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On Jordan Peterson (Episode 49)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
Michael and Caleb discuss…Jordan Peterson. In a previous episode, we covered 12 Rules for Life. Jordan Peterson is a controversial political and cultural figure – but in that discussion, we put all that aside.
In this discussion, we bring it all back.
We cover what we see as Peterson’s virtues and vices in this conversation and how they impact his work. We discuss soldier mindset, audience capture, beauty, and neuroticism. Peterson is a role model for us, but also, an anti-model. This was a useful discussion for clarifying what we find valuable from the man, what we don’t, and how that shapes what we want to do with Stoa.
(01:49) Introduction
(03:44) The Good
(12:29) Don't Apologize to the Mob
(18:39) The Bad
(27:58) Soldier Mindset
(45:31) Outstanding Questions
(49:07) Conclusion
https://stoameditation.com/blog/12-rules-for-life/
***
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Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
Sensitivity in Critiquing Influential Figures
00:00:00
Speaker
I feel sensitive when I get too critical of somebody, especially somebody that I think is like, I do think Jordan Peterson has been kind of struggling with some issues recently as well. And so I don't want to hit somebody below the belt, but I do think when somebody is so influential, it's worthwhile talking about their public
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:15
Speaker
figure.
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome to Stoic Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of Stoicism. Each week, we'll share two conversations. One between the two of us, and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert.
00:00:32
Speaker
And in this conversation, Michael and I discuss Jordan Peterson.
Jordan Peterson's Influence and Stoicism
00:00:36
Speaker
In a previous episode, we covered his book, 12 Rules for Life. Jordan Peterson is a controversial political and cultural figure, but in that discussion, we put all that aside. In this discussion, we bring it all back. We cover what Peterson, the person, does well and what he doesn't.
00:00:55
Speaker
We discuss soldier mindset, audience capture, beauty, the importance of consistency and neuroticism. It's wide ranging and should be satisfying to those of you who wanted us to touch on more cultural issues in our previous episode on 12 rules for life.
00:01:15
Speaker
I got a lot of value out of it because Peterson serves as a useful role model, but also a useful anti-model in a number of respects for me. So thinking through that more with Michael was really helpful in clarifying what we want to do with Stoa and this podcast. I hope you find it of interest as well. Here is our conversation.
Controversial Status and Separation of Ideas
00:01:42
Speaker
Welcome to Stowe Conversations. My name is Caleb Montiros. And my name is Michael Trombley. And today we are going to be discussing Jordan Peterson. So in a previous episode, we discussed the book, 12 Rules for Life.
00:01:59
Speaker
and sort of considered that by itself. Jordan Peterson is, of course, a controversial character. If you don't know much about him, you can check out his Wikipedia page or something of that sort. But we took on 12 rules for life sort of independently from the man himself.
00:02:15
Speaker
And it's important to do that, it's important to consider ideas on their own, on their own merits. But there's also the thought that every idea is embodied and that ideas cannot be divorced from their advocates.
Strengths, Weaknesses, and Positive Influence
00:02:30
Speaker
Nietzsche has the remark that philosophy is auto-biography.
00:02:34
Speaker
So today, to even out what we missed, we're going to be considering the man himself, and we'll follow a similar structure highlighting some of our praise for Peterson, what we think he does well, then critiquing what we think he does poorly, and then end with any questions or points of his practice that we think are interesting.
00:02:59
Speaker
That was a good introduction. I like this method we've been using of going over the good, the bad, and then the interesting, because it makes me feel a bit more comfortable to talk about criticizing ideas, to talk about criticizing people. What you just said was that Peterson exists within a context. So if we're going to talk about somebody and their
00:03:20
Speaker
Jordan Peterson's kind of movement through the public space. I like to have that in the full context too, of both the things that I think that does well and the things that I think are negative about, about his impact in the public space. So it'll be a fun discussion. Looking forward to it. Yeah, absolutely. So since I had you start last time, I can kick it off with what I think he does well. How does that sound? Yeah, sounds good. Let's do it.
00:03:45
Speaker
All right, so the first thing that comes to mind for me is that he's positively helpful, especially helpful for many younger men, which is what he sort of designed his message for. I suppose one could say, I think 12 rules for life. A lot of people found that book very useful and they have also found his video lectures exceptionally useful. He's a very motivating speaker. He's an excellent rhetorician.
00:04:14
Speaker
and both positive and negative aspects that you can describe someone as an excellent rhetorician. He has the ability to sort of, I imagine, capture his audience and convey a kind of feeling. And this is something that I've heard from people who have attended his lectures who don't really like him that much. I've never attended one of his lectures, but at least from secondhand reports, he's exceptionally good in person.
00:04:39
Speaker
So I think that's my first point of praise for him, is that people describe him as helpful. And they do that in a concrete way, not in the sense that they feel good when they attend his lectures, but maybe they're down in the dumps for a bit and then manage to turn things around. And Peterson is part of the cure for whatever lady they were suffering from. That's what I have as my first note. Anything to add onto that?
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah. So a lot of the things that I think he does well, I agree with you that he's very, very helpful. I think he's very helpful in particular for young men and any kind of group of people. There's going to be people within that group that need help.
00:05:22
Speaker
I think young men need help.
Psychological Insights and Philosophical Connections
00:05:24
Speaker
I think they need messages that are specific for them that they feel are relatable to them, especially as they begin to kind of make progress in language that's relatable to them in kind of stories and metaphors that are relatable to them. I think Peterson does this really, really well. And I think he helps a group that, that needs help. And I think Peterson is, is at his very best when he's providing psychological advice.
00:05:48
Speaker
to people who are struggling psychologically and grounding that in kind of his clinical experience and emphasizing personal accountability, emphasizing personal responsibility, emphasizing transformation, while also being sympathetic to the struggles that can lend into a position where you need help, where you can be
00:06:09
Speaker
know, not as successful as you want to be, not happy as you want to be, not really regulating your emotions in the way you want to, or kind of experiencing extreme emotions in ways that you don't want to. And he does a really good job, I think, of kind of speaking to those things in a way that helps, you know, yeah, disenfranchised, struggling men in particular, but I think many people, you know, I know plenty of
00:06:31
Speaker
you know, women as well that have benefited from his message or older, older people that have benefited from, from reading his work and listening to him talk. So yeah, I think, I think I agree with that. And I think that's kind of the, the best part is like, whatever else we're going to say today, there's, there's people myself included that have been in their lives have been improved by things that Peterson has said or messages or ways of framing those things. And I think that's a, that's an absolute positive.
00:07:02
Speaker
One other aspect I'd add in terms of positive is that I think 12 Rules for Life is a good work. It's a kind of work that you can think with. It's provocative and there are multiple levels of meaning one can
00:07:22
Speaker
take away from the work. So the first pass you can treat it as a sort of standards piece of self-help, but at a deeper pass you can see, oh, there's all these connections to these ideas and depth, psychology, of course, different religious ideas.
00:07:40
Speaker
or there's also a political reading. And in that way, it's not to, unlike Plato's Republic, where you have a view of the individual and their parts, and you think through that, and then you think through questions about the city and the parts that make up the city.
00:08:02
Speaker
So I think that's another positive aspect that I'd like to mention on Peterson's side is that his works are something that are serious enough that one can sort of think with them and engage with different levels of their meaning. Yeah, I didn't think of this until you just mentioned it, but I think that's a great point. One thing we often talk about in terms of stoicism, you know, a lot of our conversations are around stoicism. I think of these three levels of stoicism.
00:08:32
Speaker
And we've talked about this before, but the first is this kind of toolkit level, which is, you know, you can apply the dichotomy of control or you could apply the contemplation of the sage and you can do this no matter your value system. You could be a bank robber and say, I'm only going to focus on what is up to me, which is robbing the banks to the best of my ability. You know, you can do, you can do that kind of thing and take it at a real service level. Then there's this kind of second level of stoicism, which I think is about values and about what matters.
00:09:00
Speaker
The main value being to focus on virtue, that being the main thing that matters being a good person. And then there's this kind of third deeper level about the way the world is where you bring in stoic arguments about God or the nature of the universe. And I think you've nailed it that 12 rules for life and a lot of Peterson's work functions at all three of those levels, or at least unlike many other people's work.
00:09:23
Speaker
provides answers at those second and third levels, provides, it's not just, oh, clean your room. It is, you know, here's a conception of what a good meaningful life means. It provides a sense of meaning, which is especially appealing to people who are lacking that or don't have that. It succeeds on those two deeper levels, which is cool. It's ambitious. It takes those deeper questions of meaning seriously, instead of being at this, at this higher level of, well, I'm just going to give you this hack or this trick.
00:09:50
Speaker
that's going to make you 5% more productive. It tackles those deeper questions in a way that I really respect. Right, right. Absolutely. What else do you want to say that's positive about
Selective Empathy and Free Speech
00:10:00
Speaker
the man?
00:10:01
Speaker
I mean, we prepared, we prepared kind of our discussion separately, but a lot of our things are overlapping. I mean, for me it was that, you know, he advocates for a group of people that need help, particularly those that are struggling and particularly young men, as we talked about. He functions, he develops a coherent life philosophy. He's interested in these questions of deeper meaning, which I think are really, really important questions. And I wish that more people.
00:10:23
Speaker
that we're not explicitly religious, we're tackling those questions because I sometimes have trouble engaging with those questions in a religious context, but I'm really, really interested in them.
00:10:33
Speaker
And then I, and then his clinical foundation, there's just, there's just experience there. So I think as we'll talk about, we get into the, the parts that I think are already bad about his public persona. One thing that he does have is, is this clinical background, which, which comes into providing, you know, good advice, especially for those that are looking to kind of develop better habits or moderate their behavior in a way that's really effective if they're kind of struggling at the moment.
00:10:59
Speaker
Those are those are my three point. Those are my three ones. Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, I think yeah, I think we have a lot of overlap in our lists although we did prepare these independently I would also agree that one thing he does well as Thinking about these questions of
00:11:19
Speaker
meaning and relating the problems of life to deeper questions of meaning is one move that he makes, the Stoics make, other excellent psychiatrists, philosophers who write about these sorts of problems of life make is it's not just a matter of
00:11:39
Speaker
Oh, here are some tools in your tool belt metaphor that you can use to solve whatever comes up. It's taking the next step to thinking about how should you train? How should you change your operating system? How should you change your entire worldview, if at all? And tackling controversial questions, tackling deep questions, philosophical questions head on.
00:12:08
Speaker
At least at his best, I think that's well put. And if you're listening and you're starting with this episode, we get into some of those questions about the meaning and some of those questions about his deeper arguments in our last episode on 12 rules for life. So, you know, if that sounds interesting to you, you can dig into those in that one.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. The other positive aspect of Peterson, I would say is that, and this can be a vice as well for him and for many others, but he does not apologize to groups of people who are angry at him or when those people are being
00:12:45
Speaker
unreasonable. I think in general he is very clear about his stances and does not make the move of making an empty apology for the sake of PR or something of that sort.
00:13:04
Speaker
Now there's nothing virtuous in doing that by itself because if you actually did something that warrants an apology, then you should apologize and probably make a genuine apology. Although what that amounts to I think is always an interesting question. And I think it's plausible that it doesn't look like what apologies we often see in the form of social media and genuine apologies probably make, still leave many people angry.
00:13:33
Speaker
So that's not a virtue all alone, but he has made stances or taken stances at any rate that I don't think he has needed to apologize for, and he's also done the opposite. So I think that's an admirable set, at least for the former case.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, I put this down in my interesting section, but I'll bring it in here. I think he's genuinely in pursuit of the truth. I have him here as not a grifter, is what I put him as. I think he believes what he says, and then he has the courage not to back down from what he says. And as you said,
00:14:13
Speaker
You know, whether or not that's a good or a bad thing, you can't separate that from kind of the content of what's been said or the content of what's been done. But I think as a general kind of like overall quality, it makes discourse a lot easier when people are genuine. It makes debating ideas a lot easier. It's kind of like a.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like a beneficial quality in people that are taking up public space to be the kinds of people that say what they mean, think what they mean, and don't apologize unnecessary out of pressure I guess I shouldn't say unnecessarily but out of pressure. I think that's a really, I would, I would enjoy it if a lot more people took on that kind of quality, because
00:14:51
Speaker
It just makes it a lot easier to engage with ideas when you're like, that's really what you think. I can really wrestle with it. And you're not just flip-flopping because of either what's going to make you more money or because of what is, is popular in the moment. That's, that's, that's how I read him. At least I see him as, as genuinely pursuing that truth. And because of that, not apologizing if he doesn't think he's wrong. I mean, he only thinks it's being kind of socially demanded.
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right. And just to be concrete, since I think one correct stance I think he has taken is generally been in defense of free inquiry and free speech. In particular, he came to prominence for
00:15:35
Speaker
debating a Canadian bill, Bill C-16, which he argued plausibly would compel speech and would classify the failure to use someone's preferred
00:15:53
Speaker
pronouns as hate speech, which seems like a bad idea to me, which is different from the view should you use people's preferred pronouns, which I think is important to be clear about. There's what's the right thing to do, the ethical thing to do in some case, and then does the fact that someone misuses speech warrant involving the state punishing someone for hate speech
00:16:21
Speaker
So I think that's a stance that he's taken and faced a lot of heat for that I'm in general in favor of. We don't need to turn this into a podcast where that's the right stance or not. But I think since I said that it's virtuous that he doesn't apologize to the mob sometimes, I owe an account of when are those times. And this is, I think this is it. Yeah. I think those kinds of situations
00:16:48
Speaker
I think about that in terms of, you know, so you had this idea of kind of pronoun usage or what's kind of required or what qualifies as hate speech. This often comes up in kind of abortion discussions as well. I think of kind of a paradigm case or maybe something along euthanasia that we had a discussion on made recently. These topics where there can be potentially a break between what is ethical and what is legal can get really, really naughty really quickly. And so for in your example,
00:17:17
Speaker
You know, I generally think, I mean, yeah, we, we don't need to have the conversation as this, but to be clear, I think, you know, I think if you're not using someone's preferred pronoun, you're being kind of a, you're being a juror. Like that is a, that is a unethical thing to do in most situations. I would say in the vast, vast majority of situations, you know, you should, you should call somebody what they want to be called and you're being.
00:17:41
Speaker
unnecessarily harmful in a way that is speak poorly on your character if you're not. But as you pointed out, that's kind of a different distinction from a legal precedent. And when those lines get blurry, you can get a lot of heat because people can understandably feel like you're talking about the ethical question when you're talking about the legal question and vice
Consistency and Accountability
00:18:04
Speaker
versa. So I think it's a great example of a naughty issue that's difficult to hold your ground on.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yep, yep. Without endorsing it. Cool. Well, we said some good things. Anything else we want to say about Peterson? That was in the positive part. I said lots of, I said a lot of what I think I really respect about his ideas in our last episode on 12 rules as well. But in terms of, I do think you'll get more as a listener on the positive side, just from listening to our conversation on his ideas. Yeah.
00:18:36
Speaker
Cool. Should I jump into the bad then? Let's do it. Yeah, I have a couple ideas here that I wrote down. My first good point was like, he really cares about disenfranchised struggling men, which I really respect and appreciate. I think that's a group that needs to be appealed to. But one thing that I think is kind of strange in his public persona is that he seems to have extreme empathy for some groups, but not for others. So men need help.
00:19:01
Speaker
But there are other groups that need help too. And I feel like there is, I find in his kind of discourse, there's an incredible sympathy to one side or kind of incredible, I think a really admirable sympathy to the struggles of some groups and not to others. And I find this frustrating. I really admire that kind of sympathy that he can have for the struggles, again, of young men in particular, but
00:19:30
Speaker
I've watched a video of him crying, discussing the current state of what it's like to be a young man or to be an incel in particular, I think the example was. And I admire that almost radical empathy for a group that the ability to get there and to see the struggle and to recognize the humanity in these people
00:19:53
Speaker
but then I don't see that shared universally. It's kind of focused. And I think that is, I don't want to say it's necessarily harmful because you can't be perfect everywhere, but it makes conversations uneven. There's an amount of charity that's given to one group in his discussions that's not given to other groups. I think, for example, members of the queer community or something like that, I see this,
00:20:23
Speaker
or people that are, you know, there's people on the far left, for example, that I don't, I think are getting things very wrong, you know, and I think I don't, I don't relate to, or I don't think they're right. But I can kind of turn on that empathy perspective and say, well, this is a person, maybe this is a person that struggled, maybe this is a person that doesn't feel empowered. So they're trying to take power through, you know,
00:20:48
Speaker
yelling at people on Twitter or kind of coming up with these, these more extreme positions. I can turn that on for those groups. And I admire that Peterson can, can do that with disenfranchised men, but I just wish he would be able to do that in both directions. And I think you would have a better discussion, a more productive discussion if you're able to do that. But instead you end up, I think in this position, I guess my thought is you end up in this position with him where.
00:21:11
Speaker
the disenfranchised young men, particularly right leaning, become very sympathetic group. And then the left or the far left become kind of a bogeyman. And there's no way to empathize with this because this is going to be, you know, the movement that leads to new Russian gulag or something like that.
Mindset and Empathy in Public Discourse
00:21:31
Speaker
And I find that, I find that, no, I might not be getting this exactly right, but that's the, that is the way that I feel about it. And I find it kind of off putting that asymmetry there.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think he's become more, the way I put this in is that he's become more of a soldier. So you had a conversation with Julia Galiff and she has this distinction between scout mindsets and soldier mindsets. And scouts are people who, when they think about issues or sort of exploring, they're trying to come up with the right map of the terrain. Whereas a soldier,
00:22:08
Speaker
is when they think about issues they are using their arguments as weapons to win in a whether it's a personal debate or the political sphere or something of this sort and
00:22:24
Speaker
he's officially become more of a advocate for right-wing type causes. And when you do that, well, then it's just going to be a matter of effective rhetoric to play up the plight of some groups rather than others. So I think that's one way to think about what, maybe you could have your critique though and make it deeper and say, no, it's not,
00:22:51
Speaker
It's not so he joined the Daily Wire, which is more of a political media organization. So now he's a soldier. But if you wanted to make your criticism deeper, maybe you could say now he had this asymmetry from from the beginning. Do you think something like that's true? Yeah, I think he had the asymmetry from the beginning. And I think it's gotten worse. So I absolutely think it's gotten worse to the point where, you know,
00:23:16
Speaker
I find him almost impossible to engage with as a thinker in his current state of, at least in terms of Twitter, from what I've seen on Twitter, I find it almost in a different person from the person that wrote 12 Rules for Life. It was somebody that I think I had maybe disagreement with, but a lot of respect for. And I find you, you know, people talk about like late Wittgenstein or early Wittgenstein, like I feel like almost you have this like early Peterson, later Peterson.
00:23:40
Speaker
So I think there's been this movement to being a soldier absolutely to trying to argue a point at the expense of truth or I wouldn't say necessarily is like lying though I think he's almost like blinded to the truth and almost becomes like which is the part of the soldier mindset as you were talking about is that you're not aware of the fact that you're making up a story you're just you're just making these stories are just coming up because you're trying to fight for something you're trying to argue for something that you do believe in
00:24:08
Speaker
But I think that asymmetry was present in the beginning of his thinking, at least going back to 12 Rules for Life, which is five years old now. I think that asymmetry was there. There was always kind of a focus on personal accountability, always kind of a focus on particularly, I think particularly young men, but there could be kind of a cause and effect here thing. So I'm going on a tangent here, but
00:24:32
Speaker
I don't see this being unusual for Peterson to be putting out this work on the internet, young men are responding to it positively, and then you end up in this kind of feedback loop where you say, well, look, these people are enjoying this, so I'm going to make more work that appeals to them. And there can be a kind of like, you know, people need, people need, every group needs work that appeals to them, writes to them, talks in their voice, right? And we can't have
00:24:56
Speaker
We can't have works that appeal to every minority, but not to white men as well. That's a group that needs to be appealed to or just young men of color as well in general. But I think there's become an animosity, almost a lack of empathy, a lack of sympathy for the other side rather than just a proactive focus for one side.
00:25:19
Speaker
This is another thing I put on one of my dot things is one of the things that I admired in 12 Rules for Life was this focus on personal accountability. This focus on clean your room, worry about yourself before you shout at the world. Don't be shouting out clouds. What right do you have to change the major political factors of the world when you can't even get your things in order?
00:25:40
Speaker
But I find Pearson does the same thing and that rule doesn't apply when the, as if the political factors become the far left or the political factors become feminism. Right. Then all of a sudden it becomes, I'm going to shout at these political factors. I'm going to shout at these macro things. That's okay. But, but anybody, you know, on the left being concerned about political factors on the right, that's, that's incorrect and you should worry about yourself. It seems inconsistent to me.
00:26:06
Speaker
It doesn't seem like a thing that cuts across political lines in a genuine way. It seems inconsistent. Yeah, I think there certainly is something to that. There's a persecution complex of sort, both for himself and for his political coalition, which does seem to have gotten worse over the past few years. In 12 Rules for Life, he has a section where he talks about the Garden of Eden, and he has some line about
00:26:35
Speaker
the man. The first woman made the first man self-conscious and resentful. So what did the man do? Well, first he cursed the woman for causing him to make this mistake and then he cursed God for making the woman
00:26:51
Speaker
Eve, such a temptress, and then curse God himself and so on. Of course, this story is pointing a finger at Adam for failing to take responsibility for his own decisions. But one does sort of have the sense that
00:27:11
Speaker
that lesson could be integrated more deeply in Peterson's own political and cultural thought. That he's spending too much time pointing his fingers at others and reacting to others' mistakes instead of promoting this accountability that he did early on for both himself and his audience.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah. I absolutely agree. And I think it's, it's hard to see because it's, it's a quality that it's a, it's an argument that I think gets a lot right. And it's a quality that I think is really admirable if I can see it. And I think the absence of it is kind of frustrating. Yeah.
00:27:58
Speaker
So I had one more point I wanted to make here. I mean, it's the same kind of point about the asymmetry though. I think it all comes back to that for me. There's, I watched this big think piece by Peterson and he talks about the fear or the risks of the far left.
00:28:14
Speaker
And I think that's valid. I think, you know, my political position in order to be really, you know, not to be able to take a super controversial position here, but I think there is danger on the far right and there's danger on the far left. I think, you know, if on the far right you have Nazism and on the far left, you have something like Stalinist communism or something like this, you know, both of those things are states that we should avoid. And if we can be afraid of Nazism, then we can also be afraid of kind of the
00:28:41
Speaker
the Stalinist version of communism. And I was inspired, one of my favorite authors is Milan Kandera, who is a writer from the Czech Republic, which had to deal with occupation by Russian forces. So a lot of his writing is informed by kind of the dangers of Russian occupation. And one of his first books is called The Joke, and it's about how in this communist regime,
00:29:07
Speaker
there was no space for humor or ambiguity. He made a joke against a political figure and they were like,
00:29:15
Speaker
What are you saying here? And he's like, Oh, it's just a joke. And they're like, what do you mean? It's a joke. You said something bad. And there was no, there's no kind of space for any ambiguity in this, in this realm of kind of virtue signaling and collectivist power or wherever you want to call it. And I'm pretty sympathetic to those. I think those things are dangerous. I think we have to keep an eye on those and I'm glad that people are keeping an eye on those tendencies because I think they're very harmful in their most extreme form. And I think some extreme forms of them absolutely exist in Canada and the United States.
00:29:42
Speaker
I just also think there's also a problem on the extreme, right? There's also a problem with white nationalism, Nazism, racism, and these kind of movements. And I find the asymmetry in which those things are treated by Peterson really frustrating.
00:30:01
Speaker
Because I think ultimately both those movements could benefit from a lot of his insights or a lot of this idea of focusing on yourself, this idea of personal responsibility and accountability, these ideas of finding meaning in self-development instead of meaning in changing people around you or like controlling the world around you.
00:30:20
Speaker
But I find those kind of this criticism of the far left getting far right get ignored and I don't know why if it's not a blind spot it has to be I think the point kind of you made it being kind of this soldier for a certain position and that's just not I lose a lot of respect for for soldiers speaking of that's the soldier mindset, you know people who are pushing a certain position Yeah, yeah, I think you have I think the soldiers often
00:30:47
Speaker
have a slogan that I think comes from the French Revolution, like no enemies to the left. It was the original form. You can also say no enemies to the right. And what that means is that as a political coalition, you will not critique members of your own coalition, except in a very private
00:31:14
Speaker
way. You especially will not do so when provoked to condemn some member by the opposing coalition. So it seems like that's something that Peterson has taken to heart. And there is one of the sort of interesting questions that I think comes up for me is like, when should you, if ever apply a principle like that?
00:31:40
Speaker
plausibly if you were in a state that you actually believe was turning totalitarian.
00:31:46
Speaker
it would not be unreasonable to form a coalition with people who you thought were otherwise unsavory but better than the alternative. Practice Stoicism with Stoa. Stoa combines the ancient philosophy of Stoicism with meditation in a practical meditation app. It includes hundreds of hours of exercises, lessons, and conversations to help you live a happier life. Find it available for a free download in the Play Store and App Store.
00:32:17
Speaker
Yeah. I haven't heard that quote before. I think that's a, that's a, that's a good, or that phrase, no enemies to the left or no enemies to the right. Yeah. I suppose you, you would have to, you would have to adopt, as you said, a worldview. It would be plausible to say, look, I'm going to choose the lesser of two evils. If I really do think this one is the, we're, we're close to this occurring. And this is a significant evil. Like we're close to far left totalitarianism.
00:32:43
Speaker
And I think this is a significant evil. Either far left totalitarianism is worse than far right, or we're much closer to far left. And I guess maybe then it just comes down to a difference of kind of intuition, maybe almost like an empirical claim or a factual claim. And I don't feel like we are, but maybe there is some integrity to be found there if you really do think that's the case and you say, look, well, I'm gonna
00:33:11
Speaker
no enemies to the right for this point because I'm really doing a kind of consequentialist thing here. I'm working with people I'd rather not work with or ignoring problems I identify as problems for the sake of the greater good. There's a reasonable point there. I take your point.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So I suppose, you know, you have to think you're essentially at war, right? If you're at war on the front lines, you're not going to comes back to the soldier, right? Comes back to the soldier. Yeah. Yeah. You're not, you're not going to cancel your fellow Truby because he's got some problematic attitudes or beliefs. Yeah, totally.
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think in general that critique, what you are maybe causing me to think about a little bit more is that I've seen him turn more into a soldier over the past few years, but there is this view, of course, that that's actually been there for quite a bit of time, maybe since the beginning of his sort of current political attitude, which probably crystallized, you know, as a decade ago, two decades ago.
00:34:19
Speaker
although it is true that may have gotten worse. Two additional things that I want to add in terms of critiques. One, somewhat short, I think Peterson says a lot of silly things. His language is awesome, vague, and imprecise. You can look at a number of clips where you might be asked whether he believes in God or accuses other people of believing in God, where it seems like his language has
00:34:42
Speaker
He's just essentially misusing language, speaking like a continental philosopher, the kind of philosopher he would critique for saying nonsense.
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And just to be clear, I mean people like Derrida or Foucault, which are people that Peterson thinks don't make any sense and are bad. And I do think there is some value in continental philosophy to be clear, but one of
00:35:19
Speaker
its least admirable traits is the fact that it's often impenetrable and one gets a sense that there's nothing to be uncovered beneath the cobwebs of theorizing. So I think that's pretty clear and it's not that interesting to talk about. I think like with continental philosophers, if you come at Peterson with an attitude of
00:35:47
Speaker
Some of his statements are going to be silly and verge on the meaningless, but I'm looking for what's of value here, what other people see as a value here, then you will come away with something that's worth thinking about.
00:36:05
Speaker
But it is worth critiquing because it would be better if he didn't speak in such unclear fashions at times. And it's almost certainly true that he uses that as a crutch at other times. A more central critique perhaps that's worth spending some more time on is that he's just a very passionate person. Sometimes he will start crying when he's talking about a particular issue, even if it's quite intellectual. He clearly gets worked up about
00:36:33
Speaker
serious political or cultural problems. He displays some traits that can only be described as neurotic. I think he has an episode, an earlier episode with Joe Rogan, the podcast host Joe Rogan, where he talked about how drinking apple cider took him out of action for about three weeks.
00:37:00
Speaker
and describe the sensation that consuming apple cider cause in him as an overwhelming sense of impending doom, which it's one thing to say, you know, this apple cider messes up my stomach for three weeks and another to
00:37:20
Speaker
sort of throw, you know, an existential crisis or existential angst at Apple cider. It's intense. Yeah, if you were at a party with somebody and somebody said, this Apple cider is giving me a sense of impending doom, he'll be like, that's a, that's an intense person. That's a lot.
00:37:39
Speaker
And I think this is connected to his persecution complex, the sense that there are people out to stop what he's trying to do, which is certainly true now, but was not always true. And I would think it would be better when talking about
00:37:59
Speaker
serious political cultural issues, whether it's relations between the genders, climate change, issues about whether modern democracies have turned into totalitarian states.
Public Persona and Beauty Standards
00:38:12
Speaker
It would be better to avoid
00:38:14
Speaker
being so passionate, getting so worked up about these sorts of things. I think that we should bring a level of epistemic rigor and epistemic calm, if you will, to a number of these discussions that can just so easily escalate into different parties passionately critiquing one another. And Peterson is sometimes part of the problem.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah, so to take this back to the stoic lens, right? Part of stoic ideas is that the issue of passions are not just that they're unenjoyable. So like if you feel extreme sorrow, extreme anger, it's not just that it hurts or just feels unpleasant. It's also that you can't really reason well when you're in extreme state.
00:39:00
Speaker
So it's not just preserve your equanimity for the sake of not feeling things, but also preserve your equanimity because you can reason better when you're not in the thralls of emotional turmoil. So if you're the kind of person, I mean, this was one of the points I was taking you to make, or one of the things that I was thinking, or if you're the kind of person that can get put in a passionate state by something you've read on the internet.
00:39:22
Speaker
by a tweet somebody laid, you know, there was that famous thing of that overweight model or kind of plus size model on the cover of sports illustrated swimsuit model. And, you know, Peterson is angrily tweeting about this, you know, in a way that's incredibly passionate, like viscerally passionate to everybody seeing this Twitter thread.
00:39:42
Speaker
I can't remember the exact wording, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was saying something like, you know, I'll never fall for your, you know, I won't succumb to this totalitarianism. And it's this kind of zero to 10, which is not just, it's not just kind of strange to observe, but also is just like a poor habit to have as a thinker.
00:40:00
Speaker
And it's probably dangerous if you're the kind of person that a lot of people look up to. And so it's one thing if people are reading your books, which maybe you've thought about carefully in a quiet context. And it's another thing if people are following along on your kind of daily thoughts or your daily reflections and you kind of succumb to these extreme emotions. Right, right. You said, sorry, not beautiful, and no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.
00:40:28
Speaker
And then I think he goes on and says, he gets a little bit more unhinged. Well, just this idea of evoking authoritarianism, when you see a magazine cover of somebody that you yourself don't find attractive, although somebody who's clearly attractive to many people, you're just kind of, you're seeing something through such a lens that it struck me that
00:40:54
Speaker
How can you even objectively observe any situation if this is like immediately what you get pulled into? It's like you're almost, you're looking for red, so you're seeing it everywhere. That's where I felt seeing that tweet. Yeah, yeah. The argument that this picture of the plus size model is less beautiful than probably the artificial
00:41:25
Speaker
sort of very, I don't know, how would you say, sensate model who probably appeared in the previous year doesn't seem exceptionally strong. You're just saying that even on empirical grounds, it's not a very good argument. Like even on just like an objective grounds of the kind of people people find attractive, it was like a weird hill to die on. Is that what you're saying? No, I think people almost certainly found the previous year's model a hundred times more attractive. But there's this idea of
00:41:55
Speaker
beautiful that the people probably found they're more attractive and almost like the pornographic sense rather than the. Sense of beauty. Yeah. So that, in that sense, it seems to me like if you have these views about it's important to promote these ideas about women's beauty complaining about the 2022 version of swimsuit sports illustrated.
00:42:25
Speaker
What's so bad about that compared to all these previous decades where they've promoted essentially different forms of sex theft models that probably do not map except in
00:42:43
Speaker
some sort of 10x sense. They map onto beauty in the same sense that McDonald's maps onto good food. There is something there, and you can certainly say that previous editions of the swimsuit models were more beautiful than the existing one. That seems plausible to me. But they're still distorted, right? And they're still certainly more pornographic.
00:43:09
Speaker
Anyway, that's a bit of a detour, but I think that the point stands that we have many criticisms of Peterson. Yeah, I want to kind of bring that back. I mean, I guess we got to do another episode on the philosophy of beauty or something like that because it sounds like an interesting topic.
00:43:28
Speaker
The point remains that I find it difficult to take someone seriously who finds themselves personally affronted by something that I think is innocuous, if not actually beneficial, that have more representation or different kinds of bodies on swimsuit magazines. But at the very least, you said, if distorted by social pressure,
00:43:51
Speaker
no more or less distorted by social pressure than the other examples of models in the past. But those kind of examples don't evoke the same kind of rage from him, which I think comes back to that kind of asymmetry point because he feels to me like he's looking for examples of this left authoritarianism in practice, and then it's kind of ready to jump on these.
00:44:16
Speaker
I mean, another example, you know, that I see, I see in your notes is the time that he tweeted out an example of Chinese porn, right? Which is just this, for those that aren't familiar with this example, it was kind of, it was a joke. It was a, it was a pornographic dominatrix scene and the person tweeting it had tweeted a joke that this was like a, an example of some sort of Chinese thing. It was a, like a.
00:44:41
Speaker
berm collection camp or something like this. And Peterson immediately took this as terrible evidence of the state of the world without any kind of further research or without any sort of further inspection of what's going on here. And you've got to be especially careful on Twitter, right? You're not talking to a good friend of yours, it's Twitter.
00:44:58
Speaker
Anytime my emotions get riled up on social media, I always have to kind of take a second and be like, is this person being ironic? Is this a joke? I have to kind of have that awareness. But I think to me, that example speaks to speaks to this poor epistemic skill of getting really passionate really quickly. Just kind of just kind of just calm, just, you know, just calm down and just think about the things with it more.
00:45:18
Speaker
You know, just do that more. Just be more like that. And I think you'd be happier and you'd probably have better things to say because you'd be saying them for a more careful position.
00:45:31
Speaker
Right, right. Well, just to end, to get in some of our things that we think are interesting or we don't necessarily think are good or bad, one of the questions that I floated earlier that I think Peterson brings to the fore is, what sorts of battles is it worth becoming a soldier for? And how do you take a stand well without becoming captured by your audience or
00:45:56
Speaker
being defined by your enemies, the worst form of your enemies in
Becoming a Soldier for a Cause
00:46:02
Speaker
particular. And I think those are what Peterson provides, I think, as an anti-model, especially in the politics and cultural type case, of how to answer that question. But the question does remain how do you take these stands well, and especially as you become more famous, these problems almost certainly get harder to manage.
00:46:27
Speaker
So those are two question marks I'd like to like to leave with. What did you have on the eye, either on those, on those lines or anything else you want to shout out? I just think that's an insightful point, right? Like we can't, we don't want to, you know, I don't want to say that I, you know, I kind of transcend these political issues. If Peterson thinks these are the issues that are affecting the world, we might disagree on empirical grounds or thinks that these are the issues he takes to be the most important. He thinks are the most important.
00:46:56
Speaker
Then there's kind of this maybe this empirical disagreement, but I think ethically you're raising again in that kind of ethical question of like, well, if you do think something needs to be fought over, how do you do that well? And how do you do that without losing yourself? And I think those are really interesting questions. I'm just.
00:47:13
Speaker
Just repeating back what you said, but I'm really struck by that question of how do you not lose yourself in the fight? Because I feel like he's lost himself in the fight a little bit over the last couple of years in a way that I think many people, the vast majority of people would say that he is not in a good way or has at least gotten worse as a person to kind of look up to or take their ideas seriously.
00:47:34
Speaker
And that's a that's a really, really compelling point because I don't think the answer to that is to think there's no battles worth taking seriously. So the question is, how do you fight, you know, which are worth being coming soldiers for and then how do you fight them? Well, I just I really agree with that. For me, I'm kind of struck by the interesting point I wanted to leave with was this point of
00:47:54
Speaker
What core thing is he hitting on that makes him such a polarizing figure to so many people? Like I would think that for years, Jordan Peterson was the one who you'd have the kind of most evocative dinner conversation with, with casual friends where it would be the, where typically, you know, people maybe have similar political leanings or similar backgrounds or similar kind of friendship groups would very much all agree on things. You'd almost have half a group thinking,
00:48:22
Speaker
He's the worst person ever. And half the group thinking, Oh, he's great. I really love his stuff. And I don't know if I have an answer to that and maybe Caleb you do, but I'm kind of curious about what is the, where is that part that's swinging past it?
Polarization of Jordan Peterson
00:48:36
Speaker
Such that, you know, it's so viscerally negative for some people and then very viscerally positive for other people. I think there's something interesting about human discourse and human nature or kind of current society there that that is demonstrating that I haven't really been able to put my finger on.
00:48:53
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, absolutely. I won't answer that question right now, but if someone's listening to this and they have a answer, do let us know. I think we're running out of time so we can call it. Anything else you want to add?
00:49:07
Speaker
No, I just like a fun conversation. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you, anybody else you'd like to hear us talk about any other book reviews, this was a fun format. So looking forward to doing it again, especially with anybody you think is worth talking about. But yeah, Caleb has always fun one. And I also think that like.
00:49:23
Speaker
I think I'm a really empathetic person I think I feel sensitive about this kind of stuff and I, I feel sensitive when I get too critical of somebody, especially somebody that I think is like, I do think Jordan Pearson has been kind of struggling with some issues recently as well. And so I don't want to hit somebody below the belt. But I do think when somebody so influential. It's worthwhile talking about their.
00:49:43
Speaker
Again, they're public figure. I really take this as kind of a criticism evaluation of their public influence and their space in the public sphere. And as long as they're in that public sphere, I think, you know, it's fair game to talk about that. Right. Yeah. I think I feel less bad critiquing people, which is maybe a vice on my part. We'll see. But I do think it is worth
00:50:05
Speaker
restating that I think Peterson's work is, especially some of his earlier stuff is worth engaging with. But it is true that it does seem like he's gone off the wagon a bit and I don't find him as interesting or challenging or in the real sense, as good of a character, at least in public as I used to. And that is unfortunate. Great. All right. Great conversation. Thanks for doing it. Awesome. Thanks, Gil.
00:50:33
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Stoic Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use, and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way.
00:50:49
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.