Jordan Peterson, Rule Two: Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.

"'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it. 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'" (Matthew 22:37-38).

         Do you remember Earl Silverman? His story is about five-years old. It was told, back then, in Macleans Magazine.

         Earl Silverman, of Calgary, died by suicide after going bankrupt trying to make a go of Canada’s only shelter for abused men. He opened the shelter, he said, because after twenty years of physical and emotional abuse by his wife, when he sought shelter in a Domestic Violence safe-house, he was refused entry because he was a man. 

Jordan Peterson

         Silverman’s death became an Internet sensation. Typical was the Reddit user who wrote, “This is what happens when we throw men on the garbage heap.” Harry Crouch, president of the National Coalition for Men wrote, “He was a victim of feminism,” and “murdered by suicide by the feminized state of Canada.” Blogger Dean Esmay warned that men’s rights activists would now be “coming for” feminists.

         Today, there is growing impatience among some men, and especially among some young white men, impatience about a world they see as tilting against them. The traditional privileged throne that men sat on, so well captured on the TV show Mad Men,is under attack. Not only do women now compete with men for the best jobs, but more women complete University than men, and they do it, on average, with higher grades. Meanwhile, it isn’t only women, but Asian and African students who are perceived as winning too many scholarships and also making it tougher on young white men to get ahead at work, at school, and in the marketplace.

 

Jesus.

         The privileges that go with being male are disappearing, and a growing number of young white men are angry about it. Great-paying life-long union jobs that needed little education at places like “The Motors” in Oshawa or the steel mills of Hamilton are gone. Now, you need a College or University degree just to get your foot in the door, and you need life-long learning to stay relevant in today’s gig economy. 

         Today, there is growing impatience among men, and especially young white men, about a world they see as stacked against them. For example, it used to be cool to be macho, but now macho is out, too. The #MeToo movement is just the latest reminder that sexual mores are changing. If you are a young white male, like Prime Minister Trudeau, you must come to grips with the fact that what was once seen as flirting is now considered assault. 

         Nearly as difficult, today’s men are also supposed to be able to share their feelings and fears. Strong and silent is so twentieth century. Today’s men are expected to empathize, put their kids to bed, and do the dishes. They must be emotionally present. As a result, a segment of today’s young white men feel as if they’ve become—as Arnold Schwarzenegger famously put it—“girlie men.” 

         It frustrates a certain segment of today’s men. It is as if they are at a lovely banquet, a table loaded with a sumptuous feast. But they cannot eat, because they have long four-foot arms without elbows. Asa result, they can neither bend their arms to lift food from their plates, nor bend them again to bring the feast to their mouths. They are trapped and hungry. It is all there right before them: the wealth, the jobs, the girls, the Molson Golden BBQs—but because they came into the world with long arms but without elbows, as individual men, they are unable to partake. 

         This is the scene Jordan Peterson wants to help fix. So, he tells these frustrated young white men, “Listen, I understand. I get it. We’re for order but women give us chaos. It’s undermining the hierarchy.” 

         Jordan Peterson doesn’t devote all of Chapter Two to the plight of men. But elsewhere he is all over it. In his videos he actually breaks down in tears talking about how young men are lost in today’s society, how they are not encouraged, how identity politics and political correctness works against them, how they cannot feed themselves what they want when they want.

         What Peterson does say in this chapter is that while men represent the yang of order, women represent yin of chaos. “For the men,” says Peterson, “[women are a] direct encounter with chaos, and it occurs with devastating force every time they are turned down for a date”—language that tragically echoes the complaints of the Toronto Yonge St. murderer, incel Alek Minassian. In case we didn’t understand him the first time, Peterson adds of women and their chaos potential: Each is like “the mother grizzly, all compassion to her cubs, who marks you [Mr.] as potential predator and tears you to pieces.”

         And so, what is the solution, according to Peterson? Everyone—but especially young men—needs to buck up. They need to fight back. They need to take back control and privilege. They must order their own lives to fight the chaos. Along the way, Peterson tells men to stop playing victim, he denies that there is such a thing as white-male privilege, and he refuses to call gay or trans people by the pronouns they prefer—insisting that all this gender stuff is really a plot by left-wing politicians who are Marxists.

         Peterson is finding a ready audience for his message. For example, on Instagram, thirty-year-old @DominantLobster – a male data analyst from the Netherlands – writes: “We hear too much about rights and how much we need more of that. I feel Peterson's talking about responsibilities, not being a victim.”

         Buck up, men. Peterson says, “If I am someone’s friend, family member, or lover, then I am morally obliged to bargain as hard on my own behalf as they are on theirs. If I fail to do so, I will end up a slave.” Or, in the words of Rule 2, “Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.”

         So, just as the Earl Silverman suicide hit a nerve with a certain kind of disillusioned man, Peterson has struck a nerve with the same constituency. And I can understand why, at least in part. 

         We do live in a time of profound change. Our country, our schools, our economy, our ideas about what is right and wrong—everything is changing. Good jobs dodemand top notch skills and life-long learning. The gig economy doesmean there is no relaxing. New people from near and far dofill the workplace and university. They challenge us with different ideas and priorities and cultures. The middle class is shrinking, and people who fall out of the middle class are angry. We hear a lot about the injustices done to women and First Nations and Gays, but it often feels, to young white men especially, that they get all the blame while everyone else gets the love.

         And again, Jordan Peterson’s response to this angst, this anger at the way the world is turning for the young white male knocked off his pedestal, is the second rule: “Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.”

         I don’t like it.

         Neither would Jesus, nor just any other religious tradition in the world. We counter with words that sound similar but have a very different sense. Jesus suggests that what we need to do, both on good days and when the world is in crisis, as his world was, is this: We must love our neighbour as ourselves.

         The Bible is full of this kind of language: “What does the Lord require of us, but that we do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with the Lord.” Nothing about how I should look after myself, first, there. The Old Testament prophet adds that, God, “lifts the poor from the dust and the needy from the garbage dump.” It’s God’s way. Jesus praises those who love their neighbors. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” And, in an Old Testament verse about refugesthat Jesus actually quotes Matthew 22:9, the great commandment and the second one like it. In this passage Jesus says, “Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites and love them as you love yourself.”

         Look, of course, Jesus knows that you will help yourself in whatever way you can. You are supposed to love your neighbour as yourself after all. Jesus is not saying we should be pansies or pushovers.

         The thing is, in his life, Jesus’ strength was most visible in how, against all social convention he surrounded himself with and loved: tax collectors, Roman soldiers, prostitutes, fishermen, foreigners, the sick and lame.

         This is Christianity. We do not live in fear of the other, or even of change. But we do live for our neighbour. 

         So sure, today, there is growing impatience among men, and especially young white men, impatience rooted in a world that doesn’t privilege them like it used to. That seems tough and even unfair. It frustrates some young men. 

         But think back to that illustration I half-told you, earlier, based on a story Saint Augustine once told. There is a group of frustrated men, sitting around a table, a table loaded with a sumptuous feast made up of every delicious delicacy imaginable.

         These men are very average, except for one feature. Each has arms without elbows, arms four-feet long. As a result, even though each man had a fork in hand, his long, straight arms could neither bend to lift food from the plate set before him, nor bend to bring the food to his mouth. 

         But what if instead of trying to feed himself first, each of these long-armed men took food from plate four feet away and then reached across the table to feed a friend? What if instead of privileging himself, each fed a neighbour? Then everyone around the table would be satisfied, and the sumptuous feast would be a feast indeed. In Christianity, it is our neighbors who give us life as we give it to them. It is our neighbors who make us human together rather than I, me and myself against the world alone.

         So, do not merely “Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.” Down that path, the person you are responsible for helping is eventually going to seem, to you, like a very personal problem. Instead, as with Jesus, love your neighbour as yourself.

Jordan Peterson Rule One: Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back

I'm beginning a series of talks, to be completed over two summers, on Jordan Peterson's Twelve Rules: An Antidote to Chaos. Given the wide interest in Peterson, I'll post them here too. JS

"See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; 

so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matthew 10:16).

          The truth about humans, says Jordan Peterson, is that we are like lobsters.

            Lobsters live in the sea of green beneath the waves. There, they hide under rocks and eat whatever edible garbage sinks to the ocean bottom. Not a life of ease. I wouldn’t like to be a lobster.

            Now, some bits of seascape are more lobster friendly than others. These ocean plots have a great shelter and get more than their fair share of food floating to the bottom. Lobsters know this and they compete with each other for the best property. It’s a lobster-eat-lobster world down there.

            Lobsters compete by waving their antennae threateningly; they swing their legs here and there; and they spray each other with chemicals that say, “out of the way, or else.” They thrust and parry with their claws and exoskeletons, and—if none of this works—fight until one knocks the other upside-down.

            After the fight, the winner takes the real estate, and the loser skulks away. Soon after, the most desirable lady lobsters throw themselves at the champion, for mating. The rest of the lobsters grovel. The big lobster has status. He is dominant, top dog—or crustacean—and gets whatever he wants from all the other shrimps.  

            There is more. Lobsters don’t actually have brains, but they do have a few tightly packed neurotransmitter nodes—an early evolutionary step towards a brain. When a lobster wins one of these property wars, this micro- sort-of brain makes a chemical called serotonin. Serotonin does many things, from aiding digestion to helping brain cells communicate. In lobsters, producing lots of serotonin makes you—drugs you—into acting like a confident and aggressive lobster of high status. Less serotonin in lobsters is associated with the meek and mild behavior of a loser.

            Lobsters also have a sixth sense about who has more or less serotonin. They honor and obey the lobsters with the “mostest.” They treat the winning serotonin-sotted lobster as big man on campus. At least until infirmity or age leads to a lost fight. I wouldn’t like to be a lobster.

            What interests Jordan Peterson about this deep-sea drama is that he thinks it is a pretty good picture for how humans behave, too. He notes that we humans have serotonin in our brains, too, because humans and lobsters share a common evolutionary ancestor. Then, he argues that this brain structure means we too are forever chained to the whims and drives serotonin still produces in us. For that reason, whether we like it or not, he believes that human life, like lobster life, is essentially “my” personal battle against all others for status and dominance. He argues that we are hierarchal beings driven to climb the ladder, even if it means pushing other people down. He thinks it is normal for men to want as many women as possible and for women to exercise their power through refusal, if they are able.

            What is more, just as lobsters with lots of serotonin have swagger, Peterson argues that humans with lots of serotonin have swagger too. So, if we want to be top lobster, dominant at home or work or on the street, we need to increase our serotonin levels. We do this by adopting the posture of a winner. 

            That’s why, says Peterson, even losers should stand up straight with their shoulders back. This will impress other people, and if they are impressed, your brain will unconsciously respond by making more serotonin which will make you more powerful and stronger which will make you walk with your shoulders further back, and so on, a positive feedback loop that will soon make you into a Neptune of the ocean deeps, or maybe King on Bay St.

            What are we to make of all this? A few things. First, it deserves to be said that apart from all the biological and spiritual objections I have to Peterson’s ideas, standing up straight with your shoulders back is, on the whole, good practical advice in many, if not all, situations.

            Proverbial advice is like that of course. Such advice is always context specific, and never a general rule that always applies. Proverbs are “sometimes yes, sometimes no,” sort of things. That’s why there are so many contradictory proverbs. For example, which should it be: The pen is mightier than the sword, or actions speak louder than words? Which should it be: Good things come in small packages or the bigger the better? Which should it be, “stand up straight with your shoulders back” or, "if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

            I mean, standing up straight with our shoulders back usually looks good on us. Refusing to stand up straight with shoulders back may lead to adopting the iPhone slouch, which in turn causes myopia and middle-aged back problems. Standing up straight may send positive middle-class, white-privilege vibes out there into the business world or the gym or the Yorkdale customer you’re serving. This is social convention, like a firm handshake or dressing for success. And people do notice, and even if they don’t bow, they are usually suitably impressed. In fact, as many of the youth in this church who have spoken from this pulpit can tell you, I usually tell them, before they read scripture, to “Stop. Stand up straight, shoulders back. Look out at the audience. Smile. Read slowly.”

            So, second, it is when you dig a bit deeper that what Peterson says—or rather, why Peterson says this—that his advice becomes problematic for me. You see, what Peterson describes is a modern human world where, we are told, an ancient biological instinct, the drive for individual dominance—is nevertheless inescapably normative or right, for now. That is, Peterson writes as if the fact that lobsters want to dominate each other by climbing the social hierarchy is a universal animal law built into our genes in such a way that the good life can only be one where we struggle to dominate others in order to become top dogs. This is called biological determinism.

            The trouble with this view is that humans have undergone a whole lot of evolution since we shared an ancestor with the brainless lobster. We’ve added cranial capacity, including a frontal cortex and a cerebellum, and other odd bits of brain, so that we are no longer driven merely by instinct rooted in the most ancient part of our brain, the tiny amygdala. In a way, Peterson wants to hitch the whole of human meaning and happiness onto how successfully individuals succeed at satisfying urges and instincts rooted in the most ancient echo chamber of our pre-brain evolutionary selves from billions of years ago.

            Now, I would never deny that there is an ancient animal amygdala that still whispers (or even sometimes shouts) at us in the present and that it gives us things like fight-or-flight reflexes and that some humans are very competitive and want to dominate others. But the truth is our brains also now get to make rational choices and community choices about what matters. We are not prisoners to the lobster part of our brains. Humans have much more grey matter to work with than lobsters. For example, we can use empathy rather than brawn to solve some problems. We can rely on family or committed communities we voluntarily join to give us a rich emotional life even if we walk with a slouch or are differently abled so that we can’t stand up straight. We can choose to sacrifice resources like cash or time in order to live a quiet retirement or volunteer at an inner city shelter or donate to a great museum instead of investing in domination. Unlike lobsters, we can make moral choices about which values and goods are the most important to us and which we will therefore strive for.

            Third, one of those moral choices most of us have made is this: while the individual is important to us, the community and its needs are too. And communities work best when they are tied together not by dominance but when they are tied together by deference rooted in chosen values and ideals like love and kindness and long-suffering and compassion and justice. Sure—the individual in us wants to personally succeed, but all of us also want to belong, to be attached to others in emotionally rich and satisfying ways that the lobster can know nothing of. Dominating others may be an instinct built into some of our genetic heritage but our big brains mean that getting along cooperatively is a possibility too. We can choose communal ideals and soulful action. 

            In fact, instead of being led by the nose of our most ancient animal instincts, Jesus uses quite a different animal analogy to describe how we should live. He said we should be as wise as serpents (who were, in the ancient pre-scientific world, considered to be very wise indeed), and as harmless or gentle as doves.

            Jesus is all about our rising above basest instincts and using our entire brain to accomplish not merely personal dominance, but to build a community of mutual care, of shared flourishing. Such flourishing takes more than individual animal drive and serotonin; it requires using the wisdom of the whole brain, and the brains of others, to determine the wisest path forward. And the twist that Jesus—who knows that those who live by the sword die by the sword—the twist that Jesus adds, is that besides being wise we should be gentle. We should be humble, patient, kind, looking to the welfare of others rather than to their defeat or submission. We choose to love our neighbours as the first priority.

            So sure, in your day to day activities, head up, shoulders back, stand up straight. That is a short-term strategy that is sometimes useful, especially for the lobster in us. On the other hand, be as wise as serpents—use all your brain, not just your base instincts—be wise as serpents and gentle as doves, choosing love rather than war, peace rather than strife to achieve your aims in life. This is the sort of human flourishing that Jesus preached and lived.

            And so, while I would not like to be a lobster, I do want to be like Jesus.