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Just read the piece, quite rushed. This extract encapsulates what I think about Peterson well:
‘He’s also able to weave in a lot of different topics together, where he’s got the self-help, he’s got religion, he’s got psychology, and then the politics…If you listen to one of his lectures where he’s in this lecture hall talking for an hour, two hours, he’ll go across all these different topics and weave them, like he’s trying to give the impression that they’re all unified together. But it’s this hodgepodge of different things that maybe aren’t related. It gives this feeling of “Wow, this guy knows about everything, and he’s just so knowledgeable, and he’s giving this profound insight that other people just don’t have. I think there is definitely an impression that you’re getting genius insights from this person. I think that’s what leads to over-trusting of his information, because if he’s a genius, then why look into anything he says? He must just be correct.’
As the ‘Decoding…’ guys frequently point out about ‘guru’s’ like Peterson, they’re big on charisma and often stream of consciousness ramblings that link a lot of disparate ideas together to form a grand narrative. But when you examine what they’re actually saying (when someone like Peterson stops for breath!), it often doesn’t stand up to critical analysis. He and others like him are also very good at slipping in a ‘but I could be wrong!’ disclaimer, but equally tell you that they’re absolutely right. Very contradictory. Also, very keen to knock leftist ideas but whilst saying for instance ‘Trump is bad and I don’t agree with him’ don’t go to town on him and the far right in any way near as great length. Reminds me a bit of our old pal Bucks with a cursory ‘of course what the Tories did there is wrong’ but then proceeds to rip in to the left fir the rest of the discussion!