TL;DR for the Podcast:
Thanks for touching on Jordan Peterson. He's a thoughtful person, and like anyone understanding him fully takes infinite hours. As you mentioned, treating any person as a shibboleth is a bad idea. I don't expect you to invest hundreds of hours to understand him, but I hope you do anyway! Watch his biblical lectures. You'll see why, as a liberal lefty, I appreciate his work. I went into it trying to prove he was a fraud. I couldn't. It's actually good.
Context for Newcomers:
I deeply respect and care for John Roderick. I've followed him for many years, leaving his music behind in the playlists of my ex-girlfriends and writing his thoughts and attitudes on my heart.
In the last two years, I've embarked on an intellectual journey with Jordan B. Peterson (herein JBP) acting as a guide, showing me new ways to understand the world. His writings and lectures have had an immense effect on me, and I also have his thoughts and attitudes etched on my heart.
John Roderick has, on occasion, made dismissive remarks about JBP. John also has a very personal podcast available through his Patreon called Dear John Letters. These letters are often private, but with this topic, I felt it was important to share my thoughts publicly. So, this is my semi-public submission to DJL. You should sign up with this link for his Patreon for what I imagine will be a thoughtful response.
The Full Letter:
Dear John,
You are right. JBP's genius is being filtered by your liberal culture. If you listened to him unfiltered in his own words, you would see that you've been misled. Unfortunately, that movie (I'm assuming you're talking about The Rise of Jordan Peterson) gave a pretty bad view of him, especially in the beginning when he was VERY sick. However, it wouldn't take you an hour of listening to him to come to that realization—it would take many hours.
I don't doubt that you've heard much of what he's saying. You are a well-read and thoughtful person. I can only speak to my experience: he was the first to introduce me to some profound, nuanced, and compelling ideas. I started watching him seriously because I wanted to see where he was wrong. He seemed like an arrogant prick, and as an arrogant leftie prick myself, I figured I could crush his ideas with my own intellect. I've watched approximately 135 lectures of his, most of which are over an hour long. I've read both of his accessible books and struggled mightily through his densely packed one. While dense, it was worthwhile. I am unable to dismantle his ideas with my intellect, though that doesn't mean it's impossible. At the very least, he's worth paying attention to.
That said, I don't insist anyone pays attention to him. The world is vast, and his ideas can cause strife, especially if you have many leftist friends. Luckily for me, I'm usually the leftie in the room, so all that happened was my extremist ideas were tempered, and I found new toeholds in arguments with those on the right. Understanding their positions better and offering slightly more moderate positions that align with their values has been very helpful for me.
In your response to my last letter, you touched on exactly why I'm reaching out to you about this. It is not good to use a real person as a shibboleth. That is a lazy shortcut that makes you look uninformed. I understand that you've absorbed your opinions about him through the culture and used references to him as a shortcut to indicate your baseline position. But for a person of your stature and capacity, it is unbecoming to do so. I heard that understanding in your voice as you answered my last letter, so I don't hold it against you. We are all struggling uphill together, after all. Still, I hope your reflection on your words can spread thoughtfulness.
-Martin
P.S. I defy you to watch Lecture: Biblical Series I: Introduction to the Idea of God all the way through and come away able to deride him in such a pithy way ;)
