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Thank you for posting this honest revelation. I sympathize as I also had similar infatuations with Rand in my teens and Chomsky in my twenties.

However, let me also warn you that this path of becoming infatuated with "thinkers" like Peterson is a dead end.

People like Rand, Chomsky and Peterson look heroic merely because they are willing to shout the loudest and attract the spotlight.

If you are really searching for authentic meaning, you're probably not going to find it among those in in the spotlight.

Instead of Rand, seek out Robert Nozick. Instead of Chomsky, seek out Murray Bookchin. Instead of Peterson, seek out Alasdair MacIntyre.

There are smart, brilliant thinkers of every ideological stripe. However, the best and brightest rarely make the NYT bestseller list. Continuing to be attracted to "thinkers" like Peterson will only lead to disappointment. Almost everything he is saying has been said before by someone who was smarter and a better writer, and most importantly kinder, than Peterson.

There is one thing about Peterson that makes this interpretation a bit more difficult. For most of his career, the guy was a relatively obscure but respected academic, not making an effort to reach a broader audience with his message except through a well liked course for undergraduates at the University of Toronto. He had strong convictions and a clear message, and there was certainly a current of conservative political belief, but his launch into fame was largely happenstance. He took issue with a new Canadian law that he considers an attack on free speech, and this came at a time when conservative media feels its job is to emblazon this kind of viewpoint.

He has done a good job surfing the wave of fame for sure. In my opinion the core of it is not about fame though, the core is a message he's promoted for decades and that he truly thinks is correct, and helpful to people.

I don't see Peterson as an end in himself. I see him as a valuable pointer. He hasn't shown me any destination, only a recognizable path. But I've spent my adult life looking for that path with no luck, so it's a huge achievement in and of itself.

I think you're falling into a trap that's easy to fall into, and perhaps lies at the crux of the criticisms leveled against Peterson. What I'm about to say has certainly been more eloquently stated by someone else, but I'll do my best here. As I see it there are effectively two types of knowledge acquisition and transference. The first is explanatory knowledge. Scientists and philosophers work to build new explanations of the world. In this realm, it makes no sense to re-tread familiar territory, and the faster we accumulate this knowledge, the better.

There's another realm, and it's what I would call cultural knowledge. These are like "social truths" that are arrived at via some method of consensus in a given group of people. In this realm, the re-treading of familiar territory is acceptable, so long as the knowledge still needs to propagate throughout society or be contested by those who deviate from it. In this realm faster is not better, because these truths act as societal stabilizers.

I see Peterson's influence as belonging to the second realm. I find it irritating when people point out that "it's been said before". Yes, I'm sure it's been said before, but that is not the point. The point is to revivify that knowledge within a culture. To assume he needs to tread new ground is to treat him as belonging to the first realm, and I don't think that's the correct approach here.

You've described "Top Down" and "Bottom Up" means of knowledge production. Often cast as rationalism and empiricism respectively. One favours knowledge that is known already and seeks to generalise that to explain the world, and the other favours knowledge that is produced trying to deal with specific problems on a case-by-case basis.

Each approach has it's conceits, strengths and weaknesses but truth emerges where these are reconciled and a synthesis is arrived at.

Peterson is also anti-women and pseudo scientific, not a great intellectual on those counts.

Any examples of his “anti-women” stance?

Certainly, I wrote this in another statement, but I'll repost it here:

https://twitter.com/21logician/status/831020059212541956/vid....

Purposefully misrepresents the opinions of those he disagrees with potentially, here. Not to mention how messed up what he is saying is.

https://twitter.com/21logician/status/813901825539788800/vid....

Maybe we should oppress Dawkins, and other atheists. Very hypocritical here.

https://twitter.com/21logician/status/813890243606802432/vid....

You need to be religious to have morals (unless you are Muslim, he hates Muslims...)

There is another video of him stating that women want to be brutally dominated, and that is why women support Islam... can't find the video now though.

https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/615e3z/i_am_dr_jordan_....

Frozen was propaganda, in his mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjON3cwjILQ

Women should just have a family, not try to have a career or work.

There are plenty of examples of him being hypocritical, pseudo scientific, and anti-women. There is a good collection of this on the subreddit enoughpetersonspam.

I have to strongly disagree.

You're writing off people in "the spotlight" as if it is incapable of shining on people who convey rational ideas.

To be frank, you also assert your opinion on the competence of thinkers as if it's factual.

This. i felt same. i feel uncomfortable following a passionate thought leader without being able to critize his ideas. for that aim i find myself in thought-provoking arguments with my lgbti activist friends, which was very intellectually-fun times for me.

the thing makes me most uncomfortable about his attitude is what he doesn't say. demonizing 'social justice warriors' and repeating danger of politically correctness is ok, but what criticism about rising nationalism, alt-right movement? this is the elephant in the room he does not talk about, instead he is only focusing on small-minority leftist groups. don't know weather he is biased towards right, or he is trying to get-well with these group. but these are my two cents.

He clearly condemns fascism, anti-semitism, etc, and is mostly individualist. I believe he doesn't directly address /pol types much because they haven't been literally inches from his face, whereas identity-politics people have been, as well as surrounding lecture halls carrying on and breaking windows to intimidate him and his audiences. He certainly condemns the worst alt-right ideas.

I don't think his critiquing of modern identity politics is necessarily an ideological thing. Like you say he's been embattled for some time over his opposition to the whole "C-16" gender pronouns thing. For better or worse this firmly gained him cheerleaders on "the right" while gaining him vociferous condemnation on "the left".

As GP points out he's not so critical of his alt-right cheerleaders. Perhaps we would like it if he took some responsibility for his more regressive fans but I don't think he sees that as his problem. Maybe that's fair enough too. Maybe he just sees himself as a guy who's "speaking the truth" moreso than "a leader".

I think this is all spot-on. Polarization itself makes for a lot of confusion, and many accuracies being tossed out the window for politics. Someone recently opined on the problem of having 'the wrong fans' like this: if the KKK likes a tax law that benefits them, does that make the authors and other supporters of that tax law white supremacists? For some reason people are a lot more sensitive when it's about ideas. Especially lately, when there seems to be so much fear that thought might cause atrocities, since it precedes them.

I think this critique of him is fair. I would have less of a problem with the SJW-types if they showed any interest in combating the more extreme/hostile elements in their own side. I should expect the same from the right, and though Peterson does mention his opposition to the alt-right from time to time, he could do with a fair bit more of it.

sure he is. he could have make criticism about alt-right with exact same harshness and might not say too much thing about leftists without too much changing his stance. this bothers me since i believe raising nationalism is much bigger threat than a couple thousands of university students. (although 'political correctness' is also a raising problem)

Ah yes, but the article paints a picture of him actively not doing so because he's trying to help exactly those who are caught in this 'raising nationalism'.

More than once I've caught myself leaning into or at least not challenging views that I strongly disagree with when talking to someone espousing them, because I felt it would not really be helpful/productive. I can see Peterson doing the same, and avoiding outright condemning the 'alt-right' in the way you desire because he might feel it would not lead to a desirable outcome.

I'm uncomfortable giving him this leeway, but I have to admit that I respect Scott enough to not write what he did without a decent degree of thought.

For myself, at least, I can't tell if this is the right approach. But at the very least I can say it's not as simple as always expressing my 'true' beliefs. That would be lazy.

One thing you can do is to actually read the Bible. You don't have to become an evangelical to get meaning and use out of it.

Here's a great example of how to read it:

https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2017/08/everything-y...

You can keep the supernatural stuff at bay and just use the Bible the way it's intended to be used, as a repository of wisdom. It's got a bunch of really cool stories in it that are also really dark and rich. They don't just have one moral. You can see yourself in any of the characters in any of the stories and it will show you what to look for and how to respond.

Have you ever explored the dichotomy of religion and spirituality? We tend to think of them as synonymous but to me they represent two different things that are often coincident. The word "Religion" comes from latin words meaning "to bind together" and this to me suggests it's more about the collective, whereas "spirituality" is more about individual experience.

So religion is the whole thing of living by a particular moral code, going to church every sunday, marrying within your creed etc. it's a very "wordly" concept.

Spirituality then is the whole "higher consciousness" "explaining the unexplainable" thing.

We can be religious without being spiritual, and spiritual without being religious. Ayn Rand for instance, or much of modern atheism serve as examples of the former. Ayahuasca, psychodynamicm, meditation etc. the latter.

Of course we often have the two come together as they complement each other quite well but we often see spirituality subjugated by religion, or people scared off spirituality by it's religious connotations.

I'm not a fan of Peterson, but from the bits I've looked into I find the part you highlight most attractive.

I come from a deeply religious (Evangelical) background, and in some ways, perhaps, my situation is 'worse' than yours because I never left because I felt that it was burdensome. On the contrary! I loved much of it and in hindsight the structure and social life it provided me might've been extra-valuable in light of my Asperger's. I just couldn't believe it, and moved to another city, country, etc.

While I'd like to say I figured it out in the interim, I'm still very much working on that. However, I found that at least on the personal level, zen buddhism has filled a significant part of that void, and if you haven't looked into it I can highly recommend it.

I've not looked into the more social aspect of it, though. That's high on my list. I'm bracing myself for a degree of disappointment, because I often don't really like the 'woo-hoo buddhist types' that I run into who are or claim to be buddhists. But I have no real evidence for that.

Nonetheless, despite my ongoing 'search', I feel zen has provided enough that I feel I can be some degree of content without running back to more 'traditional' religion (and I have considered that, up to going back to an evangelical church).

If you're interested in discussing this further, don't hesitate to send me an email.

I personally think there's a very valuable role 'us' ex-evangelicals/ex-religious folk can play in this growing sense of emptiness that I see all around me, and that I see turns people to various 'extreme' movements that all strike me as rather less-than-stellar (alt-right, extreme SJW, rabid marxists/anarchists/whateverists). I'm still often shocked at how many nonreligious folk around me simply do not understand the sense of community that, among other things, a church can provide. It's like talking to someone who has never been in love!

EDIT: Let me add that I don't immediately have anything concretely against Peterson either, and the article kind of confirms my suspicion that he's a bit like C.S. Lewis, which I consider mostly a good thing. I would not want to deny anyone the positive role Peterson could play in their lives, in the same way that Lewis played a very important role in my life. Peterson makes me uncomfortable in a way Lewis usually didn't, but that could be because my point of entry was, well, being deeply religious.

As one of the people who you probably think doesn't understand the sense of community that a church can provide, I am curious if you think church can provide a sense of community that can't be provided by a bowling league, book club, or any other local gathering of people.

I have nothing against people gathering to find a sense of community but I am somewhat against the beliefs of most organized religions that I am familiar with.

Coming from a similar evangelical background to the person above, I can say that the community is very different than that of a club or sports league. I'm not diminishing the community that you can get out of it - even seemingly-trivial associations can become profound. Some of the strongest connections I've had with people have been with co-workers.

But a community centered around a particular framework, with a particular set of goals that extend beyond even the lifespan of the people involved, combined with an outlet for collective grief/ecstasy. It's hard to describe if you haven't grown up in it, but it's different from any other community I've experienced.

I'll second this. A book club, or any other gathering I've experienced (and I've searched frantically), pales in comparison to the 'smallgroups' that were part of my religious world. The closest I came to that experience in a non-religious way were some of the Alain de Botton style 'Church for Atheist' meetups. And even then only the ones that were organized by an overtly religious person!

I personally don't find what he says worthwhile. It's honestly not worth bothering looking into him, in my mind with all of the terrible things he has said, and believes, he's pseudo scientific, and really doesn't understand much of what he tries to argue as well.

What terrible things?

https://twitter.com/21logician/status/831020059212541956/vid...

Purposefully misrepresents the opinions of those he disagrees with potentially, here. Not to mention how messed up what he is saying is.

https://twitter.com/21logician/status/813901825539788800/vid...

Maybe we should oppress Dawkins, and other atheists. Very hypocritical here.

https://twitter.com/21logician/status/813890243606802432/vid...

You need to be religious to have morals (unless you are Muslim, he hates Muslims...)

There is another video of him stating that women want to be brutally dominated, and that is why women support Islam... can't find the video now though.

https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/615e3z/i_am_dr_jordan_...

Frozen was propaganda, in his mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjON3cwjILQ

Women should just have a family, not try to have a career or work.

There are plenty more examples of this kind of behaviour, if you look into him more. But he is quite clearly sexist, and he panders to the alt-right.

Additionally, he is supposed to be a self-help guru, but he gets quite angry and vents on twitter all the time, those two don't quite add up to me.

Have you read Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton? You don’t have to be an atheist to enjoy it but it does have an interesting view on the void that you mentioned.

In some places there are even “church”/gatherings for non-religious people called Sunday Assembly