Another One-Dimensional Portrayal of Jordan Peterson

“It is hard for even those of us who disagree profoundly with Peterson’s diagnoses of society to fail to empathize with his common struggle to get through being human.”

Introduction

I accepted the suggestion to review Savage Messiah: How Doctor Jordan Peterson is Saving Western Civilization by Jim Proser with some hesitancy; my expectations were low given such a gleeful title and the very mixed online reviews. Sadly, these expectations were realized. Now, Proser’s book is not without some redeeming characteristics. The segments of the book that focus primarily on biography are interesting enough, and Proser brings an admirable intensity to his descriptions of Peterson’s spiritual and personal struggles. His characterizations are moving and engaging. Where the book falters—indeed stumbles into unbridled cheese—is when it deals with the political and philosophical issues at stake. The late Philip Roth wisely said that while a novel about a good son might be interesting, one written by a good son cannot be. This is because all interesting nuances and shades of gray fall by the wayside when the goal is to make an idol of the subject matter. Proser routinely falls into this trap. Indeed, Proser is often more dogmatic than Peterson himself on many issues, which is saying quite a lot. Rather than digging into deep questions raised by the subject matter, Proser is content to lean on platitudes, condemnation, fawning praise for those he agrees with, and a level of hyperbole that would make Kanye West proud. The result is a book that offers unstinting praise for its controversial subject without describing what makes his beliefs and philosophies both interesting and fallible.

If You Can’t Say Anything Nice…

Before I jump into that, I will further discuss some of the book’s redeeming qualities. To begin with, Proser writes in an accessible and involved way. Savage Messiah would have been far more intellectually interesting if he actually interrogated some of the issues brought up in the course of its 300 pages. But the boon of not doing so is the prose skips along with scarcely a blip or dangerous temptation to think critically. This accessibility is crucial to getting through some of the earlier sections of the book, which are genuinely moving. These sections describe Peterson coming of age as a middle-class kid in rural Alberta (for non-Canadians, this is isolated even by our standards). As depicted by Proser, Jordan Peterson comes across as an intense youth always searching for bigger answers than anyone around him can provide. The world to Peterson then—as now—appears in primary colors and is defined by sharp distinctions. His natural curiosity and investment in people complicates such a worldview, since as Kant might say, “out of the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight was ever made.” And it is to Peterson’s credit that he—often enough—sought to understand this complexity, rather than reduce it to ideological simplicity. But as Proser describes it, the coming of age process was not easy; the young Peterson struggled with alcohol, religious uncertainty, and overwhelming feelings of existential anxiety and depression. This continues to the present day, as he battles ongoing depression, as well as concerns about his family’s health and well-being. It is hard for even those of us who disagree profoundly with Peterson’s diagnoses of society to fail to empathize with his common struggle to get through being human. Anyone who reads Savage Messiah will at least come away feeling they know Peterson ze man a bit better, which I suspect is what many readers want. Proser also does a reasonably good job summarizing many of Peterson’s concrete positions on psychology, meaning, and the relationship between order and chaos. There is little in the way of academic analysis or deep engagement; everything operates at the level of laudatory exegesis. But readers just looking for an easy summary of the basics of Peterson’s worldview could do worse than Proser’s book.

One of the other pluses is that Savage Messiah is it is more willing than some to gesture towards the thinking of Peterson’s intellectual and political opponents. Ironically, Proser probably cites more post-modern and leftist figures than Peterson himself in his writing. However, as we shall see reading and treating carefully are two very different exercises. But in a world where the Intellectual Dark Web has a bad habit (discussed here) of relying on ambiguous terms such as “post-modern neo-Marxism” as catch-all neologisms lacking any specificity, Proser earns a few points for being original and actually referring to a few concrete sources. Unfortunately, however, these few redeeming qualities are not enough to redeem the books many sins, which I will now address.