In just a few years, Jordan Peterson has risen from little-known psychology professor at the University of Toronto to pop cultural icon and bestselling author, boasting millions of followers and just as many haters. His book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, which claimed the masculine spirit is under assault and espoused basic tenets such as clean up your room and get your house in order, became a sensation in 2018, particularly among young men who flocked to hear his lectures worldwide.
In an age dominated by political correctness, Peterson has taken contrarian stances on topics such as white privilege, the gender pay gap, and the enforced use of gender-neutral pronouns. Hes been deified as an intellectual superhero by his fans and demonized as an alt-right villain by the left. Just this week, it emerged that the progressive writer Ta-Nehisi Coates may have used Peterson as the inspiration for Nazi supervillain Red Skull in his new Captain America comic book. (Peterson called the likeness smears and urged his followers to buy a limited edition poster featuring Red Skull paired with something I actually said and added that 100 percent of the proceeds would go to charity.)
His latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, weaves together a diverse range of ideas, including from Nietzsche, the Bible and Harry Potter, and was an instant No. 1 New York Times bestseller when it came out last month.
And yet, in the past year, Peterson has faced one of the biggest trials of his own life. After his wife Tammy was diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer, he was prescribed sedatives to calm his anxiety, only to find himself dependent and experiencing the horrifying side effect known as akathisia, which causes an inability to stop moving along with a sense of doom, panic and suicidal thoughts.
Peterson disappeared for a year as he went to Russia, then Serbia, for treatment. (The Sunday Times wrongly claimed he had schizophrenia.) Last summer, he returned to his regular self on his daughter Mikhailas podcast, where he was welcomed back by millions of fans.
A couple of weeks ago, I met with Peterson, 58, for almost three hours on Zoom, where he appeared in top form, speaking about ideology, our modern culture, spirituality and his own continuous struggle with mental illness. What follows is an edited and abridged Q&A from that session ...
Many people on the left have critiqued your re-emergence and new book release as fraudulent and hypocritical given the degradation of your own life. How do you respond to the criticism?
Yes, right. Believe me, Ive tortured myself about that plenty and constantly ... I was very apprehensive about writing this book or certainly about releasing it ... But everyone is susceptible to [being] cut off at the knees at any moment ... You can protect yourself against that, to some degree, by putting your life in order, and by living properly, but that doesnt mean that youre fully protected from it. We all die, we all get sick. If we cant communicate with anyone who doesnt get sick or die, then we cant communicate with anyone. Does that mean ... that we have nothing to offer? No, it means were also radically imperfect, that we should be careful, but were stuck with our inadequacies. I have my inadequacies.
A healthy dose of self-criticism is a common theme in your work. Have you come to realize any bad decisions you may have made which exacerbated your illness?
Yes, Ive looked at my contribution to it ... I took benzodiazepines, and that seems to have been ill-advised. Im very sensitive to benzodiazepine withdrawal. When I took them, I was really sick. I was insomniac for a long time, weeks, three weeks, I was freezing, I couldnt get enough clothes on. My blood pressure was so low I couldnt stand up. I was in absolute terror. I have no idea what happened. Then I went to the doctor and was prescribed this medication. I slept, and I felt better. I didnt think much of it. My life was very stressful at that point. That turned out to be a very bad decision. I wasnt aware of how dangerous this could be for some people.
Im curious how your suffering shaped your outlook on life and human existence.
The last chapter of my new book is be grateful in spite of your suffering. Its the right thing to do, to be grateful. Im not claiming this for myself. Its tightly allied with a kind of existential courage. Its a decision.
Im bitter, Im angry, Im resentful. (But) thats all victimhood. Its not helpful.
If you fall prey to resentment, and anger, and hostility, not even however rationalized, but however justified ... its not helpful.
Many, many days in the last two years, I truly believed that I would die before the end of the day. I just couldnt see how I could possibly be that impaired and live. It turns out youre a lot tougher than you even want to be sometimes ... Youre not that easy to kill.
One of the things one can do in a time of great hardship is to adapt a victimhood mindset. How have you dealt with the temptation to wallow in victimhood?
Im bitter, Im angry, Im resentful, all of those things. I shake my fist at God. Whats the justice in this? Trying to scour my conscience to see what Ive done wrong. Thats all victim. Thats all victimhood, but its not helpful. Im doing my best to drop that ... None of the victim responses have been productive for me. Ive tried to fight them off.
Why is victimhood status so attractive in our culture right now?
The first part of it is people dont necessarily regard themselves as victims. The activist types, they tend to regard themselves as spokespeople for the victims. They see an altruistic ethical motivation in that and regard it as admirable. To some degree, it is ... but those are important constraints ...
First of all, what makes you think that youre a spokesperson for the oppressed? What makes you think that you have that right? Why should anyone take you seriously? How do you know youve got the message right? Why do you think you have the solution at hand? How do you know youre not more dangerous than the problem itself? How do you know that your dark and unexamined motivations arent blinding you? ...
If you can just be a good person because you believe the right three things, how convenient is that? ...
You dont have to look at yourself and you have an enemy. Thats the part that scares me the most ... Now you have an enemy and that enemy is the cause of everything you hate. Now you have all moral justification to go after them, to hurt them, to stop them because theyre evil, and to elevate yourself morally as a consequence.
You have this unearned pathway to moral superiority thats actually dependent on your willingness to unfairly persecute based on your ignorance. Its terrible. Universities promote this, Well, you should be an activist. Thats essentially what every 19-year-old is taught. Its like, no, you shouldnt be an activist. You should get your own house in order, and then you should cautiously proceed to more difficult things if you dare.
Victimhood culture is most pronounced along the racial dimension. This is why perceptions like white privilege and oppressed minorities are so popular.
This is something that really bothers me about the radical left, you get your privilege, and you get to be morally superior because youre standing up for the victim. Its like you get to be privileged and a victim at the same time.
Its terribly socially divisive and its unbelievably hypocritical.
Anybody who stands up and says, Im a professor, the system that produced me was so racist or was so prejudiced that its racist, you just admitted [that] you have no moral claim to your position. Resign now.
If ... the system that produced you say, as a professor, is so systemically prejudiced, you dont have a valid claim. Youre actually an incompetent fraud.
We say that culture has no capacity for forgiveness. Yet, people have forgiven me. Im amazed.
Why do you think people in positions of influence are so quick to call our society as oppressive and bigoted when our society is one of the most free, liberal, open-minded, inclusive societies that has ever existed?
A lot of its ignorance. People dont know, for example, that up until 1880, 95 percent of the Western world lived below todays UN-established poverty line. We have no idea how much dramatic improvement has been made in the last 150 years and how absolutely godawful things were before that. We dont know that because weve never been hungry, for example, not for one day.
You look around and you see, well, things could be better, so theyre bad ... Well, bad compared to what? Certainly bad compared to a hypothetical ideal, but not bad compared to all extent historical comparisons.
Why is religion increasingly unpopular in society, particularly among the young?
Lets say youre an ideologue, and youve decided that the patriarchy needs to be smashed. What do you do? You go to protests. Thats smoke and fire. Its dramatic. If youre a young Christian, what should you do? Be good. Its a little vague ...
Theres danger in confusing your political beliefs and your religious beliefs, not noting that theres a difference between them.
What are the biggest ways your life has transformed over the past few years?
Its funny because since Ive been launched into the public eye, lets say, or launched myself or whatever, since Ive become notorious, my life has been very complex. The levity has declined, the playfulness has declined, and its really unfortunate. Im a very playful person. All I did with my kids was play with them, and laugh with them, and joke with them ... but since 2016, things have been complicated. To say the least. My daughter was extremely ill, my wife was extremely ill, and we thought for sure she was going to die. She had a cancer that only 200 people, only 200 cases have ever been reported, and every single one of those people died ... She lived on the edge of life and death for five months.
This is something that really bothers me about the radical left, you get your privilege, and you get to be morally superior because youre standing up for the victim. Its like you get to be privileged and a victim at the same time.
At the same time, I had this meteoric rise to public notoriety, fame, which hasnt slowed down at all. In fact, it seems, in some sense, to be accelerating ... My reputation was on the line in an international way, dozens of times. Generally, what Ive observed in peoples lives is if something like that happens to them once on a local scale, thats enough to traumatize them. That happened to me like every week. Its happened to me every week essentially, in multiple countries, for like five years.
People can look at that and think, He should have managed it better. Its like, OK, fair enough, you try it. See how you do. I dont even want to say that, because I wouldnt wish this on anyone. Im not complaining. You might also ask, Why do you think you have the right to continue? Because really, thats the question, Why do you think you have the right to continue?
I certainly doubted it profoundly. I thought, Ill get back on my feet, so I did some podcasts first. Its like, do people find this useful? Will they find it useful? How will they respond? Positively. OK, Ill do another one. How will they respond? Positively, so I think, Im either going to curl up and die, or Im going to continue, and so Im continuing.
Despite all your mental and physical struggles, how have you managed to return? What has helped you pull through?
That I was forgiven by my audience. Here I am this guy, Im a clinical psychologist, I got tangled up with benzodiazepines. Im talking to people about getting their house in order, and things collapse around me. The irony, its almost unbearable.
That was part of what made this so difficult ... not only the physical pain, but this absurd paradox. Yet, people have forgiven me. Im amazed. We say that culture has no capacity for forgiveness. You hear that about cancel culture and about people being eradicated for making one mistake ...
Ive been attacked in the press when people have gone after my reputation with all guns blazing ... being compared to Hitler, etcetera, etcetera. Yet, the support that Ive received has been continuous. Why that is, I have a hypothesis: I include myself in the audience of reprobates to whom Im lecturing. I dont assume that I abide by all these rules. There are targets for attainment, and hopefully, that has protected me at least to some degree, against the perception of undue moral superiority ...
The general public my viewers, readers, and listeners, lets say have been unbelievably loyal and supportive. Ive seen this outpouring of love at the micro-level within my family, and from my friends, and from people I dont know, but who I communicate with. It saved my life for sure.
Read more from the original source:
Jordan Peterson: Deadly effects of prescription drugs left me bitter, but I refuse to be a victim - New York Post