ieee23 wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 1:40 pm
I've seen a number of articles about Jordan Peterson in very respectable publications of good reputation such as the New York Times.
Reading these articles written by professional journalists ( whose careers depend on their reputations for getting the facts right ) my understanding of Jordan Peterson is that
1. Peterson was a very respected research psychologist in his field.
2. Peterson hasn't published any significant research in about ten years
3. Peterson's research has nothing to do with his popular self help book
4. Peterson's research has nothing to do with his talks on his YouTube channel
5. Peterson's made for YouTube talks are worryingly hard right wing, misogynistic, and homophobic
6. Peterson's right wing politicalish talks are worryingly followed by impressionalbe 20 something alt-right and prot alt-right wing types.
In other places where I have seen these aspects of Jordan Peterson brought up, he is usually STRONGLY defended by people who have an emotional investment in his self help material, but who are unaware of Peterson's political talks.
1) is apparently true.
2) I don't know about.
3) is patently false. I read "12 rules..." a couple of months ago, and have now passed it on to my son to read. It has lots of references to his earlier research.
4) might be true, but then again the videos might not need the support of academic psychology.
5) is a subjective value-judgement. I've only seen a few of the videos, but nothing struck me as particularly misogynistic or remotely homophobic. I would need examles to even make a judgement on this one.
6) might again be true, without in any way compromising the value of what they have to say.
I thought that Peterson behaved with great courage and aplomb during the first flush of his international fame: his resistance to the mob mentality and his well-articulated opposition to the "pronoun" issue. That was enough to make me think he was a considerable force for good. His book I found to be good, but it was written for people a lot younger than me. It reminded me a bit of Robert Bly, in the way it linked contemporary issues to themes in Western culture and mythology. He knows his Jung, and his Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche, and he has lots of good insights.
My impression is that because he stands up to social trends which a lot of young men find perplexing and threatening, he has attracted lots of them as "followers", more because of his accomplished performances with the likes of Cathy Newman and the baying mobs of SJWs than his insights into Dostoyevsky. My guess is that they also like the idea of a strict and principled father-figure, which so many of them have never had; Robert Bly with balls. He generally seems to want to distance himself from some of the excesses of such "followers".