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Identity

Identity Politics and Political Polarization, Part II

Jordan Peterson and identity politics.

Jordan Peterson rails against the “Postmodern Marxist Totalitarian Radical Left.” What is it and why is it central to his fame?

The first blog in this five part series examined the issue of identity and argued that one’s identity could be thought of both as the seat of agency (the portion of the individual that decided what action to take) and biography (the story of who the person was and why they did what they did). This concept can be applied to the nation. We can ask: what is the identity of the United States of America?

The answer is that it is fragmented and polarized, and there are lots of reasons why. One key reason is that the “general knowledge situation” (if you will permit the term) we find ourselves in is one of “fragmented pluralism.” That is, the amount of information available coupled with the dizzying array of ways to look at it, results in a head scratching WTF experience when it comes to being grounded in what we can know.

The current situation stems from a series of events during the 20th Century. Religious views struggled in the face of the growing power of scientific knowledge. Science lost touch with philosophy and became hyper empirical. Globalism combined with developments in continental philosophy to give rise to the view that all knowledge is relative and positional. This is deeply related to the “postmodern” aspect of modern knowledge that Jordan Peterson rails against. However, it is only half of the equation.

Although knowledge is fragmented, it nonetheless is the case that one feature of knowledge is salient for postmodernists, and that is its relationship to power. Indeed, one of the great emphases of the postmodern analyses of knowledge is that what constitutes knowledge (and other aspects of justifiable ways of being) is power. Where is this power located? A key answer is that it has been held by certain social groups.

On the heels of WWII (which, of course, included the atrocities of Nazi racism), came the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s which emphasized how unjustly certain groups were treated. The movement was remarkably successful. In the span of a few decades, with no wars or hostile take overs, the attitude shifted. Whereas in the 1950s, explicit racism and sexism were well within the normative ways of being, by the 1980s, explicit racism and sexism were largely shunned and deemed primitive and backward in polite society.

Achieving victory on the explicit forms of discrimination, the social justice movement shifted focus from overt beliefs to implicit and institutional forms of bias. Being consciously colorblind was not enough to transform society. Racism, sexism, and heteronormativity were “baked in” to the structure of the institutions and implicit associations needing to be actively rooted out and transformed.

It is here that we find our current struggle for identity and direction. For if one sees racism, sexism, and homophobia as a “baked in stain” that our society must rid itself of to be just, the implications are enormous. As this lens is put on, everything becomes suspect. Everywhere you look you see problems, in our heritage, in our history, and in our heroes. Consider the example of Captain America from the previous blog. The ethnocentrism of the era is blatant to folks concerned about the baked in stain.

The conclusion for many progressives is that people who are woke to the ways in which racism, sexism, and heteronormativity are baked in must lead to transform society from its eons of injustice toward a society in which no group is given unfair advantages. And given our history, we must be constantly working to correct the distortions. It is not enough to be colorblind. One must be committed to being anti-biased. If an individual from traditionally marginalized group claims offense, they are almost certainly justified in doing so, given our country’s structure and history. Truly virtuous people see this as the great issue of our times. Those who fail to see it, remain trapped in the baked in stain of our history.

"Seriously", say the conservative skeptics? We can no longer admire Captain America? Perhaps we should name him Captain from the United States of America so as to not offend. Progressives strip dominance out of everything, robbing people of freedom and leaving only themselves as the virtuous dominant group. The fact of the matter is that the US saved Europe and the world, and we should embrace icons that represent that without apology!

Welcome to the very different narratives that are attempting to shape our cultural identity. Jordan Peterson’s narrative relates deeply to this kind of identity dispute. His primary political concern is what he calls the “postmodern, Marxist (as in forced communal equality) radical left” view. Much of what makes him famous is that he is an academic who is standing up against and saying “No! This is wrong and leads to very dangerous places.”

From my vantage point, we should be clear about the continuum of reasonable perspectives, and identify where we are on that continuum. Jordan Peterson and the controversy he represents allows us to identify a continuum of reasonable perspectives. On the conservative side, the reasonable perspective starts with a colorblind attitude of explicit equality and a denial of inherent superiority of a particular race, ethnicity, or sex/orientation. Claims that any social category has an inherent right or essence that should confer dominance (or conversely, the suppression of certain groups as inherently inferior) is a completely unacceptable ideology.

In his participation in the Munk debates, Jordan Peterson claimed that society has found the limits on the conservative side of the social identity equation. That is, it is no longer acceptable in the mainstream discourse to believe in the basic or inherent inequality of ethnic or gendered groups. Explicitly sexist or racist beliefs have been shown to be tragically unjust and are (or should be) no longer part of the mainstream cultural identity.

Peterson believes that whereas the right has found its reasonable limits, he argues that the progressive left has not. And, thus it is vulnerable to collapsing into totalitarianism. What does he mean by this? That there is not a common discourse and set of shared claims that identify when the progressive case has been taken too far. He sees lots of examples of it, especially on college campuses. Consider, as one exemplar, the case of a Yale student screaming at a professor about an email that encouraged people to be wary of being too sensitive about Halloween costumes. Most people can see that this is pretty ridiculous. The question is: What, exactly, is the narrative that grounds the claims that this person is going off the deep end?

I think Peterson is on to an important point. I see the failure of the left to be clear about how to rein in progressive extremes as being one of the key driving forces in the election of Donald Trump. I, for one, find that comedians capture this extreme very well (see, e.g., here and here) and think these kinds of exaggerations should be very much a part of our conversations about when virtue signaling and misguided righteousness goes off the rails. And, a number of people have been hurt by those excesses. A few have been physically hurt, like Dr. Allison Stanger who obtained a concussion as she attempted to escort Charles Murray to his talk in Middlebury. Many more have been hurt by public shaming on social media from progressive hordes wielding the mark of racism.

At the same time, I think Peterson overshoots in his proclamations regarding how totalitarian or dangerous the progressive left currently is. Yes, there is some absurdity, yes there are too many examples of hyper progressive snowflake activity on campuses. But I do not see it anywhere near in the ballpark of a Stalinist Totalitarian regime that Peterson sometimes suggests that we are on the precipice of. This is not just because there is no Gulag, nor secret police, nor anything of the sort. Rather, the case that free speech is being limited is complicated and mixed, although I agree with folks like Jonathan Haidt who argue it is an important issue. The ideology really does not lead to Stalin. As Peterson notes when he calls out the so-called “Postmodern Marxist Radical Left,” it is a bit of an oxymoron. Marxism is foundationalist in its epistemology and postmodernism is not. Without getting into the philosophical weeds, let me just say that the conflict raises serious questions regarding the extent to which the two could combine to give rise to a true totalitarian state.

What does this all mean for the US in terms of our identity? One of the elements of a mature identity is that it can hold a multitude of different perspectives with becoming chaotic or rigid. Our fragmented and polarized society is both rigid and chaotic on these issues. It is rigid in the sense that we are too often framing these issues in black in white, right and wrong terms. You are either woke or your not. You are either a level-headed conservative on these issues, or a crazy leftist. You either live in red America or blue America. Take your pick. There are two teams, and you have to be on one or the other.

In addition to being too rigid, we are also too chaotic. Our dichotomous frame sets us up to be dragged around by the media who loves to throw out extreme examples, and make the issue about wins and losses. After all, that is what gets attention. Unfortunately, as clinicians of troubled souls know, dichotomous thinking on complex issues is rarely ideal for one’s identity. Dimensional thinking, in which positions are laid out on a continuum and one can appreciate shades of grey is more effective. Another key ability is dialectical thinking, in which positions are placed in tension on key points to give rise to a whole. For example, consider the value of liberty in relation to the value of equality and the tensions between the two. Both dimensional and dialectical modes of thought are more sophisticated than simple dichotomies, and tend to result in deeper, more flexible, and more adaptive way of seeing the world. In short, we are trapped in an unsophisticated, rigid and chaotic dichotomized poltiical identity.

One of my hopes for the country is that we grow out of this identity crisis not as a result of one side being victorious over the other, but rather we come to realize the potential in different modes of thinking. If we could move from a dichotomous mindset to a dialectical one, for example, that would really be a sign of growth. As we leave these reflections on the nature of our identity, the next blog in the series is on Jordan Peterson's identity.

Links to the Series:

Part I: On Identity

Part III: Jordan Peterson’s Psychology and Philosophy of Life

Part IV: Controversial Sparks and the Emergence of the 100-foot Wave

Part V: What the Peterson Controversy Means for Our Culture

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