That toxic masculinity gateway thug Jordan Peterson is back. In case you hadn’t noticed. The Canadian psychologist-turned-provocateur has staged a comeback after his life dramatically fell apart a couple of years ago. He put out a book earlier this year, Beyond Order — the update to his 12 Rules For Life has been dubbed “a ragbag of self-help dictums”.
And he’s back on YouTube, where millions devour his illogical word salads, vague platitudes, and turgid lessons for boys and blokes. Beyond his turn-down-the-bedspread inanities, he insists that the world is hierarchical, with men on top because they are … well, better.
His latest video revisits his hoary argument that the feminine is represented by chaos. You can see why he has become such a hero to incels and bitter men’s rights activists when he says things like:
Chaos, the eternal feminine, is also the crushing force of sexual selection. Women are choosy maters…
This weekend he started up again with the same old bullshit.
“Why is the feminine represented as chaos?” a fan asked. “My feminist friends often question that part of your teaching.”
(The 12 Rules subtitle is “an antidote to chaos”.)
Peterson snarls back: “Well, let’s throw something back at your feminist friends.” And so it begins. It’s a “foregone conclusion” that the patriarchy is represented with masculine symbols.
“And it seems an equally foregone conclusion that the patriarchy is order, so if the masculine symbolism is used by feminists themselves to represent order, what is left for the feminine to be represented by? Order? Well that’s already taken! And the reason your feminist friends object to it is … well, I would say fundamentally there’s two reasons: they object to everything and they don’t understand it and they don’t understand their own behaviour. So you ask them: well why is the masculine represented as order?”
Then he meanders off into Daoism (“Get your feminists to ask the Daoists why yin is feminine?”) before saying the feminine throws the masculine into disorder “primarily through rejection”.
It goes on. And on, and on, and on. And on some more.
It boggles the mind that someone with so little logic can be held up as a “father figure, philosopher-king, and prophet”, let alone one of the world’s greatest thinkers.
Calling something a “foregone conclusion” when it’s anything but would not cut it in a high school essay. Setting up a patently false binary that if the masculine is represented by order, feminine must be chaos is intellectually fraudulent. Saying feminists object to everything and don’t understand their own behaviour is a pathetic and childish taunt with no basis in reality. Deploying ancient Chinese philosophy as a rhetorical flourish is entirely vacuous.
And that bit about rejection? No wonder the incels love him.
Peterson’s mission creep from psychologist to self-help guru is audacious and frightening when his humourless pseudo-intellectual babble bolsters the bitterness of the men’s rights movement.
Cognitive anthropologist Chris Kavanagh and psychology professor Matthew Browne include him in their list of “secular gurus”. In an ABC piece on their podcast Decoding the Gurus Browne describes them as a “new breed” who promote themselves as being “uniquely qualified to provide a special source of knowledge”. They mimic reason as they create personality cults.
That’s Peterson. A solemn pronouncer-from-on-high, a mystical wordsmith, a tweed-clad pretender. Like all self-styled sages, he’s a bullshit artist.
We know what Tory Shepherd thinks of Jordan Peterson, but what do you think of him? Write to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
Pretty poor piece of criticism if you ask me. I have no particular truck with JP but your abusive tirade does nothing to help me understand why and how his arguments should and can be challenged. This is a particularly egregious example of how leftists (of which I am one) damage our brand. You may not like him, but he is not just a reactionary, conservative, old white male spouting nonsense – he carefully mounts his case and while it may be unpalatable, deserves equally careful demolition. Just engaging in self indulgent shouting is pointless – I suggest you simply ignore him.
I bizarrely became aware of JP via YouTube recommendations (along with earwax and pimple poppers – god help us how do they decide this stuff?) I watched a couple before hitting “not interested”. My impression was of a man permitted to rant and make unsupported assertions. The videos I saw were of him speaking to rooms full of I students. TBH I wasn’t hearing much logic or carefully constructed argument. The audience looked more to be tolerating him than engaging or even following his rants, but at the same time fearful he may become angry. Like the crazy guy in the train everyone pretends isn’t there.
Ignoring bullshit artists is not without peril these days…
Agree, they do have a distressing tendency to become PMs or Presidents.
Might be something to do with a credulous/gullible electorate and a mendacious, meretricious media.
I have no particular knowledge of Peterson’s logic or lack thereof, and no real desire to find out…I am quite happy to accept Tory’s summation.
One more anti-women bigot the world can do without.
Just a question, fairmind, why are you happy to accept Tory’s summation if you have no particular knowledge of Jordan Peterson’s logic?
He is to logic what Trump is to truth.
Should we be holding our breath for when Tory will write even one article about an anti-men bigot the world can do without?
well, i think you should, at least
Don’t hold your breath. You get out there and write that article if you think it is something the world has to know about.
Andrea Dworkin had that base covered.
Very good point, but as Stephen Fry and a feminist commentator here accurately pointed out, the left and feminists don’t play nice when challenged. I can do without the hate mail.
Reminds me how my grandparents followed what ever their priests told them to think.
even if you disagree with someone its still important to have a open mind. You should always try to here both sides to any story and formulate your own opinion. Putting your fingers in your ears when the other side is talking will leave to uninformed and naive
Really?
Tory makes a clear argument that Petersen’s binary order/chaos position is unsupported by anything other than myth. Is that not enough reason to challenge at least one aspect of his reasoning??
I listened to a conversation between Sam Harris and KP and KP couldn’t even articulate some basic positions. Compared to the savvy Harris, he sounded, frankly, very silly. He’s a waffler, and listening to him reminded me of the favoured saying of an old friend: “BS baffles brains”
KP?
Perhaps KP salted nuts?
Ha!
Oops
K is next J on the key board
Well, there’s his false equivalence of patriarchy with masculinity for starters.
I tend to agree Myki. I read Tory’s article and thought “she’s not happy with what this guy has to say”, but as to the substance of the criticisms, not a great deal of detail was presented. It certainly read like a rant. I get the general drift though and the citing of some of Peterson’s comments definitely did not augur well for Peterson’s credibility in my eyes, but not having read his book or much about him at all, I would have preferred a wider more concise dissertation of Peterson’s views.
youtube him and work it out for yourself 🙂
Except that he does just spout nonsense. I am also a leftist who thinks there are quite a few dogmatisms and sacred cows within the current liberal and socialist left, particularly identity politics, deserving of serious critique. But Peterson is not it. He routinely shows a stark misunderstanding of the positions he rails against, leading him to attack strawmen rather than actual positions. And, as Tory demonstrates well in only a short article, his own theories about human social organisation consist of sophistry and pure mythologising, e.g., masculine = order, feminine = chaos, the behaviour of lobsters can say something of use about human behaviour, etc.
Watch his debate with Zizek. There he shows his understanding of Marxism (one of his main areas of criticism) to be laughably shallow. This is characteristic of him. He is not a serious person with serious critique. He is a sophist rationalising his own predetermined view of the world. You give him far too much credit.
Firstly, I don’t think that Myki Smith is giving him any credit, and I liked Myki’s point.
I watched the debate with Slavoj Žižek over Marxism. Obviously when it became clear that Peterson thought that Marxism can be summed up in the Communist Manifesto I realised Peterson didn’t even have a first-year university level understanding of what Marxism is and fast-forwarded through his half hour of debate. Slavoj, on the other hand, took the opportunity to reason on the topic of happiness in capitalism and Marxism.
Brilliant how he elevated the debate beyond the simple-minded rhetoric Peterson was on about. Žižek is worth listening to, Peterson is a charlatan. And I don’t think he reads.
As for Peterson’s ideas on feminism, I’ve seen him taken to task by feminist interviews and thought he was the least crazy one there. Mad false dichotomies and extreme sexism is a poison in our times. Peterson is just picking up on resentment and using it to his own ends.
I’m sure he’s a psychopath but so are lots of other authorities using this subject to boost their own image.
Also, Peterson seems to deeply love Adolf Hitler and thinks IQ tests prove that some races are less intelligent. So, something else to think about
Fair point, I was probably a little unfair to Myki. What I was mostly replying to though was this part of their post: “he carefully mounts his case and while it may be unpalatable, deserves equally careful demolition.”
I think this is giving Peterson too much credit. Perhaps Peterson carefully mounts his case in terms of rhetoric, but not empirically. Even that could be disputed in light of his poor debate performance against Zizek and Harris.
Also I’m sceptical of the idea that polemic against people like Peterson is turning people off the left (as Myki suggests Tory is doing). I think confident and self assured polemic is exactly what is drawing many people to Peterson, Trump, the alt-right etc. Not that I think the left should in any way abandon reason for the intellectual fraud of the alt-right. But I think it was pretty unfair to accuse this article of “self indulgent shouting” while suggesting Peterson’s arguments are carefully constructed.
I certainly agree that Peterson builds his case on rhetoric and poorly understood scientific ideas; but I still think he does ‘carefully mount his case’ (if protected by waffle and boring opponents to death) and it does need to be ‘equally carefully demolished’ — because his ideology is so pernicious. Nor do I think that polemics are ‘turning people off the left’: if the left has something useful to say, I’m sure more people will listen (nor do I think feminism is intrinsically a left or a right thing). But I was left with the suspicion that Tory just took a grab bag of quotes and argued around that. (I didn’t think his stuff about lobsters, as he presents it in interviews, sounds that bad: hierarchy is such a deeply ingrained condition that even lobsters show this quality. I suspect he only read the abstract of some paper on the subject and had nothing deeper to say on the neuroscience, although he insists he could. But I, like Tory, would have to read his book to know what he was really on about. And that would be a hard ask.)
And I just wanted to talk about what an arse Peterson is. When I saw Russell Brand on tv talking about how cool he finds Peterson, I thought this guy needs investigating. So I saw the thing about race and IQ — the first thing Peterson said was that race is a social construct. And then went on to demonstrate with less-than-high-school level statistical analysis skills that some races are demonstrably smarter than others. It’s hard to follow what he’s really saying because he’s so long and slow and boring but he does often get around to saying awful things. And IQ doesn’t measure intelligence, which he doesn’t seem to know.
Plus I wanted to say something about Žižek because I like him and he’s a funny guy
I’m a lot more sceptical of the lobster comparison. Yes, hierarchies are commonly found throughout the natural world, but I think it’s extremely reductive of the complexity and potential for humans to think and change ourselves to make an argument that animals have hierarchies therefore it’s “natural” for people to have hierarchies. True, hierarchy is deeply engrained in us, but I would say in a totally different way than it is in the lobster or any other animal that does not display the capacity for symbolic thought and the meta-cognitive ability to think about thinking.
Agreed on most everything else though, especially your point about IQ, something too few people are aware of unfortunately. Russell Brand is absolutely a walking red flag for bullshit. And Zizek is indeed hilarious, deeply thought provoking, and so on and so on…
Thanks for that.
Yes, you’re right, the stuff about lobsters is suspect. The quality that Peterson doesn’t rate is human empathy; which I don’t think he has; which gives me cause to wonder whether he’s a psychopath: just doesn’t seem to get how people feel about things.
The other thing I would take issue with — with most modern ‘philosophers’ — is that they assume the basic unit of society is the individual, whereas I think the basic unit is the family. People can get around as individuals, and even do quite well, but I don’t think it’s natural and healthy to be alone. I certainly didn’t feel at rights with the world until I got married. I haven’t felt lonely since. And I’ve got a favourite nephew and a crappy sister. Superficial friendship isn’t going to cut it, although some friendships can get deep. I wouldn’t want to test it though.
Living in North Asian cultures you see that belonging to families is a natural way of being. The natural way of being. So how can it be that Western people are individualists and North Asian people (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese) are ‘group oriented? Firstly, we are not as individualist as we imagine. I’ve heard the expression, ‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered down’ many times about Japanese culture. But not by Japanese people and mostly only by Americans. It smacks of racist stereotyping to me. And as for nails getting hammered down, it’s the same in the West (I know from personal experience: other kids, teachers, parents … maybe the cops or judges and foster homes which I have no personal experience of, but people seem to have a hard time in those institutions — particularly Aboriginal kids) and in Japan it seems like the kids belong, and it is safe and comfortable for most. Belonging is a virtue, not a hardship to be endured. Yes, they have a problem with bullying, especially in schools — but so do we!
So when Peterson starts rabbiting on about lobsters, he seems to be imagining them as individualist, happy-go-lucky psychopaths. (Like all good people.) No appreciation of natural human empathy, or family units, or even social norms and religious feelings that allow people to do extraordinary things for their communities.
But in Interviews, I’ve heard Peterson argue that hierarchies are neurologically ingrained in our biology. Which I think is ok on the face of it. Even families have hierarchies. But like Confucianism, all healthy human hierarchies go two ways: reverence for those higher up, responsibility for those lower down, respect both ways.
The Western system started breaking down, I think, with the industrial revolution. Family structure started breaking down, working people moving into the slums of big cities, lost as individuals trying to survive and find a good life. Consumerism. You see this happening in real time in Korea and Japan. And so now they get all the Western diseases, including fat kids. I’m sure China’s much the same.
I like what you said about Russell Brand.
The lobster thing is not really sound. There are species where females are top of the hierarchy. There are human societies with cultures, which allow for more or less hierarchical societies.
His lobster analogy was to point out that there are social hierarchies in animals, and he chose an example that was far removed from the typical comparison of humans with other apes to point this out. He was asking why we should expect humans to be any different. He was not saying that males are or should be at the top of any social hierarchy.
Actually, that is precisely what he is saying because, testicles.
Re-posted with one word from a scientific hypothesis changed to slip the moderator net.
I do withdraw my use of the word “social”, as he was positing that there is a biological reason for dominance hierarchies forming in animals with a central nervous system, which includes lobsters. His hypothesis is that serotonin is a key chemical driver of these hierarchies, although this is a simplistic answer as the receptors and responses become more complex in “higher” order vertebrates.
Is our tendency to form dominance hierarchies biologically driven or mediated? Probably, yes. Do we overlay these with social behaviours and rules that can be passed on through learning and culture, rather than biological evolution? Also, probably yes. Do these social rules and cultures contribute to the reproductive success of the dominant? Also, probably yes (but see the sneaky effer strategy – aka kleptogyny).
It’s almost as if we are, as individuals, a complex system, imbedded within a complex system, and which are contingent on the past. We are most definitely not blank slates.
It is obvious why we should expect humans to be different. Humans are social, intelligent language speakers, who are capable of creativity and self-reflexion. Why genes might play some role, in human beings nurture in human cultures typically but not always plays a greater role. Hierarchy in lobsters cannot show you what is most or even more likely among human beings, and also among more genetically determined beings it shows nothing either. Among cassowaries, females are dominant and males sit on their eggs for nine months till they hatch. Among bonobos, there is o hierarchy.
Here’s actual biologist PZ Myers calling BS on the lobster thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq7W9frEPLg
By way of summary, he says: “Jordan Peterson does not understand evolution or nervous systems! Jordan Peterson thinks that because lobsters exhibit dominance hierarchies, dominance hierarchies are a metazoan universal, and that serotonin puts hierarchies into all brains. This is, of course, flaming bullsh
*t.”
Hi Ian, yes I take your point. I can’t comment too much on Peterson’s views on hierarchies because I haven’t read his book, don’t think I could.
As for whatever views he has on sexual identity and politics, he seems to be quite deranged (or not very talented and trying to reduce deeply personal, extremely complex subjects to ideologies he can dominate).
I’m only going on what I’ve heard him say in interviews. He establishes that hierarchy is a biological imperative — which I think is ok as far as that goes, which isn’t very far — but neglects to explain how this applies to complex human social interaction. I guess you’re going to have to buy his book to find out — and by the time you’re bought the book and started reading, you’re already part way down the rabbit hole.
He doesn’t seem to get empathy, so how could he explain social dynamics?
I think he’s terrible but I think it’s important to discuss his views because of their pernicious influence. The way things are going we could end up with a Jordanite prime minister. Tony Abbott … Scott Morrison … some guy really into The Handmaid’s Tale for the wrong reasons. He’s deeply into Christian fundamentalist ideology, incel identity and fascism. A very nasty mix
Reposting because my reply got caught by the auto moderator last night:
I’m a lot more sceptical of the lobster comparison. Yes, hierarchies are commonly found throughout the natural world, but I think it’s extremely reductive of the complexity and potential for humans to think and change ourselves to make an argument that animals have hierarchies therefore it’s “natural” for people to have hierarchies. True, hierarchy is deeply engrained in us, but I would say in a totally different way than it is in the lobster or any other animal that does not display the capacity for symbolic thought and the meta-cognitive ability to think about thinking.
Agreed on most everything else though, especially your point about IQ, something too few people are aware of unfortunately. Russell Brand is absolutely a walking red flag for bull****. And Zizek is indeed hilarious, deeply thought provoking, and so on and so on…
Thanks for that.
Your phrase ‘meta-cognitive ability to think about thinking’ is a good one. I would like to know more about this subject but would not look to Peterson for insights. Asking a neuroscientist would seem to be a good place to start, maybe read a few papers …
Also, I like Slavoj Žižek but he goes on a lot about phenomenology. And what’s his deal with Hegel? and Freud?
The man who invented the IQ test gets 100% every time. “The patriarchy is based on merit” and the Patriarchy defines merit. A self-fulfilling prophesy.
I guess that Peterson is claiming that the ‘patriarchy’ exists for very good reasons. In interviews he outright affirms that there is no difference in mental capacity between men and women — but what I saw him say about race started the same way, and he relied on IQ testing to argue about that too — but then, as this article demonstrates, he starts claiming a yin and yang between male order and female chaos, or whatever he was on about. It’s a slippery eliding from a generally agreed principle to something else entirely. Not dogma, as I see it, but manipulation of ideas.
According to verywellmind.com, the guy responsible for creating the idea of IQ tests, Alfred Binet, complaining about the Stanford-Binet version of his testing method — originally designed to identify kids who needed help, but adapted to support the eugenics movement to weed out the ‘feeble-minded’ — said,
‘Some recent philosophers seem to have given their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts that affirm that the intelligence of an individual is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be augmented. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we will try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.’
And to think that Peterson, with an education in psychology (and therefore knows what he’s on about), accepts as irrefutable this testing system, deformed into an instrument of eugenics, is quite startling
He’s the sort of guy who has to win every argument. He was probably picked on at school and now feels he’s getting his revenge and/or finally being accepted by the cool kids.
Zizek has argued that paedophilia is the last great taboo to be broken hasn’t he?
I’d rather listen to someone telling me to clean my room.
Me thinks you don’t just have ‘no particular truck’ but might in fact be a bit fond of word-salad guru. By virtue of his intellectual dishonesty and nonsensical logic he does not deserve ‘careful demolition’. He left that party along time ago with his re-re versioned apologetics/man-help/moralising book-selling strategy. He carefully mounts publicity, thats about it.
I am quite comfortable paying attention to all the comments here as to why JP may have gone off the rails. But yelling “bullshit” is not one of them.
I agree, Myki. Your point is valid and worth saying
I’ve heard just enough (and believe me, it doesn’t take much) of Jordan Peterson to be in complete agreement with the author of the article about him. He has the intellectual depth and clarity of a muddy puddle, and has pitched his schtick to those poor, sad, angry boys who can’t work out why no-one will have sex with them.
robust criticism is not abusive tirade, i think
l agree. Jordan peterson is scary. He reminds me of Radavan Karaditch, the psychologist leader of the Serbian attempt at exterminating the Bosnian Moslems. There is little more dangerous than a psychotic psychologist. Everything that he projects to the world must be carefully dissected and analized. Sometimes our more activist sisters apear to beleive that if you shout the truth loud enough, people just have to beleive it, because it’s right. Unfortunately, to understand why some men are misogynists you really have to get inside their heads, and who wants to do that? Yuk!
He does not carefully mount his case. He spouts garbled word salads with no logical narrative. Such melange is impossible to engage with intellectually. All you can do is call it out for what it is, which is what Tory has done. In fact, I would say she has been restrained to a fault.
I quite agree, Tory.
Peterson got an initial lift among freethinkers because took a chainsaw to some sacred cows that might well need some vivisection anyway, but over time his rhetoric has departed from science, empiricism and objectivity. You diagnosed it correctly: he has adopted the charlatan methods of political cult-building, making himself a sort of Deepak Chopra of the white right.
It’s entirely appropriate that he’s shredded by everyone, but in particular I’d like to see more public scientists wade in and shred his veneer of pseudoscientific authority so it doesn’t always look like feminists from the humanities vs scientist.
Whatever empirical light the neutron murk of identity politics sometimes needs (and I think some corners need it urgently), it won’t come from Peterson.
Peterson skilfully manipulates essentially contestable concepts and it takes a lot of work to unpack them. Most people have got better things to do with their time.
I don’t know about that. I think it’s important to reject the ugly sexism that Peterson feeds off, as well as what he’s offering.
His potential army of incels is dangerous and he would be their demagogue. Peterson’s world view strikes me as deeply fascistic. But like in Weimar Germany the warring between the communists and the fascists did everyone a terrible disservice. And the Nazis won because the communists divided the common cause.
The whole thing Peterson would be the leader of is deeply tied to Christian fundamentalism, a powerful political force in North America and a growing force here: think Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, Christian Porter, Stuart Robert, et cetera.
You may think this analysis is ridiculously over the top but I am convinced that this is exactly how these hard-right fanatics think. Not everybody listening to Peterson is a fascist but the fascists are trying to build a movement.
Peterson may not be their Messiah, but he could be their evil John the Baptist
Agree. Some of the dog-whistling faces of JP are quite nasty. And rake in the $$ too.
MacQuoll suggested: Peterson skilfully manipulates essentially contestable concepts and it takes a lot of work to unpack them. Most people have got better things to do with their time.
Yes, he does, but it’s actually it’s really easy to tell pseudoscience from science, M. Genuine scientific expertise can always answer the following question, while pseudoscience is either silent, evasive or unreasonable:
What minimum evidence would suffice to persuade you that this claim is wrong?
This is called the falsifiability test, and it’s key to scientific validity.
Peterson fails this test on multiple claims, as does (say) Chopra.
Many journalists are more trained in communications (i.e. commerce in influence) rather than empiricism (how to turn systematic observation into knowledge), so it helps to have scientists remunerated for public communications to ask these questions.
Such workers do not have better to do with their time: that’s what pays for their time.
So, I totally understandable that public commentators from humanities/womens studies want to shred Dr Peterson: he’s cynical, obnoxious and eminently shreddable. Go to town!
However when it’s done principally from the humanities it plays into a pre-existing narrative of feminist/left scalp-hunting (of which commentators from the feminist/left are sometimes guilty anyway.)
It’s still worth commentary of course (and must be hard to remain silent in the face of such regressive thought couched in pseudoscience), but I don’t think it’s likely to be as productive as scientific critique.
I agree with what you’re saying, but the problem with these essentially contestable concepts is that they are notoriously hard to operationalise and subject to empirical testing.
Although asking “What minimum evidence would suffice to persuade you that this claim is wrong?” the answer is often something along the lines of, “If I could tell you that, I would get a Nobel prize.”
MacQuoll: the answer is often something along the lines of, “If I could tell you that, I would get a Nobel prize.”
…which is a claim that the falsifiability test is unreasonable.
Which is an appeal to ignorance, also easily debunked. For example:
Which Nobel prize-winners earned an award for only advancing falsification criteria on a scientific claim? (I know of nobody who got a gong nearly so easily.)
However, any thesis examiner can attest that failing to advance falsification criteria on a scientific claim can deny you even a Masters.
And this helps illustrate why humanities-trained commentators may have difficulty dismantling Peterson’s rhetoric, go instead for ad-hominems on professional credibility and character, thus look like scalp-hunters and help feed the beast.
A science commentator has no such problem.
Not “unreasonable” I never made that claim, just sometimes very difficult to satisfy. Eg issues such as the existence of god, or free will.
Perhaps we’re talking at cross purposes? I see JPs individual mission as political rather than scientific. Political positions, it seems to me, have philosophical underpinnings of a kind that are difficult to subject to empirical/scientific investigation. The appropriate methodologies are those of the social sciences and they are hotly disputed. Even if we were to develop a super-intelligent AI that provided us with the answers to all of our political questions there would still be people who would say that it is wrong.
A more Peterson specific example would be to ask the question about power. “What evidence would falsify your hypothesis that it is an error to use the concept of power as a tool for political analysis.” I suspect that the answer is going to have some problems that will require drilling deep down into definitional matters before any terms can be operationalised. Then we’d need to agree on methodology, data collection, analysis, appropriate theoretical frameworks, etc. I suspect that at some point an impasse will be reached because there are a priori commitments to particular outcomes, and it could be anticipated that conceding a particular point may “give the game away”.
Compared to this fraud Vroomfondel and Majikthise have more credibility.
Engaging with the banalities & B/S of JP or his true believers would be like netting smoke, an utter waste of time.
I’m starting to enjoy your comments more than the articles themselves
What do I think of Jordan Petersen, nothing – I have managed to live my life without giving Mr Petersen (or any other “lifestyle guru”) the slightest thought and, after I finish writing this, I have every intention of continuing that habit of a lifetime.
Very sound.
My 30 something son brought my attention to Jordan Peterson a couple of years ago, asking my opinion of him. By the time I took much note of him he was already getting flak and he certainly failed to cut through with anything that interested me. He is humourless and narky. As soon as I discovered he was piss weak on the subject of fossil fuelled climate change I totally lost interest in him.
As for male/female mythology it amuses me that he associates the feminine with chaos. I am easily pursuaded to view fossil fuelled climate change as a very blokey chaotic pursuit, pushing the climate and oceans of our only mother earth away from a beneficent and orderly dynamic state.
This article and the cheer leaders at the end is very depressing. I subscribe to Crikey because I am tired of ideological virtue signallers on both side of politics and yearn for thoughtful evidence-based discussion and argument, and this article appears. A tabloid article with a vicious heading which consists of nothing but insults, cheap shots and a total failure or even interest in trying to see what JP is about. The most disappointing thing is so many readers acknowledge that they haven’t read any of JP’s work but are happy to condemn him.
THAT DEAR FIRENDS IS THE TROUBLE WITH THE WORLD TODAY.
People don’t listen and try to understand what others are saying. Of course JP is loathed by the new crazy left because he uses rational argument and science to raise problems with some of the sacred rules of the new secular religion. I have always been a great supporter of the left and all it stood for but over the last 10 years I’ve gradually noticed the fanatical intolerance of the left towards anyone they fear might question their sacred totems of gender, feminism, gay and racism. It doesn’t surprise me at all that old friends of mine (born in the 50s) have also found the new left almost unrecognisable from the old left. Many of these people are attracted to JP just because of people like Tory Shepherd who is more interested in virtue signalling her credentials as a true leftie by destroying the perceived enemy than in seeking the truth.
One thing that immediately attracted me to JP was his repeated statements that most of these issues are complex and not resolved by shouting insults at one another. They require respectful and reasoned debate and discussion. He argues that humans are not particularly good at resolving ideas and it is only through reasoned debate and discussion that these ideas evolve. Amen to that!
This author has previously described JP as an ‘alt-right thug’. If you are ever interested in finding the Andrew Bolt of the left here she is.
It would be really good to have a reasoned evidence-based discussion about many of the things JP says but it doesn’t look like Crikey is the place for that.
Weird & VERY telling that you dont comment on the new right- which is far more concerning than anything your imagined ‘new left’ is producing.
Hi Penny, The danger of the right far exceeds that of the new left. Trumpism is the greatest threat to democracy at the moment. Everyone here knows that. However listen to Stephen Fry (a lifelong passionate advocate for left value) in a debate on political correctness. Fry said:
The liberals are illiberal in their demands for liberality
“They are exclusive in their demands for inclusivity
They are homogenous in their demand for heterogeneity
They are undiverse in their call for diversity, you can be diverse but not diverse in your opinions
I fear that political correctness is a weapon that the right values, the more we tell the world how people should be treated how language should be treated, all of this is meat and drink to malefactors
They are recruiting seargents for the right by annoying and upsetting people.
The reason Trump is where he is, is not the triumph of the right it is the catastrophic failure of the left.
The ability to play gracefully with ideas has been lost from our culture
I would like to share this quotation from my hero Bertrund Russell to hover over the evening:
One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid,
and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision
Let doubt prevail.”
This was before the rise of Trump, and I began to see how the right exploits some of the more idiotic behaviour of the new left, and how this weaponises the right.
Nonsense. The majority of the media are owned & controlled by right wing corporations. they love peddling this stuff. Meanwhile the exceptionally intolerant far right is expanding. Be aware.
Hi Brett,
Not everything JP says is rubbish – there are obviously some reasonable things among his pronouncements, or he wouldn’t have generated a following.
I haven’t read his books, but I have listened to him / watched some of his videos, and I find some of his logic to be tenuous at best.
The link below from Sam Harris summates a conversation they had, and subsequent attempts to overcome an impasse they had. I find Harris’ writing to be succinct and easily understood, while the opposite could be said of Peterson’s, whose logic repeatedly contains false equivalents.
https://samharris.org/speaking-of-truth-with-jordan-b-peterson/
They did go a 2nd round, which was more congenial than the first, but JP struggles at times to answer basic questions without referring back to ancient myth. It’s very strange.
https://samharris.org/podcasts/meaning-and-chaos/
By all means, take JP’s good bits, but be aware there are loads of contentious bits.
I didn’t see any of the virtue signalling in this piece that you did, but perhaps I’m a little blind to it.
Posted above but repeating for you: here is some reasoned evidence-based discussion on something JP has said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq7W9frEPLg
By way of summary, actual biologist PZ Myers says: “Jordan Peterson does not understand evolution or nervous systems! Jordan Peterson thinks that because lobsters exhibit dominance hierarchies, dominance hierarchies are a metazoan universal, and that serotonin puts hierarchies into all brains. This is, of course, flaming bullsh*t.”
Since you have praised the virtues of listening and understanding, I hope you will listen and try to understand the biologist.
Hi Johan, interesting blog by PZ Myers. As I see it JP uses the hierarchical behaviour in lobsters simply to demonstrate (amongst countless others) that hierarchies are simply a natural biological phenomenon. They are unavoidable but what we have to strive for is good hierachies, not bad ones which tend to occur. I think that’s an important point well made. A quick google suggests that serotonin is a neurotransmitter in lobsters, and this may well mediate behaviours. Be nice to see them debate. Thanks for the reference
They are a natural biological phenomenon in some species. In some species, eg some arachnids, the hierarchy is dominate by females in others by males and in some, there is no sexual hierarchy. The apes show it a variety: gorillas and chimpanzees have male dominated hierarchies, while Orangutans and Binobos have little or none. Human beings have cultures, so that our hierarchies are made rather than biologically determined.
Hi Brett, I think it would be more precise to say that at a certain levels of organismic complexity, group-living creatures start to exhibit “social hierarchies”.
Human beings are certainly at that level of organismic complexity. However we are also able to deploy “culture” to moderate or amplify this “natural biological phenomenon”.
As you observe hierarchy can be pernicious, so we should strive for “good hierarchy”.
But everyone wants “good hierarchy” rather than “bad hierarchy”, so what does “good hierarchy” in human society actually look like? This is of course a political question, and lobsters merely a distraction.
In my understanding, Myers agrees that hierarchies occur widely in nature and in many different organisms. However, in his view, there may be different causes of hierarchical behaviour across these different organisms.
So if one such organism (lobsters) is biologically “wired” to behave hierarchically, that does not, of itself, prove that hierarchical behaviour is inherently biological in our own species.
As I see it, Myers’ point is that the biology of lobsters cannot be used as proof that social/ environmental factors play no role in the establishment and perpetuation of hierarchies in human societies.
You say Peterson uses lobster behaviour to demonstrate that hierarchies are unavoidable. I think Myers would argue that lobster behaviour does not in fact prove this in relation to human society.
I too would like to see Peterson debate Myers, or any pre-eminent biologist.
I wouldn’t go to PZ Myers for any discussion on the scientific merits (or otherwise) of what Peterson claims. Myers jumped the shark on his science blog a long time ago, positioning himself quite firmly as an ideologue.
Mmm but assuming staff descriptions on the University of Minnesota Morris website are correct, Myers is still a biologist, qualified to PhD level, currently working in the field of biology. Peterson has no such qualification or expertise so I cannot see how it is logical to accept a claim by Peterson regarding biology in preference to a claim by Myers.
That said, if other biologists disagree with Myers’ statements in the video feel free to share their commentary, I’d be interested to read it. .
PZ’s research output is pretty paltry (and I’m a former practicing scientist with a PhD in a biological field, so feel able to judge). One of the highlights of his research was buying zebrafish from a pet store and putting Roundup into the tank with them.
He has a political lens upon which he views Jordan Peterson, and this colours his analysis.
I’ve only had a brief glance at his site but Myers appears to have a sense of humour and joie de vivre – unlike Peterson.
In my view it suggets that is him more credible than a drunk & junkie, however ex he claims to be.
I followed and contributed as a BTL commenter on his Science Blog Pharyngula for many years. He did have a good line in writing popular science articles at the time, and did have some sense of humour. I left it when he became a moral absolutist and other members of his commentariat became a nasty self appointed Red Guard.
“Drunk and junkie” if ever there was a good example of the combination of ignorance and ideology here it is. If you haven’t bothered to find the truth of Peterson’s medical story, just don’t comment
Someone unable to manage their own life is not someone from whom I accept advice.
Hmmm. I am struggling a bit with this. I pick up references to the “crazy left”, to this new “crazy left” being “fanatically intolerant” of anyone who questions its “sacred totems of gender, feminism, gay and racism”, followed by the claim that Tory Shepherd is more interested in “virtue signalling” than the truth and the further claim that she is the “Andrew Bolt of the left”. Then Brett Forge commends Peterson for requiring “respectful and reasoned debate and discussion”. At this point, I wondered what Brett had learned from Peterson. I am pretty good at spotting reasoned and respectful discussion but thought his tirade against the “crazy left” and Tory Shepherd as the “Andrew Bolt” of this crazy left is anything but argued or respectful.
First, the gay “sacred totem”. When I was young and completely heterosexual I could never understand the hatred and persecution of people who happened to have a different sexual inclination from mine. Setting aside crimes such as rape and child abuse or personal betrayals such as infidelity, I could not see that men who wanted sex with men were doing anything wrong. To the extent that they might engage in what I set aside more than heterosexually inclined people did, I thought that would be the result of their persecution, which could justify their persecution in a circular way. That was confirmed by the way that Lesbians lived, who were not subject to the same degree of persecution. I therefore supported the same sex marriage referendum and am pleased with the result. Saying that I subscribe to a gay “sacred totem” is just disrespectful abuse.
Second, on the “gay totem” of gender and feminism. When I was young, I presumed that what men thought and said carried more weight than what women thought. I thought, though, that sex was ideally engaged in for love and would never pay for sex with a woman and thought it unthinkable that I have sex with a woman without her consent. This struck me as the only way of relating to women in a way that respected them as persons, though my pride in the weight of male opinion was inconsistent with this. Experience taught me that if I wanted thoroughly to treat women with equal respect as persons, who could form their own idea of what they sought in life and could intelligently pursue and revise their aims in life, then I would have to drop any idea of male superiority in thought or decision making. I therefore arrived at supporting feminism and dropped stereotypical male behaviour that presumed male superiority. I found that my new position gave me a wonderfull happy marriage.
Finally, on the “sacred totem” of opposition to racism. When I was young, I saw some documentaries on the rise and fall of the Third Reich. I left these thinking how could anyone treat human beings as the Nazis treated Jews and others in their death camps. I became opposed to racism for the rest of my life. The premise behind my reaction was that every human being should have the same basic rights as any other human being and, from my own experience, knew that the claims of racists that some people were not humans was absurd.
In conclusion, I don’t find anything rational or respectful about your claims about people like me and doubt that Peterson is as good as you claim or, if he is, that you have learned little from him. Having read some of his attempt at social philosophy and viewed some interviews, I am inclined to say that Peterson is not as good as you think he is and that you are at least as incapable of reasoned and respectful discussion.
Interesting read – thank you. Also I’m very suspicious of the claim that Peterson “uses rational argument and science to raise problems” with the views held by others. Does he though? If we break down his arguments, are they always rational (or even coherent)? If we look closely at his statements on scientific matters, are they always factually correct or generally accepted or even plausible? No.
It seems like more than a few of Peterson’s supporters have heard some of his high level ideas and, because those ideas appear to align with their own worldview or a particular axe they have to grind, have gone “Yeah that sounds about right, this guy’s definitely onto something.” And after that there’s not a lot of critical analysis of the actual words he is actually saying. And do I get that, because Peterson can be unbelievably verbose and rambly so the analysis is hard work and time-consuming.
But having your ideas and claims closely scrutinised and criticised is an essential part of being an intellectual. It seems like Peterson is deliberately trying to avoid that scrutiny and criticism. To that end, he uses long-winded prose that meanders through disparate topics, as well as dramatic appeals to the raw emotions of his audience.
It’s not that everything Peterson says is necessarily wrong or unjustified, but his conduct does bear some of the hallmarks of a bullsh*t artist so for that reason I will remain suspicious of him.
Suspicion seems to me also justified in Peterson’s case. Reasoned and respectful argument is difficult if you begin, as Peterson does, from the assumption, unargued and unexamined, that religion and myth embody the wisdom of the ages. If we consider the matter, it might well embody some of the wisdom of ways of life now gone by, which will do for us in some ways but not in others. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics is a great example, better than any myth or religion of the past. Myth and Religion embodies the prejudices of the past, as well as some wisdom. Still, religion still mobilises those who think that God’s blessing should make them great or those who think they lose out and should do better. This enables Peterson to muster a reactionary cult to defend old privileges and reverse losses of old privileges.