When Jordan Peterson was at the peak of his popularity, I made the mistake of bringing up one of his ideas—”Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them”—at a family get-together. We were on the subject of kids’ propensity to do dangerous, destructive and disrespectful things and our role as parents to make them stop. I wanted to discuss the difference between disliking what your children do as opposed to disliking them, and whether one could cause the other, as Peterson suggested. However, the mere mention of Peterson compelled one of the adults in the room to go ad hominem on the celebrity academic, and the idea I wanted to discuss went by the wayside.
The primary indictment against Peterson was that he supported white nationalism and the alt-right. As I had read only one of his books, 12 Rules for Life, and had found nothing in the text to support that claim, I couldn’t speak to the indictment. I knew that Peterson was a Canadian. I knew from an interview on Real Time with Bill Maher that he was wary of identity politics and authoritarianism on the left (understandable, as both Nazism and Stalinism emerged from left-wing ideologies). I knew from the book that he considered biology (nature) to be a key determinant of gender-specific behaviors and roles. But this idea isn’t controversial, though it might piss off folks who want more freedom in the matter of gender and regard nature as an enemy of choice. Overall, I regarded Peterson’s ideas as commonplace and, on that basis, didn’t see how he could be called a crypto-fascist.
After that personality-bashing sesh, I began to wonder how Peterson had attracted such a large contingency of rabid detractors. Would any of his ideas be as fervidly denounced were they to issue from another bullhorn? The only cause I could see for his fame on the one hand and infamy on the other was his popularity. The public’s reaction to him was not based on the strength of his ideas but his public persona. In short, it was the public’s “passionate intensity” that had polemicized him and not his unoriginal ideas.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.–William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Public intellectuals are simply those who convey ideas to the public. The more famous they are, the less control they have over how the public reacts to them. More often the public will skip their ideas and denounce or support their personality. If the public intellectual is a polarizing figure, then half will crucify and half will deify them.
I don’t pity public intellectuals like Peterson. They have their own vanity to blame for how the public treats them. They had to consider themselves more worthy than others in the field to become famous and maintain their fame:
“There was never yet true poet nor orator, that thought any other better than himself. And such for the most part are your princes, potentates, great philosophers, historiographers, authors of sects or heresies, and all our great scholars. As Hierom defines; a natural philosopher is a glorious creature, and a very slave of rumor, fame, and popular opinion, and though they write de contemptu gloriae, yet as he observes, they will put their names to their books.”
—Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
As musicians often develop their chops in the church choir or band, public intellectuals develop theirs in institutions that provide them with an audience. In the academy they are afforded an endless supply of young adults who have not established themselves in the world and are receptive to new ideas. In the newsroom they are afforded the followers of current events. In research institutions they present to their peers and colleagues with whom they study and publish. In community organizations they speak at gatherings, protests and political debates. In public office they stump speech to their constituencies. The breakdown of the disciplines of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals for 2025 is the social sciences (35%), natural sciences and technology (25%), humanities and arts (20%), political activism and leadership (15%) and interdisciplinary studies (5%).
Regardless of the institutions they issue from, public intellectuals must adopt a media and presentation style that the public finds attractive. They publish, go on speaking tours, make guest appearances and otherwise garner, for lack of a better term, publicity. Many are famous by dint of timeliness. For instance, in chaotic times, authors like Mel Robbins (The Let Them Theory) become popular. It’s not that Robbins’ silver-bullet remedy to a common cause of anxiety—that we cannot change others and the world—is new. In fact, her approach to personal, social and political chaos is straight out of stoic philosophy. Two thousand years ago, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius advised people to not give a shit about what was out of their control.
Despite the robustness and salience of the ideas that public intellectuals highlight, the public attention they receive usually devolves into a personality cult. Their ideas may be widely accepted but false, like the idea that cholesterol causes heart disease (Ancel Keys). They may be widely denied but true, like the idea that biology affects cognition (Noam Chompsky). They may be original but uninfluential, like the idea that modern media create “pseudo-environments” that are politically destabilizing (Walter Lippmann). They may be unoriginal but influential, like the idea that human will is the cause of human suffering (Arthur Schopenhauer via Siddhartha Gautama). It takes critical thinking to assess the worth and applicability of an idea. And unless the idea is both popular and preposterous, like the idea that the singularity is universally achievable by 2045 (Raymond Kurzweil), it is usually forgotten.
Thanks to our focus on the personality instead of the idea, it is now possible to preach smaller government and practice tyranny. To be both the president of a democratic republic and a fascist dictator. To proclaim oneself entitled to the Nobel Peace Prize while instigating performative wars, inventing arbitrary enemies, imprisoning and murdering innocent civilians, persecuting political opponents, inciting violence and civil unrest, exerting military force no matter how unnecessary and unwanted, and threatening to annex foreign countries in defiance of international treaties and laws. Thanks to the decline in critical thinking, we the people no longer elect our public officials based on the strength and applicability of their ideas. We elect them because they are showboats.
An elected rogue who acts outside of the construct of civilization and is ignorant of the ideas that founded it, reflects the public that elected him. He also reflects the inability of public intellectuals to not simply popularize ideas but to demonstrate and stimulate critical thinking. Public intellectuals have a responsibility to turn the public’s attention away from fatuous VIPs and blustering jackasses and toward the founding concepts, principles and ideas that constitute our civilization. Instead of celebrities who inhabit media pseudo-environments, public intellectuals should act as custodians of public thought. Even when the public regards them as a bunch of popular rogues vying with the rogue in chief.