Thinking Out Loud: Jordan Peterson and the Essence of Patriarchy

All right, so this should be an interesting one. I've been getting a lot of questions over the past couple years, and I haven't addressed this topic yet. But I've had a lot of questions about my opinion, my perspective on Jordan Peterson, why he's so popular, why people love him, why people hate him, you know, why people can't stand him. And interestingly enough, I believe that the reason for it is the same, and I think that it's very indicative of something that's happening within our culture, within our societies, at a much larger level. So I wanted to talk about this because it ties into fatherhood, it ties into patriarchy. And I hesitate to talk about and even use the P word because, I mean, I'm just tired of hearing it. Every single time I hear on a podcast or on a show, somebody even dropped that word. I'm like, oh, like, my body just cringes. And so I hesitated to talk about this, but I think it's actually an important topic. And I recently heard a very interesting conversation by a man named Stephen Jenkinson, who's going to be joining me on the podcast here in the next couple of weeks to talk about this and other things. But I wanted to talk about Jordan Peterson because he's a bit of a phenomenon in some ways. Here's this Canadian who actually grew up not too far from where I grew up in Northern Alberta, and he's, you know, a professor, and he's outspoken about, you know, certain topics and whatnot, but he seems to attract a very specific type of opinion about who he is. People really are sequestered and divided into, you know, love him, love his work, love his, love his ideas, love what he stands for, or I can't stand him. And I, you know, I vehemently disagree with him and his perspective. And so I wanted to dig into this because, again, I think that he represents and embodies something that has been really lacking within our society. And so just for a moment, I would invite you to put aside your perspective of Jordan Peterson's content and his opinions and, you know, whether you love and admire his work and you've read all of his books and you listen to his lectures and watch him on podcasts, or you can't stand him and you shudder at the idea of hearing him speak and his rhetoric, just put that content aside for a moment, and let's look at the archetype. Let's look at the embodiment of the symbol that Jordan Peterson represents and why it has created so much controversy within our Society. So let's dive into that. So, first and foremost, I, I believe fundamentally that Peterson represents the symbol and the archetype of the father. And when you look at the demographics of the people that are really drawn to him, that are drawn in, that, you know, either vehemently despise what he is, what he, what he's putting out, what he stands for, or the people that really revere and respect what he's saying and who he represents and what he represents. What you'll see is people.

Jockeying against or sort of pushing up against or accepting and embracing the substructures of what a father represents. And so this is where the patriarchy comes in again. Like I said, I was listening to this podcast with Stephen Jenkinson, who's going to be coming on the show in a few weeks. Incredible thinker, just an incredible man, very wise, elder, and I think it's going to be a wonderful conversation. But he was talking about the patriarchy, and he had a very interesting perspective on it. And hopefully I'll get him to elaborate. But I'll try and summarize here. He said, you know, the patriarchy, in its etymology, in its root, stands for patros, which means father in Greek, and archi, which means to uphold or to stand under and uphold. And so the origin of both patriarchy and matriarchy is the acknowledgment that.

Those individuals should be upheld, that the archetype and the framework and the values and the, the different aspects of what that individual embodies, what that symbol embodies, should be upheld. Now, we live in a society where that has been denigrated and that has been severely eroded through years of war, through years of lacking a sense of self respect, through years of denigrating the feminine and losing respect from, from many different angles, from being absent within the household. And so in, in many ways, patriarchy, which has sort of turned into this battlefront of ideologies of gender politics, of, you know, countless other things, of, of power, of, you know, monetary accomplishments, of, you know, just a, just a myriad of different aspects and avenues that have now been attached to it. Patriarchy has become the sort of the, the demon or the villain within modern, within modern culture. And here you have an individual in Mr. Jordan Peterson who represents, not necessarily actively and openly, although sometimes he does talk about, you know, patriarchy and the case for it. And, and again, this isn't me saying there's a case for or against patriarchy. I'm really not interested in having that conversation right now. All I'm saying is that who he represents and why he is so controversial is that he is the embodiment of something that our culture, that our society is fundamentally malnourished in, that our society has become so starved of fathers, so parched in the energy of fatherhood, of the essence of real patriarchy, I guess we could say, in the sense that its origins are supposed to be steeped in the role of the father playing a very active and important one. And I believe that Peterson creates all of this tension because for some of his followers, he truly is the embodiment of this order and this structure and this direction and this discipline and this sort of risk, love oriented compassion, rich form of direction. I've never heard Peterson really attack anyone. I've never heard him, you know, become belligerent or belittle other people. I think the reason why he's very controversial is that he is in many ways a grounded embodiment of what he speaks about, which is order and structure and direction and love and compassion and discipline. So he represents those things. And when people listen to him, they are often listening through the lens of their own relationship to the father archetype, their own relationship to what they wanted their father to be, who they wanted their father to show up as, who they wish their father was, who they hated, the parts of their father, you know, that the sort of rebellious rebellion against the order and structure and the discipline that maybe our fathers presented for us in our life, sometimes in very unhealthy ways, sometimes in very disconnective ways. And so I think, you know, Peterson represents and embodies this archetype of the father that so many people have been in our, in our culture, very malnourished in. When you look at the statistics and the research and the. That's coming out and that has come out in the past few decades around the impact of fatherless homes, it is absolutely fundamentally devastating. You have something like 82% of school dropouts come from fatherless homes. 90% of aggressive rapists come from fatherless homes. You have runaway kids that are runaways come from fatherless homes. Something again, like, you know, in the 80 percentile. And so you see a lot of the systemic issues that we're facing that yet that the younger generation is facing. And again, when you look at the audience and the listenership and the readership of his, of his audience, it is a lot of young men, you know, this. Surely there's a lot of older men and there's women, you know, of all ages. But I think that demographically you have this really huge, huge demographic that are young men that are craving and hungry for a very clear, pragmatic, logical sense of, here's how you create direction, right? Make your bed every single morning, right? And for some people, that's sort of like this trite, obscene.

Kind of direction that Jordan Peterson tries to provide, that they rebuke and reject. Because it is really the type of direction that you would hear from like, you know, a dad that would just say, like, well, you know, if you want to be successful in life, make your bed, start there, start small, start with something that is meaningful, that you can accomplish and build on that. And so his advice and his direction to the people that are listening to him is very pragmatic. And I think for a lot of people, that is either not welcomed, they don't think it's warranted, they don't have an issue with needing that pragmatism. And so there's a rejection of it naturally. I think for other people it's seen as a threat. And again, this is indicative of the role that the father is supposed to play. Fathers are not meant to be sort of always revered and always liked because they play this very important role. And again, this is research backed. We know that fathers play a very important role in helping a child individuate and helping a child take risk and sort of move outside of the family system. And that fathers sort of encourage healthy, hopefully healthy risk taking and that children that don't grow up with that can sometimes be stymied and stifled in their capacity to take normal, healthy risks. Or if they grew up around a father who was abusive, as I've seen with many, many, many, many, many men, they can really struggle to take healthy risks because of the wound and the damage that the father has done in their life. So all of this is to say that it's a larger, it's less, it's the reason for me, why Jordan Peterson is so, so much of an important figure within our modern culture and is not necessarily because of what he has to say. It's because of the symbolism and the archetypal understanding that he offers insight to within our culture and our society. And I think for me, when I see the kind of paradoxical approach to either, you know, sort of viciously hating him or, or, or, you know, really agreeing with him and pedestaling him and loving him and thinking that he's the be all end all and that, you know, whatever he has to is really absolute. Truth is indicative of this absence that many people have felt around the father figure within our culture, within our society. This isn't to really say that there's a solution embedded into this. This is just my perspective and opinion. And it's a reminder that sometimes we need to sort of back out of being so close to a situation and arguing our agreeance or disagreeance about an issue or perspective that someone may have, and about taking a step back and looking at who that person represents culturally, societally, who that person represents maybe to the other person that we're speaking to. And we can see that this is maybe a very important aspect to what a lot of people missed out on in the last four years in the Trump era. That, you know, Trump is in some ways a another figure, a very different one that I'm not going to comment on right now, but another figure that in many ways he represented this kind of father oriented figure for many people. I think that they are radically different. And I hesitate to even bring Trump into the equation. But I think that in many ways, when you speak to people, there's that kind of disdain and disgust against him, while the simultaneously love and admiration and followership that he seemed to gain. And so, you know, we're living through a time where the archetype of the father has eroded so significantly to the point that we have these sort of characters becoming larger than life symbols of fathers. And you can see it in the way that people speak about people like Jordan Peterson, the way that they protect them vehemently. I mean, just they will fight to prove that his point is true. They'll, you know, spend countless hours researching and, you know, really trying to say, like, what he's saying is true or that his direction and his guidance has, you know, radically supported their life and supported their growth. And that it, you know, it has really given them the, the missing piece that maybe they didn't have growing up with a father who was distant or growing up with a father who was absent, or growing up with a father who was very subservient and while he was there, didn't really offer anything much, you know, outside of throwing a baseball once in a while and watching Law and Order on Wednesday nights at 9 o'. Clock. And so, you know, some men are, and women are very much starving for that quality of that archetype of paternal direction and structure and order. And it's to say that for some of us, for some people, it actually plays a very important role. And it's also a reminder that the role of the father within our modern culture is very much an Important one. And as I step into fatherhood, you know, not having been one before in the past, this is certainly a question that has been on my mind quite a bit. And to see the way in which modern fathers are treated in tv.

They'Re always sort of the sort of bumbling idiot that's absent, but in many ways they have their own adventure, they have their own ethos, they have their own direction that sort of pulls them away from the family. There's a little bit of a mystery there. And when we look at the mythological representations of fathers, when we look at the fairy tales of fathers, they are almost always fathers that evoke a quality of venturing out into the world, a quality of pulling the tether and stretching the tether from the family and the individual. And.

There is this call into.

Adventure that requires discipline, that requires structure, that requires order, that requires us to face the unknown, that requires us to embark on a kind of journey that we don't know where it's going to lead us. It could certainly lead to death. But in that process we will encounter a quality of life that will help us determine how we should live. That, you know, this is what many of the great fathers and the archetypes of fathers have represented, from Odysseus and the Iliad, you know, even in some ways to the, to the modern imbeciles of the Homer Simpsons, is that there is a quality of freedom that is to be found in venturing into the unknown in whatever capacity that looks like now we should be conscious in that venturing in some way. I think that, you know, there's some father figures in modern mainstream culture, pop culture, that maybe aren't the best role models or examples of that. But we can surely look at people like Jordan Peterson, who has taken a stand. I mean, this man has risked his reputation, he has risked his family, he has risked, you know, the well being of himself. And he's not without flaws. I mean, this is an individual who speaks very pragmatically and logically and I think is revered for that in many ways by many people. But on the other side, has many flaws, you know, has struggled and battled with severe anxiety and, you know, specific drugs to support him with that. And, you know, in interviews can be talking about very logical, pragmatic things in a very analytical way and really get emotional about it because he views the world through a lens that has at its core, even though it is about order, I mean, his book is about order. I mean, it couldn't be more blatant. Even though it's about order. It is about order for the sake of well being and order for the sake of safety and health and joy and structure from an identity perspective that is meant to bring understanding and value and meaning into our lives. And again, not it's not to say that his frameworks are correct. It's not to say that one should follow his frameworks in an absolute fashion, because maybe they don't work for you. But it's most mostly to say that we as a society must take a harder look at the role of the father, at the role of patros within our society, within our communities, and ask ourselves the question of how are we as individuals, as a community, as a society, upholding the role and the sacredness of this figure, of this archetype that is so important. And as Stephen Jenkinson said, it's not that we need less patriarchy, it's that we need more of it in some ways, but we need more of it in a, in a, in a qualitative fashion. We need more of it in a returning to a kind of root or essence of what it means to be in the seat of patriarchy. That there is a deep kind of reverence and a deep responsibility that many of, of the men in our society haven't embarked on, haven't undertook. That there's a fear, a really deep terror internally and unconsciously. Often that is, that coincides with the role of being a father. And being a father here is not just about being a father to a child. It's being a father to a business. It's being a father to a community. It's being, you know, an elder within your friend circle. You know, it's, it's being a father to your friend's children or your siblings children. It's, it's, it's not limited to or specific to you as a man being a father simply to your children, but rather that you bring order and love and structure and direction into as many fields and areas and communities as you possibly can and that there is a inherent meaning in that endeavor. So I would love to hear what you say, what your thoughts are on this on the YouTube video. Please comment below. Hit me up Man Talks on Instagram I would love to hear your thoughts on this or any other questions that you would like for me to embark on. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.