Agency and Morality
By: Jade Saab
Tags: Ethics, Morality, Jordan Peterson, Society, Politics

Agency and Morality

Jordan Peterson is back in the news, this time for being admitted to a Russian hospital by his daughter to get help kicking his anti-depressant addiction which he developed after his wife was diagnosed with Cancer. Many have pointed out the irony in how the self-help guru, who bases most of his arguments around the concepts of agency against the ‘chaos’ of life, was himself unable to overcome it. Others have expressed relief at Peterson’s breakdown as well deserved due to his outspoken sexist and transphobic remarks.

Obviously, those reactions have been condemned by many who see this as taking pleasure in another human beings pain. This is despicable behaviour that we must ‘rise above’, we are told. My question here is why? Why do many people share in the view that we must live up to this categorical imperative of ‘rising above’?

For the basis of this investigation, I’ll be leaning on an article written by Darren McGarvey who takes a moral stance against this ‘Immaturity’. I pick McGarvey’s piece simply because it does a good job at articulating that point of view and also because McGarvey has done significantly important work in his anti-poverty activism where he has brought a voice to individuals usually lumped together into the faceless category of ‘the poor’ — making his take on this somewhat paradoxical.

Deontology

To effectively investigate this issue we need to ground the argument in its ethical landscape. At its core, the argument of ‘we shouldn’t laugh at the pain of others, even if they’re our enemies’ falls within the ethical school of deontology. Deontology is pretty much the idea that we should live our lives based on what is right, regardless of outcome or circumstance. This view can be found everywhere in popular politics and has also come up during the last election season with statements such as ‘whoever you vote for, let’s just be nice to each other’. In other more popular interpretations, you have the batmanesque proposition that ‘if you kill a killer, the number of killers remains the same’. In overly simplified terms, Deontology can be summarized with the sentiment of ‘ just don’t be a dick’.

Located in a political landscape, deontology also touches on other liberal values such as the acceptance of plurality and toleration/civility. Under this schema, there is a certain level of decorum that we must all agree to live our lives by otherwise we may just devolve into an animalistic state of nature.

Falling flat on its face

The obvious criticism of deontology, tolerance, and whatever other derivative values that extend from it is that they are entirely abstracted. They depend on the notion that what is ‘right’ is knowable — that a category called ‘right’ exists in the first place and is absolute/unchanging, and that this right must be done regardless of the circumstances. In the batman example, the right is ‘don’t kill’, but most of us will agree that in moments of acute self-defence, taking a life is more than understandable. So deontology completely removes any sense of dependency on a situation and the power dynamics involved in it. Extending to the voting example, yes, in theory, we should be nice to those who voted for candidates we do not like. But if the candidate you have voted for will have an adverse impact on my quality of life, extending to my ability to live a dignified life because they will be removing necessary social support I and my family depend on, then it would make sense that I hold you in contempt — your action signifies a direct threat to my wellbeing.

A lot of these parables also have massive logical failures. Sure if I kill a killer the number of killers stays the same, but what if I kill two killers? or 100?

Back to the task at hand

Engaging in deontology based moral arguments, which is what is happening around this Peterson issue, depends, to a large level on the mystification of what is really going on and the abstraction of those involved.

This is clear in McGarvey’s article where he frames the debate as “people on the left” who have “ slipped into is our human tendency when blind-sided by bitterness, to dehumanise the people we don’t like.” vs. Peterson’s “stupid ideas” and family and friends who are now “caught in the crossfire”.

Speaking to these lefties, McGarvey says that their reaction proves “that you’ve abandoned the very compassion and common sense which apparently makes you morally superior to conservatives, requires a special lack of self-awareness.”

There are several assumptions in these claims that deserve to be unpacked.

First, although, yes, Peterson’s ideas are “stupid” (I have written extensively on Peterson’s ideas and the arena in which he operates) they are more than that, people don't hate Peterson because he has stupid ideas, of which McGarvey is right in pointing out is something “clearly not unique to Peterson.”. But because Peterson’s ideas were harmful to those he attacked, particularly women and those in the trans community. Many of the people revelling in Peterson’s misery, who McGarvey acknowledges are a “ small but extremely strident cohort of lefties” are not doing it because they have slipped into a blind-sided fit of vitriol or are acting without any self-awareness, but because they have been personally or adjacently impacted by Peterson's work. He is, therefore, more than just “guilty of the crime of expressing ideas” as McGarvey puts it.

Second, this type of rhetoric also seems to shift the blame of actors. McGarvey points to the suffering that Person’s wife and daughter who are now theoretically having to deal with watching this vitriolic outpour. But what about Peterson’s choice in speaking out against Trans rights? Has he not consciously ‘made his bed’? Is any of this ‘hatred’ not a result of Peterson's practice of agency? Why are we suddenly describing Peterson as a victim? Where are we to draw the line between someone practising their agency and the reaction to that practice (people practising their agency by reacting to someone else’s practice of their agency)?

I have touched on a similar case to this in my discussion of the vlogger Nas Daily (Nusseir Yassin). In one of his video’s Yassin, an Israeli citizen, complains about his inability to travel 15 countries who won’t let him in on account of him being Israeli. In his video, he makes the case that those government should see his as a human being. But the ban on travel on Israel is a result of Israel’s continuation of an illegal occupation. Therefore, his pleadings would be apter if they were directed at his own government instead of others. Where Yassin sees himself a victim of discrimination from those governments he should see himself a victim of his governments own actions.

McGarvey’s misreading of the situation finally culminates in his conclusion where he claims that it is compassion and common sense which makes lefties morally superior to conservatives. This is purely McGarvey’s interpretation. As far as I’m concerned, being a ‘leftie’ and being ‘morally superior’ have nothing to do with each other. Everyone thinks their interpretation is morally superior otherwise they wouldn’t hold it. Even if we consider that ‘conservatives’ are morally inferior, they certainly don’t think so, and even if they do, by say, claiming that morality is less important than pure power dynamics, that in itself is a different frame of morality. McGarvey’s need to make this about morality is purely so that he can make the point he wants to, that there is some sort of moral absolute we should behave by and that he is on the right side of that abstract line.

Agency

A big part of Peterson’s schtick is that life is naturally chaotic, something he adopts from the works of Nietzche. To a certain extent, he is right. Our imposition of moral frames on life is a way for us to cope with this chaos and make sense of it. This is what both Peterson and McGarvey have done.

However, we also need to understand that through our individual and group practices of forming systems of understanding, we are bound to reach limits in which contradictory or oppositional viewpoints can no longer coexist and a chaotic battle for survival must ensue. Although this is not what is happening here, it is a minor variation of it. The argument can be made that this kind of engagement is a fruitless labour, which I would agree with, but this is a far cry from the moralistic debate that McGarvey and others are making.

Engaging in critique based on moral lines undermines the fact that this clash and others like it are inevitable and are more than just disputes of ideas but are disputes with material implications. It just so happens that when those material implications do not impact us that we can frame them moralistically and condemn them.