The chaos of Jordan Peterson
The chaos of Jordan Peterson
The outspoken Canadian professor has become the chaos and disorder he rallies against
Four years ago, I sat down to read a highly recommended book.
A book that would restore order and discipline in my life. A book that would give me routine, meaning and morality that downtrodden, overlooked young men supposedly lack in a society fuelled by TikTok videos and iced lattes.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos sold over five million global copies reaching over 100 countries, and even has a sequel with the uninspiring title 12 More Rules for Life.
The author is Canadian psychologist Jordan B. Peterson, University of Toronto professor turned YouTube celebrity turned author turned pseudo-father figure turned Daily Wire+ salesman.
From the outset of his YouTube career, Peterson’s grasp of reality has never been complete. A staunch free speech defender, the professor used his to wilfully mischaracterise the purpose of Bill C-16, a law that added gender expression to Canada’s list of protected characteristics.
He declared he would refuse to refer to anyone by their preferred pronouns, even going so far as to claim he would do jail time. The law did not criminalise misgendering, but Peterson’s profound tone and gratuitous embellishment made Bill C-16 akin to a nuclear bombing of free speech.
The fervent libertarian became, in the words of Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson, ‘a kind of Rorschach test’. He was impossible to debate because of his ability to use ‘a lot of words to say almost nothing’.
Peterson’s battle with the concept of normality is embodied in everything down to his diet, which consists of just beef, water and salt. Following this regime, Peterson lost 50lbs (he claims) and told Joe Rogan it cured his gum disease, depression, snoring and eye floaters.
The diet was thought up by Peterson’s 28 year old daughter Mikhaila, who is not a qualified nutritionist, dietician, scientist or doctor. She has no medical qualifications at all, yet sells half-hour sessions on the all-meat diet for the buckshot price of $75 (£56).
Her food blog Don’t Eat That grandly proclaims 'many (if not most) health problems are treatable with diet alone', a statement that would nullify generations of scientific research had it not been plucked straight from the rear of a cow, which as a reminder is the only thing she and her father allow themselves to eat.
If his claim of finding a miracle diet wasn’t superfluous enough, Peterson says when he broke rank and drank apple cider he didn’t sleep for 25 days and had an 'overwhelming sense of impending doom.' Nutritionist Lisa Sasson told The Guardian ‘this is probably the worst diet I’ve ever heard’.
“Peterson may be the closest thing academia has ever had to Paris Hilton. Both use profound but vague language to say a lot of words that carry little meaning. Both make an absurd amount of money for merely existing, thinking and talking.”
Through book tours, speeches, podcasts and merchandise, social media has made an unknown academic a multi-millionaire. Peterson’s Patreon subscription page reportedly generates in excess of $80,000 a month, so why he started plugging statues of his own head at $360 a pop, apart from reasons of Macbeth-level narcissism, is beyond even his most devoted supporters.
Peterson’s latest venture is music. At the age of 59, he’s a late entrant into a saturated market. But his debut single, Wake Up, isn’t even the best song called Wake Up to come out of Canada (that title belongs to Arcade Fire). The ballad is ‘dedicated’ to the professor’s arch-rival, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and is a blatant Pink Floyd rip-off. In the video’s comments section, one viewer noted 'I can already picture the album: “Clean Side of the Room”, whilst another wondered if they were in a 'schizophrenic hallucination'.
The song came into existence as the self-proclaimed ‘freedom’ convoy of Canadian truckers rolled into Canadian capital Ottawa in January protesting vaccine rules. His lyrical waxing was posted with a video that could easily double as a recruitment advert for a cult.
And not even a good cult.
Edited by someone who only discovered PowerPoint transitions three hours ago, it consists of a slideshow of black and white drawings of children interlaced with silent movie-style lyric boards.
Peterson may be the closest thing academia has ever had to Paris Hilton. Both use profound but vague language to say a lot of words that carry little meaning. Both make an absurd amount of money for merely existing, thinking and talking. Both became famous from one distinct moment that reached a global audience, and have remained in the public eye for an unconscionable amount of time.
And, most significantly, both have racked up huge male followings on social media. Ironically, the problem Peterson has spent the last four years attempting to solve - an alleged lack of role models for young men - is incarnated perfectly by the fact he is somehow viewed as the solution. 'In a reasonable world', adds Robinson, 'Peterson would be seen as the kind of tedious crackpot that one hopes not to get seated next to on a train'.
Except over four million people have plonked their eyes and ears in Peterson’s carriage, and are being taken for a ride by a man whose millions have been made by other people’s embellished regurgitations of his ideas.
On their own, Peterson’s works are an undefinable maelstrom of PR guff. His 1999 book Maps of Meaning carries little meaning at all, with passages including 'meaning is manifestation of the divine individual adaptive path'.
His conclusion, that humans turn to archetypes portrayed in myths and legends for cues on morality and meaning, is blindingly obvious. It’s instilled in us as children, at school, and in Disney films. Every once in a while he drops in a stream of inane patter on how the legal system is a barrier to humans 'discovering the potential grandeur of the soul', a bizarre and unfounded concept that is never revisited or justified.
Yet by attempting to simplify the reams of ‘Petersonisms’ into comprehensible sentences, journalists like Cathy Newman have unwittingly played an active role in repackaging him as an anti-feminist, counter-cultural icon. It’s an act he’s all too happy to keep up, so long as the money keeps rolling in.
Take virtually any Peterson interview and his formula is plain to see. In a sit down with Australia’s 60 minutes program, Peterson made the claim that 'if you hire 50% male and 50% female engineers, the quality of the female engineers will be lower.' Peterson’s only evidence is based on the assertion ‘it’s mathematically impossible’. Across STEM, women are outnumbered three to one by male colleagues.
But the interviewer sets Peterson up for a walk off home run by opening her retort 'so you’re saying…'
The 'strawman' question - or putting words in an interviewee’s mouth - has become a blessing in disguise for Peterson. Adversarial enough that it can paint an innocent question as an intellectual challenge. Simple enough for the general viewer to understand.
So what of that mythical formula? First, make a vague, highly qualified yet mildly controversial statement. Say, men and women shouldn’t earn the same wage because women work less overtime. Throw in some psychological jargon about ‘agreeableness’, or ‘multivariate analysis’. Wait for the journalist to ask a clarifying question: so you’re saying women need to work harder to earn the same as men?
Instead of answering the question, hit back. Hit back with Trump style ‘fire and fury’. No, what I mean is that women are often less willing to work significantly more overtime than men, and that’s why they earn less. Some women earn more than men! Does that sound like a pay gap to you?
It doesn’t matter if your theories are based purely in anecdotal notes, pure fiction or Joe Rogan’s ivermectin-induced hallucinations, because your audience will believe you.
I showed an old friend, who was relatively unexposed to Peterson’s sphere of influence, some interview excerpts. 'God, it’s so 2016 4Chan', came the response.
The fringe social media 4Chan is a Freudian id-driven incubator for ultra-virility and misogynistic hatred.
It is the fertile ground on which the incel (involuntary celibate) movement spread, and its de facto deity is Peterson, who has a unique ability to squeeze his entire worldview through the parochial lens of the so-called culture wars. Despite the facade of accountability and discipline, a significant portion of the professor’s rhetoric sets the blame on the opposite sex, and paints men as victims of a society ignoring their plight.
‘The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy’ says Peterson of the male-female dynamic, ‘don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence’.
At its worst you get Alek Missanin. A radicalised incel, the 25-year-old male supremacist drove a van into a crowd in Peterson’s native Toronto, killing 10 and injuring 15. Reddit’s now-banned r/Incels page featured posts including ‘reasons why women are the embodiment of evil’.
‘The cure for that is enforced monogamy’ said Peterson in response, a theory that would placate incels instead of instilling the mental strength he purportedly champions.
The rabbit hole of incel media is radicalising impressionable young men ingesting Peterson’s rhetoric. Whilst the professor does not promote violence or incels, his videos are used as a gateway drug to a belief system that the US Secret Service says has already killed 'dozens'.
I know how impressionable that audience is firsthand. For a while, I too was onboard with JBP. I watched his interviews, his podcasts, read his books and speeches. In the commercialised thought leadership market, Peterson’s increasingly self-cocooned philosophies have detached him from the reality young men actually face, and is sending his audience into dangerous, incel-istic territory.
Peterson’s willingness to shill cuts an increasingly desperate figure lurching to new lows for an audience. Google search data shows his popularity peaked in early 2018, and has declined to just under half its peak.
When I closed the cover on 12 Rules For Life I wish I had known then the mysterious thirteenth rule: If someone plugs a statue of themselves, inadvertently sides with incels, only eats beef, rips off Pink Floyd and overstates the reach of unassuming laws, their life advice isn’t grounded in reality and isn’t worth listening to.