I admit even though I’d been watching some of Jordan Peterson’s lectures posted on YouTube since 2016, I thought the Canadian psychologist, as a cultural phenomenon, would have dissipated by now. It’s been over a year since his star rose, following not just the release of his book “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” but really his foray into the political sphere, when he spoke out against a law in Canada that would compel people to use the “correct pronouns” when speaking with transgendered persons.
“It all came to a head at 2 a.m. over a Jordan Peterson video.
‘I saw a video of Bari Weiss interviewing Jordan Peterson,’ he said one night. ‘She was really fawning over him.’
‘That’s just her personality,’ I replied. ‘She’s extremely charming and personable.’
‘I don’t see why anyone would fawn over a racist Canadian professor,’ he said, disgusted.
Was he really starting this discussion right now? Despite being half-asleep and kicking the flu, I remained calm. I barely said a word as this so-called discussion turned into a one-sided rant.
Even as his message has almost normalized to the global public, and we are now accustomed to his rockstar status created by a psychologist-meets-political commentator blend of common sense and passion, he grows even more popular, even more relevant. At every juncture in the news bend, there’s almost always a way to process it through the eyes of Jordan Peterson making his message that much more sustained.
Take Jussie Smollett, the actor who felt his five-figure-per-episode salary was too meager and staged a hate crime for attention, attention he thought would garner him a raise. The heart of the matter was that Smollett felt himself a victim, or worse, that acting like a victim was such a valuable commodity in our society, he would be rewarded with empathy, news hits, and more funds. Alas, Smollett was not—he was smacked down like an annoying gnat and will be made to pay for his attempt to abuse the criminal justice system—not to mention he was suspended from his acting role.
“Peterson has a simple explanation for his extraordinary popularity: In a culture that sanctifies victimhood, he proposes that people confront life’s inevitable pain unflinchingly. So here is Peterson in a nutshell: Life is suffering. We can only bear it if it has meaning. And meaning is created when you take responsibility—by confronting hardship and firmly steering your ship forward, even against waves that will, ultimately, overwhelm it. This is a message people are “hungry for” in our times, he says.”In essence, Peterson isn’t going away partly because of the man—he is at once compelling and charismatic, passionate and straightforward—but mostly because of his message: He has finally told men not what they want to hear but what they need to hear about pain, purpose, and productivity.
Peterson has been accused of being a misogynist many times, due to his emphasis on encouraging young men to own their flaws and man up; women are rarely the focus of one of his talks. He also really believes in the prominent role men play in society’s well-being. In some ways, he remains the male version of Camille Paglia, who once famously stated, “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would all be living in grass huts.” Women might need a nudge to embrace their womanhood on occasion, but it’s mostly the men tossed into the third and fourth waves of feminism to be eaten alive, vilified, and scorned until they either give up their manhood or lose it in the engulfment, who need a boost.
Peterson isn’t going away because while the rest of us were looking at feminism’s takeover with skepticism, he saw the Jussie Smolletts of the world decades before we did and he knew that men would need a kick in the pants not in spite of “the end of men” but because of it.
