© GettyCanadian author Jordan Peterson has come under relentless attack for encouraging young men (and women) to become their best selves. His latest attacker: Actress Olivia Wilde who claims he's an incel "hero."
The latest demonization of Peterson comes from actress Olivia Wilde. In an interview about a new movie she directed called Don't Worry Darling, Wilde revealed the film's misogynistic cult leader antagonist was actually based on "this insane man, Jordan Peterson, who is the pseudo-intellectual hero for the incel movement."
Wilde suggests that incels — an online community of young men who feel rejected by women and often harbor hostile (and even violent) feelings towards them — think Peterson is "someone who legitimizes certain aspects of their movement because he's a former professor, he's an author, he wears a suit, so they feel like this is a real philosophy that should be taken seriously."
The incel philosophy, as Wilde describes it, contends that women "must be put back into the correct place" and that men are justified in "[feeling] entitled to sex with women."
© Getty Images for for CinemaConWilde, who recently directed the film "Don't Worry Darling," told an interviewer that Peterson was the inspiration for her movie's main character — a misogynistic cult leader.
Although I'm definitely not an incel, I read Peterson's book 12 Rules for Life a few years back in my freshman year of college. I also pored through his expansive library of lectures during the pandemic. While Peterson's audience certainly tilts male, his wider message isn't gender-specific.
In fact, it's thanks in part to Dr. Peterson that, while it felt like the world was crumbling around me as a 19-year-old in lockdown, I decided to buckle down, work hard, and launch a career in journalism, rather than give in to nihilism.
© Brian Zak/NY PostPast self-help, part moral pathway, Peterson's 2018 best-selling book "12 Rules for Life" has sold over 5 million copies worldwide.
Beyond the fact that Wilde's views of Peterson feel so removed from my own, he also took her attacks quite personally. Indeed, the famously stoic psychologist recently choked up when asked by Piers Morgan about Wilde's comments.
"People have been after me for a long time because I've been speaking to disaffected young men. What a terrible thing to do that is," Peterson said with tears in his eyes. "It's very hard to understand how demoralized people are — and certainly many young men are in this category."
© Piers Morgan Uncensored/YouTubeIn a recent appearance with Piers Morgan, Peterson expressed how much Wilde's words had hurt him. "People have been after me for a long time," he said.
Today, 60 percent of college graduates are female. And one in six 18- to 24-year-olds are neither going to school nor working, with young men disproportionately overrepresented among them. In that age bracket, men are six times as likely than their female counterparts to commit suicide.
Unmoored young people — particularly young men — need a role model. But, for the crime of offering his predominantly male audience someone to look up to, Peterson has been dragged through the mud and even equated to the magical Nazi villain Red Skull.
© Associated PressChris Pine stars in Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” where his robotic character Frank leads the creepy Victory Project.
But empowerment isn't a zero-sum game. Boys can be uplifted without girls being pushed down.
Besides, the vast bulk of Peterson's advice isn't gender-specific. It's classic pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps wisdom: clean your room, stand up straight, get yourself in order, assume responsibility, and make yourself a respectable person before you criticize others.
Perhaps more young men flock to this messaging because they're in more acute need of it. Young women are encouraged with messages of "girl power" and are rightfully told they can be whoever they want to be. Young men, on the other hand, are regularly informed that their masculinity is inherently toxic and are starved for similar empowerment.
As Peterson told Piers Morgan, "It's really hard to see how many people are dying for lack of an encouraging word — and how easy it is to provide that."
His message is one young people — men and women alike — desperately need to hear. The pandemic pulled the rug out from under our feet before we ever had them solidly on the ground. Our educational and career paths were derailed. We have no control of the world around us. Gen Z is facing down a very uncertain future in an era of chaos.
The only thing that is in young people's control today is their own actions. By teaching us to grow up, embrace responsibility, and take charge of our destiny, Peterson preaches a message of radical individualism in a culture that seemingly celebrates victimhood at every opportunity.
If telling young people to clean their rooms makes Jordan Peterson a cult leader or a Nazi villain by today's standards, something is seriously wrong.
Reader Comments
The social cultural tactic of accuse the other person that of which you are guilty of (projection) yourself is obsolete imo. They wore it out & got caught again. Whether the attribution is/was Goebbels or Marx is pedantic imo. It’s the same sources of the idiom & thought gestalt. I see it & experience it frequently.
The incessant mis-characterizations & micro-aggression tactics are getting old. Yawn.
Jordan isn’t telling something new, he is just telling you the truth as has always been, without sugar coating.
That’s what stoicism is, facing life and truth head on, and standing because you have no space to back down.
An ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.
The crux of the issue as it said in the above truth is gnosis/knowledge as the highest good. If people aren’t aware of the Demiurge - Plato’s Cave aka Life & truth it appears those of us who already know have some patient waiting to go through as the layers of the Onion get peeled back. I haven’t watched TV with regularity in years as I literally get ill & angst listening to the BS lies & deceptions still being perpetrated daily into the predictive programming.
Peterson is such a refreshing voice of honesty. If I can develop one quality in my later years, I will develop the ability to razor into a convoluted argument and speak with honesty. Not nastiness. No hyperventilating venom which is the de rigeur today. Simply honesty in a direct connection with another. If that hurts another, so be it. If their honesty hurts me, so be it. I'm living too late in life to play pretend games anymore and have vowed, for myself, during meditation/chanting, to stop lying to myself. And, man. We all do.
I've been trying the simple honesty, direct connection approach to family and acquaintances that don't share my world views and I have a word of advice; don't.
You express yourself beautifully. I doubt you would be guilty of hyperventilating venom to begin with.
It's really weird, being around those you love and are important in your life (family and friends) and they can't see the other side at all, let alone can't even hear it. Invasion of the body snatchers pretty much sums up the times we live in.
I've come to terms with the fact that half of the people I know who were injected are going to die before me. Even those younger than I. So I treat them softly, as though there was nothing amiss because from time to time I can see it in their faces that they know things are not going to work out well in the end. They can't admit it. I cannot imagine what that must feel like.
For me, it's not hard on my spirit, seeing through the lies and recognizing the truth. What is truly hard is seeing those who can't, that weighs more heavy on my spirit, because it does not need to be like that. Take Care! Peace!
ps.
On another note, do you have any thoughts on those municipal elections in BC, re, that ABC party? Just curious.
Sorry no. I read the news but don't hold out any hope for change. The newly elected mayors are promising the same things the incumbents promised prior to Their election. For many of those mayors the problem is the town council, but for many of those town councils, the problem is the mayor.
Municipal politics in Northern California, I mean British Columbia, have little to no impact on life in the next province over. There are those mountains and then there are the cultural differences that separate the two provinces. Thankfully the mountains can be crossed...
I don't have family, and the last time I forcefully projected my views on Covid (a year ago) to a former friend, she advised me she didn't want to hear anymore nor during our upcoming coffee klatch with another friend. I canceled our intended get-together.
Jordan P. makes me realize that, if I can't have the real thing, I don't want a poor substitute imitation. Life is increasingly too short for bullshit.
Funny, isn't it? Truth comes lurking. We smash and stash it. We ignore and trammel it. And...dang! There it is again!
Jordan Peterson can be described as a male mentor, or male mother, who assists men in becoming more disciplined. By any standard, to have to tell a man to get out of bed, make your bed, clean yourself up, and face the day is a sad commentary on where young men are today psychologically. But even in today's world we find that it is not just the woke in the west that are struggling. The Chinese have their fair share of young men who don't want to raise a family, and much rather play video games. In India and China, the men out number women in their respective countries, with something like 70 million men who out number females. The one child rule in China and the infanticide of baby girls in India have led to this conundrum. In China, the young men would rather play video games and hang out with their buddies online than move up the corporate ladder. Then there are the males in the rural areas of China who find themselves doubly locked out of society just by virtue of the fact that they live in rural areas and the women would much rather have a family with men who are making money, are educated, and live in the cities. (a practice known as hypergamy).
So, it's a problem the world over. I just read an article about how the women in Ghana are complaining because the young males "would rather play video games all day long than get busy, take responsibility."
Entertainment plays a huge role in this as well. "More recently, puppy-like boyfriends are ballooning in popularity on China’s internet thanks to TV dramas that feature relationships between older women and younger men. One of them is Korean drama Something in the Rain, which is translated in Chinese as Pretty Sister Who Buys Me Food..." [Link]
But getting back to Jordan Peterson. I applaud his efforts. Being an academic, he has access to younger people and he and his son have come up with a website to instruct people on how to think critically. It's called 'Essay.' [Link] In effect it is set up to teach people how to write, to express themselves, to think.
Here's an excerpt:
Writing is thinking.
"...Consider this: you can write down far more than you can remember at one time. Writing therefore increases your capacity to consider a number of ideas at the same time.
Once those ideas are written down, you can move them around and change them, word by word, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph. You can reject ideas that don’t hold up to your careful scrutiny.
If you do this, then all you will have left will be good ideas. You can keep those, and use them. Then you will have good, original ideas at your fingertips, and you will be able to organize and communicate them.
Thinking is powerful.
If you learn to write and to edit, you will also be able to tell the difference between good ideas, intelligently presented, and bad ideas put forth by murky and unskilled thinkers.
Then you can be properly influenced by profound and solid ideas instead of falling prey to foolish fads and whims and ideologies, which can range in their danger from trivial to mortal.
If you can think and communicate, you can defend yourself, and your friends and family, when that becomes necessary, and it will become necessary at various points in your life.
The person who can formulate and communicate the best argument almost always wins. This is true in many of life’s domains.
If you want a job, you have to make a case for yourself. If you want a raise, you have to convince someone that you deserve it. If you are trying to convince someone of the validity of your idea, you have to debate its merits successfully, particularly if there are others with other competing ideas..."
You can join and spend 6$ a month, 48$ a year or 249$ for a lifetime. I decided to go all in and spend the $249. I like to write, and so, Essay will be helpful to me to practice in making the time, and developing the discipline to be descent at it.
I can really get behind this one quote you offer; " If you can think and communicate, you can defend yourself, and your friends and family, when that becomes necessary, and it will become necessary at various points in your life ."
I am familiar with the legal system in Canada on many levels and for many reasons. I owe my current freedom(s) to my ability to think and communicate.
When she was rescued and had no idea who she was as a person or where to begin ordering her life and using her newly gained freedom, Mark, the man who rescued her, told her to sit down and begin writing.
She said that the power of the pen was enormous. She specifically restricted the remark to pen writing. She elaborated by saying that the pen enabled her to think through the events so tangled and jumbled in her mind; the horrific emotions and fears which arose; and learn to communicate these experiences to others. She was, of course, dealing with compartmentalized rooms which had been created in order to help her survive the abuse and denigration from every year of her life until she was freed by 30. By the end, she had discovered her "self."
This young lady is on the right path of thinking and evaluating emotionally what is going on.
Quote: " By teaching us to grow up, embrace responsibility, and take charge of our destiny, Peterson preaches a message of radical individualism in a culture that seemingly celebrates victimhood at every opportunity." Our educational system is teaching people to not take responsibility for their lives.
When I was young it wasn't a 'game', it was called 'dating'...
The moral of the story is those tricks will never work on "the one" (being someone you would choose as a partner to marry). The author himself attempted using pickup artistry on someone he was genuinely interested in, and she saw right through it. He eventually ended up marrying her, but had to eat a whole lot of humble pie before she would give him the time of day.
Not coincidentally, I told every woman I knew to read the book, but it soon became a cultural phenomenon to call out men who were using those tricks in bars. However, I had to call a guy out once that was trying to use tricks on my cousin. I don't remember the specifics, but I did ask him if he was going to "neg" my cousin next or show her a magic trick. It's funny how people who cling to that stuff think they're the only ones who read.
This transformation in turn dovetails & integrates into the Hermetic Alchemist’s warped & incorrect current LBGT/gender identity social construct & the incorrect divine Androgyne construct. If you dig deep enough in your research you will come to recognize it & where & why it happened. It’s still a perversion of the original context & meaning. I put up a couple of links last week but no one noticed.
Think natural vs. Satanism/Luciferiansm (that perverts the divine natural creator’s design).
But this is not dating. The Game was never about dating. The Game was only about sex. This should not be confused with traditional or modern courtship. The Game is more akin to hookup culture, which young people mistake for and rationalize as dating.
Women are hard wired differently than men. Brains are wired differently hormonally, chemical reward receptors foci are different. Warrior/Hunter gene is not wired same in typical female. Gatherers/Nesters/Nurturing are the typical prime drivers & priorities.
I was trying/attempting to logically point out in a post about what the Greeks thought about Love construct vs. Americanized Materialist version of Love. Other person didn’t get it, but it’s there nonetheless. Love is an action not a materialistic object construct. It’s a QUALITY not a QUANTITY ….
Hence an earlier written hugely successful book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs got perverted & hi-jacked. Ask any divorced American male who got ass-raped of his parental rights vs. his ability of earning income to support the beast in a divorce. Especially in Commiefornia.
Yes, love isn't quantitative. God/The Universe is love, which sounds trite if one hasn't "gotten the message," yet it's the whole point.
When Crowley said "Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will," he was talking about God's will being love and that following God's will for you is what we should strive for. This has unfortunately been both mistakenly and intentionally misinterpreted as "do what you want and go forth and bed whoever you can" which has the ironic effect of reducing the number of people who will get involved in esotery and lower the quality of those that do by attracting immature hedonists instead of spiritual neonates and truthseekers.
We have free will insofar as we can choose to follow God's will or not. If you find yourself in the flow of God's will, life is much simpler. Some people call this "being in the zone" which is something that leads to a lot of "coincidences." The thing is, they aren't coincidences, and the zone can go on forever with practice. That is the foundation and the goal state of what one might call "magick." What you can learn in that state is just everything. But if it isn't done with love, well, you'll get another chance at it the next time around, and the next, and so on until you do.
Horrible to look back on it but that was 'popular culture' at the time. I and many others fell for it. I've tried to teach my 32 illegitimate children not to follow in my footsteps.
Glad you brought up Crowley. Do as thou Wilst as the Whole of the Law means something else & different to Luciferians/Satanist’s AND most importantly Masonic Apotheosis. Your or other’s interpretations are not necessarily the same as I came to understand from literally countless hours of research & learning about their dogma. Morals & Dogma by Pike clearly speaks to this this whole topic also.
Zoroastrianism the predecessor religion to Chaldean/Babylonian/The Zohar doctrines clearly identifies this dogma duality. And so it goes the materialist wealthy who worship Mammon will never follow the correct path b/c of their lust for power & control. The EL-ites know what path we follow which is why they have already told us Men are commingled of both good & evil. The Samurai / Ronin Zen Buddhist whole dogma is based on KOAN truth of rectitude.
Enjoy the quality of exchanges & discussions when I can find time. I chose my path long ago after some sage me who dug the well told me lots & the rest is the journey of discovery / uncovering as to how the human condition became this way & who did it.
Namaste’ 🦅🔥
I really like and respect Prof. Peterson. Few academics have the guts to take a stand on the trans issue and yet he did. His comments on peace in the Middle East are disappointing but not surprising. He has changed his opinions on many things so hopefully he'll change them on this issue too.
Here are two Syrian born gentlemen, the host and commentator, a British citizen Richard Medhurst: 'Debunking Jordan Peterson on Israel' [Link]
Radical... I'd say the only thing that might make one consider it to be radical is that its vital importance has been forgotten.
I think anyone who is in a public spotlight must have a very hard time to hold onto their integrity... most from the very start have sold out their honour, and thus live a double life of social bulimia - one face for the crowd, one face in private. I often consider that as a whole, we are all very critical of public figures, when it can be guaranteed that if we were in their shoes, we could just as easily be swayed by the sheer psychic onslaught of public opinion and social projection... even those who would like us and look up to us, would secretly despise us with an unconscious jealousy... at the same time, those that most oppose us and criticize us, probably are doing so from an unconscious admiration that they do not wish to admit to themselves.
It can be guaranteed that Olivia Wilde has already sold out her value, blending into the feminist woke crowd, and thus feels safe shielded by 'the herd' that she probably both despises and yet leads. It is one thing to stand up against it internally and quietly, and another thing to stand up against it publicly.
If such people do criticize and attack, one should consider it a compliment and an honour.