David Brooks As Antidote to Jordan Peterson
Relationalism vs. Individualism
J. Linn Mackey
Jordan Peterson’s best selling book is titled 12 Rules For Life. The subtitle is “An Antidote to Chaos”. I argue in this essay that David Brooks in his new book The Second Mountain provides an antidote to Peterson’s views in 12 Rules For Life.
On the surface it appears that these two books address different stages of life. We can use the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung’s stages of life to see this. Jung’s stages of life are childhood, the first half of life and the second half of life. Jung indicated that the passage from the first half of life to the second is often marked by what he called a “midlife crisis”. Brooks’ metaphoric use of mountains in The Second Mountain follows Jung’s developmental stages for the first mountain accords with Jung’s first half of life and the second mountain of his book title accords with Jung’s second half of life. Brooks’ metaphorical presentation of life stages even includes Jung’s midlife crisis which he refers to as the valley between the first mountain and the second.
Viewed from the vantage point of stages of life, Peterson’s 12 Rules For Lif is clearly addressed to the first half of life. Its sales, becoming a best seller in eight countries, indicate its success in addressing the issues of the first half of life. The title of Brooks’ The Second Mountain indicates that it is primarily addressing the second half of life. One can ask “is it fair to compare the two books and call The Second Mountainan antidote to Peterson’s views in 12 Rules For Life”?
I argue that it is fair because much of what Brooks discusses in The Second Mountain applies to the first half of life. For example one of the tasks of the first half of life is finding a partner and establishing a family. The whole of Part III of The Second Mountainis about marriage, clearly part of the first half of life. A more general basis for contrasting the book is that both reflect each author’s fundamental worldviews. It is on the basis of differences in fundamental worldview that leads me to the title of this essay “David Brooks and an antidote to Jordan Peterson.”
Brooks and Peterson agree on certain issues. Both agree with Edmund Burke. “We should respect the ‘just prejudice’ of out culture, the traditions that have stood the test of time (TSM, 190).” In fact Brooks identifies himself as “a Burkean conservative” (TSW, 192). Peterson argues that we should honor, respect, and preserve the values and institutions of the Western tradition.
Both are critics of the current form of university education. However, they differ on what underlying nature of the dysfunction is. Peterson argues that the humanities and other areas of higher education have been taken over by what he calls postmodern Marxists who foster perspectivism and identity politics rather than truth. Brooks received his university education at the University of Chicago. That introduced him to the Great Books and thinkers of the Western tradition, what he calls the “humanistic ideal” (TSW, 192). In his view universities have dropped the humanistic ideal and adopted the “research ideal” (TSW193). He believes the research ideal offers little way for the university to engage the student as a whole person, “…an entity that has longings and a hunger for meaning (TSW, 193).”
Another important place where they both agree is that humans experience the world in two different dimensions. Peterson writes, “The world can be validly construed as a forum for action, or as place of things. The former — more primordial, and less clearly understood — finds its expression in the arts or humanities, in ritual, drama, literature and mythology. The world as forum for action is a place of value, where all things have meaning. This meaning, which is shaped as a consequence for social interaction, is implication for action, or — at a higher level of analysis — implication for action or guides action. The latter manner of interpretation — the place of things — finds its formal expression in the methods and theories of science (MM, 1).”
Brooks takes a similar position. “We are alive in the natural world, and use science to understand that larger aliveness. We are also alive in another dimension, the dimension of spirit and meaning (TSW, 213).” So what is our human situation in the dimension of spirit and meaning as revealed in drama, literature and mythology? This is the grounding of ones worldview, and where I find the fundamental difference between Peterson and Brooks.
Peterson has a number of videos on YouTube that deal with the bible. He believes the biblical stories are a repository of foundational wisdom on our human situation and how we should act in the world. One of these videos is on the Genesis story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I think this story is foundational to Peterson’s worldview. In Chapter 3 of Genesis God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden into a situation of toil, suffering, and death because of their disobedience. Peterson draws from this the fundamental situation of humans in the world.
He is fond of saying “life is suffering tinged with malevolence”. One should act in the world with truthfulness and honesty so as not to contribute to the suffering and malevolence of the world. He thus takes a kind of existentialist position that we must struggle to make meaning in a meaningless universe. The individual must heroically struggle against the human suffering and lack of meaning that Camus portrayed so profoundly in The Myth of Sisyphus.
Brooks grew up in a Jewish family and went to Hebrew school, hearing the Biblical stories (TSM, 211).” Like Peterson he agrees on the importance of Biblical stories for our lives. “We use the biblical stories to understand the dimension of aliveness [the dimension of spirit and meaning] (TSM, 213).” He quotes Alasdair MacIntyre, “I can only answer the question ‘what am I to do, if I can answer the prior question of ‘What story or stories do I find myself a part’ (TSM, 213).”
Unlike Peterson who emphasizes the Genesis story, Brooks emphasizes the Exodus story. “Exodus has become the shaping reality of Jewish life, how Jews understand and fashion their lives TSW, 213).” This is a story of a people, a whole community, not an individual. “Righteousness is something you achieve together, collectively as a people (TSM, 217).” “The Jew does not experience faith primarily in solitude. He or she experiences it primarily in community in what one does with others (TSM, 226).”
I see the fundamental worldviews of Peterson and Brooks as grounded and shaped by these different Biblical stories, and growing up in a harsh Alberta, Canada vs. growing up in a close Jewish community in New York. These worldviews manifest themselves in 12 Rules For Life and The Second Mountain as individualism vs. community. Peterson’s individualism manifests as a kind of existentialism and Brooks as a form of communatarism he calls relationalism. Brooks recasts his metaphor of two mountains as a contrast between two different moral worldviews. “The first mountain is the individualist worldview, which puts the desires of the ego at the center. The second mountain is what you might call the relationalist worldview, which puts relation, commitment, and desires of the heart and soul at the center (TSM, 296).” So what we have with Brooks and Peterson is two different moral worldviews. Peterson’s as individualist and Brooks is relationalist. This is why Brooks is an antidote to Peterson.
