Personal Opinion on Jordan B. Peterson

Burdens of A Public Intellectual and Psychologist

This is a synthesis of my collection of notes I have taken over the past year about my take on Jordan Peterson especially after reading loads of articles both criticizing him and endorsing him. Was mildly astounded at how my views of someone subtly shifted over the year and how multilayered they have gotten. Took me some time to make these coherent and be somewhat of use.

I have the privilege to say that I followed Jordan Peterson before it was cool. By some odd chance I stumbled upon a pretty interesting Reddit AMA with this clinical psychologist who publishes self-help videos and interesting lectures on YouTube, while offering his trademark Self-Authoring programme. That day onwards the name Jordan Peterson become known to me as someone living the most ideal life a psychologist can get (from my vantage point as a psych undergraduate): a full professor that can make time for some science communications, private practice as a psychotherapist, and owns a decently sized business. Presumably a workaholic.

Months later, this very same Dr. Jordan Brent Peterson blew up on the news as a ‘conservative wingnut’, which came off as strange to me as his AMA did came across like a reasonable liberal. Early 2017, I got permission to use a psychometric measurement, which he coincidentally co-created, to use for my undergraduate research. A year later, I got to read his iconic ‘12 Rules for Life’ and my YouTube feed was flooding with his lectures and snippets of him ‘destroying feminism’. This was the time I started to really look up more about him and tried my best to understand what he really stands for. Eventually, I simply decided that there are other more important things in the world to be concerned about.

Because, at the end of the day, Jordan Peterson is simply a good guy who got ahead of himself and talked a little bit too much about topics that is not his expertise and might in turn, misrepresent what psychology really is about.

Not the greatest psychologist of all time.

I have seen people criticizing a list of the ‘Most Important Psychologists’ for not including his name. It grinds my gears how often people outside the discipline refer him as a great psychologist if not the greatest.

A competency of a psychologist lies in his aptitude for scientific research. To be fair, Peterson is actually a pretty prolific researcher! He has numerous publications and a pretty respectable citation count (hopefully for good reasons). His Researchgate profile is pretty diverse and mainly consists of studies involving personality traits, psychopathology, addiction, neuropsychology, and political views. But this is also where the public often misunderstand Peterson’s credentials. They do not involve ‘lobsters’, ‘nutrition’, ‘evolutionary neurobiology’, ‘political science’, ‘religious symbology’, ‘postmodernism’, ‘gender identity’, or ‘theology’. Also, he has not proposed any new and unique topics, model, or theory of behaviour that has not been well-researched already. That alone would make him a difficult candidate as a great scientist at a global level, when many others have done much more for psychology. The stuff he writes in ’12 Rules for Life’ rarely constitutes scientific psychology, unlike other modern psychological books like ‘Grit’ and ‘Paradox of Choice’.

Also, Peterson is actually also a clinical psychologist that provides psychotherapy, which has no ways to measure one’s achievements. There are no prizes or awards for solely being a great therapist due to the nature of the profession. Awards only go to outstanding research, development of new therapeutic modalities, or humanitarian work (which he has won neither aside from his dubious book being a bestseller). In Peterson’s case, it is clear that he is qualified and well-trained, but there is no way to know that he is ‘among the best’ by any means.

Peterson is an outstanding psychologist compared to the masses. Impressive researcher, qualified therapist, and an outstanding instructor. But he has not contributed any scientific finding that revolutionized the fields he is involved in (which is to be fair, a very high bar which majority of psychologists never attain in their careers), and has spent most of his time talking on fields that are not his expertise. The main question of ‘what did he contribute to psychology’ would have been a difficult one to answer even for many of his followers.

12 Rules for Life, but critical thinking ain’t one of them.

12 Rules of Life was probably the biggest letdown I have ever experienced as a reader given how well endorsed it was. For instance, I get that he is trying hard to stress certain points like the importance of having an hierarchy being a natural order of things, insisting that it exists neurobiologically in our biological makeup. But going to the extent of using lobster biology (once again, not his field) as an example to justify a some social hierarchy (which was not explained beyond ‘we need to follow leaders’) has missed more than a few logical steps and is likely guilty of the naturalistic fallacy. He also makes highly questionable use of examples to debunk ideas he doesn’t like, eg. scratching professors’ cars to discredit moral relativism. The mixing of religious symbology with how should life be lived used to be mildly interesting, but over time it just ticks all the ‘bad science’ boxes in my head, not to mention that he never even have peer reviewed papers in this area. His legendary quote on cleaning up one’s personal space sounds interesting, but his elaborations on it did not come together to make any sense for me. I do not want to make a full review on his book, but his writing is clearly not on par with his speaking. They were simply too many missing logical leaps, misuse of examples, inconsistent jumping of topics, and pandering to mysticism to be called a work of psychology.

The curse of the public intellectual.

Let’s not deny Peterson’s intellectual bandwidth. Even assuming he was wrong about many ideas from political science to biology, the fact that he was able to make links between them on the fly (on top of his professional experiences in psychological research and therapy) is remarkable. The only reason I even keep his videos on my subscription is that I do find Peterson’s self-help advice pretty intriguing and surprisingly helpful. His followers will surely agree.

But how do we know when is he right and wrong? Most approaches that investigate the credibility of intellectuals is to look up his credentials to be sure that the person is not a fraud to begin with. The tricky part here is that for most intents and purposes Peterson did not mislead anyone. He mainly market himself as a psychologist which concerns expertise in human behaviour, which in extension gives him credibility to offer pointers about a good life. While it is in their responsibility to not speak about things beyond their expertise, it isn’t clear how does one do that. The process of seriously studying anything can in extension lead one into many other disciplines, which induce the illusion of knowing without actually understanding.

I can only say that we need a new model to help us navigate the world of public intellectuals. A framework that can help experts express their ideas more liberally and being responsible for whatever they say, and also help the public access the credibility of their statements and hold them responsible.

The antidote in intellectual humility and sensibility.

Despite his shortcomings, Peterson possess a particular virtue that most if not all of his opponents lack.

Intellectual humility.

I would go as far as to say that this is the very virtue that cements Peterson as a legitimate intellectual. He definitely possess a strong personal pride and ego alongside a passion for disproving his foes, but when provided the evidence or possibility that he could be wrong, he has been ready to admit that. During his speeches and lectures, it is very evident that he thinks through his points and also counterpoints with nuance. He doesn’t walk around shoving his ideals everywhere with an arrogant strut and has a distinct air of gentlemanliness that I rarely have the privilege to learn from. Above all, if one fails to see any merit in his lectures, one still cannot deny how much Peterson inspire learning in my generation, where many of us are disillusioned by the changing rules and norms of our societies and the broken system of academia. If other intellectuals are puzzled and frustrated by the Jordan Peterson phenomena, perhaps they could begin by considering this: Peterson’s influence, negative or otherwise, wouldn’t have been so prevalent if other academics are capable of speaking sense in their respective fields. There is a reason folks began to distrust ivory-towerism more and more.

Closing.

I hope in this piece I got across a few ideas.

First is that while Jordan Peterson is a legitimately good psychologist in both research and practice, one has to be cautious when evaluating his statements when it comes to human behaviour, especially when it is riddled with mythology and Darwinian naturalistic fallacies. His academic research and reputation is of high standing, his classroom lectures on psychology is likely valid and honest, and his life advice is worth trying if you can discern its suitability. However, be absolutely skeptical of the stuff in his books and interviews, especially when it concerns politics, biology (especially nutrition!), and law. I am still not convinced 12 Rules For Life has any value as a self-help material compared to the thousands of others.

Second is that being a public intellectual is not as straightforward as it seems. While Peterson has been guilty of confounding his credentials as a psychologist to speak in biology, politics, theology, and philosophy, he is not the only one. A larger problem exists out there about how should we as a public position and evaluate our intellectuals while holding them accountable, especially if they come from academia. Given that rough outlines of information can easily be retrieved at a click, are we sure that we will never be guilty of the same? How do we do that?

Thirdly, I strongly believe as a person Jordan Peterson has qualities that many of us could emulate, especially when it comes to speaking and confronting adversity. While he seems to hold views and values that are either incoherent or a result of shallow reading, at the end of day he is a good man who has ideals of a world where everyone has a place, and behaves with class and humility even against the lowest of blows.

By no means a simple man, a coherent writing of his life story and how he arrived to his hypotheses of the world would make a pretty good read especially if it allows us to understand one man’s complexities. If that happens I hope that will be the last time I have to endure reading about pop evolutionary psychology and mythology referenced next to each other.