Peterson seems to have a knack for not explaining himself well and expecting people to just understand where he's coming from. He's also really bad at phrasing. He constantly seems to get into hot water for what he says, and then if you try to figure out what he says he actually said it's never for what we're told he says.
I think he'd do much better if he wrote more books and had a really good editor.
This is the hallmark of cult (or any organized religion's) literature. Also how therapists operate. Be vague, and let your customers project the meanings onto your words that they most want to hear.
If you actually gave people answers, their quest for meaning would be complete and they wont come back next week. You lose engagement.
How do you manage to put the blame on the person cited out of context instead of on the journalists, whose job it actually was to verify such things?
I don’t know the exact context for the original statement, but the linked explanation video[1], which is only three minutes long, is very straightforward and exhaustive, and not at all vague as you claim.
Mostly it just irks me, as I have seen many people I respect given this treatment, but it has always been by the intellectually dishonest, including in fact in cult literature, with which I unfortunately have some personal experience.
The fact that this is now the new norm in mainstream press is very concerning.
Peterson doesn't want a really good editor. His books are known for being intentionally vague and incomprehensible while sounding clever and insightful, but in a way where most people can never really prove that he intended to make a statement about anything.
"You're ambiguous therefore you're malicious"? Yeah, I don't buy that he's being intentionally vague primarily because he will explain what he means when people ask him to explain himself in more detail. It's just that everybody knee-jerks today.
Every time I've seen an article about Peterson -- which, to be fair, has been all of three times so I'm not particularly well read -- it's saying he's done something or said something horrible. When I dig up what he actually said to get the context -- something that no article has ever done -- I'm usually left with a different interpretation or still being unsure what he was trying to say. When I look for Peterson's own explanations, they make sense to me and they're still consistent with what he originally said. Now, I don't agree with, well, hardly any of his points, but they're typically consistent even though the media consistently says they're not.
It strikes me more along the lines of how once James Damore, the guy who wrote the Google memo, was labelled anti-left and anti-feminist, it was just accepted that everything he said was immediately wrong and his entire argument was assumed to be the least favorable position. Nobody tried to actually read his memo and address those arguments. It could be interpreted as anti-left and anti-feminist there for it must be anti-left and anti-feminist and that engineer must be ceaselessly attacked for not toeing the cultural line even if he had good points.
It's like someone just gets labelled as an enemy and then it's red vs blue, left vs right, up vs down, and everybody has to be hardline anti-center lest you be labelled with that scarlet letter R or D. It's so intellectually dishonest. It's exactly what we used to blame Fox News and the religious right for doing! As someone who has been liberal and left their whole life, this recent behavior of mistaking character assassination and vitriolic reprisal for criticism has been one of the most disappointing and frustrating changes I've seen.
I didn't say he's malicious. I'm saying he isn't insightful or original. He has nothing meaningful to say that everyone doesn't already know. He just phrases it incomprehensibly and vaguely because he's trying to make a living selling books and giving self-help talks.
You are apparently upset that everything turns into a team sport with the left on one side and conservatives on another. Well, you're the one doing that here. I was basing my opinion of him on his own words, written and spoken. I have pretty moderate political beliefs and I don't really see how they pertain to a conversation about a guy that writes self-help books.
> I'm saying he isn't insightful or original. He has nothing meaningful to say that everyone doesn't already know.
Forgive me if I suspect this is essentially an admission that you've only engaged with Peterson on a drive-by level.
Of the top of my head, were you already familiar with things like:
* Who Jakk Panksepp is, or have any outline of points from his work on affective neuroscience? (say, for example, the observation that if you deprive young rats of rough and tumble play they get hyperactive and their prefrontal cortexes don't develop very well and that can be treated with psychomotor stimulants)
* Anything about the narrative in the Enûma Eliš/Babylonian creation myth, or possible relevant interpretations for present day people?
* Questions of epistemology considering whether faculties of reason or attention are more valuable, and what the difference might be?
* Some neuroscientists/psychologists don't map the left and right brain to "logical" or "creative" but more as "explored territory" and "unexplored territory"?
* Anything about biological mechanisms that might underlying different systems for incentive/future rewards vs consumptive rewards?
* Much about Piaget's life or stages of cognitive development?
That's nothing like an exhaustive list of things I was introduced to following his lectures.
I don't have any desire to defend all of Peterson's statements, there's enough he's said that I disagree with. In some cases, I believe he's misrepresented things that I already do have some understanding of and so I certainly don't think he can be trusted without reservation. Perhaps he has even misrepresented some of the things I've mentioned above. There is plenty of room for criticism of him. And a good chunk of his oeuvre is synthesizing the works of others, so maybe the charges of unoriginality stick too.
But you'd have to be part of a considerably better educated crowd that's much smarter than I am to believe that the contents of that oeuvre are simply self-evident and empty.
> He just phrases it incomprehensibly and vaguely because he's trying to make a living selling books and giving self-help talks
Perceiving people's inner motivations is hard, and unless you're better at it than you are at accurately summarizing their work, there's no reason to believe your summary is particularly good. I think anyone who's actually payed attention to Peterson would say that whether or not he enjoys the money that's come with his attention, he is also on some kind of mission and is potentially more helpful or dangerous than someone who merely wants to augment their standard of living or financial power.
> You are apparently upset that everything turns into a team sport with the left on one side and conservatives on another. Well, you're the one doing that here.
You know, one of the things that Peterson said in his lectures that I'd suppose everybody might know is that when you argue with someone, one of the first things they're likely to do is try and turn the argument around on you. Perhaps it's inevitable. But did the parent really turn it into a team sports game? Seems to me they were criticizing a team they identified with.
> I was basing my opinion of him on his own words, written and spoken... a guy that writes self-help books.
The problem I'm having here is probably the same one the person you're responding to is having -- you're claiming to have engaged with his words, but the picture you're reflecting is very different than the one others who have engaged with his work have.
Is it possible they've engaged it on a level that you haven't?
Even if you think Peterson is trouble (and he is, in some ways) is it possible you can be more effective at responding to the trouble he presents if you have engaged at a deeper level?
My take so far (with limited research) is that Peterson is trying to evoke debate on the issues in a centrist fashion reminiscent of Plato and his cave. The ‘shapes’ of traditional societal structures are being bound to new normals on the ‘wall’ of the human condition; solving this jig-saw of a problem necessitates open debate & negotiation.
That seems reasonable. I think he spent so much time in a classroom that it's colored his speaking. He's too used to leading students to the point that he's trying to make and waiting for them to make the final leap of logic instead of just saying what he's trying to say.
He is purposefully obtuse, so that wouldn't help. This way, hard core incels can believe he means the more extreme options, and he has plausible deniability for journalists.
I think he'd do much better if he wrote more books and had a really good editor.