Need a plate of generic, insipid platitudes with a giant helping of bad science and misogyny?
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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I used to like him. I fell for the crap. To my 16 year old brain what he said made a lot of sense. He had a handful of good points, and it made me believe the rest of the shit he peddled.
I see him now, I look back on how I hung onto his words like a lost lamb, and I can only facepalm.
I realised that the only thing he is good at is marketing, not psychology...
It's understandable - back in the day, he had some reasonable points and an academic veneer. If course, what he was saying tended to have a strong bias, and didn't stand up to scrutiny, but it's hard to fault a 16 year old looking for guidance for falling for it. Hindsight is 20 20 - particularly when the negative tendencies ratcheted up rapidly over time.
Since his Russian benzo coma (remember, kids - clean your room and don't criticise others or systemic issues unless your life is perfect... pay no attention to my crippling addiction as I peddle that advice), things took a hard turn. I honestly think he suffered non-trivial brain damage. He's far more erratic, bursts into tears at the drop of a hat (while trying to sell "traditional" masculinity, his takes have lost their academic veneer and are self-evidently stupid. There's a reason he may be stripped of his accreditation.
TL;DR: Peterson went from being a pseudo-intellectual preacher to a lolcow, and (to me) the benzo coma seems to have been the catalyst for that shift.
I didn't know about the benzo thing. And that was the advice from him I appreciated; the clean your room, etc.
I didn't realise he was a walking blackout the entire time.
And I think his as following grew, so did his ego, and he began to think he knew way more than he actually did.
Ah well. An oversized ego is as bad as a termite infestation - if you let it grow it'll eventually make things collapse...
Oversized ego is generally a problem with people who take it upon themselves to give advice to society in general. Sometimes you can work around it. The guy has some interesting things to say, and he's an eloquent look into the rationalization certain people give for the problematic beliefs they already have.
You just have to learn how to approach these people without thinking they have some special right to think and you don't, because a little thoughtful examination shows much of what he says for the bs it is. That ability frequently comes with age and self sufficiency, which is probably why ye targets the people he does.
Yeah - it speaks to his long-term lack of principles and integrity, but that's not on you as a teenager. I'm just glad you grew from it, acknowledged when you were wrong, and grew from it - that's no easy thing to do.