The Cult of Petersonality

Jordan B. Peterson has noted several times that about 80% of his viewers and speech attendees are male. He seems a little incredulous that these men, often atheists, pack auditoriums to listen to Bible stories deconstructed and to receive his message of responsibility. He comes across as genuinely perplexed at his rise to YouTube celebrity. His modesty concerning the matter is maybe a little less natural. There seems to be aspects of it in which he, with a touch of guilt, revels. It’s a legitimate question, though. What is it about a mid-fifties college psychology professor that has rather suddenly gained the attention of men in generations X-through-Z?

                The early-to-mid 20th century psychologist Carl Jung has a strong influence concerning much of Peterson’s message of utility. Jung’s concept of “The Shadow”, those repressed portions of an individual’s personality that often tends toward the negative and/or violence, figures prominently in his speeches and over-arching philosophy. Peterson’s morality is not one based on innocence or timidity. He posits that there is no virtue in weakness masquerading as morality. Morality is only truly a virtue if it comes from an individual who fully understands they are capable of malevolence and then makes a conscious choice to restrain and redirect that aspect of themselves. By integrating the Jungian Shadow, as opposed to simply suppressing it, into one’s overall being, a person can provide beneficial aggression in perilous situations without succumbing to malicious behavior in everyday life.

                American men have been warriors and adventurers for as long as we have records. Certainly, the Europeans that came here somewhat more than 500 years ago were prone to both, but the indigenous peoples who had been here for, perhaps, nearly 40,000 years prior were no shrinking violets by any measure, either. Every generation of American has born the load of either fighting a war or fighting the frontier, and often both. Only those who have come of age in the past 40 years or so have not, for better or worse, been forged in such a furnace. Yes, Slavic Europe, the first and second Iraqi wars, not to mention conflicts in Afghanistan and Somalia, have seen military intervention, but these have all been limited engagements. They’ve been a case of a military at war as opposed to the country fighting one. The men who have fought these battles have often had to contend more with Byzantine rules of engagements than actual physical enemies. They’ve also had to face a population who gives largely tacit support of the troops while often vocally opposing their actions. There is simply no comparison between the public support afforded the men who fought in the Ardennes with the men who fought in Fallujah.

                At present, society is deeply bifurcated by the subject of masculinity. The vocal portion of the left, including, but not limited to, the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) Left have shunned masculinity as a whole by advancing the narratives of rape culture, women’s studies and toxic masculinity. The university intelligencia routinely belittles any man who has the temerity to question, much less oppose, the idea of differences between the sexes with respect to personality, proclivities or even physicality beyond sex organs. Truisms, such as men have more muscle mass, are vehemently attacked as social constructs and suggesting otherwise, as ex-Google employee James Damore found, leads to any number of attacks in addition to personal and professional ostracization. Men in these groups are accepted conditionally upon complete subservience, and, at the first sign of dissention, are viscously attacked and jettisoned.

                There is a large contingent of men, either apolitical, centrist or Right-leaning who seem to be lost in the confusion of not wanting to unwittingly offend, but are perplexed at the ever-changing goal-posts of outrage. It appears there’s a reasonably large group who have turned to athletics as a way of being acceptably masculine. CrossFit, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Spartan races and triathlon participation have all surged in popularity in the last decade as men attempt to find an outlet for the physical and competitive instincts which they are subject. Intellectually, though, these men are limited in their options. Attempts to engage in even respectful dialog online inevitably spiral downward into ad hominin name-calling or accusations of prejudice and ‘man-splaining’. It’s not so much a rejection of ideas; it’s a rejection of even meaningful dialogue about ideas. Men are increasingly being left with two options: acknowledge their masculinity and embrace the radical Right or deny it and suffer the emasculation of the far-Left. For most, neither is particularly attractive.

                Chuck Palahniuk explored the descent into true toxic masculinity in 1996 with his book Fight Club. He examined how men struggle with their own identity by having an inability to reconcile God’s with this conversation between ‘the mechanic’ and ‘the narrator’.

                “The mechanic says, ‘If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?’ ” He continues, “‘what you end up doing,’ the mechanic says, ‘is you spend your life searching for a father and God.’“ The mechanic eventually reaches his conclusion, “’What you have to consider,’ he says, ‘is the possibility that God doesn’t like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen.’”

                Fight Club follows an entire group of men who descend into violence, Nihilism and anarchy. They find each other by collecting in groups for bare-knuckle, mano-a-mano fights as a way to find purpose, fulfillment and a way temporarily unleash their Jungian Shadow. Without a true social structure for direction, though, The Shadow has nothing with which to integrate. Nature, abhorring a vacuum, lets the Shadow take the alternative: It dominates. This domination starts with pranks, but takes a malicious turn and quickly goes violent. In the end, The Narrator, whose name we never know, shoots his personal Shadow and group leader, Tyler Durden. In the last chapter, we find the Shadow isn’t really dead. It’s simply dormant. It’s the correct ending. The idea that any method, even serious physical trauma, could eliminate the Shadow of a person, to say nothing of a population, is foolishness.

                Palahniuk is not the only man to struggle with these existential questions. Six years after Fight Club was released, the band Audioslave, a conglomeration of ‘Rage Against the Machine’ musicians and the vocals of Chris Cornell asked similar questions with their song “Show Me How to Live”. Cornell shrieked repeatedly in a manner only he could:

“Nail in my hand

From my Creator

You gave me a life

Now show me how to live”

The official music video ends with Cornell driving a car into bulldozers killing himself and the other band members. The poignancy of his question was perhaps only truly brought to life some fifteen years later when Cornell took his own life following a performance. How many times over the years had he tried to explain his feeling of being sacrificed by God? For how long had he struggled to find his life’s meaning?

So what, you may ask, has any of this to do with a professor from Toronto whose rise to prominence began with a bought of insomnia, a YouTube video and the refusal to use somewhat odd gender pronouns? To answer this, we must go back and take into account the architype model put forth by a major influence of his, the aforementioned Jung. According to Jung there are two sides to the masculine archetype. Present political leftism correctly identifies and derides the negative side of the masculine, the tyrant king. This is the aspect of the masculine psyche which Palahniuk signified with the character of Tyler Durden, but also which has been amply displayed by every dictator, be it kingdom large or small. This is the aspect of the masculine which leads to totalitarianism. What the more rabid, new-era feminists and their supporters neglect to acknowledge is the positive side of the masculine, the protective hero, exists as well. By doing this, they are ignoring the men who would attempt to further humanity by accomplishing truly meaningful and worthy tasks. The men willing to bear Quixotic loads are often rough around the edges and they often have a checkered past which includes run-ins with the law or addiction. These ‘toxically masculine’ individuals have struggled with their Shadow in a way that often not relatable by the refined intellectuals in the proverbial ivory towers of academia. They’re dangerous and that’s important to know. It’s also equally important to realize the very qualities which make them dangerous also gives them the strength to excel in arenas where the more socially acceptable falter. Instead of being dominated by or dominating their Shadow, they’ve been able to embrace it and provide a structure with which to use its power for a personal or social benefit.

Peterson’s main contribution to this discussion is to explain these archetypal tendencies to what we now know is millions of men worldwide. His Bible story speeches show men that their instincts are not only a product of the modern world, but often tens of thousands of years older than the written word and, often, older than humanity itself. His message of willingly accepting responsibility resonates because, somewhere inside us, we know it’s true. It’s not just true in the trivial way we all acknowledge 2+2=4, but in a much more fundamental way that has the ability to allow men to validate their very existence. It removes the nails which Cornell felt were damning him to a sacrificial existence. It gives the direction which he tragically failed to find. Palahniuk’s protagonist led a group of men into mayhem and destruction. Peterson, as the Anti-Tyler Durden, is encouraging an equally dangerous group of men toward a life of utility and service. This comes not from compulsion, but from a sense of duty or purpose.

The message distills to this: Pick a meaningful, useful and difficult goal. If it’s to expand your reading, then make it The Gulag Archipelago, Dostoevsky or Nietzsche. Undertake this task not because it was assigned to you, but because you personally deem it an important and difficult thing to be done. Once the goal is defined, take small steps to make getting started less daunting. If helping reduce pollution in your city is a goal, Peterson’s common example is to start with cleaning your room. Accept you will fail several times initially and don’t get frustrated. It’s all part of the learning process and as long as you are moving in a direction that is approximately correct, then, at the very least, you’re gaining information which will allow for better aim, better decisions and success in the future. He stresses, as you progress towards your goal, to avoid the pitfall of target fixation. Allow the goal to evolve and update as new information becomes available. The path to success is rarely without unforeseen twists and turns. Once a goal has been reached, use your newfound strength and ability to accomplish a new and greater goal. In this manner, we can each support the other and society as a whole. It was never a question of pronouns. From the very beginning, it was about individuals, their importance and their ability to shoulder the responsibility to shape our world.