I spent way too many years of my life cheering for the bad guy in the Walt Disney classic Peter Pan. The older and hopefully wiser I get, I regret seeing Pan as the hero and Hook as the villain.
As a child, you see a funny kid who can fly and constantly thwarts the evil designs of a nefarious rapscallion with a hook for a hand. No one needs to teach you who to root for there – it's fairly self-explanatory.
But as I learned somewhere along the line (not through a Jordan Peterson lecture, even though I understand he has talked about this), the overarching metaphor of the story is that Hook represents the adult that Pan saw himself growing into. Thus, the boy fiercely fought off the oppressive forces of maturity.
Living in a youth-obsessed culture that seems to idolize puerility and celebrate irresponsibility, count me among the outnumbered supporters of the red-clad pirate of the Jolly Roger these days. Peter Pan Syndrome is, after all, leading to a multitude of sorry spectacles like this:
I don't know this social scientist and writer Justin Murphy personally. But I do understand him. I see thousands of him all around me. I see him on TV with regularity, I hear about him all the time from former students – the lonely sons and daughters he has abandoned. I know him well enough to know how unpersuaded, unmoved, and bored he will be with the standard "traditional gender role" pushback.
I know that telling Justin to "grow up" or "be a man" will do precious little to motivate him towards adopting a different mindset about parenting. In all likelihood, it will engender the precise opposite reaction. If he already sees Captain Hook as a killjoy, hearing that pirate sneer and condescend isn't going to make boarding the Jolly Roger more enticing.
If you scan this Justin Murphy's more recent tweets that have appeared since his initial thread above, you can see that's exactly what has happened – he recoils and scoffs at the "Alpha Males" and "right-wing LARPs" and "hyperbolic hero Chads" who have responded to chide his "honesty."
Like I said, I know this Justin. But actually, all of us know this Justin.
We all know him too well because we are him. Justin believes this life is about Justin. His existence is meaningful only to the extent of what pleasure he can squeeze out of the few "ripe years" he has – something that the burden of parenthood greatly diminishes. When we believe that our lives belong to ourselves, that we are the captain of our own destiny and the composer of our own masterpiece, there is a natural narcissism that, the longer it is indulged, eventually comes to overwhelm us and own us.
And with as off-putting as Murphy's tweet thread may have been, this phenomenon regularly manifests itself in far worse ways: shattered commitments, broken homes, fatherlessness, substance abuse, physical abuse, and illegitimacy.
So while I agree with those disapproving of this particular Justin Murphy's current view of his world, I am far too sensitive to the lurking presence of my former self – a carbon copy of Justin – to spend too much time ragging on him for not being more of a man.
Justin's problem was my problem – the false belief that I am king of my own castle. The truth is our lives are not our own, and only when the rightful Captain takes control of our ship, will we have the desire to set aside those childish things. Only when the proper Composer begins writing the symphony of our lives will we find contentment and peace in self-sacrifice and commitment.
Justin doesn't need to be shamed or disciplined to embrace some valorous sense of familial duty; it wouldn't last anyway. He won't be changed by incessant guilt, or by being pressed with some inescapable parental obligation.
To defeat his own inner Justin Murphy, he needs the same thing I needed to defeat mine: He needs to step down from the throne and give the scepter to King Jesus.
