I watched 30m of a Peterson lecture a co-worker recommended to me. It kind of opened my eyes. Peterson is basically a ‘motivational speaker’ that presents himself as an academic well enough to fool people that only understand academic aesthetics. He doesn’t even try to back up his claims or references, he just makes wildly abstract and generalized claims about human civilization and draws analogies that support that perspective. They sound right enough to people that want to believe that there is an expression of their culture that is inherently ‘good’ and all of civilization’s problems are based on corruptions of that culture. But in the minds of his fans he’s offering ‘proof’ of this perspective by appearing academic, even though he offers none.

This shines brightly in his “debate” with Slavoj Zizek

piped.video/watch?v=qsHJ3LvUWTs

I wish Zizek had went harder on that fool.

I felt like Zizek understood that debating Peterson directly wouldn’t benefit him, and instead took his case to the audience, sort of bypassing Peterson himself and focusing on the ideas he wanted to share.

However, I don’t disagree. I wanted to see more of Zizek shaking is head in “my god” disbelief at the bullshit Peterson was peddling.