Jordan Peterson, a reluctant ring bearer for a modern Middle-earth

Jordan Peterson wrote his latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, during a year of personal medical and emotional turmoil. Amazingly it was his “lifeline” to sanity as all hell broke loose. It already sits on top of many countries’ best-selling lists of books.

In recent weeks Peterson has been engaging in public discourse more and more. He works a couple of hours a day doing interviews and podcasts; the remainder of his time is invested in maintaining his health. Considering what he needs to overcome every day just to live and breathe, his contributions seem all the more meaningful.

I have a deep appreciation for Jordan Peterson. He is an important voice in the world today, and we lost much insight and guidance when he was forced to step away from the public for nearly a year. Think of all the water that flowed under the bridge while he was away – racial tensions and Black Lives Matter, COVID and its related measures, the U.S. election, the continued polarization of our culture …

I don’t agree with everything Peterson says, writes, or thinks, but what I do know to be true is that he has much to offer the world in terms of critical thinking about complex issues. His presence can help us avoid the disaster of rushing toward solutions in a reactive state so they become tomorrow’s biggest problems.

The New York Times has called him the most influential public intellectual in the Western world. Yet despite the millions of books he has sold, the hundreds of thousands of people he has spoken to at live events, and the millions of views on his YouTube channel, I cannot help but sense a certain discomfort by Peterson with it all.

He is not timid, shy, or passive – far from it. What he is lacking is something more important. There is no unbridled ambition in Peterson.

Amid his clarity of thought, calculated speech, and assertive transmission of ideas, there is also an air of humility, as though he recognizes that ideas that are true are not his property. He has inherited them, received them as a gift, and he is a steward of their clarity, application, and proliferation.

I have watched him be moved as he tells stories of meaningful encounters. I believe him when he suggests with a trembling voice, “It is overwhelming.” Young people (men and women) have shared with him how his lectures and writings helped them turn their lives around.

His observation that “people need so little encouragement” is wonderful and painful at the same time. It means that all of us, armed with only a few words of encouragement, can alter the life of an individual and therefore human history. It is painful because most of us live without such encouragement.

Modern man tends to find fault and tear it down rather than build it up. Peterson tries to help others on their pilgrim journey. He has been forced, absent ambition, into a public tornado that is dangerous because it is consequential.

I think he has a sense of being called on for such a time as this. “You did not choose me, but I chose you,” are the words that come to mind. And like all great leaders, Peterson has the necessary combination of professional will and humility.

Saint John Paul II had the same sense of historical imagination. On his election day, he told the cardinals who elected him Pope, “May God forgive you for this,” demonstrating his sense of humour and humility. He then set out to engage in the most public pontificate to date, a teaching and prophetic ministry that won him both supporters and opponents. Like Peterson, he was mislabelled and misunderstood, wading into polarized territory to bring truth while being judged both too liberal and overly conservative at the same time.

Great leaders set out to steward well what has been given to them, losing themselves in something bigger and more important than their own lives. When I think of great leaders who have become reluctant prophets, I think of Frodo from The Lord of the Rings.

Like Frodo, all great leaders have their Mordor. Peterson’s is the polarized fabric of society, and when he stepped into his prophetic role, first by opposing Bill C-16, which added gender identity and orientation to the human rights act and criminal code, he knew full well where that journey would take him.

In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo’s best friend and companion on the journey, Samwise Gamgee, said of Mordor, “It is the one place in Middle-earth we don’t want to see any closer, and the one place we’re trying to get to.”

Peterson can say the same. “In order to think, you have to risk being offensive,” he told an interviewer. In other words, to grapple well with the issues of our day in all their layered complexity, you have continually to risk offending for the sake of pursuing truth. I wish and pray to God that we could give each other that kind of space to process, think deeply, and dialogue through complex matters, instead of cancelling each other as soon as disagreement, perceived or real, surfaces.

Peterson knew full well what his Mordor had in store – the language of victimhood, hypersensitivity, group think, identity politics, unwarranted labels from the left and the right. Nevertheless, he set his face like flint, grounded himself as best he could, and entered the Colosseum of contempt. Anyone bearing a ring of power, that is a mantle of influence, will travel the same path.

Reluctant prophets are willing to take a conversation where it needs to go, even when fear says not to. So, into the Bill Maher Show’s Trump-bashing banter, he inserted a thoughtful question: “What is the alternative … what will the American people do with the vacuum created if Trump is impeached?”

Peterson is not a Trump supporter. But he knew when he asked the question that 50 per cent of Americans would celebrate a Trump impeachment and 50 per cent would revolt. Is that unity?

We need to be concerned by the polarization that has fallen on the U.S. When Peterson asked his question, he was not making a statement disguised as a question. He was asking something from a place of legitimate curiosity and encouraging the same curiosity in others.

Jordan Peterson is not a polarizing figure. He is a lightning rod for the polarization already there and, sadly, growing every day.

The world is deeply polarized. Catholic leaders such as Pope Francis, Mother Teresa, Bishop Robert Barron, and others – those who are not easily categorized right or left – have experienced the same treatment.

Throughout the history of the Church, most heresies have been the result of moving truth from the centre to one extreme or the other. The same can be said of factions within the Church today.

The world needs leaders who are magnanimous. Leaders who are not easily boxed into identifiable groups or existing categories. These leaders lead by creating wide-open spaces for conversation, decisions, and collaborative action. They are neither alt-right nor radical left, identifying as neither conservative nor liberal.

Peterson’s message to young men, for example, is something I celebrate, like the testimonies of young men getting their lives sorted out.

Many young men grow up with the idea that getting older means more privileges in life and fewer responsibilities, extending their adolescence into their 20s and even 30s. No wonder anxiety and depression among young men are on the rise. Life is requiring something of them that they are ill-prepared to deliver.

In an interview, Peterson said, “What I’ve been telling young men is that there’s an actual reason why they need to grow up, which is that they have something to offer … that people have within them this capacity to set the world straight, and that’s necessary to manifest in the world, and … doing so is where you find the meaning that sustains you in life.”

Peterson’s loyalty from young men is not the result of coddling them, but communicating to them that he believes in them, he knows they have something to offer the world as men, and the world needs the realization of their potential.

In the Catholic Church we just celebrated the great Feast of Saint Joseph. God entrusted to the young man, Joseph, the protection of Mary and Jesus. The two greatest gifts ever given to humanity by God were entrusted to a young man. That tells you what God thinks of young men.

Brett Powell is the Archbishop’s Delegate for Development and Ministries in the Archdiocese of Vancouver. This is an abridged version of an article that first appeared on his website Leadership Where it Matters Most.