DO YOU LOOK GOOD TO ME?

Robert has a new friend - Jordan Peterson. Where does he find them?

 

Listening to Jordan Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychiatrist and professor, I heard an explanation, be it unwittingly on his part.
Jordan Peterson said "Being is maybe a paradoxical state where there is just enough limitation to maximize (sic) possibility. If limitation is the precondition for being then that introduces suffering. If you want being where possibility is maximised then you have to accept the limitations that produce tragedy!". He then gave an example using a rugby field. The only way to maximise possibility is to limit the size of the playing area. Meaning, I think, that if you want to be the best rugby player in the world you will never achieve this if the rugby field is infinite because any one can score.

OK. I'd never heard of Jordan Peterson. I have heard of Oscar Peterson.*

I wonder if they are related. They are both Canadian.

I had a look on the internet to see if Jordan Peterson was another of Robert's nutters. Boy was I surprised.**

Here's a link to a The Guardian article that's worth a look.

HOW DANGEROUS IS JORDAN PETERSON?

It is a long article, so no doubt Robert won't read it, but here are some outtakes:

So, what does Peterson actually believe? He bills himself as “a classic British liberal” whose focus is the psychology of belief. Much of what he says is familiar: marginalised groups are infantilised by a culture of victimhood and offence-taking; political correctness threatens freedom of thought and speech; ideological orthodoxy undermines individual responsibility......... His bete noire is what he calls “postmodern neo-Marxism” or “cultural Marxism”. In a nutshell: having failed to win the economic argument, Marxists decided to infiltrate the education system and undermine western values with “vicious, untenable and anti-human ideas”, such as identity politics, that will pave the road to totalitarianism.

In many ways, Peterson is an old-fashioned conservative who mourns the decline of religious faith and the traditional family, but he uses of-the-moment tactics....... His YouTube gospel resonates with young white men who feel alienated by the jargon of social-justice discourse and crave an empowering theory of the world in which they are not the designated oppressors. Many are intellectually curious. ... His recent sold-out lectures in London had the atmosphere of revival meetings.


Such intense adoration can turn nasty. His more extreme supporters have abused, harassed and doxxed (maliciously published the personal information of) several of his critics. 
Peterson's audience includes Christian conservatives, atheist libertarians, centrist pundits and neo-Nazis

The key to Peterson’s appeal is also his greatest weakness. He wants to be the man who knows everything and can explain everything, without qualification or error......

 This staunch anti-authoritarian also has a striking habit of demonising the left while downplaying dangers from the right. After the 2016 US election, Peterson described Trump as a “liberal” and a “moderate”, no more of a demagogue than Reagan. In as much as Trump voters are intolerant, Peterson claims, it is the left’s fault for sacrificing the working class on the altar of identity politics. Because his contempt for identity politics includes what he calls “the pathology of racial pride”, he does not fully endorse the far right. 

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Yet Peterson’s commitment to unfettered free speech is questionable. Once you believe in a powerful and malign conspiracy, you start to justify extreme measures. Last July, he announced plans to launch a website that would help students and parents identify and avoid “corrupt” courses with “postmodern content”. Within five years, he hoped, this would starve “postmodern neo-Marxist cult classes” into oblivion. Peterson shelved the plan after a backlash, acknowledging that it “might add excessively to current polarisation”. Who could have predicted that blacklisting fellow professors might exacerbate polarisation? Apparently not “the most influential public intellectual in the western world”.

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Well I think this creep is dangerous. 

* A nice Oscar Peterson number HERE

** As Richard would say - "NOT".