“So, keep your head high and don’t do the things that you know lead to meaningless outcomes or belittle you (especially in your own eyes). Eventually, your brain will kick itself into overdrive - it will get easier to hold your head up high as these positive habits will start to happen naturally.
But first, you must make a little bit of effort yourself to start moving in a positive direction.”
He got into politics because U of T was ready to fire professors for not engaging in compelled speech (E.G. Not using somebodies preferred pronoun "Xir" or "Ze" even if you use their preferred/legal name "Betty" and avoid misgendering) based on a misinterpretation of Canadian law supplied by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (later quietly corrected). The initial dispute quickly spiralled into self-parody in one debate where fellow professor A.W. Peet admitted to forgetting WHICH gender-neutral pronoun their friends use and suggested programming peoples pronouns into your contacts https://youtu.be/SiijS_9hPkM?t=356. The Canadian government later introduced a 3 gender system for IDs and the American Psychological Association recommended the usage of singular "They".
Yet Petersons amateur input only added to public confusion over the law, the controversy prompted him to only say more controversial things about gender, and he became this alt-right symbol whose fanbase holds far more extreme anti-trans views than he ever did. If he just stuck to psychology and ripping off Joseph Campbell he would be a lot less controversial and a lot less famous.
I don’t think he ever meant that to happen, but it’s an interesting case study for, when you get out of your area of expertise, it is super easy for things to spiral out of control in a direction you weren’t planning on.
Do you think a professor like that should not have gotten involved? If he was being threatened with being fired, it’s hard to not say something... is it just he went too far and should have turned down the increasingly more serious / public policy related interviews etc?
He also has a bit of a reputation for twitter toxicity and he later ended up with anxiety issues and consequently an addiction. It's hard for me to not see him as a cautionary tale of why to avoid getting wrapped up in politics and the culture wars.
Agree - he has his failings for sure. I wonder if that makes him a good example or not... sometimes knowing that even those striving to do better do also fail is useful to humanize their message... similar thought with Cicero for example (vain despite his philosophies - not saying Peterson is in Cicero’s league).
He seems to have recently turned a corner post the health issues. I wonder if he is going to approach things more quietly and more carefully this go around. Sounds like he is wanting to get busy.