1. In this post I'm going to venture some comments on Jordan Peterson.
Peterson deservedly has a huge following. To his credit, he's is a brave man who stands his ground. Pushes back against the social engineers and social justice warriors. He fearlessly attacks feminism and speech codes. He attacks political correctness (e.g. "Islamophobia", "toxic masculinity"). He expounds and defends innate differences between boys and girls, men and women. He marches to the beat of a different drummer.
Of course, that could be said of many libertarian/conservative pundits, but he's caught on in a way they haven't. In particular, he's tapped into the plight of disaffected young men who've been marginalized and vilified by identity politics. He exposes a weakness on the part of many evangelical "leaders" who are too concessive, too meek and mild. Who let the secular progressives to define the terms of debate.
By contrast, Peterson is confrontational. He stands up to bullies. He challenges assumptions. He says things many people know are true, but are afraid to say. In a time of crisis, he's the kind of guy who rises to the occasion.
2. There are, however, people who make good critics, good insurgents, but they are deficient when it comes to presenting a constructive alternative. They know what's wrong, but they don't know the solution. They can identify problems but their correctives point people in the wrong direction. Many revolutionaries succeed, but are then at a loss to make things better, because their vision is defective. That's Peterson's limitation. I'm going to comment on two aspects of Jordan's teaching in particular.
3. I've seen several different clips in which he harps on the same theme. To be successful, you must strike a balance between your geniality and your shadow side. You need to get in touch with your dark side. Cultivate your capacity for evil. Develop your inner psychopath. Not that you should normally act on those impulses, but keep them under control–like a guard dog.
This is something he gets from Jung. We have an alter-ego, like an evil twin. And that's the source of our strength. Our capacity for evil is what makes us tough and decisive.
A successful individual must integrate those two sides of his personality. The potential for pathological evil is necessary to have strength of character. It's something we should foster, but channel and discipline. Be a monster, but a civilized monster. That's what makes anti-heroes appealing.
Dropping the metaphors, I assume he's alluding to his belief that humans are animals who evolved from predators. And human males in particular still have those dark powerful instincts. A propensity for pitiless violence. A capacity to commit atrocities. Making your mark in the primordial primate dominance hierarchy.
For Peterson, evil is a necessary good, so long as that is properly harnessed. Without it, people take advantage of you.
If that's a correct interpretation, then Peterson's recipe is radically at odds with Christian theology. In Christian theology, evil in moderation is not a necessary good. A capacity for sadistic cruelty and wanton mayhem, however bridled, is not an instrumental good.
That doesn't mean Christian men are supposed to be soft. That's a harmful stereotype. But Christian masculinity isn't grounded in amoral predatory instinct. Peterson's prescription is dangerously false. It fosters a Fight Club mystique that's appealing to alienated young men, but a self-destructive fantasy.
4. Given his view of the shadow, I don't see how Peterson can avoid having contempt for Jesus. Christ doesn't have a dark side. Jesus doesn't harbor sociopathic tendencies. Jesus doesn't have an alter ego. Jesus doesn't derive fortitude by tapping into his capacity for evil.That's not the source of his inner strength. Peterson's paradigm is intrinsically hostile to the Christian exemplar.
5. The second thing I'd like to comment on is Peterson's mythological paradigm. And the bottom of this post I have post copious excerpts from his Maps of Meaning to document how he interprets and appropriates comparative mythology. My assessment is based on what he says in that programmatic statement of his reference frame.
There are different kinds of atheism. On the one hand, there's the hard, cold, fatalistic atheism of Schopenhauer, Hedda Gabler (Ibsen), The Damned (Visconti), Long Day's Journey Into Night (O'Neill), Jean Genet, Rainer Fassbinder, &c. Fleeting moments of happiness are decoy birds. We're only in a position to appreciate the best things in life after we've lost them.
By contrast, there's the heroic atheism of Buddha and Camus. We're all losers–doomed before we begin. But we can postpone defeat. Eke out a little satisfaction on our the way to the guillotine.
It's clear to me that Peterson is a secular humanist. He subscribes to heroic atheism. Don't go gently into night. Go down fighting. Rage against the dying light.
His outlook is like a POW camp. If the enemy wins, the POWs will die in that wretched camp. Die from illness, exposure, malnutrition, or old age–if the survive. They will never be released. But if the enemy loses, the commandant will spitefully execute them before the camp can be liberated by the victors. Either way, the POWs will never leave that wretched camp.
But they can make the most of the situation. Befriend the guards. Smoke, swear, drink, play cards, tell the same old stories–until they die there, one by one.
6. I take Peterson to mean that paradigm myths are psychologically true. Paradigm myths are psychological and sociological allegories. They encode perennial aspirations and ideals. Even though mythology is literally false, it can be a useful guide to self-understanding because mythology still insightful regarding human nature and the human condition.
But a problem with the inspirational value of mythology, given his secular outlook, is that human psychology (and corresponding behavior) boils to brain chemistry, which was cooked up in the laboratory of the evolutionary mad scientist. So there's nothing good about it. When you peel back the layers, idealism has no basis in reality.
7. Peterson treats the Bible as an anthology of paradigm myths, no different in principle from world mythology. The only difference is that biblical mythology has been the dominant mythos of western civilization for centuries. But that's an arbitrary difference.
He views Jesus as a fictional variation on a stock mythotype. Whoever the historical Jesus was, the Jesus of the Gospels is just one of many masks donned by the ubiquitous hero of cross-cultural imagination.
8. Mythical archetypes have their basis in objective experience. There are positive archetypes: the good mother, father, husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, mentor, spring, summer, sunrise, daytime, youth, health, prowess, beauty, fertility, orchard, oasis, river valley, rescue, deliverance, homecoming, reunion.
That has its counterpart in negative archetypes: the abusive mother/father, adulterer/adulteress, faithless son, tempter/temptress, tyrant, false prophet, outcast, drifter, winter, sunset, darkness, disease, disability, decrepitude, excrement, desert, wasteland, storm, natural disaster, snakes, predators, monsters, starvation, betrayal, disgrace, desertion, exile, lostness.
There's nothing essential fictional about these motifs, because they constantly recur in real life, which is why they become stock characters, settings, and plots. So there's no presumption that Jesus is just another imaginary hero because he happens to correspond to some fictional tropes.
Some archetypes like death, the trickster, and the warrior are positive or negative depending on the culture.
9. Not only is there heroic atheism, but heroic faith. To revert to my illustration, there are Christians like Eric Liddell and Jane Haining who died in concentration camps by choice. They had a chance to elude capture, but they had a Christian servant ethic.
In Peterson's secular outlook, when you die, that's it. But from a Christian outlook, the death camp has an invisible back door. When Eric Liddell and Jane Haining died in captivity, they went to heaven–like releasing a bird from a cage. Because Peterson lacks that otherworldly perspective, his secular humanism is valium.
10. Peterson has no solution to human evil. Evil people can't fix themselves. They're not good enough. That's the dilemma. Humanism is like a dying patient with Ebola who takes a syringe, draws some of his own blood, then injects himself with his own blood to infuse himself with antibodies. But they're the same inadequate antibodies. Fallen creatures require outside intervention: moral and spiritual renewal.
Likewise, once you do something evil, you can't step into the time machine and become innocent again. You can't turn the clock back and make it right.
Fallen creatures need forgiveness, predicated on redemption. Vicarious atonement. Penal substitution.
Here's a representative sample of Peterson's mythological paradigm:
