Peteron knows that he is “surfing a 100 ft wave” and that it is not likely to end well, yet he persists.

He is also aware that there are differences between the left and the right as to what is acceptable; the left has no gaurdrails as long as the speech and actons push the current agenda. It is not the case with the right, as an example Peterson cites Bill Buckley and the John Birch society. He has no use for the identity politics/racial supremicist alt right fringe.

But he’s made it so far without putting a foot wrong — in fact, he keeps on putting his feet remarkably RIGHT, as in that famous interview with the British journalist. The longer that lasts, it seems to me, the stronger his reputation becomes and the harder it will be for the jackals to tear him down.
* * *
I hope so, but the jackals have proven themselves very persistent, and they outnumber him.
The danger is when the people currently “on his side” decide to side with the jackals, for some perceived offense.
That happens on the left all the time — look at the 99.99% pure leftists who ran afoul on the .01% position (Eich, Starbucks, others too numerous to list).
It can happen on the right as well.

“I am speaking now not to all of you, but only to those who have condemned me to death. And I have another thing to say to them: you think that I was convicted because I had no words of the sort which would have procured my acquittal–I mean, if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone or unsaid. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words– certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to do, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I maintain, are unworthy of me. I thought at the time that I ought not to do anything common or mean when in danger: nor do I now repent of the style of my defence; I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use every way of escaping death. Often in battle there can be no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. “

The most recent Jordon B Peterson podcast was a Q/A format held at Lafayette College with 90 minutes of questions from the moderator followed by 90 minutes from the audience. It was very good and illustrated why the left fears and hates him IMO. Peterson came off as serious, engaging, and occasionally funny.

Generally the questions were serious and there were only a few “Cathy Newmans.” The silliest was a dude who asserted that Solzhenitsyn was a KGB agent (that’s what his professor asserted); because no one could remember all those details that are in the Gulag Archipelago. The argument “because I couldn’t do it, no one can.”

I found it interesting, but I think that the author has almost zero understanding of what Peterson offers and what he’s about, sorry to say.

He tips his hand at the beginning by writing, “I could scarcely have less interest in Peterson’s ruminations on Jungian symbology, evolutionary biology, or psychometrics (whatever that is)…”

Since those things are a huge part of Peterson’s message and appeal, as well as the underpinnings of why he says what he says, I can’t imagine how a person who has such a complete lack of interest in those things could understand the Peterson phenomenon.

Nor is Peterson’s appeal limited to men, although I’m aware that men predominate in his audience.

Here’s another thing in that essay that seemed quite wrong to me: “Peterson is a latter-day Norman Vincent Peale, offering sympathy and practical advice.” Not in the least. Peale was religious and had no training in psychology. This is from Peale’s Wiki entry:

One major criticism of The Power of Positive Thinking is that the book is full of anecdotes that are hard to substantiate. Almost all of the experts and many of the testimonials that Peale quotes as supporting his philosophy are unnamed, unknown and unsourced. Examples include a “famous psychologist”, a two-page letter from a “practicing physician”, another “famous psychologist”, a “prominent citizen of New York City”, and dozens, if not hundreds, more unverifiable quotations. Similar scientific studies of questionable validity are also cited. As psychiatrist R. C. Murphy exclaimed, “All this advertising is vindicated as it were, by a strict cleaving to the side of part truth,” and referred to the work and the quoted material as “implausible and woodenly pious”.

A second major accusation of Peale is that he attempted to conceal that his techniques for giving the reader absolute self-confidence and deliverance from suffering are a well known form of hypnosis, and that he attempts to persuade his readers to follow his beliefs through a combination of false evidence and self-hypnosis (autosuggestion), disguised by the use of terms which may sound more benign from the reader’s point of view (“techniques”, “formulas”, “methods”, “prayers”, and “prescriptions”). One author called Peale’s book “The Bible of American autohypnotism”.

It’s almost the opposite of Peterson (except for the first two letters of the last name). The very parts of Peterson’s message that the author of that article has zero interest in are some of the enormous differences between Peterson and Peale. Peterson doesn’t guarantee results; he sees life as harsh and difficult, not something you can improve by positive thinking. Peale was criticized for being shallow and simplistic in his approach; Peterson is anything but. Not only does author Matthew Schmitz seem to know little about Peterson, he seems to know next to nothing about Peale as well.

Then there’s “[Peterson] flirts with positions that the Religious Right gave up on long ago, such as opposition to contraception and divorce.” No, those are not Peterson’s positions at all, nor does he “flirt” with opposition to them. He is aware, however, of their drawbacks and the problems associated with them, which is a very different thing entirely.

Etc., etc….

I don’t care what you believe in or whether you buy into it or not. That’s not my problem, that is your problem and responsibility.

When you start going off the deep end and conflating “subjective opinion” with primary sources, that’s a problem I’m not going to ignore.

I wasn’t aware that I was in front of my thesis board in which I had to defend a thesis. Since this is merely a casual discussion about Lucifer and what he was/is and the prehistory context, I don’t think you have the Authority to stand in judgment of this issue, GB.

If you do have this Authority, let’s see it.

If you want to know what I think, maybe you should ask questions like a humble person rather than an old person that thinks they know more than me. Well, if you do know more than me, let’s see it. All I’ve seen so far is that I can craft a response based upon citations to sources as well as my own words and story craft, but all you do is remain silent with this stony posture, attitude, and outlook that says “I won’t believe it”.

Not sure why you need to believe anything, as that is not my concern.

What I think is that your religious dogma just got triggered, GB. So maybe I should have wrote a trigger warning for those reading my narration of the Lucifer vs Jesus context.

The problem of those at a doctorate level debating those at an undergraduate level is that they are talking past each other. This is a solid reason why many people with doctorates look down on undergraduates or people with only a bachelor’s, even in STEM.

The refutations don’t even qualify as good intellectual sparring.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/04/jordan-peterson-unlikely-guru

https://soundcloud.com/jordanpetersonpodcast

It’s probably also up on youtube, but I don’t run and watch videos; running with earbuds and audio is risky enough for this old wheezer.

“If they are not established fact or a fact, then merely present the counter argument. I await the effort.”

You haven’t demonstrated them to be established fact and until you do… you have nothing other than subjective opinion that you are asserting to be factual.

“These are merely summarized conclusions from various thesis papers, Ph.D. doctorate papers, and scholarly research. Just because I do not cite them, does not mean they don’t exist.”

I’m not disputing their existence, though I’m somewhat skeptical that fragments from thousands of years ago, written either in a dead language or in a long obsolete vernacular… can be authoritatively and perfectly interpreted by non-native speakers. I AM disputing your “argumentum ad verecundiam” i.e. assuming a claim to be true because an ‘authority’ says it is.

“These are decades of research in Ugarithic, ancient Semitic languages, and Qumran scroll translations. Not something that came from my hands. You will need more than a bit of “effort” if you wish to contest these arguments and facts that you believe to be X.

I never claimed that your sources were self-created. And, I never claimed to believe anything to be “X”. I’m urging caution in considering your so far… unsupported arguments and ‘facts’ that you assert with certainty to be ‘X’.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying that I’m not willing to just take your word for it that you’re right.