I recently read this excellent article looking at a topic many wonder about: Why are so many people reading and/or listening to Canadian professor Jordan Peterson?
I have been listening to and reading a lot of Prof. Peterson’s content since 2017, and have benefited from it greatly. (I am a woman in my early 40s with a family). I’ve also read a lot of “why do people listen to Jordan Peterson!” articles and often “why is it mostly men!” articles, many of which drip jealousy and resentment, and thus explain their own existence if nothing else. I don’t even read those kind of articles anymore, BUT this article by Ms Natthew is very different and makes many excellent points.
I particularly appreciated the point about how current generations need to make choices about social arrangements and responsibilities that previous generations could take for granted. This is absolutely a stressor on people and an extremely important issue. And people of my generation and younger (also thinking of myself when younger) likely never articulated to ourselves or had it clearly explained just how big a challenge it is to shoulder responsibility while isolated.
“Moreover, even as we have sought to centralize, routinize and institutionalize many of our familial relationships and friendships, we recognize that our interactions with others are nearly always conscious choices rather than ever-present unconscious realities. For this reason, our responsibilities—professional, marital and parental—are ours alone in a way that was not true for either my Italian-American grandparents or his Liberian ones. Hence no amount of self-awareness or hard work can render us truly fit for the sheer amount of personal responsibility required of anyone trying to be a decent citizen, worker or parent in today’s newly individuated world.
“Enter Jordan Peterson with his now 24 rules, making what was communal, implicit and abstract for my grandparents individual, explicit and specific for me.
“Thus, it is Peterson himself who has noticed that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated. His resonance with younger people reflects the extreme demands of modern life and the new isolation in which we are expected to meet those demands. It also reflects the failure of our parents and grandparents to prepare many of us for the logistical, psychological and emotional reality that they unwittingly created.”
Matthew also makes the point that JBP resonates more with young (white) men than women because women and some racial minorities already understand his message, but young men are more likely to actually believe they can evade responsibility without consequence. I tend not to agree with the author that there are more “lost boys” than “lost girls”. There are no shortage of women living alone, struggling with responsibility (and/or avoiding it), seeking relief through medication or retail therapy or whatever. But if our modern world doesn’t necessarily nurture young women, perhaps it caters more to us in the sense that it can repackage and sell our desires back to us. I would say that if you really want to generalize, it’s not that JBP’s message is not relevant to women, it’s that we are lagging a bit behind in our awareness of its relevance.
Highly recommended read.
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