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Peterson is Canadian and Professor of Psychology at Toronto University. I vaguely heard of him a few months ago when my attention was drawn to a YouTube clip of him being challenged by a number of transgender students for refusing to use their preferred pronouns. You might ask, what's so remarkable about this? Well, for transgender people this is now mandated by the Canadian Government's Bill C-16 and Peterson sees this as an assault on free speech.
I had forgotten about him until about a month ago - he was interviewed on Channel 4 in the UK and he challenged the interviewer, Cathy Newman, for her incorrect interpretation of the gender pay gap and patriarchy. She admitted on air that it was a "gotcha" moment when he rebuffed her arguments. Since then he has become a free speech celebrity and his latest book 12 Rules for Life: An antidote to Chaos is number one on the best seller list in the US and Britain, even outselling Fire and Fury, the exposition of the Trump White House by Michael Wolff.
Why is Peterson - previously almost unheard of in Europe - now such a hit? He writes very clearly and offers basic advice such as "Make friends with people who want the best for you", or "Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't" or "Be precise in your speech". This may seem like basic and anodyne stuff, but from Peterson's pen and lips it is told in the form of stories and tales that is compelling in its style and emotion. Much of this is available on YouTube, where it is both entertaining and instructive. He is a wonderful teacher.
Do not be duped into thinking that this is pop psychology and psychobabble, for to do so would greatly underestimate him. Peterson's work is informed by a multiplicity of distinguished sources including Dostoyevsky the writer, Carl Jung the psychotherapist, Nietzsche the philosopher, and the Bible. He also uses ideas from evolutionary biology and neurobiology. Themes from these are woven together to provide a guide to good and proper living. As he points out - life is tough and it encompasses suffering. We need to learn to cope with the inescapable travails of life and to draw on the richness of our ancient past as a guide.
He makes use of examples from the Bible and mythology - he refers to sin, hell, heaven, archetypes, human weakness, ancestory and God. Although not a theist or even a Christian in the traditional sense, he sees a wisdom in the Biblical stories that echo the myths that Jung alludes to. They provide us with our rich collective unconscious and have guided us and our ancestors for thousands of years. When asked if God existed, he says he doesn't think so, but adds: "I fear that he does!"
Why has he captured the public's imagination? Partly it's his style of parable-like storytelling and the powerful emotion, that imbues his presentations, especially to public audiences. Above all it's probably his message which is largely a critique of many aspects of modern culture. These include political correctness, the censorship of speech, the centrality of victimhood and the tendency to live in the here and now, while ignoring the rich history available to our psyche and our spirit. At a time when sexual and social roles have become jumbled and according to libertarianism's views there is no absolute right and wrong, with the only rule being not to hurt anybody, Peterson is articulating ideas that are striking a chord.
Not surprisingly The Guardian newspaper describes him as using pseudo-facts and engaging in conspiracy theories. Watch his YouTube clips and decide if this is an accurate depiction and if he really is "the stupid man's smart person" (as described by Tabatha Southey of Macleans, a Canadian magazine).
To his admirers, he is voicing ideas that were once common and mainstream, but have been shouted down in the course of the culture wars and the politically correct speech rules that dominated US campuses in the 80's and have now spread to Europe. They describe him as a "public intellectual". Perhaps it's a case of "Cometh the hour, cometh the man."
Reader Comments
Made by an ex channel 4 technician who knows the insider view - and also aligns with Peterson in a more psychologically grounded recognition, as a true need.
I don't prefer to use the phrase 'psychological' as I believe we use it to distantiate ourselves from psychic-emotional reality. The study of the psyche must use the reflections of others, but can only see in others what they have already recognised within themselves.
That being said, a reconnecting with reality as is - is called for.
When issued regulations for compliance to speech control. JP openly and publically refused to be bound by them, and was able and is able to articulate why, as a positive expression of integrity from which all benefit, instead of reacting in gate at feeling denied. So he did not play the victim as the basis for 'power' and that is key.
The comment above - like so many online - is in the mode of 'sides', as if Peterson is a hero because he is the good side to be on, but as regards Peterson, he saw the Cathy Newman interview as a failure to share an open debate and not a victory.
If there is anything that could undo Peterson's otherwise acute eye for the ball (presence of mind), it could be being set up and made special as a representative of polarised 'sides', or from self inflations arising from being so timely an influence for so many in reconnecting to a genuine sense of worth and purpose and discovery.
Anything else is a fake identity, and NEEDS enemy and grievance to seem to exist.
Fake identity politics is the exploitation of victimhood by false promise of power.
Accepting responsibility for our experience is part of releasing dissociated and fragmented 'thinking' for real relationships - even though this at times is extremely challenging (of course) to who we think we are and what we think the world is.