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Why Do Young (White) Men Love Jordan B. Peterson So Much?
Until 2016, Jordan B. Peterson was a relatively obscure, middle-aged professor of psychology at a Canadian university. He had created a self-help program called Self-Authoring. He had also written a tome called Maps of Meaning about the psychological significance of “archetypal stories” from the Bible and mythology. And he regularly posted his university lectures on YouTube, for which he had developed a respectable following. He was accomplished, but he was certainly not famous.
Then came Bill C-16. This Canadian law that may have required (among other things) that public university professors use a student’s pronouns of choice – not only for a transgendered biological male who wants to be called “she” but also for self-proclaimed “non-binary” people, who wanted to be called new, fanciful pronouns. An outraged Peterson declared on his YouTube channel that he would not be compelled to use state-mandated language.
While Bill C-16 would only affect Canadians, many saw it as a natural progression of the shut-up campaign currently being waged by American leftists against anyone who isn’t a full-throated partisan in the social justice wars. And Peterson was seen as a guy who was fighting back – with passion, intelligence, and courage. And what’s more, he drove the left crazy!
Suddenly, Peterson became a YouTube superstar – especially among young, white men. A couple of weeks ago his book of advice, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, was released at #1 on Amazon.com. The success of the book and his media blitz to promote it has put him on the radar of every conservative thinker out there. Conservative wonks have been trying to size him up: Is he conservative? Is he a friend or foe? If we embrace him as we did Milo Yiannopoulos, will he make us look bad?
Young men (of any race) are rarely conservative – at least in the sense that conservatism is an ideology articulated by National Review, The Weekly Standard, and such. But nowadays, young men are often anti-left. Back when the American left focused primarily on class divisions, there were plenty of young, white men who were happy to get on board. Under the worldview of the old-fashioned left, it was the rich who were cast as the villain – and not very many young men are rich. But since the American left has shifted toward “intersectional” theory, the villain is now pretty much any white, straight, cis-gender male. Since white men don’t see themselves as hateful, “privileged” villains, they rightly (if reflexively) reject the left.
But once young, white men reject leftist ideology, what should they then embrace? From what point-of-view can they understand their gut-level revulsion at the stench of intersectional politics? For some young men, it’s Ayn Rand. For others, it’s Young Republicans. For a very small number, it is the white-men-are-the-real-victims ideology of the alt-right.
Jordan Peterson provides an additional (and welcome) alternative to these options. He unflinchingly attacks the left, sure – that’s why he’s famous. But once he has his audience’s attention, he refuses to offer an alternative ideology or an outlet for political activism. Instead, he offers personal responsibility.
In Peterson’s view, the healthy focus of a young man’s life should be on becoming competent. You will not be able to fix the world, he explains, until you can run your own life well. This has been said before, but it cannot be said often enough. Political activism cannot give meaning to a young man’s life. He needs, instead, to concern himself with the problems directly in front of him: his job, his family, his own front lawn, his neighborhood association. Focusing on things he can actually change will keep him from growing resentful, make him useful to other people, and maybe, just maybe, prepare him to deal with large societal problems once he has become extremely competent.
Better that than wasting your life kvetching on Facebook about things you can’t control!
Published in General
The Germans must have a word for what this critic is doing. Exaggerating or misidentifying what people of opposite belief actually believe or why; either knowingly or else unknowingly from a position of naked human impulses. Hyperbole isn’t right and it definitely isn’t satire.
Befuddled, pompous, ignorant, banal, tedious, crackpot – this ranges from distaste to personalizing disagreement to just banal sour grapes. I don’t see any of that. Does that make me one of the hero worshippers (which I also don’t see)? I find Peterson refreshing, entertaining, and solid. Does that count as lapping up his banality? I like that Peterson takes the work of geniuses and applies it to current cultural battlefront in a way that doesn’t stifle exchange but actually promotes it. I feel ashamed for the overt hero-worship and polishing of Peterson’s turd of a presentation of other people’s work with no value added.
He’s inauthentic because Conservatives like and promote what he wrote and stood for.
Yes. In particular, the Current Affairs review immersed himself in Peterson’s Maps of Meaning, which seems as if it may really be considerably more jargon-filled and “gobbledegooky” than “Twelve Rules”.
Is there any quantitative evidence to support this? Speaking as a young white man I think Peterson is okay, I agree with much of what he has said that I have heard, but I don’t find him inspiring and to my knowledge I have only seen one video of him, not from his you tube channel.
In THIS PIECE by Rod Dreher from January, he talks of Peterson’s appeal among young men. It’s very good, and draws from this longer piece “What Pastors Could Learn from Jordan Peterson.”
And Dreher says:
Just so. “In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.” If not a king, at least remarkable.
He makes a good point. I’m probably not the target audience that Peterson is writing for, and I’m inherently skeptical of anyone who gets lauded as the One Person who can Change the World or is the Next Big Thing. While I do tend to agree with most of what he says, what I’ve read of his has had the tone of someone who’s trying to make things that are simple seem profound. None of this means that there aren’t people who can get real value out of what he’s teaching or that what he is teaching isn’t any good.
What I get from him is that he states things plainly without apology or unnecessary embellishment, but not in a blunt, in-your-face style.
And this is rather unusual in 2018.
If only we were in the land of the blind…