
Why Is Jordan Peterson So Popular? - ca98am79
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/why-the-left-is-so-afraid-of-jordan-peterson/567110/?single_page=true
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rleigh
He is popular because he has a lot of interesting things to say, and in
today's social environment quite a few of these topics are considered taboo,
not because they are scientifically unsound but because they run counter to
the unscientific identity politics pervasive in our universities and
governments. In other words, he's a minority voice of sanity in a crazy world,
and while many of his points are considered objectionable by a certain subset,
for the rest of the world they are mainstream and entirely conventional.
However, the silent majority has for a long time lacked a voice to champion
orthodoxy, and he is that voice. It's a bit ironic that the far left consider
him a radical, when he's a classical liberal, and shows just how distorted our
societies have become.

I discovered Jordan Peterson a few months ago through Sargon of Akkad, which
exposed me to a world of opinion which is almost completely absent in the
mainstream media. In particular related to freedom of speech and identity
politics suppressing free speech. However, that led me to his other interviews
and lectures which are genuinely interesting for their own sake. In a world
where most opinion is delivered through soundbites, his calm demeanour,
lengthy and considered discussion, and deeper exploration of complex
interesting topics is very welcome. Totally coincidentally, I bought "12 rules
for life" from a bookshop on my lunchbreak today, which I hope is as
interesting as his online lectures.

Across the Western world we have for decades been slowly drifting relentlessly
toward the left, and I think people like Professor Peterson are part of the
inevitable pushback against some of the really extreme excesses we are seeing,
which are beginning to have significant negative consequences such as on our
freedom of speech, thought and expression.

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DuncanKeith
This is some incredibly transparent concern trolling.

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MiddleEndian
People like self-help gurus, this one found out a way to make cash on the
internet instead of through TV or books.

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Viliam1234
Self-help is just a part of what he does; actually it is a recent part.

Years before the current controversy, Peterson has been publishing his
university lectures on YouTube. They are quite fascinating, if you are
interested in mythology or Jungian archetypes. Nothing political in the narrow
sense of the word, just in general how people navigate between the "Chaos and
Order", or less poetically, the eternal ambivalence of systems we create,
which are both supportive and suppressive at the same time.

Among people whom I know which are impressed by Peterson, most of them found
him through the controversy, but most of them stayed because of those
lectures. That is his life-long work. The self-help is just a simplified
extract.

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MiddleEndian
I don't particularly find it controversial, he's advocating mostly mild,
deliberately ambiguous stuff, similar to that of any other self-help guru, but
he happens to be targeting younger crowd that likes to debate on the internet
rather than yell at their TV.

For comparison, Dr. Oz was a skilled surgeon, but he chose to make more money
selling fad diets or whatever it is that made him famous. So while his
surgical abilities are objectively impressive, he is judged by how he presents
himself.

I'm sure he has some real lectures, just like Dr. Phil actually has a
psychology degree. But their public personas are what they're known for now,
and they probably don't care that much because it makes them a ton of cash.

Edited: Fixed a word.

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peterashford
It seems like a huge collection of straw men just got slain. The author's
world sounds a bit like some version of an alt-right nightmare where there are
thought police everywhere. This view of what the 'left' is, I simply don't
recognise.

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sp332
Is it weird the article is full of outright lies, qualified only by the
weaseliest of hedges?

 _They did not make waves; they did not confront the students who were raging
about cultural appropriation and violent speech; in fact, they forged close
friendships with many of them._ These people sound... hypothetcal, to be as
kind as possible.

 _What they were getting from these lectures and discussions... perhaps the
only sustained argument against identity politics they had heard in their
lives._ Perhaps? Yeah probably not though, and it's disingenuous to throw that
in there with nothing to back it up.

 _That might seem like a small thing, but it’s not. With identity politics off
the table, it was possible to talk about all kinds of things—religion,
philosophy, history, myth—in a different way. They could have a direct
experience with ideas, not one mediated by ideology._ Pure bullshit. At best
they would be switching one ideology for another. A very old mistake is to
assume that you don't have a limited perspective and can see things with an
"objective" God's-eye view.

 _campus free-speech zones where it could be monitored, shouted down, and
reported to the appropriate authorities_ I'm not necessarily saying this
doesn't happen, but putting it this way makes it sound like a big problem when
it's just not that common.

 _As with Peterson’s podcasts and videos, the audience is made up of people
who are busy with their lives—folding laundry, driving commercial trucks on
long hauls, sitting in traffic from cubicle to home, exercising._ More
fiction.

 _The left has an obvious and pressing need to unperson him_ I'm sure that's
not what that word means.

 _There are plenty of reasons for individual readers to dislike Jordan
Peterson._ The following paragraph is a convenient little bundle of straw men.

And in all this, not a single reason given why identity politics is bad or
even what it is.

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pluto9
You act as if some great injustice has been done because this article doesn't
present an empirical analysis of Peterson's following, but it never claimed
to. It's obviously just an opinion piece. What you call "lies" are simply
anecdotes and imagery that the author had the audacity to not back up with
statistics and pie charts.

I wonder if you read every think piece so uncharitably, or just the ones that
have the absolute gall to disagree with your worldview.

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sp332
The claims that the left is vulnerable are entirety founded on this imagery.
The article asks me to be afraid of a lot of things without bothering to
explain why they are bad, so my reaction is not exactly disagreement but
declining to be convinced.

~~~
pluto9
There are three claims:

\- The more people eschew identity politics, the more uncertain is the future
of any political party (left or right) that builds its platform on it. That
seems self evident.

\- There is a significant, and possibly growing, number of people who eschew
identity politics. No statistics are presented to support this, but
considering the left's "It's Her Turn!" rhetoric failed to hold enough water
to put "Her" in office, and actively turned some people against her, I don't
think it's such an outrageous notion.

\- Peterson is one of the driving forces behind the possible growth of the
anti-identity-politics crowd. If you want numbers, just look at the statistics
on Peterson's YouTube channel. Agree with him or not, his popularity is
undeniable.

Pick apart those points if you wish. But calling the author a liar by pointing
out that an image of a person folding laundry doesn't refer to a specific,
literal person (you don't say?) is pure sophistry.

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sp332
I don't see the first claim anywhere in the article. It's pretty explicitly
about the left, not identity politics apart from the left. Is identity
politics supposed to be about voting for people based on their demographics?
Because that's not what the Wikipedia article says, so if you could point me
to a definition of what we're discussing I think it would help.

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dragonwriter
> It's pretty explicitly about the left, not identity politics apart from the
> left.

It explicitly addresses right-wing identity politics briefly, but mostly to
note that one particular repulsive group practicing of those politics rejected
Peterson as a kind of validation of Peterson through combination of guilt by
association and affirming the consequent, and secondarily to further discredit
left-wing identity politics by simple guilt by association.

~~~
sp332
Ok, thanks. I misread that as the alt-right group's endorsement of Peterson.

