However, let me also warn you that this path of becoming infatuated with "thinkers" like Peterson is a dead end.
People like Rand, Chomsky and Peterson look heroic merely because they are willing to shout the loudest and attract the spotlight.
If you are really searching for authentic meaning, you're probably not going to find it among those in in the spotlight.
Instead of Rand, seek out Robert Nozick. Instead of Chomsky, seek out Murray Bookchin. Instead of Peterson, seek out Alasdair MacIntyre.
There are smart, brilliant thinkers of every ideological stripe. However, the best and brightest rarely make the NYT bestseller list. Continuing to be attracted to "thinkers" like Peterson will only lead to disappointment. Almost everything he is saying has been said before by someone who was smarter and a better writer, and most importantly kinder, than Peterson.
He has done a good job surfing the wave of fame for sure. In my opinion the core of it is not about fame though, the core is a message he's promoted for decades and that he truly thinks is correct, and helpful to people.
I think you're falling into a trap that's easy to fall into, and perhaps lies at the crux of the criticisms leveled against Peterson. What I'm about to say has certainly been more eloquently stated by someone else, but I'll do my best here. As I see it there are effectively two types of knowledge acquisition and transference. The first is explanatory knowledge. Scientists and philosophers work to build new explanations of the world. In this realm, it makes no sense to re-tread familiar territory, and the faster we accumulate this knowledge, the better.
There's another realm, and it's what I would call cultural knowledge. These are like "social truths" that are arrived at via some method of consensus in a given group of people. In this realm, the re-treading of familiar territory is acceptable, so long as the knowledge still needs to propagate throughout society or be contested by those who deviate from it. In this realm faster is not better, because these truths act as societal stabilizers.
I see Peterson's influence as belonging to the second realm. I find it irritating when people point out that "it's been said before". Yes, I'm sure it's been said before, but that is not the point. The point is to revivify that knowledge within a culture. To assume he needs to tread new ground is to treat him as belonging to the first realm, and I don't think that's the correct approach here.
Each approach has it's conceits, strengths and weaknesses but truth emerges where these are reconciled and a synthesis is arrived at.
https://twitter.com/21logician/status/831020059212541956/vid....
Purposefully misrepresents the opinions of those he disagrees with potentially, here. Not to mention how messed up what he is saying is.
https://twitter.com/21logician/status/813901825539788800/vid....
Maybe we should oppress Dawkins, and other atheists. Very hypocritical here.
https://twitter.com/21logician/status/813890243606802432/vid....
You need to be religious to have morals (unless you are Muslim, he hates Muslims...)
There is another video of him stating that women want to be brutally dominated, and that is why women support Islam... can't find the video now though.
https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/615e3z/i_am_dr_jordan_....
Frozen was propaganda, in his mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjON3cwjILQ
Women should just have a family, not try to have a career or work.
There are plenty of examples of him being hypocritical, pseudo scientific, and anti-women. There is a good collection of this on the subreddit enoughpetersonspam.
You're writing off people in "the spotlight" as if it is incapable of shining on people who convey rational ideas.
To be frank, you also assert your opinion on the competence of thinkers as if it's factual.
the thing makes me most uncomfortable about his attitude is what he doesn't say. demonizing 'social justice warriors' and repeating danger of politically correctness is ok, but what criticism about rising nationalism, alt-right movement? this is the elephant in the room he does not talk about, instead he is only focusing on small-minority leftist groups. don't know weather he is biased towards right, or he is trying to get-well with these group. but these are my two cents.
More than once I've caught myself leaning into or at least not challenging views that I strongly disagree with when talking to someone espousing them, because I felt it would not really be helpful/productive. I can see Peterson doing the same, and avoiding outright condemning the 'alt-right' in the way you desire because he might feel it would not lead to a desirable outcome.
I'm uncomfortable giving him this leeway, but I have to admit that I respect Scott enough to not write what he did without a decent degree of thought.
For myself, at least, I can't tell if this is the right approach. But at the very least I can say it's not as simple as always expressing my 'true' beliefs. That would be lazy.
As GP points out he's not so critical of his alt-right cheerleaders. Perhaps we would like it if he took some responsibility for his more regressive fans but I don't think he sees that as his problem. Maybe that's fair enough too. Maybe he just sees himself as a guy who's "speaking the truth" moreso than "a leader".
Here's a great example of how to read it:
https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2017/08/everything-y...
You can keep the supernatural stuff at bay and just use the Bible the way it's intended to be used, as a repository of wisdom. It's got a bunch of really cool stories in it that are also really dark and rich. They don't just have one moral. You can see yourself in any of the characters in any of the stories and it will show you what to look for and how to respond.
So religion is the whole thing of living by a particular moral code, going to church every sunday, marrying within your creed etc. it's a very "wordly" concept.
Spirituality then is the whole "higher consciousness" "explaining the unexplainable" thing.
We can be religious without being spiritual, and spiritual without being religious. Ayn Rand for instance, or much of modern atheism serve as examples of the former. Ayahuasca, psychodynamicm, meditation etc. the latter.
Of course we often have the two come together as they complement each other quite well but we often see spirituality subjugated by religion, or people scared off spirituality by it's religious connotations.
I come from a deeply religious (Evangelical) background, and in some ways, perhaps, my situation is 'worse' than yours because I never left because I felt that it was burdensome. On the contrary! I loved much of it and in hindsight the structure and social life it provided me might've been extra-valuable in light of my Asperger's. I just couldn't believe it, and moved to another city, country, etc.
While I'd like to say I figured it out in the interim, I'm still very much working on that. However, I found that at least on the personal level, zen buddhism has filled a significant part of that void, and if you haven't looked into it I can highly recommend it.
I've not looked into the more social aspect of it, though. That's high on my list. I'm bracing myself for a degree of disappointment, because I often don't really like the 'woo-hoo buddhist types' that I run into who are or claim to be buddhists. But I have no real evidence for that.
Nonetheless, despite my ongoing 'search', I feel zen has provided enough that I feel I can be some degree of content without running back to more 'traditional' religion (and I have considered that, up to going back to an evangelical church).
If you're interested in discussing this further, don't hesitate to send me an email.
I personally think there's a very valuable role 'us' ex-evangelicals/ex-religious folk can play in this growing sense of emptiness that I see all around me, and that I see turns people to various 'extreme' movements that all strike me as rather less-than-stellar (alt-right, extreme SJW, rabid marxists/anarchists/whateverists). I'm still often shocked at how many nonreligious folk around me simply do not understand the sense of community that, among other things, a church can provide. It's like talking to someone who has never been in love!
EDIT: Let me add that I don't immediately have anything concretely against Peterson either, and the article kind of confirms my suspicion that he's a bit like C.S. Lewis, which I consider mostly a good thing. I would not want to deny anyone the positive role Peterson could play in their lives, in the same way that Lewis played a very important role in my life. Peterson makes me uncomfortable in a way Lewis usually didn't, but that could be because my point of entry was, well, being deeply religious.
I have nothing against people gathering to find a sense of community but I am somewhat against the beliefs of most organized religions that I am familiar with.
But a community centered around a particular framework, with a particular set of goals that extend beyond even the lifespan of the people involved, combined with an outlet for collective grief/ecstasy. It's hard to describe if you haven't grown up in it, but it's different from any other community I've experienced.
Purposefully misrepresents the opinions of those he disagrees with potentially, here. Not to mention how messed up what he is saying is.
https://twitter.com/21logician/status/813901825539788800/vid...
Maybe we should oppress Dawkins, and other atheists. Very hypocritical here.
https://twitter.com/21logician/status/813890243606802432/vid...
You need to be religious to have morals (unless you are Muslim, he hates Muslims...)
There is another video of him stating that women want to be brutally dominated, and that is why women support Islam... can't find the video now though.
https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/615e3z/i_am_dr_jordan_...
Frozen was propaganda, in his mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjON3cwjILQ
Women should just have a family, not try to have a career or work.
There are plenty more examples of this kind of behaviour, if you look into him more. But he is quite clearly sexist, and he panders to the alt-right.
Additionally, he is supposed to be a self-help guru, but he gets quite angry and vents on twitter all the time, those two don't quite add up to me.
In some places there are even “church”/gatherings for non-religious people called Sunday Assembly
But I don't care about the fight against "Postmodern Neo-Marxism" or any of his discussion about free speech. His value for me is due to his religious content. I, like many people my age, grew up in a conservatively religious household and became irreligious as soon as I left home. I thought of it as breaking free from burdensome constraints.
But after years of attempting to "simply be a good person", I've found that there is indeed some kind of void that needs to be filled. And yet, I just cannot go back to being (in my case) an evangelical christian. Once you're out, you're out. So where should a modern, rational, scientifically literate person do when they need a deeper source of particularly religious meaning in their life? Peterson is the first person I've come across who has even come close to answering that question adequately. No matter how many faults the man has, he has done me this kindness. All the rest is fluff to me.
I do think he's a bit of a prophet, in that he has the ability to inspire conviction without guilt, passion without irresponsibility, and courage without hubris.