TJ Kirk VS Jordan Peterson: Round 2

“Okay. I read it. Peterson's book leaves no room for error in his simplistic conception of order and chaos. An occasional bit of subtlety on the issue from him doesn't erase his over all assessment.” - TJ Kirk, in response to my original post: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@sonofsparta/a-rebuttal-of-a-rebuttal-tj-kirk-vs-jordan-peterson

My first inclination after reading this response was that TJ had not addressed most of the points I had made, but to be honest I’m glad to even have a dialogue with him to begin with, so I’ll consider myself lucky he bothered responding. There’s nothing I hate more than an interesting discussion that never happens.

So my second thought was to dive deeper into “12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos.” I reread the Foreward and the Overture, which both briefly address this idea of chaos and order Jordan has. It is true that Jordan does make the generalizing statement that order is generally good and chaos is generally bad, but he does not advocate order above everything. In fact, to quote the man directly,

“We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown, and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path. Each of the twelve rules of this book and their accompanying essays, therefore provide a guide for being there. “There” is the dividing line between order and chaos. That’s where we are simultaneously stable enough, exploring enough, transforming enough, repairing enough and cooperating enough. It’s there we find the meaning that justifies life and its inevitable suffering.” - Jordan Peterson, “12 Rules For Life”, page 34, Overture.

Peterson, therefore, admits that we need chaos in order to reorient our order to better suit our slowly evolving sensibilities. In fact, without chaos, we would not be able to find the meaning that justifies life and it’s inevitable suffering.

Which brings me back to the crux of TJ’s entire argument of the first chapter of “The Order of Chaos: An Antidote to Meaning”,

“Order equals goodness and stability, chaos equals badness and uncertainty. He makes occasional exceptions to this otherwise rigid dichotomy, but the prevailing narrative is one of simplistic caveman logic: Order good. Chaos bad.” - TJ Kirk, “The Order of Chaos: An Antidote to Meaning”

I don’t have the faintest clue as to how TJ actually believes this is what Jordan Peterson thinks. Jordan is fucking obsessed with totalitarian regimes, and explains that once they’re implemented the only way to un-implement them is for chaos to emerge and destroy the tyrannical order. Once we’re in the realm of chaos instead of (tyrannical) order, only then can we move forward back to (true, un-authoritarian) order. Jordan acknowledges that chaos is frequently an agent of good, as TJ lays out in his first chapter quite convincingly.

Peterson did generalize a little bit about chaos in the same Overture, saying of chaos, “is where, or when, something unexpected happens.” But he also says in the same paragraph, “It’s Creation and Destruction, the source of new things and the destination of the dead.” But Peterson simultaneously makes the point that order can become too much, in the same way chaos can become too much, and the only truth we can find between these two concepts is the road in the middle.

I don’t think saying Peterson believes that chaos is bad is an accurate view of his actual position. I think it’s an oversimplification meant to enable TJ to dedicate time talking about something he’s interested in, the benefits of chaos, while ridiculing someone who is hard to ridicule otherwise.

But that would mean the entirety of TJ’s first chapter is TJ arguing with a scarecrow in the shape of Peterson; a strawman. It means all that really cool and passionate shit TJ monologued over like it was his Hollywood debut is moot and meaningless to the actual disagreement the two have. Remember that concept I brought up earlier, about burning away parts of you that aren’t valuable? But it’s not burning away the worst of yourself that people are worried about, they’re worried about how much of themselves deserves to be burned away, and what will be left? Where will all of that order they once had go, and how will they deal with all of the new chaos in its place? It’s kind of ironic, coming from the dude preaching the benefits of chaos.

If TJ would accept the fact that Peterson does not hold this infantile view of chaos, we could both move on to more substantive disagreements.

Like the elephant in the room; Jordan Peterson is a Christian who believes in god, and also frequently uses evolution as his lense for viewing human behavior and the truths and dichotomies about it. He does this to great logical effect, and I know this because I’ve tried my damndest to deconstruct Peterson’s arguments, especially when they come from the Bible. But Jordan does not fall into the normal pitfalls of fundamentalist Christians who deny science, reality and facts. He frequently focuses on the Bible from a mythological perspective, looking at it not necessarily as true, literal fact from god but rather a subtle metaphor for the truth we already encounter in our own lives, and the ideas therefore help us navigate chaos and tyrannical order, which inevitably leads to chaos. The stories the Bible tells only really get interesting when you start to break them apart at their basest levels and when you try to find out the meaning behind their message. It’s how we would look at the Norse or Greek religious stories today, but since we don’t view it as a legitimate religion anymore, we use the term mythology.

Jordan Peterson has also described what someone feels when they see a piece of art that they enjoy, but they can’t quite understand everything about the piece, even if they contemplate it for the rest of their lives. That’s how Peterson views the concept of God, as far as I can tell, where beauty and the unknown meet, and it’s inadvertently tied into his view of the world and how we as humans must navigate this realm of order and chaos without creating a system that kills hundreds of millions of people in the name of utopia. I think only with a combination of listening to Jordan Peterson’s videos he frequently posts on youtube, and reading this book, can you truly start to get a grasp on what type of person Jordan really is, what he cares about, what he’s trying to say, where he’s actually coming from.

If you start a conversation with someone who’s thought as long and as hard as Peterson has about these subjects, you have to understand the literature he’s referring to when he makes his points, even if you don’t have the time to read the laundry list of books he likes to quote or summarize. And you have to understand the subtleties of language he uses; as I tried to explain in my first post to TJ, you can’t take the man literal with absolutely everything he says. Sometimes the concepts he’s trying to convey are so burdensome to verbally dump onto someone that he has to simplify it a bit to get his point across in an understandable manner. And if you are an open, agreeable person, you are more likely to deeply contemplate what he means instead of responding to his claims as though they’re obviously simplistic and ludicrous. If you talk to someone like they might actually know something you don’t, if you humble yourself just a little bit, it can completely change how you frame where he’s coming from. And that’s a huge distinction if you actually want to get to the truth of the matter, which I honestly do.

Like I said in a youtube comment on TJ’s foreward to his own book,

“To be honest I've watched 100 times more content from TJ than I have Jordan. This entire fascination TJ has with arguing Jordan Peterson's points seems entirely based on the fact that TJ feels like he should be opposed to everything Jordan Peterson is, but TJ has yet to actually demonstrate a point or argument where I agree with him over Jordan. Normally TJ is a lot more fact based and strikes quickly to the heart of an issue.

He is tap-dancing around Jordan, and it's pretty obvious why; he has no idea what he's doing.” Son of Sparta, my youtube handle

Which, you know what, brings me back to an even more important point; TJ actually thinks that Jordan Peterson is positioning himself as an authoritarian because he released a book telling people how to better their own lives. As one youtube comment put it,

“The fact that you portray Peterson as “Authoritarian” already shows me that this is not gonna be a series worth following.” - Samuel Appiah

One of the valid criticisms of Peterson is that he probably focuses too much on totalitarian regimes, he’s too doom and gloomy about what happened in the 20th century, he’s been obsessed with it his entire life, self-admittedly. He has Soviet Union paintings in every room of his house. This dude could not be more obsessed and in opposition to tyranny, and TJ’s shining intellectual moment, the opening to his argument against ‘low-hanging fruit’ as he describes Peterson’s arguments, is the farthest from the truth you could possibly get about the man, regardless if you agree with him or not.

“One truth that is beyond dispute and beyond serious argument: chaos cannot and should not be cured. An antidote to chaos is an antidote to the new, an antidote to change, an antidote to progress. In other words, it is no antidote at all, but a poison that paralyzes humanity.” - TJ Kirk, “The Order of Chaos: An Antidote to Meaning”

I’m going to reiterate what I said earlier; TJ is arguing with the subtitle of Jordan’s book, not the book itself. Before I end this post, as this may very well be the last one I make if TJ doesn’t respond to my points in an intellectually honest manner, I’d like to directly address what TJ wrote to me privately on Twitter.

“Okay. I read it. Peterson's book leaves no room for error in his simplistic conception of order and chaos. An occasional bit of subtlety on the issue from him doesn't erase his over all assessment.” - TJ Kirk

If you actually read every word the man said in the most open, honest and objective way you possibly can, and you still feel that your statement here is correct, I don’t think I can ever get through to you. It’s obvious that Peterson has no simplistic view of order and chaos. It’s complex, wrapped up in philosophical conversations that have been happening for thousands of years, with dozens of intellectuals. He views chaos as necessary to our very lives and any objective meaning we can get out of the experience, to justify the suffering that is inherent to existence. He does not think chaos is bad. He has not simplified anything, you’ve taken the beginning of the conversation he’s started in the first 20 pages of his book as the entirety of his knowledge on a subject matter, even if he then expanded on it 13 pages later, in the same Overture.

You are not looking at this objectively. You’re not even arguing with what he actually thinks. It’s frustrating, because I yearn for actual criticism of the man. I have no reason to defend Peterson to you, I think more like you, TJ, than I think like Peterson. You made me an atheist, you’ve been apart of my life for seven years, and not once have I ever thought you weren’t being objective about something. At this point, I’d rather read your scathing rebuttal to what I’m writing right now, rather than write it to begin with.