I knew of Peterson but never read his work nor heard him speak.
This interview could be an important piece for university level discussion. I think it summarizes problems among the media and intellectuals like Peterson.
And, wow, I just watched this and it is horrendously cringeworthy. Seems like the presenter was expecting someone soft in the head (like an MP/politician), and approached the interview in that modern British fashion, which didn't work out well at all. It's really awkward to see somebody be that badly intellectually outclassed, but then it was Channel 4...
On the other hand, coming back to OP, there's something encouraging about a critical thinker having "star appeal". I think that's the best way to describe Dr Peterson, as you don't have to agree with him, but it is easy to follow his lucid trains-of-thought, and he is at least consistent.
I don't really know who he is other than seeing his name popup on Youtube regularly however I do note that his supporters always use that sort of language, often watch X destroy Y in an interview.
There seem to be minorities at the extremes shouting past each other whilst the rest of us get on with our lives and wonder what all the fuss is about.
I didn't know who Peterson was but like you had also heard about him. I watched that interview and have a better idea.
This interview could be an important piece for university level discussion. I think it summarizes problems among the media and intellectuals like Peterson.
In this case I found their interview to be excellent viewing. She was harsh and honest with him, and hurled most of the standard criticism at Peterson that people talk about. And while doing that she gave him the time and opportunity to respond. And he stayed calm, considered, articulate and entertaining throughout. I don't agree with everything either of them said, but I enjoyed watching that interview immensely - its exactly the sort of thing I want to see more of on youtube and in the public sphere.
Harsh, perhaps. Honest, not so much. I found most of her ripostes a dishonest caricature of Peterson's position, or downright lies.
I would have said that humans are little more than talking primates, and so our societies (West and East) are organized according to how primates organize themselves - e.g. hierarchies. We're more sophisticated than chimpanzees, but not by much. Once you understand this idea, then all the stupidity humans get up to is understandable.
The interviewer, however, was barely coherent and couldn't deal with that level of precision. And she kept bouncing all over the place. She was totally unprepared and kept flipping to tangents and not drilling down into one topic...
So to proclaim her as the typical embodiment of 'feminism' and use this as 'the perfect example' of why feminism (or whatever you want to project onto this) is fundamentally garbage... really only reveals your prejudices. At a surface level, the quality of the discussion or conversation was poor, so this video clip really is of low informational value.
I had a conservative friend who did this sort of thing - I'd try to get into the details of examining something (to try and get at the limits of a position or what caveats there are) and he'd do the same BS as the interviewer (though not as badly), oversimplifying things and deriving blanket principles from contrived examples. I guess that is the difference between philosophers and ideologues.
So I don't talk to him anymore - I got tired of the hassle and I'm tired of listening to how feminism is destroying society. It isn't. Society is morphing and change always upsets conservatives, because they are so fundamentally terrified of everything they can't control. Given how things are really going to go out of whack in the next few decades due to all the unstoppable changes coming, they are going to have to keep up or go extinct.
He's criticized as "on the right" because he disagrees with feminism, neoliberalism, and marxism (it's more cultural marxism, which he calls neomarxism). That is a reactionary label, and it doesn't fit, which is precisely the problem with modern politics.
A decade, maybe 15 years ago, Peterson would've been right in the middle of the liberal camp. So would people like Dave Rubin. Today though, the modern left is falling in line with these feminist and marxist ideas even though they fundamentally contradict his long held liberal principles. People like me who aren't in some extreme position are described as malicious by these ideologies. I know it's nonsense because I can actually see what's in my head, and what they claim is true about me and about an entire class of people based on gender or race, is utterly false. The obvious response is "that's nonsense", but of course we're talking about people who are throwing labels of "racist" and "sexist" at anyone who dares disagree, so that's not a good enough response. We must be defensive, yet the irony of saying someone is bad because they're male or because they're white and then using those labels seems to be a little out of reach.
Watch this interview. Nearly every response she makes to him "so you're saying" is trying to ascribe some feminist or marxist ideal of how the world works to what he's said, and he simply repeats what he says. He goes to great lengths to explain his issues with these ideologies in various lectures, but you can see it here as a prime example, condensed into a comical and pathetic 30 minute interview. Everything wrong with today's left. It's not liberal anymore, she tried so hard to make him look like the bad guy, like he has bad evil wrong thoughts.
It's no wonder the situation regarding diversity at Google is so precarious, and this Damore lawsuit is just one of many to come if this mentality continues. I like Peterson because he opposes it and for good reason, not just in such as simplistic manner as ridicule and memes as you see from the right.
You're equally attempting to define my opinions and positions for me. So many of these arguments revolve around strawmen, on both sides.
Also, a person's biases are not something that they're self-aware of by default. No one has a perfect handle on their own brain.