Marc Champagne - Myth, Meaning, and Antifragile Individualism: On the Ideas of Jordan Peterson

This book will look at how humans use stories to generate meaning, so it seems only fitting to start with a story. I first heard the name Jordan Peterson on March 16, 2017. I can pinpoint this exact date because a prominent lecture was held at the university where I was teaching. After the lecture, a former student asked me what I thought of the lecturers argument. I had kept mostly silent during the talk, but I confessed that I simply could not believe academics were still peddling vast utopian schemes. This is as old as Plato, so as a professional philosopher I have trained myself in the subtle art of shutting up and smiling politely whenever someone explains their latest redistribution scheme. But after two hours of this, my impatience had risked becoming visible. My student, who shared my impatience, thus tried to cheer me up by telling me about a professor at the University of Toronto who was finally standing up before the crashing wave of social justice hysteria. My response was: thats great, but he wont last. Still, my student was mature and not prone to endorsing just any figure, so his vote of confidence in Peterson left a mark.

A few weeks later, when work slowed down a bit, I Googled Peterson. I eventually came upon a video of him speaking to a class, with his friend Bruce Pardy at his side. Peterson was explaining why no one has a right to not be offendedor something along those lines. I was impressed by what I heard and saw, so I remember telling my partner: Hmmm. So far, the UofT prof that my student recommended looks legit...

When another window of free time opened, I watched a more involved video. I eventually purchased what was at that time his only book, Maps of Meaning . The more I studied Petersons ideas, the more I realized that he was adopting a principled stance. I articulate some criticisms of that stance in the second part of this book. Still, such disagreements aside, here was a thinker who actually had a systematic worldview, the lucidity to explain it, and the courage to act on its basis. These days, such people are in short supply.

Because of this rare combination, Peterson has emerged as a public intellectualin the strictest and finest sense of that expression. He is public in that he applies his academic training to real-life issues that affect people from all walks of life. He is an intellectual in that he has earned this wide following the hard way, by consistently engaging with real ideas and putting forth real arguments.

The world in which Peterson makes his argumentative interventions is an increasingly confused and confusing one. Indeed, [p]eople now think nothing of reinventing themselves as a particular set of attributes, however absurd, ideally demonstrating their status as first class victims of a set of social arrangements that have been the reference points for virtually all human societies for tens of thousands of years, which they claim must therefore be overthrown by next Tuesday (OHara 2019, p. 47). In speaking against the foolhardy political implementation of some of these trends, Peterson stands before his detractors with a fortitude reminiscent of Socrates.

Interestingly, Petersons ideas in psychology help to explain his massive appeal. As he writes: The capacity to maintain territorial position when challenged is [...] indicative of how convinced a given animal is that it can [should] hold its ground [...]. This integration constitutes power charisma , in the human realmmade most evident in behavioral display (1999, p. 191). The reason why Peterson looks like he believes what he says is that he really believes what he says. In fact, some have suggested that Petersons 12 Rules for Life are, first and foremost, directed at himself (Day 2018, p. 13; see, for example, the remarks about not lying in Peterson 2018a, p. 205). This palpable authenticity can be quite attractive. Of course, there is no valid inference from the premise A is willing to lose his job for the sake of creed B to the conclusion Creed B must be true/good. But in ordinary social interactions, we make that leap all the time.

Yet charisma alone cannot explain the remarkable reach that Peterson has attained. To my mind, he stands out from regular pundits because he complements his critical stance with a comprehensive account of what a good life and a good society might look like. At the same time, Peterson has sought to identify what he sees as the source(s) of evil in this world. His tendency is to locate that evil in the individuals lack of responsibility, not in societys alleged oppression. Indeed, Peterson has for the past several years been cajoling his fans to stand up instead of stand by (Shermer 2018, p. 19). This resonates with a lot of people. Every time a new calamity makes the headlines, mainstream commentators and journalists who put ideology before truth lose credibility, while Peterson gains a bigger audience.