Sean Speer: Jordan Peterson’s Keys to Success

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This week marked the highly anticipated release of University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson’s latest book, “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life”. If his latest book, who has sold over five million copies is an indication, the most recent is bound to be another massive commercial success.

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Peterson is an odd fit for a cultural celebrity. He’s obviously a complicated person who seems a bit awkward and introverted, and whose obscure interests (including clinical psychology, philosophy, and theology) are far from dominant. Yet its intellectual and cultural significance is extraordinary.

His Youtube channel, which combines conferences, podcast videos and various speeches, has 3.5 million subscribers and more than 145 million views. Its social media accounts (including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) have an additional 4.7 million subscribers. And there are reports that when Peterson was on Patreon, the popular crowdfunding website, he was making almost $ 50,000 a month through individual contributions.

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He is by far Canada’s most important public intellectual. No one else is even close. In fact, Tyler Cowen, an American economist and serious public intellectual in his own right, has called Peterson the most influential public intellectual in the entire Western world.

This raises questions: How does a prominent, but generally obscure, Canadian psychologist turn into a global phenomenon? How did we get in which New York Times columnist David Brooks a called “Jordan Peterson moment”?

I think there are three main reasons. The first is that there is an incredible hunger among young people – especially young men – for a combination of practical and transcendent wisdom. The modern ethic of hyper-individualism reflected in banal opening speech slogans like “find your truth” and “do you” do not provide generational guidance on the fundamental questions of how to live a good life. and meaningful.

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The result is that Western societies increasingly have a critical mass of 20+ who feel anxious, rudderless, and lonely. Peterson’s so-called “rules” (such as “making friends with people who want the best for you”) may seem trite to some readers, but to a young person trying to make their way through the world, they offer a more structured and more objective life plan.

The second reason is that in a political culture that seems to descend by default into lowest common denominator arguments, Peterson typically stands out by refusing to disparage his ideas. He has enough respect for his audience members to avoid superficial talking points and speak to them as thinking adults, even on complex topics such as moral philosophy, worldly expression of good and evil, and Bible.

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Peterson implicitly bet that those who think the modern public is incapable of engaging beyond carefully calibrated slogans are wrong. And he’s been proven to be absolutely right.

A few years ago, as Peterson’s profile grew, we both spoke at a political and political conference in Toronto. I spoke after him, but my then-girlfriend (now wife) and I got there early to see what it was all about with this eccentric professor who was generating such a buzz in the mainstream media and online.

His words were dense and esoteric. There were references to French philosophers Michel Focault and Jean-Paul Sartre and various nods to Marxism, structuralism and post-modernism. I mostly followed what he said, but suffice to say that it was far from a light speech.

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Yet as I looked around the crowded amphitheater, the audience was spellbound. People’s enthusiasm was a sign of the underlying demand for Peterson’s unique blend of intellectualism, intensity, and sobriety.

Which brings me to the third (and most controversial) factor behind Peterson’s passionate support. He championed a conservative alternative to the prevailing zeitgeist, which tends to be called, rightly or unfairly, “awakening”. He was not afraid to speak frankly about the forces of “cultural Marxism”, of the “radical left” and of “political correctness” which he sees as a threat to Enlightenment thought.

This line of argument certainly resonates with young conservatives who, according to a recent study, are grossly under-represented on college and university campuses. As I wrote before, there is a growing sense among Conservatives that their ideas are not fully authorized in traditional institutions. Peterson has proven to be an accredited but combative advocate for these people.

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That doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s without its flaws. There are many points of disagreement in his ideas, his arguments and his tact. His stubborn message may seem unempathetic, clinical, and cold. David Brooks observed an element of lack of joy and lack of grace in Peterson’s worldview. Matt Welch of Reason Magazine has described it as a “defective messiah”. His detractors would say even worse.

But the story here is less about Peterson and more about what his popularity says about us. The fruitfulness of his message suggests that the mix of consumerism and secularism in modern society does not meet people’s metaphysical needs. Something is missing in our lives. Peterson, for better or for worse, fills this gap for many young people in Canada and around the world.

It’s made for an unlikely intellectual and cultural icon. And he definitely sells books.

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