Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh Disagree Over Gay Marriage

 

This is interesting, how two relatively conservative, fairly influential modern media figures disagreed over whether or not gay marriage is valid.  How could gay marriage really be invalid?  It seems like nothing more than a bias in accepting that lifestyle, preference, or self-definition as legitimate, doesn't it?  One reasonable interpretation seems to be that it's just homophobia, extended to protect an institution regarded as "traditionally straight."

It takes some back and forth to get to it but Matt starts to propose why he sees gay marriage as problematic in this video discussion clip.  I commented there trying to help clarify what he started in on but never made clear; let's start with that:

I'm no fan of this guy, and Joe clearly proposed the superior take on definition of marriage here, but there is something Matt wasn't able to clearly express that works. At a societal level if we drop most of the definitions of roles and forms like marriage, being male or female, related to employment status and commitment, other types of self definition and other family roles there will be negative impact. And probably some positive change, to be fair. 

It doesn't work well to take up the God's eye view on what these social forms reinforce, so any final mapping is problematic. It certainly doesn't work to apply concern about broad societal cultural changes to individual imperatives, or role or relationship definitions, like that of marriage.

In one sense Matt is saying that gay marriage just doesn't work for him personally, but there's a deeper and potentially more reasonable component of that, which starts to question if abandoning many traditional societal roles wouldn't have negative impact on American culture, and on Americans' lives.

The awkward part of his framing is a loose and seemingly meaningless claim that opposes "his" traditional definition of marriage (between a straight man and woman, for the purpose of having and raising children) with a gap on the "other" side, and a claim that there is no good opposing definition.  Joe Rogan argues well here (unusual, that), and is more or less proposing that marriage could as easily be seen as any definition of committed monogamy, as a long-term relationship commitment between man and woman, or a gay couple, with or without any intention to have children.  That part is odd, that married people should intend to have children for some reason, so I'll just set that aside here.

Grey areas are always going to come up.  There's an internet rumor that Joe Rogan is in a somewhat open relationship, that he has binding prenuptial agreement support to pursue physical relationships outside his own marriage, which of course may or may not be true.  Setting that aside here works, and open marriages in general, or just not considering if three people couldn't be married.  It definitely works best to set aside that Matt Walsh is opposed to transgender acceptance and rights in general.

They never did dig down to the supposed problem, to the layers of why Matt sees gay people being regarded as married in society as problematic.  He seemingly wants to retain the use of that pair-bond term and legal definition for straight couples.  He probably is uncomfortable with others being gay, so there probably is a personal feeling aspect to this, but it can work to isolate the most reasonable concern, that he's not expressing well, and isolate it, to see how much sense it could possibly make.  He seems to think that traditional societal roles are functional, and is concerned that new non-traditional definitions and roles won't work as well.  He just stops short of clarifying that concern here.

As a starting point let's use a hypothetical approach, and move back to a more standard definition of marriage from the US in 1950.

Traditional marriage in the US in 1950

Before even treating this gender preference issue it's worth noting that mixed race marriages were not always legal in the US, and the shift to broad acceptance of those probably came after 1950, along with repealing some of the laws preventing this.  It's a bit of an aside but let's start there, with interracial marriage instead (don't worry, this does connect):

Interracial marriage in the United States has been fully legal in all U.S. states since the 1967 Supreme Court decision that deemed anti-miscegenation state laws unconstitutional (via the 14th Amendment adopted in 1868) with many states choosing to legalize interracial marriage at much earlier dates. Anti-miscegenation laws have played a large role in defining racial identity and enforcing the racial hierarchy. The United States has many ethnic and racial groups, and interracial marriage is fairly common among most of them. Interracial marriages increased from 2% of married couples in 1970 to 7% in 2005[16][17] and 8.4% in 2010.[18]

According to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data conducted in 2013, 12% of newlyweds married someone of a different race...

Certes, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons (link)

U.S States, by the date of repeal of anti-miscegenation laws:   No laws passed   Repealed before 1887   Repealed between 1948 and 1967   Overturned on 12 June 1967

In a sense we are there at the connection already, aren't we?  In 1967 all US Southern states were in agreement that people of mixed races could not legally marry, and the rest of the country was in complete agreement that of course they could.  55 years later we're onto a very closely paralleled concern with gay marriage.  The Supreme Court backed all the States outside the South in that divide, and extended previous constitutional rights to include marriage between people of different races.  A more conservative court could walk that back, as gay marriage has been somewhat universally accepted and then restricted again over the past few years.

What was the perceived problem with inter-racial marriage?  It threatened the way that people in the conservative US South viewed race, and surely plenty of conservative and racist individuals elsewhere didn't want people of different races marrying either.  To them race was a social construct and also a real thing, based on clearly identifiable genetic and cultural grounds, that enabled people (with their opinions and perspective) to navigate the world.  To this opposing view if government and legal precedence accepted this racial mixing it would validate that as a form of perfectly reasonable individual choice, in violation of prior norms.  In retrospect it was the norms that had to go, but it probably wasn't so clear at the time, or at least not universally accepted.

To be clear I have two mixed race kids; my wife is Thai, and I'm white and American.  Of course I don't see them as a threat to how others arrange their worldviews, or see their existence as somehow less valid than anyone else's.

where that other direction led, to happy families with more mixed genetics

Matt Walsh sees a related individual choice as a threat, just in regards to gay people forming families, and taking up the formal role as a married couple instead.  Is there anything remotely valid about his perspective?  Not really, as a broad imperative that should be applied to everyone who identifies as gay, but he still might have a reasonable point, just not necessarily the one he's trying to make.

Erosion of social constructs

The isolated race theme some conservatives were promoting in the middle of the 20th century in the US surely didn't work out, but it must be hard to identify how that impacted the US.  Even if someone could tie negative social trends back to this causal input, for example to try to link racial mixing with crime rates, which would be impossible, there is no way that this ever should have trumped individual free choice, that inter-racial marriage should have stayed illegal to maintain some positive social order or common good.  That's Nazi stuff.  This is actually still the main tenet of modern white supremacists; they want other people to stop marrying between races, because it suits their preferences.  Too bad for them, that no one really cares what they prefer, beyond taking active steps to make sure that their views are not influential related to government policies. 

What if a current US social movement was sweeping aside or altering a lot of social constructs at the same time, not just perspectives on race and gender preference, but also gender related roles, what it means to be male or female, related to family structure definition, stability of gender definition across extended time periods (the trans and gender fluid issues), and also how people self-define as employees, citizens, local residents, and so on?  Couldn't that potentially build up to be a more serious problem than any one issue?

Maybe.  Analyzing this is problematic though.  Even if it wasn't a problem to understand these influences, even if these social transitions and cultural cause and effect sequences could be sorted out, identified as they inter-relate, and mapped from causes to final effects, it still wouldn't necessarily tie back to a firm grounds for limiting personal choices.  But let's set that concern aside; how would it be remotely possible to identify any one input's effect?  Let's try a hypothetical test case, not necessarily one that is going to shed light on this, but to help consider how one to one mapping of one change might get started, and why it would have trouble even getting started.

What if we could analyze two relatively identical societies in relation to just one easily identifiable social role and practice related parameter input; that might work.  Let's see if maybe we could consider divorce rate alone in two very comparable countries; maybe it's possible to trace likely outcome patterns from that social input, and maybe the US and Canada could work as examples.  Here's a graph to get us started:

That's from 2013, reported in 2016, and the US and Canada aren't on there (cited as currently 2.3 and 2.1 divorces per 1000, respectively, per Google results, so a bit on the higher side).  What does that even mean, since we are more accustomed to the rougher stat and half of all US marriages end in divorce?  This bullet summary probably helps:

• The current divorce rate in the US is 2.3 persons per 1,000 people.

• Overall, the rate of divorces in America is falling.

• Divorces amongst people aged 50+ years are rising.

• Fewer couples choose to marry than pre-1990.

• The US divorce rate is the third-highest in the world.

• There were around 630,000 divorces in the US in 2020.

Ok then; there is some real social role and practice change.  It does seem like it makes some sense that in the long term that roughly half of all US marriages end in divorce, even though we're not really seeing that stat form there.  Comparing 2.1 and 2.3% does show a difference, off by 10%, but it's probably not enough to serve as a basis for vague guesses about outcomes.  Comparing family stability and then further outcomes between places like the US, Guam, and Peru (at opposite ends of that scale) is also problematic, because so many other cultural differences would factor in.  It could help to compare standardized test results for children with married and separated parents across different countries, and if a clear pattern showed up in spite of the cultural differences then maybe that would help narrow down real, single cause related impact.

Of course this hypothetical study example is still a bit problematic.  Back at the level of guessing causes for the divorce rates at a glance, no trends seem to jump out related to developed or less developed countries having higher divorce rates, and so on.  There is a lot of bunching up of stats between the 2.0 and 2.3 levels in the US and Canada.  That earlier cited claim that "the US divorce rate is the third highest in the world" seems a bit questionable, based on this other set of stats, but so what if Guam, Aruba, Belarus and the others really do have a much higher level rate; what would that tell us?  I suppose if societal conventions are breaking down this might work as a bell-weather indicator, but even if it could we probably couldn't support that through clear analysis and justification, working back to why (eg. if race, religion, or gender preference concerns are a significant cause).

If a stat that is so easily accessible remains problematic to treat much in terms of cause and effect analysis themes like gay marriage and the impact of trans-gender self-identification must be all the more so.

Considering divorce rates in Thailand

Let's shift over into the opposite extreme, ungrounded hearsay input, versus analyzing clear stats; since I've just lived in a foreign country and culture let's consider how I interpret social changes having an impact here in relation to in the US.

Divorce seems pretty common, to me, but that's a little too anecdotal.  My wife's mother (who is elderly, closing in on 80) had 4 siblings, and one didn't marry, three were divorced, and she was widowed, but maybe her own marriage would've held up if not, leading to a 75% divorce rate in their example.  One source goes further, claiming that a general rate was 27% in 2006, and 39% in 2016.  Looking at other stats and sources doesn't narrow that to a clear number per 1000, to match with what I've mentioned so far.

It does seem to disrupt family member's lives, of course, in those examples I've witnessed.  My wife has four closer cousins, and one we're not in such close touch with, and half of those four have been divorced.  It adds complexity and stress for their children to grow up in divided households, or to live with brothers and sisters from different parents.  The cousin that isn't close is from the first wife of an uncle we aren't in touch with; those kinds of ties are impacted.

It's hard to get any feel for general status related to other changes in relation to marriage practices, for example if the impact of increased gay marriage is causing any negative effects, for example if that status is stressful and problematic, as growing up in divided household can be.  Gay people can't legally marry in Thailand, so that's going to throw off collecting any stats.  I don't know that incidence of non-heterosexual identification is necessarily higher or lower in Thailand, but there is a very culturally embedded and accepted male to female identification change, with the opposite seemingly less common, but also well accepted.  Thais don't seem very homophobic, to me; the few gay people I've worked with were treated exactly like everyone else.

Although all this didn't lead anywhere, as considering inter-racial marriage didn't, to me it's still interesting pursuing these thought-model parallels a bit.  We will surely never sort out a final societal negative impact (and positive outcomes) from more widespread gay marriage, but perhaps we can learn from comparing it to other related and better known circumstances.  If there is no way to clearly identify cause and effect for broad trends like divorce rate changes then acting on a presumed possible cause for family structure instability would make no sense, because even if we could accurately isolate a likely potential future cause (eg. society "supporting" gay marriage) we could never really place to what extent that ever happened (acting as a real cause), or didn't happen.  

Of course that's still avoiding a main concern:  gay couples can have kids whether or not legal protections and benefits of marriage apply to them.  It's not likely that slightly more favorable tax deduction options would tip the balance for such decisions.

How could the US government attempt to resolve a "problem" like a high divorce rate, if it came to be seen as problematic?  That's a tough one.  Applying the opposite of tax incentives, some sort of penalties, probably wouldn't work.  Offer counseling?  It's just not the place of government to get involved at this level.

Gender fluidity as an extreme case

Let's go further with what I'm trying to get at.  This seems like as extreme a case in current self-definitions shifts as we are seeing, with some people rejecting that they should adopt any consistent time-frame gender self-definition role at all, not just in terms of gender neutrality (not participating), but related to form of consistent, active identification.  What impact will this have on the stability of society, or an ability for someone to serve as a role model for developing children?

There's no clear way to tell, of course.  As far as society goes I think offending sensibilities and not meeting expectations might be the main impact.  Gender neutrality has the same effect; people just don't know how to place that.  And they don't need to know, unless it somehow becomes relevant to them.  Matt Walsh gave a good example of how that might work in that podcast discussion, just not in that clip, describing a negative experience in referring to a person working in a coffee shop as male, a bearded individual wearing a dress.  That person was offended, and corrected him.  

Relatively little impact there, but Joe and Matt went on to discuss how adding preferred pronouns to their work email footer impacts them.  Really, does it?  Seemingly not; this turns back to sensibilities.  If someone could be processed through HR reaction for mis-gendering, and eventually fired for this, then that's a more practical effect.  If what Matt Walsh said had been a crime, responding "thanks, bro," instead of just "thanks" that's another example of when real impact could apply.

It would take impact and outcomes pushing on to this next level for new forms of confusion and inability to relate to have a next level of real effect.  That gets tricky, because as societal protections ramp up to match average personal acceptance level those legal implications will enter in as well.  It could become very difficult not to "mis-gender" people who were changing self-designation day to day, or difficult to interpret where it all should naturally leave off, if people are adopting non-human identification along with new forms of gender identity, eg. identifying as an animal type, elf, or fairy.  It could sound absurd now but new practices and social norms could need to evolve along with new forms of identification and expression.

It goes without saying that society as a whole trying to prevent anyone from entering into relationships or having children is taking a couple of extra very problematic steps.

Considering differences between two cultures and nationalities

It's very difficult to separate different levels of social changes and outcomes across two different cultures.  Since I just spent two months living back in Honolulu, where I went to grad school, and since I'm in constant online contact with US culture, I can share some impressions related to how changes have real impact, related to here in Thailand, where these changes are slower to occur (accepting that these self-definition changes will also happen here, which is not necessarily a given).  For the most part they really don't seem to shift culture in terms of changing how people inter-relate, to me, beyond a myriad of these isolated cases adding up to real net effect.  

Within certain parts of US society, in sub-culture groups, and probably even industries, there would be real teeth to these new applied demands to observe new norms.  Actors need to adopt or support certain social perspectives, for example, or company cultures can evolve towards shared perspectives, and can certainly prune out staff who don't observe those.  Beyond that it's probably these sorts of hypothetical discussions, up until something like a legal right to marry completely shifts that.

Again, to be clear, Thailand is not undergoing this related social change, per my understanding.  It's coming; according to my son early teenagers are so well exposed to these ideas that it's now just a matter of time until that generation carries their new self-definition range on to adult perspectives and practices.  In not facing the issues yet, for these new perspectives and self-definitions not being taken up, the complications and negative outcomes also don't arise.  To be clear I'm not talking about people self-identifying as gay or trans-gender; those things are normal in Thailand, and have been for some time.  I'm still projecting ahead to how other related changes may cycle through to other kinds of impact, eg. enforced gender pronoun use laws.

A completely unrelated observation that I made just yesterday shows how this kind of input could be almost impossible to isolate, for some types of culture changes being gradual, or relating mainly to background conditions or "feel."  I'm going to try to use this example to explain how a general culture-based "feel" varies, which is difficult to achieve.

My wife and I were in an informal market area, eating dinner in an outdoor food court sort of area, with lights hanging to outline the area, food trucks or stands serving the food, and loud music playing.  In the US I had only seen food trucks mirroring this sort of environment, and that only recently, on the last stay in Hawaii (it wasn't there 15 years ago, or probably open to local licensing).  I'm not claiming that Thai and developing-world culture is influencing the US; in fact the opposite.  That sort of chaotic, vibrant, loud, uncontrolled environment didn't remind me of any experience I'd ever had in the US; it just felt different.  I suppose it was closest to the feeling at an event, let's say at a large sports event, or state fair type environment.  There is more structure and shared intentional context there, but the dynamic feel is somewhat comparable.

It couldn't be more normal in places like Bangkok sidewalks, or old-style markets.  It reminded me of how one main observation from a single visit to Europe a very long time ago was that societies there were much more orderly, quieter, and more reserved.  Not Eastern Europe, I don't mean; beyond the Czech Republic we only visited the Western parts.  That was generally a positive thing, that public environments were much cleaner and better organized, and people were more reserved.  It just felt a little odd, being accustomed to less restrictive and louder American experience.  

Thailand is a couple of steps further into chaos, culturally.  And that's generally a good thing too, ironically.  There is essentially no crime at all, in comparison with US urban environments, and a lot changes when you cut off that mapping of rough edges and poverty linking to a lack of safety.  A high degree of comfortable feeling enters in, when restrictions drop away, and noise picks up, with no real downside in terms of what might happen that's negative.  Traffic risk is much worse; you have to be careful of that, and that's about it.

In the US political issue tension combines with these varying contexts and cultural shifts.  Some of it all is just about perceptions and expectations, one broad group not liking another, but then real impacts do adjoin all that.  Real violence comes up.  Someone can get shot in a road-rage incident in Thailand too, but road rage is a much less common theme.  Everyone drives so poorly all the time it's just the norm.  It's rare for people to use a horn because that's regarded as poor form, but people almost crash into each other continually; that's just what driving experience is.  I've only been in one accident in 15 years here though, when the mud-flap of a truck grazed our car due to passing too close when we were turning at an intersection.

Where was I going with all this?  Broader cultural context is a funny thing, not something easy to isolate.  Splitting out individual inputs and change effects is going to be problematic when cultural context baselines are so complex themselves.  Some degree and types of chaos can seem good, and others can be very problematic.  The tension and political perspective divide in the US isn't a universal theme, and legal restrictions mapping to every point of personal perspective also isn't.   

Thailand is quite openly accepting of gay and transgender status, but there is no same sex marriage in Thailand.  This relates to a generally conservative approach to application of laws, and the government trying to just stay out of it.  I don't think there ever were legally mandated protections related to gender, race, or ethnic status either; society was given free reign to sort all that out instead.  That's a trade-off; problematic special cases would occur without such protections, some people treated unfairly, while the entire range of problems from mandating equal rights also drops out.

It's probably going to seem like none of that connected, as much as I see it all as linked.  What is the running thread between informal food courts set up under elevated highways tying back to societal protections and perspective of gay people?  Less formal and restricted social order seems to be a normal earlier state in the development of societies.  At the other extreme perhaps European societies are much more orderly, clearly role-defined, and rigid, which has to bring in positive aspects at a cost.  The chaotic state of people doing whatever they want to do is nice, in terms of freedom and openness, but then negative patterns evolve that society tries to make adjustments for.  Maybe gays being married is not at all a good example of this; it doesn't seem to parallel the natural need to set speed limits on roads or to control food safety through laws and inspection steps.

Conclusions

The final point, as much as there is one, is that dictating culture, perspective, and individual behavior is problematic.  You can't really isolate broad cultural shifts and then identify clear outcomes that result from those.  No one can say if allowing mixed race marriages proved to be a positive or negative input to US culture, in terms of some vague well-being metric.  Surely providing people with reasonable rights was a positive change.  

It also doesn't work well to identify clear outcomes of culture-based choice trends through stats, or by comparing one aspect of one country to another, broadly mapping different cultures.  "Allowing" gay marriages probably has no more impact than allowing mixed race marriages did, but even if there was some negative outcome (eg. higher divorce rate, children experiencing problems due to drawing on more diverse role model forms) it seems in this case access to equal rights is still the primary concern.  

If 25% of all Americans drop out of traditional gender based self-image roles that will have significant impact on US culture, but no one will ever really be able to separate that out as a cause of other individual effects.  The US economy is already in serious long term decline, which surely no one can contest, and that cause will have greater impact on US society than almost any other individual factors.  That one over-arching factor, along with issues of unequal distribution of wealth, will have more impact than people deciding that they want to switch genders, or not adopt one, or keep switching that self-definition around.

Conservatives in general would be uncomfortable with people being gay or trans.  My own parents are completely liberal, except with regards to this one point.  They just can't accept that as a valid norm, that men might be attracted to men, and women to women.  As committed liberals maybe they can't go as far as Matt Walsh does, and say that marriage should be restricted to straight couples, although maybe they could, supporting use of the term "civil union" instead, accepting equivalent rights but not use of "their word."  

My parents would be open to offering gays equivalent tax benefits, and legal protections related to divorce processing and inheritance, which shifts the issue back into purely semantic range.  My parents would base that preference for word use on a perspective informed by religion, where it seems that maybe people like Matt Walsh see societies' endorsement of taking on social roles as grounded elsewhere, as supporting positive forms (what he sees as positive), leading to better outcomes (what he projects as probably better).  His framing and read are problematic on every level.  All the same thinking through broader related patterns and why he is uncomfortable seems interesting, to think through the next level of underlying context.

Disney, Marvel, and the change in movie formats and values

 

It's no secret that the culture war has touched on essentially all aspects of American life, that everything divides between liberal and conservative views and preferences, well beyond entertainment media and news coverage.  Since I've been watching more Disney content than usual lately (my wife subscribed us to Disney + last year) those patterns are becoming more and more familiar, related to their input to Marvel movies and television shows.  Probably it would be for the best if I just eased up on hearing any related commentary (online views on their content), since that has moved from interesting and insightful related to outlining the two related points of view to quite tiresome, creating conflict where there only really needs to be preference differences.

Here is one latest reference I just saw, mentioned in a Joe Rogan Reddit subforum:

That subforum is a good example of what I need to stop being exposed to.  Does it really matter if cartoon movie characters are gay?  I don't know; I guess opinions on that would vary.  Probably it would be more of an issue how they framed that status and general acceptance of it, the perspectives of different movie characters.  I'll get back to placing it further.

A seemingly deeper issue has been Marvel television series and movies "ruining" comic book characters and themes by swapping out white male characters for female and minority equivalents.  Any problem there?  Again it depends.  Plenty of that came up in renewing text comic series, making female versions of Thor and the Hulk, for example, so these are based on existing in-print character versions.  Beyond that it seems to mix with problems with creating good stories, which would seem like a real issue.  This Youtube "Critical Drinker" reviewer post seems to outline the conservative side of this perspective divide, in this post "Ms. Marvel:  How Not to Build a Hero."

One might expect that the problem is that the hero in question is a minority female, a Muslim Pakistani American teenage girl.  It's not really that, or at least as that Youtuber frames things it's not.  He outlines how a movie needs to go about setting up a good superhero story (which we should consider and critique, rather than accept, but at least initially the points seem reasonable).  You need these elements:

1. a hero, with some sort of origin story 

2. that hero's well defined powers (or some just have extra capabilities, like using a bow)

3. an internal conflict to be resolved in that hero, enabling some sort of character and story arc

4. an external threat, typically a primary antagonist, but this could take different forms

So the problem is that this story misses most of that.  This story's hero wasn't like that (as described in the trailer, a preview, since he didn't see the episode then, since it hadn't come out yet).  The Ms. Marvel character (Kamila) has a background, so in a limited sense 1 is met, but 2 didn't seem to be clear in that preview (although later it would be; origin stories can develop that over time).  Based on his assessment, which turned out to match the first episode, since I just saw that, there really isn't much internal conflict to be resolved in the hero, besides her being a teen, and a minority, and being into comic books (although in that story the heroes are real; it's set in the Marvel world, so it's really just the in-movie real life characters).  The external threat might come later; as of the first episode and the trailer there isn't one.

Does what he is saying work?  In one sense sure, but in another maybe not.  This is a primary earlier paradigm for telling comic book stories that he has outlined, for sure.  But do Disney and Marvel need to stick to this template for every movie or television series?  Not really.  Traditional action, adventure, and fantasy story telling tends to follow this form, but leaving a part out or replacing one might be fine.

A common critique is that in this new liberal oriented version, as in Captain Marvel, the hero--or heroine; I'm not sure which term is more acceptable now, probably hero?--is granted powers by an external agent or force.  They're not tied to a development story, or linked with character limitations the hero needs to overcome.  Then again Green Lantern was just given a power ring, Superman was born that way, Spiderman got bit by a spider; like that.  It's not as if Marvel themes are a completely different paradigm, but they do tend to follow their own somewhat rigid patterns.

It's worth noting that this paradigm is part of a much older "hero's journey" theme that evolved in older mythology, as something that was written into stories about Green and Roman gods, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and so on, up until the modern day.  Jordan Peterson--claimed to represent conservative perspective, and to some degree he does--attributes this form to Disney stories like Pinocchio, and it seems to fit.  This list of 4 plot points would need to add a rescuing of an external valued good, fulfilling a societal norm or family expectation, and probably transforming both self-understanding / actualization and also a broader framework of valued roles and actions.  Heroes often tend to "save the world" in some sense, not just overcome a serious threat.

What if a storyteller wanted to throw out most of these four "rules?"  It should be possible to still tell a different kind of story, which still may appeal to a broad audience.  Something like a tragedy form of story is different; it's not like this.  Of course a Disney television show can't be a tragedy, but I mean that the normal template isn't required, it's not the only one available.  Love stories set up a similar conflict / resolution theme, but they are also different.

All this makes me think back to when we saw forms of story telling change in the past, related to shifting how stories were framed, and which values and forms were promoted.  Star Trek tried to explain, justify, and lead societal changes by promoting inclusiveness for racial equality (represented by aliens, but clear enough in meaning), gender equality (to a limited extent), and the use of reason and value of promoting common good.  It all kind of worked, in a limited sense.  The parallel with the Cold War and roles of the Russians and Chinese (as Klingons and Romulans) was a bit heavy-handed, and they really weren't promoting a mature form of gender equality, but it was fine for the 1960s.

Prior to that what kind of rules could we derive from heroic story forms like Westerns, the Lone Ranger, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rodgers, previous equivalents of stories like Star Trek and Star Wars?  Maybe these:

1. a central hero is a white male, matching that real life societal expectation, for example that every US President was of this type.  This paradigm is from earlier European culture, but these movie forms are based out of the US, from Hollywood.

2. a sidekick role can be used to promote positive value of minorities, females, or youths, with these secondary in importance, personal strengths, and story resolution effectiveness

3. characters need to be truly good or truly evil.  They can change from one to the other, but there can be no anti-heroes (a character who is both), or heroes with deeply flawed characters.  A character arc can transition a deeply flawed but basically good hero to the more uniformly positive form; this is really the most typical form.

4. antagonists represent negative character, not just an equivalent moral value separate interest.  Limitations in character (morality) and competence link together and cause their downfall.  Again I'm referring to an old paradigm; in the most modern form it's better if people can relate to the villain's perspective as somewhat reasonable.  Even the Heath Ledger Joker made some good points, and he was clearly evil.

5. there is room for arbitrary "other" character range as background.  These rules for main hero and main antagonist don't apply to all other characters, although the others are generally aligned with one "side" or the other.

Can we still tell this form of story?  Sure, but it's not going to work out like that in most cases.  It's a dated form, and a far more interesting story theme to move on to the Marvel template, or even beyond that.  Superman is written in this older form (for example he has no character flaws or arc), and it makes stories too simple sticking to that.  This is why they tend to include "evil Superman" arcs in comics, or add shortcomings for him to overcome in movie versions.  Not so effectively in recent films, really, because it runs against his entire character type.

Why is it a problem to include a protagonist / main hero who faces absolutely ordinary and mundane background and challenges?  Why can't being normal be a problem, like being a minority teen seeking out a self-identity and clearer social role?  Or I guess a drug or alcohol problem, or losing a job, or physical injury.  Dr. Strange overcame a physical injury, but his real arc was about character transition, and change of direction in terms of what he values.  But a more mundane form of story might be more relatable, without taking up magic use being so central, or leading on to saving the world. 

In a sense having the Moon Knight (tv series) character experience mental illness followed a related form, even though Dissociative Identity Disorder isn't conventional or mundane.  Mental illness sort of is conventional; lots of people struggle with depression or schizophrenia, and so on.

I'm not sure that Marvel made that work, setting it up as an internal challenge to be resolved.  The two primary internal personalities quickly became friends, although I guess per the writers' intent maybe that was a series long challenge and resolution, and it only seemed thin to me.  The wife of one persona immediately felt a strong personal bond with the other, which I guess could be a basis for later tension and conflict, but it missed an opportunity to write in real conflict to be resolved.

Per the Star Wars story and character arcs what this liberal "side" wants to write are stories where characters are granted special powers, without facing an internal arc, replacing older characters as superior than them, and later triumphing based on those received attributes.  Some of the "life lesson" form intended in old myths, and in not nearly as old Marvel stories, then drops out.  That was about overcoming setbacks, conflicts, and personal limitations.  Is this really a problem?  It's hard to say for sure.

To succeed as a form of mythology, to transmit values for ordinary people to take on as lessons, it might be a problem.  It doesn't take much adjustment for a new form of similar lessons to enter back in.  Per one interpretation Captain Marvel succeeded because an accident gave her powers, and per another she realized her then-inherent potential through deeper self-understanding, and through accepting risk of failure in testing her own limits.  Rey of Star Wars played out a similar revised form of character and story arc.  She did nothing to earn being the most powerful force user in existence, with the movie #8 explanation being that random chance caused that, and there were no unusual choices involving her taking on the hero's path, she was pushed into it externally.

On the conservative side of the perspective divide it looks to some people as if Disney / Marvel / movie content producers overplay this theme by not only having the central character granted special powers, without going through any internal challenge and transition, but the same happens with supporting characters.  In the Shang Chi story one main hero was a sidekick--a minority, without physical gifts or aptitudes, representing an ordinary person--who saved the day in the final battle with a lucky shot with a bow and arrow, after a few hours of practice, hitting a small moving target 1 km away.  Roughly the same happened in the Star Wars series, based on almost exactly the same character type, and to some extent the exact same action sequence.

The lesson here is that ordinary people can be heroes, even if being a main protagonist involves special circumstances and in-born or granted attributes.  In a sense that really is ok.  It just doesn't match an earlier expected form, and per one set of expectations it makes luck way too central to main movie turning points, versus effort and earned aptitude.  It doesn't try to teach people to work to earn special status, and the ability to resolve difficult problems, the lesson is that luck determines most things.  Or there just is no lesson, really.

From there intentionally including a lot of reference to gender, race, and sexual preference is off-putting to conservative viewers.  Female heroes are more effective in many recent Marvel stories, and older central heroes are "nerfed," reduced in power level and importance.  In the new Hawkeye series Hawkeye doesn't take part in the final "boss battle;" his younger female sidekick does instead.  If a very high proportion of primary protagonists are female or minority race, or gay or trans, in a sense that's still fine, but to viewers of conservative political inclinations it won't work well.

Surely all this came up related to the old Star Trek series, and that earlier paradigm shift.  Everyone had to get it that female characters were playing a greatly expanded role, even though, as in James Bond films, those roles were secondary.  It must have been clear that it was all allegory about race or nationality.  Looking back that shouldn't have been a problem, because the Klingons (Russians) were evil, and Romulans (Chinese) were also evil, and also somehow less respectable, so from both of "that time period's" conservative and liberal views the stories should have still worked.  They broke new ground, but from this time period's perspective they were careful about limiting that.

Next we might guess at where all this is leading.  It's possible for better story tellers to use these potential new forms in more developed ways, that support broader acceptance.  That's another sticking point; these stories being told could be appealing to people valuing these minority and gender representations, but they're not great stories in terms of building compelling characters and plot lines, setting up conflict to cause tension, and leading to engaging action as resolution.  The real shift to acceptance should be based on that.  The Star Trek form, and those old shows, are still popular today because it was all so well done, while a series like Battlestar Galactica was novel but largely faded from view, for not pulling it all off as well.

Then it's a problem that new stories aren't being told, as often as old characters and franchises are re-used.  Television shows will need to lead this form, since it's a risk to spend $150 million on a major production not based on a known story context.  Or presumably small-scale drama oriented stories could lead action / fantasy / adventure story context changes.  Streaming platforms are definitely helping drive this.

In the meantime if you listen to liberal or conservative film and television content commentary both "sides" come across as a bit "toxic" (most typically a label the left applies to the right).  They both make reasonable points about these issues, but tend to miss that they are opposed to the sub-contexts that they don't prefer, based around story-telling mode preferences and gender and race character context.  Any one person should only see one set of opinions in their Youtube or Facebook related secondary opinion commentaries, given how political preference filtering works out in those platforms, so that side would seem more right.

Digging deeper into secondary issues and contexts

What about the starting point of opposing or being open to movie characters being gay, or self-defined in other less traditional ways?  That's back to a simpler sticking point of the culture war divide.  "Hollywood" really does want to press a liberal context acceptance agenda, and half of the US population isn't on that page.  Or maybe it's really 45%, with 10% not as actively involved in the left and right divide.  It may come down to which proportion of movies and television content take up that context and portray it as a normal life theme, a standard value norm, and which other content sets that aside.  

The last Marvel movie I saw, Dr. Strange, included a gay character (America Chavez), but they didn't include that portrayal in the story, beyond having her wear a "pride" pin.  I don't remember it coming up in the last Spider Man movie either, and the Eternals had gay characters kiss, as a reference to it.  It's an active culture war; it's going to come up.

As I consider further the challenges faced by the Ms Marvel character it seems like I'm overstepping "internal struggle" concerns as trivial that are being addressed as serious, and of primary significance.  That character was a Youtube content creator with no following, and she had friends, and participated in social activities, but wasn't popular.  Completely normal, right?  Sure, but to not see this as a problem trivializes how younger people, and people in general, relate to their own life experience.  If she was a very attractive girl, with parents pushing her to be popular, and academically successful, or probably if she was wealthy, her conditions would be quite different.  She would experience other status and benefits from social acceptance.  

Her minority status seems to not be problematic at all, as portrayed, but I suppose incidental challenges might be seen as more important than I'm attributing them to be, for example her character having a tighter curfew.  I suppose it's understandable that such context as personal challenges has to be inconsistent, to fit episode plot lines, for example that one week she can't go to a comic convention (real life hero convention "in-story"), and the next she can go to a party.

She isn't really identified as experiencing mental health issues, like attention deficit disorder, but it's implied there.  As a parent I can relate to the general concern that all kids who spend more than half their free time consuming media, playing games, or on social media might naturally develop a limited real-life context attention span.  Dealing with this in a story line is probably going to be problematic, for that show, so they won't go there, but waving aside the issue as trivial isn't right either.  Teens experience this as a problem; they have to deal with it.

The same parallel can come up related to kids who are gay, or who now see themselves as gender neutral, or gender fluid (which I really won't try to unpack here).  To them it's a serious concern and challenge, and it doesn't work for a more conservative viewer to just see that as normal, as nothing to be concerned about, as not a significant internal conflict.  

I'm reminded of one gay roommate experiencing a significant internal struggle with exactly this issue, and after some degree of dealing with self-image and external social image he came to see it as normal, as not particularly unusual or challenging.  But that process took years, probably a main life theme for him between 15 and 25.  It works better for Spiderman to work through challenges of having superpowers and balancing saving people as a demand than for him to be gay; it fits natural fantasy story lines.  I don't mean that it has to be off-limits, or that it's a story that can't or shouldn't be told, but it's complicated, and a lot easier to move plot points along related to having superpowers.  My roommate put it all together little by little, one discussion and social exchange after another, and it took that full decade.  Spiderman tends to go from the spider bite to stopping muggers within a few scenes, only delayed by uncle Ben dying in two out of three portrayals.  He could come to terms with a gender or sexual preference issue in 3 or 4 short scenes too, but it would conflict a lot with real life experience.

Back to the theme of good storytelling form, I think one main problem is that these can be real character concerns, internal struggle for them to overcome, but that in the movies or tv shows I've cited they're not actually addressing and resolving these issues, these are just background concerns for them to deal with.  In one sense the Moon Knight character resolved having multiple personalities, so that's a potential counter-example, but really it went from impossible to work with and relate to on to being completely resolved with very little struggle or resolution effort on the main character's part (the two of them, two personas).  It would've required very developed, nuanced, and abbreviated form story arc to change that, and I suppose to some viewers that's exactly what they pulled off, and I just didn't see it that way.  The same could apply to Captain Marvel; to many maybe she really did overcome personal self-limitations and fear, through long struggle and introspection, and that's just not how I saw it on-screen.  She realized that she had a control device on her and pulled it off; problem solved, easily.

Maybe these personal development arcs are going to need to be like that, to match real life forms, drawn out across running threads and many personal exchanges, across more scenes and screen time.  I'm referring to the abbreviation issue tied to my friend and roommate's case.  These Youtubers who are criticizing this content themselves spent years building up to 100k follower counts, learning their craft of developing content, managing algorithms, telling their own stories, networking to build viewer base, etc., and the Ms Marvel character can't be shown doing equivalent things.  Maybe in a montage sequence of some sort, but even that would look mundane, beyond the limitations of showing it in a half dozen visual images.  Her own resolution needs to be about having superpowers, as occurred in the Spiderman story.  Peter Parker struggled with relationship issues and job concerns, so they balanced all that, but it took careful storytelling to do so, adding a moving depth to that character.

There's one additional problem, a big one, that relates to why the news media divide thrives on developing this perspective divide, instead of helping resolve it.  That "Critical Drinker" Youtube video has 1.5 million views, and that content creator has made another 20 videos with almost exactly the same theme, across different Disney or other producer characters and stories.  It's his job, literally, to take that side on this issue, to express it and for others to consume that content, and for him to get paid for making it.  Over the next year he will make another dozen videos complaining about the same issues, in exactly the same way, and he will draw the better part of another 10 million views for doing it, and earn the related ad revenue.

He's not exactly an outlier in that regard; this other channel, Nerdrotic, made roughly the same video ("Marvel PANICS After Year of M-She-U FAILURES | Ms. Marvel DISASTER Undergoes EXTENSIVE Reshoots"), at the same time, which has so far drawn 680k views, for a channel with less than half a million followers.  It seems like a Youtuber equivalent to doing what it takes to succeed in a corporate job; maybe it matches their views and maybe it doesn't, but it pays off either way.  I don't know that liberal supporters of this content form draw quite the same following, but that content does exist.  Drama and negativity work better for drawing viewership, and this "conservative side" can build on attachment to earlier forms of the same stories, complaining that Disney is ruining comic book stories.  Maybe they are, per one valid perspective and set of expectations?

One might wonder how people in other cultures place all this.  I live in Thailand; what do people here think of sticking to more traditional forms of hero stories (like Iron Man had been), or moving away from that, embracing diversity issues over a main central character arc, like in the Eternals?  They don't tend to think about it.  

I recently discussed superhero movie preferences with my wife's cousin, who is on that page, and his main comment was that he didn't like the way general story tones became darker.  For example, the Infinity War story killed half the universe, Endgame killed off a few main characters, and even the last Spiderman movie killed one main one (aunt May), for no clear story support reason, just to add tension and impact.  The good guy tended to win in the past, and at most they dabbled in offing a secondary character to mix things up.  It's not unprecedented in written comics, but not a sub-theme he likes.  In the written comics characters could die and come back, which also happens in films, but it has a different feel to it.  

Characters being minorities or gay doesn't seem to hold positive or negative value for him, I don't think.  Gender perspective isn't transitioning here, and it was fairly open to begin with, so that people can self-define as they like.  No one is going to learn any extra pronouns, but in general people will call trans individuals according to the role they take up, without anyone overthinking that.  They're not exactly "fully enlightened" in relation to such issues, but a liberal and conservative culture war wouldn't have the same divide to build on, so one has yet to start.

Does it seem like I'm tipped pretty far in one direction related to all this?  I feel as if I can relate to both sides.  If these newer, more progressive hero stories were just better stories I'd be fine with them.  The Loki television series (on Disney +) included a powerful, compelling, well-developed alternate universe female character that completely worked for me, framed within a good story.  It's a little late for me to be newly introduced to the idea that a woman can be a superhero too, since Wonder Woman covered that in the mid 20th century, and Gamora is one of my favorite Marvel characters, but it added to that legacy.  Folding in more social role commentary might be tricky, but if it somehow told an integrated story it could be fine, maybe even if I didn't fully accept the point of view being suggested.  

It will be interesting to see if Disney ever can succeed in normalizing normal internal struggles as part of a new form of hero's journey.  I mean mundane ones, like normal teen social development.  It should work.  It might fail for a reason I've not brought up, that it's too ordinary, and fails to fulfill the function of fantasy escapism.  It was nice having Neo of the Matrix escape life in an office cubicle, but what if he worked there for the entire movie instead, and a main sub-plot was about mundane office politics, him not getting a raise or promotion?  Maybe the imbalance in parallel themes could be interesting, as they started to play off of in Fight Club.  But it took great writing to do what they did in that movie.  They didn't include sub-context just because it made for a cool background aspect; every point brought up was woven together into story lines and character development.  

In the Eternals one immortal character was a child, just because they happened to be that, as one seemed to be a teen for the same reason, and characters were gay just because they were.  It can frame these contexts as normal, as they should be, but without being a part of a story about characters and developed plots it doesn't mean anything.  Could an immortal being maintain the status and personality type of a child, instead of developing mature social perspective, matching an adult form?  Would such beings face and overcome conflict related to same sex gender preference, and would that form shift over historical time periods?  The movie didn't develop these points.  

This is really why a more standard path is to start with origin stories at a more detailed level, to build up how these inputs work, instead of starting from a team-up movie theme context.  It's just good story telling, versus showing cut and pasted versions of expected images, exotic locations, action packed fight scenes, and novel superpowers.  To do justice to supporting new social role definitions and issues movie makers will have to build up interesting characters and tell good stories.

Jordan Peterson on the Bible as the basis for modern worldview

 

Jordan Peterson recently made an interesting claim in a Joe Rogan podcase video that the Bible is really such a foundational work that to a limited extent Western literature and general perspective itself is based on it.  Maybe.  It takes some doing to get to why he's saying that, in order to evaluate it.  Or maybe it doesn't really work to evaluate it, but doing the framing part is still interesting.

He outlines the main direction as follows, in the first words in that video:

"if categories just dissolve, especially fundamental ones, then the culture is dissolving, because the culture is a structure of categories.  That's what it is.  So in fact culture is a structure of category that we all share.  So we see things the same way, so that's why we can talk.  I mean not exactly the same way, because then we'd have nothing to talk about.  Roughly speaking, we have a bedrock of agreement.  That's the Bible, by the way."

I'll start with a bit of an intro of Jordan Peterson's general perspective first, and get back to this.  I mentioned this video to an online friend who is into Christianity who responded that he wasn't interested because Jordan Peterson is not a reliable source (just not put that way).  There's something to that; I think a lot of what Jordan Peterson expresses is either meaningless or not informative without placing exactly what he is saying, or not saying, and why, with his normal form of expressing content not at all clear without that context.  So although it's all tangent I'll address that part first, then get on with looking at how the Bible really may or may not be the basis for a modern Western worldview.  

I've studied religion a little, even in a number of religion classes, but I'm not exactly an expert on the subject, it's just something I've already given some thought to.

Jordan Peterson versus the left

His conflict with "the left" came to head at the same time his popularity as a thought leader evolved, in relation to the gender pronoun issue.  More specifically, it was identified as something like illegal hate speech to not use preferred pronouns where he was living, in one part of Canada.  There are problems with that type of law, which he correctly identified.  And a general context problem with the use of diverse gender identification, which he also identified.  Then he does also go on to make criticisms and sweeping cultural identifications that don't make sense.  Let's start with those.

He consistently identifies a broad range of perspectives and directives as tied back to Marxists and Marxism.  Parts of it seem to work, it's just that the framing really doesn't, as if there is a unified far-left perspective that involves a lot of shared philosophical underpinnings and final conclusions.  The philosophical part is weak too; a far left perspective evolved a certain way, but not really based on those inputs, or at least not as directly as he explicitly links together.

It might work to say that perspective basis and positions on final issues might be generally common to a range that could be fairly identified as extreme left, but he just goes too far with the generalities.  It's probably because he is exposed to extreme versions, and within the academic environment what these derive from, in general, is more consistent and known.  But it's not really like that related to the average person who thinks that trans-gender individuals should or should not have equal rights.  They're not necessarily well read up on 19th and 20th century philosophy, or involved with the same degree of philosophical and psychological assumptions.  Some are extremists, sure, on both the left and right, and draw on ideas derived in lots of ways.  One could argue that their final positions and views are partial extensions of those earlier ideas, and the linkage doesn't need to be tight, and that's back to working better.

The starting point of rejecting mandated use of language works.  It's not problematic to restrict use of negative terms (the "n word," fag, and so on).  Telling people which words they need to use is a bit different.  If there was a distinct set of new gender pronouns being advocated that would at least be a more workable context, but the list of those expanded to over 50, and just kept changing and growing.  Tracking them and being responsible for use in every interaction was already impossible at that point, and it's not as if the numerous early versions were going to stay fixed.

If it had only related to that the subject wouldn't have drawn the attention it did.  Jordan Peterson next claimed that only a limited set of pronouns made sense in relation to being tied back to biological gender, which of course is a divisive and problematic position.   That issue never really gets settled, because people on both extremes keep redefining their position context and finer points, so they end up talking past each other.  

It doesn't work to say that biological gender identification is optional, or you end up with female powerlifters competing and breaking records who only identified as female for a matter of weeks prior, or maybe even only on that day.  It also doesn't work to say that gender identification needs to be tied only to genetic factors, because lots of other cases contradict that, and there has to be space for gender to be regarded as a social construct too, because of course it's partly that.  Leaving aside atypical biological conditions it's just not right saying that people can't change their personal identity because of some genetic biological context.  Of course they can.  It was this messy topic that made Jordan Peterson famous, as much as any other.

His core messages were never really mostly about that.  He is second most known for a self-development theme, encouraging people to set goals for themselves, to take responsibility for their lives, to start with making small positive changes in their life circumstances or self perception, to become aware of limitations they place on themselves, and so on.  His earlier academic work wasn't about either theme (political perspective and gender issues, or self-development).  He focused on two topics:  the basis for and experience of meaning, and how basic teachings and groundworks of psychological models fit together with biological and social inputs.  That second one tied to the gender issues.

So how did he ever become a spokesperson for the right wing?  The short answer is that this is wrong, and he didn't.  He opposes an extreme left / liberal set of ideas and positions, but for the most part doesn't support much that is associated with the right wing / conservative perspective, beyond not explicitly rejecting the alignment as much as one might expect for a professed "classic liberal."  Maybe self-development themes could link with themes about personal independence, and then it all connects, but it's a stretch.  I suppose the whole nature versus nurture / inborn characteristics versus social development set of themes does underpin positions he takes or opposes, which map to conservative themes in whatever ways.  It just doesn't work to connect it all together.  

When he debates liberal members of the media they are consistently attributing positions and claims to him that aren't accurate, so those interviews get bogged down in talking about rejecting what he doesn't actually say.  It's not worth watching more than one example of that, because there is limited positive content from either perspective (ideas actually asserted) to relate to or not relate to.

So how does Jordan Peterson go too far, what does he say that's not fair, or accurate?  He habitually categorizes positions and perspectives in broad, sweeping ways, so that most "leftists / Marxists" are making the same claims, based on the same foundational context.  Some of that may work as a generality for some people and positions, but it's just not how that really works, that you can paint a broad and general political perspective into such a limited and clear set of positions and assumptions.  That's partly what is going wrong with people identifying his ideas and position in relation to the right, or far right / conservative perspective.

Oddly that tendency and pattern tie back to what works well in his teachings.  You really can't easily pull apart what foundational thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, Jung and Freud, and later French philosophers are saying, pinning each down to a half dozen core assertions and ideas.  They address complex divides in thought that only really make sense in relation to other sets of ideas they are building on, opposing, or responding to.  Sometimes parts of some models are very simple and clear, and then simpler summaries do work better.  

But the problem with saying that you can't extract complex teachings into a half dozen simple statements is that you need to do this to "work with" such ideas, unless you are able to take a graduate class that studies their work, and even then you tend to only focus on one text by one person.  So to a limited extent distilling Nietzsche down to a dozen "Nietzsche says..." statements misses what he is really saying, but at least it works with some ideas, it considers them.

The other part of problems with Jordan Peterson's thinking, besides overgeneralizing, and being judged for advocating ideas that he is really not advocating, is that he seems to get caught up in negativity that isn't really necessary, other aspects of the political divide, and the general downfall of society sort of themes.  Extreme personal difficulties could account for that, facing problems across a lot of scope as a main life theme, health issues and such.

On to the part about Christianity, which will tie back further to his general approach and thoughts on other broad patterns, but not to problems or criticisms with him, his statements, or his work.

Christianity / the Bible as a basis for Western perspective and society

This subject is good and sweeping, isn't it?  More context on JP's approach and perspective on things:  he sees legends and traditional stories as distillations of familiar narratives and old events that include life guidance, that set up a context for an individual worldview, and underpin it.  He uses the Pinocchio story to give the most detailed examples, but any hero's story will do to fill in the same pattern.  Let's start there.  

First let's be even clearer about what I've just claimed is his position:  these traditional legends may or may not be about people that did exist, but the stories are built out of other old stories and forms, including external details of activities (things added).  I think this part is right; extra interpretation and things added or taken away in retelling would change old story forms to borrow from or match other old stories.

The hero's journey (a broad and shared form) is that the central character is faced with some sort of external threat or demand, and needs to go on some sort of quest to resolve this, to seek something out, or finish a difficult task.  Then they undertake this, face extreme challenges, and question their own perspective, capabilities, and motivations, often making some sacrifice, finally accomplishing their goal and returning triumphant, and altered by the experience.  

Why these themes, what does it mean?  Lots of things, really.  It's a good story (a basis for one); that's part of it.  It's also a teaching about personal character, appropriate motivations, questioning assumptions and one's role in society, about transcending earlier self-definition and assumed capabilities, and contributing to society.  The bad characters, and their motivations and actions, represent what society intends to reject, and "quest" setbacks represent conventional pitfalls in self-understanding or development.  And it's also about other things, I suppose, but that works for a start.

Moral teachings are an important part too, about placing the good of others and the whole above your own.  That one theme repeats more than any other in a lot of story telling.  But why?  It's part of the basis for society itself, part of the fabric of what a collective of individuals is based on.  If everyone only acts for immediate and long term self interest then the institutions and broader goals suffer.  Societal level issues like global warming and national debt could never be resolved, because these relate to the interests of future individuals.  

Even more mundane restrictions on things like stealing also help establish societal order.  Proactive emphasis on themes like generosity work in a similar way, just from the other direction.  Self-sacrifice is a great example of extension of that kind of theme.  Minor norms would end up being swept in too, relatively value-neutral components that are still positioned as generally positive, something like urban versus rural living, or aesthetic themes.

So the old legends people accept and re-tell are really tied to a kind of meta-narrative, about underlying themes and conditions.  Tony Stark is doing what Beowulf had been doing, and these stories include life lessons.  Then it's interesting to consider if we are really soaking up that message; does anyone lead their own life differently because the Stark corporation moved on from selling defense goods, or because Tony risked his own life to defeat Thanos, and then actually did die?  Probably not really.  But that always had been part of the point.

The Bible is a lot more direct about this intention, or religion in general is.  You are supposed to learn from these examples and apply them.  Then in the end your own place in heaven is dependent on doing this, with it all taken in one way.  With religion taken less literally there probably is no literal afterlife like that, but we build up the reality we should be able to experience based on all our own actions, perspectives, life directions, and moral choices.

So far so good; Jesus and Moses and the rest are teachers of correct perspective and morality.  Jordan takes all this one step further in observations in that video, and it's an interesting step.  To him it's not just meta-narratives that "roll up" to a worldview and perspective context, we can apply all this to literature.  Shakespeare informs a lot of later story telling, both in form and content.  He asserts that the Bible was actually the first set of writings to be collected into a book, really more a set of books or a library, and the most disseminated early on in printing development, and the most influential in general.  Then from there he concludes that the Bible is the literal basis for Western perspective, related to that.

Does this work?  Kind of, or maybe not really, given probably only partially so.  Separating a Western and Eastern perspective alone may not work.  It would be necessary to consider the role of the earlier Greek thinkers in impacting Roman perspectives, and that of others, how these inputs built up and influenced later thinking.  To say that the Bible is the single primary cornerstone for a relatively unified cultural perspective goes a bit far.  But then Jordan is into sweeping statements and conclusions, and it also still kind of works.  

We would have to try to place access to the Bible by people other than priests throughout history, and the role of Latin in academic study and daily life across a range of centuries.  It doesn't help that Jordan Peterson is not really a historian, or an expert on literary history, and that the order of his specialization goes pretty far down a list to get to that range.  He's most trained in psychology, while also drawing on a good bit of philosophy, literature, and physical sciences for input.  Already that's kind of too much range.  Folding in the general anthropology scope of history of ideas and cultural evolution goes a bit far.

The Bible did have to be about as influential as any other single work ever created; how could it not be?  He's right that it's not really a unified, singular work, even beyond the division into old and new testaments.  It's just that last step, saying that the Bible grounds everything else, that seems to reach a little.  Breaking that apart into influences of the old and new testament and tracing both across sets of cultural forms would work better, in comparison with other inputs and conditions.

To me it's still well worth considering, even if the limitations in using imagination and intuition to flesh it all out means that won't get far.  Let's add one more consideration that frames what I mean:  to what extent have we received detailed, intact versions of early Greek philosophy, which could be a separate contender as a main influence in Western culture?  The timelines might be a little different; we think Plato lived from 428 to 348 BCE, roughly, and a 100 year history of culture he was building on still doesn't reach back to the early Bible age.  Egyptians had been around for a long, long time prior, but let's consider Greek philosophy anyway. 

Plato hung around; his writing we do have.  Socrates, his teacher, taught Plato, and Plato's work is considered to be based on that input, but we only have what Plato said about what Socrates said to go on.  Maybe a little of other references here or there, but nothing significant compared to Plato's accounts.  To be clear I'm basing these statements on only taking one undergrad class that reviewed Greek philosophy and pre-Socratic input, so probably one professor's input on that subject.  It could be wrong.  What I was taught could've been right and my memory and interpretation of it could still be wrong.  From what we studied of those pre-Socratic philosophers, of the teachings of 8 or 9 main figures, we only have a few fragments of statements or writing from each, a page or two of text worth in total.  It's not much.

Doesn't this support Jordan Peterson's ideas about the Bible being more primary, since "the trail goes cold" related to what we learn from those Greeks today at around 400 BCE?  Sort of, but also not really, as I see it.  Just because some ideas or texts are not available today doesn't mean that the ideas didn't have a lot of indirect impact 2000+ years ago.  Then we also still have a lot of writings from both Plato and Aristotle, which were also very foundational in our understanding of human reality, worldview, and perspective.  And of physical reality too; Aristotle didn't stop at philosophy.  It could work to try to compare the relative inputs of Plato and Aristotle as grounding Western perspective (as much as there is such a thing) in comparison or contrast with Biblical teachings, or to seek out dependency between the two.  I studied religion some in a degree program, and more philosophy, but nothing like that ever really came up.  It's too broad, too sweeping, and too difficult.  

It almost doesn't matter but let's check on Wikipedia's take on how old the Bible is:

Considered to be scriptures (sacred, authoritative religious texts), the books were compiled by different religious communities into various biblical canons (official collections of scriptures). The earliest compilation, containing the first five books of the Bible and called the Torah (meaning "law", "instruction", or "teaching") or Pentateuch ("five books"), was accepted as Jewish canon by the 5th century BCE. 

So someone inclined to believe Jordan Peterson (personally) and this interpretation could completely accept it, or based on their own biases could just as easily completely reject it.  Actually sorting through the ideas would be problematic; it would be a lot easier to draw on a personal bias against Jordan Peterson instead of making any start on that.  How could we evaluate the input of stories about Gilgamesh and Beowulf in comparison with those about Moses and Abraham, or the Greek gods?  It wouldn't really work to try.

I like that Jordan Peterson makes the attempt though, that he tries to connect the dots in such sweeping forms.  That's probably more about personal preference than whether it all works or not.  At the risk of over-generalization about two thirds of what Jordan Peterson says completely works for me, with a minority of the rest seeming less functional, or maybe even a bit wrong.  He keeps all the statements so general that it can be hard to really argue against one as wrong.  If he says "Nietzsche says (x)" there's a pretty good chance that Nietzsche really did express and intend what JP was talking about, but that his interpretation is open to being disputed, or more frequently too general to really see as right or wrong.  Then JP extends that to roll together parts of what a lot of people are doing for perspective or beliefs, and that part might not work either.

Nietzsche said a lot of things.  He was talking about a lot of broad patterns or specific aspects of human experience in a lot of different ways, but never in as cut and dried, bottom-up form as would be expected or familiar from other thinkers.  Kant was at the other extreme; her really explained what he meant, only stopping short of being able to pull together hundreds of ideas into a complete and unified system, but he did an insane amount of development work towards that, and others built on that later.  Nietzsche didn't do that; he expressed himself in isolated aphorisms and symbolic parables, which only sort of connected back up.

Conclusions, take aways

I think there is value in considering what Jordan Peterson says, but all that value drops out if you aren't already completely familiar with how he's placing background concepts and perspectives.  To completely get there someone would've needed to develop an interest in his presentation of earlier, better grounded ideas about meaning of life positioning or psychology basics, and get through a lot of his material, seeing how he uses concepts and expresses himself.  Just being conservative and liking most conclusions wouldn't be enough to help you really understand what he's saying about most topics.

It wouldn't hurt to be relatively familiar with the sources he's referencing, to help place how he is using ideas, and which parts he is adding.  I've read a lot of Nietzsche and studied his work in philosophy classes, and am familiar with some basics from Jung (another of his favorites), and am somewhat introduced to Piaget's work on development of perspective and reasoning forms.  What gets grouped together as later Continental Philosophy I'm less familiar with, Sartre and the rest, but I suppose I've had some exposure to that.  

Really when JP says "the Marxists say..." he's referencing his own collection and rejection of ideas tied to existentialism (more or less).  It's kind of a strange summary form but listing some basic principles helps define that:

Tenets of Existentialism

Existence before Essence:  people are born as a blank slate create essence through unique experiences

Impotence of Reason:  Passion and emotion

Alienation or Estrangement:  from Humans, human instructor, past/future, self nature, God (From God man has provided all answers through sciences)

Despair or Anxiety:  freedom to create decisions and morals based on evidence (experience) causes fear and anxiety

Nothingness or Death:  death hangs over all of us

Awful Freedom:  Awesome/ Awful

The Absurd:  Human tendency to search inherent value inability to find any

Cope:  Acceptance of absurd, religious, suicide

Bad Faith:  when individuals negate truth in an attempt to become a self they are not.

Doesn't sound so optimistic, does it?  Basically all fixed definition of human nature is rejected by existentialism (to the extent that it's all one thing, which wouldn't hold up), and the existence of God is rejected, and of rigid and meaningful social forms and societal norms.  So what's left?  A bunch of conventions, which can be changed, and a process of searching for more functional self-definition.  

Jordan Peterson doesn't care for all that because social conventions play a real role, whether we think of them as rigid and well grounded or not.  If you throw out the gender roles for men and women family structures are likely to become a lot less stable, and a real connection to biologically based natural tendencies gets tossed out with them.  

He talks more about the second point (connection between biology and conventional roles), but I think his concern is more the first, that men can become more feminine (or women more masculine, assertive and such), or people being gay can be completely accepted in a society, or trans-gender status can be, but if you lose all of it there are no broad social patterns to fall under.  That's not a problem, it's the social roles related to those patterns dropping out that is problematic.  Instead of kids growing up with a father and mother they could be raised by a group of ever-transitioning caregivers who may reject even the concept of pair-bonded relationships, between any defined or undefined genders.  That extends the problem a bit, because gay couples tend to embrace pair-bonding too, but rejection of social forms could lead to later extensions of rejections of social forms.  It's not really something I'm worried about; I'm trying to explain what I see as one part of Jordan Peterson's critique.

It's easy to see how this maps to conservative fixed adherence to past social definitions and roles, and liberal rejection of those in any strong form.  

Does this work, the broad project to criticize changes in perspective of social roles?  To an extent.  Is it a problem that people in the US now don't see gender roles in the same ways?  The culture is less unified than it could be, for sure.  70 years ago in the US "white culture" was fairly unified around the idea that black people are fundamentally different and inferior, and surely black people were a lot less certain of that.   Perspective was not unified. So there were just two cultures, right?  And related to shared perspective issues someone who believed that all "races" are equal would have had a lot of trouble talking to someone who thought that of course black people were fundamentally different and inferior.

It's not so simple mapping this to changes in gender role definitions, which are some fundamental categories.  Some people on the liberal side would feel that relatively rigid definitions of male and female should be "dissolved," just as a lot of people in the US felt that racism should be dropped, those categories dissolved, although some people still don't agree with that.

From a narrow, somewhat flawed perspective this would be all about rejecting trans-people's right to exist.  It's not about that, really.  It's about whether or not retaining some variation of traditional masculine and feminine identification should be important, if the concepts of mother and father should be retained, for example.  Some people would say no; a woman can be a father, and a man could make a great mother.  

I'm reminded of an ex-girlfriend telling me that I would make a great mother, because I was good with some maternal aspects of raising her daughter that she had trouble with (a little girl I loved very much).  Sometimes my daughter calls me mommy to make fun of this same set of ideas, because I empathize with her and care for her in ways a mother traditionally should instead.  I help her shower and get ready for bed every night, for example, even though of course at this point she needs no help, because she's 8.  It's a ritual role and activity, and her messing around until I start to get angry about that is part of the normal process.  Last night it was making a "beauty treatment mask" out of toilet paper, and often it's something about making potions.  I love those experiences; I value them.  Just not on days when I'm tired and in a hurry.

Moving back to the Bible, it's teaching people to live within social expectations through stories.  It's a little problematic that old testament versions are kind of dated, so people might get killed by stoning for relatively trivial offenses in stories, or slavery could seem normal, or whatever else they did or didn't object to as much 2500 years ago could come up.  The lessons about being empathetic and supporting others and society, even at the cost of sacrificing your own self-interest, would hold up better across time and shifting social norms.  It's all not as hard to sort out as what Nietzsche or Kant said, so there's that.

Jordan Peterson's statement that the Bible grounds a lot of modern forms of literature and worldview I see as partly right, maybe even completely right within the bounds of how he probably meant it.  If you look back through that list of ideas put forth by existentialism (in a crib-notes study guide reference form) it completely conflicts almost all of the assumptions the Bible starts from:  society and human nature are based on rigid, externally defined forms, there are clearly defined norms for right and wrong, self-determination relates to accepting these boundaries and acting within them, as externally directed, etc.  

So which set of ideas is wrong, or more right?  People make that selection in relation to assumptions, which are largely inherited, and often only develop them a little through internal review.  My own take might involve a bit more explicit review for being on that page (interested in this general subject), but in the end maybe I just fall back on what feels right to me to, in relation to which parts of the two sets of ideas I accept.  I suppose I merge them.  Or to give myself more credit I resolve some of the assumptions that lead to these contradictions at the level of assumptions instead of getting this far, on to different conclusions.  Something like "people are born with a blank slate" is just wrong, but it takes too long to unpack the two levels on which this is incorrect, about societal perspective being a framework and how genetics factors in.

Let's be clear, Jordan Peterson can accept that social roles and definitions, and moral norms, are all defined through an organic process of reason and natural evolution of forms, not through dictates from a real God.  This was really Kant's project, building it all up from reason, without any need for random and shifting external forms, which kind of didn't work.  Nietzsche felt that people were right at the cusp of completely rejecting a lot of prior norms, evolving past them, and that's not as much in contrast with thinking that relatively fixed social norms evolve through rational development as it might seem.  Nietzsche didn't see it all as rational in the same sense that Kant did, but it works out similarly enough anyway, that instead of a rational mapping process explaining it all, and then eliminating inconsistencies, we can experience a re-write of social forms through the input of greater vision, creativity, and self-awareness.  Nietzsche's ideas lead more directly to what JP's "philosophical opponents" take up than what he does.

Except those opponents, the modern "Marxists," kind of don't really exist.  People are certainly acting on continued ideas and forms from earlier Existentialism, but there are no "boogeymen" of people who really know what they are doing in proposing ingenuine and manipulative philosophical positions, and then also advocate flawed derived norms.  Some of the social forms probably are problematic, and ideas flawed, there is just no insidious conspiracy to push it all through as Peterson describes.  Maybe there might as well be; some Hollywood movies are still impacted as if there was.  

If you look long enough you could find academics with related positions to debate, but they aren't influential known figures, or people pulling the strings from the shadows, they're just college professors or authors.  Contemporary atheism has proven much more popular, related to selling books and drawing attention, and that's unrelated.

Related to how I personally place Christianity, I think what Jesus taught is what people need to hear, even though I've been influenced a lot more by taking up Buddhism.  Buddhism is too hard for almost everyone; it's a process of guided introspection that involves a number of components, different functional tools and contextual references.  There's no one clear and simple modern form to review and try to follow.  Christianity is better; the moral teachings are essentially equivalent, and they work.  

this role represents a part of Buddhist religion but to me the core meaning is something else

For people who absolutely need to get the rest sorted out Buddhism could be the best reference, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.  Sometimes the shortest path seems long, and Buddhism really is a long path.  The goal of understanding and revising your own worldview wouldn't be for everyone.   There's a bit on one core component here that fills part of that in.

Can we put Jordan Peterson's assertion that the Bible underpins a modern Western worldview to use in any way?  Not really, I don't think.  Reading the New Testament helps identify what Jesus really taught, but getting through the Old Testament is all but impossible for almost everyone, regardless of what is or isn't in there, or how much filtering would be required to place the ideas.  It's still interesting to consider, for me, but I'm not sure how common that positive reaction to the idea would be.  Jordan Peterson's broader themes are more worthy of consideration, or early work on meaning and psychology basics, but as I've covered here I see it all as connected.