![]() ![]() I didn’t feel any more dominant than usual. By early afternoon I was finding excuses to hunch over, even for a few seconds, to get some relief. The pain started in the small of my back around 10 a.m. I stacked my laptop and monitor on top of some dictionaries and sat up very straight, with my shoulders back, for hours. I took a literal approach one Monday morning. Don’t be a pathetic lobster, basically, though lobsters don’t have shoulders, as such. Rule 1 is to stand up straight with your shoulders back. But he chose lobsters, and I have to think it’s because anything that’s been around that long has clearly figured itself out. There are lots of animals Peterson could have used to make this point, like elk or lions or elephant seals, all of which compete for females and none of which pee out of their faces. (Except for the part where female lobsters squirt pheromone-laced urine out of their faces to entice the males, but Peterson doesn’t mention that.) We are not so different, his argument goes. The thing about lobsters, according to Peterson, is that the males fight each other to establish dominance, and the females all want to mate with the dominant males. ![]() The ancestors of lobsters were around at least 350 million years ago, and 350 million years is a Very Long Time. Not lobsters, exactly, but the ancestors of lobsters. You have to understand about the lobsters. STAND UP STRAIGHT WITH YOUR SHOULDERS BACK Because I fear that on some level, Jordan Peterson despises me. I’ve spent time with some of his followers and I appreciate what he’s done for them, and what, to some extent, he’s done for me. I cannot despise Jordan Peterson, as I thought I might. I did not know where I would end up at the start of this, but I can safely say I didn’t think it would be here. So I have, and it’s been eye-opening, infuriating, challenging, and sometimes deeply boring, because there is nothing interesting about protein-rich breakfasts and washing floors, even if they are good for you. I want to read the book, I told them, and try to live out the rules. The idea came to me one evening, while out with colleagues. I did not understand it, and I wanted to. And I am fascinated by the fact that some of his followers feel their lives were changed by a self-help book Peterson published based on a list of maxims he wrote on Quora one time. But I am interested in what he is saying. I confess I have only a passing interest in who or what Jordan Peterson is - conveniently enough, as he didn’t speak with me for this piece. Peterson is actually “ the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now,” or, as he’s been described in these pages, “ a warrior for common sense and plain speech.” He is the “ custodian of the patriarchy,” a “ disturbing symptom” of our intellectual and moral breakdown, “ dangerous.” But no, others insist. Many better minds than mine have offered up their thoughts on our latest cultural icon. With 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Peterson has become, as they say, incontournable. And then he wrote a book, which is still, more than 30 weeks after its publication, among Amazon’s top 20 best-selling books. Peterson’s rise to prominence on the wings of what seemed like a willful misinterpretation of a law, Bill C-16, which added gender identity and expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act, struck me as opportunistic at best.īut Peterson didn’t go away. ![]() I’ve always had trouble believing that freedom of speech was truly what Jordan Peterson was peddling. I first heard about Jordan Peterson in the same way you all did - he’s that professor who had the thing about the pronouns. Join the conversation Photo by Brice Hall Article content.Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt. ![]()
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