In a recent podcast with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on JRE, Joe Rogan mentioned that Peterson, perhaps more than any other person he knew, has been maligned and mischaracterized by hyperbolic critics. I think that's a pretty accurate statement. Given that Peterson is essentially just a Canadian college professor with some strong views (and a lot of questions), it's astounding the level of controversy and conversation he's been able to inspire (which ironically, I'm guilty of exacerbating, here). Indeed, at least among those of us who frequent sites like Reddit or YouTube, he's about as controversial as President Donald Trump. I doubt there's a person here who doesn't know his name in one context or another, which, again, given his actual role in society and his very recent rise to fame, is quite extraordinary.Another interesting aspect of Peterson being in the spotlight is the polarizing effect it has had on our (particularly internet) culture; it seems that most everyone either loves him or hates him; thinks he's a modern day prophet or some modern iteration of the Antichrist. Again, he's a lot like Trump in that way; contrast Peterson or Trump with a figure like, say, Joe Rogan, where people seem to be perfectly able to say "eh, yeah he's got some interesting podcasts, I like his martial arts commentary, but he's a bit of a conspiracy nut stoner who rants about keto too much" (i.e. people can hold opinions of him without them being particularly strong one way or another), while figures like Peterson and Trump seem to leave very little middle ground in their support vs opposition.The purpose of this CMV is to discuss my assertion that Peterson gets far more of a bad rap than he deserves. Now, I also think those who worship the ground he walks on are off base in doing so, but I just don't feel that such ardent support is really a stance worth debunking; anyone who takes the words of any other human being as unchallengable Gospel is being ridiculous, and the reason they are so absurd (i.e. all people are fallible) isn't really something I feel needs much explaining beyond just that: people are fallible. The level of denigration and hate Peterson incurs, however, I do find to be an interesting topic, so in this CMV I'm looking for a reason why he deserves it and why he isn't just being frequently maligned and mischaracterized by the left.I'm reminded of another prominent figure on the right: Ben Shapiro. When I first heard of Shapiro years and years ago, I was in college, and still much more on the leftist progressive part of the political spectrum. The first time I encountered mentions of Shapiro, it was from left-wing news outlets who were framing him as a literal Nazi. Being younger and very much on the left, I didn't really question that. Their cherry-picked quotes and sound-bytes were more than sufficient evidence for me that Shapiro was very much the radical right-winger they painted him as. Then, one day, looking for a laugh at some absurd kook spouting racist hate rhetoric, I actually went and pulled up a full speech + Q&A from one of his college presentations. I probably had an hour to kill doing the dishes or laundry or something. I kept waiting for the goose-stepping, sieg-heiling, lynch-mob-encouraging ball to drop... but it never came. Figuring that particular speech was a fluke, or an anomaly, I pulled up another video... and another... and another... and never did I get one whiff of the horrible monster I had been led to believe Shapiro was. He was a sharp and witty man, to be sure, and I hardly agreed with every word out of his mouth... but I agreed with a surprising amount, especially given that everything I knew about him prior signaled that he was a racist, white-supremacist bigot. How could I be agreeing with a racist, white-supremacist bigot... unless perhaps he actually isn't any of those things.I feel the Peterson situation is more or less the same, except the dial has been cranked up to 11. Where it was different for me, at least, is that I have been casually following the progress of this situation from day one - the ground zero event outside his college that got this whole ball rolling just a couple short years ago. I'm not an ardent supporter of his - I haven't bought any of his stuff or donated to him, and I'm not even subscribed to his channel - but unlike Shapiro I had the benefit of at least being aware of his existence and positions before the media and the mob sunk their claws into him......and then was horrified by what the media and the mob said about him once they finally did.The following two years were essentially characterized by a string of massive mischaracterizations and misrepresentations, of which we can only speculate as to how deliberate they were, asserting that he, among other things, has a mental disorder that makes him hate/fear trans people, or that he's literally worth mentioning in the same breath as alt-right folks like Richard Spencer and David Duke.This slander campaign culminated in the ultimate example: his interview with Cathy Newman. IIRC Newman, in a less than 30min interview, started her utterances with or used some variation of "so what you're saying is... [insert some absurd mischaracterization of some position Peterson has never espoused or supported here]" over 30 times. Assuming they both had equal time to speak, that means she made baseless assumptions about his views two+ times per minute. Can you imagine trying to hold a discussion with someone like that? Every ~30seconds they're saying stuff like "so you're saying you support genocide?" And you're like "well no, I don't, in fact I've done a lot of work to help prevent it from happening in the third world-" and she interrupts with "So what you're saying is, you'd be happy if impoverished minorities are killed from genocide?" It's impressive Peterson didn't spend the whole interview in a permanent face-palm. It was so absurd it's become a rather popular meme. One example being:Peterson: I had bacon and eggs for breakfast.Newman: So what you're saying is kill all vegans?And honestly, even though it's a typical meme over-exaggeration, that's not an unfair characterization of Newman's real, non-meme ability or willingness to understand what Peterson is actually trying to say. You get the impression that if Newman had bothered to sit down and watch even a few hours of raw (not cherry-picked, detractor-commentary-laced) footage of Peterson just explaining his ideas, she wouldn't have been able to honestly say virtually anything she did in that whole half hour. Which begs a nasty question: did she, like so many of his detractors, just not bother to do their homework and fell hook, line, and sinker for the media smear campaign against him, or did she know how devious, maligning, and ungenerous she was being in her mischaracterizations, and yet did them anyway just to push her own narrative? A little pet theory of mine is that just since Peterson espouses pro-Christian, pro-Conservative, and anti-Socialist viewpoints, the left hates him, which results in their online rage-fest against him. Since he did rise to prominence, however fairly or otherwise, his substantial ability to speak on these things marks him as an enemy of the left, which is why we see so many smear pieces on him. Never mind that he's not an insane Christian like "bomb the abortion clinics," or an insane right winger like "gas the Jews and lynch the blacks;" the fact he has a substantial platform makes the left treat him as if the things he is saying really are that insane, simply because they want to silence descent.Newman is, from what I can see, basically the poster-child for the anti-Peterson movement. You get the impression 90% of the issues they have/she had with him could be cleared up if they/she just watched a couple hours of him speaking on the subjects they're concerned about... and given how easy that is to do, you're left to wonder if they don't really care to rectify their ignorance about him.. or they just favor slandering him regardless of how true their accusations are, instead. And then again: why?If I went into all the various examples of how Peterson has been maligned this already over-long post would end up long enough to be a book in its own right, so I'll leave it up to you to bring up various examples that you think are valid and not maligning. Just to touch on one, though, to show you what I mean:Claim: Peterson is a hateful transphobe. He refuses to call his trans students by their preferred pronouns which, as he knows, makes them feel unsafe and unwelcome on campus, but he persists because he hates/fears trans people.Reality: Peterson is against government-compelled speech, including the use of preferred pronouns. He has no issue calling his students (or others) by their preferred pronouns, has done so and continues to do so, and in any case his doing/not doing such has never been an issue or caused complaints. He just dislikes the idea that it might be considered a criminal action not to use preferred pronouns. He maintains good relationships with current and former trans students, and has received a far more positive feedback from the greater trans community than negative feedback.In my experience, virtually all complaints about Peterson follow this general model. And even in those cases where the "reality" part is, in fact bad or wrong, the "claim" part always seems to over-exaggerate just how bad and wrong it is. For example, I disagree with him on a number of things, like just how slippery the Marxist slope is (the far left is dangerous, indeed, but some of the things he points to as signals of it's potential impending takeover are just, imo, him being paranoid and alarmist), and while he's made a better case for Christianity and the importance of religious tradition than the many highly educated Christian apologists I've spent much more time watching debate folks like Hitchens or Harris, he does sound more than a little kooky when he's 10min deep ranting about "the shadow" or whatever. But you don't just hear that his views might be flawed in places or in whole, you hear that he's a vicious, calculated, alt-right, racist, sexist, etc. monster.Point being, as stated much earlier, I do not agree with every word out of his mouth. But 1) I don't think the critiques of him rise to the level of his actual threat potential, and 2) even if I (we) don't agree with everything he says, so what? I mean, honestly, can you name me even one figure that you wholeheartedly agree with 100% of the time? Is there anyone on this Earth whose words you accept, without question or deviation, as Gospel? And, even if there's a figure that you generally agree with and respect 90% of the time, why should that 10% render the 90% invalid, as Peterson critics so often seem to do (e.g. we'll he's wrong on points X, Y, and Z, so better scrap his points A-W since the dude is clearly a lunatic)?I also find it rather amusing how many people are so loose in their propensity to label him "dangerous," while fully dismissing his fear of the extreme left. As stated earlier, I think his fear is a bit alarmist and paranoid... but not entirely unwarranted - the far left has repeatedly demonstrated its ability and willingness to enact violence and/or even turn whole countries into totalitarian hellholes. So for someone to so casually dismiss his "dangerous" concerns about far left ideology while at the same time feeling free to label him, a goofy, Kermit -the-frog-sounding Canadian professor with a couple books and a YouTube channel as "dangerous" is rather cheeky, don't you think?To reiterate my main thrust here, you can like or dislike Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. But while I think he's undeserving of your unconditional love, he's also undeserving of your unmitigated hate. More than most people in recent history, his name and his ideas have been falsly represented to better drag them through the mud. You can levy a virtually never-ending host of complaints about the guy, many of which I would probably support or even add to, but when it comes to claiming he's a right-wing extremist, misogynistic, transphobic hate-monger who is completely out of his mind, for example, you need to tone down your rhetoric and re-listen to what the guy is actually saying because, even if you disagree, it's not that bad.I'd also posit a few theories for why I think he's such a target:1) He's popular. Any person with that kind of fame paints a target on their back, no matter what their reason for being famous; being thrust into the limelight for views on political/social issues, though, as he has, paints an especially big target.2) He is, to some extent, breaking the "Ivory Tower" exclusivity of intellectualism. This takes two forms: A), he is sharing academic ideas with a broad population that we have no reason to assume attended/are attending a prestigious university, or even graduated high school. He's deviating from the "closed door" nature of universities by sharing all of this free and publicly, so regular academics might dislike him for doing so. B) Because he does so, this makes him a "pop academic," someone who is no longer just speaking to high-minded, well-educated individuals, but the common man. A scholar might view other scholars who contain their discussion to just between other scholars as credible, but one who interacts with the broader public is just putting on a show for the weak-minded.3) He's made a good bit of money off of his endeavors. Note that, AFAIK, he hasn't monetized his videos - I have yet to see even one ad while watching his content - but his monthly Patreon donations swelled to over $60,000 at my last count. Just to reiterate that: sixty thousand dollars PER MONTH. That alone means he's making more in two months (not even counting his regular salary) than most college professors do in a whole year. There has to be some jealously at work there, especially considering how many smear pieces against him open with, or at least contain, some details about how much money he is making. And hell, I'd be pissed too if I was one of his colleagues; at that point I've dedicated most of my life, certainly several decades minimum, to academia, and I'm pulling in a rookie salary while most of my projects go unfunded, and I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do (teaching enrolled students) but my wealth is minimal and my power/influence is relegated to whatever class I'm holding that semester... and here's this fucking guy putting his shit on YouTube for free and speaking to the masses making enough money to buy his own yacht in the next year or so. Generally I really detest the "well you're just jealous of how awesome I am" rational for why people dislike you, but when you compare average academics to a guy like Peterson it seems a valid complaint; among academics, this guy is a rock star while they all did all the things they were told would bring them success yet they're living paycheck to paycheck while he's riding high.4) Ties into #3: he's also fairly well-cited. His academic work, from what I've found, has several thousand citations spanning across just over 100 papers published, averaging around ~50 per paper. From what I understand as a non-academic, most of the industry is churning out countless papers that will never be cited even once, a standard that can persist across a whole career. So again, if you're an academic that has dotted all your "I"s and crossed all your "T"s for several decades and yet you get no recognition at all for it, a guy like Peterson getting recognized left and right would likely be quite galling, and give you just all that much more of a reason to tear the guy down.As an analogy for 3 and 4, it'd be like if you were on a sports team. You, fifty other guys, and one guy named Peterson all put in 2 hours a day practicing. You all attended competitions. You've all been working towards this passion for decades. But this fucking Peterson guy, without putting in any more hours or doing anything special (and in fact he might be breaking some rules from your POV) is winning every event and getting incredibly lucrative sponsorships from Nike, while the rest of you are just toiling without result or recognition. That'd piss off anybody, right? Enough even that you might write a smear piece about him online, no?Just to clarify, I've been a little loose with my use of "right" and "left," "conservative" and "liberal;" frankly, I really only view as "conservative" in the sense he advocates for things like family, work, and duty, and only really view him as "right" because he's at least further right than the extreme leftists he combats. In truth, I'm not sure that either of those terms are accurate in the grand scheme of political ideologies. Classic liberal or centrist might actually suit him better. IIRC he's identified as such.To CMV I'm mainly looking for clear, consistent evidence that Peterson really is as bad or evil or dangerous or whatever as he's made out to be, and why whatever those things might be are so bad that everything he says can be written off because of them. For example, I'm looking for justification that Peterson can be rightly mentioned in the same breath as Spencer.There's not a lot that I can think of that I would regard as particularly poor evidence in this endeavor EXCEPT short little YouTube excerpts, compilations, or sound-bytes of his speeches... and there will be an extra ten points from Gryffindor if they're subbed or commentated on by random YouTubers. Oddly specific thing to bar, I know, but they're one I've encountered far too often when discussing this topic; some Redditor will link a 3min video pulled from one of his speeches with some commentator butting in every 15 seconds explaining why this means I should hate the guy. By all means, use his YouTube videos as evidence, but use the FULL video, cite which time(s) you're referring to (so I can get context), and critique those portions in your own words. I want to hear from you and from Peterson, not some internet personality who managed to convince you with a smear video.And for what it's worth, I have done my homework on this; as I said I've discussed it with individuals online, looked over Reddit threads discussing him, watched anti-Peterson YouTube rebuttals, and read through most of the more prominent articles refuting (or smearing, depending on your POV) him, like this one. As such, if you're going to point me towards the article or video that convinced you, please don't just link the thing. Draw attention to specific parts of it and add some of your own commentary. CMV is kind of my last hope for a view change on this.I'd add:1) Claims his ideas are "obvious truisms." If that were the case, why the hubub? If I somehow made my name espousing a message like "plants need water and sunlight to survive," you might roll your eyes and think "duh," but that's hardly a reason that explains his level of notoriety or the hate he gets.2) Claims his ideas are deliberately ambiguous. I got into it with a guy on this very sub not too long ago about this. In the end he failed to provide any concrete examples of how Peterson is deliberately vague, but I think the Newman interview just proves my point: if you don't bother to listen to even a few hours of him laying out his (fairly complex) thoughts, you're bound to think he's dodging some kind of point in being specific, per what the media says about him. In the Newman interview he was staying far more on track than she was; she'd mischaracterize him, he'd correct it (again, with very little ambiguity), and once corrected she'd other move on to another facet of that discussion to mischaracterize him or shift gears and mischaracterize him on a whole different topic. Further, Peterson doesn't claim to know everything, even though he's often questioned as such; he often professes ignorance, or that he doesn't know enough to answer the question, or that he's posing the question to try to find answers, none of which he is sure of. This, to me, is the mark of an intelligent mind; when someone is asked something in a podcast or an interview or during a speech Q&A and they say "I don't know," that's ten points to Gryffindor, right there. It takes a special kind of specialist to realize they don't know jack shit and choose not to talk out of their ass, something Peterson does often. But we can't confuse him not having every position he might have pinned down with him being deliberately vague, lying to us about his actual positions to cloak his true intentions. If you have actual evidence of Peterson, say, asserting in what he thinks is off camera footage, "yeah, lets gas the Jews," while on stage he says he'd never condone such a thing, bring it forward and we can discuss it... if your evidence is just that you really know that he must mean "gas the Jews" because you are so adept at reading between the lines of what he actually says, I call bullshit. I want something concrete, not "well he says X, but we know he means Y because he must be lying."I'll add, in closing, that this isn't a view I "want" changed in the traditional sense. If, for example, this CMV was that "I fear black people, CMV," I'd really want that changed because I feel it's wrong and racist, yet feel it anyways. Rather, given the level of vitriol directed at Peterson, I just feel I'm missing out on something rather critical that would make such contempt justified. There are a great number of intelligent people who just seem to loathe the guy, and I just can't figure out why. It's like I'm missing some crucial ingredient to the recipe. So while I'm willing to change my view, I feel doing so will require some rather extraordinary evidence.Ya'll know what to do. Cheers.This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please read through our rules. If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which, downvotes don't change views! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to message us. Happy CMVing! via /r/changemyview https://ift.tt/2Hja1Gl
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