What does the return of Jordan Peterson to the public stage portend? Is it yet another sign of the end-times, or an affirmation of the old truth that a travelling quack should be able to rip off the same town twice?
Peterson, the global scourge of woke through his bestseller 12 Rules of Life ended up, readers may recall, in a coma in Russia having sought miracle medical treatment for pill addiction. Now he appears to have sorted himself out. Again.
Will he be greeted with warmth and welcome by his old friends on the right as he barnstorms around the world once more? For yes, Jordan Peterson has a new book coming out in March, the unironically titled Beyond Order: 12 More Rules of Life. The original 12 Rules of Life, a mass-market book which mixed a variety of vaguely “mindful”/cognitive-behavioural self-help with more portentous reflections on culture, meaning, war and genocide, was a fantastic best-seller, moving five million copies.
Peterson, a psychology professor in Canada, had hitherto been ensconced in the academy, having authored a big theory-of-everything book Maps of Meaning in 1999. 12 Rules For Life has some useful stuff in it but its wild success was largely due to its taking aim at the progressive movement of recent years — in particular the accusations that oppression by race and gender was composed of multiple layers of privilege and micro-aggression in everyday life, such being enjoyed by whites and white males especially.
The justice of pointing out this oppression was overlaid with a degree of gotcha stuff — self-appointed race and gender leaders from middle-class elites making careers off “oppression capital”; trauma as a way of being is generalised; woundedness; brokenness becomes a source of life-meaning.
Peterson’s rejigged lessons from cognitive behavioural therapy, Jung and other sources became popular as a curative to the debilitation of the oppression/trauma/victim model of self.
What started as an author tour gathered pace and became a movement. Its followers were largely young white kids, who felt as squeezed and crushed by life as many others but didn’t have a narrative of oppression to fit it into to — and who were accused of being the oppressors themselves by an identity politics making political capital from division.
The traditional left had largely yielded to identity politics, its leaders taking a share of the political cut. Peterson filled the vacuum created. Kids loved its appeal to a stern self-scrutiny — “stand up straight”; “make your bed in the morning”; “don’t be a victim”; “there’s no such thing as addiction”. His supporters, seen at Peterson events, had an ecstatic, giggly effervescence much like Christian megachurch attendees, the joy of release, of a straightforward answer, and the finding of a tribe.
The political right jumped on the bandwagon, holding up Peterson as a champion against wokeness and victimhood, tying personal autonomy to the Western heritage. True, Peterson could come off a little obsessive at times, for someone who counselled reflectiveness and self-scrutiny.
Some coverage hooked on his diet: he ate only beef, a diet proposed by his (untrained) daughter in a response to an alleged autoimmune condition. Well, fine, it’s a known treatment. He carried shrink-wrapped cold steaks in his pocket for emergencies. Well, uh, OK.
These tics appeared in the numerous interviews Peterson did about self-responsibility. Then the interviews stopped.
And then, nearly two years ago, Peterson vanished.
When he reappeared, the extraordinary, bizarre tale of his travels was revealed to the world. The apostle of self-reliance and no excuses had been addicted to (or physically dependant upon, depending who you asked) benzodiazepines for years, their initial take up for anxiety stemming from the same shadowy autoimmune condition. Thereafter, the account sounds like a National Lampoon cruel humour piece.
When he could not shake the addiction, his daughter took him to an ICU in Russia, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia (possibly from mineral malnutrition), lost motor function and then after another move got COVID-19 in Belgrade.
The root cause of Peterson’s addiction is no joke — trauma brought on by his wife’s cancer diagnosis. But, erm, yeah, the preaching stoicism and self-reliance round the world while popping bennies to deal with a life event (among other matters) is a hell of a thing. How can he show his face again, with this level of implicit deceit and absurdity?
Presumably he will turn it into the very thing he has criticised, the confessional personal journey. The new book is being published by Penguin so the establishment seems along for the ride.
Will the political right come back for the second round, or is their effusive support of Peterson going to be another embarrassing chapter of rightolatry? Janet Albrechtsen praised Peterson for his words of wisdom, and his ability to infuriate the left, Andrew Bolt called him a superstar of the right, and, as we noted last year, Caroline Overington published 15 pieces on him in a two-year period.
Peterson was in a long line of the right’s fallen heroes, from Lord Monckton, the climate denier turned Obama birther truther, to Milo Yiannopoulos, the cool conservative turned man-boy love “advocate”, to the “daddy” Donald Trump himself.
The right falls for one after the other because their politics is a cult of the imaginary. They are afflicted by something that Peterson himself identifies — the slippage of meaning in modern life and the false path of going to war in the name of a single simple truth to restore it.
But their latching onto Peterson took that habit to a meta-level. They followed a guru who re-appeared like a classic ’70s EST-biorhythms crackpot — advocating sober realism, acceptance, and meaning over happiness — while at the same time projecting his manifold neuroses onto the world and running after instant cures.
Peterson’s best move would have been to retreat to the cloister and have a bit of a think for a while. Or forever.
Instead, by coming around again he ensures that his tale is not one of caution but of absurdity. One suspects he has done his dash with troubled and diffident youth, but will the right line up again for more snake-oil?
Their favoured brand is a very strong addiction…
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Well deserved smack-down. Should be titled ‘Rundle DESTROYS Peterson!’
Peterson lost me when he claimed that he didn’t believe in climate change due ‘the type of people who were promoting it’. Okay. Goodbye science. One can only hope that he is hit by a bus after studiously ignoring warning cries from a concerned lefty.
Yeah, I remember watching him talk about that. Very weak.
But (apart from self-interest) this is what motivates the climate-change denying of most conservatives/right-wingers. To them it’s just part of the culture wars. As someone (rightly) said, if the Greens didn’t believe in climate change, then these idiots would.
another great read Guy Rundle, thanks
Couldn’t disagree with the article more, though it is true and slightly weird that ‘the right’, esp. journos at The Aus, seem to have chosen him as a champion of their cause.
He is not. He is above it, and leagues above them. And he is sooo much more of a humanist and all-round better person than the woke and shallow types that criticise him on really spurious points.
This article continues the classic politicizing and debasement of an otherwise thoughtful and extremely intelligent dude. JP is popular precisely because he, by and large, is so much bigger than all the right/left, PC/not-PC BS that fills the ‘newspapers’ (Murdoch and Fairfax press, and Crikey, sadly, is no exception).
Of course, he has been repeatedly dragged back down into the sordid fray, by journos on both ‘sides’, who can’t seem to view the world and the likes of JP in any other terms than, essentially, puerile and narrow left/right terms. Never mind the human condition, what does JP think of unisex toilets… FFS.
Jordan Peterson has soooo much more to offer, not least his years of research and study into social and personality psychology. He is, first and foremost, a research psychologist, and a genuine thinker. I respect the guy a lot, and love his talks on jungian psychology the most. And I’m a progressive… weird, isn’t it?
This progressive classic liberal lefty agrees with you Frank. The reactionary left don’t like having their sacred cows challenged by him and the reactionary right buy into ideas that actually challenge their ideologies too if they were to think about them.
Agree that as a psycholigist he’s one of many that are worth a decent glance.
But as a multidisciplinarian he ties himself into so many loose ended knots that the only minds that can make any sense of him are those of angsty teenage gamer boys filling in the time with YouTube feeds until mum gives the confiscated consol back.
Agree with GR that a post-rehab confessional is about all he’s good for now. He seems like a nice enough chap when on the right meds so i hope he makes a few more bucks – and his bed in the morning! – if he’s still up to it…
It is weird for a progressive to admire Peterson, who talks about “post-modern cultural neo-Marxism” as a threat to civilisation, when there is no such thing, since the term bundles together all the diverse views that Peterson opposes. Only one of his professional publications deals with gender relations but he has an awful lot to say about it, likening makes to order and females to Chaos, which borrows from a Greek origin myth. The analogy is nonsense, as is the suggestion that dominance of males over females is innate, since male lobsters seek “dominance” over female lobsters when they mate. Apart from not seeming to be aware of some species, such as some spiders, where the male spider scuttles off to avoid being eaten by the female after mating, Peterson simply does not recognise that by being social, intelligent, communicating beings, humans have developed cultures that create various relationships between male and female, which individuals adopt more or less strongly, depending on the life histories and personalities.
I fail to see what there is to admire in an academic exploiting some achievement in an academic field to pontificate on human relationships with a melange of trite stuff fluffed up with Indian and Greek myth and moral guidance suitable for other times.
Peterson’s comments regarding post-modernism aside, serotonin is found in lobsters as it is found in primates (i.e. us)! Evolution?
Primates are more closely related to fish or poikilothermic animals generally THAN are poikilothermic animals related to crustaceans.
These amines (serotonin – add dopamine too) are responsible for aggression when attached to neurons. It is the SAME amine and THAT is the point Ian.
For that reason, aggression will never be “socialised” out of primates or any other (higher) vertebrate to say nothing of crustaceans. Higher vertebrates are capable of cooperation AND aggression. That is it in a nutshell.
The R-factor of the brain. Some call it lizard brain.
I’m not sure as to what you mean Tony.
Reptilian brains are quite different to mammalian brains even if something like a neocortex (similar function) is observed in lower vertebrates.
YET the attachment of amines to neurons *IS*universal in animals at or above crustaceans.
Its in brain development between fish and mammal. Evolution can only add to pre-existing. I read that’s the part of the human brain where you find emotionalism and religion.
I see what you mean. Poikilothermic animals (e.g fish) are considered lower vertebrates.
Slightly more accurately, evolution is concerned with ‘modifying’ rather than ‘adding’; a subtle difference. ‘adding’ has a wiff of Lamarck about it.
How to explain mammalian brains, where existing reptilian sections weren’t just expanded. And then the uniqueness of human brains where areas exist which don’t in other mammals.
“… as to…”? Are you taking the piss out of those who use “as to” as a universal and utterly unnecessary preposition?
O dear o dear : consult any useful books of English etymology and you will find that “as to” is (1) correct and (2) been in existence since the mid 14 century.
Not convinced? Read Marlowe or Joseph Addison. While you are so engaged search for a split infinitive or where an adjective preceeds a verb in their writing. Try Shakespeare come to that.
To adopt your motto, I’d bet a slab that not 1 in 10 (to be generous) here, including the staff, could read a page of Steele or Addison in their hey-day and be able to precis.
The punctuation alone would defeat most, never mind the sub clauses, allusions, digressions and general erudition used as an épée to puncture pomposity.
As to punctuation try the signage in New York. More generally, a comma seems to serve three functions nowadays. Closer to home, I’ve seen references such as “me and Harry” in corporate reports.
“Me & him” is now the norm on RN.
Geesus!
If it’s as in “do you believe me and him?” then all is well.
No, for 3 reasons.
1) the sentence is ungrammatical English, with incomplete syntax.
2) even given the execrable common excuse of ‘common usage’, lacking “what we said” or similar – one cannot ‘believe a physical reality/thing/item’, cf Bishop Berkley or climate change – – it should be “believe him & me” (may my hands not suffer terminal palsy for writing that).
3) in Standard English the understood phrase would be connected to the subject believing a tale, or similar, which would have to be have been told by using the nominative pronouns HE & I – “him”& “me” being accusative pronouns.
There are other reasons too arcane to discuss here.
Other than to state that the nominative refers to the subject and the accusative refers to object for the Latin-deprived generations; Slavic speekers excepted.
Remind me to ask Peter S. a question (regarding his alleged reading) concerning the declensions of some Greek or Latin verbs that will change the sense of a given verse.
My kind of writer.
I’m not sure what you mean, Ras.
(See what I did there?)
The expression is a common acknowledgement of acceptance but preferring disbelief. I’m happy to help with any other questions.
Get a room.
Interesting, the few I know who praise Peterson either lack education and/or skills of critical literacy but have a need for belief or to worship a guru or preacher who supposedly reflects their culture, views or values; observing a mainstream religion could be more plausible but looks like servitude for believers.
The same also praise Peterson for his fluency or presentation skills, yet he has nothing special, let alone grounded in science process and academic integrity, to say, except a mish mash of logical sounding words, for commercial reasons that are attractive to those on the right. He may get the pathos but the logos and ethos are lacking…..
No wonder he gets wall to wall promotion form NewsCorp catering to its constituency of subscribers and MPs who demand bias confirmation through junk science masquerading as academic and empirical, presented by a political agitprop pop star (bit like Q&A panellists, a form of circus of feelings and sentiments).
Appreciate your response. It is genuinely interesting that there is such a divide around JP… I can’t quite get my head around it, though I imagine it depends a great deal on exactly what you’ve seen of him… i.e. either click-bait clips on YouTube, out-of-context snippets in Tweets or promos in The Aus, or his earlier recorded lectures in social psychology, for example.
Not sure what to say, but it would be interesting to talk. It’s definitely a stretch to suggest that all fans of his necessarily worship him as a guru – some few must do presumably, but that’s a whole different level of fervour.
I also think, generally, people don’t cut him much slack. Can you imagine having thousands of hours of your opinions and thoughts recorded, in text and video, then made available to everyone (to edit and cut at will), and not ever erring, saying something regrettable, or being deliberately baited and provoked into saying things you might otherwise not? Anyone who had his level of exposure could, and would, be easily torn to shreds, and hated by millions. You and me both, for instance. I reckon we’d be canceled in a matter of hours.
He’s also just of a different caliber, and more articulate, than the run-of-the-mill opinionated types you’ll otherwise hear from in the trash, trite commercial media. That’s not a big claim to make.
Cannot believe you read Crikey.
Such is a “view” Guy but there is rather more than what you (in simpleminded fashion) convey.
I ought to thank you for, more or less, explaining the reason for a colleague of yours who attempted to ridicule
Peterson’s “Twelve Rules ..” some years ago. Overall, I considered her articles rather good but I was surprised
at the ad hominem directed towards Peterson (your article not being all that far away either!).
What I liked about boarding school and the army (subsequently) was the “make a bed at 6am to a high standard; stand straight; don’t complain; victim-hood is for losers; do your job well irrespective of the conditions;
compulsiveness is only in the mind so control one’s mind and one controls one’s life ..” (caveats from Marx excepted).
Secondly, a father of a mate offered an impromptu lecture on the perils of smoking (much more information is available nowadays) to three or four of us as middle teenagers at the end of the 60s. During the admonishment to smoking the conscientious father must have had at least two cigarettes in our presence over the 30 or 35 minute chat.
As to hypocrisy, my parents were so proficient in the practice I suspect (in fairness) that they seldom realised that they were engaging in the activity. An idiot may well be aware of the correct value for the speed of light or any other constant contained in a text book of physics. On account of their being an idiot does not, necessarily imply an incorrect answer.
As Popper pointed out, some decades ago, we only need to know what (at least in principal) would falsify the claim being offered. Freddie Ayer said much the same thing.
True enough, the Right attempted to exploit Peterson in the same way that the Greens exploited a Swedish school girl with (even for her age) a below-average comprehension of the physics (and chem) of climate change. As with the NZ PM the adherents became infantile.
Peterson’s “tale” remains one of caution; his hypocrisy notwithstanding; indeed his hypocrisy is (I would have thought from you – but less so from others) beside the point unless you’re inclined to a “point-score”.
Associating Peterson with Trump is disingenuous to say the least.
Lastly, rather than “jump the gun” let’s take a look at the content of the forthcoming book and discuss implications from there. The polarisation of USA politics has an origin (would you agree?) and is wafting to Australia.
I’ll consider this article, given that it is Friday, as a 10pm rant in a student bar from a student who has been
a patron for six hours. You may come to think better of it tomorrow morning (recalling Churchill’s quip to Bessie
Braddock).
(I can’t find reliable evidence for the clam of Frank Dee)
There’s a powerful current on the internet, a mediated and reverberated facet of normal people made simultaneously bland and monstrous, where people look for a hero then discard them for having any flaws at all. The only lasting faces we see are mutant horrors like Allen Jones.
Power has given us its stooges and minions, potato-faced liars and rabble-rousers, when an appreciation for quality should by now have rendered to us some array of great thinkers to look to.
I’m sure there are great thinkers out there, and they leave us poorer when they die, but they don’t advance as a wall of angry fear and they persist despite lacking the ability to declare things they know to be untrue.
HL Mencken (more or less forgotten but Alistair Cooke was a fan) said much the same thing.
Many here might wonder why you would cite an English cricketer.
Some decades ago an English MP, when hearing the name Nijinsky recalled a racehorse rather than Vaslav Nijinsky.
Another type, political and/or media grifters of the right; Oz has produced many.
Speaking of pills – can’t wait until they invent one for verbosity.
E, any chance you can skip the non-scenic route and take us straight to your destination? Or do you just enjoy driving around in your own circles like your mate JP?
At least you’ve given us a taste of what to expect when his new books hits the online shelves… more self righteous certitude and cryptic babble… next!
Context is everything Ward.
The 12 Rules would eliminate 1st world social problems (including events with parliamentary staffers) but most have not the discipline or (see BK today) the inclination to adopt them. Such is life as a similarly undisciplined felon put it 140 years ago.
Ward, Kyle is unfortunately addicted to circularity which often deteriorates into vorticularity.
He rarely has a destination – that’s the problem. Some of us have attempted to pin him down to actually state what his point is, but he garrulously, tangentially and consistently refuses, instead spreading cryptic references around like confetti to make himself sound knowledgeable.
Knowledge is fine, but it’s pretty useless without a concomitant ability to think clearly and critically.
Supercilious
Do you have a problem with eyebrows?
10 down votes. Is that a record?
I believe that my record is a miserable 27 down-votes; not that I pay that much attention Tony.
Down-voting and one line bon mots are all too easy. Occasionally I am challenged but more so by revered mantra (Australia was invaded or flat wages exists in Australia only etc.) than by counter analysis.
I don’t recall anyone having the background to criticise a reference that I have offered.
I suspect that a post with a number of down-votes is read from morbid curiosity in any event. A former CEO of Bethlehem Steel remarked, after a major industrial accident, “there is no such thing as bad publicity”!
** as evidenced here.
“not that I pay much attention”
Oh Erasmus, you do make me laugh. You are the very apotheosis of counting how many down votes you receive.
In all truthfulness, DB, I do not know my record of down-votes. However, should I receive a 100 down-votes for this post I will likely remember it.
I’m delighted that I manage to cheer you up.
*Down votes = units of narcissistic supply.
I would use that on zoo tube but they got rid of down voted a some years back.
I use my clams in chowder.
By the way, Erasmus, if you google JP plus climate change, you get over five million hits. I’m sure some of them are reliable.
Such is the problem isn’t, Frank, it but in fact inference does not equate to evidence. Then the motivation for posting, as with Cky, that has to be taken into account.
Scanning Scientific American or (hold on) New Scientist yields nothing: at least nothing that I encountered.
From ancient history… OK 2018… but for today’s Mayfly mentality that is an eternity.