Jordan Peterson may be the only clinical psychologist who
believes that psychology is subordinate to philosophy and the one thing that
psychology and philosophy both genuflect before is story. Story, or myth,
predates religion and is, in fact, as old as language itself.
In his earlier book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of
Belief, Peterson connects the stories we share with our earliest ancestors with
modern knowledge of behavior and the mind. It’s a textbook for his popular
University of Toronto courses.
The one-time dish washer and mill worker spent nearly 20 years
at the University before garnering international attention. In September 2016,
Peterson released a couple of videos opposing an amendment to the Canadian
Human Rights Act which he contended could send someone to jail for refusing to
use a made-up gender identity pronoun. Peterson went on to testify before the
Canadian Senate, and has emerged as a foremost critic of postmodernism on North
American campuses.
Postmodernism is the “new skin of communism,” In Peterson’s
view. The ideology has been so thoroughly discredited from an economic
standpoint that those who still advocate for it, for either political or
emotional reasons, have resorted to attacking the very process in which
something can be discredited—reason and debate. At the same time they have
worked to change the face of oppression away from those living in poverty
toward individuals who don’t look or act like those who hold most of the
positions of power and authority in Western society.
Peterson’s classroom is now the entire globe. Millions are
watching his lectures and other videos on YouTube. For this new and greater
audience, a more accessible, more affordable compendium than Maps of Meaning
was called for.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is more
affordable for sure, but only slightly more accessible. Part self-help book,
part memoir, part Maps for the masses, it’s organized sprawlingly. Rule 2
(Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping), for example,
opens with a discussion of biblical texts only addressing the lesson at hand at
the very end.
In Rule 3 (Make friends with people who want the best for you),
Peterson tells the reader about some of his experiences with troubled boys growing
up in brutally cold, Fairview, Alberta. This is a compelling section offered as
a setup, only the point at the end seems slightly off. We should not make or
stay friends will people who do not want the best for themselves.
For those stuck in a downward spiral, however, Peterson serves
up some simple but potent solutions. “Wake up at a consistent time…eat a fat
and protein heavy breakfast,” and “attend to your posture. Quit drooping and
hunching around.”
Yet the overall tone is fairly downbeat. His purpose is less to
build one up and more to keep one in check. “Who are you?” he asks in
connection to Rule 4 (Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who
someone else is today). “You think you know, but maybe you don’t. You are
neither your own master, nor your own slave. You cannot easily tell yourself
what to do and compel your own obedience.”
In Rule 6, (Set your house in perfect order before you criticize
the world) he advises “Life is in truth very hard. Everyone is destined for
pain and slated for destruction. Sometimes suffering is clearly the result of
willful blindness, poor decision making and malevolence…But human control is
limited. Susceptibility to despair, disease, aging and death is universal.”
The narrative and advice becomes more inspiring, however, in the
book’s final chapter. Those who’ve stuck with it are well rewarded.
Peterson’s great insight, criticism of postmodernism aside, is
that story is lifeforce. The individual needs a personal story consistent with
a larger societal narrative. These together keep him moving forward, learning
and growing and taking on responsibility. The lesson is directed equally at
those too single-mindedly focusing on self-actualization, as those too prone to
sulking and complaining.
Peterson is what might be called a cultural Christian. He won’t
tell you that the stories of the Bible are true, only that they are important
to read and understand. “The great myths and religious stories of the past,” he
explains, “particularly those derived from an earlier, oral tradition, were
moral in their intent, rather than descriptive. Thus they did not concern
themselves with what the world was, as a scientist might have it, but with how
a human being should act.”
It’s a philosophy any Rotarian would embrace. He writes, “In my
own periods of darkness, in the underworld of the soul, I find myself
frequently overcome and amazed by the ability of people to befriend each other,
to love their intimate partners and parents and children, and to do what they
must to keep the machinery of the world running.”
In a fascinating two-hour debate with neuroscientist Sam Harris
over the primacy of morality over science, Peterson needlessly faltered. Bogged
down in semantics over the meaning of “true” he failed to expose the obvious
flaw in Harris’s view that science precedes morality, which is that science,
with examples from history and the present is often corrupted. We should
question the findings of academics who profit from either falsifying data or
not looking at new evidence.
Peterson writes as he speaks, a style which might be called
professorese. It’s an unapologetically wordy, borderline
stream-of-consciousness which at times trades clarity and brevity for
trance-inducing rhythm.
Peterson’s critique of postmodernism on college campuses may
just as well be a criticism of college itself. Following the controversy at the
University of Toronto he has been on sabbatical and has stated publicly that he
is not sure when, if, or how he will lecture again.
“I had to get my act back together after all these things
happened,” he said in a recent interview with Jocko Willink. “I told them [the
university] look I’m going to be much better if I take this year and do what is
necessary for this book that’s coming out and re-conceptualize what I’m going
to be teaching.
“I have all these lectures recorded on YouTube. There are three
years of some of them online. It’s not obvious to me why I should do them
again. I have to rethink what I’ve been doing as a lecturer. With YouTube you
can do something new, like this biblical series I’ve been doing. You can have
it out to 100,000 people in one day.
“I like to do lectures about things I’m still learning about.
It’s hard to do that at a university because you have to have an evaluation
structure. People have to know what to expect. It has to be preplanned. That’s
not so good if you want to do something that’s novel. So I have a lot of
thinking to do and don’t know what’s going to happen this next year.
“People are ready for a message that’s not all freedom and
rights we have been walking down that road for 60 years. Freedom doesn’t give
life meaning. Responsibility is what gives life meaning.”
–Charles Stampul, Founder, Harrier Young Adult Business Program,
Author, Peaceful Teaching: Promoting Voluntary Learning Within The Compulsory
School System
Reprinted from Amazon.com.