So: Jordan B Peterson. This column has resisted comment so far on the biggest self-help sensation in years – the subject of approximately a gazillion media profiles – because I don’t know what to think. Clearly, he’s got some obnoxious followers, including those who spat misogynistic venom at Channel 4’s Cathy Newman, after she subjected their hero to an ordinarily aggressive British TV interview. He’s also too fond of explaining differences between men and women in terms of evolution, no matter how flimsy the evidence. (And who knows what else lurks on the hours of YouTube videos I haven’t watched?) On the other hand, it’s equally clear that many of his detractors have barely opened his bestseller, 12 Rules for Life, a sprawling, often brilliant, sometimes infuriating book built around the core message that life works best if you take responsibility instead of blaming others, tell the truth, pursue meaning over fleeting pleasure, give your day some structure and tidy your room. If rudderless young men are flocking to him in droves, that’s hardly a bad thing. I hope they follow his advice: we’d all be better off.
But lately, my wishy-washy ambivalence about Peterson has hardened into defiance: why the hell should I be obliged to decide, as seemingly every writer who encounters his work thinks they are, whether Canada’s most controversial professor is A Good Thing or A Bad Thing? This sort of pressure isn’t limited to Peterson, of course. It’s a symptom of our hyper-partisan times, in which everything is politics – every film, book and sporting event, plus all the regular politics – and it’s your responsibility, as a good citizen, to adopt and then feverishly defend one sharply defined, absolutist viewpoint, come what may. Journalists are undoubtedly among the worst offenders. But spend three minutes on Twitter, or the comment sections beneath our articles, if you think it’s only us.
This attitude is especially badly suited to evaluating life advice of the kind that Peterson dispenses. After all, it makes little sense to reject an insight that strikes you as useful simply because the source is wrong about other things, or because you dislike their politics. (Even the cartoonist Scott Adams, now a cynical Trump-booster, wrote a pretty good book on productivity.) For instance, Peterson’s counsel to “treat yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping” gets more profound the more you reflect on it, I think. And his peppy tips for digging yourself out of a rut are splendid: “Ask yourself: ‘Is there one thing that exists in disarray in your life or your situation that you could, and would, set straight?’ Then ask yourself, ‘What could I do, that I would do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward?’” Cheesy, perhaps. But would you rather mock the cheesiness, or get out of that rut?
Pledging undying allegiance to a guru’s every word is pathetic, but rejecting his every word on principle is just the same patheticness inverted. Are you really so weak-willed that you fear you’ll tumble headlong into the cult if you dip into his work? As Peterson might put it: have some damned self-respect!
Read this
M Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled, with its famous opening observation that “life is difficult”, offers a complementary, less pugnacious version of Peterson’s outlook.
oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com.
