[First off: JBP supporters who are downvoting the parent, come on, you know better. That's not how you do things.]
> Isn't Jordan Peterson also famous for being a proponent of racial IQ theories?
If he is, it's remarkable that I've been able to miss that over listening to his course lectures since 2015 on top of the more recent bible/other lectures.
My personal location on the political spectrum right now is pretty partisan Democrat, largely out of the opinion that the Republican Party and most of the conservatism in the US is a dumpster fire, and in particular that the GOP is almost completely incapable of doing policy in the public interest. I say this to make it entirely clear that I'm hardly "far right." :)
And I still think taking in Peterson's stuff has been probably the single best thing that's happened to me for sharpening my thinking over the last few years.
I also think there are some reasonable arguments that he's wrong about a number of things, and I think you should be suspicious about how some of his ideas are functioning in certain political conversations. I see lower-resolution versions of his thinking being pressed into service of conventional conservative partisan narratives. But I strongly suspect that the solution, if there is one, is going to be engaging with the political ideas and trying to criticize them as effectively (and intellectually) as he advocates for them. Ad hominem attacks aimed at his status are only going to feed the beast.
And to the extent that you think progressivism or liberalism or centrist technocratism or whatever are based in reason and argument (and I do), it would be a gift if Peterson's thinking became more prominent, even where it might be wrong. You can engage reason and argument with reason and argument. It's pretty hard for me to tell how to engage Trumpism.
And finally -- Peterson is super popular in large part because he's primarily working in the realm of applied personal philosophy. He's done a lot of compelling work to distill the interpretation of religious narratives, philosophical thinking, and psychology into some concrete guidance that's digestible for those of us culturally centered in western modernity. I think it'd be a rare person who can't find some of what he has to say interesting and useful.
> Isn't Jordan Peterson also famous for being a proponent of racial IQ theories?
If he is, it's remarkable that I've been able to miss that over listening to his course lectures since 2015 on top of the more recent bible/other lectures.
My personal location on the political spectrum right now is pretty partisan Democrat, largely out of the opinion that the Republican Party and most of the conservatism in the US is a dumpster fire, and in particular that the GOP is almost completely incapable of doing policy in the public interest. I say this to make it entirely clear that I'm hardly "far right." :)
And I still think taking in Peterson's stuff has been probably the single best thing that's happened to me for sharpening my thinking over the last few years.
I also think there are some reasonable arguments that he's wrong about a number of things, and I think you should be suspicious about how some of his ideas are functioning in certain political conversations. I see lower-resolution versions of his thinking being pressed into service of conventional conservative partisan narratives. But I strongly suspect that the solution, if there is one, is going to be engaging with the political ideas and trying to criticize them as effectively (and intellectually) as he advocates for them. Ad hominem attacks aimed at his status are only going to feed the beast.
And to the extent that you think progressivism or liberalism or centrist technocratism or whatever are based in reason and argument (and I do), it would be a gift if Peterson's thinking became more prominent, even where it might be wrong. You can engage reason and argument with reason and argument. It's pretty hard for me to tell how to engage Trumpism.
And finally -- Peterson is super popular in large part because he's primarily working in the realm of applied personal philosophy. He's done a lot of compelling work to distill the interpretation of religious narratives, philosophical thinking, and psychology into some concrete guidance that's digestible for those of us culturally centered in western modernity. I think it'd be a rare person who can't find some of what he has to say interesting and useful.