He's still a human. He will make mistakes, and he's not perfect and 100% truth.

It's nice to see someone in public light maintain a degree of accuracy in language when debating something. It's been missing since the loss of Christopher Hitchens. The recent ascendance of Language Can Be Whatever You Want-ism is finally getting some kick back, and I like that. I'm glad it's not me on the front line.

However, I'm also seeing something I've seen before: the Ayn Rand Intellectual Icon Worship Fallacy. To the nascent intellectual wanna-be, the appearance of a popular, clearly intelligent alpha-figure breeds a certain feeling of contentment and comfort. It's a train to jump on that seems to be going somewhere.

Combined with a large oeuvre, a heady sensation of a rudder in control takes over. Which can be good or bad, but it will definitely be bad when it becomes steered by a noisy input.

Peterson on the feminism issue isn't giving you a religion. If anything he's just pointing out linguistic inconsistencies being used as the basis for the presentation of authoritarian bureaucracy. Placing him on a podium as some sort of basis of a counter-movement is just as bad as Cathy Newman's "so what you're saying is" logic. Just listen to what he says and the point of it, but don't read more into it. You don't have to build up an "opposition" in response to a stimulus that maybe shouldn't be there.

It's refreshing that someone is able to be linguistically pure in today's Tower of Babel environment. But if you effectively worship him, as the misguided Ayn Rand fan might proclaim Objectivism to be the end-all-be-all, you've made a Nietzsche approved boo-boo. Philosophy is fun, but it ignores neuro-chemistry.

My concern is that he willingly engages people mentally unfit to debate him for whatever reason. If I were in his position, I would want to run away from such encounters if I wasn't forced to have them. While it's nice to see the Lowest Common Denominator Language Destruction get checked, and it might have a positive societal effect, I'm not sure it's elevating people without the contrast of more ardently concise debate.

I didn't like William F. Buckley, but I'm not going to say he wasn't cogent and used language well. Gore Vidal's encounters with him were fun to watch, but more importantly elevated the bystander because the debating went somewhere. The Cathy Newmans, the Random Sidewalk Argumentative Millennial, does not stoke the conversation with Peterson to this effect.

But seeing that there really isn't any other intellectual icon around in the year 2018, I'm glad he's doing what he's doing. I'm just worried he's morphing into a sort of intellectual-bully category, and the process of being careful with language will turn into Yet Another Thing To Rail Against by the weak minded herd. I grant that it was once easy to categorize people philosophically as "liberal" or "conservative", those days are gone and he'll have to stay singularly topical these days. He can still choose to use his time against better equipped opponents, hopefully.

There was nothing worse than Ayn Rand being propped up as a religious icon for the "conservative right wing", and then "Republicans". It tore out what one could actually learn from what she wrote, despite the downsides of her position. In the 21st century it's even more telling than if you ask the Average Self-Professed Republican or "Conservative" who Ayn Rand is, they either don't know or they go into proselytizing mode. She did have an interesting angle on certain things - that there are differences in skills and the way people exploit people, there is something to be learned there. It was turned inside out, and now her writing is taken as linguistically literally by some the same way religious fanatics parse the Bible.

No understanding or intellectual advancement. In Peterson's case, I'm starting to see ironically a kind of authoritarian glee from people in regards to what he says: "this guy speaks the truth and you MUST go by it". Maybe, or maybe not. I'd say that a person is either already aligned to his externalized philosophy he espouses, or may benefit by considering it, OR... it may not be totally unsuitable.

In reality, he's making generalizations, not pronouncements.

Wim Hof is interesting, and has some interesting points and ideas. That doesn't mean I'm going to start taking cold showers and throw my coat away. Some people have decided to "become" Hof, though. Peterson shouldn't be flipping a switch labeled "intellectual arrogance" but he's lightly caressing it, and that's a tricky thing. I can see people eagerly waiting to jump on the "Peterson Intellectual Bullying" bandwagon. It will be a mess and counter productive to the benefit of society.

I miss Christopher Hitchens. I didn't agree with him on everything, certainly not the Iraq War. But it was nice to hear him speak on a subject with perfect, effortless clarity and language acuity while lubricated with alcohol. There wasn't any malice there, just self-realization.

Hitchens didn't suffer fools at all. To the extent that it would become apparent he avoided them, otherwise he'd blurt out something cogently precise with an intellectual period at the end of it. Done.

That is a hard act to emulate. I admire that, it's the ultimate reduction of communication, and he did it drunk, effortlessly. Done, move on to the Good Stuff.

I like that Peterson attempts to deconstruct the language of what his opponents say, but it's kind of tedious when it becomes obvious it's wasted effort. Educational to a bystander, perhaps, but I hope he's not turned into a Language Hitler figurehead instead of that being a by product of his debating. I know he's having fun, it's entertaining to watch,

..... but in the meantime, don't worship him.