JP - Evaluation

This man is dangerous. He is dangerous because the personal stuff is on the money, and so there is a tendency to think his other stuff is good as well. Far from it.

He has typical inconsistencies because of his academic ego. The main inconsistency concerns his evaluation of social impact. His academic rationale is that he is clinical psychologist and therefore focusses on the personal. This is where his good stuff is. The 12 rules are fine - except they don't go far enough - sila, but he doesn't leave it there. He evaluates social impact by saying that we should focus on the personal to the exclusion of any social impact. There is no problem with focussing on the personal and saying that is your area of expertise; but to say there is no social impact is an evaluation, and it is this evaluation that is the starting point of his inconsistencies.

He repeatedly talks about success, personal development leading to success. In this talk he never discussed what success meant, but I could have replaced success with wealth and status and that would have made sense. I could never have replaced success with a hard-working committed social worker, or a nurse caring for patients, or a teacher educating the under-privileged. Or a starving artist creating great works - I perceive that Jordan would see such an artist successful if they sold (only if?); even though a significant aspect of his therapy was a creative authoring suite. I could never have replaced success by compassion. What success means is an important social evaluation especially if it solely means wealth and status.

A sound position for Jordan would be to advise people to focus on the 12 Rules in order to develop themselves, to achieve some form of self-realisation - success for themselves. This would be consistent with advising people to ignore social impact on their lives. However his not accepting a totality of factors in dealing with personal development is a weakness, there needs to be a holistic view - this is a standard academic weakness.

But he takes this inconsistency far far further because it is his social evaluations that have made him the intellectual darling of the alt-right. It was noticeable in his talk that there were two cheers (apart from the standing ovation), and they were both concerned with social evaluations. His academic expertise that he continually (and probably legitimately) refers to is his clinical experience, it is this experience that forms the basis of his 12 rules, and yet it is his social evaluations that are cheered.

And these evaluations are alt-right. He focuses on individualism yet he describes social hierarchy as based in competence. This is an important evaluation for the alt-right, that the people in their relative positions in social hierarchy deserve to be there. How much is this evaluation concerned with clinical psychology?

He does not accept social impact yet his anti-PC-authoritarianism is a social evaluation. He feels that men are undervalued, decries vehemently and emotionally that the "positive masculine" is restricted, and yet blames the other - this sounded like a criticism of gender-police but this was not specifically mentioned in this talk. But surely in his terms the issue of men not developing is a failure of individual personal development, and could be improved by the 12 Rules. What has "the other" got to do with this - whether gender-police, liberal authoritarianism or whatever. It is the blaming of the liberal "establishment" that the alt-right likes, that attracts the MAWPs, and yet this is not his expertise, this is not what he claims he is advocating - a personal development approach of 12 Rules.

And then finally there was the national chauvinism in which he described the rest of the world as brutal dictatorships. What has this blind view to do with the personal development of the 12 Rules?

It was well worth considering what Jordan stands for. He is a man of his times. Despite his claims to being a clinical psychologist with his 12 Rules, his fame is based on alt-right views. Liberal authoritarianism is an aspect of neoliberal empowering in order to create a division of the 99%, and his alt-right views are equivalently empowered to create the division. This is such a shame as it is good to see the type of personal development of the 12 Rules - rules if applied by liberals would help them see what dupes they are. And if applied by the alt-right would stop their social criticism and help develop them as well.

PS 20/11/19

The Rise of Jordan Peterson is a movie from Thought Maybe. It focusses on the division Jordan causes, and in these times any caring person has to make efforts to avoid causing division. There is limited focus on what I think he would like to stand for - in the movie at the end a friend was juat amazed because what was being said had nothing to do with what Jordan said. To me this is why he is dangerous, he won't stand up and say he is against the alt-right, he would rather stand upi for moot points of language.

There is nothing in the movie that makes me interested.

13/11/22

Once I did this series of blogs on Peterson I personally forgot him. As the opening sentence he is a danger, was a danger when I wrote this, and will continue to be a danger until dark money stops seeing the benefits of division. Angie Speaks did an excellent talk on Peterson as a warning to the left here. She mentioned many of the divisive inconsistencies zandtao recalls but has greater knowledge of Jungian archetypes - not difficult. A theme throughout this talk was ceding ground to the left. Part of this ground zandtao sees as spirituality, and his attempt to address this lay in Pathtivism - see Manual. Zandtao found her conclusion particularly relevant for the left.