Addressing nihilism in rural America: What we can learn from the Jordan Peterson phenomenon and why it should not be written off as “dangerous right-wing radicalism”

A couple weeks ago, I stumbled across an interesting find in the used book section of a thrift store in a rural town in southwest Kern County, California. It was a copy of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. I purchased the book, and on my drive home up highway 99, I contemplated the impact of Jordan Peterson, a prominent public intellectual who, at times is casted as a conservative, is more accurately described as a classical liberal and traditionalist, on rural communities.

While I recognize that Jordan Peterson is a polarizing figure, I believe that understanding the “Jordan Peterson phenomenon” is important for anyone seeking to understand and uplift rural peoples in America. 

The aspect of Jordan Peterson’s message that I am interested in exploring in this post is his emphasis on personal responsibility, to which Peterson attributes much of his popularity, especially amongst young men (though women are an increasingly growing part of his audience as well). For Peterson, responsibility is the neglected half of any discussion pertaining to rights. And this is especially important because, Peterson argues, responsibility gives meaning to life–it’s what makes the suffering one experiences in the world worth enduring.

Peterson’s book is subtitled “An Antidote to Chaos,” signaling the clear purpose of his rules for life. Peterson notes that though not all chaos is bad, it must be balanced adequately with order, lest extreme forms of chaos—like anarchy or tyranny—result. 

Many parts of rural America seem to suffer from what I would call an inner chaos, if I may, in the form of ennui. It is a chaos of the soul due to feelings of loss of dignity, status, purpose, and importance, which ultimately results in nihilism—the notion that there is no meaning or purpose to life. Nihilism entails the rejection of objective truths, morals, philosophical codes, meanings, or values. This inner chaos is exacerbated by the pitiful economic conditions of many rural communities.

The plight of despair within rural communities has been chronicled by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton in their book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (2020). Since the turn of the century, premature death rates have sharply increased among rural Americans due to increases in suicide, drug overdoses, and liver disease related to alcohol abuse. To be fair, there are countering narratives as to the cause of these tragedies. Case and Deaton argue that the main reason is the lack of economic opportunities whereas others point to the proliferation and accessibility of illegal drugs. Either way, the net effects are undeniable, and they result in what we logically expect from broken communities: pervasive poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, and the likes.

To add insult to injury, rural communities also face “rural bashing” often at the hands of progressive elites, who, in recent election cycles, have resorted to blaming rural folks for their own problems because they ostensibly vote against their own interests.

The zeitgeist of our time would entail rural folks adopting a mentality of victimhood and internalizing it as an identity. Perhaps many rural Americans have done just this in embracing Donald Trump. President Trump capitalized on America’s victimhood culture by encouraging his supporters to embrace victimhood as an identity throughout his presidential campaigns and presidency. 

This should not be too surprising because furthering victimhood culture is (tragically) an excellent political strategy. Indeed, both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of perpetuating it. This is because it allows an “in-group” to rally its members to act in an intensely revengeful manner against an otherized “out-group”. Think Democrats vs. Republicans, rural vs. urban, white vs. non-white, educated vs. uneducated, etc. What results is dangerous and destructive.

When a group places extraordinarily great emphasis on their own suffering, they can develop “egoism of victimhood.” Psychologists use this phrase (egoism of victimhood) to refer to situations “whereby members [of an in-group] are unable to see things from the perspective of the rival group’s perspective, are unable or unwilling to empathize with the suffering of the rival group, and are unwilling to accept any responsibility for harm inflicted by their own group.” (See here and here for research supporting this.) Further, researchers have found that people who embrace victimhood culture are less willing to forgive others, have an increased desire for revenge (as opposed to mere avoidance,) and are more likely to engage in revengeful behavior. 

Another pitfall of victimhood culture is that it relieves one of responsibility by shifting it to someone else, maybe even “the world,” broadly, or to some structural aspect of society. Dr. Peterson argues that once a person is relieved of responsibility, they are also stripped of power and agency. Thus, without responsibility, one has no power to change one’s circumstances (though it seems that without personal agency to change one’s immediate situation, some folks shift their energy towards deconstructing and destroying societal structures at large, given their ostensible structural inequities). 

Given this backdrop of the rise of victimhood culture, the plight of rural America, and the increasing struggles of young men (see Richard Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It), Jordan Peterson offers an attractive alternative. I argue that rural Americans may be attracted to this message—and benefiting from it—because it is radically different.

Jordan Peterson fans and followers seem to share a common perspective and experience. Many are disenchanted by the shaping of contemporary society (the prominence of ideologies based on the centralization of race, gender, and sexuality,) and many are even more troubled by the apparent lack of purpose in their own lives. Many share stories of despair, addiction, and depression in their lives. Still, his followers are often written off as right-wing extremists. I believe, however, that there’s more to Jordan Peterson fans than the popular media presents.

If we look past the rhetoric and analyze Dr. Peterson’s message, we can see that his message is one that seeks to uplift individuals by speaking to the basic nature of humans as conceived within a Judeo-Christian-Islamic ethos. In short, Peterson proffers a solution to chaos that has been neglected and maligned by the Left in recent years and only superficially discussed by the Right.

The power of his message is that it seeks to restore dignity and agency to each human being, reminding them that they have control over their circumstances so long as they take responsibility. This is so even if much of their predicament is technically at the hands of forces outside of their own individual power. Put another way, this is a return to personal responsibility, and it seems to resonate with rural people, who tend to value individual striving, hard work, and responsibility. 

Dr. Peterson proffers 24 “Rules for Life”  in his books. Fifteen out of the 24 are related to personal responsibility:

• Treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping.
• Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
• Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
• Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie.
• Be precise in your speech.
• Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement.
• Imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that.
• Do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
• Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
• Abandon ideology.
• Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
• Try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible.
• Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship.
• Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.
• Be grateful in spite of your suffering.

I believe that a message that puts power back into people's hands resonates with folks in despair because it means they have agency to change their lives. This does not necessarily mean that it puts blame on the individual for their circumstances or that it rejects the notion of structural issues that may play a role in causing underlying crises. I’ve always wondered why a message that emphasizes personal responsibility ought to be viewed as one that denies the existence of structural inequalities? The two aren’t mutually exclusive. 

People in despair genuinely seem to be benefiting from Jordan Peterson’s message. He has amassed a massive following on YouTube (over six million subscribers and over half a billion total views on his videos). Glossing through the comments on his videos and posts on the Jordan Peterson Reddit page (which has over 300,000 members) there seems to be a significant number of people profusely thanking Dr. Peterson for his role in transforming their lives for the better. Sure this is anecdotal, but it is certainly worth something.

Earlier I stated that Jordan Peterson’s approach is a “return to” personal responsibility. I say this because the importance of personal responsibility in uplifting the downtrodden has ancient roots. It can be traced least as far back as the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Arguably one of the most successful programs for pulling people out of addiction and despair, the 12-step program created by Alcoholics Anonymous, puts the power in the hands of the sufferer, but interestingly, via a recognition of a higher power that can give aid, i.e., God. Ultimately, though, it is the individual who has the conscious ability and free will to make decisions and perform actions that will better their life.

This reminds me of multiple verses in the Quran in which God says that no soul is taxed with a burden except that it is one which they are able to bear. (Quran 2:233, 2:286, 6:152, 7:42, and 23:62). Furthermore, God states that “no bearer of burdens shall bear that of another.” (Quran 6:164, 17:15, 53:38. Translation by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, The Quran Beheld, (2022)). The implication is that some level of personal responsibility is required to recognize and strive toward a path out of one’s difficult circumstances. For the 12-step program, as well as the Muslim and broader Abrahamic traditions, the path begins with recognition of the Higher Power.

Tying this back to the discussion about victimhood culture, psychologist Dr. Scott Kaufman explains in an article published in a Scientific American article that the opposite of a victimhood mindset is a “personal growth mindset.” He argues that a personal growth mindset can help flip the narrative of trauma and despair if individuals choose to view their trauma not as a something essential to their identity, but as something that may actually be a source of personal growth and development, rather than a demarcation of oppression. He ponders of the personal growth mindset:

What if we all learned at a young age that our traumas don’t have to define us? That it’s possible to have experienced a trauma and for victimhood to not form the core of our identity? That it’s even possible to grow from trauma, to become a better person, to use the experiences we’ve had in our lives toward working to instill hope and possibility to others who were in a similar situation? What if we all learned that it’s possible to have healthy pride for an in-group without having out-group hate? That if you expect kindness from others, it pays to be kind yourself? That no one is entitled to anything, but we all are worthy of being treated as human?

This would be quite the paradigm shift, but it would be in line with the latest social science that makes clear that a perpetual victimhood mindset leads us to see the world with rose-tinted glasses. With a clear lens, we’d be able to see that not everyone in our out-group is evil, and not everyone in our in-group is a saint. We’re all human with the same underlying needs to belong, to be seen, to be heard and to matter.

Seeing reality as clearly as possible is an essential step to making long-lasting change, and I believe one important step along that path is to shed the perpetual victimhood mindset for something more productive, constructive, hopeful and amenable to building positive relationships with others.

Dr. Kaufman’s proposal seems to be an explanation of how people in despair are benefiting from the message of Jordan Peterson. I would further argue that a good part of why Dr. Peterson has been so successful with his employment of this messaging is because it is rooted (however imperfectly) in ancient, transcendent truths steeped in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.

I share this post in large part to compel us to reckon with the possibility that there is great good in a message that emphasizes personal responsibility in lieu of one that places greater emphasis on structural inequities and victimhood culture. For one, the former seems to bring about real benefit more readily for real individuals in a relatively short period of time, whereas the latter leaves one stuck in a rut, hoping for the government to deliver a utopia.