Dear Jordan Peterson Fans, Try to Actually Be More Like Him

“Peterson is neither sacrosanct nor untouchable. He would agree with that statement himself.”

“Whenever there is a reaching down into innermost experience, into the nucleus of personality, most people are overcome by fear and many run away…The risk of inner experience, the adventure of the spirit, is in any case alien to most human beings. The possibility that such experience might have psychic reality is anathema to them.”  –  Memories, Dreams, Reflections by  Carl Jung and Aniela Jaffé

On January 7th, an assistant professor — and “anti-fascist” — from the University of Calgary by the name of Ted McCoy tweeted his thoughts on the well-known Canadian psychologist, Jordan B. Peterson, in the form of a (McCoy’s words) “joke.” McCoy stated in his since-deleted tweet that “I heard it rumoured students will fail my class if they cite Jordan Peterson and I’d like to clarify that this is absolutely correct.” After much feedback, McCoy revised his view on Peterson by tweeting that he acknowledges his students’ right to hold a dissimilar political viewpoint than his own. Whether this is truly McCoy’s actual belief, however, remains unclear.

A portion of Peterson’s fans — certainly not all of them — make use of a method of argumentation by attacking disagreements with empty “Petersonisms,” which I define as thoughts, arguments, or ideas that Jordan Peterson has once articulated.

My issue is less with McCoy and people like him, who frequently criticize Peterson with little depth to their criticisms. (This is not to say, of course, that these people and their “freedom-injuring” attitude belong in academia.) However, any personal animosity that I have had towards Peterson’s critics is being increasingly redirected: towards Peterson’s followers and those of public intellectuals similar to Peterson. A portion of Peterson’s fans — certainly not all of them — make use of a method of argumentation by attacking disagreements with empty “Petersonisms,” which I define as thoughts, arguments, or ideas that Jordan Peterson has once articulated. Empty is the way that many deliver these sayings; they often amount to little more than grateful gestures towards Peterson, without fundamentally agreeing with the underlying ideas.