Jordan Peterson - commentary

The above video was posted elsewhere, and I responded, as below.

I have a friend that references Peterson some amount, and I've done some googling, but this is the first interview I've watched.

It's interesting, and I'll just throw out a couple of comments about it.

One, the first question about the "right to be offended" is essentially a straw man that she (accidentally from the looks of things) lobbed over for him to easily destroy. Of course, a person has a right to be offended, but as he says, there's only so far a thinker should be concerned with their offense. If I state a truth, and a person is offended by it, I don't consider it to be my problem.

On the other hand, I'll say that this guy is a really smart, well-educated, and careful individual, and he's saying things with meaningful intent, and with carefully chosen words. He is not, for instance, the same as an Alex Jones, or a Rush Limbaugh, who are making an active living off of saying whatever comes to mind, whether true or not, and not clearly labeled as "entertainment," but are labeled as "truth" upon which we should be basing things like decisions of existential and international import.

So, where he does state a concept that is true, most concepts do break down at the end of the slippery slope, and these days, a great segment of western thought leadership are firmly entrenched down there at the bottom of hill... saying crazy things... in return for power and money; from people that don't know better.

This is already an essay... but the next item is the comparison or Trans activists to Mao, and I'll say that this is absolutely invalid. It is at least as invalid as comparisons of GW to Hitler. We'll see if comparisons of Trump to Hitler are valid, or not, in time.

For one, whenever a person invokes "identity politics" I become really wary. And yes, every time he uses the term "Leftist" he is using identity politics to make his case; it's just in the reverse of the direction that he'd like the term to be understood as. When he says that they consider the primacy of the group over the individual (paraphrase), and then he vilifies the "left wing," he is absolutely acting as an identity politics warrior (though, seemingly like many, he might only consider racial, religious, or sexual minorities to be capable of identity politics).

The fact is that Mao would have had him wiped out, most likely, because the Chinese have known for millennia that the way to change society from what "was" to "what you as absolute ruler WANT" is to first wipe out the educated people and the free thinkers. Well, maybe Peterson would actually end up in the top level of Mao's regime as an excellent propagandist, but who knows.

So, yeah, interesting interview, and he's certainly an interesting fellow that has a well constructed point of view, but I'll stick with my centrist economic position (taxation is NOT theft), and my somewhat further "left" positions like "LGBT is ok if the individuals choose," "abortion is NOT murder," along with "I have no say over a woman's choice about her OWN body (prior to a baby being a viable individual person)," and "yes, there is systematic oppression of various minorities, and where they are discovered, it's worthwhile to try to resolve them" among various others. Identify me as a "leftist" if you want, but if you (the Government) come to my house based on this fact only, then the 2nd Amendment MAY apply. That's a moment of many decisions.