THE WAY WE LIVE TODAY
Carving, Charles Joseph
I am a latecomer to the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. I haven’t read any of his books but I have listened to numerous lectures and interviews. A 2018 interview with NYU professor Jonathan Hardt, founder of the Heterodox Academy, about the causes for the unravelling of the contemporary university touched me close to home. Peterson appeared on the social media battlefield after involving himself in a free speech controversy with the University of Toronto, his employer. Peterson’s views have made him a lightning rod for radical left-wing critics who have trotted out the usual accusations: hate-speech mongerer, fascist, racist, white supremacist. Peterson collects native Canadian art from coastal British Columbia, and has formed a friendship with Charles Joseph, an accomplished Kwakwaka’wakw carver from the Ma’amtaglia-Tlowitsis tribe. In a blanketing ceremony Peterson was given a Kwak’wala name and made an honorary member of Joseph’s family. Unexpected for a racist-white supremacist.
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Jordan Peterson seems a hard person to reduce to simple labels. He carries serious intellectual weight in both popular culture and in the university setting. Like most of us he carries the taint of our racist culture and also the white bias that permeates most colonial societies. He deals with gender identity and coming of age ceremonies as part of his studies, so I am not surprised he became a lightening rod for reform. But he is not the Gollum. He seems willing to learn. He could be a strong ally in our current efforts to break free of that same damaging bias.
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