{"id":5213,"date":"2017-09-23T04:56:30","date_gmt":"2017-09-23T04:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/09\/23\/jordan-peterson-and-the-transgender-wars\/"},"modified":"2017-09-23T04:56:30","modified_gmt":"2017-09-23T04:56:30","slug":"jordan-peterson-and-the-transgender-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/09\/23\/jordan-peterson-and-the-transgender-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Jordan Peterson and the Transgender Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things in Canada are worse than I thought. Their Pee-Cee brigades are even more insane than ours. Quotable<\/a> (and quoted):<\/span><\/p>\n

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At the University of Toronto, after receiving two written warnings, he [Jordan Peterson] has been in danger of losing his job following his announcement that he would refuse to use the preferred gender pronouns of students and faculty who don\u2019t identify with their biological gender, to the fury of radical transgender activists. The use of such pronouns is mandatory under a recently instituted Canadian law, Bill C-16. Peterson rejects the injunction on free speech grounds. \u2018I\u2019m not going to cede linguistic territory to post-modernist neo-Marxists,\u2019 he says. He has expressed the view that he might use the preferred gender pronoun of a particular person, if asked by that individual, rather than having the decision foisted on him by the state.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, at least one Canadian has a pair of balls. The C-16 law is fucking insane if you will excuse my French. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Free speech is a core value for him \u2014 the<\/em> core value \u2014 and one that is becoming increasingly pressing, most recently (as I write this) with the resignation of the Labour shadow minister Sarah Champion after she made remarks in the Sun<\/em> about Pakistani sex gangs and ran foul of what was considered acceptable by the Labour leadership. That elements of the left have begun to label free speech as somehow a \u2018right-wing\u2019 value is particularly rattling (although such censorious thinking has a long history in radical left ideology).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Free speech a right-wing value? It's classically liberal.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2018If I can\u2019t say what I think, then I don\u2019t get to think, and if I can\u2019t think then I can\u2019t orient myself in the world, and if I can\u2019t do that, then I\u2019m going to fall into a pit and take everyone else with me,\u2019 Peterson says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Peterson has been saddled by some of his critics with the label \u2018alt-right\u2019, which he views as a ridiculous slander. He describes himself as a \u2018classic British liberal\u2019 who makes those on both the left and right uncomfortable. He supports socialised health care and the liberalisation of drug use, and is libertarian on most social issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Alt-right\u2019 is certainly one of the most inaccurate pigeonholes you could imagine cramming him into. His heroes include Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Orwell and Solzhenitsyn. He is a Christian, but more on the pattern of existential Christians such as S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard or Paul Tillich than anything to be found in the Midwest Bible belt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Peterson\u2019s thought-crime is that he disagrees with the view of transgender activists that gender is a social construct and has no grounding in biology (although he is not opposed to transgender rights in general).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is reasonable to hold that gender roles are in part socially contructed as long as you also hold that they are influenced by underlying biological realities. But if you say that gender is a social construct with no grounding in biology then you show that your contact with reality is minimal if not nonexistent. If your stupidity is a willed stupidity than I condemn you morally. People have a moral obligation to use their intellects properly.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a curious paradox here. Lefties who accuse global warming skeptics of denying reality and being anti-science themselves deny reality and are anti-science in their constructivist views of gender and race.  The difference, of course, is that there is good reason to be skeptical of the global warming theses of the climate alarmists, but no good reason to doubt that gender and race differences are ultimately rooted in biological differences.<\/span><\/p>\n

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So why does his right to free speech trump a transgender activist\u2019s right not to be offended? Why not just keep his thoughts to himself?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Because thoughts aren\u2019t like that,\u2019 he says. \u2018People mostly think by talking. Not only do they think by talking, but they correct their thoughts by talking. If you deprive people of the right to think, then you doom them to suffering. You doom their stupidity of its right to die. You should allow your thoughts to be cast away into the fire \u2014 instead of you<\/em>.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

His claims about gender \u2014 that women consistently differ, cross-culturally, from men on many of the Big Five personality traits identified by psychometric researchers \u2014 are, in psychology circles at least, not particularly controversial. These traits are Openness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Agreeableness (each of these are technical definitions that are somewhat more precise and different in meaning to their casual usage as terms).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018These traits are not social-cultural,\u2019 says Peterson. \u2018The evidence is crystal clear. As you make a country more egalitarian, the gender differences get larger. Most particularly, women are higher when it comes to Agreeableness \u2014 wanting everyone to get along, not liking conflict, compassionate, polite, self-sacrificing \u2014 and Neuroticism \u2014 higher in negative emotion and more responsive to grief and threat and punishment and isolation.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anyone with any experience of life knows that women as a group are more agreeable than men as a group. Why the hell do you think they are 'over-represented' among realtors?  And anyone who is not stupid, or a leftist, knows that the statement two sentences back cannot be refuted by uncovering a covey of prickly, jack-booted dykes, or a convention of Walter Mitties.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The denial of what he considers these fundamental realities has led him to become an outspoken critic of mainstream academia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The humanities in the universities have become almost incomprehensibly shallow and corrupt in multiple ways,\u2019 he says. \u2018They don\u2019t rely on science because they are not scientifically educated. This is true particularly in sociology, where they mask their complete ignorance of science by claiming that science is just another mode of knowing and that it\u2019s only privileged within the structure of the oppressive Eurocentric patriarchy. It\u2019s appalling. We\u2019re not having an intelligent conversation, we are having an ideological conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Even climate science is ideologically infected to a very high degree.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2018Students, instead of being ennobled or inculcated into the proper culture, the last vestiges of structure are stripped from them by post-modernism and neo-Marxism, which defines everything in terms of relativism and power.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

His battle to defend the fundamental tenets of free speech against language control has meant he has had to pay a price. There are videos on YouTube showing disturbing confrontations between him and radical transgender activists.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

An argument for concealed carry. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2018I\u2019m very upset by the criticism \u2014 very, very upset,\u2019 he says. \u2018But I know what the consequences of failing to engage in the necessary conflict are \u2014 and those consequences are worse. To speak words that others told me to speak is to kowtow to a corrupt ideology and would break the part of me that is useful in the world.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Peterson studied political science \u2014 notably 20th- century European totalitarianism \u2014 before taking up psychology. This has left him with a dark view of the path that collectivist thinking can lead you down. He is both astonished and puzzled that the crimes of Stalinism and Maoism have not received anything like the attention that has been given to the Nazi atrocities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Students coming to his classes are often entirely unaware of the mass exterminations those systems of belief wrought during the 20th century \u2014 numerically greater than those perpetrated by the Nazis.<\/span><\/p>\n

This ignorance, he believes, as a Jungian, is a real and present danger, since he considers that the Shadow (the dark part of oneself that has to be recognised and incorporated in order to produce a mature human being) needs to be acknowledged if it is not going to wreak havoc \u2014 and totalitarian pathology disguises its malevolence with declared good intentions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018We are all monsters and if you don\u2019t know that, then you are in danger of becoming the very monster that you deny,\u2019 he says.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Absolutely right. The Left's denial of this truth is perhaps their most fundamental error.<\/span><\/p>\n

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This belief is not a million miles from the Christian belief in original sin. Peterson\u2019s Christianity is perhaps one of the most mysterious sides of his personality. His current deconstruction of The Bible<\/em> grew out of his previous work in analysing the meaning of world myths and folk tales, a journey recorded in his book Maps of Meaning<\/em> \u2014 The Architecture of Belief<\/em>. This is a hefty and challenging work which opens with a quote befitting someone who has the demeanour of a prophet: \u2018I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

His Christianity is also viewed through a Jungian lens. He points out that the INRI inscription on crucifixes also has a mystical meaning, apart from \u2018King of the Jews\u2019 \u2014 \u2018Through fire all nature is renewed\u2019. \u2018Which means that in order to renew your soul, you have to die and be reborn repeatedly,\u2019 he explains. Peterson\u2019s world view includes a lot of respect for Taoism, which sees nature as a constant battle between order and chaos, and posits that without that struggle, life would be rendered meaningless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Peterson is not, rather surprisingly, only a philosophical Christian. When I ask him whether he actually believes that Jesus physically rose from the dead, he is unable to answer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The world is a very, very strange place,\u2019 he says. \u2018What we don\u2019t know about consciousness and its relationship with the body, and time, and corporeality, and vulnerability \u2014 and death \u2014 would fill many books. I don\u2019t understand the structure of being well enough to make my way through the complexities of the resurrection story. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s reasonable to boil it down to \u201cdo you or do you not believe it\u201d. I don\u2019t know the limits of human possibility. I am unwilling to rule out the possibility of life after death, the idea of universal redemption and the defeat of evil.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is close to my own view.<\/span><\/p>\n

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However, it is not his unorthodox Christianity that is responsible for Peterson\u2019s immense online audience. It is gender. More than 90 per cent of his audience are men, which seems a pity since there is nothing particularly gender-specific about his teachings. Why the imbalance then? \u2018Because these men\u2019s stress levels are very high,\u2019 he says. \u2018I\u2019m telling them something they desperately need to hear \u2014 that there are important things that need to be fixed up. I\u2019m saying, \u201cYou guys really need to get your act together and you need to bear some responsibility and grow the hell up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The lack of an identifiable and compelling path forward and the denialism these kids are being fed on a daily basis is undoubtedly destroying them and that is especially true of the young men.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point, to my astonishment, Peterson begins to weep. He talks through his tears for the next several minutes. \u2018Every time I talk about this, it breaks me up,\u2019 he says. \u2018The message I\u2019ve been delivering is, \u201cFind the heaviest weight you can and pick it up. And that will make you strong. You\u2019re not who you could be. And who you could be is worthwhile.\u201d\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re so starving for that message. Young men are so desperate for a pathway that they are dying for it. And it\u2019s heart-breaking and terrible that this idea has been kept from them. It is a malevolent conspiracy or ignorance to keep that from young men. Some of the young men who come to my lectures are desperately hanging on every word because I am telling them that they are sinful, and insufficient, and deceitful and contemptible in their current form, but that they could be far more than that, and that the world NEEDS THAT. This presents an ideal that can be approached and life without that is intolerable. It\u2019s just meaningless suffering and that\u2019s true if you have all the cake you can eat and all the girls you can have one-night stands with.\u2019 Peterson composes himself. The tears are patently sincere \u2014 his sincerity probably defines him more than any other quality. It is rare to come across a public figure so lacking in artifice or conscious self-presentation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether he will be finally destroyed by the forces that oppose him \u2014 which is entirely possible \u2014 or continue to gather followers at the current remarkable rate is open to question. He will be publishing a new book in January 2018, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos <\/em>(Penguin Random House Canada) \u2014 and this may be what lodges him firmly in the popular imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have watched dozens of the videos Peterson has posted \u2014 they are addictive \u2014 and I am coming to the conclusion that I am probably watching one of the most important thinkers to emerge on the world stage for many years. Peterson is quite likely to find himself outshining the rogue Marxist Slavoj Zizek \u2014 whose concerns about free speech he shares \u2014 as the celebrity academic de nos jours<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But he is a more profound, charismatic and serious figure than Zizek and is almost certain to end up as a front-line warrior in the culture wars that continue to rumble across Western societies. One of his mottos is \u2018Don\u2019t apologise for what you think\u2019 and there is no question of him backing down under pressure from his ideological critics. As such, he is either remarkably brave, irrepressibly stubborn or wilfully provocative. Whatever the case, he has become increasingly difficult to ignore \u2014 and whoever chooses to do so, whether out of partiality or prejudice, will deprive themselves of an intriguing intellectual journey.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Things in Canada are worse than I thought. Their Pee-Cee brigades are even more insane than ours. Quotable (and quoted): At the University of Toronto, after receiving two written warnings, he [Jordan Peterson] has been in danger of losing his job following his announcement that he would refuse to use the preferred gender pronouns of … Continue reading “Jordan Peterson and the Transgender Wars”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-decline-of-the-west","category-leftism-and-political-correctness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}