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Whilst I am willing to concede that his approach and ideas might not be novel, it is his fantastic delivery of lectures and connecting different phenomena in a

Whilst I am willing to concede that his approach and ideas might not be novel, it is his fantastic delivery of lectures and connecting different phenomena in a network to explain/support a concept is what draws me to his stuff. As a counterpoint, I really like Campbell's a Hero with a Thousand Faces, but darn if his book isn't hard to read. I think it's a fair argument against him, but it is not Campbell or Evola who managed to get into the spotlight and spread those ideas to millions, but Peterson. Perhaps it could be argued that it's his captivating presentational style or ability to package things well are his USP? Thank you for the reading list, I do want to delve deeper into this stuff.

Bakary 6y ago
He is captivating to a certain audience, but so are televangelists. That's the whole crux of the problem. If you recognize it as being entertainment and an aesthetic/subculture, that's fine. But Peterson is presented as a leading thinker to people, which is a problem. Despite what I've written, Peterson isn't even someone I'm specifically interested in, it's more about the underlying issue of which he is a prominent example. Consider the following: during the Žižek debate, it became clear that not only was the Communist Manifesto the only Marxist text he had read, but he could not accurately recall some of its main points. And it's a really short pamphlet! That means that Peterson had expounded at length on Marxism, made it a central point of his critique and philosophical brand, while having almost no knowledge or understanding of it. Even with the most charitable interpretation, that goes way beyond just occasionally making mistakes due to a discursive style. Imagine a charismatic professor with a large audience and who has talked at length about the worth of various programming concepts. Now imagine that it turns out the professor can't pass Fizz Buzz. Following that, his fans defend him by saying that he's a captivating explainer who is only sometimes wrong, and that the size of his audience and fantastic delivery is proof of his worth as a leading expert on computer science and programming. Wouldn't that set off alarm bells in your mind?
- 0x737368 6y ago
  >He is captivating to a certain audience, but so are televangelists. That's the whole crux of the problem. If you recognize it as being entertainment and an aesthetic/subculture, that's fine. But Peterson is presented as a leading thinker to people, which is a problem. Despite what I've written, Peterson isn't even someone I'm specifically interested in, it's more about the underlying issue of which he is a prominent example. I think that's a reasonable point. I'd still maintain that his message is useful and his ideas are, imo, interesting and illuminating. I haven't thought of JP-televangelists comparison before so I'd need some time to mull it over. But in my personal experience I listened to Peterson for a while, internalised what I thought was useful and moved on. Whether televangelists have the same effect - I don't know. >Consider the following: during the Žižek debate, it became clear that not only was the Communist Manifesto the only Marxist text he had read, but he could not accurately recall some of its main points. And it's a really short pamphlet! That means that Peterson had expounded at length on Marxism, made it a central point of his critique and philosophical brand, while having almost no knowledge or understanding of it. Even with the most charitable interpretation, that goes way beyond just occasionally making mistakes due to a discursive style. I wish I had more knowledge on Marxism/leftists school of thoughts right now to have a more interesting discussion on this, but I don't. It does look bad on Peterson that he was so ill prepared for that debate. Having said that, we cannot not say that there isn't a cultural shift happening in the academia and in our societies at large. Traditional cultural norms are being thrown out and in some extreme cases even shamed(not saying that's a 100% bad thing, but imo such things must not be done rashly), instead of bringing equality there are some attempts of inversing the inequality, and people are getting cancelled/silenced/fired/deplatformed in some cases simply for having a different opinion. Whether this is Marxism or not is really irrelevant, what's important is that we note these changes and act to mitigate them, and I believe this is what Peterson was referring to as "cultural Marxists". It might be embarrassing if he got the name wrong, but it doesn't change WHAT he's talking about.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    It is a bit counter-intuitive, but the cultural shift you describe is a mirror image of Peterson's popularity, in the sense that both are the result of sloppy, black-and-white, and adversarial thinking and ideological repackaging. If this cultural shift is a concern due to its effect on society and its norms, then Peterson would be a counter-productive solution, since this sort of person being considered an intellectual worth following is a step down from these very same norms. It's like putting out a house fire with a flamethrower. The problem is the breakdown in informed discourse. The result is that the money and attention of people concerned about cultural shifts is then funneled into the pockets of people like Peterson or Shapiro or whomever, with some pretty unenviable results. You end up in a situation where people talk of rediscovering traditional norms and opposing them to new norms, without actually understanding what the traditional norms are or engaging with them beyond vague social-media ready descriptions. What could have been effective or at least thoughtful conservatism paradoxically turns into a post-modern parody of itself, with plenty of references to the aesthetic aspect (flags, slogans, freedom of speech etc.) without the substance that originally generated those symbols. And this substance and world lying outside of the Petersons and Shapiros starts to shrink because they monopolize the attention of people who would have otherwise engaged with deeper material and applied it in productive ways.

Bakary 6y ago

He is captivating to a certain audience, but so are televangelists. That's the whole crux of the problem. If you recognize it as being entertainment and an aesthetic/subculture, that's fine. But Peterson is presented as a leading thinker to people, which is a problem. Despite what I've written, Peterson isn't even someone I'm specifically interested in, it's more about the underlying issue of which he is a prominent example. Consider the following: during the Žižek debate, it became clear that not only was the Communist Manifesto the only Marxist text he had read, but he could not accurately recall some of its main points. And it's a really short pamphlet! That means that Peterson had expounded at length on Marxism, made it a central point of his critique and philosophical brand, while having almost no knowledge or understanding of it. Even with the most charitable interpretation, that goes way beyond just occasionally making mistakes due to a discursive style. Imagine a charismatic professor with a large audience and who has talked at length about the worth of various programming concepts. Now imagine that it turns out the professor can't pass Fizz Buzz. Following that, his fans defend him by saying that he's a captivating explainer who is only sometimes wrong, and that the size of his audience and fantastic delivery is proof of his worth as a leading expert on computer science and programming. Wouldn't that set off alarm bells in your mind?

0x737368 6y ago
>He is captivating to a certain audience, but so are televangelists. That's the whole crux of the problem. If you recognize it as being entertainment and an aesthetic/subculture, that's fine. But Peterson is presented as a leading thinker to people, which is a problem. Despite what I've written, Peterson isn't even someone I'm specifically interested in, it's more about the underlying issue of which he is a prominent example. I think that's a reasonable point. I'd still maintain that his message is useful and his ideas are, imo, interesting and illuminating. I haven't thought of JP-televangelists comparison before so I'd need some time to mull it over. But in my personal experience I listened to Peterson for a while, internalised what I thought was useful and moved on. Whether televangelists have the same effect - I don't know. >Consider the following: during the Žižek debate, it became clear that not only was the Communist Manifesto the only Marxist text he had read, but he could not accurately recall some of its main points. And it's a really short pamphlet! That means that Peterson had expounded at length on Marxism, made it a central point of his critique and philosophical brand, while having almost no knowledge or understanding of it. Even with the most charitable interpretation, that goes way beyond just occasionally making mistakes due to a discursive style. I wish I had more knowledge on Marxism/leftists school of thoughts right now to have a more interesting discussion on this, but I don't. It does look bad on Peterson that he was so ill prepared for that debate. Having said that, we cannot not say that there isn't a cultural shift happening in the academia and in our societies at large. Traditional cultural norms are being thrown out and in some extreme cases even shamed(not saying that's a 100% bad thing, but imo such things must not be done rashly), instead of bringing equality there are some attempts of inversing the inequality, and people are getting cancelled/silenced/fired/deplatformed in some cases simply for having a different opinion. Whether this is Marxism or not is really irrelevant, what's important is that we note these changes and act to mitigate them, and I believe this is what Peterson was referring to as "cultural Marxists". It might be embarrassing if he got the name wrong, but it doesn't change WHAT he's talking about.
- Bakary 6y ago
  It is a bit counter-intuitive, but the cultural shift you describe is a mirror image of Peterson's popularity, in the sense that both are the result of sloppy, black-and-white, and adversarial thinking and ideological repackaging. If this cultural shift is a concern due to its effect on society and its norms, then Peterson would be a counter-productive solution, since this sort of person being considered an intellectual worth following is a step down from these very same norms. It's like putting out a house fire with a flamethrower. The problem is the breakdown in informed discourse. The result is that the money and attention of people concerned about cultural shifts is then funneled into the pockets of people like Peterson or Shapiro or whomever, with some pretty unenviable results. You end up in a situation where people talk of rediscovering traditional norms and opposing them to new norms, without actually understanding what the traditional norms are or engaging with them beyond vague social-media ready descriptions. What could have been effective or at least thoughtful conservatism paradoxically turns into a post-modern parody of itself, with plenty of references to the aesthetic aspect (flags, slogans, freedom of speech etc.) without the substance that originally generated those symbols. And this substance and world lying outside of the Petersons and Shapiros starts to shrink because they monopolize the attention of people who would have otherwise engaged with deeper material and applied it in productive ways.