How much does the motivation for our research impact what we find? How much does the goal of a journey we undertake determine where we will get to?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is both a question that I kept coming back to in this week\u2019s reading as well as a question raised within the reading. Canadian Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto. He specialises in the areas of religious and idealogical identities. He has risen to fame in recent years as a vocal opponent to Bill C-16.<\/a>[1] This particular Bill would grant people the right to self-identify with regards to gender identity and, in particular, have the legal right to be addressed as they request.<\/p>\n While Peterson\u2019s opponents suggest he is misconstruing the Bill<\/a>[2], Peterson\u2019s argument is consistent with his book Maps of Meaning:The Architecture of Belief. <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Peterson argues in his book that the stability of civil society is dependent on the myths\/narratives that establish the meaning of the objective world. To significantly disrupt these narratives is to risk a level of instability that necessitates complete reconstruction. He thus viewed the bill in question as significantly undermining the stabilizing narrative that Canada relies upon. Tracing his understanding makes sense of his objections.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The objective world is experienced through the senses and gives rise to language to describe what is being experienced. These words are collected to provide a discourse through which the world can be explained. Scientific inquiry, from this standpoint, is objective observations about the natural world. However, the meaning of these observations is created as people interact with this world. The stories that are told about these interactions with the world evolve over time to order a groups\u2019 interactions with the natural world in a way that leads to self-preservation and orderliness amongst the group. These narratives become the foundational beliefs of a group and thus come to moderate action. Action is what takes place within the world as individuals or groups move from what is towards what they think should be.<\/a>[3] \u201cA belief structure orients one to action. One has to believe something in order to act.\u201d<\/a>[4] The belief system must be rigid enough to reduce group anxiety such that behaviour and daily circumstance is largely predictable. When minimal disruption occurs within the predictable patterns, adaptation within the belief system is possible. When significant disruption occurs, the belief system itself will be called into question and the narrative will require amendment or may even collapse altogether. A belief system is vulnerable if it is too rigid, and resists innovative thinking, but it is also of little use if it lacks boundaries and thus fails to offer the security that comes with the ability to predict another\u2019s behaviour. The age of reason, or the enlightenment, complicated the ease in which the Christian narrative interacted with the natural world. For many, the narrative no longer made sense of the objective world and thus became too rigid to maintain. \u201cWhen religion collapses, nationalism rises to take its place because you need a belief system.\u201d<\/a>[5] In the west, democratic nationalism has risen, nurtured by Judeo-Christian values. The difficulty is that democracy is an ideology rather than a narrative\/myth. Given that ideologies proceed from cultural narratives, the erosion of the narrative could eventually undercut the ideology if no communal narrative is established. This will lead to a cultural revolution as the belief system is rebuilt.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So back to Bill C-16. Why might it be so threatening? It seems a stretch to suggest that allowing a person to self-identify their gender would have any more consequence than allowing them to request you call them by a variation of their given name. At first appearance this celebrates individualism, which is generally respected by the right. However, Peterson classifies this bill as emerging from the ideology of the far left, or socialist\/communalist agenda within Canada. While Peterson did spend a number of years actively supporting and promoting Canada\u2019s NDPs (a social Democratic Party), he eventually left after feeling that Orwell\u2019s suggestion that the motivation of such movements was less about loving the poor but more about hating the rich.<\/a>[6] While he was disillusioned about the inefficacy of the ideology, I suspect his true concern is much more visceral. This brings us back to the question of how important our motivation for setting out on a journey is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Peterson\u2019s introduction to his book is biographical and vulnerable. (Brene Brown<\/a>[7] would approve and I confess this in itself softened me to listen with interest to what he had to say.) He talks about his experience growing up during the Cold War and in particular the devastating effect it had on his mental health for a period. He describes a full year of vivid dreams in which the bomb went off and people he loved were killed and his world was completely deconstructed. Out of this anxiety and fear, Peterson underwent a journey to understand the circumstances that gave rise to this situation. He examined people\u2019s individual and communal capacity for evil. He sifted through countless belief narratives in order to understand their common themes. (I feel he might overgeneralize in order to construct his archetypes, but it was an interesting project none the less.) He also looked at how evil was characterized and then what ideologies had led to to the highest effect of evil (quantified by the number of people killed by their own state<\/a>[8]). His conclusion was (unsurprisingly) that communist societies were the most vulnerable to being where evil flourished. Thus there must be a pathology in their beliefs. Beliefs that have similarities to those supporting Bill C-16. When you set out on your journey to alleviate your fears and along the way find ideas that instead trigger them, is it not like the irritation of slow traffic on the way to a meeting?<\/a>[9] Perhaps you would take no notice if you didn\u2019t suspect it could derail your own flourishing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I think this is a valuable story for me as a researcher, as a pastor and a as a Christian. How is where I think I am, where I think I should be going and the beliefs that motivate my actions a product of why I undertake the journey at all?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Incidentally, it seems that Peterson has recently come out of a year that has been hard enough that it may lead to another personal revolution<\/a>[10]. My prayers are with him.<\/p>\n <\/a>[1]\u201cAbout,\u201d Jordan Peterson, December 9, 2019, https:\/\/www.jordanbpeterson.com\/about\/<\/a>) accessed Feb 13, 2020.<\/p>\n <\/a>[2] Torontoist, \u201cAre Jordan Peterson’s Claims About Bill C-16 Correct?,\u201d Torontoist, December 19, 2016, https:\/\/torontoist.com\/2016\/12\/are-jordan-petersons-claims-about-bill-c-16-correct\/<\/a>) Accessed February 13, 2020.<\/p>\n <\/a>[3] Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning: the Architecture of Belief<\/em> (London: Routledge, 1999), p.15)<\/p>\n <\/a>[4] Jordon B. Peterson, \u201c2016 Lecture 01 Maps of Meaning: Introduction and Overview.\u201d YouTube<\/em> video, 1:40.54. 2016.\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bjnvtRgpg6g&feature=share<\/a><\/p>\n <\/a>[5] Ibid.<\/p>\n <\/a>[6] George Orwell as quoted by Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning: the Architecture of Belief<\/em> (London: Routledge, 1999), p.14)<\/p>\n <\/a>[7] Brene Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts<\/em> (New York: Random House, 2018) Section 1).<\/p>\n <\/a>[8] Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning: the Architecture of Belief <\/em>(London: Routledge, 1999), p.343)<\/p>\n