Dr. Peterson’s new rules
In response to a question on difficulties the Trump administration was experiencing in achieving, well, anything, Steve Bannon once said – if you thought they were just going to give you your country back, you’re sadly mistaken. Jordan Peterson (henceforth JP) presumably agrees with the contention that once in power, people and groups tend not to want to relinquish it. As he might say of his recent appearance on Channel 4 News – if I thought they were just going to let me come on TV and beat them in an argument, I was sadly mistaken.
Channel 4 news differs from regular news coverage in being both more “Progressive” yet also somehow more tabloid – it has the attitude of a particularly aggressive, better-read HuffPo editorial. A story about, say, Brexit would be covered with the same contemptuous sneer and trembling scorn with which ITV news or the Daily Mail talks about Gypsies or refugees in million pound houses, but with an added dose of Soy-faced concern. The barked contempt with which JP was treated was fairly run of the mill.
He’s no revolutionary. JP became popular by adopting the position of the Manosphere’s demanding but loving trad dad. He was on Channel 4 to promote his new book “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos”, which reflects that approach. Here’s a random sampling of the lessons from his book: “Make friends with people who want the best for you”, “treat yourself like someone you need to take care of”, “don’t let your children do anything that makes you dislike them”. Or to put these another way: Stop hanging around with those losers! If you don’t respect yourself, no-one else will! your kids are your kids, not your friends, so discipline them! These are the sort of common sense lessons that have been passed from father to sons over the course of many generations as a matter of routine, with the chain only recently being broken.
In all likelihood the effect of his message will be to give some portion of the men who read him a little more self-respect for a short period of time, a sense of urgency about getting their life in order, and a path to do that. Then, like all self-help books, his lessons will fade after a few months and we’ll all be back to normal. Yet, look at how the Received Opinion Defence Squadron flies into action once he appears on their radar. He presents no existential threat to them. So why go to war?
It turns out that the rules and lessons JP has for us are not just the ones in his book – there are some hidden ones to be learned from the extreme reactions to him. They are not necessarily rules he would endorse; in fact you could be certain from what he has stated about the oppositional culture we’re developing that he would not endorse some of these, or at least not openly – but they’re true. They’re rules about the media, about what you can and can’t say, and about how you get to be the one who determines either way.
1. Be intolerant
There’s a Simpsons episode where Homer decides to get rich by entering the tech industry. His nebulous enterprise (Homer is not sure what it does; it doesn’t do anything) catches the attention of Bill Gates, who, in the interests of minimising competition, orders his goons to “buy him out”. This turns out to mean smashing up Homer’s office. When Homer points out that he assumed “buy him out” would mean a pay-out, Gates baulks and says – “I didn’t get rich writing a lot of cheques!” The same is true of the establishment media. Neither they, nor those whose beliefs the exist to articulate, got to a position of unquestioned cultural hegemony by giving doubters the space the work their thoughts out in public. Their fierce refusal to countenance any dissent is almost inspiring. JP has channelled it on a number of occasions, but it’s a rule that needs constant reinforcement – no mercy.
2. Control the message
Lets say you somehow get enough elbow room to win an argument against the media on their own patch, revealing as you do that the emperor has no clothes. Well, naked or not, the emperor is still the emperor. Even if a show trial doesn’t work, an interviewer still holds the editorial red pen and can strike through much of what they don’t like. It’s vital that people who dissent from mainstream view have their own platforms to work from, or failing that platforms on which they can present their content the way they want. Occasionally the truth will be allowed to slip out from an establishment outlet, as it did in this case; you won’t get that chance a second time. Following a messaging failure, the commentariat (both the professional soldiers, and the unpaid irregulars of social media) form an impenetrable wall around their rhetorically wounded soldier, and broadcast a coordinated message of oppression and victimhood. Ideally we would live in a world where there would be a robust variety of outlets for alternative opinions – publishing houses, video hosting sites, funding platforms – not just places to house content but a support structure to finance and sustain it. Such a structure may never be in place. In the interim the rule is that if you dissent from the party line of the establishment media you will not get a fair hearing, and their purpose for engaging with you is not merely disinterested but actively malign – so don’t engage except on your own terms.
3. You can’t win the disavowal game, so don’t play it
JP experienced the reality of a common fear of the digital age coming into reality: being hounded by a social media mob for something they say you did, when you know categorically that that it didn’t happen like that. In the past, he has had harsh words for other non-mainstream voices and ideas; he’s a pitiless foe of what he regards as “collectivism” in all its forms. If his recent experience hasn’t caused him to re-evaluate how he decides who the bad guys are, it should. How many of the people he regards as beyond the pale are there because that’s where the establishment media sent them? That, after all, is the most effective tactic for maintaining control over what can can cannot be said: they cast you out then condemn you for associating with outcatsts, push you to the fringe then tell you your fringe views are inherently illegitimate. Be careful who you assume is a bad guy, and who deserves to be dismissed or disowned, you never know who’s next on the wrong side of that equation.
Those are sad, nihilistic rules. Nietzsche is one of JP’s favourite philosophers, and he would be very familiar with the quote about staring too long into the abyss and becoming a monster. Rather than a monster he prefers to see himself as a knight going to slay a dragon – it’s certainly a metaphor he uses a lot (see below – he approvingly retweeted this image). Now, dragons don’t exist; but if they did, would a knight with a rusty sword and buckled shield stand a chance of slaying it, rather than simply slicing off the occasional scale? What if it takes a dragon to slay a dragon?
