Good ideas from questionable sources?

[Starting this post with a disclaimer: I was not familiar with Peterson’s work until recently, apart from a general idea he was cancelled by a large part of British society for debating Cathy Newman about feminism.]

Jordan Peterson has been famous for about ten years. He recently went viral for having what looks like the worst debate session ever. He consistently made poor arguments and was aggressive, and many articles and videos explained how terrible it was.

I realised that I’d never tried reading any of his work. I am aware that he is generally unpopular, but I figured I would try out some of his content for myself. Conveniently, a friend has one of his books on his bedside table: Beyond Order, 2021.

Beyond Order, 2021 - Summary

Frankly, I was shocked. In short: it’s a great book, packed with thoughtful ideas. In long: …

The book is in 12 chapters, each titled a bit like a Bentham’s Bulldog post. “Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens”, or “If old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely”. I like this, basically stating your argument as the chapter title. Then spending 20 pages expanding.

When reading non-fiction, I like to look over chapter titles, and pick the one that seems newest or most surprising to me. Why read something that I’m just going to agree with? So I start in the place where I’m most confused or unsure.

1. Cultivate Beauty

I started with the chapter “Try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible”. 

To me it sounded like dumb advice, or useless. I don’t see the need. There’s so much other stuff I could spend time on. Art is fine and cool, but I’m a technology person, and it wouldn’t bother me to never visit an art gallery again.

I’ve never been the aesthetic type. My granddad’s house was full of paintings, and people praised his taste in art. I never knew how he got there, how he chose his works. I didn’t get the value of it either.

This chapter has been a breakthrough for me.

The general concepts of the chapter are:

• Beauty is one of the most essential values in life. Others include love, honesty, gratitude, courage, collaboration, friendliness, devotion, play).

• Recreate beauty in your home. Paintings, sculptures, pretty colours and sensible layout. Fix the lighting. Peterson told a story about turning his ugly factory-looking office cube into a wood-panelled wonder, and it sounded really nice, actually.

• Beautiful room is important to help you touch grass, stay grounded and focused on what matters. If you can keep a sense of beauty you will be a more rounded human.

• Art recreates childlike wonder at the world. Kids are so inspired by the simplest things, but adults become cold and hard to this.

• art needs to be about going beyond, about testing the limit of our understanding, about seeing the world with new eyes. Art that doesn’t seek the unknown is fake.

• Art is sacred. Art is holy objects we put in expensive buildings, and it is global news if a famous piece is damaged or lost. Many people have an intuitive sense for how important art is.So reading this I was amazed at Jordan Peterson.

So will I adopt this rule? Yes, certainly. I have completely neglected art this in the past.

I have long known some movies, songs and books that I love. I recently started looking into poems and felt better for it. I read the ~1200-year-old-poem Beowulf and felt amazing for that also.

But I have completely ignored art, interior design. After reading this, I plan to spend more time finding what I like and adopting it.

2. Abandon Ideology

Another chapter also struck me: “Abandon Ideology”.

The idea is: some public thinkers want to explain all of the history of the world with a single force. For Freud it was sex, for Marx it is wealth. For some people it’s even colonial power that explains all of history.

This is clearly false: jealousy, greed, misogyny, chance, cruelty, companionship, ignorance, honour, don’t even start to explain all of the factors at play in world history.

Furthermore, by having a single explanation for history, you can end up with a single group responsible.

However, it’s completely risky to have a “them” who are responsible for all badness in the world. It’s small-minded and generalistic. I went to the Cambodian genocide museum last month, and it’s patently obvious that by hating anyone who appeared wealthy or educated, the perpetrators convinced themselves to carry out torture and murder of insane proportions.

It’s important to remember: billionaires, police, companies, soldiers, activists, politicians - in every group you will find good and bad actors. Do not generalise.

The virtuous thing to do instead is recognise that there is no perfect villain, no perfect victim.

We are all a mix of good and bad. I might be a great social justice activist, but I can be small minded and hateful. Or I might be a great community member but I can’t control my jealousy.

Benefits of this idea:

• seek complexity

• no perfect villains

Weaknesses:

• doesn’t work for the masses. Even with education, I think it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to get good at seeing this nuance.

Close

Regardless of any culture war stuff that Jordan Peterson is famous for, I find this completely sensible and beautiful advice from him which made me change my ideas.

I know I’ll raise some eyebrows saying this, but I think it’s fair enough to praise him here. Even if you don’t like him, you can still separate the art from the artist.

PS: Some of my favourite culture is:

Favourite book: 100 Years of Solitude

Favourite film: Maidens of Rochefort (look at the colours + choreography!)

Favourite song: You’ve got a Friend.

Favourite poem: Composed upon Westminster bridge