Sometimes you can hear the same thing 100 times, but when someone frames it in a slightly different way, or just uses slightly different words, it clicks.
Some people have found Ryan Holiday’s books on Stoicism to be helpful, but all he’s doing is retelling Meditations and it’s lessons with a more modern voice. Should we tell him to stop writing? I don’t think so.
The books, videos, etc about getting your shit together aren’t full of transphobia, they’re about getting your shit together. One person can speak on different topics. Even the trans stuff, it all started as a free speech thing, when the Canadian government made a law telling people how they had to speak. That’s what he took issue with, not trans people. Things may have spun out of control from there for various reasons, which isn’t a debate I’m interested in having.
Have you read my comment? I’ve said that maybe it’s good but maybe you can teach those things in a better, less toxic and less sectarian way. I don’t have issue with his old teachings but I think following anyone blindly is stupid and with JP from the very beginning I’ve seen a lot of it.
Have you read my comment? I’ve said that maybe it’s good but maybe you can teach those things in a better, less toxic and less sectarian way.
Yes, I read your comment, that why my reply was about the value of hearing the same things from different sources and in different ways, because you never know which one will click for a person. I don’t see how Peterson saying “clean your room and here is why” is any more or less toxic than a mother yelling at her kid to clean up their room. What his version included was the why, so you’re not cleaning just to clean it or appease your mom, but for a reason that can help other areas of life. I’m keeping the messages separate and not infusing everything he ever posted on Twitter into a college lecture from 10 years ago, as those things were completely separate, and I’ve never follow him on Twitter or read any of that stuff. I have watched some videos of lectures from his psyche class on YouTube, just like I’ve watched countless other things on YouTube, I don’t idolize any of them. When I see a news article about something he posted on Twitter, my response is usually one of, “huh, that was weird…” I don’t run out and start trying to kick people out of bathrooms; that’s something a crazy person would do.
I agree that no one should be followed blindly. I also think that people are imperfect, and we shouldn’t throw away everything they’ve done because they have an unpopular opinion, or have said things inelegantly, in some other areas of their life. We should be able to hear what someone says and say, I agree with X, but not with Y, so I’ll leave Y behind and integrate X into my life. We all do this every day. That’s what it means to not follow someone blindly. Those who agree with 100% of what anyone says aren’t thinking for themselves.
I agree that there are a lot of resources to learn things from, but for whatever reason, the way he frames certain things is working for some people, where other things haven’t. I feel like I’ve said this several times now and it keeps getting ignored. We can’t always wait for the perfect source of information, it might never come or not show up at the right time. For example, I was curious why he always skirted the question about if he believes in god, so I watched some of his lectures on the bible. It took 6+ hours for him to get it out, which could have been a 15 minute TED talk, so I wouldn’t really recommend it (it wasn’t an easy watch), but I understood his point, it made sense, and it changed the way I think about “god”. I still don’t believe in an actual god, but I can now understand where the idea likely came from and the value of something akin to god in a society, even if it’s been co-opted by people seeking power at various points in history. Maybe I could have heard that somewhere else, but it’s been many decades, and gone down many religious rabbit holes, and it took those lectures for me to put that mental model together. Growing up in a religious family I have a lot of issues around god and the church, and I think if I had heard those lectures, or those ideas, when I was much younger it would have been extremely helpful. Hearing it now is still helpful as it provides me a more nuanced view of the issues, rather than just “religion == bad”, which is where a lot of people land. Maybe somewhere, someone else is saying something similar, but will I ever chance across it? If I do, would I have been able to understand it in the same way? Probably not. Did any of the stuff he talked about in those 6+ hours have anything to do with divisive politics? Nope.
It looks like you believe I have some issue with you personally finding some value in Peterson’s writing. I don’t. You’re basically paraphrasing the same thing I’ve said. Can his writing help people? Yes, probably. Can you approach it in a healthy way, avoiding the toxic part and not becoming part of a cult? Yes, I’m sure it’s possible. Did most people approach it like this? Well, my sensation is that no, they did not. The community that grew around him became part of the right wing toxic masculinity and transphobic movements. And he never renounced it, it keeps playing a right wing guru. So yes, I don’t have any issue with people that read some of his books and found something valuable in them. But I also believe (and I think most people that are against him think the same) that he did more harm than good overall and that the world would be better without his philosophy. But of course it’s impossible to measure, it’s a subjective point of view and you can disagree.
This thread started when I questioned someone who seemed to question his relationship with his own brother because he read a book of Peterson’s 3 years ago which he liked, but says he is otherwise decent. I don’t really know how to put it into words without talking in a bunch of circles, but that bothers me a lot. Not because it’s Peterson, I’d be bothered no matter who the author was. I hate that we’ve come to a place where someone’s entire character is put into a box based on a single action or thought. I get it with strangers to some degree, but with brothers… that’s really bad. Whatever ideology is feeding that is just as toxic as any of these other toxic things being mentioned, maybe even worse. I think that has done much more harm than good.
Sometimes you can hear the same thing 100 times, but when someone frames it in a slightly different way, or just uses slightly different words, it clicks.
Some people have found Ryan Holiday’s books on Stoicism to be helpful, but all he’s doing is retelling Meditations and it’s lessons with a more modern voice. Should we tell him to stop writing? I don’t think so.
The books, videos, etc about getting your shit together aren’t full of transphobia, they’re about getting your shit together. One person can speak on different topics. Even the trans stuff, it all started as a free speech thing, when the Canadian government made a law telling people how they had to speak. That’s what he took issue with, not trans people. Things may have spun out of control from there for various reasons, which isn’t a debate I’m interested in having.
Have you read my comment? I’ve said that maybe it’s good but maybe you can teach those things in a better, less toxic and less sectarian way. I don’t have issue with his old teachings but I think following anyone blindly is stupid and with JP from the very beginning I’ve seen a lot of it.
Yes, I read your comment, that why my reply was about the value of hearing the same things from different sources and in different ways, because you never know which one will click for a person. I don’t see how Peterson saying “clean your room and here is why” is any more or less toxic than a mother yelling at her kid to clean up their room. What his version included was the why, so you’re not cleaning just to clean it or appease your mom, but for a reason that can help other areas of life. I’m keeping the messages separate and not infusing everything he ever posted on Twitter into a college lecture from 10 years ago, as those things were completely separate, and I’ve never follow him on Twitter or read any of that stuff. I have watched some videos of lectures from his psyche class on YouTube, just like I’ve watched countless other things on YouTube, I don’t idolize any of them. When I see a news article about something he posted on Twitter, my response is usually one of, “huh, that was weird…” I don’t run out and start trying to kick people out of bathrooms; that’s something a crazy person would do.
I agree that no one should be followed blindly. I also think that people are imperfect, and we shouldn’t throw away everything they’ve done because they have an unpopular opinion, or have said things inelegantly, in some other areas of their life. We should be able to hear what someone says and say, I agree with X, but not with Y, so I’ll leave Y behind and integrate X into my life. We all do this every day. That’s what it means to not follow someone blindly. Those who agree with 100% of what anyone says aren’t thinking for themselves.
I agree that there are a lot of resources to learn things from, but for whatever reason, the way he frames certain things is working for some people, where other things haven’t. I feel like I’ve said this several times now and it keeps getting ignored. We can’t always wait for the perfect source of information, it might never come or not show up at the right time. For example, I was curious why he always skirted the question about if he believes in god, so I watched some of his lectures on the bible. It took 6+ hours for him to get it out, which could have been a 15 minute TED talk, so I wouldn’t really recommend it (it wasn’t an easy watch), but I understood his point, it made sense, and it changed the way I think about “god”. I still don’t believe in an actual god, but I can now understand where the idea likely came from and the value of something akin to god in a society, even if it’s been co-opted by people seeking power at various points in history. Maybe I could have heard that somewhere else, but it’s been many decades, and gone down many religious rabbit holes, and it took those lectures for me to put that mental model together. Growing up in a religious family I have a lot of issues around god and the church, and I think if I had heard those lectures, or those ideas, when I was much younger it would have been extremely helpful. Hearing it now is still helpful as it provides me a more nuanced view of the issues, rather than just “religion == bad”, which is where a lot of people land. Maybe somewhere, someone else is saying something similar, but will I ever chance across it? If I do, would I have been able to understand it in the same way? Probably not. Did any of the stuff he talked about in those 6+ hours have anything to do with divisive politics? Nope.
It looks like you believe I have some issue with you personally finding some value in Peterson’s writing. I don’t. You’re basically paraphrasing the same thing I’ve said. Can his writing help people? Yes, probably. Can you approach it in a healthy way, avoiding the toxic part and not becoming part of a cult? Yes, I’m sure it’s possible. Did most people approach it like this? Well, my sensation is that no, they did not. The community that grew around him became part of the right wing toxic masculinity and transphobic movements. And he never renounced it, it keeps playing a right wing guru. So yes, I don’t have any issue with people that read some of his books and found something valuable in them. But I also believe (and I think most people that are against him think the same) that he did more harm than good overall and that the world would be better without his philosophy. But of course it’s impossible to measure, it’s a subjective point of view and you can disagree.
This thread started when I questioned someone who seemed to question his relationship with his own brother because he read a book of Peterson’s 3 years ago which he liked, but says he is otherwise decent. I don’t really know how to put it into words without talking in a bunch of circles, but that bothers me a lot. Not because it’s Peterson, I’d be bothered no matter who the author was. I hate that we’ve come to a place where someone’s entire character is put into a box based on a single action or thought. I get it with strangers to some degree, but with brothers… that’s really bad. Whatever ideology is feeding that is just as toxic as any of these other toxic things being mentioned, maybe even worse. I think that has done much more harm than good.