Angelus News | April 9, 2021 Vol 6 No 7

Jordan Peterson speaks at the 2018 Young
Women’s Leadership Summit in Dallas.
| GAGE SKIDMORE/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
whatever is most recent is therefore
better than what came before. We
need practical wisdom to discriminate
between true developments making
for a better future and changes that
inadvertently undermine the tacit
knowledge of social institutions.
Although a champion of individual
responsibility, Peterson’s new book
recognizes the indispensable role of
marriage, family, and community.
“Beyond Order” emphasizes the need
for family, friends, and community in
order to gain the wisdom necessary for
upright living.
“People depend on constant communication
with others to keep their
minds organized. We all need to think
to keep things straight, but we mostly
think by talking. We need to talk
about the past, so we can distinguish
the trivial, overblown concerns that
otherwise plague our thoughts
from the experiences that are truly
important. We need to talk about
the nature of the present and our
plans for the future, so we know
where we are, where we are going,
and why we are going there.”
Indeed, it was Peterson’s friends
and family, and especially his
wife, who enabled him to endure
and to continue to endure unbelievably
awful health challenges.
We need wisdom from the social
world of family and friends, a
wisdom found not just in explicit
rules but also in the practices and
customs that we inherit. Perhaps
the most important inheritance
are the stories and myths of
archetypal figures, the evil Queen,
the benevolent Mother, the loving
Father, the domineering Tyrant,
the hero and the adversary.
Interwoven with stories from his clinical
practice of psychology, Peterson
explicates the story of St. George and
the dragon, Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty,”
J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbit, and J.K.
Rowling’s Harry Potter. But Peterson
grants special attention to the stories
that most profoundly shaped our
culture: the stories of the Bible.
These stories, especially the story
of Christ, approach a kind of limit.
Jesus is the greatest of all heroes who
faces the greatest of all adversaries,
the serpent who threatens us with
eternal death, to secure the greatest
of all treasures, eternal life for all who
believe in him.
Peterson wonders whether this myth
became fact, but there is no doubt
that he respects the power, beauty,
and majesty of the greatest story ever
told.
These myths and stories enable us to
develop the wisdom needed to avoid
rigid rule-following when breaking
rules of human construction is exactly
what is needed. These stories also
help us to avoid a libertinism that fails
to recognize why the rules were there
in the first place. Before we tear down
any fence, as G.K. Chesterton noted,
we first need to know why the fence
was erected in the first place.
The stories of Jesus found in the
Gospels, Peterson writes, “portray the
existential dilemma that eternally
characterizes human life: it is necessary
to conform, to be disciplined, and
to follow the rules — to do humbly
what others do; but it is also necessary
to use judgment, vision, and the truth
that guides conscience to tell what is
right, when the rules suggest otherwise.”
Jesus, as the true hero, manages
this balance perfectly.
In “Beyond Order,” Peterson develops
his vision in significant ways.
Peterson the humanist, the lover of
poetry, and the husband is added to
the scientist, the clinician, and the
professor. This work is a fitting companion
to “12 Rules for Life,” but is in
many ways more rich, complete, and
balanced.
Christopher Kaczor is professor of
philosophy at Loyola Marymount University,
the author of “The Seven Big
Myths about the Catholic Church”
(Ignatius, $17.95) and the co-author of
the forthcoming book “Jordan Peterson,
God and Christianity: The Search for a
Meaningful Life” (Word on Fire Press).
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