization.
2
Peterson has set up a false dichotomy; strong, independent, people who don't whine vs. weak people who worry about being "politically correct" (PC) and whine about injustice. It is possible (I think it's even more appropriate) to be strong and independent while caring about others. After all, being PC is really just being polite and self-disciplined, understanding (and caring) how what you say affects others. People used to call it tact (or on a larger scale, diplomacy). Being PC does not mean lying. Such false dichotomies create an environment in which being un-PC is seen at telling the truth, when our President clearly demonstrates that the two are not related.
4
Matt, I would add that I think the paragraph you quote refers to the Nietzschean influence on the Nazis. I also think it is spectacularly wrong because worldwide, human societies have become far less violent with time, not moreso. Steven Pinker has an entire book on the subject.
Brooks’ and Peterson’s characterization of contemporary boys sounds very upper middle class to me.
Ironically, it is precisely those upper middle class boys who are under pressure to excel in academics (preferably without learning anything) and sports for the sake of The Good College and The Good Job.
Not being able to compete in this environment can turn boys aimless and searching, but young men have always struggled to find their true selves. Isn’t that what a large percentage of world literature about?
A far greater problem is the millions of boys who either have no father figures or whose father figures are addicted to alcohol or drugs and/or incarcerated. Their only role models are in the entertainment media, which promote a mindless machismo and disparage reflective thought and any emotions other than anger. The “heroes,” whether in movies or video games, spend their time massacring faceless foes with no individual characteristics. You see the results in all ethnic groups, in bullying and school shootings.
If you look at the popular boys’ entertainment of the 1950s, you see the heroes defending the vulnerable from individual bad guys, basically, training in how to be masculine without being macho.
No one is well served by either hyper-competitiveness in suburbia or hyper-machismo in the Rust Belt and rural areas.
Brooks shows the weakness of conservative thinking in general. Christianity restrained barbarism? This is "make America great again" in its lack of precision and vague, wistful mythologizing of the past. The "Christians" never acted as Jesus might have recognized. Brooks should study Cornell West on the difference between Constantinian Christianity and the original kind. Imperial Christianity has been a litany (sorry for the pun) of murder, torture, and inhumanity for near all of its existence as an official religion of nation states. Blame Auschwitz, and World War One for that matter, on modern technology outstripping ethics, not on the loss of Christianity. How absurd! Church-going men standing arm-in-arm with atheists ordered the machine guns of the Somme and ordered the trains from Drancy. Please try to wake up to the idea that the past was never very nice.
2
Peterson is one of the current generation of right-wing provocateurs who become successful by telling people of higher status in society--men and in particular
white men--that they are the real victims of discrimination. He tells higher status people that any differences in the way society treats others is a result of immutable nature and not because of centuries of social conditioning. But even if nature does play a role, we have these big brains so that we can think our way out of problems and injustices. Peterson practices pandering and hucksterism of an ancient kind: give the people what they want. It's only particularly contentious right now because we also have such a con man in the White House.
4
We do not pretend that everyone is nice. We will not tolerate destructive, hateful, exclusive ideologies. We assume that all people are equal in value, and have the same human rights. That doesn't mean they are nice. They certainly are not.
I'm glad Brooks is writing about Dr. Peterson and this article isn't terrible, but Brooks gets some things wrong.
1. Peterson's message isn't only for men. It's about bravely and honestly facing the challenges of living a meaningful life. It is true that men have gravitated to his message, and he does discuss different challenges faced by men and women, but he is not a men's-movement type.
2. "life is essentially a series of ruthless dominance competitions." This is completely wrong. Peterson sees life as tragic in that it is full of suffering, both unavoidable and potential. But his view of hierarchies is that most are legitimate, based on things like competence. The relationship between the top cardiac surgeon at a teaching hospital and the new resident is a hierarchy, but it is a good hierarchy that benefits us all. It is the leftist postmodernists Peterson criticizes who would see this relationship as based on nothing but power and domination. (Peterson does use the expression 'dominance hierarchies,' which perhaps creates the confusion.)
3. Yes, life is full of suffering and pain. But Peterson's view is that by becoming stronger and more honest, we reduce the suffering of the world, not merely endure it (although as long as humans die suffering will remain). He frequently talks about how good life could become if we all tried to make things better, starting as small as we are capable of--hence his frequent refrain "clean your room."
11
Brooks writes:
"Since most conflict is over values, we’ve decided to not have any values. We’ll celebrate relativism and tolerance. We deny the true nature of humanity and naïvely pretend everyone is nice. The upside is we haven’t blown ourselves up; the downside is we live in a world of normlessness, meaninglessness and chaos."
And that's bad? If there's a choice between a) having values and blowing up people who don't share them or b) having no values, then the choosing the latter is a nobrainer.
Why is that a problem?
2
I'm about halfway through reading that 12 Steps book. Mr. Peterson does dwell a lot on the Bible, and also relies on classic works of philosophy, what today's scholars would derisively call "dead white men."
This is most certainly *not* a "self-help" guide by any stretch of the imagination, but more his visualization of how people should regain confidence in their own ability to affect their surroundings.
The real issue isn't Peterson, but Ms. Newman's approach to argument, to deliberately distort points and hope her distortions define her target better than the target's original points. That approach has attracted public attention, but not in the way she expected.
6
David, get a grip. You know perfectly well that Christianity did not single-handedly, “restrain(ed)the human tendency toward barbarism.” God did not die in the 19th century. The “age of ideology” that you reference is a gross simplification. The assertion that collectively we have “decided to not have any values” and that Judeo-Christian values no longer permeate the Western world is just plain silly.
What men need is not more dognma, which is what Peterson is purveying. They need opportunity. They need good jobs. They need just laws and good schools. They need leaders with conviction and courage. They need to see our common “Golden Rule” values actualized in their daily lives, in the people who serve them in government and in the corporate entities for whom they work. The problem lies not in a “cocktail of coddling,” but instead, in a “highball of hypocracy” and a “stew of systemic institutional racism, sexism, bigotry, and exploitation.”
1
It is interesting to note the number of comments from people who have never heard or read Mr. Peterson's teachings. I only know him because of the recent Atlantic article condemning Ms. Newman's pathetic attempts to distort what Mr. Peterson was saying.
I found Mr. Peterson's calm, even humble, demeanor, in the Newman interview, to be entirely reasonable in the face of an unreasonable interviewer. If Ms. Newman is representative of what journalism schools teach, they should be closed. If she is not representative of those schools, she should be sent back for remedial studies.
I will try to carve out some time to listen to Mr. Peterson's YouTube addresses. Perhaps then I will have something to say about his teachings.
2
Is it Peterson or Brooks that never says what it is that young men must be strong and resolute about?
Being correct, self sacrificing, moraly strong and resolute sounds a lot like the training that young men in Germany received when they were recruited into the SS.
As those young men broke "free from the needy mother that controls" them, she was replaced by the state, which would become the embodiment of their strength. That steel will, sense of the survival of the fittest and commitment to self sacrifice was unleashed on all of Europe with a vengeance.
It also became the philosophical basis for theories of racial superiority where these qualities of strength became genetic and the rest became the untermensch.
I don't know Paterson's politics so I won't make assumptions. But I do know history and we have heard the appeal of how to overcome this sense of national weakness before. In a word, beware.
2
"Tell your boss what you really think."
Says a man who has never worked as a woman in a male dominated profession and literally has no clue -- none -- what it takes to survive in that environment.
6
It's interesting, and disturbing, how so many of the commentators, having admittedly never read Dr. Peterson's book nor viewed his videos, are nonetheless self-proclaimed experts on his political, moral and spiritual viewpoints. I would expect more out of the presumably educated readers of the TImes. With the understanding that this is likely a vain hope, I offer the following link, so that readers may obtain a more nuanced and sophisticated picture of Dr. Peterson's values: https://medium.com/@andrewpgsweeny/in-defence-of-the-jordan-peterson-cul....
1
You can instantly tell who has actually taken the time to read or watch Dr Peterson's work, and those that haven't a clue.
9
Peterson has a distorted view of history if he thinks Christianity held back the tides of barbarism. As for Communism and Nazism, they were religious movements hiding behind secular facades.
3
Lone wolf syndrome is a pretty well-known malady among libertarian types. It helps them rationalize the idea that humans must be psychological islands, independent of communal tendencies. Which, of course, contradicts thousands of years of human evolution. The syndrome is a rich resource for celebrity professors who seek to profit from libertarian angst. What is libertarian angst you ask? It is juvenile angst that lingers when the full consequence of living as a solitary being becomes a reality. Constant vigilance is very tiring but necessary for lone wolves. Never trusting, never giving, never resting for fear that the angst be exposed. The good professor only reinforces that angst because his vision of human nature is not human. Sadly Mr. Peterson is advocating solutions that perpetuate myths and don't solve problems.
12
The channel 4 interview is an unremarkable and fairly standard oppositional interview.
What she was, correctly, trying to get out of him was the truth; that he's a misogynist dressed as an academic and wrapped in fancy words.
18
If that was her intention she did a lousy job.
6
Him: The sky is blue.
Her: So you are saying the sky favors men? And you think this is okay?
You are correct that it's a fairly standard oppositional interview. I would go further and say it's standard for any discussion with leftists: they create false narratives and frame people's language in dishonest ways to either make them seem worse or better than they actually are. The reaction from the left over the Obama's photo with Farrakhan at a Black Congressional Caucus event will be eye rolling and say "big deal!" Let some 20 year old working at 7-11 stand within 400 feet of Richard Spencer and they try to get him fired. Paula Deen had her career ruined circa 2015 for using slurs against a black man who held a gun to her head 30 years earlier. The left doesn't play fair, and that is putting it mildly. This interview is a clear example of leftist norms at work.
6
This Jordan Peterson is just another guy trying to found a modern version of the "He-Man Woman-Haters Club". The problem with this is that, while the original club was a funny episode in an "Our Gang" comedy in which the members found out that the woman-hating was unsustainable, this guy is functioning in the real world. He is a male psychology version of Ayn Rand, telling men to take what the world supposedly holds out for them if only they behave. "Break free from the needy mother who controls you" is old hat. Saying things like "Stop doing what you know to be wrong. … Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that you could speak of with honor..." may not be an overt inducement to violence against women, but out of context they could make a young man feel entitled to take what he wants despite exhortations not to blame others, seek revenge, or exhortations to "...conduct his or her life in a manner that requires the rejection of immediate gratification, of natural and perverse desires alike."
For me, all of the above feels very much like the misogyny I experienced growing up in Franco's Spain, where phrases which were virtually identical were used to keep men at the top of the hierarchy and women at the bottom. They justified religious persecution of the "other" (whoever that might have been). They sound neutral (and even laudable), but they are not.
16
I agree with Peterson that the world is a tough place, especially today. However, I don’t believe that you should make a tough place all that more complicated. I think Alfred E. Neumann was a lot smarter than Peterson when he uttered the words “What Me Worry?”
9
This is a man who writes, " Chaos is the realm without norms and rules... Chaos, the eternal feminine..."
And here I always thought entropy was the second law of thermodynamics - not some menacing Freudian threat emanating from us women.
Sorry, not interested.
57
Entropy does not equal chaos. It s a property of matter where absent other mitigating factors structures of matter become less organized. Being less organized means you still have organization. Additionally, one of the biggest mitigating factors is life since it absorbs external resources as it maintains and increasing its complexity.
9
"The implied readers of his work are men who feel fatherless, solitary, floating in a chaotic moral vacuum, constantly outperformed and humiliated by women, haunted by pain and self-contempt. At some level Peterson is offering assertiveness training to men whom society is trying to turn into emasculated snowflakes."
I'm pretty sure that the people (men) who feel "outperformed and humiliated by women" are the ones most likely to call other men 'snowflakes.' I'm pretty sure the average recipient of the 'snowflake' pejorative is much more bullish on the world as a whole (and perhaps less, shall we say, 'maladjusted'?)
10
Embarrassing op-ed about an embarrassing public "intellectual". I know first hand; as a U of T grad I'm ashamed to associate with the school now that it's reputation is tied up with this clown. His arguments and principles sound like a high-school student who just read Genealogy of Morality for the first time and his "critiques" of "postmodern neo-Marxism" show no understanding of what postmodernism nor Marxism are, let alone how they have historically related to each other.
You know the real reason Peterson is famous? Because he tried to grandstand for the internet by publicly shaming trans and non-gender conforming students at his own university in a pathetic act of striking down at an obviously vulnerable group. It was videos of him condescending to undergrads over basic issues of respect and pronoun usage that propelled him to "viral" status. Not only did he make tired appeals to biological determinism that belie his psychology expertise, but he tried to position himself as the victim in the situation, citing potential legal action (that never came to fruition) over, surprise, hate speech! Is this the kind of alpha male dominance you hope he inspires in his disaffected male readers? Lashing out at marginalized people you yield power over and then whining about potentially being censured for doing so?
For a more thorough and intellectually rigorous deconstruction of Peterson's sloppy work, check out Shuja Haider's piece for Viewpoint: https://tinyurl.com/y8akrxk2
30
Thanks so much for your timely link to the Viewpoint/Haider treatment of Peterson's work that Brooks either ignored or couldn't defend against. Two names popped out at me: Ayn Rand and Pat Buchanan. The former, an icon to post-pubescent high school boys and a goddess to Republicans today, including Rep. Brat, the Ayn Rand endowed chair by a wealthy donor to Randolph-Macon and who upset Eric Cantor. Sen. Rand Paul is even named for Rand, the nymphomaniac Russian emigre. And Buchanan is still haunting the halls of failed conservatism. Haider also mentions McCarthyism which we see rising again in Republican quarters as they find "Democrats" in our sacrosanct FBI. The VIEWPOINT article should be required reading for David Brooks, who just can't accept that his party and his philosophy have failed.
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism." Oh, give me a break. As though there are no examples of atrocities committed by Christians within Christian countries, frequently against other Christians? The conflict between Presbyterians and Episcopalians in Scotland in the 1680s is known as "The Killing Time", for crying out loud. Religion may restrain our worst impulses -- or it may give them a voice.
25
Peterson (in this column) sounds like any old misogynist buffer from the late nineteenth century railing against the Eternal Feminine.
18
Why on earth do we need a talk show psychologist who tweets and has a following to tell us how to behave correctly? Even his pose for his picture smacks of phony self importance. Dr. Phil does the same thing. As an avowed atheist, I do the right thing because it's the right thing. It certainly isn't because I'm afraid of burning in hell.
10
If YouTube views make you the most influential public intellectual in the West, then we are all doomed. Getting young men to become enamored of simplified trivial ideas is probably the second oldest profession on earth--and just about as honorable as the first.
That said, getting young men (or women) to whine less and embrace the unequaled joy of self discipline, truthfulness, honor and self-confidence is a great contribution. On the rest of it, however, he's wrong. The world is not a desolate, isolated, relentlessly competitive and harsh place. In fact, it's filled with lively, usually funny, friendly people trying new ideas to to improve their own lives and the lives of many others. After these young men learn self-disciple, they should close their browsers and go talk to some of them.
14
Peterson has an interesting point of view and a good message. Try actually watching his videos before making a snap judgement. Too many comments say "I don't know him but he seems awful." Let's try to be a bit more open-minded, folks.
26
Couldn't agree more, Dan. I'm a feminist, of course, and don't hear misogyny in his message. I have no problems with his using Youtube for his lectures. He's a capitalist. So what? And he's an intellectual so everything he says is grounded in research including thousands of hours counselling men and women. There are a lot of damaged young men out there who are grappling with their place in a rapidly changing diverse and equitable work place. I have two of them living in my home who are...yes...whining. And with the onslaught of the #METOO movement they are trying to defend what they can't defend, when they should just shut up and listen. Peterson's messages are simple. Stop whining and take responsibility for your behaviours, actions, families and future. Be a leader. There's a deficit of strong and responsible, eloquent men. They just need some coaching and enlightening. We all know the difference once they get it. And when he talked about traditional men's work citing the Alberta oil rigger who risks his life every day and retires at 50 with gnarled knuckles (some fingers missing) and arthritic knees, I agree we should not begrudge him his six figure salary and pension while his female colleague payroll clerk makes one third of that. We need these brilliant blue collar guys. Let's not misunderstand Peterson.
11
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism. But God died in the 19th century, and Christian dogma and discipline died with him. That gave us the age of ideology, the age of fascism and communism — and with it, Auschwitz, Dachau and the gulag."
An absolutely absurd statement, as even a cursory study of Western history from the 5th to the 19th centuries attests.
15
it's also a statement by David Brooks, paraphrasing Jordan Peterson. I'd be sceptical of paraphrases, especially if one wants to call out the originator.
2
"At some level Peterson is offering assertiveness training to men whom society is trying to turn into emasculated snowflakes." ... Really, David Brooks?? Society is making men emasculated snowflakes? I think society, like this Jordan Peterson, simply expects men to treat others with respect. And too many of them do not. You should not contribute to this thinking that men are being put upon and women are unreasonable for demanding the boorishness stop. Why don't we dispense with this gender-separating thinking and focus on raising humans, male or female, to be strong, respectful, self-confident, and enjoyable to be around.
18
Oh...how I love this, Kathleen.
"At some level Peterson is offering assertiveness training to men whom society is trying to turn into emasculated snowflakes."
Just who are these emasculated snowflakes? Might they be alpha males (or wanna bes) who used to assume that they could get all the money and all the girls but who now have to contend with the fact that the girls don't need them and that learning to code guarantees a better living than playing football?
I can see Peterson's appeal to a certain segment of boys (whether they are boys by age or just adults who have refused to grow the hell up). But I am disappointed that David Brooks, who I often admire for writing about connectionalism, community, the social contract, morality, etc., would find anything to admire in Peterson.
A swing and a miss this time, David.
4
How will you ever attain the strength Peterson advocates when this is believed: "Life is suffering, Peterson reiterates" The whole point of an expanded self, one that is not just looking out for itself but for others too, is that this involves no sense of loss or sacrifice; one can only gain by doing so. If believe you are giving up something of value when you choose to love another as you love yourself, your gains will be limited by what you thought you lost. Every true teacher of spirituality has taught this. Every man who knows it, knows it is the essence of being a man. Look at the fearlessness that military training seeks to teach. What is the strength of a soldier? That a soldier care for another, as they care for themselves. This is the power that transforms childishness to adulthood. So stop with the 'there is no gain without pain,' and grow a pair that brings a fearlessness that ends all pain. Peterson is on shaky ground with the feminine as chaos. The feminine is the receptivity that can contextualize meaning away from the singularity of abstractions. Both men and woman have this, as they both have the masculine strength to transcend the contextualized and localized meaning; the contextualized is meaningful when it can look beyond itself to the transcendent. When this is realized men and woman will stop trying to rob each other of what they believe they do not have. There ends exploitation and the silly but often tragic 'battle of the sexes.'
2
This is an interesting discussion regarding American young men. People wouldn't like this, but one problem is that today's parents over protect young boys today. I grew up in the 1950's & '60's. Young boys ran free in those days. No special protections were provided. We were simply told to be home by dinner.
We ran out in the woods, built tree forts and explored our town. When bullies assaulted us, we learned to avoid them or to fight back. We learned that when you punched a bully, he often left you alone. We learned that the world could be cruel, but that but that you weren't powerless. We learned self sufficiency that young men seem to lack today. They are suffering for it. Set your boys free.
15
I could not agree more.
Sounds to me that Peterson personifies a typical western response to, what Mr. Brooks often writes about, absence of a moral center. Western responses look to religion, family, community, or some form of moral boot camp to restore meaning and discipline to self-gratification gone wild. I am much more comfortable with Eastern responses, which do start with the belief, that the world is sorrowful, but instead of looking outward for some societal guardrails Zen masters, for example, look inward, to a busy mind constantly generating narratives, beliefs, ideas, that advance different degrees of narcissism. Instead of creating a persona attached to a certain identity, in the East they recommend non-attachment or to put it the terms of this article, it might be healthier to take a few minutes to meditate--relax the mind---rather than engage in a one on one duel each day with your narcissistic self.
2
I’m not a huge fan of Peterson. For someone who bases much of his work on Jung, he himself seems to often act out his shadow side, particularly in over-wrought concerns about neo-Marxists, relativists etc. taking over the Academy. However, his core message is much the same as Robert Bly’s in the 1980’s, and needs to be heard. Masculinity is not inherently destructive. It can be expressed and lived in a positive way that sustains the whole community. Doing so doesn’t necessarily entail diminishing women or promoting intolerance towards anyone. That young, male energy, so potentially destructive, can be channeled into respecting and protecting the rights of all. You don’t have to believe the tired narrative of the death of some kind of inherently superior West to see that this is true.
4
Peterson is also a former Harvard professor but, of course, no need to mention that.
3
Peterson sounds like a real quack. If you can fundamentally distort the concepts of relativism and tolerance into an insult concerning personal responsibility, you're not an intellectual; you're a quack.
My history professor actually had an old joke about ideologies that fit conveniently into a little box. Advice is free but the right answer will cost you. I think this sentiment applies well to Jordan Peterson's YouTube videos.
4
I advise anyone to not judge Jordan Peterson on the basis of the (brilliant) Channel 4 interview or some brief and therefore inevitably shallow critique like this one.
There are very many very comprehensive lectures and interviews on Youtube, search for example for Joe Rogan #877 Peterson.
I assume Peterson will remain in the news for a while but the usual liberal-left brand of shallow journalism will be too lazy and dogmatic to actually care to get to know his philosophy, much less fairly represent it in reporting.
If you want to widen your world view as a liberal, this is the rare conservative intellectual who is civil and eloquent and highly educated.
And don't trust any journalist who reduces Peterson to a sound bite about the gender debate. That is a tiny fraction of what Peterson is lecturing about. He is not a gender crusader; rather his position on the issue naturally grows out of his philosophy - it is inevitable.
165
A subtle, clever belittling and mischaracterization of an important and compelling man. I exhort anyone who has determined that they've got Peterson's "number" based on this piece, to go watch some of his videos. As they say, "This ain't that."
13
What is this coddling and accusation Brooks claims young men are suffering from? I read and hear this all the time yet there are no specifics. Evidence please. Are young white men afraid of competition from women and minorities? I we are as weak as Brooks and others claim perhaps "we" aught to have compulsory military service? In doing we will toughen our young men and demystify the military.
With so much advice and “professional” insight “out there” about how men/ males (or for that matter, women/ females) ought to live ... I suppose to be “happy,” whatever that is ... you’d think the right answer(s) would be known by now. But no; we just keep getting more! And to declare that God is dead doesn’t make any sense. Oh, ignored or dismissed: yes, for some; but dead, no. Sorry, one cannot blame human unhappiness on God’s failure to be, since God as God can’t deny Godself. The power of human self-interest, including “enlightened,” has for a long-time been said to be at the root of our brokenness, “sin” being merely the failure to love. The thing that gets in the way seems to be human freedom to choose not, or a will that is bound/ addicted to a lie. We, all of us, need help that can’t come from us ... that ought to be clear.
Peterson sounds like he is just rehashing The Hunting Hypothesis school of thought from Robert Ardrey. Move along folks, nothing new to see here.
1
Nothing gives more pleasure to the common man than seeing the establishment finally take notice of someone they can no longer ignore, only in an attempt to marginalize him.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
6
First the author summarizes, and grossly oversimplifies, some of Professor Peterson's ideas, and then asserts that the Peterson way is harsh. I see nothing harsh about it, and it may be testament to how far we've fallen that anyone would see Professor Peterson's ideas as harsh. They are hopeful. I also disagree that much of what he says is "vague exhortatory banality. Like Hobbes and Nietzsche before him, he seems to imagine an overly brutalistic universe, nearly without benevolence, beauty, attachment and love. His recipe for self-improvement is solitary, nonrelational, unemotional."
You clearly have not read much or viewed many of his lectures. I have found him to be the most passionate and compassionate, not to mention also the most rational lecturer I have ever seen. And if you think the universe isn't brutal, then you live in a bubble and no nothing about modern history.
As for being unemotional --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ER1LOarlgg&feature=youtu.be&utm...
14
Five children in my liberal Democrat parents home. We were not rich, but they were teachers and focused on themselves, and others. The five personalities are all polar opposites, if that were possible. Some mentally tougher than others. Home was a place of rules, and music and laughter, rules strictly enforced through words. There was work everyday. The five watched and learned from their parent models who maintained their honor throughout. We're all old now, but lives were lived well and generously, and as liberals.
1
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism. But God died in the 19th century, and Christian dogma and discipline died with him. That gave us the age of ideology, the age of fascism and communism — and with it, Auschwitz, Dachau and the gulag."
This is so simplistic and childish that it takes my breathe away. I can see why this guy has a following: he permits people not to thinks.
The mystery is why Brooks is doing a book review about
a charlatan.
"Life is suffering, Peterson reiterates." Good God!
1
should watch some of his lectures, brooks does an incomplete job of summarizing. Peterson’s thinking is anything but simplistic. I recommend his first biblical stories lectures or anything about 20th century’s ideology.
2
This is a sophomoric essay about a psychologist's sophomoric reasoning. Apparently Mr. Brooks thinks a good dose of, "Now see here, young man!" is all that's needed to rescue men from floundering through life's challenges.
It's all fine and well to prattle about "individual responsibility", self-discipline, and assertiveness training for "men whom society is trying to turn into emasculated snowflakes." Unfortunately egoism, self-centeredness, and navel gazing can only serve to get us to a certain point before we realize the individual is only one component of a functioning society.
Young men would be better served if a psychologist, or preferably their parent(s) as well as elementary and high school teachers, instilled the concepts of reason, logic, and free will. They must know that the choices they make every hour, day, month, and years will eventually comprise their lives. The better the choices that are made, the happier and more satisfying their lives will be.
And, finally, they need to learn that sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, whether it's simply in the sense of providing for one's family, or expanded to the community, nation, or the world. Collaboration with each other is preferable to mindless competition that results in mediocrity of the individual and society.
The individual is important, certainly, but so is the concept that "We are all in this together". Perhaps that would better serve ourselves, our nation, and our world.
124
Peterson's basic point, at least from what I've read and seen, is that society has turned women and their allies, not men, into snowflakes. On the contrary, it has turned men into demons by means of political correctness, which silences men in the public square.. Only by tenaciously arguing against prevailing claims, therefore, can met attain the self-respect and societal respect that they deserve as fellow humans.
8
David: Christianity is defined by the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Not by so-called Christians, past and present, who actions are completely contrary to that life and those teachings.
5
I don't see how Christianity "restrained the human tendency toward barbarism". The Inquisition? Europe's Religious wars? To glorify the past is to not understand the progress that has happened directly from development of reason and science. I agree with Stephen Pinker that things are now less violent, more humane. There may be a problem with the development of boys/men but it's more about losing the power they had to do whatever they liked without challenge from women/minority groups. There are more and more people who don't believe myths that things were "better in the old days" and that's where their confusion lies. What do we do now?
4
Why do I think that young men who don't have "realistic and practical wisdom on how to live" are the ones are not the ones flocking to his podcasts? In my day it was M. Scott Peck, and I'm all for better education, including the classics and the Bible (what Blake called "the Great Code of Art"), and I usually love you. But if God "died" it might mean that the "dogma" and "discipline" that has been used over the centuries to excuse the bigotry that justified pogroms and inquisitions and more lately the extremely cold and un-Christian positions of the Republicans now in power have killed him.
Jesus, of course, didn't preach this Gospel according to Peterson. Jesus taught the opposite, to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to give more than is asked, to give food to the hungry, and comfort to those in prison. I teach in a community college. I don't know who all these coddled young men are. The young William F. Buckley didn't suffer much, either, did he? If Peterson and his ilk want people to come back to Christianity, perhaps he should trade his "idealism" for the feminine teachings of Christ. I usually really like your take on things, but you should have stuck with the part where you knew it was all banal nonsense.
6
Again, recommend commenters actually watch some of Dr Peterson’s online lectures. This article does an incomplete job of explaining his popularity.
3
Peterson's message reminds me of the old Nation of Islam message in the 1950s and 60s. There's a tough, hyper-masculine doctrine of self help that, at times, is offensive and, at times, makes sense. For some young men, it is a proven way to get oneself straightened out in prison and/or get out of your parents' basement and get into the productive world. Having encountered many disillusioned, anemic young men in the past 6-7 years, I hope the call to energetic self-actualization and responsibility works. But while those are important, foundational skills, these young men will need other kinds of personal development to succeed in the world that Peterson (or the Nation of Islam) can provide.
2
I suppose that Jesus' preaching of Good News - that is, that God is loving and forgiving, that healing, both physical and mental/spiritual, is possible, and that these are available to all, and not just some elite, qualifies as "naïve optimism."
Silly me: I thought that was the basis of progressivism.
1
This comment section's tendency to mischaracterize, distort and simplify Peterson and his views is kind of ironic considering the article itself mention this tendency.., mostly uttered by those with a certain political view.
If you think harsh dark depressing reality is what defines the man and his views then you've missed the point. Also, Peterson has never shied away from using and advocating for humor.
7
Yes, when one cannot find a job no matter how hard one tries, life is hard. It's hard when you can't pay the bills, can't support yourself or your family, can't get medical care if you need it, are discriminated against because of your race, your religion, your gender, your sexuality, and your age. It's hard when you live in a country that is bent upon supporting the very rich at the expense of the other 99% who are not rich, do not have the ear of their local or national politicians, one that doesn't seem to care at all about impoverishing as many people as possible in order to hand out government welfare in the form of subsidies and tax breaks to the richest people and richest corporations in the land.
We need to stop coddling the richest of this country not the people who are struggling to get by. Unfortunately our current president and majority party seem to need more coddling than most critically ill patients do or most infants once their basic needs are met. It's a shame that we are wasting tax dollars on such people.
3
I happened upon Mr. Peterson's videos last year and found him to be intriguing, though I couldn't figure out why. I kept watching, and eventually I saw that we come to some of the same conclusions, but for different reasons. Or we follow the same line of thought and come to different conclusions.
Of his "belief that life is essentially a series of ruthless dominance competitions" I would say there's some truth to that, especially in the corporate world, but maybe not as much now as there was in the Stone Age. Of his telling young men that life is hard, I would say to the young men: "Life is harder than your privileged existence has led you to believe." I'm in favor of young men becoming "honorable, upright and disciplined" not so they can get the spoils but so that they can have the pleasure of developing the characterological muscles to join the civilized human race. I don't think religion restrained barbarism, I think it channelled power to men.
One thing I admire about Mr. Peterson is his willingness to be wrong. In one of his videos, he says you have to put yourself out there, even if it turns out later that you were wrong. I call that courage.
I find it fascinating that Peterson thinks that all of life is "perched on the point between chaos and order," that his audience is men who are "constantly outperformed and humiliated by women," and that "chaos is the eternal feminine." I would love to hear how he reached these conclusions.
84
It's pretty simple: see Freud on castration anxiety.
5
Would love to hear more about his chaos/femininity conclusions too. One thing he does say is that he believes life should be lived with one foot in chaos, the other in order. A yin vs yang. Neither order nor chaos is just “bad” or “good.” So “chaos” is a necessary part of inspired living. I’m a Jordan Peterson fan as well. And a woman, btw.
7
"constantly outperformed and humiliated by women"..it's fascinating, whenever a woman does a great job she is humiliating men. When men do a great job, or just call it in, the pedestal comes out and the band warms up. Why can't a woman who outperforms someone else get the same cheers, why is her performance seen as taking away from the rightful performer instead of seen as a great performance?????
Decoding this kind of thinking interprets 'political correctness' as having no awareness at all that woman (or POC, or LGBTQ for example) are humans with aspirations, great talents and bloody great brains.
8
Again, recommend commenters actually listen to a Jordan Peterson lecture or two. Brooks does an incomplete job explaining his appeal.
1
No, the problem for men is not women who outperform men or "do a great job." The problem is women who shame, ridicule and accuse men day after day in countless ways--and not only, these days, on college campuses. This is the strong impression that comes across during the moral panic over sexual harassment. I refer not only to some of the allegations themselves but also to the highly ideological op-ed pieces, especially the ones in this newspaper, and to so many of the comments on them. The implication is that every man who is accused (often anonymously and without the presumption that they are innocent until proven guilty or any other feature of due process) is not an individual man at all but Everyman. The underlying assumption is that all of history has been a titanic conspiracy of men to oppress women and the consequent assumption that women have some right to revenge (which is definitely not the same as justice).
2
There is a lot of wisdom there. A lot of young men and women would be a lot better off if they would simply "cowboy up" when they meet adversity.
I grew up in a working poor family and had to overcome a lot to get to a good station in life. It meant getting up again and again after being knocked down.
I have a 28 year old son and a 26 year old daughter. Both were given love, support, and attention. And I am astounded how fragile they and their friends are. While attributing this condition to an entire generation is overbroad, but dang, if they aren't a bunch of cupcakes. They could do a lot worse than read Peterson's 12 rules and improve their constitutions.
5
Is there no place left in our world for kindness, compassion and good manners? Or, are those things too "girl-y" to have a place in the male conscience?
12
I recommend you listen to a peterson lecture or two. Peterson does not push some overtly masculine/uncaring identity as is depicted in this piece.
1
David;
You identify the choice, but you continue to circle around that choice. Do we choose benevolence, beauty, attachment and love; or do we choose the Peterson's world of the Ubermensch. God is not some little old guy in the clouds, God is us choosing love! Choosing love has nothing to do with lacking strength of character, quite the opposite; but love has nothing to do with self-achievement. Real lasting achievement is only build together. Character is not bootstrapped, it's achieved by Grace.
1
Kind of sad that you are giving this pseudo-intellectual more attention. He is widely known as a sham among academics in Canada, using his position as U of T professor to manufacture controversy, fuel the so-called alt-right, and cash in on YouTube videos.
153
So you think it's okay that the CBC - Canada's public broadcaster - has effectively no-platformed Peterson because he doesn't fit their ideological credo? The BBC, the Guardian, the Atlantic, and now the NYT have all done profiles on him and his work, but the CBC, whose mandate is to support Canadian intellectuals and writers, doesn't think he's worth an interview in the last 18 months? 12 Rules for Life is the top selling book on Amazon, in both the U.S. and Canada. And yet the CBC does not mention it in their 21 Canadian non-fiction books to read in the first part of 2018.
You don't have to agree with someone to recognize they're important or newsworthy. The only reason to deliberately ignore someone with the profile of Peterson is to politically silence him. Which is not something a public broadcaster should be dong.
29
Oh Penny Burke! A pseudo-intellectual, eh? Think what you may, but Peterson's core message of personal responsibility is unassailable. At least it is to those of us that can think clearly. Look at the responses here. The number of readers who worry about their kids and the precious snowflakes we have created. Heaven help us!
19
It is misleading, to put it mildly, to describe Peterson's message as "joyless and graceless calls to self-sacrifice."
"TREAT YOURSELF LIKE SOMEONE YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR HELPING" is about as far from self-sacrifice as it gets.
And while joy and grace may be subjective, the fact that Brooks describes the book this way, tells me more about him than it does about Peterson. It's no surprise that the book makes many in the social "justice" crowd cringe - because it exposes the lies they've been living by. I was once among that crowd myself, but fortunately, I said good bye to all of that years ago - and Peterson's graceful book gives me much joy and hope, as does its #1 spot on Amazon bestsellers list. Apparently, there are many people who prefer virtue to virtue-signaling.
7
Thanks, but I think I'll stick with Lasch's "Culture of Narcissism," from thirty years ago.
Among other virtues, it pretty much explains Jordan Petersonn.
1
Ah, here we go again. “Chaos is the realm without norms and rules … the impenetrable darkness of a cave … It’s the mother grizzly, all compassion to her cubs, who marks you as potential predator and tears you to pieces. Chaos, the eternal feminine, is also the crushing force of sexual selection.”
This gynophobia is as old as the ancient Greeks and as tiresome as Freud and Norman Mailer. It transcends religion, race, class, political ideology. It persists through centuries of alleged intellectual ‘progress.’ Despite its ubiquity, it is always greeted as something new and vital, indeed the basis of a great moral vision. This fear and obsession with dominance is what feeds the longest ongoing injustice of human history: the oppression of women.
14
I believe his believes an inspired life should have elements of “chaos” and “order.” He compares it to a yin and yang. Brooks does an incomplete job of summarizing his work. I recommend you watch one or two of Peterson’s lectures.
2
"For much of Western history...Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism."
Was colonialism and the slave trade - which spread in tandem with Christianity - not barbarism?
The ignorance in this column is mind-blowing. Perhaps the 'relativistic' values you abhor are actually morally upstanding because they believe that the ways of living you promote here - an aggressive, Christian masculinity - are precisely what unleashed (and continue to unleash) barbarism on the world.
4
Peterson sounds like a dealer in second-hand ideas, an intellectual Charles Atlas. If he is an academic psychologist, he should be devoting most of his time to teaching students and undertaking research, not telling young men on You Tube how to throw sand in the eyes of their bullies.
Academics make poor public intellectuals. The great public intellectuals of the 20th century in America were independent journalists and writers--Edmund Wilson, Walter Lippmann, Bertrand Russell--who could explain complex ideas in literature, economics and politics, and philosophy to the general public.
Peterson is rather extreme in his preaching. He sounds like the nuns that taught me. What they preached is there is only one way to live and only one religion that is true. None of which is accurate.
Peterson does not sound like a well rounded man. Obviously there is truth to what he says, but it is not the only truth to which you become a fully functioning human being.
He might want to try a little humility in his preaching.
2
I have watched quite a few Jordan Peterson videos. Perhaps it would help readers to know that most of them are of his psychology course lectures: Jung, myth, statistics, personality theory, human evolutionary development. He most definitely has a point of view, which helps keep the students awake during class. I also recommend an outside-the-class interview he did with Jonathan Haidt. I don't think Peterson can be pigeonholed as liberal or conservative. Quite often he's just trying to hone the kids' critical thinking skills by being deliberately provocative. God knows we could all use a refresher course on that topic. Now that his videos have taken off, he is invited to appear on radio, TV and to do public speaking. All this because he raised money online to post all his lectures so he could circumvent the University thought police. I find myself agreeing with him some of the time, disagreeing with him some of the time and, lately, thinking he's become so intense he's getting in his own way. He'd do well to spend a month throwing the frisbee to his dog or playing with his grandchildren (if he has any yet). Still, he's worth watching, which I would recommend to all the commenters to this column who have strong opinions about him but have never heard a word he's said.
148
I am so sick of hearing "relativism" used like a billy club. Of course there are absolutes in progresive thought, the most important of which is "we will not commit acts of violence against one another."
It's also surprising that no commentators have pointed out the essential sexism of Peterson's message. These poor young men all of a sudden have to compete on a level playing field with women, for whom the concept of a "level playing field" in their own lives translates to "work twice as hard, achieve twice as much, and you might reap half the benefits of the male beside you." Guys, shut up and get to work.
5
Would that it were, actually, a level playing field. It's not. One problem, among others, is the current assumption that all men are alpha males and all women their victims. To take only one example from the daily headlines: the rules that should promote fairness to both alleged victims and alleged victimizers--due process, the presumption of innocence, the right to be heard at all (even without conforming to conventional wisdom)--are being abandoned.
Sophistry is en vogue again in the age of "fake news." Just make stuff up, cloak yourself in the “authority” and apparent gravitas of your academic credentials, spew out loudly your sophistry on social media, and one will certainly find an audience of willing followers who will cling to anything that lauds their imperfections and prejudices without truly examining the downside to such badly-held ideas. All the sophist needs to do is to sprinkle in enough academic-sounding jargon with all the logical fallacies and other laughably phony piffle that comprise a majority of the “philosophy” being touted, plus blithely ignore all the facts contradictory to all this piffle—because facts are, like, so 20th Century and uncool, dude—and, VOILA! An Internet philosopher, phony as a three-dollar bill, is a star.
2
“Since most conflict is over values…” Wrong. Most conflict is over economics and the power it provides or takes away. The country is divided and Donald Trump is in the White House, not because people are conflicted over values, not because some people are racist or religious and others not, or because young men “are floating in a chaotic moral vacuum,” but because of an inequitable distribution of basic needs like jobs, food, shelter, education and healthcare. Economic disparity ignites irrational impulses and conflict. You act as if values are a magic wand, as if they can be created out of thin air. The seeds of values can be planted in the barren soil of poverty. An inequitable distribution of goods and services will crush values and release toxic behaviors. That’s what happened in Germany that allowed people to desperately turn to the Nazi Party. Only an equitable economy will keep our worst behavioral inclinations at bay. And that means reigning in your conservative free-market capitalism which has no “values” except profit.
3
"Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism." What? If so, how much more barbaric could it have been? If anything, Christianity was and is a curse of humankind! What institution was more corrupt and criminal than the Roman Catholic Church? The present assault of evangelical Christians on principles of the separation of church and state and factual realities of science?
3
Mr. Peterson exhorts young men, young people, people in general, to do the right thing. To bootstrap themselves. To not seek refuge in excuses, rationalizations, moral relativity. To exercise self-discipline, be honorable, to delay gratification.
None of what he says reads on our shared obligation to help people who cannot bootstrap themselves -- people who need our support like the disabled, the elderly, children, the poor, the sick. Perhaps his world view isn't comprehensive, doesn't touch all bases, doesn't address all issues. Perhaps someone ELSE could come along with a modern, understandable message and provide a similarly inspiring framework for thinking about social and interpersonal responsibility?
But it's hard for me to argue that starting from "do the right thing", "be disciplined", and "be honorable" aren't a good start.
2
Christianity tried to reduce the human tendency towards barbarism? As long as you don’t count the Crusades against other Christians and Muslims, the Spanish Inquisition, the European regilious wars, and a number of witch hunts, Christianity mostly argues for peace and love. When modern outbreaks of large-scale violence do occur, often all sides declare God is on their side and God is who they fight for and who encourages the killing of those on the other side. Isn’t God in our pledge and on our money? Religions allow and often support just wars and bind themselves to governments to support their ends. Cultures have grown to understand that constant war and violence is not in their best interest. Is this because of Christian teachings or is it a result of human development? It is important to understand the difference between cause and coincidence. There is a difference between what is said and what is done.
2
What is this meme I feel building against religion?
The tortures of the inquisition were horrific, as were the crusades pitting one religion against another. But their source was power and the fear of its loss.
Today we have wars for power without recourse to religion (everybody knows religion is false.)
But it's not false. Stripped of its power grabbing and returned to the struggle within us all between acquisitiveness and respect for our neighbor, religion--any religion--has tremendous ability for good in this world.
1
I genuinely think you have missed a full-orbed understanding of Peterson’s world view. I don’t understand his view to be a world completely lacking in “benevolence, beauty, attachment, and love” (I believe that is how you described it. I can’t double check it on this app and continue this comment.) I found extraordinary personal compassion, delight in others, and appreciation of the beauty of ideas and creation woven into much of his video lectures. He expresses it with what I would describe as earnestness and forthrightness without as much overt warmth and personally assuring “agreeableness” as he calls it, but in many ways it seems to me to be more genuine than the banal, to use your word, affirmations I hear from some more positive sounding people. I encourage you to listen further to fill in more gaps to your representation of his views. I don’t find your assessment wrong as much as not comprehensive.
90
Peterson is the very paradigm of moral courage. When a "white male" becomes a high school shooter, we cry about the gun he used, and not the so-called "society" that failed him. To stand up to feminism's misandry these days is beyond brave. And utterly necessary. I've been watching Peterson's rise with renewed hope that we might become better, after all. He is a true hero. Brooks doesn't do his work justice.
8
Bravo, Brooks, for bringing Peterson to the attention of your readers. Anyone who dismisses Peterson's arguments without hearing him make them himself is missing a rare intellectual treat. I highly recommend that readers watch the interview with Cathy Newman, easily found on the web -- it is riveting, pure oxygen. You'll see why students in Peterson's courses at Harvard cried in the last class of the semester because they would no longer hear him speak.
12
This is sheer nonsense, sophistry for the right. It may expose fissures in identity politics but it hides its own sinful isolationist individualism and transfers dangerous assumptions onto the ground of gender and sexual difference. Look at how women figure in this scenario: needy, controlling mothers, choosy maters, mystical/chaotic feminine (what?!). As a college professor, former Scoutmaster and adviser to young men in a church youth group, I've seen the opposite: young men can be devastatingly choosy and condescending. Sure: be strong, be responsible, shun victimization (without denying victims of the underlying enmity, even confrontation, this worldview promotes). But not the rest of this path. Another flawed Christian social Darwinism (if only it knew its roots! sexual selection, only the strong survive...) to skew masculinity. It needn't be harsh to be strong.
116
There has never been a lack of conservative belief in taking personal responsibility for one’s life trajectory. Peterson’s unwillingness to let trans people identify as trans and willingness to marginalize them based on his beliefs of who they should be tell me he is just a well-spoken conservative bully teaching others to do the same. This does nothing to build build bridges between the different groups in our society and will only foster more tribalism.
65
The central issue was about the legalization of compelled speech - not about gender pronouns. It just so happened that the social constructivist activists who sought to enshrine legally compelled speech into law portended to represent all trans people in Canada. They misrepresented the issue as one of bigotry in order to keep the light off the core issue of free speech.
32
So Brooks offers Jordan Peterson as the champion of a post-Christian Sparta values training for young men, seeing in its austere commitment to self-sacrifice a needed values corrective to the aimless and self-indulgent paeans to "tolerance" and other forms of "naive optimism." Brooks' depiction of Powell makes him sound like a Calvinist Emerson. I wonder what is gained by treating life as a series of power competitions. How can community form and attachments to values beyond winning the struggle for survival? What's striking to me about Brooks' attraction to Peterson is not the fetishizing the austere self-sacrifice it extols, but rather the ingrained loathing of anything associated with "the feminine," and the association of care and love with failure and humiliation. To my reading, this worldview is far more barbaric than anything than our pre-modern forbears could imagine.
3
I don't necessarily disagree with Peterson that "life is pain" or at least that it has been pain since the dawn of time. However I still feel that as a society it is up to us to come together and make the pain more bearable. As Father John Misty said:
"Just random matter suspended in the dark
I hate to say it, but each other's all we got."
There is no reason that life has to be as feral and as brutal as Peterson describes it. We can collectively change that attitude.
1
"...he seems to imagine an overly brutalistic universe, nearly without benevolence, beauty, attachment and love. His recipe for self-improvement is solitary, nonrelational, unemotional. I’d say the lives of young men can be improved more through loving attachment than through Peterson’s joyless and graceless calls to self-sacrifice."
Then you haven't really absorbed the comprehensive set of his ideas. It sounds as if you were appreciative of a few things, but looking for confirmation in the rest.
So, there was no violence or conflict for the 1,800+ years that Christianity dominated the world’s zeitgeist? And, where exactly was/is that world where Christian morality prevailed and pacified the people? And where and when did this dominion die?
There are more Christians in the world today than any other religion, and it doesn’t seem to have brought peace anywhere—not even within the Church, or among churches, or among professing Christians. And could it be that the reason for this abiding conflict, which has often leads to violence, that professing Christians do not follow the example of Christ not to judge, not to “throw stones,” but to forgive seventy times seventy—not only to behave toward others as you would have them behave toward you, but to behave with love and to try to protect those who are the least among us? to see strangers and even despised minorities as our neighbors?
Yes, this philosophy sounds more like the Pharisees’ rigid, rule-based morality rather than Jesus’s revolutionary teaching of “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
77
Peterson correctly says that we deny the true nature of humanity and naïvely pretend everyone is nice. But his brutalistic solution is neither the only answer nor the best answer. We need a society that recognizes and works with humanity's base passions but does not give in to the unfair and harmful effects of giving them unregulated expression.
Maybe we need a creative social entrepreneur to develop a brutally difficult 2-year national service program for young men. Two years of physically and emotionally challenging infrastructure work at some location far from home that is committed to the larger goal of 'America'. Include cooperation with local communities to develop personal skills and to overcome their Lure them in with college tuition remission and statistics of good jobs upon completion. Also, have them work side by side with women and people of all colors and religions.
Articulate a goal larger than themselves, requiring discipline, effort, strength, and emotional growth. Frame the purpose of such sacrifice in terms of some mix of nationalism and cosmopolitan humanism.
5
I think we call that program the Armed Forces. At the same time I do not believe in national conscription. Only 20% of the pool even pass the minimum standards and the modern military does not have room for 19 year olds marking and wasting time for 18 months before they leave.
It seems akin to the Egyptian belief of Ma’at and Isfet, Order and Chaos.
In precepts of Ma’at; the people would be guided by truth, justice, balance and morality.
We should all paint the green feather of Ma’at on our tongues and palms of our hands.
1
Peterson is certainly an interesting character, a postmodern conservative (as inspired by Nietzsche as the postmodernist leftists he so despises) who has a knack for articulating his (justified) unease with modernity while simultaneously ignoring the elephant in the room: that capitalism is the core catalyst of modernity, the socio-economic system which has done more to corrode ethics, social relations, community, tradition than an army of Hippies ever could have. Just read the Communist Manifesto, it points out verbatim the valueless, relativist, globalized fragmented world the logic of capital creates and which Peterson (like so many other conservatives) erroneously blames "Marxist postmodernists" for. I his own Jungian terms, Peterson is St. George battling the many-headed dragon of Marx, Lenin, Derrida, Foucault, but really, to mix meztaphors, he's barking up the wrong tree and severely misjudges, from his university ivory tower perspective, the social power of the academic identitarian postmodernists (he thinks they are also left, I would disagree).
He makes some good points especially in his true field of expertise, psychology. As an [social-media] intellectual in the broad sense, while sincere, I find him to be one-eyed king among the blind (obviously, compared to figures like Milo or Ben Shapiro he appears like Aristotle himself), but his book sounds pretty awful, like it was written by Teddy Roosevelt.
2
I learned more in the last two months of studying the thinking of Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris than I did in all of my years at the neo-Marxist postmodern University of Colorado at Boulder.
4
I'm not familiar with Mr. Peterson's views but, as I understand them from your presentation of them, they are hard to accept against the calming thought that we actually live in the most peaceful time in all human history and when a great percentage of the human race lives lives of relative stability, when threats are very real but reality is a lot less threatening. It is a period where the gulag and Auschwitz are in history books and the barbaric intellectualism that created them are discredited, replaced by the social progressiveness that Mr. Peterson apparently disparages. The greatest threat I see is the endless stream of hyperbolic, near apocalyptic, social theory we are constantly fed. It did, after all, get our President elected. By way of example, walls used to be built to keep invading armies at bay, now we are told we need one to keep desperate immigrants across a river.
As for chaos as the eternal feminine, it is fairly clear to me that most of human chaos has been caused by a small minority of hyper-aggressive males and those who are willing to follow them. Alexander the Great was not great in our current usage as meaning "really good", he was great as in "really large", and, I submit, not good at all.
4
These days, any pseudo intellectual (most often a man) can make millions on the internet. All you have to do is start railing against the phantom menace of political correctness and mourn the phantom days when men were really men.
13
Everything Peterson says (and more) is already in the Bible. He simply quotes without attribution.
Why does it appear that the only people doing advocating Identity Politics these days are conservative white men? Mr. Peterson's views appears neither original nor especially creative. Rather, he appears to be another of a long line of conservative intellectuals that appeals to the American mythological "Horatio Alger" heroes for young white men. The "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and don't look back at those falling behind. It's okay to "Blame the victim," because life is suffering and hard, so if you are poor and a minority, that is just too bad. Because, if you manage to overcome this suffering and face the hardship in life with personal responsibility, then you deserve all the riches you have earned. If others are envious (for surely, they must be envious if they are victims and sufferers, lacking personal responsibility), you have no need to feel compassion. Showing compassion to victims would only enable them and create a cycle of endless poverty, without fathers and responsibility. I'm sure you find my characterization to be distorted and cartoonish, but perhaps, it is you, Mr. Brooks, that is not listening - plugging your ears and sing "la, la, la..." to the latest #metoo accusers. How is Mr. Peterson's simplified mythology any different from Robert Bly and Iron John characterization of the "fatherless" young males in need of elder white mentors and Priest to relay to them the importance of White Men for the maintenance and preservation of the status quo?
3
I can understand the angst that many men are dealing with these days and, yet, walked away from this article disturbed by the heavy undercurrents of mysogyny.
This is the first that I've heard of Jordan Peterson and realize I may be wrong but am disturbed nevertheless.
5
Perhaps if there was true economic equality, if the system wasn't rigged, the grindstone of life would not bear down so heavily and there would be less need for stern lectures.
2
Jordan Peterson?
I don't know much about him, but from what little I have heard he seems much more sensible in charting goals for human beings and building methods toward such than most people.
Let's speak coldly for a moment and take certain beliefs and goals of America and ask if people really believe in these goals. Take Christianity for example. Do Americans really believe in Christianity? Then why is it Americans do not state with perfect business sense that our goal is to get into heaven and that society must be formed accordingly? What American before the public eye for all Christianity states directly that the human goal is to get into heaven and that behavior must be modified accordingly, that we must be Christlike?
Or take socialism. For all everybody is equal talk, who really believes, including socialists, that society must be leveled entirely flat and that everybody is to be held equal? In other words, we hear about a lot of goals, a lot of beliefs, but if one were to approach these goals/beliefs in a commonsense business/logical frame of mind they quickly appear silly.
Which is why someone like Peterson appears sensible, and why it appears even more sensible to state as I state that the goal, the business target, our main American product, must be high quality human beings and ideally genius, and that all social/cultural/political/economic method must be oriented in this fashion. Clear and tangible target. Clear methodology. Obvious and measurable result.
1
Does Peterson's work account at all for the impulse of historically disadvantaged communities to unite and take political action to counter those systemically reproduced disadvantages? In Mr. Brooks construction that seems like it would be counted as "whining" "identity politics" or something even less "manly." Personal responsibility (and even "bootstraps") are well and good but any concept of society that fails to address problems larger than the individual belongs where this one is: on YouTube.
1
I note that Mr. Peterson is White, and male, and lives in a privileged position in a wealthy country. He stands at the very pinnacle of our worlds' elite class without any effort at all. He was born there.
It seems clear to me that he is in no position to tell anyone else how to raise their lot. is "stop your whining" postulate changes nothing for the average citizen who lives in a world based on class, and in a class that is below Mr. Petersons.
Peterson, like every fascist before him, demands young men become Nietzsche's superman, knowing full well that he is speaking to a very limited class; his own people. A "philosophy" much like his was used by the Nazis to isolate Hitler's pure, Anglo-Saxon nightmare. That did not end well for the world.
10
haven't we heard all this before...men must cower before a made up entity (an entity that explains why the rains won't come and the moon being eaten and will eat you if you are contrary) and stay strong against the siren song of harpies.....isn't there a way to teach humans to be humans without such malignant ideas....I learned....sure discipline is a good thing but it needs to be internal or it will not stand...as always I recommend a course in logic.....
4
And why is it two men side by side can keep these same ordinances and one ends up successful and the other never gets ahead? I think he's a little simplistic.
1
"Chaos, the eternal feminine...."
There you go. Perhaps his hours of lecturing are a richer and more vibrant expostulation on why men should be more like "men," but those four words seem like to highlight a dark little kernel in his philosophy: he's sad because he couldn't get a date, or because his mother didn't rush to his side quick enough.
A lot of men seem to think that women owe them something (cue the men who are shocked and now must defend themselves), whether it's emotional support, sex, or dinner. Peterson wants us to get over it, I guess, and kill our own gosh darn steaks. But the point of view espoused in those four words seems awfully unfair to women. Women antagonize, and men must gird themselves against feminine antagonism. Does Peterson, I'd be curious to know, think that women are actively working to spread the chaos, or is it really just their nature and they can't control themselves? Doesn't matter either way, men should be able to handle it.
I'll give Peterson credit that he probably has a lot more to say than just this. But little things like "Chaos, the eternal feminine" say a lot more than he might like us to know.
8
Have you read Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae, where she says the same thing?
Another self help book? Reread Ayn Rand with a set of 12 instructions?
Personally, I've ascertained that most everyone wants a quick. "how to" course on living life. The ruthless among us are ready, willing and able to provide us with the answers. I'm not referring to Peterson, but to Hitler, Stalin and many others. As individuals we have two responsibilities. One to ourselves, but another to society. The second is to counter the masters of deflection like those mentioned. They offer the same ole, same ole , follow me and blame some target, (person or group) for your troubles. Amazing how people feel connected through hate. To my mind, that's how individualism and morality become lost.
4
Watch the youtube of the interview found here: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/putting-monsterpain...
Tthe interviewer did an excellent job of getting her guest to explain his points, presenting them in a rather bad light, distorting them. He calmly explained what she got wrong and what he actually said. If he just stated his points, listeners would wonder if he was actually getting at the things the interviewer purported. So this interviewer gave him a chance to clarify -- and the interviewer did not yell at him, she kept probing to get him to be precise and clarify, which he did. This is nothing like the hatchet jobs done at FOX. I disagree with his notion of Maoist and radical leftist thought -- he did not know what he was talking about there. In the rest of his conversation he was talking about psychology and biology, topics he did know a lot about and was precise. His point about pay discrepancy was important -- and the interviewer got him to explain himself quite well, even though she did not agree. He agreed that there are pay differences; he just said gender itself was only a part of the explanation -- now we can quibble with his points about some of the other causes and whether they too are related to gender as such -- that is, what is gender, pure and simple? But he had interesting things to say and said them. He even said he appreciated the role the interviewer played. Brooks is the one who distorts here.
2
Jordan Peterson is a "philosopher?" Here are some of his quotes. Society is lincreasingly dominated by a view of masculinity that’s mostly characteristic of women who have terrible personality disorders and who are unable to have healthy relationships with men." "It's sane women who have to stand up against their crazy sisters and say, ‘Look, enough of that, enough man-hating, enough pathology, enough bringing disgrace on us as a gender.’ ” Society is "undermining the masculine power of the culture in a way that’s, I think, fatal.”
The British interviewer may have been biased and didactic against Peterson, but As that old philosophical truth says "Two wrongs don't make a right." Brooks errs by holding Peterson as some kind of insightful genius when he is in fact just stoking the culture war.
8
David--thank you, as always, for your column. I was wondering if you've read Chernow's biography of Ulysses Grant? I'm halfway through it, and while I've read several Grant bios and numerous other works about him, I'm most touched by this one and how Chernow effectively recreates Grant's humanity. I think, in several ways, the man touched upon the virtues you mentioned here, but like you, with more humanity and love than Peterson musters. He espoused the same virtue as Peterson, but did so quietly, politely; respectfully. True enough, Grant was often ruined by his inability to perceive and grapple with the ruthlessness of society that Peterson describes. But he did so nobly, never with complaint--always true to his principles. As I try to further my life with a purpose, I find Grant a courteous companion to some of things you mentioned here.
3
Good example. We need more US Grants and few vince mcmahons in this society.
My beef is not with Jordan Peterson, whom I have not read,but with David Brooks whom I have.
Mr Brooks makes the same errors of history and logic over and over:
-- As many commentators have pointed out, Christianity has rarely been a force for good, more often an excuse for violence and repression (e.g. slavery in the US, the inquisition, the endless Irish conflict . . .).
--Men and women are not that different, and certainly not locked in eternal conflict. "men who feel . . . constantly outperformed and humiliated by women" are no doubt also outperformed by many men, but this Brooks accepts as normal. It is only being outperformed by women that is humiliating, because they are naturally inferior.
--Brooks asserts that relativism and tolerance are at best naive and at worst create a world "of normlessness, meaninglessness and chaos." I would assert just the opposite, that tolerance IS a norm, that relativism, which I would define as respect for others, reduces conflict and that this modern ethos is much closer to Christ's ideal than anything propounded by the modern Christian churches.
I agree that life is suffering, this is not a new concept. It is, in fact, the basis for all philosophy. We need not fall into despair or collapse into unthinking acceptance of organized religion. We can find meaning in our ability to exercise our free will, to restrain our base impulses, to ease the suffering of others and to bring joy to those we love.
18
The coddled young men in the NFL have locked on to the New American Chic: Victimhood. No matter whether you have actually been harmed, be a victim, do it loudly, grab eyeballs, point fingers and join the eternally victimized in self righteous indignation. It's cool, baby.
The backlash has begun. The ratings are way down, the stadiums are far emptier, and that intangible mix of loyalty, love of team, admiration of athletes and their amazing skills has been eroded. The American public does not buy the soap of victimhood - and Brooks nails it in this analysis. We do not wake up on Sunday, rub our eyes, and say in our hearts: Today I'm gonna invest myself for hours on end cheering for pampered men making millions of dollars who hate cops! Yay!
Where do we go from here? Run, do not walk - away from the Chic of Victimhood. It does not become us. It is in-American. It is what filled the beer halls in Central Europe in the 1930s, it destroys civil society through identity politics, and it is alive and well, tonight, on cable news, late night talk shows, and throughout the popular culture.
Run from the victims. Rise above Victimhood. In the process, don't forget to fine tune your Victimhood detector - there may actually be a few downtrodden left.
4
Do you really believe that all men are alpha male? Do you really believe, on the other hand, that the current moral panic against sexual harassers has not generated a tidal wave of hostility toward men in general (although that had been going on, less dramatically for decades)? I don't like the game of competitive victimhood, but that's a characteristic feature of identity politics and is now the only game in town.
1
> I’d say the lives of young men can be improved more through loving attachment than through Peterson’s joyless and graceless calls to self-sacrifice.
And what if your goals and your sacrifice is pointed in the direction of gaining loving and meaningful relationships in your life?
And really, in what way is it graceless? To bear the burden of the cross just about defines grace.
2
This opinion piece somewhat misrepresents Peterson as a bible beater- he's not. Up until the 18th century the Bible was the moral guideline for most of western society and its roots are still visible in everyday life, just take a look at the dollar bills in your wallet.
He objectively analyzes the metaphors and implications of stories in the Bible, he is not a Christian evangelist.
3
Dr. Jordan Peterson is intelligent, honest and wise. A rare triumvirate in one person. I’m proud of my fellow Canadian and all that he represents.
5
I hope David Brooks re-investigates his claim that Peterson is all that influential. Matt Yglesias at Vox notes that Peterson has only 660,000 YouTube subscribers (hell, my favorite gardening guru has 120,000), and that his top video has had 1.3 million views. Now, Peterson’s “popularity” is perhaps still discouraging to those of who us think 2 millennia of Christian calumnies against Jews was the cause of the holocaust, rather than creeping secularism. But I take Brooks’ point that insincere television interviews are a problem.
3
Before investing time in reading articles such as this that is heavy centered around some individual such as Jordan, I do a little research.
(last week I researched JS Mill and found this man severely wanting - colonial administrator for 35 YEARS, who then justified and supported the notion of the "white man's burden" that was India).
I watched a youtube video of a conversation between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson.
Sam Harris is a known quantity to me, intelligent, intellectually honest, articulate, etc.
Jordan Peterson was an unknown quantity to me prior to watching this video.
For the life of me, I can't figure out what in the world is Peterson's worldview(?), philosophy(?), or what word am I searching for? He was railing against some 'political correctness' aspect of some law recently passed in Canada? What the heck? Maybe he is justified, maybe he is not, in his criticism. But whatever point or points he was making were completely lost in all the gibberish.
Conclusion: I really don't care what Mr Peterson thinks about anything.
10
Sam Harris' world view, on the other hand, can be easily understood and summarized: All religion is not only wrong, it is stupid. Religion is responsible for all the evil and bad acts in the world. Anyone who is not a committed, evangelic atheist is an idiot. Please buy one of my boringly repetitious books.
History for men like Peterson always starts at convenient turning points that suggest there is something in modernity that has ruined men. if we could recover those pre enlightenment male virtues all would be good. This conveniently forgets how oppressive of the rights and freedoms Brooks so often champions those ages were. Perhaps tolerance and a certain amount of relativism, so disdained by Brooks, is the necessary condition for any genuine conceptios of rights and freedom to flourish in reality. The concept certainly seems absent, or perhaps is even the enemy of Peterson dime store Nietzschean worldview. it's a prescription for a return to a world where the few rule the many.
4
There's nothing wrong with course correcting. Just because due east is wrong, doesn't mean due west is right. Maybe we need to adjust course a few degrees here and there, to get to where we want to go.
Your black and white thinking is not helpful.
"The Peterson way is a harsh way, but it is an idealistic way — and for millions of young men, it turns out to be the perfect antidote to the cocktail of coddling and accusation in which they are raised."
How does David Brooks, or Jordon Peterson, know how millions of young men have been raised? Have they been alongside these millions in their homes? In their schools? Amongst their families and friends? So much tripe, these days, passing as substantive intellectual thought. I'd like to recommend a book to Mr. Brooks that I've just finished. It's Ezra Pound's, ABC of Reading. In it are the tenets of 20th-century artistic modernism, and which exhorts writers, painters, and musicians to trust in things, not in ideas. Make it new by making it well. Clean and uncorrupted by the things we do not know. And which is quite a lot. Not bad advice, I think, for both young men and women. Doesn't even need to be puffed up on youtube.
2
Well, I don't know anything about this man - but I took two seconds to hear him say, "men need to grow up - nothing worse that an adult infant". I tied it to your, "perfect antidote to the cocktail of coddling", and I think you are both wrong. I think most all of our children lack "coddling", at least proper coddling. The coddling, that can't be bought with money. All children lack the attachment needed to allow roots to grow strong and deep. They are born into a life a shuffling --- here, there, and whatever. And, as adults, they wander around aimlessly with shallow roots, no convictions, no deep roots, surviving only on the surface, and little to hold them strong and fast in periods of droughts and storms. (Hey, that picture says a thousand words!)
2
As as an older man, 67, I wonder why this advice is offered to young men, as you repeat several times throughout your article.
It immediately raises suspicions.
Also, the advice seems both ruthless and heartless at its root.
Very Ayn Rand, objectivist and all that.
HOWEVER, that said, as an older man I have encountered a deep emotional problem within me that has flared up and ruined my life for the past 3 years.
I am a whiner and a self described victim of my own making.
If anything my takeaway from this article is to man up (sorry) and do the right thing.
So, thank you. I think.
1
“For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism.”
What?
Crusades, genocides of indigenous people on several continents, the Inquisition, etc., etc. A bit like basing your argument on the idea that the world is flat. Need one read further?
8
If 4 million video views makes Peterson an influential public intellectual, than any late night comic on any given week has got him beat cold.
162
Except that he’s an obscure college professor, not a famous comedian. His 4 million is a lot more meaningful.
15
Young, especially white, men now collapse under the weight of competition with women and brown and yellow people. The world is no longer theirs to have and control; they must fight and win their spots. They must now accept that all of them will no longer rule over somebody or something. They have to assume those everyday lower spots on the pecking order. They don’t like it so they just give up. No sympathy here.
4
Being from his locale, it's refreshing to know that Peterson has activities that go beyond arguing about pronoun usage. But I am not going to watch his videos. Thanks for summarizing.
1
That’s the problem with summaries. If you actually watch his videos, you’ll see he’s not arguing about gender pronouns. He’s arguing against a Canadian law mandating speech.
How sad is this? Desperately seeking approbation and justification for their inability to conform or adapt to a civil society, 40 million people go in search of a guru to tell them to unleash their inner rage and conquer the world. Here is a better path. Quit whining, try to learn something in school, be nice to other people, do some good in the world immediately around you, and, most importantly, quit whining already.
3
Near the end of this piece, you accused Cathy Newman of distorting Peterson's views. By the time I had reached that portion of your argument, I thought you had presented Peterson as a MAGA Tony Robbins, a sales trainer who pines for the halcyon days prior to the deity's demise.
I suggest that any person out there, but especially males who believe that they are entitled to status on the basis of their gender, who truly wishes to find a better way to treat friends and rivals read Vonnegut, who in "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," wrote his prescription for human behavior:
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
This week, according to Raw Story, "Republican U.S. Senate candidate for Missouri Courtland Sykes blasted 'women’s rights' this week [in a Facebook post] .... According to Sykes, feminists push an agenda that they 'made up to suit their own nasty snake-filled heads.' The candidate said that he hoped his daughters do not grow up to be 'career obsessed banshees who forgo home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she devils who shriek from the top of a thousand tall buildings they are [SIC] think they could have leaped in a single bound — had men not been "suppressing them."'
Class, compare and discuss.
8
Most of the men I know do not feel "entitled to status on the basis of their gender [or sex]." Rather, they feel entitled to a healthy identity, as everyone does. And that means the ability to make at least one contribution to society that is distinctive, necessary and publicly valued. More specifically, boys and men feel entitled to a healthy identity as men.
1
David Brooks' article is all I know about Jordan Peterson. I had never heard of him. As a career psychologist with a Ph.D. and years of experience treating patients, teaching and doing research, I do know one thing. Nothing in the training of psychologists makes them expert on advice on how to live one's life. The advances in psychology have come from controlled scientific research, which rarely, if ever addresses issues of one's philosophical stance toward life. From Dr. Phil to Jordan Peterson, psychologists are simply voicing their own views and philosophies. Whether or not such views make sense is for the consumer to decide for himself, but the title psychologist gives such views no extra authority.
4
Ironic that Peggy Noonan in the WSJ also writes about Peterson today. She uses the opportunity to criticize liberals on campuses for being afraid of controversial speakers. But she fails to elaborate on one of Peterson’s main principles, “never lie.” Might be something to discuss further in light of WAPO documentation of over 2,000 Trump lies in the first year.
4
yes, life can be harsh. the cosmos is inhuman. evil lurks in the hearts of all on this little planet. in the end, it may all mean nothing.
it remains up to each of us to choose how to live. justice is a human idea. fairness is a myth, but one that is worth living by. if indeed there is evil, there can also be good. we have to seek it, choose it, nurture it. love is a choice, and one worth making.
if young men today are somewhat confused about their place in the world, it may be that their confusion is an appropriate reaction to being immersed in the slow collapse of white patriarchy.
You know, I think the Buddha figured out that "life is suffering" several thousand years ago, in fact, it is the founding precept of the Buddhist faith. Oh but wait, silly me, that's an Eastern religion and therefore irrelevant. Never mind, do carry on, you were saying something about God being dead...
1
I am only vaguely familiar with Peterson's videos, having been introduced to them last summer. What I can offer here is a reflection of my reality, and the reality of so many single, attractive, capable, educated women across this country: where the hell are all the good men? No one has an answer for me. Not my father, brothers, friends both married and not, urban or rural... Ask almost anyone if they know solid, single women and they can list numerous ones but you ask someone if you know many single, upstanding men of character and they scratch their heads. Philosophy aside, this is the REALITY for so many single, heterosexual women.
6
I'm not familiar with Mr Petersen so I can't comment on his work. I am however tired of the current mentality that for women and minorities to succeed white men are being held back and it's hurting their manhood. Cultures that embrace equality and diversity thrive while those who don't die. Competition is a good thing.
As for the loss of Christian values causing a decline in our country, please. Nothing could be farther from the truth. No one is asking Christians to give up their beliefs. All that is being asked of them is to be tolerant of those who have different values and allow the same happiness that Christians take for granted. You don't have to agree with someone's lifestyle choices but stop passing laws that criminalize behavior that your religion doesn't accept.
10
David -- thank you for this column. The New York Times is lucky to have you.
1
Regardless of your thoughts on Peterson, his light is now shining on a mass media caught with their pants down. It is also shining on the political correct monster which has been eating away at the edifice of western culture. A monster which the media have failed to address and one which helped create both disasters known as Trump and Brexit,
All the credible global sources of news are doing their very best to discredit Peterson. It’s interesting to see how all these sources present the image of a man, not as he is, but as they think their audience would prefer to see him. In this instance, Brooks paints Peterson as a fatherly principle of a correction school, dispensing urgent advice to a flock of white boys gone astray. This just not the case.
What Brooks does, is no different to what Newman did in her attempts to misrepresent Peterson in her interview, and for which Petersen was catapulted into fame in the first place. Brooks is just a little less crude.
As with Channel 4, this too is a reminder how journalism has entirely abandoned the ideal of truth. There seems no need to make even an attempt to represent an image of the person being reported on, bearing a resemblance to the actual person we find in real life.
It is alarming to witness an increasing schism between the world being report on, and the one we live in. No wonder Peterson is looked upon by the public as King Arthur riding onto the stage on a shiny white steed, or worse, some sort of modern Messiah.
7
Let him show himself here.
Your critique of Brooks’ depiction of Jordan Peterson is spot on. Watch Peterson respectfully debate Cathy Newman in her recent program interview. Brooks seems to have invested little time in getting to know Peterson.
I know the general rule online is to rush to judgment, but I haven't heard or read him, so I have a limited opinion on his philosophy or advice. But, what I read about here sounds like common sense to me. Stop whining? Be courageous? Stop telling yourself you are a victim? All good. I hope the kids are listening b/c many of their advisers are just terrible and preach the opposite.
We owe a lot to the liberal movement in this country. It is a much better world today in America and many places than it was when I was a kid in terms of prejudice, opportunity, freedom of expression and conscience, etc., and a lot of that had to do with overcoming entrenched conservative views. But some of those used violence and intimidation and were irresponsible. Regrettably, the heirs of that "movement" seemed to have adopted the violence and victimization, rather than debate, example and sacrifice. Now it is the left (also still a fringe far right) that seems to want us to judge each other not by our character, but by superficial characteristics - so long as it makes them victims. That's what BLM, antifa, safe spaces, attacking speakers, social media shaming and the like are about. Even an initially positive movement like the Weinstein Effect/Metoo quickly morphed into an anti-sexual witch hunt and bonfire of the vanities approach to work, that even many women I know sneer at it.
My question is - why aren't more parents, teachers and the media telling kids this? Why does he need to?
131
Simply be compassionate to yourself and others whenever/wherever/however you can. That in itself is tough enough.
The rest is just palaver.
1
Marx called religion the opiate of the masses. At least part of his view of religion was based on the ideas that have us believe that a supernatural power would save us if we prayed hard enough; that suffering was a test; that we need not worry about rewards because they were in the afterlife. Life may have been nasty, brutish and short, but it was all good, because we believed.
Brooks' description of Peterspn has us believe that we can skip the God part, but get to the same place. Life is nasty, brutish and short, but if we work hard and quit whining we can suffer through and not be emasculated. We can win the minor competitions - be the caveman to get the biggest share of the mastodon - but not really improve society very much. That's whining, snowflake, suck it up.
And of course the big winners always deserve to win. Hard work is key. Luck is never a player, nor time, place, or circumstance. Just hard work and the absence of whining.
I'll take old-fashioned New Testament teaching, thanks. I'll even take Marx as inspiration first. Our goal is to make life less nasty ,brutish and short, not to celebrate the brutality.
1
It sounds as if Peterson is overly harsh on females, perhaps leading to anger toward females. I am all for accepting responsibility for one's life, but he should not be arguing that women are evil, which it seems he is doing.
1
I think he gives young men and women a good perspective on what they should expect in life. He's is basically correct about mate selection and the need for people to be disciplined and in control of their lives to be successful.
Yes, Western Civilization is not without it's faults but the alternatives haven't been any better either as they couldn't intellectually progress past basic hunting and gathering.
He wouldn't have 40M viewers if young people (especially men) weren't missing something in their lives. Obviously our public education system created a blind spot or is incapable of helping develop men.
2
Shorter version: Grow up! Life does not owe you a living. Get a job, respect your fellow human beings and the animals that inhabit our planet. Reproduce responsibly and teach your children how to be good people. Religion is not necessary to do this (and may be a hindrance in its more intolerant forms).
6
Defining life as remorseless burdensome process to be reckoned with appears to be hyperbolic. However his proclamations to decrease cries of victimage and the assumption of responsibility for your welfare in life is refreshing in this age of enabling excuses with it's over emphasis on identity politics and economic inequality that diminishes the individuals role in their plight. Cant find a good job-then take a lousy one while working towards the opportunity you desire by taking advantage of educational and training options that are abundant. Yes you will sacrifice the good life with the additional burden but their is a distinct but delayed payoff. It's no secret that one of the key's to combating depression and or despondency is taking meaningful actions to improve your life. This also includes delaying immediate gratification including starting a family prior to stabilizing one owns life.
3
We are in chaos, we just are. It is our fate to be alive in a time when all is being examined, and the power of money and greed and brutal war is weighed against a different moral charge, and been found the most stable attitude of them all. My individual stance really has little chance against the income inequality of the global oligarchs and the investor class.
Mr. Peterson seems to be making a religion out of himself, and making his experiences the textbook for us all.
Nothing to be seen here.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
2
Petersons presents a stew of wrong and unproven opinions about history and human traits, often mixed with true scientific findings. To mix lies, half-thruths and hard facts seems to me a very effective way of lying for those that are the better educated but who finally really want to believe what they already thought beforehand. Always tell these modern fairy tales with the serious face of an unyielding scientist who also claims to be deeply Christian.
And yes: he was absolutely right during the BBC interview.
5
God didn't die. What kind of God concept does Peterson (and you) have! Goodness.
And Christianity was not the antidote to barbarism. In fact Christian crusaders proliferated barbaric behavior with the excuse of proselytizing, no different from western colonial masters who wanted to bring "civilization" to natives and "primitives" of occupied lands.
Who is "we"? "Since then we’ve tried another way to pacify the race." White Christian men?
2
t is easy to deride Peterson’s advice and work. What is much less easy to do is to attack his behavior: as Brooks points out, “he personifies the strong, courageous virtues he champions.” Indeed, what is so fascinating about the Newman interview is not just how she demonstrates what qualifies as ‘debate’ today (shouting louder than your opponent), but how Peterson is clearly in a different mindset altogether. He wins so easily because he actually LISTENS to her and respects her, even as she, in a sense, is not even present. Not only is there no contempt nor aggressiveness whatsoever in his demeanor throughout the entire interview, but he has emotional room to think and carefully articulate his responses.
That demonstrates a cultivation of character that is the best advertisement for what he preaches. That’s why he has influence: he has shaped his own character and behavior in ways that are difficult and effective: few seasoned public speakers could sit through an interview like he did and maintain such clarity and poise. Whatever his ’trick’ is, lots of people will feel compelled to learn more about how he got it. I know I do!
16
He's a psychologist. That's the "trick". You too can learn this skill. It's not that difficult. Good luck with your education.
After reading your column, the only conclusion I can come to is that this man is sick and dangerous.
Be wary, be careful, be watchful. Avoid him and his words.
1
I have been following Peterson’s evolution in the media for about two years now.
For the most part he’s presented as a transphobic crank in the typical “mainstream” media in part because they parrot back the shrillest complaints (and distortions) about his positions.
The Cathy Neuman interview perfectly encapsulated how modern feminists try to reframe any voices they disagree with. Instead of addressing substantive points, they use strawman arguments and resort to name calling.
Peterson just stuck to his points and Neumann imploded.
Of course now the narrative is that Neumann is a victim because people have called her names. Perhaps channel 4 might want to ask why they are paying her so much for her obviously poor interviewing skills.
11
Neuman isn't a "modern feminist" by any stretch. Her interview "style" is very much like the one in "Hard Talk" - they just talk over, don't listen, take every statement and twist it into a pretzel. Neuman is an embarrassment for journalists, for women, for thinking people, etc.
I know I would never watch her program as it is simply not informative at all.
A missed opportunity for a great and interesting dialog. Too bad.
Sounds similar to the advise given to women a few years back:
1. assertiveness training to men.
2. never resort to a man's instinct to whine, to play the victim and to seek vengeance.
What goes around comes around. What goes up must come down.
Interesting
1
Having daughters and granddaughters, I'm interested to hear that someone is encouraging young men to have some measure of toughness, decency, and self-discipline. Over recent years while my daughters were dating and marrying, I was continually struck by how, well--inept--so many young men are. Perhaps I'm being nostalgic, but when I, a 60 year old woman, need to explain to a (perfectly nice) 28 year old man, how to use a tool, or fix a faucet, or hear him turn down an excellent job offer because it would interfere with his gaming night, o r point out that he might want to shovel the snowcovered walkway his pregnant wife needs to descend to get in her car...yes, I do feel the lack of a little stoicism on the part of men.
2
'Chaos the eternal feminine' ??? Is this not just a restatement of a visceral hatred and fear of the feminine that is one of the foundations of the three Abrahamic religions, starting with the myth of Eve? Men's predatory, tribal behaviour and predilection for war has created much more chaos over the Millenia than women's family- and society-building behaviour. This man seems dangerous to me - hiding radical anti-feminism under a seemingly intelligent, philosophical carapace.
18
The NYT has not heretofore covered the "Sort Yourself Out, Bucko" phenomenon/maelstrom, but now his second book is finally out.
I suspect they toyed with the idea of doing a JBP profile, especially at the time of the Damore/Google imbroglio, but hey - the Canada desk also failed to bring the recent passing of Saul "Red" Fisher to the attention of its readers.
In my case, I stumbled upon Peterson's magnum opus "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief" at the public library here, around the turn of the millennium. I'm a tech guy, and had not received much education in the area of religion, myth, etc. That book resonated, at a time when I surely needed its message. I viewed his talk "Chaos and the Orienting Reflex" online, etc. So it has been fascinating, to say the least, to observe the fairly sudden emergence of this Toronto-based Albertan since way back then.
In those days, the public library actually was teeming with books, new and old, and not with hubbub. Anyway, this new "12 Rules" book can be found there ... once I return it. Stand up straight and promptly pay all your overdue fees!
2
Chaos vs. Control?
Sounds more like a young Maxwell Smart.
7
“He reminded me of a young William F. Buckley.”
Ah yes, the young Buckley and his brilliant mind and wit used in an impassioned defence of white supremacy- “Why the South Must Prevail.” I don’t know much about Mr. Peterson but comparing him to the young Mr. Buckley is no compliment.
8
I must admit that I have not heard of Jordan Peterson. His philosophy seems somewhat reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling's "If".
I might agree with some of his views, but it is naive to think that any one person has all the answers. To the men who are apparently his readers, I say "read wider."
6
It must be understood that Paterson is a philosopher and sociologist fior our time and for our time only and that is exactly where his stupendous success lies Every generation is faced with burdens many of which are beyond the grasp of prior greats ( Nietzsche, Kant Spinoza etc ) as the issues facing each generation are unique and prior answers unhelpful: Did Nietche need to contend with the internet and porn on demand or total abundance of western cooking shows that have turned food into entertainment while 60% of the world starves ) Paterson has filled this philosophic gap for the western youth of our time and although ( as all philosophers do ) he often misses his target he should be lauded for his very honest attempt at helping people make sense of a world that none of us has ever seen before .
5
Unlike seemingly so many who have posted here, I have listened to Dr. Peterson's lecture series and have heard him speak in multiple interviews. So I will come to his defense.
If you do your homework and listen to some of his podcasts--particularly his biblical lectures--you will come to realize Peterson is not pushing an agenda, nor is he suggesting that the Christian church is the answer to life's questions. However, he does reflect deeply on the stories in Genesis, and gives a thoughtful analysis of how these stories might have come to be enshrined by an ancient people struggling to find meaning in the basic patterns of human existence.
I was impressed, for example, with his exploration of sacrifice, which traces its roots back to the primordial discovery that delaying (or giving up) something in the present can yield a benefit in the future. When you follow this reasoning to its conclusion as Peterson does it becomes apparent that the Christ figure was inevitable as a cultural icon (i.e., the ultimate sacrifice).
Yes, he has a basic prescription for living for anyone who is interested, but it's nothing you couldn't figure out on your own: tell the truth, resist ideologies, and seek to be competent in any endeavor you undertake. The fact that so many feel threatened and are reacting so strongly against his ideas is fascinating. I think he's gaining popularity because he's saying a lot of things we know innately to be true but never put into words like he has.
177
And to add, the "prescription" is what feminism was built on - just let me stand and do my thing and don't impede me and let me have the same opportunity and I'll take it from there. Ironically enough it's time that western boys were more like western girls have become: simply empowered.
The one thing I'm not a fan of with him is the abrahamic-centric view of world history. It's where you really see how limited his thinking is and why he posits what he does.
4
"I’d say the lives of young men can be improved more through loving attachment than through Peterson’s joyless and graceless calls to self-sacrifice." ... and that's where you are basically wrong. Mostly girls need to be loved to dare be something, and mostly men need to be something to dare to be loved. It's innate baby. It's also psychology which, apparently, everyone considers themselves an expert in these days... greetings from a licensed clinical psychologist.
3
It is easy to deride Peterson’s advice and work. What is much less easy to do is to attack his behavior: as Brooks points out, “he personifies the strong, courageous virtues he champions.” Indeed, what is so fascinating about the Newman interview is not just how she demonstrates what qualifies as ‘debate’ today (shouting louder than your opponent), but how Peterson is clearly in a different mindset altogether. He wins so easily because he actually LISTENS to her and respects her, even as she, in a sense, is not even present. Not only is there no contempt nor aggressiveness whatsoever in his demeanor throughout the entire interview, but he has emotional room to think and carefully articulate his responses.
That demonstrates a cultivation of character that is the best advertisement for what he preaches. That’s why he has influence: he has shaped his own character and behavior in ways that are difficult and effective: few seasoned public speakers could sit through an interview like he did and maintain such clarity and poise. Whatever his ’trick’ is, lots of people will feel compelled to learn more about how he got it. I know I do!
9
The thing that is most disturbing about Peterson's worldview is that, in the end, there is no principle behind it. Strong and disciplined for what end? Just to have bragging rights to being the strongest? Where is the selflessness for a higher purpose than one's self? Struggle for what? Where are the noble ideals underpinning this approach to life to make the suffering and denial of immediate gratification worthwhile? Without that, it is just a bunch of apes chest thumping. And I think we all know where that gets us.
3
David, I appreciate you elevating Dr Peterson to the national level with this column, but you made a mistake when you wrote that:
“The implied readers of his work are men who feel fatherless, solitary, floating in a chaotic moral vacuum, constantly outperformed and humiliated by women, haunted by pain and self-contempt.”
Dr Peterson’s supporters are men and women of all ages and nationality. You made the same mistake Ms Newman did. Next time please spend more than 15 minutes researching your subject.
11
The First Jordan Peterson Moment: when a student approached him and accused him of having "Nazi" followers and uploaded the video on YouTube. His rebuttal made the would-be social justice warrior look utterly ridiculous and made the video go viral. This is what first made him famous, and now history repeats itself with the Ch4 interview.
If you're going to dismiss Peterson as a "twisted psycho" or an example of "Trumpism," remember that many have tried such ad hominem attacks but ended up looking foolish.
2
The Radical Left created Peterson and his base by focusing too much on Identity Politics and too little on Economic Justice, which is just the way the Establishment wants it.
3
Peterson is correct when he says that legions of young men lack will and discipline. Female undergraduates perform much better in college in the main.
However, there is more to life than being a rational Hobbesian. There's art; there's beauty; there's love. Where do people like Andy Warhol and David Bowie fit in Peterson's categorical imperative? In Peterson's world, Romantics like Keats and Shelley, Mick and Keith would have no purchase, and we'd all be the lesser for it.
Alas, David, there are "Other Ways of Being besides Being Young."
http://robertpirsig.org/Being.html
3
How can educated people take Peterson's far-out views seriously?
His claims using bits biology out of context are ridiculous. He claimed in the interview that annoyed Friedersdorf that because lobsters have a simple hierarchy, and the lobster's status within it is indexed to serotonin levels this somehow shows that questions raised about the justness of particular hierarchies for humans are somehow refuted. This is absurd on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. For one thing, lobster serotonin and human serotonin do not work in the same way. For another, there's no scientific basis to regard serotonin as a driver of choice. This is such a perfect example of the naturalistic fallacy that it belongs in a critical thinking textbook.
Peterson's claims about human beings, and about Christianity are historically inaccurate, as many commenters have noted here. There have been very orderly societies that contained no Christians. There are disorderly societies where all members believe in Christianity.
More disturbing is that people are taking seriously the dogmatic rules he's invented, and they consider these shallow interpretations of science and history as validating these dogmatic rules. These factoids he throws can never be the basis for a moral code.
The interviewer did a weak job refuting him--but there are many refutations of him to be made. His popularity likely stems from his ability to validate the prejudices and narcissism of his audience.
12
As a self-described atheist and progressive, I share little in common with Peterson's world view. But the identity politics of the left has pushed many people into his arms. When my fellow leftists judge people solely based on their race (the Michael Brown shooting is a good example of this - the fact that the police officer was white is largely the reason he was judged as a racist murderer, despite the facts) it only takes somebody like Peterson to point out the obvious.
1
This article should come with a warning. WARNING This article only has some modest relevance to young men in western societies. It is of no relevance in Asia, the Middle East or Africa.
5
YAWN. 1) I am neither young or male and I like Peterson a lot and find him relevant to my life. 2) There are many things that would be relevant in Asia, Middle East or Africa that have no relevance to westerners. Your insinuation that things only have relevance if they are important to people of certain demographics is a strong leftist belief that has no relevance to me.
I’m Mexican (therefore non white), leftist (the Mexican left would be considered a terrorist endeavor in the US), anti trump (of course), graduated from college 10 years ago and I find Peterson’s lectures and ideas refreshing and very very useful. He happens to lean to the right, sure, but that doesn’t make him wrong.
150
Great, more cutthroatedness, just what we need in this world of haves and have-nots. More harsh capitalism, less humanism. Sounds like this fellow is a male version of Ayn Rand.
10
I would recommend spending some time listening to his thoughts in long form.
Peterson is so charismatic that it's all the more frustrating that he has such conservative biases and blind spots.
As a clinical psychologist, his background is in helping people relate in a healthy way to the structures of society as they currently exist, not challenging those structures. A hundred years ago, he would be happy, and perhaps even compelled by his profession, to help a gay man relate in a "healthy" way to a society that criminalizes homosexuality, perhaps through "conversion therapy". Now, he's telling women to be more disagreeable or go into plumbing instead of nursing if they want higher pay. He's not equipped to question why society is valuing disagreeableness over agreeableness, or plumbing over nursing. He is disparaging as idiots, snowflakes, neo-Marxists, etc., all those who are questioning these social structures, from the position of someone who is seated comfortably within those structures.
His arguments all seem limited by this unacknowledged conservatism.
131
Peterson is, quite simply, a breath of fresh air. He is highly intelligent, highly moralistic and .... he gives .. interrogators a really hard time. He is also gifted with great articulation of his philosophy.
He so outshines Milo who is apt to say really outrageous things during an otherwise serious discussion.
I have not understood why people, mostly radical extreme pseudo-left-wing activists, label him right-wing though. I fail to see anything racial or discriminatory in videor that I have seen up till now.
11
My Dad was an immigrant, a doctor from Europe, and ended up in America by chance.
He was a lapsed Catholic, an intellectual, an enlightened man. One of the earliest memories I have of him is telling me that Catholicism and religion were the basis for most of the strife in the world. He also said, "You will see the hypocrisy of the Church when you see the Vatican for the first time."
I remember then going to Rome and seeing this wildly gilded place, covered in gold, paid for by masses of poor people.
I remember asking my Dad why women couldn't be priests or Popes. He said it was all about money and power.
Then there are the revelations about Pius, "Hitler's Pope" by John Cornwell, a book about Pius, by the proof of his own words, that revealed that he had helped Hitler to power and at the same time undermined Catholic resistance in Germany.
And then came the revelations about pedophilia and the church, the coverup by the Pope, the moving around of pedophilia priests, closing of churches and schools to pay for secret payments to victims, whisking out of Boston to Rome of Bernard Law - running from the law - with Law being placed in a position of honor in Rome.
The Pope who oversaw this coverup was the "beloved" John Paul who was replaced by the Nazi, Ratzinger, who continued the coverup.
And now we have the example of Evangelicals, conveniently changing their morality to support an immoral president.
Give me a break about the morality of Christianity.
50
The same is true about every other religion. Notice Islam seems to have been adopted by the left as the religion of progressives and pictures of women wearing headscarves are promoted everywhere on the left. No other religion is promoted in the same way.
Christianity brought the world Crusades, Inquisitions, witch hunts, persecution and discrimination against Jews, native Indians, blacks, minorities, and gays. It does have the capacity to change, but it's still targeting gays with spiritual abuse and civil discrimination.
I've never heard of Jordan Peterson, but he seems to be advocating survival of the fittest in a savage jungle. I would rather use the intelligence and reason of humanism to provide for our common welfare, personal growth, and self-reliance for both men and women.
18
I like Peterson and bought his book. I am a classic liberal and yet admire clear thinking, honesty, and non-accusatory communication. Peterson was masterful with Cathy Newman, but I think for different reasons than are generally acknowledged. He complimented her, acknowledged her right to do as she was doing. He was not antagonistic at all. I believe Peterson would attack toadyism and group think on the right as well as the left. He has studied totalitarianism on the right and left. It is interesting that Stalin and Hitler occupied the same
timeline. I think Brooks take on Christianity is wrong also. As a prevoous poster argued. Christian antisemitism, was pervasive. Hitler, was able to tap into that well of hate. I think Peterson would agree,
8
I encourage anyone who took the time to read this article to watch one of Peterson's lectures for five minutes. What you discover will surprise you.
The brutality of the world, be it racism, sexism, or authoritarianism, is precisely what he has sought to counter with a lifetime of intellectual effort. And yet we decry the messenger for announcing that these dangers exist and are ever present?
Please, see for yourself.
13
I've spent considerably more than five minutes. My only question is why anything he says is news to anybody. I'm serious when I say this--my impression is that all he wants is for people, not just men, to stop mindlessly reacting and start thinking rationally. When did we forget our obligation, as a thinking species, to do exactly that?
1
Here is youtube which went viral a few days ago (4 million + views), with Dr. Peterson being interviewed by Cathy Newman, of Channel 4 News. It is about 30 minutes long, and worth at least seeing part of it, or even better, the entire 30 minutes.
I am a big fan of Dr. Peterson, although I think most men who are his audience are straight men, and I am gay and Hispanic.
The way that heterosexual, white, masculine males have been turned into objects of contempt is sickening. Given, especially, that both feminism and gay rights have found fertile soil in the world...meaning the 1st world...which they largely have brought about and defended. And as I said, I am Hispanic and gay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54
10
Wow. I knew nothing of Peterson and based on your glowing recommendation, I just spent the last half hour listening to his Channel 4 interview. Right after hitting the submit button, I’m going to jump into a quick shower. Surely there are less unpleasant ways to make the case for mental toughness. He is weird, cold and absolute. Navigating the often mindless, amorphous and confusing world of social correctness is a challenge that requires better people skills than this guy has, and better people than this guy is.
12
I never heard of Peterson. From Brooks' summary I would half agree with him. I don't at all see life as a struggle for dominance and I think such a view would harm you. But I think most people are selfish and crazy and not to be relied on. I think it is necessary to learn self reliance.
I'm not clear how much it is because our society is disintegrating or whether it is a universal truth. Certainly it is something of both. But I've learned that you better not count on anyone, neither friends nor helping professionals. As a rough rule of thumb I think I can put more faith in religious people. I haven't seen that secular humanism has any such benefit.
I think that Dostoevsky was on the nose when he had a character say despairingly "If God is dead than everything is permitted." Without religion there are no reliable social rules. Someday I hope we will get God back or find a satisfactory substitute. It hasn't happened yet though.
1
Peterson is clearly someone who values the truth, and he tries to say exactly what he means. Compelling anyone to speak in a certain way by law, as with the Ontario transgender pronoun law, is so clearly a violation of free speech that I don't see how it could be interpreted any other way. There is no 'right to not be offended'. That right can not exist at the same time as the right to express yourself. Expressing yourself always includes a risk of causing offense. You can't legislate politeness.
.
His solution for dissolute youngsters is not really a new one. Adults need direction, a cause, something bigger than themselves to fight for. We have trouble living just for the sake of living. For many older people that need is met by having a family, or at least a spouse or partner to care for. With young people delaying the start of a family until their 30s, there are a lot of purposeless young people out there, particularly men. He's giving them a simple ideology of truth, the golden rule, trying to make the world better, striving to be successful. It's a better ideology than communism or fascism; it's fairly libertarian. He's weak on advocating compassion for others, but I think that is largely because the cultural zeitgeist he is fighting against calls for compassion and tolerance, but nothing else, which can be satisfied by doing little or nothing, which is the problem. He has a lot of sharp edges, but most of what he says is perfectly sensible.
3
"At some level Peterson is offering assertiveness training to men whom society is trying to turn into emasculated snowflakes."
This is very disappointing. I always wanted to believe that David Brooks was an intellectual who was above the right wing grievance culture. God did not die in the 19th century. That sounds like someone pining for non secularism in a post modern society where men can't practice traditional domination, promoting the same regressive narrative of right wing media.
4
"Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism"
Does the fact that I don't know of instances of the Spanish or Portuguese eating the babies of South American natives, or Begians doing the same in the Congo, or the British doing the same in any number of colonies, or - supply your own historical reference - support this argument?
Who hasn't paraphrased Arnaud Amaury in the Albigensian Crusade who when asked about the mistake of killing Catholics in the process of slaughtering heretic Cathars replied kill everyone and let God sort them out.
Was the reference to a higher power evidence of a turn from barbarism? Maybe I misunderstand the word barbarism.
2
"for millions of young men, it turns out to be the perfect antidote to the cocktail of coddling and accusation in which they are raised". This final comment really bothers me. Given the context of #metoo movement and the importance of showing we believe the women brave enough to report sexual harassment and abuse experiences, surely Brooks could have written " in which they THINK they are raised" to show that in reality most people know men are NOT living in an environment of 'coddling and accusation'?
3
As a middle aged professor of economics, I thought I was too old to have heroes. But, Peterson definitely is the standard-bearer of intellectual integrity, courage and humility--all too rare qualities in the academy dominated by doublespeak, self-censorship, and politically correct humbug.
12
Women get upset when men talk to each other about what it means to be a man because they want to be the ones to tell us. In other words, the correct way to be a man is the way that most benefits women.
I disagree with Peterson just as often as I agree with him, but I do so of my own mind and through my perspective as a man and not the way anyone demands that I be. I'll be the one to decide who I am, thank you, despite all of the "advice" coming at me from every side, whether that's Jordan Peterson or the branch of feminism that says men and boys are defective and need to be trained out of our natural, "dangerous" masculinity. Best to just tune out the noise.
7
I care so deeply about Jordan Peterson's ideas that these comments are difficult to read. All you've heard is that he doesn't want to be compelled (by Canadian law, no 1st amendment rights, remember?) to use gender-neutral pronouns so clearly he must be a "twisted sicko". I wonder if you bothered to watch that video. Nah, you didn't watch it.
10
Hooray, someone is talking the right language! There is something that one disagrees with Self-sacrifice, or service to others, is one requirement for good character, for sure; but KINDNESS is the most important.
Henry James said (I think it was James)... The three most important attributes of good character are kindness, kindness, and kindness.
2
"William F. Buckley"
I'm not sure if David admires or abhors William F. Buckley. I can't stand the man, but I'm not sure what is being said here.
I thank my lucky stars that I had 2 girls and no boys. I wouldn't know how to raise a boy. All I could say is that I wasn't thrilled with how I was raised. How to do better? I have no idea.
This Peterson dude sounds like a potential cult leader. Stay way, boys.
3
I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk of Peterson’s self-imposed isolation and how this may have limited his perspective. If he spent more time interacting and engaging with various members of society, then he’d be more likely to form opinions based on observable evidence (such as observations of how the words and actions of some people significantly affect the safety and quality of life of others) rather than false assumptions and generalizations (like the lazy stereotype of millennials being over-protected and entitled). However, developing more nuanced, evidence-based perspectives might lose Peterson his alt-right, troll (and bot) audience. Their online critical comments of women who dared to disagree with him, suggested they preferred simplistic, judgmental right/wrong opinions guided by the subjective, prejudiced value system of an authority figure.
2
"It’s the mother grizzly, all compassion to her cubs, who marks you as potential predator and tears you to pieces." Well, actually no it isn't. I believe most bear attacks are from older solitary males. Perhaps Peterson has some other wrongs as well.
3
Perhaps the best thing in this piece is the link to Conor Friedersdorf's piece in The Atlantic.
It explains a bit about Peterson, but the better part is it's exploration of how current media interviewing methods produce more heat than light.
6
Ridiculous. Maybe we should be worried about moral relativism and nihilism, but here we should be more concerned about 'intellectual' nonsense. "Parents, universities and the elders of society" have failed young men. Are the same parents that have daughters emasculating their sons? Raising a child to be decent, to excel, to be happy, to be courageous, etc - to fulfill their unique potential as a human being - is what most parents try to do. And the universities, somehow the acceptance of ideologically based theories of knowledge and historicism, which I expect Mr. Peterson is trying to get at, causes men to be dominated by females. One can argue for or against those things without going down the gender path. The universal male is not being dominated by "chaos, the eternal feminine". Mr. Peterson wildly overstates the case for gender and sounds like an overreaching feminist. I will expose my children to the classical thought that humans are free, agents - they as individuals are able to be good or bad, to be or not to be. When they think about who they can be and the world they can live in they should take that into account. They will be exposed to the universal and the relative. And study math and physics. And play hockey. And sew. And dance. And the grizzly bears, and the caves, and the snowflakes, they'll have those too, but not the ones Jordan Peterson is selling. They'll be able to see for themselves that he's just peddling another beast for the lord of the flies.
6
I feel sorry for anyone who has wasted their time listening to Peterson’s nonsense. There’s nothing innovative about such a reactionary ideology of self-sacrifice. That’s what Nazism was founded on.
3
And there’s the first Nazi comparison, right on cue!
1
His observations of reality are accurate. But recognizing reality does nothing to improve it.
2
Peterson is definitely imperfect but he is a far more rational and sound minded figure then those the left has placed on the alter: Cornel West, Linda Sarsour, Hugo Schwizer, Lindy West, Roxane Gay, Ta-Neshi Coates, Lena Dunham, etc.
The fact is, all these people are today what "gurus" were to the 60's. Peterson is too but far less mentally unbalanced and small minded and willing to challenge leftist dogma.
I admire him, Brett and Eric Weinstein, Nicholas Christakis, Lindsay Shepard and Nassam Taleb very much. They are what could be called refugees from the left. A lot of us are. The fact is the alt left lives in an intellectual ghetto and they are the ones who run all liberal institutions including the media and colleges. I am thankful to people like Peterson who are helping to pull us out.
The fact is, all these people are today what "gurus" were to the 60's. Peterson is too but far less mentally unbalanced and small minded and willing to challenge leftist dogma.
I admire him, Brett and Eric Weinstein, Nicholas Christakis, Lindsay Shepard and Nassam Taleb very much. They are what could be called refugees from the left. A lot of us are. The fact is the alt left lives in an intellectual ghetto and they are the ones who run all liberal institutions including the media and colleges. I am thankful to people like Peterson who are helping to pull us out.
16
Sounds a lot like any pop culture solution to real life . . a small number of rules, underpinned with abbreviated understanding, and articulated by a pat formula . . people are more complex, and respond to many more nuanced flavors of self redemption . . what working 2 years in the logging woods does for me, might require 30 years of intense behavioral therapy for you. Reminds me of the current crop of political solutions . . until we admit we are all human, and subject to all manor of destruction of our confidence, and are given the tools, not the rules, to find our way back to understanding what we feel and why, no simple minded movement, or set of rules will suffice to encourage or build a culture of confidence, competence, and compassion.
4
Dr. Peterson is more complex. Recommend you ignore this hatchet article and wander over to Youtube to see the real thing. This is a piece designed to portray Dr. Peterson in a manner aimed at diminishing the importance of what he has to say. And what he offers is important. A way in which we may, in this divided and furious country, come back to a place where we can again understand one another and talk about our shared lives. Incidentally, the eye opening interview he had with SJW Cathy Newman exposes the same tactics as this writer; to revision Dr. Peterson as some sort of reactionary who should be dismissed. I hope the plan does not work.
Peterson has the right idea, but we only need secular reason, the Greek and Roman philosophers of Antiquity - especially Socrates and Aurelius, and Mindfulness training. The problem with Americans, for instance, is not there are not enough people like Peterson, but that there are too many people such as we Americans who attempt stupidly to honor two gods: the bronze- and iron- age ones, and the secular ones: the former create delusion the latter create reason and virtue for its own sake and the sake of a common well-being. the result of THIS is a schizoid culture. The founding fathers are severely misunderstood, turned Christian by school boards that do not demand we know Democritus and Plato and Voltaire and Montesquieu - or closer to home, Jefferson and Adams and their sliced up bible - over Jesus and Muhammad. Even Buddha would make a more reasonable man of most Americans. Instead, we have this gun-toting Second Amendment ideology (which by the way is lied about and misunderstood because we also do not teach standard English in favor of neoclassical Economics, In short, we have no national Philosophy; we have instead a selfish conception of rights - and Church, Synagogue and Temple, along with Football and game of Thrones teaching fantasy. We don't need Peterson, we need a return to Classical Philosophy, Science and Civics.
5
Sigh. Forget Peterson, read Montaigne, and follow his example.
1
The Counter Reformation was responsible for barbarous acts that were as repugnant as the atrocities committed by ISIS and Al Quaeda. The antisemitism that led to the Nazis and their death camps was bred for centuries by Christians who couldn’t abide Jewish thought, culture, and people. Are there good Christians? Sure, but David continues to believe that Christianity imparts some moral superiority to its adherents (other than their belief in moral superiority of Christians). One only needs to consider the continued support of the Evangelical elite for Donald Trump to know that this is wrong.
Life is hard, but we don’t need a hackneyed conservative to tell us that. Perhaps young white men should engage more with the world, try to repair it, learn to respect others, and perhaps even develop a bit of empathy rather than adopt a retrograde philosophy that doesn’t fit the world in which they live.
Life is hard, but we don’t need a hackneyed conservative to tell us that. Perhaps young white men should engage more with the world, try to repair it, learn to respect others, and perhaps even develop a bit of empathy rather than adopt a retrograde philosophy that doesn’t fit the world in which they live.
16
Classical Judaism teaches us that there is a purpose to life. Tikkun Olam refers to repairing up the world! It's codified in the Mishnah approximately 200 AD, but stems from earlier times.
1
One thing the comments to this column show is that opinions are cheap. They are like backsides, everybody has one. It is also true that the less one knows about something the easier it to have an opinion.
That being said and understanding the dangers of spouting off after such a preamble I will say that I have actually watched some of Peterson's videos and while he seems a tad too "neo-Christian" for my taste he does make some good points. For one thing he is on the right side of the free speech debate i.e. you don't have a right not to be offended. I would go farther and say that being offended is often good for people. He is also right in saying that social engineering can't change a million years of evolution. From prohibition to bussing and the war on drugs America's experiments in changing human behaviour have been less than successful.
Another commenter wrote that Peterson is a right wing postmodernist. I don't see that at all. I suspect that Peterson believes in an objective reality and not in the relativistic world of PM where there are "different ways of knowing" and everything is "text". If you want a right wing postmodernist look no farther than Kelly Ann Conway. She invented alternate facts; of Dick Cheney and his contempt for the "reality based community".
However, I hope Peterson isn't the most influential public intellectual in the world right now. He's no Chomsky. He's no Sam Harris or Stephen Pinker.
That being said and understanding the dangers of spouting off after such a preamble I will say that I have actually watched some of Peterson's videos and while he seems a tad too "neo-Christian" for my taste he does make some good points. For one thing he is on the right side of the free speech debate i.e. you don't have a right not to be offended. I would go farther and say that being offended is often good for people. He is also right in saying that social engineering can't change a million years of evolution. From prohibition to bussing and the war on drugs America's experiments in changing human behaviour have been less than successful.
Another commenter wrote that Peterson is a right wing postmodernist. I don't see that at all. I suspect that Peterson believes in an objective reality and not in the relativistic world of PM where there are "different ways of knowing" and everything is "text". If you want a right wing postmodernist look no farther than Kelly Ann Conway. She invented alternate facts; of Dick Cheney and his contempt for the "reality based community".
However, I hope Peterson isn't the most influential public intellectual in the world right now. He's no Chomsky. He's no Sam Harris or Stephen Pinker.
8
"Since then we’ve tried another way to pacify the race. Since most conflict is over values, we’ve decided to not have any values. We’ll celebrate relativism and tolerance. We deny the true nature of humanity and naïvely pretend everyone is nice. The upside is we haven’t blown ourselves up; the downside is we live in a world of normlessness, meaninglessness and chaos."
Whoa! Who decided that tolerance isn't a value? I would much rather hold true to the value of tolerance than to some arbitrary and imposed set of values that vary according to whichever "God" you believe in!
And neither tolerance nor relativism forces a conclusion that "everyone is nice." Jesus preached tolerance for social outcastes, usurious money lenders, and even those who persecuted him; but he never said "everyone is nice."
And why do you equate tolerance and/or relativism with "meaninglessness?" Or with chaos? Perhaps YOUR mind is too simplistic to handle the complexities that a relativistic perspective demands; but those of us who ascribe to it have no problem reconciling the paradoxes, etc.; it just takes a willingness to grapple with them. And just because YOU can't find "meaning" in that worldview doesn't mean that the rest of us don't.
But of course, what I just wrote is a tolerant relativist's way of justifying relativism. But trying to convince a narrow-minded absolutist to accept the validity of a perspective that's different from their absolutist perspective is, by definition, impossible.
Whoa! Who decided that tolerance isn't a value? I would much rather hold true to the value of tolerance than to some arbitrary and imposed set of values that vary according to whichever "God" you believe in!
And neither tolerance nor relativism forces a conclusion that "everyone is nice." Jesus preached tolerance for social outcastes, usurious money lenders, and even those who persecuted him; but he never said "everyone is nice."
And why do you equate tolerance and/or relativism with "meaninglessness?" Or with chaos? Perhaps YOUR mind is too simplistic to handle the complexities that a relativistic perspective demands; but those of us who ascribe to it have no problem reconciling the paradoxes, etc.; it just takes a willingness to grapple with them. And just because YOU can't find "meaning" in that worldview doesn't mean that the rest of us don't.
But of course, what I just wrote is a tolerant relativist's way of justifying relativism. But trying to convince a narrow-minded absolutist to accept the validity of a perspective that's different from their absolutist perspective is, by definition, impossible.
9
Contrary to what Brooks says, the interviewer did not distort. She was spirited and asked a question repeatedly until his point of view was elaborated. She was neither deferential, nor hostile. It was an engaging style. There is no reason to malign her interview style to say you agree with the guest's views.
81
No, her constant use of “so you’re saying...”, and then grossly distorting his point has been widely ridiculed and deservedly so. Watch for yourselves and decide.
15
Thank you. And William Buckley wasn't exactly the paragon of a great interviewer, either. As I remember him, he constantly interrupted his guests and always, always insisted on having the last word, literally, to the point it got really funny.
1
I respectfully disagree. I watched the entire interview and what Brooks describes seems pretty accurate to me. She intentionally and continuously misrepresented what Peterson had just finished saying, trying to spark outrage when what he was saying was nuanced and reasonable.
16
"Rise above the culture of victimization you see all around you. Stop whining. Don’t blame others or seek revenge....Instead, choose discipline, courage and self-sacrifice. To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life. Never lie. Tell your boss what you really think. Be strict with your children. Drop the friends who bring you down. Break free from the needy mother who controls you."
So what's wrong with this advice for men and for women? This guy may be off his rocker or he may just have the right formula for our troubled species. Is it that revolutionary to live one's life like this? Don't you think after all these millennia it's time to grow up?
So what's wrong with this advice for men and for women? This guy may be off his rocker or he may just have the right formula for our troubled species. Is it that revolutionary to live one's life like this? Don't you think after all these millennia it's time to grow up?
6
Thanks for writing this article. Jordan Peterson is the honorable, decent role model that young men need, given their current options in the media of either macho blowhards or nihilistic snowflakes.
Too many men have lost meaning in modern life, which too often leads to extremism or suicide. It's unfortunate that a message of telling the truth and taking responsibility has become so rare and controversial, but it's desperately needed in today's chaotic world.
Too many men have lost meaning in modern life, which too often leads to extremism or suicide. It's unfortunate that a message of telling the truth and taking responsibility has become so rare and controversial, but it's desperately needed in today's chaotic world.
12
It's a losing battle. I read newspapers, journals, books, outside of the purview of my professional and academic life and now I find that 40 million people know more than I about the latest intellectual fad.
Life requires nuance, a word I usually hate as it is part of current academic jargon, but it has its purposes:
"Never lie. Tell your boss what you really think. Be strict with your children. Drop the friends who bring you down. Break free from the needy mother who controls you."
Perhaps, but there are ways to go about this and they require nuance and common sense. I do not see that here.
I think I will make do with Mr. Brook's op-ed and not join the 40 million.
Life requires nuance, a word I usually hate as it is part of current academic jargon, but it has its purposes:
"Never lie. Tell your boss what you really think. Be strict with your children. Drop the friends who bring you down. Break free from the needy mother who controls you."
Perhaps, but there are ways to go about this and they require nuance and common sense. I do not see that here.
I think I will make do with Mr. Brook's op-ed and not join the 40 million.
11
"It is the most devastatingly one-sided media confrontation you will ever see. He reminded me of a young William F. Buckley." You mean the William F. Buckley that debated James Baldwin in 1965? Talk about one-sided media confrontations.
Buckley wasn't smart. We wasn't even well-spoken. He was just well-connected and had the confidence that belongs to people who know they never have to work to survive.
Buckley wasn't smart. We wasn't even well-spoken. He was just well-connected and had the confidence that belongs to people who know they never have to work to survive.
12
Didn't see that one, but Buckley demolished James Farmer in another debate.
Don't know for sure because I haven't read him, but the way you present him, David, suggests to me he's Ayn Rand with a makeover. Certainly the appeal to adolescent men is parallel to Rand, as is the social Darwinism. "Solitary, nonrelational, unemotional," evokes squinty-eyed Clint Eastwood in any number of roles, the lone hero standing strong against the chaos wrought by the desperadoes who rule a lawless land. It's all very appealing to the wannabe tough guys, but doesn't hold up under the routine stresses of today's world, most especially the quotidian demands of a rapidly changing workplace.
As for the, "young William F. Buckley," he was never the supreme intellect he was made out to be, and those who portray him so can be safe in the knowledge that today the majority of people know him only through the legend constructed by his few remaining fans, who carefully omit his bouts into pure madness, as when he advocated preemptive nuclear destruction of "Red China."
As for the, "young William F. Buckley," he was never the supreme intellect he was made out to be, and those who portray him so can be safe in the knowledge that today the majority of people know him only through the legend constructed by his few remaining fans, who carefully omit his bouts into pure madness, as when he advocated preemptive nuclear destruction of "Red China."
23
You are not only 100% right about Buckley, you are 1000% (that's right one thousand percent) relevant. Buckley was a perfect example of what a non-intellectual thinks is an intellectual. He was nothing but a pedantic windbag who very specifically took on the job of making the right's gibberish sound halfway logical and sensible. Buckley, whose magazine The National Review was, and is, heavily subsidized by business and financial interests, was akin to those doctors who teach in prestigious universities but take a lot of money from drug companies to do promote new drugs or treatments that are suddenly considered obsolete when the patents expire. Anyone who thinks William F. Buckley was a serious thinker and writer does not have all their intellectual ducks lined-up.
Chaos is female?! How in the world would anyone come up with that? Aren't men always complaining that women are trying to tame and civilize them? I'm all for anyone seeking to give guidance to young people, but tearing down women is not the way to do this.
33
Have you read Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae?
This column does not remotely begin to do Dr. Peterson or his work justice.
And the fact that he and his intellectual positions are continuously defamed and mischaracterized by "progressives" (to the point that some anonymous official of the Ministry of Truth deep inside the YouTube division of Google tried to banish him last summer, only to have dozens of academics stand up for him and force YouTube/Google to back down) says much more about those "progressives" than him.
Watch one of the series of his core U of Toronto course, Maps of Meaning, on YouTube. I guarantee that 98% of you will learn something, and 100% of you will see for yourselves that he is no demon, no alt-righter, no misogynist, but a serious Canadian and intellectual.
And the fact that he and his intellectual positions are continuously defamed and mischaracterized by "progressives" (to the point that some anonymous official of the Ministry of Truth deep inside the YouTube division of Google tried to banish him last summer, only to have dozens of academics stand up for him and force YouTube/Google to back down) says much more about those "progressives" than him.
Watch one of the series of his core U of Toronto course, Maps of Meaning, on YouTube. I guarantee that 98% of you will learn something, and 100% of you will see for yourselves that he is no demon, no alt-righter, no misogynist, but a serious Canadian and intellectual.
18
No unbridgeable chasm separates Peterson's life philosophy from the one preferred by David Brooks. Peterson does emphasize a solitary approach to developing the values we associate with maturity, while Brooks stresses that growth through positive relationships with others fosters a sense of empathy.
Peterson clearly believes that individual integrity requires a sense of self-reliance, which precludes heavy dependence on the opinions of other people. But a refusal to define morality in terms of one's own interests, the core meaning of integrity, does not emerge from a vacuum. We care about the welfare of others, and thus reject the opportunity to sacrifice their needs to our desires, because our personal relationships teach us to cherish the worth even of people we may not know.
Peterson seeks to help young men develop their identity as individuals, while Brooks focuses on their need to function as part of a community. Both approaches play a key role in the socialization of a mature, empathetic man or woman.
Peterson clearly believes that individual integrity requires a sense of self-reliance, which precludes heavy dependence on the opinions of other people. But a refusal to define morality in terms of one's own interests, the core meaning of integrity, does not emerge from a vacuum. We care about the welfare of others, and thus reject the opportunity to sacrifice their needs to our desires, because our personal relationships teach us to cherish the worth even of people we may not know.
Peterson seeks to help young men develop their identity as individuals, while Brooks focuses on their need to function as part of a community. Both approaches play a key role in the socialization of a mature, empathetic man or woman.
8
I very much enjoyed this OP-ED, as a young man I can attest to the void that Peterson fills also due to the failure of educators to teach their students anything of value and how to become adults.
Peterson’s ideas do sound banal because he isn’t saying anything new, instead reciting ancient wisdom that helped many people live satisfying and meaningful lives.
Peterson’s ideas do sound banal because he isn’t saying anything new, instead reciting ancient wisdom that helped many people live satisfying and meaningful lives.
12
Curious to know if there is any evidence that the 40 million views are from young men yearning for a stern father figure rather than, say, middle-aged men yearning to prove that the world is waiting for such a one.
7
I'm a right winger but in the now famous interview, Peterson was so vague and brief in stating his views that the listener couldn't really discern what his views were. In response, Peterson restated and mischaracterized them as a legitimate technique to get him to respond and to clearly state and explain his views. That's her job. I had never heard of him. He had ~20 minutes to explain his views and he didn't and that I could tell each was kind of laying a trap for the other.
43
"men whom society is trying to turn into emasculated snowflakes."
When I was growing up men wore flowery shirts, they had long blow dried hair, wore jewelery and bell bottoms, they listened to music about peace love and understanding and opened car doors for their girlfriends. Today we live in a hyper-masculine culture. Young males today try to look tough. They listen to misogynistic gangsta rap, heavy metal, have tattoos, piercings, skinhead hair cuts, and wear their pants on the ground. They want to look like thugs. Yet conservatives love to complain about the wussification of young men today. This is their way of protesting feminism. They have alway been against feminism so they have created this false narrative about boys being feminized by the femi-nazis when the reality is the exact opposite.
When I was growing up men wore flowery shirts, they had long blow dried hair, wore jewelery and bell bottoms, they listened to music about peace love and understanding and opened car doors for their girlfriends. Today we live in a hyper-masculine culture. Young males today try to look tough. They listen to misogynistic gangsta rap, heavy metal, have tattoos, piercings, skinhead hair cuts, and wear their pants on the ground. They want to look like thugs. Yet conservatives love to complain about the wussification of young men today. This is their way of protesting feminism. They have alway been against feminism so they have created this false narrative about boys being feminized by the femi-nazis when the reality is the exact opposite.
35
You missed the mark on this one, David. Both I, and my son, appreciate Dr. Peterson's work, and neither of us "feel fatherless, solitary, floating in a chaotic moral vacuum, constantly outperformed and humiliated by women, haunted by pain and self-contempt". So does my daughter, for that matter.
Certainly he recognizes that such people exist, and perhaps his message resonates more strongly with them, but it's the same message he has for everyone, male and female - sort yourself out ! Accept responsibility for your life, because no one else will.
The almost universal mis-representation of his message is insulting to anyone who has spent any time reading his work, something it looks liek you neglected to do.
Certainly he recognizes that such people exist, and perhaps his message resonates more strongly with them, but it's the same message he has for everyone, male and female - sort yourself out ! Accept responsibility for your life, because no one else will.
The almost universal mis-representation of his message is insulting to anyone who has spent any time reading his work, something it looks liek you neglected to do.
22
There is something silly about the idea that Christianity ended barbarism. Not only was the pagan worlds of Greece and Roman not necessarily barbarous but the amount of barbarism done in the name of Christianity has been fairly enormous. Beyond that the modern Western World is an amalgam of the ancient world, Christianity and the Germanic culture.
12
In the past life most likely was much more of a series of harsh and brutal dominance rituals, but isn't that what we are tying to change?. Isn't that Jesus' message? That the continual struggle to order and reorder the hierarchy is, basically, hell? It sounds like Peterson wants to go back to that past. I want to go forward, to progress, to continue to evolve and make a better world.
4
I teach at the University of Toronto, and I've had the misfortune to follow up close Peterson's petulance and aggrandized self-regard. He's like the kid who used to get beat up in elementary school who, now that he's tasted fame, aims to bully back. His screeds about "postmodern marxism" belie the ongoing old-white-guy moan that the world has passed them by and that they've become disempowered. There is nothing "playing the victim" if you're rallying against an empowered person of privilege -- which Peterson, as a tenured prof, certainly is -- who, by refusing to use proper pronouns, plays games with acknowledging your existence. Peterson's arguments, such as they are, are merely dressed-up reiterations of right-wing screeds circulating on Fox News and elsewhere.
In teaching a postmodern text in one of my classes, I use, as illustration, Peterson's speech available on youtube, "2017/06/28: Postmodern NeoMarxism: Diagnosis and Cure," in which Peterson ironically seeks to shut down speech with which he does not agree. Listen to him rail not about society's injustices but to his worldview where the blame for the disempowerment of retrograde people like him are those "whiny victims" whose existence he ruthlessly denies and degrades. What a farce.
In teaching a postmodern text in one of my classes, I use, as illustration, Peterson's speech available on youtube, "2017/06/28: Postmodern NeoMarxism: Diagnosis and Cure," in which Peterson ironically seeks to shut down speech with which he does not agree. Listen to him rail not about society's injustices but to his worldview where the blame for the disempowerment of retrograde people like him are those "whiny victims" whose existence he ruthlessly denies and degrades. What a farce.
238
For non-Torontonians, know that Andrew L's view is dominant at U of T and most other Ontario universities. The politically correct, genuinely emasculated, non-binary cults rule. They insist that Jordan and others submit to a government law to use Ze, e/ey, Per, sie, ve Zie, Ou, Tey, Thae, this one, thon, ve Xe, Yre, Zay, Zij, Zed, and for birds say Fei, feis, feiself, and cat, meow,, mews, meowself and for bug there are 6 pronouns - you get the idea.
The universities have become almost uniformly Maoist and Marxist and feminist ideology cults. The adherents hate and despise the concept of university that does not duplicate China and Stalinist Russia models.
13
Thank you for the link, I do urge people to watch it as it most definitely would give anyone great insight into this man. I am not an academic, and I have not heard your or any other counterarguments, but I found his speech both illuminating and entertaining, finding myself laughing out loud at some of fun he pokes at a subject as serious as Post Modernism. Quite brilliant actually.
There is something to be said for an academic staking his reputation, by taking on something as as huge as Post Modernism, publicly denounce it, and have the audacity to call it a cult. As for being a 'whiny victim', I cannot say, but I would bet my favorite cat that he has a stash of serious academic ammunition to back up his claims.
8
It's amusing to me to see the startled reaction of the establishment media as this man's enormous online influence suddenly erupts to such a degree that they're caught off guard, heads spinning and struggling to understand what is happening.
This man, who in the beginning was grossly misrepresented and dismissed - when even acknowledged at all by the media, corporate and ideological elites - has bypassed traditional cultural gate keepers to amass a viral following that's unheard of for a serious thinker.
The question that the establishment now needs to ask, is 'why were we so wrong about him, and why are we no longer speaking to his audience?' And most pointedly, why is his audience no longer listening to us and our disapproval?
This man, who in the beginning was grossly misrepresented and dismissed - when even acknowledged at all by the media, corporate and ideological elites - has bypassed traditional cultural gate keepers to amass a viral following that's unheard of for a serious thinker.
The question that the establishment now needs to ask, is 'why were we so wrong about him, and why are we no longer speaking to his audience?' And most pointedly, why is his audience no longer listening to us and our disapproval?
5
What a see many of the commentators doing is a version of Cathy Newman, reframe through their own lens that has already found him unacceptable. No need to listen much less seek to understand.
What Peterson has said resonates with me.
“Rise above the culture of victimization you see all around you. Stop whining. Don’t blame others or seek revenge. “The individual must conduct his or her life in a manner that requires the rejection of immediate gratification, of natural and perverse desires alike.”
Instead, choose discipline, courage and self-sacrifice. “To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life.”
What Peterson has said resonates with me.
“Rise above the culture of victimization you see all around you. Stop whining. Don’t blame others or seek revenge. “The individual must conduct his or her life in a manner that requires the rejection of immediate gratification, of natural and perverse desires alike.”
Instead, choose discipline, courage and self-sacrifice. “To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life.”
132
As I read Brooks's insights into Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, it dawned on me that more than young men, it is young women (of all ages) who stand to benefit the most from Peterson's advice.
Consider the following: "Don’t be fooled by the naïve optimism of progressive ideology. Life is about remorseless struggle and pain. Your instinct is to whine, to play the victim, to seek vengeance... [N]ever do that. Rise above the culture of victimization you see all around you. Stop whining. Don’t blame others or seek revenge."
Yes, young men should man up. So should young women.
Consider the following: "Don’t be fooled by the naïve optimism of progressive ideology. Life is about remorseless struggle and pain. Your instinct is to whine, to play the victim, to seek vengeance... [N]ever do that. Rise above the culture of victimization you see all around you. Stop whining. Don’t blame others or seek revenge."
Yes, young men should man up. So should young women.
4
Young people resent being told what to do and how to conduct their lives. The main reason is the blatant hypocrisy of the 'elders' dispensing advice. Also, if you take away the cliches and the banalities, nothing of value remains other than the same old, same old. Jordan Peterson may be a notch above others but the truth is that advice, stern or loving, has a shelf life of few milliseconds. Everyone has to learn to live a meaningful life in her/his own way. What resonates on YouTube or on the pages of a bestseller gives a momentary sense of awareness that may cause more harm than good because it sets up abnormal expectations. A young man once stopped me cold when he sensed I was about to give him some advice by telling me: "Show me how to live by example. Then I will think about it. In the meantime, please leave me alone."
6
From what I have read of Mr. Peterson's teaching, my view is that Buddha is a better teacher for young men. Buddha also taught that life is full of suffering, and the path forward involves understanding pain. Buddha also taught that “The individual must conduct his or her life in a manner that requires the rejection of immediate gratification, of natural and perverse desires alike.” Buddha recognized the value of discipline, courage and self-sacrifice.
Buddha also valued kindness, or what might be called compassionate action. That appears to be missing from Mr. Peterson's teaching.
Buddha also valued kindness, or what might be called compassionate action. That appears to be missing from Mr. Peterson's teaching.
25
This piece is very fair. It suffers from a phenomenon I see with many people who are only semi-familiar with his work, which is only vague and banal under everyday interpretation.
Take 'Tell the truth, never lie'. Vague and banal, yes... until you actually understand the context and that Peterson means it and you start actually doing it.
When you say Peterson seems to imagine an overly brutalistic, loveless, universe without beauty and love, please know that the universe really is that way (and sometimes, worse, it is an empty void) for many, many people, for much if not all of their lives.
Peterson's ideas have helped reinvigorate the world with some of the love and beauty that depression, or life, has robbed me and many others of. The ideas that possess him help lead people back to their proper emotional landscape, sense of attachment to others, as well as often being joyous when put in to practice (e.g. not lying - when you might be tempted to - turns out to be awesome like 90% of the time)
"I’d say the lives of young men can be improved more through loving attachment". This is the only part I found outright annoying, not least because it is vague and banal. The thing is... Peterson's advice speaks directly to the individual, and tasks them to do things completely within their control. A lot of the guys he's talking to simply can't choose to be lovable and attachable that easily - believe me I know - Peterson's way at least gives them a chance.
Take 'Tell the truth, never lie'. Vague and banal, yes... until you actually understand the context and that Peterson means it and you start actually doing it.
When you say Peterson seems to imagine an overly brutalistic, loveless, universe without beauty and love, please know that the universe really is that way (and sometimes, worse, it is an empty void) for many, many people, for much if not all of their lives.
Peterson's ideas have helped reinvigorate the world with some of the love and beauty that depression, or life, has robbed me and many others of. The ideas that possess him help lead people back to their proper emotional landscape, sense of attachment to others, as well as often being joyous when put in to practice (e.g. not lying - when you might be tempted to - turns out to be awesome like 90% of the time)
"I’d say the lives of young men can be improved more through loving attachment". This is the only part I found outright annoying, not least because it is vague and banal. The thing is... Peterson's advice speaks directly to the individual, and tasks them to do things completely within their control. A lot of the guys he's talking to simply can't choose to be lovable and attachable that easily - believe me I know - Peterson's way at least gives them a chance.
7
It was the Boy Scouts that saved my own life. The point of Boy Scout Camp is discomfort, doing things with others, & being able to use tools, even guns, & take care of yourself and others.
Eventually I was fired for insubordination. By the time they tried to hire me the next year I had become a hippie. But that was about many of the things Boy Scouts did, like camping. Hitchiking was hiking, camping, willingness to be miserable.
William James is written to be the only recognized American philosopher, for Pragmatism. "Democracy is delicate." he said. There was the book the Varieties of Spiritual Experience, saying some people are crazy & others are spiritually in tune, different, so there has to be more than just what the word Pragmatic would imply beyond someone like Kissinger & "real politic" which if we are in pursuit of civilization, means a spiritual & ethical standard beyond the barbaric. Barbaric being might is right. Barbaric being theft instead of work for getting what you need & want.
Eventually I was fired for insubordination. By the time they tried to hire me the next year I had become a hippie. But that was about many of the things Boy Scouts did, like camping. Hitchiking was hiking, camping, willingness to be miserable.
William James is written to be the only recognized American philosopher, for Pragmatism. "Democracy is delicate." he said. There was the book the Varieties of Spiritual Experience, saying some people are crazy & others are spiritually in tune, different, so there has to be more than just what the word Pragmatic would imply beyond someone like Kissinger & "real politic" which if we are in pursuit of civilization, means a spiritual & ethical standard beyond the barbaric. Barbaric being might is right. Barbaric being theft instead of work for getting what you need & want.
Brooks blames loss of Christian virtue for the Holocaust and Stalin's purges. "Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism. But God died in the 19th century, and Christian dogma and discipline died with him. That gave us the age of ideology, the age of fascism and communism — and with it, Auschwitz, Dachau and the gulag."
Yet the Thirty Years War was entirely about Christian religion, and left Central Europe depopulated in one of the most bloody convulsions of all time. Christianity did not moderate the Hundred Years War either, which swept back and forth over what is now France, each side using Scorched Earth tactics to kill and destroy the whole of the hinterlands to the other sides' cities, and then the cities too when they took some.
Whether God is dead or not does not explain vast state organized mass murder of whole peoples. Christianity did that just as well, and for a very long time. Crusades did to Jerusalem and Byzantium what Japan did in the Rape of Nanking.
Worse, the alternative offered of Will harks to the Triumph of the Will movie extolling Hitler, and his fundamental Führerprinzip of Will over all.
Likewise, the idea of eternal struggle purifying was the ideology offered by Mussolini. Mussolini's "Doctrine of Fascism" conceives of life as a struggle, that it behooves man to conquer, creating first of all in himself the instrument in order to construct it.
Jordan Peterson could as well quote those two for all of his exhortations.
11
Jordan Peterson has helped me crawl out from years of brutal depression. His lectures have deeply altered my worldview. I hope that I can someday pass on these values to my own children.
164
"But the emphasis on strength of will, the bootstrap, the calls to toughness and self-respect — all of this touches some need in his audience."
Sounds like G. Gordon Liddy to me. Now where did I put my jackboot straps? Point toward the mollycoddlers, there's some antidote-ing that needs doing.
Sounds like G. Gordon Liddy to me. Now where did I put my jackboot straps? Point toward the mollycoddlers, there's some antidote-ing that needs doing.
2
Peterson’s REAL message is a somewhat more attractive one than David’s for those not regularly soaked in the blood of the lamb (Abrahamic version); but similar to David’s in general thrust and similar to one of mine, here, as well. In order to build communities, societies and civilizations composed of regular people, we need fence posts within which regular people labor to build connected lives. That requires verities and values. Relativism is fine for elites, but we don’t build communities solely of elites capable of maintaining sanity, purpose and contentment in the midst of fenceless chaos. And this is not to condone “verities and values” that stigmatize people for artificial and unworthy reasons, such as race, ethnicity, gender and sexual identity.
Tolerance doesn’t need to mean a rejection of fence posts for one’s own community – it simply acknowledges that there are other communities with which one’s own must co-exist respectfully in a civilized society.
Despite his entertaining Canadianness, Peterson’s message about life’s inherent difficulty and the need to face it with determination, strength and discipline is about as American as one gets. Republican and conservative worldviews, at their best, seek to keep the people strong generally, because they preach the same need to build character to overcome difficulty. Excessive dependence on doles of one kind or another does not breed strength to overcome difficulty.
Tolerance doesn’t need to mean a rejection of fence posts for one’s own community – it simply acknowledges that there are other communities with which one’s own must co-exist respectfully in a civilized society.
Despite his entertaining Canadianness, Peterson’s message about life’s inherent difficulty and the need to face it with determination, strength and discipline is about as American as one gets. Republican and conservative worldviews, at their best, seek to keep the people strong generally, because they preach the same need to build character to overcome difficulty. Excessive dependence on doles of one kind or another does not breed strength to overcome difficulty.
1
If the "dole" is medical care and without it, I (or my children) die, I'll take the dole for Locke was correct - "...when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another."
Notice that bit about health?
I just watched as much of the Channel 4 interview as I could stand. I think Peterson and Newman are exhibiting the differences in their training, and therefore their analytical processes. Social scientists, if they operate as such, solve puzzles. They ask "what is the nature of this problem?" and then they try to describe it in non-judgmental terms, and experiment with possible solutions. It is impossible to solve a problem that you can't accurately describe, so hooray for the social scientists. It seems to me that most people address social problems with no dispassionate analysis. They pick a side that comports with their "brand," i.e., their self-image, and then, if they are inclined to justify it, cherry-pick data and arguments that support the desired conclusion. Sometimes I think there is no one left who really wants to solve problems. As an example, why don't we stop arguing about the gender pay gap, and instead, push for greater investments in child care, both in the workplace, and on college/university campuses? That would give women the kind of freedom that most men take for granted. Then we can see whether there's an effect on the pay gap.
3
I've recently discovered Jordan Peterson after a long period of philosophical inquest. His defense of classical Liberalism, of freedom of speech and the dignity of the individual, is sorely needed at this point in history against the ascendant groupthink ideologies of both right and left. But his conception of the nature of the world, of human existence, and the degree of hardship and struggle that is inherent in life, is something we must struggle to combat. Through the exhortation of human dignity and strength we can arrive at a place that values and comforts all, at a society that is just and fair without being restrictive.
5
Thank you, Mr. Brooks. The tide is at long last turning. For those of us who have young grandsons, this is encouraging news.
7
There is a long and disturbing history of psychologists building their ethical values into what they claim to be a science. To some extent this was forgivable at a time when cognitive neuroscience had not moved the field toward a real science. At the present time the combination of EST and Ayn Rand that we hear in this presentation of Peterson's exhortations does little for the reputation of the Dept. at Toronto. Added onto this we have the assertion that he analyzes classical and biblical texts ( one wonders if he reads Hebrew, Greek, or Latin) and that he makes breezy world historical generalizations about the "Age of Ideology" that are reminiscent of paperbacks from the 1950's. It is not surprising that he would be popular. Every generation has it's Norman Vincent Peales, it's Werner Erhardts, they provide "the answer" for millions and then after their pose becomes tiresome we forget them. Some such as Buckley do real damage when they argue that African Americans were so biologically challenged that they should not be allowed to vote ( a position he later retracted),Rather then publicize motivationalist speakers, Brooks might better use his column to describe the extraordinary clinical and descriptive accomplishments that we can see in the field of psychology and that make this chatter so counter productive.
37
Science is the opposite of ideology. It is the art of sensing nature as it is.
Just because "life is suffering" and "remorseless struggle and pain" doesn't mean one has to live in "an overly brutal universe". The Buddha acknowledged that life is suffering, but if one follows the noble eightfold path described in his fourth noble truth they can find a way out of their suffering. To do so, though, requires a degree of acceptance that many strivers find daunting.
13
Everybody gets to Nirvana (oblivion after death) on their first try.
This is Petersons exact message. He talks a lot about The Buddha in his lectures. Brooks view is a little distorted here.
1
My understanding of Mr. Peterson (admittedly a shallow one, gleaned merely through this article and The Atlantic piece), is that he's someone who fancies he's forcing the blind masses to view the harsh truths of the world.
So here are some truths for Mr. Peterson: the world is more peaceful now than it has ever been; child mortality is decreasing; and worldwide standards of living are increasing. To begin with, I'd refer him to Mr. Kristof's recent column on why 2017 was the best year of the world.
In contrast, up until the 1940s or so, child mortality was high, maternal mortality high, life expectancy shorter, sanitation dismal, and the world suffered two horrendous wars and one crippling depression.
So -- taking these FACTS and TRUTHS into account -- can Mr. Peterson explain to me why the world was better with religion, or how our current system is failing us?
40
The FACTS you mention have all to do with science, medical care and politics. Mr. Peterson's teachings are about philosophy and psychology. Also he's not saying the old ways were the best, even if he's very critic about some of the current tendencies we've seen lately. As stated in the article, he perceives live as a series of competitions, but of course the same logic applies to societies and Mr. Peterson is committed to leverage ours to do healthy and enlightened choices.
1
Dr. Peterson's basic understanding of life as tragic--full of unavoidable pain--has little or nothing to do with the present moment. Regardless of the improvements you cite, we all face: inevitable decline and death, the decline and death of loved ones, challenges in work and relationships that require work and courage to overcome, rejection, the struggles of child-rearing, etc.
I was introduced to Peterson through his online lectures on "the psychological significance of the bible." In these he says very little if anything about the truth of a God but asserts that the biblical myths persist because of the fundamental psychological (including neuro-psychological) and human truths they contain.
I don't think he would dispute any of the points you have made. He would argue that the strong explanatory value of these myths (in many religions even though he focuses on Hebrew/Christian bible in the lectures) has been a powerful good for humanity.
Unlike the more political perspective (along with our insatiable hunger to decide who's right and who's wrong) encouraged by Books's piece and other media treatment, I think you would be persuaded by the rationality and scholarship of Peterson in his lectures (the downside is each one requires an investment of at least 2 hours). Like Brooks, I suspect I would ultimately differ to some degree with some of Peterson's personal conclusions. However, hearing the genuine and usually thoroughly reasoned (and humbly presented) science in these lectures is well worth the time. I suspect your thinking about Peterson's ideas would be more nuanced even if you don't swallow everything around his public views about governments and politics.
2
I am always suspicious of those who achieve a cult of followers and David Brooks often naively jumps on a trend he thinks will magically make the world a better place. The main problem with today’s youth is that parents think they are grown before they are and don’t continue to guide them. I worked with teenagers for 30 years and always found them to strive to be good people. They would talk to me in a cynical way but usually listened to my thoughts that contradicted their cynicism. Teachers can be a big help in guiding youth. Reading inspirational stories to the class, praising students who do right by their classmates. Realizing that teaching requires more than just teaching the curriculum. Youth is a time of experimentation but excesses can be avoided if adults talk freely and honestly about their own mistakes. My own children grew up with friends who were very competitive but most of their classmates truly cared about others. Those who were least competitive ended up well and much happier. They achieved success without compromising their values.
36
Agree with much of what Peterson says but what about compassion for those who for some reason cannot compete? I go back to the Boy Scout motto and two phrases courteous and kind. Where are they in the Peterson philosophy?
26
How surprising! Yet another conservative intellectual ignoring systemic/societal issues in favor of putting the onus on individuals without considering the broader socio-economic context of how we - collectively and individually - arrived at this point.
One thing is certain: we can harangue one another about ‘individual responsibility’ until the stars burn out, but nothing will shift until we realize that individuality only thrives in strong communities where members bear responsibility for one another as well as themselves.
Yes, there is suffering in life and trying to escape from this reality would be naive. Nevertheless, in the face of that, we can still create moments of great meaning, joy, happiness, and fulfillment. These moments come more frequently when we support one another in our individual development instead of demanding that each person conforms to a socially-constructed template.
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I don't think Brooks would disagree with most of what is in this comment. But still I think the point is that even if we radically redefined social policy in US to attempt to provide far more level playing fields, the necessity for hard work and responsibility would not go away. Brooks seems overly committed to one angle, but to insist that community alone will transform the impoverished and oppressed isn't true. But social policy changes could certainly help by stopping the putting up of obstacles in front of people not born into opportunities. Coddling the wealthy undermines the opportunity for others to take responsibility and reap the benefits of working hard--and ultimately contributing to their communities. Brooks knows this but holds back from writing it. Why?
46
"Yet another conservative intellectual ignoring systemic/societal issues in favour of putting the onus on individuals..."
My question is: why does it have to be one or the other? You're right, the world is unfair and life is difficult, so what advice, then, would you offer for individuals trying to improve themselves and their lives?
Its all well and good to examine and criticize these systemic issues (i.e., racism, sexism, poverty, etc.) that plague our society, but in terms of making one person's life better... really, what does that do? We understand the world we live in a bit better, or think we do, but rarely does that help us in terms of bringing an individual, especially younger individuals, to get that sense of urgency and go make something of themselves. Communities are made up of individuals and I would think that those communities would be stronger if people were motivated to better themselves and, eventually, contribute to the overall community. You can do this and still be someone who cares or does something about bigger social issues.
3
Who is trying to turn men into emasculated snowflakes? Women are seeking equality and now we are emasculating men? Get over yourselves, men, we just want to be treated with respect and to get paid fairly for our work.
5
I am a fan of Sam Harris, and learned of Jordan Peterson through their debates. Peterson's style is to create a straw argument, and then attack it. In his discussions with Sam Harris, Peterson spend a lot of time backtracking due to his mischaracterizing of Harris. I do not find that Peterson offers anything himself, other than attacks against other people and their ideas. College sophomores love it.
159
JP isn’t quite on Sam’s level as far as philosophical arguments are concerned. After listening to the discussion of truth, JP seemed as though he spent as much time as he needed in order to find a “proof” for the Darwinian truth of Christianity.
I share your admiration for Harris, and have read his books and heard most podcasts, including the memorably dull and confusing discussion he had with Peterson. While I can see where a person would come away with less than positive feelings if that was their sole exposure, I would politely disagree with your assessment that Peterson is only negative and has nothing to offer.
5
I recently watched a couple of hours worth of Peterson interviews and cannot remember a single instance of him using a strawman maneuver.
5
When we are young we will grow and try to live by ideals and ideal figures. I see this as fact. The persons and ideologies that form our ideals are really important. Peterson sees progressive ideology as not presenting a rugged enough ideal. So there is a vacuum, and Peterson seeks to present a normative ideal by which in his presentation young men can live and grow.
I think Brooks agrees there is in fact a vacuum created for young men's development within progressive ideology, and he analyzes Peterson's attempt to fill it. I agree with Peterson's call for honesty, self-development, and discipline, but I don't see this ideal as antithetical to loving attachment as Brooks does in his criticism of Peterson. At the end of the day, like the Stoics, the crowning achievement of the ideal is in meeting our moral responsibilities lovingly within the social fabric of our lives.
But our first responsibility is the development of ourselves in light of a meaningful and defensible moral ideal. Both Peterson and Brooks agree on this important point. So the question is whether there is a social ideal, defensibly moral, that young men now can use to guide self development and form loving social attachments. The assumption here is that development of men is different from women's development -- though the moral ideal and responsibilities to others may not necessarily be different in the end. That's a whole separate argument, though.
42
The idea that life is suffering is nothing new. The Buddha proclaimed that life is suffering over 500 years before Jesus.
People in general, not just men, need to take more personal responsibility for their actions and not blame others for their misfortunes.
What I found most troubling in the article is the conceit among many conservatives that life was better before religion became less important in daily life, particularly the concept that Christianity eased the barbaric nature in man.
Anyone with a basic understanding of history knows the role religion has played in fostering fear, intolerance, wars, murder of innocents, etc.
Glorious churches, art, music and literature have all contributed immensely to the human race.
But they all came with a terrible price.
493
Amen Kevin.
2
Wouldn't the comparison be with recorded history before organized societal religions? Or is the assumption that the hunter-gatherer way of life didn't have 'fear, intolerance, wars, murder' etc.
The global drops in poverty and violence of recent decades have nothing to do with religion. The post Enlightenment drop does.
Innocents? Who is innocent?
I don't watch YouTube much so I guess I have missed Prof. Peterson's musing. So Mr Peterson asserted Christianity has held humanity from barbarianism throughout history until the 19th Century - perhaps when Nietzsche uttered the famous "Gott ist tot?" He must have conveniently ignored the Inquisition and the famous castration of Abelard.
Listen, I have no problem if he exhorts virtuous acts etc. But Scott Peck said "Life is difficult" in The Road Less Traveled" first. Of course, the U.S. has a tradition of humanistic psychology tradition represented by Eric Fromm and Rolla May et al. Then "life is suffering" is the First Noble Truth of Buddhism.
The truth of the matter is people of various stripes can say the same words like 'love,' 'respect,' etc. irrespective of their political leanings. The devil is in the details though. Tony Perkins of The Family Research Council gave a pass to alleged Trump's Stormy Daniel hush-hush. Such a hypocrite! Ironically, to some of us, having a relationship with a porn star, or anyone for matter, is no big deal. It is the sanctimonious mental and philosophical gymnastics that is the problem.
So, is Mr Peterson living a life of what he prescribes? And if his prescription prostelgzing? Time will tell. It is like the prosperity preacher who chose not to open his church property to the Houston flooded victims. WHAT.A.HYPOCRITE!
78
Yes but...The Buddha said Life is Difficult about 2500 years ago. It is the First Noble Truth and is translated often as Life is Suffering.
Their incapacity to understand climate modeling rests on their infantile belief that there is some intelligent agency watching the game and changing the rules at whim. Yes, modeling natural processes is possible, modeling whimsical human behavior is pretty close to impossible.
Peterson’s REAL message is a somewhat more attractive one than David’s for those not regularly soaked in the blood of the lamb (Abrahamic version); but similar to David’s in general thrust and similar to one of mine, here, as well. In order to build communities, societies and civilizations composed of regular people, we need fence posts within which regular people labor to build connected lives. That requires verities and values. Relativism is fine for elites, but we don’t build communities solely of elites capable of maintaining sanity, purpose and contentment in the midst of fenceless chaos. And this is not to condone “verities and values” that stigmatize people for artificial and unworthy reasons, such as race, ethnicity, gender and sexual identity.
Tolerance doesn’t need to mean a rejection of fence posts for one’s own community – it simply acknowledges that there are other communities with which one’s own must co-exist respectfully in a civilized society.
Despite his entertaining Canadianness, Peterson’s message about life’s inherent difficulty and the need to face it with determination, strength and discipline is about as American as one gets. Republican and conservative worldviews, at their best, seek to keep the people strong generally, because they preach the same need to build character to overcome difficulty. Excessive dependence on doles of one kind or another does not breed strength to overcome difficulty.
32
But I disagree with David on his perception of an excessively stark form of banality in Peterson. The universe does NOT love us, and is constantly trying to kill us, physically as well as emotionally and spiritually. The fence posts we sink to combat that chaotic and casual vindictiveness are utterly artificial, utterly human … and utterly necessary.
31
It's always that pesky "dole" republicans detest that sneaks into the conversation. I'll return to that in a moment.
I take objection to your categorizing determination, strength and discipline as being "about as American as one gets." If that were the case, why is it that immigrant group after immigrant group proves itself to be the hardest working and most successful group of Americans time and again? Me and my fellow second-generation Americans, we whose grandparents came in the very early 1900's, were taught this ethic by their parents, not by Americans who lived here for generations. If those people taught my grandparents anything it was racism and other cultural hatreds. I can bring plenty of slurs to mind that applied to my Italian heritage. I heard them all day long from kids whose parents had come over on the Mayflower.
When I went to school, it was always the children of immigrants who worked the hardest. The kids whose parents had been here the longest seemed to be the laziest, most entitled, and most resentful. Strangely, the longer we're here, the more "American" we become, the whinier we get.
Back to the "dole," this liberal Democrat would like to put a little tough love into the "dole," but I at least recognize that civilization needs the "dole." The people who need it now, are mostly white.
Now, I have to find a video of this Peterson guy. Once I saw "William F. Buckley," my stomach lurched, but I will be strong.
8
"Fenceposts" seems like an analogy to the philosopher-kings of Plato's academy. So it's an idea with a pedigree, one could say.
As always the problem is the application. Although I've never watched nor read Prof Peterson, David Brooks' description of a masculine ideal sounded vaguely fascist. Probably I am wrong about Prof Peterson. I bet he's not fascistic at all if I were to look. But David Brooks' description didn't come out of nowhere; that spirit is loose. At least that's what Seb Gorka tells us.
3
The discussed figure was totally new to me as I am absolutely out of his 40 millions viewers online. In reading this opinion piece, Peterson appears to gather and clip, according to his view, the Western Thoughts to be handily deliverable to the digital audience. Without knowing his videos, I may be very wrong in saying this, of course.
With no real life engagement, the digital messages can elude the responsibilities of fathers or parental figures in reality. I wonder whether the medium is the key issue for the success.
One may argue as an act of reading books has the same one-way effect. I argue against. Readers of books can control their time for engaging themselves with thoughts to be read. As for the digital media such as videos, the case can be easily or mandatory reverse.
To me, Hobbes and Nietzsche, each lives in a different sphere from the other. The latter lost his mind in facing the issue. According to the writer, Peterson seized the moment and became a star.
4
The discussed figure was totally new to me as I am absolutely out of his 40 millions viewers online. In reading this opinion piece, Peterson appears to gather and clip, according to his view, the Western Thoughts to be handily deliverable to the digital audience. Without knowing his videos, I may be very wrong in saying this, of course.
With no real life engagement, the digital messages can elude the responsibilities of fathers or parental figures in reality. I wonder whether the medium is the key issue for the success.
One may argues as an act of reading books has the same one-way effect. I argue against. Readers of books can control his time for engaging themselves with thoughts to be read. As for the digital media such as videos, the case can be easily or mandatory reverse.
To me, Hobbes and Nietzsche, each lives in a different sphere from the other. The latter lost his mind in facing the issue. Selon the writer, Peterson seized the moment and became a star.
1
I think of an article such as this as a mental destination which may include a central theme and at times a lot of descriptions and supporting information that either enhance or not an understanding of the thoughts which brought it to life. Often I may agree and often again disagree, but there is one constant throughout, reading the comments of others is ultimately entertaining, especially when the descriptions and supporting information are apparently confused with the intended destination.
15
There are a lot of people who would like to paint as chaos what are merely tectonic shifts in public awareness and conversation. It's a bumpy ride, but it's not chaos. People need to stick with treating others decently during times of turmoil, instead of reverting to anti-democratic authoritarian schemes which won't work in the long term.
126
Denying the liberating influence of renaissance and the European enlightenment that had ended the medieval darkness and filled the individual with new energy and confidence to face the odds of life, while viewing theistic faith and dogma as the morale boosting energy is nothing but shying away from the challenges of modernity and seeking refuge in obscurantist social conservatism.
188
It’s depressing when people opine on opinion without understanding the underlying source material. It is in fact Dr Peterson who is taking a stand for modern Enlightenment values in a time when moral relativism, identity politics, and resentful ideologies are plaguing our cultures. I have been reading and watching his work for almost 2 years and I have learned to cast aside my resentment and focus on improving myself and achieving strength, resilience, and goodness. If I can help others with these fortunes then all the better. That’s the core of his message.
86
Perfect analysis...
3
I'm with you. His advice is to recognize the obstacles before you and approach them with energy and focus, rather than living in resentment and powerless. The more competent humans are, the more we all benefit.
3
If Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism, someone forgot to tell the colonized peoples of the world, the victims of the Inquisition and the Crusades (including Constantinople), the Germans during the 30 Years War, or the Christian soldiers in the trenches of World War I.
Peterson sounds like a Stoic, a pagan philosophy that did not bribe people with heaven and threaten them with hell to get them to be good. The real path to success is to win the struggle by outwitting and scamming others, creating images to manipulate them. Trump illustrates this; he casts an image of authority, strength, determination, and freedom from the pretense, hypocrisy, and feigned niceness of the establishment. This image we now know to be completely false except that it works.
The only self-respect in the modern world of advertising and public relations is the self-respect of the master deceiver who is not deceived. These are the deceivers that, unlike Volkswagen or Wells Fargo or Harvey Weinstein, are not caught and whose successful deceptions continue to their profit. People who want the self-respect of never lying will have to lie about that to get into the corporate world or stay there.
What young men (and women, and the rest of us) need is not the stoic virtues, but rather a world in which they can be exercised without achieving the ostracism of the whistle-blower.
185
You've unfairly cherry-picked to suit your argument that Christianity has not stopped people from their tendency towards barbarism. I'm not saying Christianity is perfect but I think, for most of it's existence, it has been the most moral ideology going.
the Crusades, first of all, were a defensive reaction to Muslim invasions into southern Europe. Would you rather there had been no Crusades and instead we lived in a world with 800 years of Caliphate rule in Europe?
Christian ideals were the driving force between ending slavery. Everyone in the world practiced slavery at the time, but Christians fought to stop it.
All of the most liberal and just societies on earth right now came from Christian nations/cultures that still retain a lot of Christian ideals.
I think your idea of heaven and hell is shallow. I see them more as 'the world we will create depending on our actions'. If we all lived well, earth would be like heaven. When people don't live well, it's more like hell (fascist tyrannies etc)
I'd like to say I'm a stoic (I'm certainly not a Christian) but I think for stoicism to work you need to have a belief in something bigger than yourself - whether it's family, the state, god or whatever. Unfortunately, it's hard to conjure that up :(
9
"People who want the self-respect of never lying will have to lie about that to get into the corporate world or stay there."
True dat.
1
David, I am great admirer of Jordan Peterson. I have watched several of his videos, and the only reason I have not watched more is that his lectures require so much thought on my part to fully appreciate and digest the sophisticated and subtle concepts he is conveying. I must pause the video every few minutes and think and often replay.
I appreciate your raising Peterson's profile and I respect your disagreements with him, but make no mistake most or your readers will never be able to appreciate the sophistication of Peterson's arguments. What follow in this comments sections will be more distortion and simplification of "his views to make them appear offensive and cartoonish."
142
See Ignorantia's comment above, about books vs video, et al. Very insightful. It relates to your comment about "pausing the video, and thinking".
So here we are... weve gone from books to tv to twitter, and consequently the world (including governments) has become an echo chamber of uneducated morons! Especially the millenials with their cell phones and social media!
1
Wow, spoken like a true convert. Catholicism and evangelicals have a place for you.
1
David, I never heard of this person before you wrote about him - but the moment that I read that Tyler Cowen likes him is the moment that I know to be suspicious.
Furthermore, you wrote:
"For much of Western history, he argues, Christianity restrained the human tendency toward barbarism. But God died in the 19th century, and Christian dogma and discipline died with him. That gave us the age of ideology, the age of fascism and communism — and with it, Auschwitz, Dachau and the gulag."
WRONG. Spectacularly wrong.
The Holocaust is the end product of two different strains of Christian antisemitism - a Lutheran strain that is set in motion in Germany by Luther's unfortunate but extremely influential diatribe against Jews towards the end of his life ("On the Jews and their lies"); and a Catholic strain, birthed in the aftermath of the forced conversions demanded in Spain after the 'Reconquista' - conversions which naturally did not take, and led to the Church beginning to focus on blood rather than professed religious affiliation (the precise emphasis that the Nazis would eventually adopt).
When I was growing up as a Catholic, even in the aftermath of Vatican II, we continued to tell ourselves that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And given how Pilate is portrayed as a sympathetic figure in at one of the gospels (and it the movies of that era), why wouldn't we?
Organized Christianity directly set the tone that made the Holocaust possible.
582
You are both right. Peterson is an enemy of any ideology which ignores that it is itself a by-product of all the evolution(s) that precedes it. Historical Christian antisemitism (itself hardly immune to political and plainly criminal motives) and diverse 19th and early 20th Centuries political opportunisms (think of the Protocols and the Dreyfus Affair) led directly and indirectly to Auschwitz, and also to the continuing evolution of antisemitism.
Peterson, like many agnostic people of Christian and Jewish cultural background, wants desperately to salvage and expand the ethical core of these traditions, founded on the rejection of idolatry - which is alive and well today, especially among so many "true believers" of all stripes.
Actually there were already riots against the Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, several centuries before Christianity
2
@Matt: Peterson bases his philosophy in part on a deep understanding of Nietzsche, who argued that in abandoning God and Christianity, the modern man would need to create his own God, because otherwise we would be morally lost at sea. It is no coincidence that Nazis tried to misappropriate the works Nietzsche to justify their own new morality. Nazism, while it did not specifically renounce religion, was an inherently secular movement, and Communism was and is an explicit rejection of religion. Together, Communism and Nazism, with Communism taking first prize, are responsible for the greatest oppression and slaughter of humankind in history. Nietzsche has been proven prophetic. Peterson is not defending any particular abuses of the historical Catholic Church (I am not Catholic, so I have no brief for them either), though these pale in comparison to the Communists and Nazis. He is defending the values distilled in the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments--not your cherry-picking select parts of the Bible to make the message inherently violent or oppressive--but the overall message and key archetypical stories. Christ explicitly rejected violence when he healed the ear of the centurion. Then, according to Christians, he sacrificed his own life for all of us. The message is one of sacrifice, submission to life's vicissitudes, and rejection of vengeance.
3
Having eight decades behind me, I've seen enough to to convince me that it's the old guys that are most responsible for the dysfunctions of human society. The young ones are just the canon fodder.
There's nothing new about this scold's nonsense, it's just a rehash of fire and brimstone and the prosperity gospel. I haven't seen any of his videos but from his photo he would make good melodrama villain. That may get him an attentive audience for the laughs, but I doubt if he'll get too many converts.
286
I agree totally with Mancuroc, even though I'm younger: only 7 and a half decades.
I think the challenges are both men's and women's and that anyone over 35 should shut up much more often than speak up. The challenges younger generations in much of the world face are rooted in 4 post-19th century phenomena that are now coming to a head: 1 "convenience" 2 "duty" 3 "rest" and 4 "leisure."
1 "convenience" lots of time- and effort-saving devices but no thought as to what the heck to do with the time and effort saved. This leads to boredom.
2 "duty" Historically but not necessarily different for males and females. For males, the end of the draft (all over), with no substitute. Social definitions have changed.
3 "rest" Rest and sleep are sine qua non both physiologically and psychologically. The invention of the electric light changed a lot of the rules of life. Oooops.
4 "leisure" Not to be confused with rest. "Leisure" is a useless or pointless activity that will make someone else richer and you poorer. Lotsa examples in modern life.
I've watched and read some of Peterson's dross. Brooks got it right: "Much of Peterson’s advice sounds to me like vague exhortatory banality." I'd add that he often sounds like Kipling before his son died in war.
3
It's interesting when a prediction is already wrong at the time it is made. I don't mean to mock you, I'm only remarking on such an occurrence.
Contrary to what you have imagined, it would seem that Peterson has become a surrogate father for a generation of fatherless young people. His book, released this week, is already a bestseller.
3
Sorry, I can't resist. "Canon fodder" is my new favorite typo! That's the true realm of Freudian slips. The traditional "cannon fodder" (notice the two n's) is a reference to martial sacrifices to the enemy's forces (Charge of the Light Brigade, for example?).
Canon (one 'n' in the middle) refers to an agreed-upon set of standards. I recognize mancuroc's criticism of Peterson in this regard, but I don't completely buy in to the critique.
2
I hope and pray that you are wrong, and that this twisted sicko is not the biggest influence out there today. I hope his 40 million views are largely from the curious, and not from hurting people truly needing help
Fyi, I know hundreds of straight up decent and normal young men who wouldn’t give this re-packaged macho nonsense the time of day (I am an older woemn who spent 40 years in IT, so I guys of all ages pretty well).
Most men I know don’t even consider blaming women for all their problems, and, in reality, rely without complaint on the support of their wives, mothers, sisters, female friends and girlfriends, as well as their male kindred, just as we females do.
David Brooks, sometimes you come off as being really out of touch with every day people.
Fyi, I know hundreds of straight up decent and normal young men who wouldn’t give this re-packaged macho nonsense the time of day (I am an older woemn who spent 40 years in IT, so I guys of all ages pretty well).
Most men I know don’t even consider blaming women for all their problems, and, in reality, rely without complaint on the support of their wives, mothers, sisters, female friends and girlfriends, as well as their male kindred, just as we females do.
David Brooks, sometimes you come off as being really out of touch with every day people.
702
JBP tells people not to blame others for their problems. I don't think you're very familiar with his ideas. It isn't re-packaged macho nonsense. Its repackaged myth and science drawing from chiefly the christian tradition and clinical psychology, but also taoism, buddhism, russian literature, neursoscience, animal behaviourism, philosopht and more.
21
Sigh..... Brook's article and Peterson's interview was 100% the opposite of placing blame on others, including women.
12
Terro, thank you for giving voice to that general discomfort most of us have whenever confronted with a worldview that challenges our own. But I don't understand why Peterson strikes you, and many others, as a sicko. I wish you would point to something specific. What has this man done or specifically said that his detractors would have us rail against? You seem to suggest Peterson encourages men to blame women (i.e. "Most men I know don't even consider..."). But that's not what Books is reporting, "Your instinct is to whine, to play the victim, to seek vengeance. Peterson tells young men to never do that. Rise above the culture of victimization you see all around you. Stop whining."
As someone evenly "every day," what am I missing?
As someone evenly "every day," what am I missing?
15
You are really, really missing the current moment if you think the mantel of "the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now" belongs to a white man.
492
OK, so who is your candidate?
9
Interesting how you carefully indicate "white man". Why did you leave out "Cis-"?
That aside, curious to know whom you think would be contenders for the title of "most influential public intellectual in the Western world"?
That aside, curious to know whom you think would be contenders for the title of "most influential public intellectual in the Western world"?
17
Last time I checked people don't think with their skin. If you know of a more influential public intellectual I would dearly like to know it's name.
No, really, I'd like to know. I burn through thinkers at quite a rate, and am always looking out for interesting ideas.
No, really, I'd like to know. I burn through thinkers at quite a rate, and am always looking out for interesting ideas.
22
I'm a woman & I think Peterson is brilliant. My daughters introduced him to me. I don't know why Brooks keeps asserting Peterson's intended audience is male. It is emphatically not. His audience is the audience any writer wants--human beings. I must say I don't think Brooks is all that familiar with Peterson's ouvre. Peterson is concerned mostly with how to best live one's life, male or female.
Asserting that the intended audience is male is a way of minimizing or misrepresenting his work, mostly by implying he is part of a male-supremacy backlash movement, vaguely or explicitly anti-feminist & anti-trans. These are not based on facts but instead are assertions with the intent to smear. Radical leftists who have embraced the identity based social Marxist new totalitarianism, are very threatened by Peterson's reasoned individualism, his advocacy for free speech, his logic & depth. Rather than respond to his arguments, just as with Ms. Newman, they seek to prevent folks from even listening to him by smearing him--in this case, an implied sexist. I'm disappointed but not surprised that Brooks echoes this (Brooks being a conformist/establishment figure).
To those who are sure they know all about Peterson's work because others have told you what he is, I urge you to read his book & listen to his podcasts. Agree or disagree on his merits & what he is actually saying, not what you are told to believe of him because he doesn't align himself with the received dogma.
Asserting that the intended audience is male is a way of minimizing or misrepresenting his work, mostly by implying he is part of a male-supremacy backlash movement, vaguely or explicitly anti-feminist & anti-trans. These are not based on facts but instead are assertions with the intent to smear. Radical leftists who have embraced the identity based social Marxist new totalitarianism, are very threatened by Peterson's reasoned individualism, his advocacy for free speech, his logic & depth. Rather than respond to his arguments, just as with Ms. Newman, they seek to prevent folks from even listening to him by smearing him--in this case, an implied sexist. I'm disappointed but not surprised that Brooks echoes this (Brooks being a conformist/establishment figure).
To those who are sure they know all about Peterson's work because others have told you what he is, I urge you to read his book & listen to his podcasts. Agree or disagree on his merits & what he is actually saying, not what you are told to believe of him because he doesn't align himself with the received dogma.
511
Excellent comment. Most people who mouth off about Peterson know nothing about him and have never listened to him.
17
Alright, although a used copy will be purchased to help a book-seller. It will also make this reader look like an erudite to have Peterson's 'oeuvre' in my book shelf and top 'Rembrandt's Eyes' by Simon Shama.
What sounds promising with this new work of Peterson's for one is that if stuck in an elevator, it might be quite informative. As a daughter of Eve, or 'I am Woman', this moment with the author might lead this reader to maturity, and some credit should be given to Carlos Osorio for this photo of Jordan Peterson, taken in Toronto in 2016. Most revealing in many ways.
What sounds promising with this new work of Peterson's for one is that if stuck in an elevator, it might be quite informative. As a daughter of Eve, or 'I am Woman', this moment with the author might lead this reader to maturity, and some credit should be given to Carlos Osorio for this photo of Jordan Peterson, taken in Toronto in 2016. Most revealing in many ways.
1
Yeah, it really isn't his intended audience. Its just the audience he got. He barely intended to get an audience at all.
I think Brooks has tried to be fair. There's so much oversimplification of Peterson's ideas flying around its got to be hard for writers who haven't spent a significant amount of time with him. You and I can see this phenomenon on this very comment section: people are reading Brooks' interpretation as an accurate reflection of Peterson and responding to a mirage, when they would likely actually agree with and learn from the real Peterson.
I think Brooks has tried to be fair. There's so much oversimplification of Peterson's ideas flying around its got to be hard for writers who haven't spent a significant amount of time with him. You and I can see this phenomenon on this very comment section: people are reading Brooks' interpretation as an accurate reflection of Peterson and responding to a mirage, when they would likely actually agree with and learn from the real Peterson.
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Although Peterson rails against "postmodernism", he is a postmodernist himself - the only difference being that he is a right-wing postmodernist.
This is not particularly revelatory - he admits as much in many of his videos, as well as in his infamous with Sam Harris, wherein Harris calmly and comprehensibly corrects and rebuts Peterson on the issue of truth.
Peterson's postmodern authoritarianism appeals to young white men disoriented by their arrival on college campuses. For the first time in their lives they find themselves in an environment where it isn't taken for granted that they are god's gift to the universe. And so they are attracted to a strong father figure - such as Peterson makes himself out to be - to protect them from the uncomfortable questions of women and minorities.
Peterson is the intellectual correlate of Trump. He is Trumpism, cloaked in impressive sounding academic vocabulary.
This is not particularly revelatory - he admits as much in many of his videos, as well as in his infamous with Sam Harris, wherein Harris calmly and comprehensibly corrects and rebuts Peterson on the issue of truth.
Peterson's postmodern authoritarianism appeals to young white men disoriented by their arrival on college campuses. For the first time in their lives they find themselves in an environment where it isn't taken for granted that they are god's gift to the universe. And so they are attracted to a strong father figure - such as Peterson makes himself out to be - to protect them from the uncomfortable questions of women and minorities.
Peterson is the intellectual correlate of Trump. He is Trumpism, cloaked in impressive sounding academic vocabulary.
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Are we living in the same world? Because your description of him seems more like that of MILO and doesn not tally with my experience at all. I would describe him as slightly left leaning. I think there are no living postmodernists.
I am a white man but I didn't need Peterson's ideas when starting Uni, it was actually after I'd completed my degree that his words really began taking a hold for me (I'm a Peterson hipster, I was into watching psychology lectures around 2012) because you kinda come out of Uni and its like 'what now?'. Peterson's ideas can help one answer that question.
Authoritarianism? Inane.
One of the key facet of Trumpism, I would say, is a lack of care or knowledge of the truth, as well as an aversion to intellectualism and elitism. Peterson clearly cares about the truth, is an intellectual to the core and values competence highly.
I am a white man but I didn't need Peterson's ideas when starting Uni, it was actually after I'd completed my degree that his words really began taking a hold for me (I'm a Peterson hipster, I was into watching psychology lectures around 2012) because you kinda come out of Uni and its like 'what now?'. Peterson's ideas can help one answer that question.
Authoritarianism? Inane.
One of the key facet of Trumpism, I would say, is a lack of care or knowledge of the truth, as well as an aversion to intellectualism and elitism. Peterson clearly cares about the truth, is an intellectual to the core and values competence highly.
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Your comment will have a definite meaning when you define what you mean by 'postmodern'.
Peterson is steeped like a forgotten tea-bag in Trumpism, the latter a most ordinary man who has a gift for creating chaos and confusion in governance; opening the door for the barbarians at the gate?
Intellects in America are often regarded as suspect. In 'Dangerous Liaisons', on hearing that these are often stupid, there is a reassuring collaborative sigh of relief in the audience, as we slump with complacency in our seat.
'Life is suffering' reiterates Peterson who might be in need of a jolt of joy, laced with goodness. Now. For the record, I have been reminded by this author to sit up straight with shoulders back, and the petting of cats encountered on my way home has led to being adopted once again by a stray, who rules this cottage like a castle.
A quiet understanding with a train representative from this green valley has been established. He showed me a self-help book that has changed the lives of many; apparently for the better. What do you think, he asked. Whatever makes you happy, I replied.
Although the title of this best-seller and the name of the author remains elusive to memory, I am smiling because he dedicates the above to his cat, 'Anyway'.
'Academic vocabulary' tends to get lost on receiving an astronomical heating bill for instance, and one is introduced to a brilliant tirade of American vernacular swearing.
In the meantime, there is no need to feel threatened by this intelligent young mind. I hope he takes a class in ballroom dancing.
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