Some Words Against Jordan Peterson’s Conservative Manifesto

[Oeaohoo]

 

This video is interesting in that it reveals the sheer mediocrity of Jordan Peterson’s political perspective. It is another case of an internet intellectual who thinks they are innovating when they are really just reinventing the wheel: his “conservative manifesto” is literally just another rehashing of Boomer conservatism and libertarianism, with a sprinkling of the “Judeo-Christian West” to please Shapiro.

What is particularly surprising is that Peterson almost entirely jettisons the very traditions that he elsewhere claims to admire. He repeatedly talks in this manifesto about the values embodied in the “Eternal Western Canon” and yet proceeds to espouse a form of “conservatism” which would be largely alien to anyone prior to the Classical Liberal thinkers of the post-Renaissance secular age. The very concept of penning a manifesto reeks of enlightenment rationalism, which was itself a deliberate inversion of traditional Western values. Conservatism is about conserving the essential principles that have been forged in the fire of long experience, not sitting in your armchair and penning a vain and self-serving manifesto. He also fails to address the undeniable fact that “the West” which he celebrates was discriminative and exclusionary for most of its existence, in contradiction to the universalist nature of his own ideas.

The greatest flaw in this manifesto is that he defines what it means to be a conservative entirely in opposition to the advances of the progressive left. Perhaps this is the problem with even adopting the terms “conservative” or “reactionary” to describe oneself. This is a bad idea even from a merely tactical perspective because it means you have handed your autonomy over to the enemy. It is also particularly inappropriate, given that he starts by saying that he is speaking here at the “metaphysical” level: by definition, a metaphysical statement must transcend the petty squabbles of the present day. And, rather than just explicitly framing himself against the left, his criticisms are all veiled in a dense and cryptic form of allegory - making it even less likely that any of the people he is criticising will even understand what he is saying! Who is this manifesto intended for? Even when his criticisms are valid - for example, regarding the infantilising and smothering nature of progressive societies - his delivery is so jilted and grumpy that the whole thing falls flat.

What is even more peculiar is that his “conservative” manifesto is barely even conservative: his solution to every problem is just “sovereign individuals freely associating in the free marketplace of friendship”! Is that what Aquinas, Plato, Seneca or even Christ would have conceived of as the “Eternal Western Canon”? Where are the calls to belonging to something greater than yourself and making human life into a vehicle for spiritual realisation? All I hear from Jordan is: “Blessed are the sovereign individuals, for theirs is the kingdom of material ambition”! When he does eventually get to briefly discussing “community”, he does so entirely in utilitarian terms. He is just clinging desperately to the corpse of the Classical Liberal anti-tradition whilst somehow remaining blind to all of its flaws, which become more and more obvious with every passing day.

There is also something peculiarly Masonic about the whole thing, particularly in the way that he appropriates a spiritual and metaphysical perspective for the purpose of selfish and materialistic ends. He seems to be very torn between genuine compassion for the people who look up to him and preaching gibberish so as to sell his soul to Daily Wire. In the same way, perhaps, that he is torn between the rich traditions of the past, particularly Christianity in his case, and a petty and pointless “reactionary” stance on present events.

He should have it called: A (Truly Awful) Conservative Manifesto… In the end, this manifesto serves to prove that Dr. Peterson - whatever interesting things he might have to say regarding mythology, the relationship between science and religion, and so on - has by now been entirely consumed by his role as controlled opposition. His presence in online public discourse is amplified precisely because his arguments against the left are so weak, and in reality he is just fuel for the very fire that he seeks to quench.