Perhaps the only thing that is easy to understand in James Joyce’s experimental novel “Finnegan’s Wake” is that the final line ends abruptly in the middle of the sentence which is finished in the book’s opening line, thereby creating a loop, or as he puts it, a “vicus of recirculation.” So has it been with Jordan Peterson. As a major public intellectual, he has rhetorically journeyed far and wide, but ever since his rise to prominence it always comes back to just one thing: The good doctor will not be forced to use your pronouns.
Peterson is currently locked out of his Twitter account as a result of a tweet in which he said that pride has traditionally been a sin (rather than something to celebrate with flags and months), and that actor Ellen (now Elliot) Page had had her breasts removed by a “criminal physician.” Twitter says he can delete the tweet and escape this form of cyber purgatory, but in a fiery YouTube video this week he said, “I would rather die than do that. And hopefully it will not come to that, although who the hell knows in these increasingly strange days?”
So why is this the hill that Peterson says he will quite literally die on if need be? To understand that we have to understand the nature of his broader program, the message that he has brought to millions, especially young men frustrated with the modern world. Central to all of it, arguably more than anything else, is honesty. Take this section from his latest book, “Beyond Order” in which he discusses the Bible’s Genesis story:
“The tool – the word God uses to transform the depths of potential – is truthful speech. It appears necessarily aided, however, with the courage to confront unrealized possibility in all its awful potential, so that reality itself may be brought forth,” he writes.
This core position is why Peterson will not compromise on the trans issue or ever delete his offending tweet. Others, even those who believe gender hews to biological sex, or who are conservatives, will compromise and use preferred pronouns in public references. But for Peterson this cannot go far enough, because it involves knowingly making “untruthful statements.”
Likewise, regarding the Twitter ban, there are many (myself included) who have sprung themselves from Twitter jail by just deleting the Tweet, the logic here being that Twitter is so clearly and grossly acting in bad faith, choosing only to punish one side, that any admission of guilt to it is meaningless outside of bizarre legalese. But for Peterson to take this road of least resistance would undermine his entire oeuvre, if it is so that every philosophy requires an Archimedean point to rest upon, the truth is his.
A new Pew Research poll shows that since 2017 (just after Peterson’s star began to rise) the number of Americans who believe gender should be defined by sex at birth has grown from 54 percent to 60 percent. This is somewhat amazing given that every major institution in the West from colleges, to medical boards, to corporate brands has spent that entire time insisting on gender as a choice. But it’s complicated, because 8 in 10 of those polled also said that trans people face discrimination and a majority favor laws to stop that alleged bias.
This reflects a general desire by those polled to be nice. Peterson is not particularly concerned with being nice, at least not in this sense. He rejects that idea that placating delusions is actually nice at all. Peterson prefers the idea of love to that of niceness, and once again this brings us squarely back to the truth, without which love is scarcely possible.
And when it comes to arbitrary rules imposed by Twitter he is entirely correct in his question on YouTube, “What rules, you sons of bitches? Exactly? Precisely? Because such things matter when the accusations start flying.” Obviously there are no rules, murderous dictators all around the world have active Twitter accounts, but former President Donald Trump can’t have one. Gender critical activists who believe in biological sex, most of them women, are regluarly threatened and targeted on the platform with no repporecussions.
This commitment to radical truth often puts Peterson in the crosshairs, as recently happened when he criticized a plus sized swimsuit model appearing on a magazine cover, saying she was not “the ideal of athletic beauty.” The language matters here, he is invoking Plato’s concept of ideal forms, the unseeable, perfect example of an object that defines it. He is not saying that she is NOT beautiful, that is subjective, he is saying that our society does and should have ideal forms to aspire to.
The obvious question that was asked by many was why say anything at all, or put another way, “if you don’t have anything nice to say…” For Peterson the answer seems to be, because it’s true. And he sees this compromise to supposed kindness as just another delusion forced down the throats of people who those in institutional power wish to control. That is a very hard assertion to argue with.
So Jordan Peterson will not be deleting his tweets or apologizing for offending people anytime soon, or, well, ever, actually. The central plank of his program is that we must face and say the truth, that we must face and say reality and that will not change. This is something to be grateful for, even for those who take a more compromising approach. In our confusing modern techno fog in which the physical and metaphysical blend with apparent ease his torch of truth sits alight up his philosophical hilltop, a beacon for those who wish to live free. May it ever be so.