Jordan Peterson: A Libertarian Reading

“In a few hundred pages of personal anecdotes, lessons from history, and psychological expertise, Jordan Peterson offers strategies for the individual to rise and face life’s hardships, and to find meaning in the fight for personal betterment.”

Dr. Jordan Peterson’s book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is a modern self-help book unlike those you might read from a fitness guru or a religious leader. Peterson’s advice to lead a fulfilling life is interwoven with concepts from psychology, mythology, tradition, and economics. It’s a personal book; Peterson doesn’t hesitate to tell stories from his own life. And it’s not a political book, insofar as the very notion of improving your own life is not a political issue. Still, in the climate of 2019, it’s difficult not to read his book and come away relating the lessons in it to one’s own political orientation. In this light, I’ve constructed my own list. It’s shorter and briefer in detail than Peterson’s Twelve. I call it, “Nine Ideas of Libertarianism.” Peterson clearly intuits many of these in his book, though he contradicts one, as we’ll see.

Spontaneous Order

Economists have long realized that order emerges spontaneously among groups of people. This is contrary to the false notion that one requires rulers for social order to emerge and remain stable. The vast majority of personal interactions are between individuals who are responding locally and voluntarily to the situation at hand. Creationists might refuse to acknowledge Design without a Designer in the biosphere, but the same logic holds in many minds with respect to society—those who advocate for a larger government cannot fathom an economy that is planned by no one, and yet displays remarkable complexity and order.

Peterson clearly understands this idea of Rules-without-a-Ruler. Early in 12 Rules for Life, he writes about the social hierarchies that emerge in birds, wolves, and chimps. He also appreciates this bottom-up way of creating complexity with respect to cultural artifacts, such as the Bible—“It’s a truly emergent document—a selected, sequenced and finally coherent story written by no one and everyone over many thousands of years.” Written by no one. I grinned at that passage. Peterson gets it.