I’ll say it. Jordan Peterson has been a positive influence in my life. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of his lectures on YouTube. I started a book club to read his recommended books such as Gulag Archipelago, Brave New World, 1984, and The Rape of Nanking. It has been a difficult and important experience for me.
Reading Dostoyevsky was eye opening, if just for the fact that as much as people change, we stay the same, and the Communists were using some of the same idealistic arguments for changing the world in 1860s Russia that they are now. The idea that we are simply products of social conditioning, the tabula rasa and nothing more, the victims of our upbringing, were all central tenants in the severity of punishments for people being sent to Gulag in the Soviet Union. Prostitution was 3 years and being a nun was 10 Years. It technically wasn’t illegal to be a Christian, but teaching your children Christian values was! Families were purposely torn apart.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that learning more history, and just how badly things can go wrong, is very important and anyone who encourages people to seek out that history on their own is good in my book.