Parsing Out Dystopia: The Crucifixion of Jordan Peterson

I'm reading a history book which I plan to review in the near future.  It's prologue is mainly concerned with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's changing relationship with the media during this presidency.  FDR began his presidency on convivial terms with the press.  But, as World War Two engulfed America, things changed.  The books reads:

“Deploring the trend toward 'interpretive journalism,' he dogmatically insisted that newspapers should have no role in news analysis or commentary, even in the editorial pages.  Syndicated columnists, said FDR, were 'an unnecessary excrescence on our civilization.'” (page 4)

How times have changed.  The “excrescence” so vilified by America's most popular president has become commonplace.  So-called interpretive journalism is now the norm.  You will be hard-pressed to find any news story in any format that is purely factual and not framed within some sort of narrative.

Freedom of the Press is essential, so I have no problem with narrative-based journalism.  Such journalism played an important role in the ultimate success of the civil rights movement and helped turn America against the Vietnam War.  The trouble is, this freedom, as all freedoms do, leads to excess without being called-out by intelligent consumers of the content.  We almost mindlessly take whatever is written or shown as fact when, in fact, it is narrative – a means to inform people how to think about the news rather than what the facts are.  As such, journalism is no longer informative.  It is left-wing/right-wing propaganda within our modern dystopia.

At the moment, the propaganda is primarily controlled by a liberal media interested in identity politics, equality of outcome, transgender rights and free access to everything without any personal responsibility for anything.  Despite conservative media like Fox News and National Review, “mainstream” media has a different agenda and looks for stories and angles that fit their purposes.

That's how we often get personal interviews and biographical sketches that turn out to be character assassination.  Witness the article published two weekends ago about Jordan Peterson in The Times (London).

I discovered Jordan Peterson back in the summer of 2020 while rummaging through YouTube.  Being previously uninitiated to his fame, I found a treasure trove of videos of his lectures, interviews, and other public speaking events such as his superb marathon discussion with Sam Harris which I have previously bogged about.  I have never read any of his books and, frankly, I don't plan to.  

Not because I don't think he has anything of benefit to say.  Quite the contrary, I find most of what he says agreeable and insightful.  But I already have books by other authors that basically say what Peterson apparently writes about and I am not interested in the “self-help” aspects of his work.  Nor does Peterson's defense of religious tradition interest me.  I'm not interested in what Peterson thinks about religion or what I should do with my life.  I am far more interested in what he is doing with his life and ideas.

The public reaction to Peterson is a stark contrast.  Many, especially postmodern thinkers and leftist culture warriors, see him as an inferior critic and apologist for outmoded tradition.  Others, find that he makes sense of a world that is clearly going insane.  I can see why he is controversial.  He is a strong advocate of personal responsibility in a time will, apparently, no one wants to be accountable for anything and collective responsibilities (whatever they might be) seem to be of overriding concern. 
 

He also is dismissive of “throwing the baby out with the bath water” when it comes to religion in general and Christianity in particular.  He clearly believes there are aspects of traditional spirituality that are still relevant to modern life, that are, in fact, critical for a fulfilling life, and that the various cultural assaults upon such an approach to spirituality are a threat to the sanity of our civilization.

What rocketed him to fame to begin with was when he, as a psychology professor, spoke out against government mandated use of transgender pronouns in Canada.  He feels that government mandated speech of any kind is absurd and harmful to society as a whole.  I agree and, in particular, I don't think any person's change of sex or intimate gender identification is more important than the rules of grammar for a society.

Though I certainly don't agree with everything Peterson says and writes, I support him on all the above points.  He has been pegged by the media as an enabler of the alternative Right and, subsequently, every interview he grants and speaking engagement the man makes is peppered with ridicule and pre-judgment that Peterson is somehow a right-wing proponent, which is utter bullshit.

Anyone taking a half hour or so to review what's available on Peterson can see that he is far more nuanced than that.  I recommend a 45-minute video he made about one paragraph of Nietzsche as an example of his expansive thought.  And certainly if you take the time to review my post on his wildly popular four-part dialog with Sam Harris in Canada, Ireland and England can plainly see Peterson has only a superficial commonality with the political Right.

If pressed, Peterson is a centrist conservative in American terms.  That is, he takes ideas from all political and cultural perspectives and, based upon his training and experience as a clinical psychologist, forges a perspective that is relevant, unique and tends to be based in traditional values.  He welcomes what he feels are legitimate insights regardless of their political or cultural source.  He is both traditional and innovative in his thinking.  Being centrist also means he gets hammered in a cross-fire from both extremes of the cultural divide.

One of the first things I learned about Peterson after I had invested many hours of watching him in action on YouTube was that he was, at the time, suffering from a horrific cascade of health issues that began with acute anxiety, worsened psychotically due to a reaction to his medication, and ultimately ended up with COVID on top of everything else.  It has taken him about 18 months to put his health back together and he is still not 100%

That explained why when I subscribed to his YouTube feed many months ago there was curiously no new content coming from him.  Happily that changed several weeks ago and Peterson reemerged in YouTube-land, admitting that he was still struggling but was now once again functional.  He felt well enough to finally complete a new book he was working on.  It will be published next month.  I don't plan to buy it.

So, from a personal recovery and pre-publication perspective, it apparently seemed to him like a good time to accept when he was approached by The Times of London for an interview about his life and career.  Unfortunately, Peterson has a history of being viciously attacked by the liberal media and college audiences because of his outspoken views which are sometimes not politically correct and directly criticize much of postmodern thought and culture.

Since he is still recovering from his illness his daughter is handling most his professional correspondences.  In the letter addressed to her, The Times wrote: “The interview would cover his life and career to date, family life, illness, recovery, and upcoming plans and projects for the future. It would allow you to clear up any factual inaccuracies that might have been reported in the press, telling his side of the story, as well as celebrating his life and career so far.”  See the letter and his ultimate response here.

I guess Peterson thought it was The Times after all, a publication of respected reputation, and they specifically stated that they wanted cover his life and work in a range of details.  So he granted the interview.  The article came out two weekends ago and Peterson immediately posted the entire almost 3-hour interview on YouTube.  I found it in my feed one night and listened to it, wondering why he had posted it.  I knew nothing about the article.

In a nutshell, The Times article painted Peterson as a “broken man” who is lost in his confused thinking and who has to rely heavily upon his daughter just to get by.  It was a total hit job.  The article's perspective so skewed what transpired in the actual interview as to be bewildering.  And it reveals everything that is wrong with liberal media, the dominant force in media for the past several decades.

Liberal media has been mainstream at least since the 1960's.  There is certainly a conservative media.  You can't say Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and Rush Limbaugh are not conservative.  These sources are all popular and compete with the liberal media, taking a share of the mainstream not by reporting facts but by offering an alternative narrative – “alternative facts” as the unfortunate saying goes.  But “mainstream” media is essentially as narrative-based and advocating as it ever was.

To be able to rip into Jordan Peterson at precisely this vulnerable moment in his life is, at a minimum, bad taste and, at worst, an attempt to smear his credibility.  He truly does depend upon his daughter to help with a lot of the management of his life, though I don't see her as “controlling” him in any way.  She's an honest facilitator and The Times portrayal of her influence over Peterson's life is simply a reflection of how the paper had to approach Peterson at this time, though his daughter.  (Honestly, it would have been wiser of Peterson to have granted this interview when he was in better control of himself emotionally.  But there is that book deal to promote...)

Jordan Peterson is not confused about his evolving philosophy of life.  He had to let all that go for awhile because he was so sick but he has it all back again.  His present condition in no way lessens the force of his arguments.  It's the same thing as saying Nietzsche godless philosophy drove him insane, which is ridiculous.  Syphilis drove him insane and Peterson's condition involves the complex juxtaposition of anxiety, an allergic reaction to a prescription drug, and the resulting uncontrollable expansion of the original anxiety.

At one point, having to abandon America and Canada to find treatment options in Moscow, he was placed in a medically-induced coma for several days.  During this time his body was allowed to go through a viscous drug withdrawal that had to be treated as the symptoms manifested in his unconscious body.  When he came out of the coma he was, naturally, disoriented for awhile.  Then he realized that his anxiety was still there. That treatment landed he and his daughter in Serbia of all places.  That's where they both caught COVID.  He had no interest in anything.  He quit playing piano, for example, which was usually a daily enjoyment activity.

But after awhile he started playing music again.  Then he picked up where he left off on his latest book and finished it.  He did all this while only gradually re-entering the social world.  He was (and remains today) highly-emotional and tends to cry when certain things strike him as poignant such as the outpouring of sympathy he has received during his crisis, which he finds unbelievably humbling.  If I had to classify his behavior right now I'd say he's articulate but unstable.

Who knows, maybe the instability will pass along with all the other symptoms from the horrid experience.  Maybe it won't.  Either way, it remains to be seen exactly what Peterson will do with his experience now that he has reacquired his ability to sensibly articulate profound thoughts.  He probably has yet to know what to make of it himself.  But, the point is, the illness had nothing to do with the quality of his work.  He finished the book and he retains the ability to visualize and express where his mind is going with his cultural critique and struggle for meaning.
 

The Times article made it seem like Peterson's confusion was inherent to his work up to now.  It is a convenient ploy to devalued or discredit Peterson's outspoken work.  But, here is the problem.  The Times story actually says at least as much about the reporter who wrote it as it does about Peterson and his work.  The mainstream media are trying to sell a narrative about Peterson that is not factually accurate.  They are not reporting the news, they are inventing the news.  That Peterson's work and thought are worth less now that he's gone a bit batty in the head is an obvious and unjustified existential prejudice.   

At a larger level, mainstream media has influence, just as Fox News influences their viewers.  The mainstream influence, over a period of decades, becomes ingrained in our national psyche.  It's not really the news or, at least, it is not the facts.  It's you being told how to think about the news – a narrative.  I'm not optimistic that this long-standing force will change any time soon.  In fact it is evolving.  The current freedom of speech discussion centers on a clash of societal narratives.

Increasingly, speech is being limited in America, by the Left who are heavily invested in selling their narrative.  Limited as in certain groups and certain expressions of hate and anger are not free to speak.  They will be culled out.  We witness this with Trump's Twitter ban which was a necessary evil, but he is still free to speak on an alternative platform.  This helps marginalize him.  It will be interesting to see how many members the new platform attracts because of Trump.  Still, we can't start shutting down everyone considered Right-wing.  That is obviously not what a free and open discussion is all about and, hence, freedom of speech.

I need to devote a post sometime on the idea of human freedom.  About how freedom has evolved from once being a freedom of choice between good and evil into a right that everyone possesses.  A specific freedom based on prevailing narratives, which at the moment say that hate cannot be expressed and ultra-conservative views should be marginalized.  This is a dangerous precedent.  Remember, freedom, any freedom, is not based on what you can and cannot do.  The true measure of any freedom is what others are free to do with which you do not agree.

Nevertheless, Jordan Peterson has had this sort of “bad press” hurled at him before and he probably will again.  What can he do?  He put the whole damn unedited interview on YouTube for you to listen and decide for yourself.  The taped interview makes it obvious that he is unstable emotionally but he is not  intellectually inarticulate.  His ideas and expressions of his personal philosophy are as surgically sharp as ever.  He might have to pause and think about what to say next, but he has always been that way.  I've heard him stop mid-sentence, staring outward and absently play with his fingers in the air, remaining silent for 20-25 seconds before the next word comes out.  He tries very hard to be exacting in his expression.  Those “next words” that come after the pause are usually his most profound concepts.

But those pauses could now look like confusion instead of clarity if you think his ideas are related to his health at the moment.  It is just utter journalistic bullshit.  Frankly, I see it all over the place no matter where I read or what I watch.  Our society is awash with the “excrescence” of media news.

Jordan Peterson will do fine because shit like this just feeds into the madness of the culture wars.  His books will sell to more Right wingers now because they hate The Times and the liberal narrative and whoever else attacks a gay who is against forced use of gender pronouns for Trans people.  Ah, there's another freedom of speech concern.  The freedom not to speak.  But he will do fine because he has a solid following of intelligent, like-minded people.  He is a genuine person.  He won't treat you nicely if he objects to you but he will always treat you as a person with fears and hopes like everybody else.  He does not dehumanize his enemies.  

On the other hand, I believe Peterson's quest to keep tradition relevant will not ultimately succeed precisely because our “tradition” is changing.  I mean come on, no tradition stands the test of time.  Even the most orthodox religious affiliations are traditions that are only a few centuries old.  Every tradition transforms, that is what history teaches us.  Those seeking to preserve tradition or even aspects of tradition are fighting against the arrow of time.  There was once plenty of insightful thought from ancient Egypt, for example, that is completely lost today and has been lost for thousands of years.  It is that way with everything.

But that does not mean Peterson is irrelevant to the present discussion about spirituality, individualism, and society.  His psychological interpretation of things demands respect and shapes the current culture wars.  It will not be dismissed even if it is ultimately doomed.  My guess is that it will not die out but become assimilated in some way I cannot fathom.

It also does not change the fact that The Times article is the latest example of the tragedy of interpretive journalism, where the reporter becomes part of the story and shapes the story to their ideals to the extent that they have any.  Hunter S. Thompson's splendid gonzo-style journalism promoted accuracy of narrative at the expense of fact.  It was insightful and entertaining but it most certainly was not the news.

Of course, the press is free to print whatever it wants.  Ultimately, it is up to us, as consumers of content, to determine which narratives are legitimate and which aren't.  And the fact we cannot agree on this is one of the pillars of the culture wars Peterson finds himself in the middle of.  So, The Times story is really more of a commentary on our times than it is about Peterson.  If you read the article you will learn more about the reporter's reaction to interviewing him than about what he said in the interview.

So, now this will play out as everything seems to play out these days, in controversy and misunderstanding when what is needed is clarity and civil discourse.  Rebel Wisdom is another YouTube channel I subscribe to.  Its take on this journalistic debacle is to rightly apply what it says about the state of public media as a whole.

“There's very clearly several things going on [with the Peterson interview as published].  One is a kind of denial.  One is a kind of double standard.  A third is a kind of journalistic practice that I've only come to understand lately.  Which is, I don't know to what extent this was preconceived...despite the massively negative response, as a positive thing.  This is being clickbait.  And these things thrive now on controversy.  And [the editor] might have well have set out to think well, how do I get this the maximum profile?  That, I think, is a very sinister development and I think it has taken over what was once the 'quality press' in the way that was once the preserve of the 'gutter press'... Outlets like The Times, The Observer and The Guardian, while hardly innocent, were much more careful about that and certain had writers that who would go out of their way to present a balanced picture of a person however controversial they happened to be and make an attempt to understand that person a bit more comprehensibly.  That's what I really found depressing because this isn't a one-off is it?  I mean it's a trend, it's a tendency, it's a corruption of mainstream media […]

“I think there's a tragedy here...[Peterson has] been so mis-characterized, so misrepresented, so trivialized, that the depth and breadth of it, which anybody who's watched his early videos, who's read Maps of Meaning...is that he's a remarkable mind.  But you would not think so.  [Reading the article] you'd think that he was some table-thumping, alt-right, boogeyman and he's nothing like that.  He's got a very, very, very interesting understanding of the way the world is and the way people are.  And I think it's a great tragedy that there aren't more writers who have taken the trouble to just simply, without getting into the whole red herrings and straw men of his supposed misogyny, his supposed transphobia, which is entirely inaccurate, and have a think about what he is saying.   When you get in to what he's saying it is very profound and very important...The people who report on him don't understand.  Because they're not looking at his videos.  They're not watching his lectures.  They're just reading other newspapers, deciding who he is, and going in there with both fists flailing.”

Our media is a dystopian landscape.  About as broken as everything else about our society.  In fact, it contributes to the breaking of our society.  Sure, they are free to do this propaganda type journalism.  But a lot of what is reported as “fact” and how it is reported as “narrative” has real consequences that the rest of us are left to deal with - without having an objective press as a resource.  To that extent, Jordan Peterson's torment by journalistic preconception affects us all.  It is, indeed,  as FDR said 80 years ago, “an unnecessary excrescence on our civilization.”