Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life: Rule #11: Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding.
Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life: Rule #11: Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding.
I don’t find this rule to be as controversial as the content I’ve read in this chapter. Peterson discusses children and how parenting affects how they react to danger in the future. When kids are skateboarding, riding a bike, or doing a dangerous activity, parents, out of their good will, want their kids to do something more “safer.” Peterson proposes this itself is dangerous because the child will eventually have to face the dangers of the world, living independently, and finding their own meaning in life. Shelter will not teach children to stand their ground.
Peterson then discusses views on the patriarchy, and whether or not it facilitated or hindered society. It’s evident that “culture is an oppressive structure.” Why? Because any structure that includes a ruler creates winners and losers. So we have to negotiate. He says that men have not created culture, rather it’s symbolically interpreted as “the patriarchy.” The oppression of the patriarchy was rather a collective effort by women and men, trying to bring order to their lives. While men struggled to bring bread to the table, women struggled too, with the “high probability of unwanted pregnancy, the chance of death or serious damage during childbirth, and the burden of too many young children.”
Men are often seen as destructive and oppressive. Peterson alludes to James Young Simpson who used ether to help women give birth. Dr. Earle Cleveland Haas invented the practical tampon, with the alternative being hyper-absorbent pads. Gregory Goodwin Pincus invented the birth control pill.
Were these men constructing patriarchy? Or trying to free women from their sufferings?
When we take another step back and think about a hypothetical utopia, we’ve learned from history that most utopias have failed. Marxism implemented in the “Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Combodia,” etc. caused tens of millions of people to die because the economic system was not sustainable. In the 1930s Stalinist Soviets sent two million kulaks (richest peasants) to Siberia. From there, more than 30,000 kulaks were killed from their resentful neighbors “who used the high ideals of communist collectivization to mask their murderous intent.” In these situations, society is not oppressed by the rich, but by the powerful. But Peterson claims that “the fact that power plays a role in human motivation does not mean that it plays the only role, or even the primary role.”
In a self-sufficient society, competence, ability, and skill are what determine status, not power.
Back to the real question: How can we decide if competence applies equally to both men and women?
Peterson deciphers gender inequality in three stages:
“The claim that all gender differences are a consequence of socialization is neither provable, nor disprovable, in some sense, because culture can be brought to bear with such force on groups or individuals that virtually any outcome is attainable, if we are willing to bear the cost.”
“The introduction of the ‘equal pay for equal work’ argument immediately complicates even salary comparison beyond practicality, for one simple reason: who decides what work is equal?”
“Group identity can be fractioned right down to the level of the individual.”
If we identify people by the level of their individual status, and apply it to their minority status, we get the following “theory” of intersectionality:
Intersectionality can be boggled down to a “ranking” where a white straight male is at the bottom, and the more memberships one claims in “oppressed” groups mean that person ranks higher in intersectionality. This means that blacks have a victim status that whites obviously don’t. Half of me believes that this is true just from our own individual perception of black people and the history of oppression, in a relatable form of police brutality. However, half of me also believes that categorizing people in their marginalized groups strips individuality and immediately devalues their ability to “succeed” in life or be equal to a white person.
This is also where the color-blind racism theory comes into place, where people aren’t all seen as equal. My point is, there are privileged people in marginalized groups and unprivileged people in white groups per se, and I feel like victim status applies to both people who believe they are victims and people who’ve had relatives who’ve been victims of prejudice. I define myself as a minority on the surface, but I have to stop believing I am marginalized and empower myself. I am equal to every other man and woman. From what standard can I decide my life is better or worse than someone else’s? And if I come across those who want to take advantage of my minority badge, I’ll be sure to act accordingly. I want everyone to judge people on the content of their character, not the status of their marginality.
But this scenario only applies to a nonexistent utopia. Maybe New Zealand hits it close. Or Iceland, Finland, Norway are close to gender equality. It’ll take eons before change really integrates within us. We have people like Malala Yousafzai trying to fight for women’s rights and education in third world countries. In my opinion, good parenting is the foundation of bringing order to society. To teach children the history of minority status and inequality, while bringing goodwill intentions and progressing towards social equality.
Towards the end of the chapter, Peterson explains why women want men, not boys.
“If they’re healthy, women don’t want boys. They want men. They want someone to contend with; someone to grapple with. If they’re tough, they want someone tougher. If they’re smart, they want someone smarter. They desire someone who brings to the table something they can’t already provide.”
But I’d like to contend: what constitutes boys? What does growing up really mean? How can we categorize love when love is limitless? But love also has its boundaries. What women really want? Does status always matter? Does wealth always decide which card is played? Maybe there is so much we still don’t understand about the relationship between man and women.
Peterson ends this chapter with the following: “Men have to toughen up. They cannot be feminized because “they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology.”
I disagree with Peterson on this statement. He’s right that we should let children explore the dangers of the world when they’re young. To figure out what exhilarates them. But also, I don’t think men need to be confined to that “masculine” role anymore. The modern world is changing before our eyes. It’s adapting. Women are still the birth givers, but they can be the breadwinners. They can be the ones bringing food to the table. Why should women be confined to one role? There are mothers out there who have 3 kids and work full time. Aren’t those women also “tough”? Instead of men having to toughen up, shouldn’t it be women? Specifically, women don’t have to be feminized in financial dependence. What kind of political ideology would a woman implement? Or does it even matter she’s a woman?
We’ll wait for the one who becomes our first female President.
If you haven’t read my previous article on why you should watch what you say, you can check it out here.
