But, Peterson might argue, aren`t left-wing political parties and Western society in general dominated by relativism and nihilism, the harmful postmodern doctrines that there is no reality or truth, and that all beliefs – no matter how monstrous they may be – are just as valid as the others? Are they? Real? There are postmodern thinkers who claim – somewhat problematically – that it is true that there is no truth and that all value systems are relative. But are these views prevalent on the political left? It seems to me that what has to do with climate change, implicit bias testing and gender pay gaps, the contemporary left is very energetic Team Rationalism, Team Science, Team Reality-is-Real and Team Aghast on alternative facts and fake news on the right. The great duality in 12 Rules of Life is the contrast between order and chaos. The purpose of the rules, as the subtitle says, is to provide “an antidote to chaos.” Policing is at the heart of Peterson`s worldview. Order is truth. It is singular and masculine. Chaos is the “eternal feminine,” a hazy Jungian formulation that puts the author in an uncomfortable position to promote a practical textbook to suppress the feminine principle. He obscures this by talking about yin and yang and “extended dualities,” but if chaos is actually the “possibility, growth, and adventure” he sometimes remembers for squats, it`s clear that he`s mostly concerned with keeping him at bay. I wanted to make Article 6 perfect to prove that I can do something right. I spent a week trying to get my house in perfect order. It was good timing.
I had just moved and was still unpacking my apartment. I can confirm Peterson`s claim that if your life is a mess, you`ll be less equipped to deal with everything else. Every time I walked through the door and saw all the boxes, I was filled with a depressing feeling of fear. Sandra told me that she believes modern feminism “really spoils women.” She thinks we`ve thrown all the traditional rules and gender roles overboard, but we haven`t built a viable replacement. Downie: One thing that is certainly at the heart of the book is telling people (especially men) that life is hard and needs to be brought together. This, perhaps tangentially, reminds me of the phenomena of “hoarding dreams” and “dismantling” as highlighted by scientists such as Richard Reeves and Robert Putnam and, in a rare moment of helpfulness, Charles Murray. The fact that there are whole swathes of our generation that benefit from the fact that they already know this information about how to improve your life, and another whole squadron that is left behind, character and life building because they don`t. And they have to rely on Jordan Peterson. This trend was even more pronounced in his live lecture. Basically, every line, every piece of advice he gave was supported by a verse from the Bible. At one point, he quoted the Gospel of Matthew: “Knock and the door will be open to you” – and said, “This is how life REALLY works” – and basically looked at the crowd and dared to disagree. Peterson`s strict tutor character probably works well in a clinical setting where he likely encounters damaged people who need an authority figure who can provide an external source of order and stability.
Most of its rules have to do with personal responsibility and making the kind of life choices that allow a person to function effectively in the world. We must choose our friends wisely, discipline our children with love, respect the wisdom of tradition, etc. He believes in building from small personal decisions to the outside world to broader social and political issues. Don`t blame capitalism, the radical left, or the injustice of your enemies. Don`t reorganize the state until you`ve ordered your own experiment. Have a little humility. If you can`t bring peace to your own home, how dare you run a city? I would say that before I took his book and read only “about” Jordan Peterson, I was prone to skepticism about his motivations and his compatriots. He`s loved by a lot of characters I`d definitely call alt-right – Gavin McInnes, Mike Cernovich, that kind of guy. And he befriends some kind of old provocateur like Ben Shapiro – people who define themselves as part of the “intellectual dark web,” as if it were intellectual to make stupid statements about how white men are oppressed. Anyway. He does not keep good company. But I think his personal work and statements are generally benign, in many cases even useful, because they push young people to seek a more structured and meaningful life.
What do you think? Emba: For my part, I`ve noticed that it promotes certain narratives that are false, but not necessarily “alt-right.” There was a tangent he continued about a future study of Holland, and how the act of creating a life plan erased differences in performance between men of different races in a college. He went on to extrapolate that “people say that structural, societal and racial issues hold people back, but of course, psychological exercise can erase the difference.” Emba: I think we may both be lucky that, although our backgrounds are different, we both come from relatively stable families with close relatives and adults who have instilled these “rules” from an early age. Thus, Peterson`s gospel does not seem new to us. Also a fact: Life is an endless series of ruthless domination competitions in which the strong triumph and access fertile and desirable women and the weak, and do not subjugate them. You can prevail in these evolutionary struggles, keep chaos at bay, and put your life in order by following the ideas found in the great literature – Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, Milton – and the Bible. Especially the Bible, which is the basis of Western civilization, which contains the coded wisdom of countless generations. However, his stories are enigmatic and need to be carefully unraveled: Fortunately, Peterson`s biblical deconstructions still fit perfectly with his unique Nietzsche-Taoist-Darwin color worldview, almost as if a treasure trove of edited and poorly translated Bronze Age folk tales could be interpreted as literally meaning everything. You see, we learn in the book of Genesis that God created a limited space known as Eden, which means “well-watered place” in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. He created Adam and Eve who were naked and not ashamed of it, so they didn`t trust themselves. A snake appeared. Thus, paradise symbolizes the order and chaos of snakes, and this represents the dichotomy of the Taoist totality. The serpent also symbolizes the eternal human inclination to evil, and even God cannot create a limited space that excludes this.
The snake is able to deceive Eva, and this may be the reason why women are more protective, confident, anxious and nervous than men. She eats the apple from the tree of life and becomes self-aware. Then she asks Adam to eat the apple, symbolizing how women have made men confident “since the dawn of time,” mostly by rejecting them. Moreover, the creature in the story is a snake because the human vision evolved to recognize snakes, so they gave us the vision of God, and that is why Mary, the eternal archetypal mother, is depicted in Renaissance art holding the Christ Child in the air, away from snakes. Adam and Eve became aware of their nakedness to protect their egos because they felt unworthy to stand before God, because “beauty shames the ugly. Strength shames the weak. Death shames the living – and the ideal shames us all. Downie: Especially the genre aspect is not so surprising after reading his book. As a young man, I am used to “life coaching books” that address me in a passive sense (i.e. nothing can be universal advice without referring to young men). But it was the first time in years that I felt that the “life council” was addressed positively to me. And people are reacting to it.
This aspect of Peterson`s work is far more sympathetic than his ill-informed and frankly harmful policies – especially since some of his cardinal rules, such as “Tell the Truth,” are moral commandments that are perfectly good to keep. Rule 8 is to tell the truth, and the truth is that I felt more and more apathetic about it all. The most tangible rules seemed absurdly obvious to me. Clean your home. Don`t compare yourself to others. Stand upright. Some of this is useful, but I didn`t understand how it can be seen as life-changing advice. (Rule 12 is to pet cats when you meet them on the street, which is so simple that I couldn`t think of a single thing to write.
Peterson tries to dress him up by saying that playing with animals reminds us that “the miracle of being could compensate for the inexorable suffering that accompanies it,” but I couldn`t be fooled into thinking it was profound.) Peterson`s argument begins with a strong condemnation of Marxism. Human society, like all animal kingdoms, is defined in Peterson`s mind by certain biological truths – including the reality that some people are inherently more gifted than others, and that life will always bring suffering.
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