Re: Lobsters, woke, JP ? 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

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t was on Sam Harris’ podcast "Waking Up" – another outpost of the Intellectual Dark Web – that I first heard Peterson say that "the most permanent things are the most real.” That instantly struck me as a logical fallacy, one of the first things you learn about when receiving a college education, particularly the fallacy of appealing to tradition or the idea that future things should adhere to the past.

Peterson’s philosophies seem to fall within those boundaries. His view is a synthesis of Jungian psychology with traces of evolutionary biology, the two combining for new meaning in his lectures and rants at breakneck pace. One moment Peterson is retelling the ancient Egyptian myth of Horus and the next he’s marveling over the phoenix. But his attention, more often than not, focuses on the Bible, a book he imbues with great mythological power that can be used to shape the world and one’s life.

This perspective amounts to a new brand of secular Christianity that appeals to men who question literal interpretation but still thirst for the benefits of orthodoxy. Peterson appeals to that thirst by parsing archetypes and suggesting that they hold knowledge of how the world should work, or that the world we know is in chaos because it has deviated from the world of ancient mythologies and, thus, its natural path.

In this philosophy, which Peterson likens to the symbol of the yin and yang, men represent the order of society and women the chaos of nature. The “hero” archetype we’ve all come to know is decidedly masculine, and he brings knowledge by braving the feminine chaos and returning it to order. If that sounds misogynistic, that’s only because it is.

The traditions Peterson appeals to are decidedly patriarchal – it bears stating that women, in these texts, are often the downfall of men and are responsible for great falls of individuals and societies – a fact never addressed in his “studies.” What he is doing, essentially, is examining the construction of the patriarchy and justifying its existence by pointing out that it was built in the first place.

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One thing that’s for sure, however, is that the University of Toronto psychologist has benefited greatly from his recent attention and controversy. Peterson's lectures have become some of the hottest tickets in all of professional speaking and his books have sold millions of copies, including his most recent release "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos."

This success, however great, is a recent phenomenon for the Canadian academic, who only garnered international attention in late 2016 after his public opposition to Canada’s Bill C-16, legislation that expanded anti-discrimination laws to protect transgender citizens.

Peterson opposed the law on the grounds that it would curtail his free speech -- and instantly became a cultural hero of sorts on the right. The story, after all, was too perfect. Here was an academic putting his foot down and saying no to the progressive movement that’s so often associated with higher learning.

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Peterson is easily one of the most sought-after personalities in this sphere and has garnered considerable controversy for his frequent criticisms of liberal politics and his insistence that the patriarchy -- the invisible construction of society by which men are granted privilege over women -- is a hierarchy of competence, while referring to feminists as “crazy, harpy sisters” who are “undermining the masculine power of culture.”

Though that kind of incendiary rhetoric certainly leads to uproar in the era of backlash-backlash, it also leads to power, influence and riches for a man who’s preaching to a choir that's starving for a particular kind of made-to-order science.
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It’s important to note that “Intellectual Dark Webs” have existed as long as there’s been a society interlinked with science. There has always been an adversarial relationship between the unbiased accrual of knowledge for the sake of discovery and progress and the search for tainted “facts” meant to prove twisted hypotheses. Such intellectual expeditions have been carried out for any number of purposes, often in a quest for knowledge and often to prove ignorant racist worldviews, as was the case with craniometry or the bastardized popular versions of Charles Darwin’s theories.

The tradition of bad science, championed by scholars who either willingly or unwittingly set precedents for intellectualized racism, has been carried on by white supremacists who rebranded their hatred as “race realism.”