New Vid: What Gives Life Meaning? | Jordan Peterson
What did you think of my recent video with Jordan Peterson "What gives life meaning?"
A majority of the comments about the recent 20 minute clip from my interview with Jordan Peterson were very positive, it was fun to see so many of you were excited to see the discussion.
However I was surprised that there were a number of commenters that seemed frankly repulsed by Peterson's appearance. Most of the comments were simply the people expressing their dislike of Peterson rather than offering quotes or specific examples of egregious conduct on his part.
Most of my exposure to him has been to Peterson the academic - I watched his University Lectures, read his book Maps of Meaning and read a couple papers of his that came up on Google Scholar. I knew of some people disliking Peterson already, but I had to dig around to figure out why.
I understand that the advent of his fame was rooted in controversy - I believe it was his denouncing of Canada's bill C-16 was what made him famous. However, at every opportunity he got, he made clear that his issue was the enforcing of speech, not with transgender people. Yet people still claim he is transphobic."
Someone else claimed that Peterson was advocating "enforced monogamy," and I believe Peterson has in fact used that phrase. However, based on the context, it didn't seem so alarming to me. (I will admit I thought to myself "now that's a bad choice of words, this is going to be clipped Even if you take that phrase out of context, wouldn't you agree that "enforced monogamy" is simply a creepier way to say "marriage?" So, he thinks "marriage" is a good thing that helps maintain order in society, as I understand it. In particular, it's good for children if parents are married/remain married. (Not that people should be forced to be married to other people.) I don't quite see what's so heinous about that.
Joe Rogan summed it up in one of his podcasts with Peterson:
One of the things that you talked about with incels... and this was part of the, what was it, the New York Times hit piece? You said one of the cures for this is "enforced monogamy." People decided and, y'know, I had never heard that term before quite honestly and I was like "What the fuck does that mean?" It's a psychological term and what it means that is enforced by culture, that it is a good value.
Peterson: Yea because polygamous societies tend to become ultra violent. And that's been known in the anthropological literature for 100 years. ...The journalist knew perfectly well what I meant by enforced monogamy. ...it was also 2 minutes out of a 2 day conversation.
My point is it seems that most people who dislike Peterson do so because they were exposed to something he said in the original context.
Gabor Mate said that Peterson seems angry, that he has a lot of repressed rage. I didn't quite get that impression, but if someone felt that way then fair enough. If someone expresses themselves in an off putting way, then naturally you're not going to like them so much and may be averse to taking in whatever information they're trying to share.
The difference is when you refuse to listen to someone because of the impression you've been told to have of that person.
I don't agree with everything Peterson says. Since he touches on so many topics, he's bound to receive some amount of hate here or there. But I get the impression that most people who hate Peterson think they hate him. In any case, not everyone has to like every guest that appears on the channel. I was just hoping to see more productive critiques like "I don't agree with this specific thing he said for this reason..." rather than "This guy bad, how can you have bad guy on the channel?"
Anyhow, what did you guys think?