He is also an example of the type of person who fetishizes concepts and objects; a "truth fetishist" or emissary of mystically ordained order, opposing the forces of 'chaos and decay' represented in his worldview by "leftist academics"; "Trans-activism"; and "cultural Marxism".
This is particularly obvious in his interviews when he speaks about Feminism, Post-Modernism, and the aforementioned subjects, drawing a vague conception of each signifier as inherently laden with negative characteristics, conducive to totalitarian mass murder. All this zealous opposition to, & treating of "leftist politics" as 'general truths emerging out of the void' really shows, -besides his unwillingness to study these things in their concrete particularity,- is an animosity and emotional bias against them that seems quite incongruous beside his impassioned pleas for maturity, empathy and understanding.
Although demonstrating open biases Dr Peterson also makes a considerable show of impartiality, demonstrating empiricism, factual accuracy, and a usually measured demeanor as though his message is higher than petty political disagreements, the inference of course is that people who are mature, responsible, informed & "individuated" adults, share similar political views to his own, find the same things as he does to be distasteful. He has found much success with this technique in the media and against his opponents, people's drive to attribute to him a malign or nefarious influence, ie by classifying him a Nazi or Fascist, mis-characterizing his views in order to more easily dismiss and oppose them, follows a similar methodology to his own regarding "the Left", enabling him to play a game of undermining, and resisting reductive attempts to define him according to their political biases, creating the impression of him being a rock, battered but unmoved in a sea of confusion. This was particularly evident in his appearance with Cathy Newman on Channel 4, where the underlying conception of women as emotional, impetuous in need of a stern masculine authority, which Ms Newman ostensibly tried to oppose, was confirmed in the febrile manner she approached the task. In this case & those like it, what he says, the substance, is less influential to his audience than the style, the form rather than the content conveys his meaning, the affirmation of a particular type of masculinity.
Through his empirically sound, biological and psychological attacks on various ideas attributed to modern leftist culture, and his certainty in their worth, he can attract support while avoiding scrutiny of his own position, which remains obscure and unsubstantiated while underpinning the selection of his various antipathies. This is the ambiguous space people try to fill by drawing the inference that he harbors at least sympathies with fascist & nazi ideology. Superficially, he is provoked by compassion for humanity as all truth fetishist's are, for the fundamental principle of the individual and a fear that this concept is under threat and attack, but in these convictions his concepts are also undeniably coloured by a particular ideological framework, one that robs the individual of their ability to define their own concepts, or escape those hierarchically, or traditionally bestowed upon us. He demonstrates an almost pathological fear of "the collective" and emerging forms of collectivism, while enjoying popularity in all social forms of media, socialized medicine in Canada & writing self help books, the apparent goal of which is to assist in a healthier assimilation of maladjusted young men, into a collective of self absorbed, consumerist units.
Baring this in mind I thought it wise to read a bit of his first book, in order to not do him the same disservice he has done me as a post-modern, Marxist-Feminist admirer of the works of "the most evil man of the 20th century, Jacques Derrida". It was no surprise having also read the work of Wilhelm Reich, Freud & Melanie Klein on the propagation and development of authoritarian personalities, to learn from Dr Peterson on the first pages, that: "Christian morality permeated our household, conditioning our expectations and interpersonal responses, in the most intimate of manners....When I grew up, after all, most people still attended church; furthermore, all the rules
and expectations that made up middle-class society were Judeo-Christian in nature. Even the increasing number of those who could not tolerate formal ritual and belief still implicitly accepted – still acted out – the rules that made up the Christian game."
He "abandoned" the traditions which supported him through childhood when he reached his late teens, and began to look at the world exterior to religious dogmatis, outside the security of the family home, though it's apparent in his concerns of the time, that much of his gaze was still coloured by the religious lens that had been nurtured in this matrix. This led him to some pretty heavy questions about the Cold War, and Holocaust, as he says; "how did evil – particularly group-fostered evil – come to play its role in the world?"
Perhaps Freud would here interrogate the accuracy of this memory, it just seems too perfect, too ideal, is this a screen memory and if so what is it hiding? In Hegel we find a suggestion of an answer; the realization, that evil is the gaze itself that perceives evil everywhere around it, separates itself from the social whole it aims to criticize. The principle of cognition, of knowing good and evil, of judging and excluding oneself from the matter judged, (a literal Gnostic principle) is the story of Adam, Eve and the Serpent, being "cast out of the garden".
"Has any one ever clearly understood the celebrated story at the beginning of the Bible--of God's mortal terror of science?... No one, in fact, has understood it...So it was a young Jordan escaped the garden, with a healthy dislike of the "incomprehensible, if not clearly absurd" Christian tenets, and a dualistic framework of universal war between good and evil to accompany his rudimentary understanding of global politics, and it wasn't long before he found a means of expressing his developing sense of justice and order...
It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge.--What happened? The old God was seized by mortal terror. Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to himself; science makes men godlike--it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!" [1]
"my nascent concern with questions of moral justice found immediate resolution. I started working as a volunteer for a mildly socialist political party, and adopted the party line."
A trend is beginning to emerge early on, towards the rejection of collectivism, indicating how successful and long lasting "Christian morality, conditioning our expectations and interpersonal responses" can be, but what greater means of transcending a teleological morality based ideology, than by adopting a superficially secular version of the same thing?
"Economic injustice was the root of all evil...Doubt vanished; my role was clear... I turned, in consequence, to dreams of political utopia, and personal power. "[2] This is in no way the inevitable effect of "volunteering for a mildly socialist political party", but it was the effect for him, & appears also to have been the effect of governing a Socialist political party, on Brother Joseph Dzhugashvili of the Georgian Capuchin seminary, who shared a similarly religious upbringing. It certainly also seems to be the effect of his current popularity. Infact, we might wonder whether the dreams of "political utopia and personal power" ever really left Dr Peterson?
The middle class, Christian upbringing was apparently still firmly entrenched at this point, though expressed through socialist political organizations, and as a married father of two who describes himself as a Conservative and a Christian, i'm intrigued as i read on, to learn if it ever left him.
"I had attended several left-wing party congresses, as a student politician and active party-worker. I
hoped to emulate the socialist leaders. The left wing had a long and honorable history in Canada, and attracted some truly competent and caring people. However, I could not generate much respect for the numerous low-level party activists I encountered at these meetings. They seemed to live to complain: had no career, frequently; no family, no completed education – nothing but ideology. They were peevish, irritable, and little, in every sense of the word. I was faced, in consequence, with the mirror image of the problem I encountered on the college board: I could not admire many of the individuals who believed the same things I did."[3]
The boardroom incident and the candid way he describes his values, as being more aligned with the board of Governers, than his student comrades, highlights not only the level to which the young Peterson's socialism extended, but how it must therefore have functioned as a means for him of aligning his egoic consciousness, with the religious morality internalized from birth. It certainly still functions this way among many in the left, perhaps who had less conformist/conservative upbringings or congregations than the young Jordan, or developed alternative values to his in other ways.
In an understandable state of "existential confusion" during his first stay at college, he reads a copy of Orwell's "Road to Wigan Pier", given to him by an "insightful cynic" who had taken it upon himself to dispel young Jordan of his rudimentary attraction to socialism. After introducing the dichotomy he remembers existing in his 17-18 year old mind, and building the tension throughout the opening chapter with repeated allusions to the collective, i perceive the narrative assuming a bit of speed as he unveils the big development about to occur: "This book finally undermined me – not only my socialist ideology, but my faith in ideological stances themselves."
"Orwell described the great flaw of socialism, and the reason for its frequent failure to attract and maintain democratic power (at least in Britain). Orwell said, essentially, that socialists did not really like the poor. They merely hated the rich. His idea struck home instantly. Socialist ideology served to mask resentment and hatred, bred by failure. Many of the party activists I had encountered were using the ideals of social justice, to rationalize their pursuit of personal revenge.
Whose fault was it, that I was poor or uneducated and unadmired? Obviously – the fault of the rich, well-schooled and respected. How convenient, then, that the demands of revenge and abstract justice dovetailed! It was only right to obtain recompense from those more fortunate than me."
This seems slightly disingenuous, and perhaps again veers into the kind of space where you become suspected of constructing a facile narrative designed merely to convey this closing message. Say we accept his recollections of the thoughts of his 17-18 yr old self as accurate, he himself admitted he did not feel this sense of resentment, anger or hatred towards his social superiors, but rather one of docile respect and admiration. Having encountered socialists practicing law, medicine and assorted "respectable" professions, I think it's safe to assume that his student comrades would also conduct themselves with proper manners, or in a similarly sycophantic way as him in their encounters with faculty or social superiors.
So what then are we to infer from this process as described by Peterson, is it anything more than what a socialist would call building class consciousness, affirming a group identity in antithesis to one you experience as opposed? Is he perhaps looking back from a position of considerable understanding, to what were potentially some fairly flippant, superficial remarks and reading more into their individual motivations than what there likely was?
What is this idle chatter he finds so repugnant, besides a vulgar expression of the antagonism described by Freud in Chapter 2 of "Future of an Illusion":
"If a culture has not got beyond the stage in which the satisfaction of one group of it's members necessarily involves the suppression of another, perhaps the majority -and this is the case in all modern cultures,-it is intelligible that these suppressed classes should develop an intense hostility to the culture; a culture, whose existence they make possible by their labour, but in whose resources they have too small a share."
This is not to even begin getting into analysis of what part, neuroses, resentment, rage, hatred, and revenge can play in the attainment of commercial or academic success, it would be foolish to suggest that there aren't any "successful" people who are motivated by a deeply felt hatred and fear, it may even be postulated, though unlike Jordan I do not have a masterly command and awareness of recent scientific research, that perhaps the kind of people who Jordan describes positively, who he identifies as "well (or at least practically) educated, pragmatic, confident, outspoken; they had all accomplished something worthwhile and difficult etc," are more motivated by jealousy, hatred, anger, resentment, than left wing people who work pretty tough jobs and long hours in the care, hospitality and catering industries, with only the occasional night out to look forward to? He clearly does not limit his assumptions to one side of his ingrained religious and class values.
Despite the described trajectory towards an individual rejection of ideologies and beliefs, we see the remnants of the Christian slave morality still inherent to his recollected mindstate, alluding above to at least 2 of the 7 deadly sins, before informing us; "It was not socialist ideology that posed the problem, then – but ideology, as such. Ideology divided the world up simplistically into those who thought and acted properly, and those who did not. Ideology enabled the believer to hide from his own unpleasant and inadmissible fantasies and wishes."
It becomes apparent at this point in the narrative, or indeed his youth that Jordan still retained his own simplistic, Manichean conception of reality to the point whereby he couldn't discern the myriad ways in which society, or this internalized ideology had shaped his world view. Hopefully more on that in the next entry.
Did he imagine when he wrote this he would nearly 20 years later be writing self help books in order to change the world and society by first "improving" the individual?
" Anyone who
was out to change the world by changing others was to
be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such
a position were too great to be resisted."
_______
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, Antichrist, Section 48
[2] pg 8 "Economic injustice was at the root of all evil, as far as I was concerned. Such injustice could be rectified, as a consequence of the re-arrangement of social organizations. I could play a part in that admirable revolution, carrying out my ideological beliefs. Doubt vanished; my role was clear. Looking back, I am amazed at how stereotypical my actions –reactions – really were. I could not rationally accept the premises of religion – not as I understood them. I turned, in consequence, to dreams of political utopia, and personal power. The same ideological trap caught millions of others, in recent centuries – caught and killed millions."
[3] "The board was composed of politically and ideologically conservative people: lawyers, doctors, and businessmen. They were all well (or at least practically) educated, pragmatic, confident, outspoken; they had all accomplished something worthwhile and difficult.I could not help but admire them, even though I did not share their political stance. I found the fact of my admiration unsettling."
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