Current Events > Globe and Mail had a really good article about Jordan Peterson

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averagejoel
02/01/18 7:51:26 PM
#1:


If his popular Twitter account is to be believed, on the morning of Jan. 9, 2018, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson woke up, opened his laptop and immediately Googled the word "bikini." Then, he opened another tab and, using Microsoft's Google-rival search engine Bing, executed a new query, also for the word "bikini."

Peterson arrived at the conclusion that the difference between Google's and Bing's respective results of bikini photos revealed the former's apparent desire "to shape our perceptions themselves in the politically correct manner." Here is the defining image of Jordan B. Peterson, the menacing academic rock star and father figure: staring daggers at digital photos of bikinis to lay bare the tyranny of political correctness.

Google (or Bing) "Jordan Peterson" today and you'll find a bestselling author, whose new pop-psychology, self-help tome 12 Rules for Life is making its debut at No. 1 on The Globe and Mail's non-fiction bestseller list and is already topping the Amazon.com non-fiction list, edging out Michael Wolff's trashy Trump tell-all, Fire and Fury. That any university prof, let alone a Canadian, should achieve such popularity is frankly unfathomable. How can such an absurd figure be taken so seriously? It is, as with most things about Peterson, a paradox.

Read more: How U of T's Jordan Peterson has made money from online notoriety

Jordan Peterson is a tangle of contradictions, inconsistencies, and seeming improbabilities: a famous academic; a middle-aged man with a spookily intuitive mastery of the vicissitudes of social media; a Christian in the thrall of Nietzsche; a self-styled individualist free-thinker who calls for the mass sackings of fellow academics; a wholly unimposing specimen who insists on the moral necessity of physical strength and bemoans the social taboo against becoming physically violent with "crazy women."

Peterson's lectures, YouTube videos, and new book contain wisdom that ranges from the incendiary (that sexual assault is a consequence of the decline of traditional marriage), to the obvious (skateboarding is cool), to the vacuously pithy ("Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong"), and utterly ponderous ("cats are a manifestation of nature, of Being, in an almost pure form"). He has been called a "dangerous scholar" (the Chronicle of Higher Education), "Canada's newest intellectual star" (the National Post), "YouTube's new father figure" (the National Review), and, in an acerbic turn that cuts to the heart of the Peterson Paradox, as "the stupid man's smart person" (Tabatha Southey in Maclean's).

Unlike other thinkers historically vaunted in conservative circles, from Francis Fukuyama back to Allan Bloom and William F. Buckley, Peterson seemingly arrived out of the blue. This dark horse quality accounts, in no small part, for the cultural phenomenon that is Jordan Peterson. Through social media, he has circumvented the traditional pathway to academic and intellectual prominence. He speaks directly to an audience that has found him: his 703,000 YouTube subscribers, 394,000 Twitter followers, and thousands of Patreon contributing to upward of $62,000 monthly he rakes in crowdfunding his mission to "take the humanities back from the corrupt postmodernists."


[continued in next post]
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averagejoel
02/01/18 7:52:04 PM
#2:


Where other academics rise on the strength of their ideas, Peterson's fame has crested on their sheer proliferation. As with his online lectures, his new book is rangy and digressive, addressing a wide range of subjects (history, theology, critical theory, evolutionary biology) well outside his realm of professional expertise. He can skip from the journals of the Columbine shooters to Goethe within three sentences; and within three pages skips to Tolstoy, to Cain and Abel, to Christ Himself, and back to "the Columbine boys." If psychology has always been the smorgasbord of soft sciences, Peterson's brand of profundity is the sprawling, all-you-can-eat Mandarin buffet a medley of undercooked ideas warmed under the heat lamp of his own faintly flickering intellect.

As recently as early 2016, Peterson was a cultural non-entity, virtually unknown outside of the University of Toronto, where he works as a professor of psychology. (The closest he had come to a celebrity breakout came more than a decade ago, when TVOntario commissioned a 13-part lecture series based on his 1999 book Maps Of Meaning.)

Then, Bill C-16, an amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act to enshrine legal protections on the basis of gender identity, turned Peterson into a glowering cause clbre. "I will never use words I hate," Peterson wrote, "like the trendy and artificially constructed words 'zhe' and 'zher.' These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century."

For Peterson, the decency of recognizing people by their preferred pronouns leads irrevocably to the gulag. And not an intellectual or metaphorical gulag. But the actual gulag. Fitting, then, that in 12 Rules for Life he finds a hero in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose epic history of Soviet forced labour, The Gulag Archipelago is praised by Peterson as, "a forceful, terrible book, written with the overwhelming moral force of unvarnished truth." Peterson casts himself as such a truth-teller: casting a lantern into the darkness of "postmodern neomarxism" (a term he uses pathologically, and without clear definition), and piercing the veil of political correctness.

It is little wonder, then, that Peterson is prominent among conservatives (he identifies as a "classical liberal," which is a conservative), angry young men, and the ranks of the alt-right. (Following her recent interview with Peterson, Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman was deluged with death threats; thus giving Peterson the dubious distinction of being the rare "dangerous scholar" who is actually dangerous.) Peterson dresses up the language of misogyny in the woozy jargon of Eastern religion (he identifies chaos, his enemy, with the Taoist notion of the "eternal feminine"); he justifies existing structures of social dominance by deferring to the hard-wiring of ancient crustaceans; he capitalizes words such as Being and Woman and Nature with no apparent rationale. For all his wailing about the dangers of tyranny, Peterson's use of language is itself spookily Orwellian justifying the most noxious, moronic ideas by making them seem intellectual or, in his words, "archetypal."

Such apparent tension may constitute yet another paradox. But where contradiction can often prove edifying as in the Hegelian dialectic, in which ideas are refined through their conflict with one another Peterson's various paradoxes are unreconcilable, and empty. In a recent interview with the CBC's Wendy Mesley, Peterson was asked how he sees himself: as Marshall McLuhan or Billy Graham. With a characteristic smirk he responded: "Billy McLuhan."


[continued, yet again, in next post]
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averagejoel
02/01/18 7:52:28 PM
#3:


A dumb joke, maybe. But an edifying one. (Jokes, as Freud knew, are frequently revealing; "an envelope for thoughts of the greatest substance.") Jordan Peterson is the intellectual as guru-mystic, and the guru-mystic as shameless huckster. He maintains that he abhors "right-wing identitarians" while simultaneously baiting them, materially profiting off their interest, and bequeathing their misguided movement the illusion of intellectual heft. He has also spoken giddily about his ability to "monetize social justice warriors," by converting outrage against him into more online donations. He is an intellectual snake oil salesman, exploiting a genuine need (pointed among the young men who shore the ranks of Peterson disciples) for meaning and order. His aim is little more than the pursuit of his own vanity and the P.T. Barnum-ish padding of his own pockets. He is a prophet, for profit.

That he has been hailed as the West's "most influential public intellectual" speaks despairingly to the state of the Western world. Anyone tempted to take him seriously, on his own terms, as some brainiac Ubermensch dispelling the gathering clouds of chaos would do well to keep in mind the image of a sallow man, slumped at a desk in his Native American-inspired attic longhouse, angrily Googling "bikini" first thing in the morning, desperate in the hope that it really, genuinely means something.


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-jordan-peterson-paradox-high-intellect-or-just-another-angry-white-guy/article37806524/
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Antifar
02/01/18 7:54:35 PM
#4:


averagejoel posted...
"the stupid man's smart person" (Tabatha Southey in Maclean's).

To that end

http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/is-jordan-peterson-the-stupid-mans-smart-person/
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UncleBourbon33
02/01/18 7:56:42 PM
#5:


I don't know who Jordan Peterson is but he seems like a cool guy if TC doesn't like him.
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CruorComa
02/01/18 8:00:22 PM
#6:


No one ever really addresses anything he says, do they? They just condense complex subject matter to overly simplified, uncharitable and misrepresentative strawfigures, then attack that. It's not impressive.
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COVxy
02/01/18 8:00:24 PM
#7:


It's funny how quickly you can find people's bias when they will lament how nonscientific sociology is, but then talk about, in the same sentence, how much of a genius Jordan Peterson is.
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Axiom
02/01/18 8:07:13 PM
#8:


averagejoel posted...
Peterson's lectures, YouTube videos, and new book contain wisdom that ranges from the incendiary (that sexual assault is a consequence of the decline of traditional marriage), to the obvious (skateboarding is cool), to the vacuously pithy ("Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong"), and utterly ponderous ("cats are a manifestation of nature, of Being, in an almost pure form"). He has been called a "dangerous scholar" (the Chronicle of Higher Education), "Canada's newest intellectual star" (the National Post), "YouTube's new father figure" (the National Review), and, in an acerbic turn that cuts to the heart of the Peterson Paradox, as "the stupid man's smart person" (Tabatha Southey in Maclean's).

Holy shit he really did say that https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/928981541849522176

Lmfao and this is the guy some people worship like a cult leader. Wow
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averagejoel
02/01/18 8:13:09 PM
#9:


CruorComa posted...
No one ever really addresses anything he says, do they? They just condense complex subject matter to overly simplified, uncharitable and misrepresentative strawfigures, then attack that. It's not impressive.

he said, after reading an article that succinctly addresses what he says
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EnragedSlith
02/01/18 8:13:16 PM
#10:


Two things hold true:
1. A lot of people are susceptible to cults of personality and dont exercise critical thinking (just look at reddit)
2. Academics always hate everything new as a reaction. I think it might be a rule
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CruorComa
02/01/18 8:36:15 PM
#11:


averagejoel posted...
CruorComa posted...
No one ever really addresses anything he says, do they? They just condense complex subject matter to overly simplified, uncharitable and misrepresentative strawfigures, then attack that. It's not impressive.

he said, after reading an article that succinctly addresses what he says


Not really.

'It is little wonder, then, that Peterson is prominent among conservatives (he identifies as a "classical liberal," which is a conservative), angry young men, and the ranks of the alt-right. (Following her recent interview with Peterson, Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman was deluged with death threats; thus giving Peterson the dubious distinction of being the rare "dangerous scholar" who is actually dangerous.) Peterson dresses up the language of misogyny in the woozy jargon of Eastern religion (he identifies chaos, his enemy, with the Taoist notion of the "eternal feminine"); he justifies existing structures of social dominance by deferring to the hard-wiring of ancient crustaceans; he capitalizes words such as Being and Woman and Nature with no apparent rationale. For all his wailing about the dangers of tyranny, Peterson's use of language is itself spookily Orwellian justifying the most noxious, moronic ideas by making them seem intellectual or, in his words, "archetypal."'

This was really the only thing that really dealt with anything he's said and it was low resolution. His lectures unpack single concepts over hours and I wouldn't say it's succinct to handwave over a bunch of them with a paragraph of misrepresentations.

https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/azXLNNp_700b.jpg
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Smoke944
02/01/18 8:40:50 PM
#12:


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FLUFFYGERM
02/01/18 8:54:44 PM
#13:


if youre extremely far left youll probably hate jordan peterson

otherwise you probably wont
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Sephiroth1288
02/01/18 8:57:57 PM
#14:


Did you notice how nowhere in that article do they even attempt to dispute his arguments? All it does is insult him aesthetically in a variety of ways and then blame him for how other people reacted to a shady interviewer trying to prod him for a quote they can exploit.

Hilarious. You have to be an especially basic person if histrionics are enough to convince you of anything.
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FLUFFYGERM
02/01/18 9:01:09 PM
#15:


Sephiroth1288 posted...
Did you notice how nowhere in that article do they even attempt to dispute his arguments? All it does is insult him aesthetically in a variety of ways and then blame him for how other people reacted to a shady interviewer trying to prod him for a quote they can exploit.

Hilarious. You have to be an especially basic person if histrionics are enough to convince you of anything.


sounds about right
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myztikrice
02/01/18 9:06:32 PM
#16:


I've watched like 14 videos of Peterson and other than directly answering a question with an answer he always starts rambling and saying nothing. It's fascinating in its nonsense.
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KarmaMuffin
02/01/18 9:09:42 PM
#17:


My problem with Jordan Peterson reminds me of some posters on CE. There will be times actual legitimate arguments are made, I may not agree with them but I can see that there is a logic and understanding to them. But then there are times when he clearly does something for attention, making trollish comments similar to people on CE switching to shitposting.
It makes it hard to really take him seriously.

I get why he's appealing to people though. It's why people fall for Ayn Rand, he offers a way to bring order and understanding to the world and that makes you feel good.
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bevan306
02/01/18 9:12:50 PM
#18:


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prince_leo
02/01/18 9:16:09 PM
#19:


I couldn't get past any of the ramblings he does. what's the point of having a lecture if you can't stick to a point?
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Antifar
02/01/18 9:17:21 PM
#20:


prince_leo posted...
I couldn't get past any of the ramblings he does. what's the point of having a lecture if you can't stick to a point?

I've known more than a few professors for whom the license to ramble was the point.
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COVxy
02/01/18 9:17:38 PM
#21:


FLUFFYGERM posted...
if youre extremely far left youll probably hate jordan peterson

otherwise you probably wont


Or if you're, you know, not a fan of pseudoscience. Dude literally says he bases his psychology on the influence of Freud and Jung.
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prince_leo
02/01/18 9:19:21 PM
#22:


Antifar posted...
I've known more than a few professors for whom the license to ramble was the point.

yeah, I had the same but I always felt that they were the worst professors
it's especially bad in a video format where editing is available
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Romulox28
02/01/18 9:20:01 PM
#23:


I love how leftists worship the ground university professors walk on until you get someone like Peterson who is against their ideals, and then of course he is a quack
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KarmaMuffin
02/01/18 9:20:27 PM
#24:


Gb2eGPi

This is every Peterson video.
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COVxy
02/01/18 9:23:53 PM
#25:


Romulox28 posted...
I love how leftists worship the ground university professors walk on until you get someone like Peterson who is against their ideals, and then of course he is a quack


When's the last time you heard psychoanalytic theory being toted by universities or by the left?
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Antifar
02/01/18 9:25:30 PM
#26:


Name a leftist professor with Peterson's level of fame
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Romulox28
02/01/18 9:26:15 PM
#27:


Antifar posted...
Name a leftist professor with Peterson's level of fame

Noam chomsky
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COVxy
02/01/18 9:27:50 PM
#28:


Romulox28 posted...
Antifar posted...
Name a leftist professor with Peterson's level of fame

Noam chomsky


And yet most psycholinguists think his work comes to the incorrect conclusions.
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Antifar
02/01/18 9:28:29 PM
#29:


Romulox28 posted...
Antifar posted...
Name a leftist professor with Peterson's level of fame

Noam chomsky

Touche
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Delirious_Beard
02/01/18 9:28:45 PM
#30:


KarmaMuffin posted...
Gb2eGPi

This is every Peterson video.


literally /pol/
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CruorComa
02/01/18 9:35:02 PM
#31:


Again, no one really addresses anything. It just devolves into not liking how he lectures or arbitratily stabbling at psychoanalysis. It's just noise. He's had an open policy on wanting to debate leftist professors for the last while, but we're here with nothing but nonarguments about fluff.
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COVxy
02/01/18 9:37:20 PM
#32:


CruorComa posted...
arbitratily stabbling at psychoanalysis


It's not arbitrary to stab at a purveyor of pseudoscience.
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CruorComa
02/01/18 9:43:20 PM
#33:


COVxy posted...
CruorComa posted...
arbitratily stabbling at psychoanalysis


It's not arbitrary to stab at a purveyor of pseudoscience.


Much of it is the foundational bedrock of modern psychology.
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COVxy
02/01/18 9:43:49 PM
#34:


CruorComa posted...
Much of it is the foundational bedrock of modern psychology.


No, no it isn't lol.
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Sephiroth1288
02/01/18 9:48:14 PM
#35:


COVxy posted...
FLUFFYGERM posted...
if youre extremely far left youll probably hate jordan peterson

otherwise you probably wont


Or if you're, you know, not a fan of pseudoscience. Dude literally says he bases his psychology on the influence of Freud and Jung.

He's one of the most frequently-cited psychologists in Canada....
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FLUFFYGERM
02/01/18 9:50:23 PM
#36:


COVxy is a make-pretend "PhD" candidate who doesn't actually know anything. Wasting your time. He's just a pseudo intellectual.
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Joelypoely
02/01/18 9:54:49 PM
#37:


Peterson's brilliance consists in his high level of competence across multiple domains and ability to make profound connections between them. He probably won't be seen as one of the greatest philosophers/psychologists/biologists/political theorists who ever lived, he is more like a polymath who has an expansive range of sources to draw upon with the ability to communicate these ideas and connections incredibly effectively. Not only does he draw from Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Orwell, Kierkegaard, Freud, Jung, Jean Piaget, Carl Rogers etc; you can find the sentiments of other great thinkers such as William James, Machiavelli and Camus also embedded in his philosophy.
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CruorComa
02/01/18 9:58:04 PM
#38:


COVxy posted...
CruorComa posted...
Much of it is the foundational bedrock of modern psychology.


No, no it isn't lol.


I think you're being deliberately obtuse.
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FLUFFYGERM
02/01/18 9:59:07 PM
#39:


CruorComa posted...
COVxy posted...
CruorComa posted...
Much of it is the foundational bedrock of modern psychology.


No, no it isn't lol.


I think you're being deliberately obtuse.


That is literally his gimmick.
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50Blessings
02/01/18 10:02:58 PM
#40:


He triggers the extreme left of CE

He must be doing something right.
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Esrac
02/01/18 10:03:15 PM
#41:


prince_leo posted...
I couldn't get past any of the ramblings he does. what's the point of having a lecture if you can't stick to a point?


I find Peterson to be unwatchable when he's lecturing. He is a lot more bearable in an interview or discussion format where he can't just go on and on and on. I thought fairly well of him in his discussions with Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla.
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COVxy
02/01/18 10:04:41 PM
#42:


CruorComa posted...
I think you're being deliberately obtuse.


No, psychology completely abandoned psychoanalysis around 1930 lol.
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COVxy
02/01/18 10:05:43 PM
#43:


Sephiroth1288 posted...
He's one of the most frequently-cited psychologists in Canada....


I can almost guarantee this is untrue lol
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Broseph_Stalin
02/01/18 10:06:24 PM
#44:


averagejoel posted...
the stupid man's smart person

this accuracy
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prince_leo
02/01/18 10:12:23 PM
#45:


Esrac posted...
I find Peterson to be unwatchable when he's lecturing. He is a lot more bearable in an interview or discussion format where he can't just go on and on and on. I thought fairly well of him in his discussions with Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla.

i'm listening to the joe rogan one
it is better, i'll give you that
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CruorComa
02/01/18 10:12:28 PM
#46:


COVxy posted...
CruorComa posted...
I think you're being deliberately obtuse.


No, psychology completely abandoned psychoanalysis around 1930 lol.


Perfect for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8i5zPeLSsE


You're welcome :)
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Sephiroth1288
02/01/18 10:14:52 PM
#47:


Broseph_Stalin posted...
averagejoel posted...
the stupid man's smart person

this accuracy

Hey, here's an 11-minute video carefully deconstructing that person's entire argument

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDANY6KyDo


tl;dw: the author of it is an idiot and also doesn't once refute any of Peterson's claims.
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synth_real
02/02/18 1:37:44 AM
#48:


I'm not really familiar with Peterson's work beyond what other people have said about him (which is a terrible basis for judging someone) but I'm automatically suspicious of a Christian who claims a big Nietzsche influence, considering Nietzsche was one of the early titans of Atheist philosophy, one of his major works is a hitpiece on Christianity titled The Antichrist. Maybe I'll get bored enough this weekend to read up on Peterson and see what he's all about for myself.
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EnragedSlith
02/02/18 2:14:47 AM
#49:


Romulox28 posted...
Antifar posted...
Name a leftist professor with Peterson's level of fame

Noam chomsky

So, for an example of a hoaky leftist professor, you picked one of the most respected academics in the country. Ok
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Esrac
02/02/18 2:24:39 AM
#50:


EnragedSlith posted...
Romulox28 posted...
Antifar posted...
Name a leftist professor with Peterson's level of fame

Noam chomsky

So, for an example of a hoaky leftist professor, you picked one of the most respected academics in the country. Ok


The question wasn't about a hooky leftist professor, it was about a leftist professor with Peterson's level of fame.
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