The suggestion is in this NYT op-ed. Thoughts?
I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that
Canadian readers: what do you make of the suggestion that Jordan Peterson, our idiot du jour, is really a “typical” Canadian?
19 responses to “Canadian readers: what do you make of the suggestion that Jordan Peterson, our idiot du jour, is really a “typical” Canadian?”
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Jesse Brown's shtick is writing, in non-Canadian media outlets, about how Canada is actually a much more terrible place than our relatively good international image suggests. He can sell these pieces because they are counter-intuitive and so are more likely to get clicks in an age where media desperately needs them. But, IMO, his pieces are chock full of bad arguments and misrepresentations. His "argument", such as it is in this piece, is perhaps this: many white Canadian men over 40 are conservative and don't like things that rock the boat or challenge their privilege. Well, uh, that's not exactly a uniquely Canadian situation! To think that Peterson somehow reflects something inherent in the national character of Canada (such as it even makes sense to talk about such a thing) is pretty ludicrous to me, and his evidence for this seems to consist mainly of a bunch of things that he, as a Canadian leftist, thinks are bad. Brown is scarcely more worth one's time than Peterson is.
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I can understand Brown's characterization of Canada if all we remember of Canada's recent past is Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper and his sweater vests. And there certainly has been a shift rightward with the far right Reform party melding with the Progressive Conservatives to form the Conservative party. This seemed to precipitate a shift rightward of the other parties to occupy the space left over by the Conservative shift.
But I would want to contest one narrative laid down in this article. Brown says "But it’s worth remembering that this image of Canada, currently personified by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is a relatively recent construction, largely put forth by Mr. Trudeau’s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau."
I think saying that Justin/Pierre Trudeau represents all of Canada's socialist imagination is a disservice to the history of compassionate and visionary leaders such as Tommy Douglas who fought the doctors and insurance companies to give Canada free medicare, Rene Levesque, Ed Broadbent and even more recently, Jack Layton (just to name a few off the top of my head.)
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As a native Chicagoan who has now lived thirteen years in Toronto, I have frequent occasion to reflect on the contrasting Spirit of 1776 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_%2776_(sentiment)#/media/File:Sprit_of_%2776.2.jpeg) and Spirit of 1783 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Empire_Loyalist#/media/File:Reception_of_the_American_Loyalists.jpg): where the former says "I'm gonna be king!", the latter says "uh, actually I'd kind of prefer it if *the King* keeps being king".
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I doubt it, though that's just an impression. I get the impression Canadians don't capitalize "being", adopt a massively out of date (and crankish to begin with) member of their profession as a role model/massive inspiration (Jung in Peterson's case), etc. Most of my circle is opposed in general or neutral from what I can tell (with one exception) – who describes him (in classes a few years back) as being completely unlike what a lot of the stuff he's been saying lately, so it seems that he may have changed or have several "personae".
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Peace, order, and good government are a Canadian slogan. It’s vaguely true in the sense that provincial and national parties have tended to govern from the center i.e. the neoliberal consensus. But the summary view misses the same divides political science finds in the US and elsewhere between rural & urban, cities & suburbs. Jordan Peterson has staked out some reactionary conservative positions on issues that wouldn’t sell to an electorate that is more left leaning than in the US so the incentives are to avoid culture war topics. Our PM Trudeau has been pilloried by the right for taking hyper progressive stances on social issues which has led to a divide between men and women in recent polls so no, Jordan Peterson is not typical of a Canadian unless you restrict it to the admittedly more mild social conservatism on the right.
There’s also the question whether this is in Canadian character and tradition or a consequence of a more stable safety net, immigration policies that favor the well off who tend to be more conservative even if they are voting liberal. Some of the insanity and polarisation in the south flows from differences in initial conditions not the other way around.
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He is as much a typical Canadian as Trump is an typical American
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It is a clever and amusing conceit, but I wouldn't take it to seriously. Snake oil salesmen are cosmopolitan.
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It's hogwash to claim that Peterson is a typical Canadian. Yet he does roughly typify some big segments of the Canadian population.
I agree with you, moreover, that much of what he says is false. Some of it is indeed idiotically false (for example, his painful defense of a hardcore version of pragmatism, i.e., the philosophy that what is useful is true). But he's no idiot. Anyone who accomplishes what he has accomplished—academic positions at good universities, some well-written books, etc.—is clearly intelligent.
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Jordan Peterson is not a typical Canadian. He is making a spectacle of himself.
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No idea, but I do not remember seeing a public figure using the expressions "eh?" or "bucko" as frequently as this. Very atypical.
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He's not a typical Canadian, but he is a Canadian type.
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I think he's more than a type; he's a caricature of what a lot of us are at our worst.
Brown is right that Canada had been governed by the same right of centre government government economic policies from 1997 to 2015. That glosses over a lot of the story though. A more U.S. style government had been elected in 2006, but the big reform plans were put on hold because of the economic collapse in 2008. Further, in the last election Trudeau was elected because the NDP (our socialist party) made the miscalculation of steering hard and to the right. Our current PM effectively switched platforms with the NDP and won a majority. Further, part of that victory could be attributed to the Conservative party's attempt at dog whistle politics and embracing socially conservative positions. Trudeau hasn't delivered on most of what he campaigned on, but he's still taken some pretty radical positions. I'd take the lessons from the most recent election as Peterson reflects the views of a good chunk of middle class Canada.
I don't think he represents what we aspire to be though. I don't think a majority of Canadians would want to see themselves described as in the article; however, to the degree Archie Bunker or Rosanne could caricature the U.S. middle class, Peterson is a caricature of the Canadian middle classes. We see ourselves as liberal but prudent, and sometimes our prudence becomes complaisance.
Our treatment of our First Nations is perhaps the best example of this. An important part of our historic image has been that we didn't butcher our First Nations like our cowboy American cousins, so you'd expect our history would reflect a pretty descent treatment of our First Nations. However, in examining our history, our official policy was to ethnically cleanse our First Nations, and our treatment of them today is pretty horrific. When confronted with that image as has recently happened in Saskatchewan and other places, we will change.
So Peterson is what happens when we get lazy and allow our complacency to dominate who we want to be. I suspect more than a few Americans can empathise right now.
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The piece is very shallow. The only idea it contains is that Jordan Peterson is a deferential and restrained critic, unlike many Americans. Well, he's sly and subversive, not strident and in your face. I guess that makes him different from Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon. But does it it make him typically Canadian? I don't really find this worth having an opinion about.
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could someone perhaps explain why Mr. Pererson has been receiving so much airtime lately? I haven't read his books, and other than hearing one of his podcasts, most of my info comes from the numerous articles being writen on him recently in quite of variety of publications. But, from what I can gather he is a mediocre intellectual and scholar, trying to have some interesting conversations a bit out of the PC frame, not a bad thing to do actually, but all in all, agree with him or not, not all that radical or even controversial, often perhaps even trivial. So why all the attention? Even on this blog …
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The most famous Canadian academic ever? Jordan Peterson? That's clearly a presentist bias at work. That title was won and retired long ago by Marshall McLuhan, who was affiliated with the University of Toronto long before he became the famous medium-is-the-message guy. McLuhan even had a part in a Woody Allen movie. Allen is not what he used to be these days, but if Quentin Tarantino ever gives a juicy part to Peterson, we'll talk.
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In answer to the question on background for Peterson:
He shot to notoriety when he posted a video on his YouTube account objecting to legislation in Canada, being passed with the intent of protecting transgender individuals from discrimination. Peterson believes that this may have involved state-sanctioned compulsion to use artificial pronouns such as 'ze' and 'hir', and he saw this as Orwellian. However, there is absolutely no evidence that this is what the legislation mandates, it has since been passed into law.
Owing to the attention, Peterson gained a substantial audience for his lecture course 'Maps of Meaning', which he had being giving for undergraduates for years – which was very popular with students, and has recently been recording and posting to YouTube.
Coincidently, Peterson's public profile had been growing in Canada owing to his appearances on public television, and a successful 'Rules for Life' article his posted on the online question site, Quora. He had signed a contract on a book aimed at a general audience, and the fame on YouTube has allowed him to ride a wave to where he is at now. He appears to be having a (perhaps short-lived) transformative effect on the lives of those interested in his lectures.
Peterson is fairly sophisticated as a reader of Carl Jung, upon whom he draws heavily, while remaining refreshingly empirical. He might have just ended up another fairly harmless populariser of Jung, were his politics not utterly odious.
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Whatever the appeal or merits of his Jungian theorizing, Peterson became famous because he dared to say that the government should not regulate his use of pronouns. Insofar as he seems to have been the only Canadian academic willing to say this morally obvious thing he must be counted as courageous. Moral courage is not uncharacteristic of Canadians in general but is manifestly rare amongst Canadian academics and perhaps amongst academics generally.
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I remember reading something autobiographical by the Pakistani-British sociologist Hamza Alvi (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/dec/19/guardianobituaries.race) about the "vicious liberalism" he encountered in Canada and because of which he eventually left the country. Not necessarily such nice folks in the Great North…
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I wrote a short essay on Peterson's politics, presenting them in the context of Corey Robin's work on conservatism: https://medium.com/@nicholasmcginnis/order-but-by-subordination-jordan-petersons-reactionary-mind-cc54ed2f99d4
The 'self-help' advice in his book is the innocuous sort of morals you would expect a stern parent to inculcate ("clean your room," "stand up straight"), which he then motivates with a romantic Hero's Journey reading of Jungian myth, some evo-psych hand-waving, and no small amount of invective directed at alleged "post-modern neo-marxists."
(In one passage he claims Derrida is a radical Marxist, and in the next paragraph writes that a Khmer Rouge official who had received his degree in economics in the late 50s had ideas that "were favourably looked upon by the French intellectuals that granted him his PhD," putting these "theories into practice" back home, clearly intending the reader to assume Jacques Derrida's philosophy spurred the Khmer Rouge atrocities, making sure to highlight how many died as a result.)
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