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I can't get onboard with this interpretation. There are a ton of people who are very charismatic and prone to making sweeping statements about the universe, and

I can't get onboard with this interpretation. There are a ton of people who are very charismatic and prone to making sweeping statements about the universe, and yet they don't gain a substantial following. Reza Aslan, for example. He's popular, but not nearly on Peterson's level. There are people who are drawn to Peterson simply due to his charisma, but I think at the end of the day there's something else going on. I think he's hit some kind of nerve though it's difficult to pinpoint it. Edit: Ha, maybe I should read the goddamn piece before commenting.

rusk 9y ago
He has absolutely hit a nerve, or hit a few nerves and done so with great accuracy. You see the thing about Peterson is for whatever reason (could even be just for the purposes of marketing himself), he is very much the controversialist. Time and again he'll say something controversial that he knows will troll a huge audience and then he's always got research and facts to back it up. That his take is often facile isn't really of consequence as any typical interviewer doesn't have the tools to take him up on it. The guy is a professor of psychology. You may not like him or his views, but he is "smart", and fundamentally the meat of his message is actually quite benign so you can't even really accuse him of being "bad". It's like he's built his own persona into this gigantic strawman that looks like an ogre to everybody.
- weego 9y ago
  Is it really that controversial though? I'm nearly 40 and I feel like had Jordan Peterson said a lot of what he says now when I was at University it would have been of almost no note whatsoever. It feels more like his statements are elevated to controversy by how polarised, anti-contextual and narrow the margins of contemporary discourse have become rather than him being particularly controversial. "Enforcing equality of outcomes though imbalanced policy is less desirable than giving equality of choice and letting other natural variables dictate the outcome" seems such an uncontroversial statement as to be almost self-evident, and yet...
  - rusk 9y ago
    Like I say, the meat of his ideas are not controversial and actually quite banal. He doesn't really say a lot of things that self-help authors haven't been saying for years. As you point out the acceptable margins of contemporary discourse are stifling and he purposely sets out to challenge (even "bait") them, and this is what's controversial. I think this is what people like him for, as much as for his actual therapeutic writings.
    - weego 9y ago
      "he purposely sets out to challenge (even "bait") them, and this is what's controversial" You've summed up exactly what I was trying to get to but failed in 10x as many words. Thank you.
  - n4r9 9y ago
    I don't think controversy needs to be modern. To take a more extreme example, it was common just over 100 years ago in the UK to hear that women should not have the vote due to the distinct natures of men and women [0]. Now (for comparison's sake) we hear Peterson talking about how women are naturally more "agreeable" and "self-sacrificing", and that this is vital for the purposes of childcare [1]. I'm not qualified to debate biological determinism, but I do wonder whether statements like this reinforce existing prejudices about the capabilities of both men and women in the workforce. Just recently for example there was an article about how men tend not to work in nurseries, "as parents assume they pose risk to children" [2]. [0] http://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm http://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9hcKUUFn5k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9hcKUUFn5k [2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/03/14/majority-councils-have-no-men-working-nurseries-parents-assume/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/03/14/majority-co...
    - ivoras 9y ago
      Though I agree that they may have the same effect on the general population, there are still large differences between claiming that "on average, on a very large sample size, population X has more Y than Z," saying "population X must always be Y" and saying "population X is banned from doing anything but Y". Whether there is a slipper-slope danger here is, I think, the real question, and how much other values should we sacrifice, if any, to actively and energetically avoid this slippery slope.

rusk 9y ago

He has absolutely hit a nerve, or hit a few nerves and done so with great accuracy. You see the thing about Peterson is for whatever reason (could even be just for the purposes of marketing himself), he is very much the controversialist. Time and again he'll say something controversial that he knows will troll a huge audience and then he's always got research and facts to back it up. That his take is often facile isn't really of consequence as any typical interviewer doesn't have the tools to take him up on it. The guy is a professor of psychology. You may not like him or his views, but he is "smart", and fundamentally the meat of his message is actually quite benign so you can't even really accuse him of being "bad". It's like he's built his own persona into this gigantic strawman that looks like an ogre to everybody.

weego 9y ago
Is it really that controversial though? I'm nearly 40 and I feel like had Jordan Peterson said a lot of what he says now when I was at University it would have been of almost no note whatsoever. It feels more like his statements are elevated to controversy by how polarised, anti-contextual and narrow the margins of contemporary discourse have become rather than him being particularly controversial. "Enforcing equality of outcomes though imbalanced policy is less desirable than giving equality of choice and letting other natural variables dictate the outcome" seems such an uncontroversial statement as to be almost self-evident, and yet...
- rusk 9y ago
  Like I say, the meat of his ideas are not controversial and actually quite banal. He doesn't really say a lot of things that self-help authors haven't been saying for years. As you point out the acceptable margins of contemporary discourse are stifling and he purposely sets out to challenge (even "bait") them, and this is what's controversial. I think this is what people like him for, as much as for his actual therapeutic writings.
  - weego 9y ago
    "he purposely sets out to challenge (even "bait") them, and this is what's controversial" You've summed up exactly what I was trying to get to but failed in 10x as many words. Thank you.
- n4r9 9y ago
  I don't think controversy needs to be modern. To take a more extreme example, it was common just over 100 years ago in the UK to hear that women should not have the vote due to the distinct natures of men and women [0]. Now (for comparison's sake) we hear Peterson talking about how women are naturally more "agreeable" and "self-sacrificing", and that this is vital for the purposes of childcare [1]. I'm not qualified to debate biological determinism, but I do wonder whether statements like this reinforce existing prejudices about the capabilities of both men and women in the workforce. Just recently for example there was an article about how men tend not to work in nurseries, "as parents assume they pose risk to children" [2]. [0] http://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm http://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9hcKUUFn5k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9hcKUUFn5k [2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/03/14/majority-councils-have-no-men-working-nurseries-parents-assume/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/03/14/majority-co...
  - ivoras 9y ago
    Though I agree that they may have the same effect on the general population, there are still large differences between claiming that "on average, on a very large sample size, population X has more Y than Z," saying "population X must always be Y" and saying "population X is banned from doing anything but Y". Whether there is a slipper-slope danger here is, I think, the real question, and how much other values should we sacrifice, if any, to actively and energetically avoid this slippery slope.