The poison of order

About the philosophy of Jordan Peterson and his new book

In Russian, the second book of Canadian philosopher Jordan Peterson, known for his vivid and ambiguous performances with criticism of tolerance and political correctness, was published. The editor of Gorky Eduard Lukoyanov - about why the “12 rules of life” brought him a rage.

Jordan Peterson. 12 rules of life: antidote from chaos. St. Petersburg: Peter, 2019. Translation from English N. Freiman

There are a genus of thinkers who, the outstanding energy of their mind lift the veil of mystery over the radiant clarity of being, making obvious what was previously hidden. Seeking the truth, they simultaneously change our ideas about objective reality, transforming the world, society, and the human life itself for the better. Like Socrates, they are ready to sacrifice themselves for the sake of a common good, confident that if not contemporaries, then at least descendants will appreciate their mournful and elevated labor.

They cannot be attributed to Jordan Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychologist, better known as the star of the intellectual YouTube. Without gaining special success in the work in the specialty, Peterson discovered the talent of a kind of showman from the right forces. Now his channel has almost two million subscribers, and he himself firmly entrenched in the status of a man-meme, which is extremely popular among alternative right and their sympathizers.

In philosophy, Professor Peterson, frankly, is an impostor. He announced the study of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, primarily communist. The fact that Peterson does not have a specialized education and with the history of dictatorships he is familiar only to artistic works (the professor does not tire of emphasizing his special love for Orwell), does not bother himself or his subscribers.

He declared political correctness a new form of fascism, which gained popularity among the right "dissidents", as they themselves are pleased to call themselves.

“12 rules of life. Antidote from chaos. " This name is the second book of Jordan Peterson, published in Russian by the Publishing House "Peter" in the series "Psychologist for himself." Throughout the world, she has already dispersed more than two million copies, giving grateful to customers almost five hundred pages of practical advice on how to finally change in order to enjoy their lives.

After March 15, 2019, Brenton Harrison Tarrant shot 50 visitors to the mosque and the Muslim city center Kraistcherch, the largest stores of New Zealand suspended the sale of the book by Peterson . However, pretty soon, when the country did not know such horrors recovered from shock, “12 rules” returned to the shelves. And this is good, because the right to freedom of speech and freedom of access to information has not yet been canceled.

But why did the New Zealand booksakers so worry? The answer, oddly enough, lies in the book.

“12 Life Rules”, as Peterson himself admits, are based on his notes left on the Quore website (the American service and answers) in minutes when he “rested from work or simply opened from it”. Judging by the impressive volume of the book, Professor Peterson is really a big specialist in the field of recreation from work.

We must pay tribute: what modern right is not refused - so it is in propaganda skill and the feeling of the notorious “spirit of time”. Mashed under the next treatise on personal growth, the book turns out to be shameless agitation directed against mainstream ideas about social justice and at the same time against everything that shifts at least a little to the left of the central axis of political coordinates.

It opens the book to the subsequent preface of Dr. Norman Doege, in which Peterson appears as a great fighter for freedom of speech and just an excellent guy who has become a victim of “left -wing extremists”. Peterson’s colleague is also diligently engaged in his head beating against the wall, crushing about the soulless generation of millennials, preoccupied with their rights and forgot about their duties. As befits a good preface, the text of the doe “acts on the warm -up” of the book, preparing an attentive reader for the fact that they will now brazen to manipulate:

“From the point of view of relativism, tolerance is closest to virtue. Only tolerance will ensure the social cohesion of different groups and will save us from the harm that we cause to each other. Therefore, on Facebook and other social networks, you express your so -called virtue, telling everyone how you are tolerant, open and compassionate, and wait for the harvest of likes. ”

This thought with a red thread will pass through the entire book, exposing the main problem of Western altraits and extreme right liberals. The problem is that they cannot imagine a person who sincerely wants good to his neighbor.

But from the pathetic we will move on to the book. “12 Life Rules” is an excellent manual for those who are embittered on the world, but cannot find the reason for their bitterness. The author offers us a rich choice: women, gays, transgender people, drug users. In parallel, Peterson gives valuable tips on raising children - for example, decisively saying: “There should be two parents.” Peterson does not have advice on how to be, if you still, for one reason or another, grow a child alone. You, apparently, simply do not exist for him.

As, according to Peterson, there is no patriarchy. In confirmation of his words, he leads to from where and why the ended statistics (after all, the abundance of numbers is always impressed by the inexperienced reader) and, just do not laugh, the fact that the modern means of female hygiene and contraceptive pills were invented by men:

“The first practical swab, Tampax, appeared no earlier than the 1930s. He was invented by Dr. Earl Cleveland Haas. He made it out of compressed cotton and developed a paper appliance. The latter helped reduce the resistance of these products from those who objected to the women to touch themselves, and such arguments would otherwise arise. By the beginning of the 1940s, 25% of women used tampons. Thirty years later, it was already about 70%. Now four out of five women use tampons, and the rest rely on gaskets, which are now hyper-entering and hold on the spot with an effective adhesive layer-not at all like ugly, the hygienic napkins of the 1970s, resembling diapers.

Did the women depressed the Muruganants, Simpson and Haas or freed them? What about Gregori Goodwin Pinkus, who invented a contraceptive tablet? How are these practical, enlightened, purposeful men part of the limiting patriarchy? Why do we teach young people that our incredible culture is the result of oppression on the part of men? Blinded by this enormous assumption, such different spheres as education, social work, art history, gender research, literature, sociology and, to a greater extent, the law, treat men as oppressors, and perceive male activity as destructive from nature. ”

Or is Peterson describes this way as in childhood, men become victims of wild hell called “gender equality”:

“Girls play boyish games, and for boys it is much less advisable to play girls' games. This is partly because it is considered wonderful when the girl wins in the competition with the boy. It’s also normal for her to lose to the boy. For the boy, to defeat the girl, on the contrary, is often abnormal, and even less normally she will lose. Imagine that a boy and a girl of nine years old begin to fight. To begin with, the boy in this situation will look very suspicious. If he wins, he is miserable. If he loses - well, his life may end. Beaten with a girl! Girls can win in their own hierarchy - being good in that they value as girls. To this they can add victory in the boy hierarchy. But boys can win only by winning the male hierarchy. They will lose their status among girls and boys, being good in what girls appreciate. It will cost them a reputation among boys and attractiveness in the eyes of girls. Girls are not attracted by the boys with whom they are friends, despite the fact that they can like them, no matter what it means. Girls are attracted by boys who win in the competition for the status of other boys. If you belong to the male sex, you simply cannot hit the female representative as much as another male creature. Boys cannot (and will not) play truly competitive games with girls-it is not clear how they can win.

So, if the game turns into girls, the boys come out of it. Are there universities, especially humanitarian, girlfriends? Do we want this? "

Jordan Peterson

These “arguments” are easily destroyed by one click of fingers. But you should not do this. After all, the authors like Peterson only wait for someone to enter into a discussion. So that, when the opponent surrenders his nerves, to blame him for infringing on the fundamental right to freedom of speech and, with especially developed impudence, call the fascist. This is the behavior of a novice Internet troll, but certainly not the “most influential intellectual of the Western world”, as the remark on the cover tells us.

In one of the series of the cartoon “Bivis and Batthead” (much more smart than it might seem at first glance), Bivis has a hysteria. He screams that he wants to steal a bulldozer and break the wall in a female locker room, because only he, as he seems to him, can finally see a naked girl. Peterson's feminine excesses are very reminiscent of this passage of the extremely frustrated Bivis. Only, unlike his animated Doppelganger, Dr. Peterson learned to relatively deftly juggle outstanding thinkers of the past (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and other “intellectual” markers are diligently placed in the book in order to flatter the reader) and hide their complexes behind the mask of experienced brainstorm.

But Professor Peterson sees the main source of evil in leftists, of the numerous crimes of which he does not tire of resemble in almost every chapter, abundantly pouring the victims of communist regimes with crocodile tears. In this difficult work, his faithful comrade becomes a simplification, smoothly turning into a lie. As if doubting the elementary political literacy of his reader, Peterson as follows explains the basic principles of Marxism:

“Marx tried to reduce history and society to the economy, considering the culture of the oppression of the poor rich. When Marxism was taken into practical weapons in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and other places, economic resources were roughly redistributed. Private property was liquidated, rural residents were forced to collectivization. Result? Tens of millions of people died. Hundreds of millions have oppressed what is still happening in North Korea - the last stronghold of communism. The resulting economic systems were corrupt and unstable. The world entered a long and extremely dangerous cold war. Citizens of these societies lived a false life, betrayed their families, reported to neighbors - who existed in poverty without complaints (or with complaints). Marxist ideas were very attractive to utopian intellectuals. One of the first architects of the horrors of the Red Khmer, Khiyu Samphan, received a doctoral degree in the Sorbonne before he became the nominal head of Cambodia in the mid-1970s. In his doctoral dissertation, written in 1959, he argued that the work that the non-Krestyana in Cambodian cities is carried out is unproductive: bankers, bureaucrats and businessmen give no anything to society. Instead, they parasitize on the truly valuable that is produced in agriculture, in small industry and craftsmen. French intellectuals, who granted him a scientific degree, looked favorably at the ideas of Samphana. ”

As they say, without comment.

The extremely simplified picture of the world, which Peterson sells to his fans, is not much different from the one that David Aik and other conspiracyologists offers. Just replace reptiloids with feminists, and Masons - with an academic establishment and you will receive the "antidote from chaos".

One thing comforts: it is unlikely that in Russia and other countries of the former USSR Peterson will be sold as well as in his homeland. Firstly, we were still passed by a cup of political correctness in its Western form, which means that its criticism will not interest a wide reader. Secondly, in the “eastern” man, a hopeless faith in idealistic humanism and “bright future” is still strong, so that the pragmatic ethics of Peterson will soon find a response in his heart.

Nevertheless, the “12 Rules” should be read at least by diagonal to those who want to understand the mechanisms of glory in the days of the millennial-infantiles so hated by the author. The crazy sales of Peterson provided likes in social networks, over which, recall, the author of the preface is ironic. We live in an era when the quality of thought is often determined only by its formal difference from the main stream of information obtained from the news tape of the same Facebook.