I don’t think anyone “understands” postmodernism, actually. It is more of a mood than a mode of thinking — a mood of skepticism and multiplicity. In some respects it is an emotional state of emptiness and nihilism that in turn leads to a preselection of different world views that jive with this internal state. For some this state of mind reaches almost an internal fervor of mysticism, since all roads point to it (at least the roads internal to the person’s mind). The postmodern mental state seems to be both they culmination and end of Western philosophizing about anything, plus the very beginning point of it (as if we never started to philosophize at all, and the whole of Western culture was a mistake).

Given that the pinnacle of postmodernism is a mystical experience, it cannot be rationally understood. It can only be experienced.

Does Jordan Peterson participate in the experience of postmodernism, then? (This is the better question.)

I think he does, although not in the sense that he is standing on the peak. More rather he is half way up the mountain that leads to the postmodern conclusion, which is the shedding of anything and everything conceptual as well as concrete.

To survive the modern world, arguably one has to be a bit of a “postmodernist” — that is to treat things nihilistically and also with a sense of their multiplicity. And Jordan Peterson (as well as Donald Trump) — two populist success stories of this age — both use language in a suggestive and indistinct way, to appeal to underlying feeling states in others without having to name them. These might be (and assuredly are) a feeling of nostalgia for “men’s rights”, an underlying need for more assurance of stability, and a need of feel self esteem on the basis of having the “right” identity.

There is a certain mysticism in the multiplicity of language use as well — since one word may have different meanings to different people, and Jordan Peterson is careful not to be precise about what exactly he means when speaking of “we” in the West. Indeed whether one includes or excludes oneself from Jordan Peterson’s implicit multiplicity of “we” is entirely based on one’s own emotional response.

When I, for instance, listen to how glorious the experience of Western culture is, and always has been, from Peterson’s perspective, I get a distinct impression he is talking about somebody other than me, specifically the experience of an affluent upper middle-class North American) I am excluded. (I’m from Africa and later I have done it tough — I’m not part of this illusive and illusionary dream.) At the same time many people —perhaps the majority — would opt to be included in this dream of Western culture being great right from its inception. It is reassuring to think positively, and Americans, for a number of reasons, choose thinking positively rather than using knowledge about history as their motivational point. Thus, Jordan Peterson puts out a lure to anyone who is feeling, “I deserve to think of myself as great,” and “Let’s make Western culture great again.” But the “we” that is implied in his thinking still reminds nebulous.