1. Another problem with Peterson is that he promotes the idea of an individual heroically self-improving, but he simultaneously admit hard biological limits (e.g. IQ). This means that some people will never get very far in a meritocratic hierarchy.
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2. Therefore, that hierarchy will always be skewed towards the “biologically privileged” no matter how hard people work. The implication is really that what is needed is a stable hierarchy of duties and obligations to protect people at the bottom.
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3. But that hierarchy of obligations (aka aristocracy) was precisely what his individualistic classical liberalism nuked. The reason people get left behind at the bottom is that capitalism & liberalism unleashed all that “biological potential”.
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4. He also suggests that meaning derives from work and self-improvement, an element of Protestant redemption through work. It’s true that work staves off depression, but I’m not sure it creates meaning.
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5. There are plenty of financially successful and professionally successful people who suffer from alienation and depression and have no idea what their identity is. Part of what Peterson is offering is “the American Dream”.
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6. But this does not create virtue. In fact, because liberal capitalism (or whatever iteration of capital development we’re on) breaks down the ties, traditions, and rootedness from which virtue may arise. And this is part of the loss of meaning.
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7. It’s not the whole answer, but Peterson’s prescription—insofar as it is liberal—is actually destructive of the forces that give life meaning. Self-improvement isn’t enough on its own, of course Peterson admits there’s a religious element.
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8. A’s I’ve stated before, his problems mostly come from his classical liberalism. This produces wild inconsistencies in his thought. If he stuck to Jung, Dostoyevsky & Solzhenitsyn he’d be okay. Because those were rooted & anti-individualist thinkers.
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9. I have a lot of sympathy for Peterson, because he makes excellent and true points and is extremely effective. And I also identify with him because, being an Anglo-Celt, I feel counterpoised between individualism and the rooted. Between Mill and Jung.
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Addendum: I suspect only about 20% of the pop. is capable of the self-directed, individualistic self-improvement Peterson recommends. They benefit from his work, if they’re falling behind on this. What is really required is for these people to form a hierarchy that guides the 80%
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Peterson should understand this, because the kind of “self-created” life he talks about is derived from Nietzsche & was conceived as extremely elitist by Nietzsche. The mob couldn’t do it. People like Camus (barely) and d’Annunzio could. Most men need to be told what to do.
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Telling people to “make their own meaning” may be telling people to do the impossible. They can’t self-create. That’s why psychoanalysis has always been an elitist field, it’s for people who can afford & know how to self-create.
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That’s why Leo Strauss though atheism should be suppressed. Only a very few men could stand to live with that knowledge. General society should never know. Peterson democratises Nietzsche, “Every man a superman.” I don’t think it’s possible.
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