Jordan Peterson - what is the deal?

[glittertinsel]

I know this guy has been around a while, but I only bothered watching some if his YouTube stuff recently. My impressions are -

He is very articulate

I alternate between thinking he is very insightful and feeling irritated by the 'mansplaining' tone of it all

Some people say he is offensive / misogynist, but I haven't really encountered that??

I get vibes from him of an evangelical (slightly peculiar / deranged?) nature underneath the calm and logical veneer?

When interviewed by Piers Morgan, why did he start crying very suddenly out of nowhere? What was all that about?

Something seems 'off', but also he makes a lot of sense in some ways.

AIBU?

What’s with the personal insults bullshit? You don’t agree with him or like him, great. Why would you feel the need to attack someone’s intelligence as if you were granted some sort of cerebral upper hand simply by virtue of saying so?

Dazz IS him. Been googling yourself, Jordan with the PhD?

Imagine, I might have one too? Maybe I just don't write shit books and crave attention.

Let's have this out Dr P. I'm bored.

How does your narcissism affect your day to day life?

Oh, it won't. You're too busy thinking you're better than everyone else.

A prophet! A genuis! Why? Because you published a mediocre book? Professorship on the horizon? The best you've got is my username which means absolutely nothing?

While reminding us that you're an unsung genius and prophet. The most basic level of psychological education has you sussed.

I feel like social media, YouTube etc has created so many options for so many people to spout opinions and attract followers that it's so hard to know who to trust, who is intelligent, who is genuine. I've seen JP's name bandied around so much I need to buy his book I think. To see what the hype is about.
Currently I feel that everyone can have a platform with no filtering (on another thread we are talking about autistic advocates and educators).

As an academic, he's pretty poor. Everything he says that is correct is obvious to the point of being facile, even tautological. I've read 2 of his books and found them vague, meandering and filled with imprecise thinking. He's an expert in a fairly obscure field of psychology but from the way he talks you'd think he was an expert in everything from history to maths. He does get unfairly caricatured and accused of saying things he never says.

I don’t understand the evidence for saying “as an academic he’s pretty poor”. He is highly qualified in his field (psychology) and has held tenure at the most prestigious institutions: he has bachelors degrees in political science and psychology from the University of Alberta, a PhD in clinical psychology from McGill University. He researched and taught later becoming associate professor at Harvard University and then became a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He has authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers and was cited almost 8,000 times as of mid-2017 and more than 18,000 times as of 2022. That’s phenomenal and certainly not very poor!
I do agree that his writing and communication style is rather fluid, often meandering through a range of ideas making it difficult to follow for some but that doesn’t make him “poor”!

He isn’t an expert “in a fairly obscure field of psychology”. He’s an expert in psychology full stop! Perhaps you are alluding to his interest in Jung; I agree that is obscure but it doesn’t mean he isn’t an expert in the field

I worship him. I want him for president/prime minister.
I can listen to him lecture after lecture after lecture on YouTube. So much intellect and insight in one man. 😊

I agree with what I've heard him say about mental health.

He says a lot of good stuff and some stuff I don't entirely agree with. Like most people.

I'm bored of people deciding that individuals are either absolutely on the money or utterly contemptible, it's so polarising.

Lucky you . Not true of countless other women. I haven't been mistreated either it I'm not blinkered enough to believe that it isn't very common indeed.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, apparently...

Nobody on the planet is an expert on the entire field of psychology, or indeed the entire field of anything. This is something you come to learn pretty rapidly in the first year of a PhD. Secondly, academia is not a meritocracy. People are appointed to posts for all kinds of reasons. That is one point I do agree with Peterson on. The vagueness with which he writes isn't just a stylistic criticism. It demonstrates the vagueness of so many of his ideas. The best academics can explain complicated ideas simply and clearly. I gave his work a fair and patient read and was unimpressed. I will say again though that I think he is unfairly caricatured, and extreme views attributed to him which he has never actually expressed. Such is the risk of courting academic celebrity.

An expert just means you’re very knowledgeable in a particular area; his qualifications, roles and publications demonstrate that he is an expert in clinical psychology

I think JP is an interesting person. Not many academics are as articulate as he is or as charismatic, whatever anyone says (I know, I spent decades in this world!)

Lots of academic's work doesn't stand up to exceptional scrutiny. He does speak beyond his areas of expertise for sure, and sounds very confident.

JP was taking SSRIs for about twenty years, then stopped, then took benzos such as Valium (I guess, not sure of the specific one) to dampen down the anxiety, he then ended up with a full-blown addiction to them which is not that surprising, they are highly addictive and he then had to try to detox off which is exceptionally unpleasant, I have a family member who was on them for a similar time and also struggled massively to come off them, having an ongoing nervous breakdown for a couple of years til he did.

I don't think JP does understand females or feminism very deeply, but many of the things he says like that countries with hugely imbalanced populations (e.g. China with an excess of millions of men due to female infanticide) have huge problems with too many men with too little to do are spot on. I feel dominant forms of masculinity are having a crisis over the world (which is good as it can't carry on its oppressive ways) but without anywhere to put all of that emotion and energy, it's dangerous for men and women. I don't know if he recommends enforced monogamy, I would be very surprised, but perhaps he's pointing out the problems when traditional forms of social regulation break down for males- I don't think they are always problems for females at all (who often benefit outside those traditions unless there's a counter-balanced attack on them).

I don't idolise him, he's a flawed human person, he's not the best intellectual ever but I admire his attempt to be a public intellectual in the French mode rather than just hiding away like 99% of academics.

Regarding enforced monogamy, he means culturally enforced: heavy social pressure and convention, not law or anything. Hardly groundbreaking stuff, basically what every other small-c conservative wants. He thinks that's the answer to tempering male aggression. We used to have socially enforced monogamy until relatively recently. Of course he fails to acknowledge how many men were regularly beating the shit out of their wives and children in the days of socially enforced monogamy.

He’s your classic ‘men’s rights’ guy. But articulate and not stupid, so gets a lot of airtime.
he’s views are low level/ mid level misogynistic on women and girls but because he’s not aggressive when he talks everyone seems to think that’s ok.

I want him to come back with a better argument than my shit username.

Let's have a decent discussion?

How is he misogynistic? Why do some women say this about him? I never heard a misogynistic sentence out of his mouth.
Could you link something here that proves he is misogynistic?

@Monoprix it's not just 'some' women. It a lot of men and 'some' men too.

@Monoprix

I don't think men have been 'in charge' for so long because they're 'better' at it - as Peterson does. Nor do I think that men are violent because they're being denied 'mates' and that enforced monogamy is the solution, because I don't think men have a right to sex with women, and I don't think women should be forced to be with certain men. I don't think society should be re-organised in favour of making sure men can get married.Peterson does. His argument is that it's all those angry single men that are violent, and that if they weren't single ( bloody picky women's falut obvs) then society would be less violent.

And I don't condemn the housewives of the 50s who had everything 'provided' for them by hard working men for being bored or wanting something else in their lives - like education, work, freedom.

In fact, I think a lot of his rhetoric is based around the backlash to gender equality, and he's tuned into this and made a fortune out of it. Good for him.

But hiding sexism and misogyny in academic language doesn't actually mean it's not sexist. Blaming women for the faults or behaviour of men or society has a long history ( witch burning, anyone) and he's just another in along line of men looking to blame women. But then he doesn't believe that women throughout history ever were oppressed in anyway. So I suppose men really were/are just better at everything.

His views on climate change seem a bit....wrong. Can anyone point me to some relevant stuff by Peterson himself about this? (Rather than commentaries of what he has said which might be biased)

I don't agree with everything he says, but an awful lot of it is very sensible.

He is a small c conservative, that doesn't make him a bad person, it just means not everyone will agree with it.

He believes in equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome, to me this is the only sensible approach.

He talks a lot about the difference between men and women as populations. So things like in general women are more interested in people and men are more interested in things. He doesn't say that this is the case for individuals, or that it means that girls and boys should be given different opportunities. However some people take this the wrong way and assume he is being misogynistic or trying to dictate gender norms.

I don't really understand why people hate him unless they are only seeing selected snippets or out of context quotes.

His argument is that it's all those angry single men that are violent, and that if they weren't single ( bloody picky women's falut obvs) then society would be less violent.

I never heard him blame women for it, though. He's just commenting on where men find themselves today as opposed to 50 years ago. He does say that he believes women would be happier in marriage than in a career. In fact I remember an interview where he says that when women are asked whether they'd prefer a guaranteed successful marriage or successful career (they might get both), the vast majority of women say, a successful marriage. And the interviewer says she disagrees and thinks a successful career is better, before admitting that when he'd previously asked her that question, she'd chosen a successful marriage! 🤷‍♀️

Therefore his argument is that societal expectation is telling women to say one thing but nature actually makes them feel something else.

I don't agree with everything he says, but I don't think he's misogynistic. At least what I've heard doesn't come across like that. He believes women are happier in marriage and, indeed, I think most women believe women are happier in marriage. An opinion that you see on MN regularly. But I don't think that opinion makes a person a misogynist even though I disagree with that view.