Peterson Contra Mundum

A whole lotta people are now talking about someone who was once just a rather obscure psychology professor from Canada. But recently his profile has gone ballistic. Welcome to the rise and rise of Jordan Peterson. He is now taking on the world – or much of it, especially the loony left.

If his famous stance against the gender benders and the radical feminists a few years back did not put him on the map, his stellar performance in the UK last week with a leftist, feminist TV interviewer has taken his profile right off the charts.

When that 30-minute interview – if it can be called that – first appeared, I posted it on a social media site. So did many others. Indeed, it has now been seen millions of times. In it the good professor took to the cleaners the television current affairs personality Cathy Newman.

The reason for this is simple. A calm, rational, intelligent, logical, polite and composed Peterson absolutely wiped the floor with an emotive, cantankerous, belligerent and ornery feminist and leftist from Channel 4. It was one of the most lopsided intellectual sparring contests you will likely ever see.

She was absolutely out of her depth and Peterson took her through the wringer. He wiped the floor with her. He made it clear to the whole world how the leftists and feminists “argue”. He demonstrated the complete paucity of the lunar left, and its inability to think straight, make a rational argument, or deal with the evidence.

It has already been seen on YouTube nearly 3 ½ million times! If you have not yet seen this demolition job, you must do so now. It is found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54

Let me offer just two brief segments from the interview here to whet your appetite:

-At the 5:50 mark:
Cathy Newman: … that 9 percent pay gap, that’s a gap between median hourly earnings between men and women. That exists.
Jordan B Peterson: Yes. But there’s multiple reasons for that. One of them is gender, but that’s not the only reason. If you’re a social scientist worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis. You say women in aggregate are paid less than men. Okay. Well then we break it down by age; we break it down by occupation; we break it down by interest; we break it down by personality.
CN: But you’re saying, basically, it doesn’t matter if women aren’t getting to the top, because that’s what is skewing that gender pay gap, isn’t it? You’re saying that’s just a fact of life, women aren’t necessarily going to get to the top.
JBP: No, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, either. I’m saying there are multiple reasons for it.
CN: Yeah, but why should women put up with those reasons?
JBP: I’m not saying that they should put up with it! I’m saying that the claim that the wage gap between men and women is only due to sex is wrong. And it is wrong. There’s no doubt about that. The multivariate analysis have been done. So let me give you an example…

-At the 11:27 mark:
Cathy Newman: A simple question, is gender equality a myth, in your view? Is that something that’s just never going to happen?
Jordan B Peterson: It depends on what you mean by equality
CN: Being treated fairly, getting the same opportunities
JBP: Fairly, we could get to a point where people are treated fairly, or more fairly. I mean, people are treated pretty fairly in Western culture already but we can improve that
CN: But they’re really not though are they, otherwise why would there only be seven women running FTSE 100 companies in the UK? Why would there still be a paygap which we’ve discussed at length?
JBP: Oh, that’s easy
CN: Why do we have women at the BBC who are getting illegally paid, less than men? That’s not fair is it?
JBP: Well, let’s go back to the first question, they’re both complicated questions, how many women run FTSE companies?
CN: Seven women
JBP: The first question might be, why would you want to do that?
CN: Why would a man want to do that? Because there is a lot of money?
JBP: There’s a certain number of men, although not that many, who are perfectly willing to sacrifice virtually all of their life to the pursuit of a high end career. These are men that are very intelligent, they’re usually very very conscientious, they’re very driven, they’re very high energy, they’re very healthy, and they’re willing to work 70 or 80 hours a week non-stop, specialised, one-thing, to get to the top
CN: So you’re saying that women are just more sensible, they don’t want that because they want a nice life?
JBP: I’m saying that’s part of it, definitely
CN: So you don’t think there are barriers in their way to getting to the top?
JBP: Oh there are some barriers, like men, for example, I mean to get to the top of any organisation is an incredibly competitive enterprise and the men that you’re competing with are simply not going to roll over and say “please take the position,” it’s absolute all-out warfare
CN: Let me come back to my question: is gender equality a myth?
JBP: I don’t know what you mean by the question, men and women aren’t the same and they won’t be the same, that doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly
CN: Is gender equality desirable?
JBP: If it means equality of outcome then it is almost certainly undesirable. That’s already been demonstrated in Scandinavia. Men and women won’t sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them to do it of their own accord. It’s 20 to 1 female nurses to male, something like that. And approximately the same male engineers to female engineers. That’s a consequence of the free choice of men and women in the societies that have gone farther than any other societies to make gender equality the purpose of the law. Those are ineradicable differences––you can eradicate them with tremendous social pressure, and tyranny, but if you leave men and women to make their own choices you will not get equal outcomes.
CN: So you’re saying that anyone who believes in equality, whether you call them feminists or whatever you want to call them, should basically give up because it ain’t going to happen.
JBP: Only if they’re aiming at equality of outcome.
CN: So you’re saying give people equality of opportunity, that’s fine.
JBP: It’s not only fine, it’s eminently desirable for everyone, for individuals as well as societies.
CN: But still women aren’t going to make it. That’s what you’re really saying….

On and on it goes. Hostile questions are dealt with by intelligent and helpful answers, only to be followed up by Newman totally twisting and distorting what he had just said! She kept putting words in his mouth and misrepresenting what he said, and he had to keep correcting her.

The real knockout blow is at the 22:08 mark – it was as brief as it was severe. It is found when Newman actually asks why his right to freedom of speech should trump the rights of trans folks not to be offended. Please watch this 60-second clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lPhy9jPiQI

Of course she was left speechless. Her inability to actually think things through was highlighted in the extreme by Peterson’s razor-sharp mind and logic. This guy is now a hero to many. I have written about him before. See here for example:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2017/12/01/time-rahab-awards/

As I made clear there, he is not a biblical Christian, and one may well not buy into his evolutionary views (which do come out in the 30-minute interview). But of course one can agree with the other 98 per cent of what he said there. I am glad he is on my side when he masterfully takes on the feminist baloney, the trans baloney, etc. If we only listen to those we agree with 100 per cent of the time, we will listen to no one!

So as a terrific example of how to destroy the lunacy of the left, he was utterly top notch. And now everyone is talking about the guy. Articles are appearing all over the place about this encounter especially. Let me quote from just a few of them. From the Spectator comes these words:

To say that the interview was a disaster for Newman is to understate the case. A Tyrannosaurus Rex savaging a poodle would be a better description. The significance of the interview is that a ventriloquist of the feminist establishment was entirely vanquished by the simple facts and logical coherence that Peterson used to present his case. At one stage, Newman lost the power of speech, such was the persuasive force of Peterson’s arguments. It was a tour de force of logical persuasion.
Every feminist argument that Newman used to denigrate, belittle or distort Peterson’s views – the usual grab bag of fallacious nonsense – backfired spectacularly. We saw the intellectual emptiness at the heart of third-wave feminism. It wasn’t just that oxygen was taken from feminism’s claim to intellectual credibility. It was that the shrieking, ranting monster that feminism has become was shown to be nothing but a deflated bag of wind.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/01/jordan-peterson-proves-truth-will-out/

Melanie Phillips said this about the man:

Peterson has now become a cult figure among young men. Partly, this is because he champions them against oppressive militant feminism. He entrances them by demonstrating how intelligence and reason can overturn the dominance of emotion and feelings which are holding public discourse hostage.
His appeal, though, is surely rather deeper still. He has become a kind of secular prophet who, in an era of lobotomised conformism, thinks out of the box. His restless and creative intelligence uses the story of Pinocchio or fables about dragons to deliver his core message to the young: that they’re not who they could be, what’s holding them back and how they could be so much better than they are.
In particular, he analyses the fear that drives so many and advises how to rise above it. Fear, however, is not just the weapon used by the bullies of the culture war against their victims; it haunts the bullies too. What terrifies them so much? The evidence that their beliefs are worthless. That’s why they try to silence Peterson, as so many others. Which makes his message as ironic as it is overwhelmingly vital.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/defenders-of-free-speech-have-a-new-prophet-7kk9mnvnl

And Christian Today did a piece on him and the debate. While acknowledging that he is not a Christian, the author makes it clear that he seems to be rather close to Christianity:

Peterson is a superb communicator who speaks about sin, hope, and the Bible and espouses what many would regard as common sense Christian values. The left-behinds and the frustrated seem particularly drawn to his message of hope and healing. Some secularists think he is a Christian preacher who is seeking to smuggle in Christianity through the back door. But when asked in an interview in The National Post, ‘Are you a Christian? Do you believe in God?’ he responded, ‘I think the proper response to that is No, but I’m afraid he might exist.’ He is not a Christian but that does not mean that the Lord cannot use him to speak his truth into our culture.
Jordan Peterson is a sincere, intelligent, compassionate, human being who in his search for the truth sometimes gets closer than many professing Christians. Anyone who can write: ‘I knew that the cross was simultaneously, the point of greatest suffering, the point of death and transformation, and the symbolic centre of the world’ is not far from the Kingdom. But he is not the Messiah. He is not even a follower of the Messiah. He just needs the Messiah.
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/is-jordan-peterson-the-new-messiah/124312.htm

Yes quite so. As with some other terrific conservative thinkers who are not yet Christians, we need to pray for Peterson that he does indeed encounter the Messiah. And imagine how much more powerful he would be in dismantling falsehoods and foolishness if he did.

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