Peterson's "Beyond Order"

I only realized that Jordan B. Peterson's follow-up to 12 Rules was to be published March 2 on the day before publication date. So I ordered my copy of Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life right away. For some reason the book is not yet banned on Amazon.

Hey, you good little girls at Penguin: how come I didn't know about the publication date? Are you still too triggered that, well, everybody knows that Peterson is a... well... something Eeeuww? 

But now I am half way through Beyond Order, and I'll tell you what surprises me. There's a lot of Nietzsche and Jung in it. And Dostoevsky. And then he tells the Mesopotamian myth of Tiamat and Apsu and Marduk. And when he is done with that it is on to the Egyptian Osiris, Isis, and Horus. And how Harry Potter fits exactly into the myth story arc. 

I would have thought all that would be a bridge too far for a best-selling self-help author. Anyway, the book is #8 on Amazon right now on March 8, 2021.

If the theme of 12 Rules was to get started in life, to get out of that proverbial parents' basement, the theme of Beyond Order is really more for mid-life adults that are afraid to take the next step out of a dead-end career. Or don't know what to do about the wokey co-workers at corporate HR. And Peterson recommends a blend of creativity, courage, and responsibility, and stick-to-it-iveness.

Of course, if you read Helen Lewis's review of Beyond Order in The Atlantic you won't be any the wiser about who Peterson is and what he is trying to do. Lewis is a Brit feminist lefty, that went to a private Catholic high school and then Oxford, darling, and you can understand that she would have No Clue about what Peterson is about, and what his ideas mean to his readers. To give you a hint, here is Lewis on Maps of Meaning, Peterson's 1990s book.

Maps of Meaning, published in 1999, built on the work of academics like Joseph Campbell, the literature and religion scholar who argued that all mythic narratives are variations of a single archetypal quest. (Campbell’s “monomyth” inspired the arc of Star Wars.) On this “hero’s journey,” a young man sets out from his humdrum life, confronts monsters, resists temptation, stares into the abyss, and claims a great victory. Returning home with what Campbell calls “the power to bestow boons on his fellow men,” the hero can also claim the freedom to live at peace with himself.

Know what I think? I think that Lewis hasn't read Maps of Meaning. But, of course, it is trite to call Peterson's work a rehash of Campbell, just as it is right out of the lefty catechism to refer, as Lewis did in her famous GQ interview with Peterson, to Nietzsche as the "Nazis' favorite intellectual." Earth to Lewis: Nietzsche was a pro-European and an anti-nationalist.

The message in Beyond Order is that if you are stuck in a rut, it isn't going to do any good to hide from your problems. And it isn't going to do any good to burst out into the stratosphere, and it isn't going to do any good to pick up on one of the modern isms. Lewis:

Peterson writes an entire chapter against ideologies—feminism, anti-capitalism, environmentalism, basically anything ending in ism—declaring that life is too complex to be described by such intellectual frameworks. Funny story: There’s an academic movement devoted to skepticism of grand historical narratives. It’s called … postmodernism. 

Ahem. Do not all the most advanced minds agree, Helen Lewis, that postmodernism is the grand narrative that all other grand narratives are, to use a Brit word, bollocks, and apologies for power. But postmodernism is pure as the driven snow.

Odd, isn't it, that postmodernism is a favorite with lefties for whom political power is not just the best thing but the only thing.

Here's an interesting moment from Beyond Order. Peterson talks about the 160 city speaking tour for 12 Rules. He mentions the need to keep the audience's attention, and how he learned to focus on one or two people in the audience.

What you want to see from the person you are facing is silence. What you want to hear from the crowd is dead silence. You want to hear nothing.

Because when people stop paying attention they shift their weight; they whisper to their neighbor; they think about tomorrow.

I became increasingly aware that the mention of one topic in particular brought every audience... to a dead-quiet halt: responsibility[.]

Well I never. Odd, isn't it that the one thing that our lefty friends are against is the notion of individual responsibility. Responsibility for lefties is all about the responsibility of the patriarchy or white supremacy for the misery of the oppressed peoples.

But responsibility for lefties is never about each individual, be xhe never so humble, seizing the nettle of life, overcoming adversity and fear, and just getting on with it.

Given how the ordinary People of the Responsible Self respond to Peterson's work, I would say that folks like Helen Lewis should spend a little more time trying to figure out why, and a little less time back-handing Jordan Peterson.

For me, the reason for Peterson's success is obvious. Peterson is laying out the road to creativity from rote responsibility. And it is a road that a lot of people in the world are ready to hear.