Jordan Peterson has recently published a video titled Message to the Christian Churches. It addresses the issue of raising up “real men.” Anyone who has been paying attention to the western Christian world will know that the Church has been dealing with this issue for a long time. Remember Mark Driscoll?
July 13, 2022
Right wingers will resonate with Peterson; left wingers will not. True Christianity is not trying to solve the conflict between left and right. Christ’s kingdom transcends our politics, thank God.
However, here again we see a non-Christian speaking with more influence over young men than any Christian leader. It doesn’t matter how wrong or right Peterson’s message is, it is the message being listened to by the most people.
Were you, like myself and thousands of others, duped by the Gillette ad?
How do you know if you were duped?
You took sides.
And if you took sides, and defended the ad, I’m guessing you are liberal leaning. And if you hated the ad, you’re probably conservative leaning.
Here is the problem with that: Does a liberal’s definition of a good man and a conservative’s definition of a good man differ a whole lot? I’m guessing not. If you asked a conservative to write a list of ten things describing what a good man is, and asked a liberal to do likewise, I’m pretty sure those lists would be nearly exact.
Then why did the Gillette ad cause so much division?
Because it was designed to.
If Gillette truly cared about encouraging men to act as good men, could they not have created an ad which would offend no one and create no division? Of course they could. It’s not hard. Simply portray a variety of men acting in a variety of good ways in a variety of situations: A man holding a door open for a woman; a man defending someone against bullying; a man working with inner city kids; etc…. Create an ad like that, but do not infuse into it any accusatory or preachy tone. That ad would encourage men to act well and it would offend no one.
Gillette does not care about men behaving well. Like an arms dealer making millions selling weapons to both sides of a war, Gillette is playing the culture war hoping to increase its profits. If, in ten years, Gillette believes it can increase profits by appealing to conservative men, you can be sure it will create the appropriate ads to do that. With this latest ad, Gillette seems to be targeting progressive liberals.
So lets all agree that there are both good men and bad men out there, on both the left and the right, and that most men are trying to be good men. And also, lets all agree that a multi-billion dollar corporation, like Gillette, is not the best place to look to for our moral standards.
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Pursuit of Percipience 