Let's see what happens.

Jordan Peterson

· Alexander

I knew about the guy previously but I was avoiding getting into his stuff at all. But this time I decided to look into his content.

First I got into some debate youtube videos of him. And it was ok.

So I decided to look into his audiobook.

I found the first part quite informative for me:

  • I really like biological facts about how things work
  • Christianity as a big sacrafice was new information for me
  • I also enjoyed different literary excerpts (Dostoevsky and others)

But then after 50% the real fun starts.

The guy starts preaching like an exhalted priest before a crowd of astonished peasants.

He preaches stuff like:

  • “you have sinned”
  • “become aware of your covardness, haterd”
  • “consider the murderousness of your own spirit”
  • “pledge to alleviate all unnecessary pain and suffering”
  • “because the only alternative is hell/nazi camps”

And the author uses german words and interjects holocaust stories here and there. And forces readers to beleive that the meaning of life for them is to be some vegan-antifa-bodhisattva or so.

If you think this can’t get more deranged than that. Then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The author starts reading (audio book) like he is crying until the end of the chapter. I thought pure guy was forced to read that way.

And then to finally and irrevocably humiliate himself and intellect of anybody listening to this stuff the author proceeds with verbal images describing how good his idea of meaning is.

Literally stuff like: buddha sitting on a rose, etc… (I am not listening to this stuff again to get exact quotes)

And I beleive that the key phrase in his crying part was: “when all evil of the past is justified”.

Omg

So I had to google this guy. I found that he has some fanatical followers.

Obviously you can’t attract smart people with stuff like that.

Anyway this was a good point to quit the book for me. Because I have no idea what to expect from the guy.

As a psychologist so ho knows if he has some tricks up his sleeve.

And his content is not worth it for me to pay additional attention and to double check his stuff just in case he tries to deceive me somehow.

Analysis

  1. He first convinces audience that they are innately evil.
  2. Then he provides them with meaning of life as actively not being as evil/bad as he convinced them they should image themselves
  3. He literally says that if you disagree with him then you should be scared
  4. He covers this stuff with crying (in audio version) and with a pile of irrelevant images

Anyway he is using manipulation. There is no argument to refute.

When I see manipulation/dishonesty I assume bad will.

Manipulation

He uses images alot.

At one point he writes how he saves his daughter from another misbehaving child. At another point he writes how he forces a child to sleep.

I would not be surprised if stories like that can be used as part of manipulation over some audiences.

There are blog posts that analyze fallacies he often to uses.

Anyway it is not what I am into at this point.

So I am finished with the guy.