What is the appeal of Jordan Peterson? Why do people love him so much?

[RedLine]

Because he is against the cultural hegemony of the pathological postmodern left. This pathological postmodern left denies objectic world ("everything is subjective", "all is about opinions")  and repress masculinity. The opossite of Jordan Peterson. He is saving this generation from decay. Read Ken Wilber - Trump and the post-truth.

Edited April 28, 2020 by RedLine

[TrynaBeTurquoise]

People sometimes need motivation to clean their rooms. 

[blankisomeone]

@Parththakkar12 Jordan Peterson is against rationalism. He believes human beings are deeply irrational beings, and that's true. And I think you agree with that, too, right? Rationality has its limits and Jordan is aware of that. Read the beginning of chapter 6 (Rule 6) of his 12 Rules for Life book. That's his critique of rationalism. The ego loves rationality, and the ego thinks its conclusions are always right, and it often leads to horrible acts. Jordan Peterson does a good job in opening people's eyes to the stupidity of the ego, he just doesn't use spiritual words, he uses psychology. He's a damn great psychologist. Although sometimes he does refer to spiritual language to get his message across.

Edited April 29, 2020 by blankisomeone

[blankisomeone]

17 hours ago, TrynaBeTurquoise said:

People sometimes need motivation to clean their rooms. 

@TrynaBeTurquoise Some people need motivation to get out of bed. And they have their reasons. The spiritual path is full of phases like that, when you feel extremely unmotivated and you question every single thing that happens in the world and within yourself. That's the dark night of the soul, to use spiritual language. So yeah, some people really do need motivation to clean their rooms at some point in their lives when they're hit with horrible truths about their nature.

Hell, I think the more conscious someone is the more motivation they need to continue carrying on this life. The spiritual path is no walk in the park.

Edited April 29, 2020 by blankisomeone

[tenta]

The irony is that what Jordan Peterson was defending is what caused him to break down over, he was saying the individual should conform to the group and be able to be tough or else they're weak, but when he got mobbed on twitter it changed to "a bunch of people hating you is very difficult to deal with", and that's WITH a group of people defending him and sending him money.

[Zanoni]

I think his "big +=%* energy" teachings is the reason for that. 

[Parththakkar12]

@blankisomeone You understand that rationality has its limits once you've gone through the whole rationality process which is to learn logical thinking, conceptual thinking, critical thinking, analysis, mental modelling, etc. and then you see the limits of all of this. JP hasn't quite gone through this, i.e. he is still propagating what he's been indoctrinated with. His critique of rationality is from below, not from above! He is a nuanced thinker, but that doesn't mean he's at Yellow at all. You can be a technically nuanced religious scholar at Stage Blue! Everything he does is informed by some book or another. His thinking is second-hand as opposed to having an independent understanding of concepts. That is logical/conceptual/mental autonomy which doesn't come from reading tons of books, it comes when you realize that your indoctrination may not be 100% right and you have a genuine interest in understanding the truth. All of his talks about 'the nature of reality' are armchair philosophy and he's just out there proudly showing how well-read he is.

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Parththakkar12 said:

His thinking is second-hand as opposed to having an independent understanding of concepts.

I think you underestimate him. He has contemplated many things by himself. He's even had some mild mystical experiences. It's just that it's hard to question/deconstruct one's entire mind. That would be a very rare accomplishment.

As an academic of course he's trapped in academic psychology group-think. But that is par for the course. Don't expect an academic to be some Buddha or sage.

[Ya know]

When I was depressed as fuck, doing a degree I hated and snorting a bunch of cocaine after getting fired from my job he was EXACTLY what I needed to hear. My life was a shambles, and he was the only person I knew giving pragmatic advice.

3 years removed I don't need him anymore and can act arrogant and nitpick his information. But back then? I was hopeless and leaned on his advice heavily to get out of a rut.

 

I know he gets a lot of flak for being close minded here, being immersed in blue / orange worldviews and being a bit too pessimistic. People posting here have an interest in self help and have been meditating for a while (Assuming) - so his advice seems banal. For the majority of the world who don't even know basic self help he's incredible though. Same with Tony Robbins.

 

He's an intelligent guy, articulate and can tell you what you need to do to sort your life out. Once it's sorted you can choose to do as you wish, but if your lacking that foundation you can't build anything. Honestly I think people need to be careful condemning him without fully hearing out his advice and living it before moving on. Otherwise your spiritual development will be limited.

 

You need to exhaust each colour to move up. 

[Cireeric]

I think he has a very sophisticated understanding of the things he talks about. He is maybe very pragmatic and succes oriented in his thinking but he also have many teachings who greatly overlap with Leos teachings, just from another perspective. And I really believe that his purpose is to help people and to orient in their world to live a better life.

[Vladz0r]

15 hours ago, Ya know said:

When I was depressed as fuck, doing a degree I hated and snorting a bunch of cocaine after getting fired from my job he was EXACTLY what I needed to hear. My life was a shambles, and he was the only person I knew giving pragmatic advice.

3 years removed I don't need him anymore and can act arrogant and nitpick his information. But back then? I was hopeless and leaned on his advice heavily to get out of a rut.

You need to exhaust each colour to move up. 

This is pretty much me. It's easy to criticize Peterson for his views on certain topics, especially on Marxism and Capitalism, but there's a lot of credit to the advice he says in regards to buckling down and facing the dragon and such. He's also one of the few people to point out the hypergamous nature of women, purely using the facts, and it's funny how he managed to do that with minimal criticism compared to what he does actually get critiqued about. I think Peterson was a bit of a father figure to me as well for a while. He's someone who builds up great arguments through his book and through some of his longer videos and lectures, but the debates and the soundbytes are sometimes crap. Peterson vs. Zizek for example was kind of unraveling into a shitshow after a while, coming from someone who leans communist but has a soft spot for capitalism. One thing he said in there that was amusing was that if people's basic needs were met (if we give the people bread), there would actually be more chaos and disorder in society, because people would stir things up just to see what would happen. He does that to refute things like the welfare state despite speaking to a primarily western audience that lives in less of a welfare state than his home country of Canada, where teachers and professors are paid more and economic safety nets are generally stronger than in the US. I dunno, I think you have to see Peterson as someone who encourages people to work effectively within the system and accept it completely first, and then hone your skills to deal with it, rather than complain about it.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Vladz0r

[Jacobsrw]

@Parththakkar12 because he appeals to the ego-mind which is what this world currently operates on.

[Parththakkar12]

19 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I think you underestimate him. He has contemplated many things by himself. He's even had some mild mystical experiences. It's just that it's hard to question/deconstruct one's entire mind. That would be a very rare accomplishment.

In that case, maybe he is more evolved than I think but simply lacks the mental discipline to communicate concepts clearly. If that is the case, it is completely understandable. Mental discipline is something that some people easily have and other people struggle with. Most youtubers/public speakers tend to be mentally disciplined people in this regard.

Maybe what I was missing was that you can be more evolved on the spiral even though you lack mental discipline. When you're not mentally disciplined, you tend to be unconscious of the logical inconsistencies in what you're saying. I was equating this to Stage Blue. My thinking was that someone at Orange would have had the mental discipline to develop rational mind skills like logical thinking, critical thinking, technical analysis, conceptual thinking, mental modelling, etc. and would be able to communicate those concepts/analysis/models. This was my experience developing from Blue to Orange and it's something I've seen most Orange people exhibit as a matter of fact.

Also what he says tends to not be about fixing your life/self-help/success, rather it tends to be about preaching what you should do (get your shit in order) so that we have a more orderly society and 'slay the dragon of chaos together'. That's his idea of contribution apparently. His teachings tend to be about maintaining social order. Now he may have had genuine insights on how to do this from his own contemplation. I'll give him that there is a certain element of cause-and-effect thinking/logical thinking (which is necessary for any contemplation to work btw) but he's not quite there yet.

Am I making sense? What do you think I'm missing?

Edited May 4, 2020 by Parththakkar12

[tsuki]

The appeal of Jordan Peterson are tangible answers and the fact that he's not ashamed of selling a meta-narrative in a post-modern world.

[RevoCulture]

I don't know if throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the best approach in life.

I wouldn't be voting for Peterson to design an overarching narrative for my life but he is an incredibly intelligent individual that I have enjoyed listening to.  I picture him as a 1950s type of guy. Trained behavioral psychologist who is heavily influenced by Piaget and developmental psychology.  His lectures are interesting.

His ability to remain centered while under attack deserves recognition.  Not many people are capable of such composure. 

Tearing people down isn't challenging, finding common ground and distilling truths from murky places is.

I am far from wise and am guilty of ribbing people out of my own ego frustration.  

I will continue to do this and attempt to grow out of it.

Ignorance is not bliss, for anyone. 

Edited May 4, 2020 by RevoCulture