Simone's First Thoughts on Jordan Peterson's The 12 Rules for Life

We discuss the aspects of Jordan Peterson's thinking that resonate with us and where we differ. We cover his reliance on archetypes and narratives, his traditional views on gender, and his appeal to personal responsibility and paternalism. Though we disagree on some areas, we find value in engaging with his perspectives.

Simone: [00:00:00] I think that's kind of what it is with Jordan Peterson that okay, the tendency isn't exactly to be like this paternalistic disciplined ideal, this ordered ideal. But I think many readers would love a vision in which masculine equals order in which masculine is this like calm paternalistic ordered force that makes everything okay.

Simone: I mean, again, it like brings me back to the daddy. Masculinity

Malcolm: create a, a, almost a feminine lens through which masculinity can

Simone: be translated. I wouldn't say, no, I wouldn't say it's feminine. And I wouldn't, and he would find this. An affront because he really hates Infantilism, but I think it's an infantalized version of masculinity.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: So Malcolm, you gave me a little bit of a homework assignment this week, didn't you?

Malcolm: Well, so we were going to do a video on some of Jordan Peterson's ideas. And, and sort of where our ideas contrast with his and where our ideas align with his. And Simone was like, no, no, no, we have to, I have to at least read one of his books before we do that.

Malcolm: Cause that's the [00:01:00] way we read books. Simone reads them. She writes like a book report. She sends it to me and then I review it. And, and that's how we think on knowledge. And then we'll have a conversation every day about it. And recently she started reading her or our first Jordan Peterson book to actually, you know, go through cover to cover and what's it, what's it called?

Simone: Maps of meaning. No, just kidding. That's like a deep cut. 12 rules for life. His, his big, his first big for public consumption book. And so you're about a chapter into it or? I'm probably on chapter four or so.

Malcolm: You're on chapter four. Okay. So what we're going to talk about is your first Thoughts on reading it what, what, what resonates with you, what you think he's actually communicating.

Malcolm: Yeah. Or

Simone: really what seems to differentiate, what more specifically, what seems to differentiate us from Jordan Peterson in his philosophy, because there's a lot that I think we hold in common. And then there's a lot that we really don't and it's really interesting to me. Like I, I read a lot of what he says and I'm [00:02:00] like, yeah, no, absolutely.

Simone: And then he'll say something else and I'll be like, Oh my gosh, and nails on a chalkboard. What are you doing? And it's, it's unusual, I think, to come across an author, especially someone discussing psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, et cetera. Self help broadly that we sometimes really agree with and sometimes don't.

Simone: Usually it's we're 100% on board. We're like, yeah, you're one of us or. We, we, this is I can't even listen to this without having an aneurysm. Even though we will

Malcolm: listen anyway. So let's talk about, I mean, so the first thing that I think really when you were talking to me. You're like this because this is another area that we've been digging into recently.

Malcolm: It seems really influenced by Jungian psychology

Simone: Yeah, yeah I think really what he's done is he's he's dressed up Jungian psychology to make it much more palatable to a modern broadly millennial a little bit Gen Z audience by adding a ton of [00:03:00] evolutionary biology and neuroscience and like discussion of social science studies and things like that to this.

Simone: So he'll mention, for example, go ahead,

Malcolm: Malcolm. I was going to say, you were saying yesterday when you told me about this, but not to the core of his points. The core of his point is typically Jungian psychology, and then he'll add a bunch of anecdotes that might not be directly connected to it that are like about evolutionary psychology or something.

Simone: Not necessarily. I mean, I think it's, it's hard, it's hard for me to articulate really well, but my understanding of. a big thesis that Jordan Peterson holds is, and this is so close to what we, you specifically, have argued in the pragmatist guide to religion, but differently. So in the pragmatist guide to religion, you point out that humans have evolved in concert with culture and religion, that we, our biology.

Simone: is designed to work with culture and religion. And when you strip that away, things fall apart. But then you proceed in, in all of our books to make [00:04:00] very logical arguments and appeals to people about relationships, about sexuality, about life philosophy, about all sorts of things, right? Like it is all, and you know, the people who, who like our books also.

Simone: Like that we are robotic and sociopathic and like very autistic. And then the criticisms

Malcolm: that we get, the new word is hot, autistic, hot, hot, autistic, women, hot, autistic,

Simone: So then the criticisms that we commonly get are, Oh, you're missing the soul. What about love? Like there's, there's this much more like touchy feely thing.

Simone: And every time we get these criticisms, I, I think I literally lack the element or processing or software that is required to understand what they're talking about. Now, Jordan Peterson starts with the same argument. He essentially says that, you know, humans have evolved with stories and religion. This is our bread and butter.

Simone: This is how we function. It is the software on which our hardware is meant to work. But his [00:05:00] conclusion is very different. It is that, you know, science, the scientific method and rationality, these were only introduced Very recently, which I think is a sort of dubious claim because I mean, I think that there's a lot of logic and like very ancient Greek thought, but whatever.

Simone: We're going to throw that aside for a second. But my, my, my very strong impression and what I'm surprised no one's really discussing is he's basically saying no, no, no humans can't understand. logical reasoning. Humans must understand or fix themselves, fix their psychology, make decisions through interactions with religion, through interactions with narratives.

Simone: And so that's the way he does it. And this reminds me a lot of a podcast that Spencer Greenberg did with some kind of psychologist where Spencer, you can tell he's a very rational person like us. I think he's much more like on the autist end of the spectrum. And he, He keeps asking this person that he's interviewing well, is this evidence based?

Simone: Is this psychological [00:06:00] intervention evidence based? You know, what, what is it robustly proven to work? And the, the guy he was interviewing kept saying things like, you know, it doesn't really matter. If it works for someone that it works, like it could be like the stupidest, like Freudian, you know, nonsense.

Simone: It could be, you know, a witch doctor. It could be like anything that's not replicable scientifically, but if it works for a person, then it works and that's what you should do. And, and Spencer's just but it doesn't work. I don't know, like it's not p