Himu, the whole point of
my initially bringing up that obscure paper was to point out the irrational strains in Peterson’s thought*. Strains that pop up time and again in his lectures and public appearances when he wants to make normative prescriptions on hot button issues. This was related to that whole discussion between me and etiolate where I ask what exactly the criterion/a is/are that Peterson uses to determine which social or political issues we can justifiably pursue reform or change.** My suspicion was that the one he implicitly uses is just ‘if the ends pursued match up with conventional conservative approaches to those issues, then you’re straight; if they don’t, then quit it’ which obviously just begs the question. This matches up well with the traditionalism he employs where he values institutions/ideas simply because they’re old and have lasted (although it’s probably contentious to what extent a lot of them have in fact ‘lasted’). What I think mandarks point was, and I hope he corrects me if I’m wrong on this, is that i) when we look at the actual empirical record that Peterson purports to be drawing from, it runs counter to the historical trajectory that Peterson outlines in that paper and ii) we can find evidence of just as many old ideas/institutions that contradict the ones Peterson uses.
So the objection that we’re bringing the paper up just because it’s obscure and think that that’s the reason he’s become so successful (although that could mean a whole bunch of things so I’d ask you to clarify what you mean) doesn’t land. No one here actually thinks that. Likewise the claim that people take issue with him just because he provides anodyne self help advice. They
might take issue with the fact that either he or his fans package that advice with the whole rest of his project -the hotep shit for white people, as it were- and then act incredulous that when you reject the latter you must be rejecting the former, too. This is, for what it’s worth, exactly the strategy you just employed.
*this should probably be more accurately termed ‘strategic appeals to irrationalism in Peterson’s rhetoric’
**etiolate’s answer was: only pursue solutions provided that they’re feasible. But this appeal to pragmatism doesn’t get us far enough because any number of potential solutions can be equally workable while being geared towards completely different ends.
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