It is a true observation that if you listen to him a lot, Peterson has a number of points and examples that he uses all the time. But that's no reason to be dismissive. New stuff comes up all the time. He's also an experienced teacher. Repetition is an important part of pedagogy, especially in lectures. The bible lectures, for example, cover many similar themes and include a lot of those stock examples, but using the bible stories means each lecture still has a different focus. That marriage quote that Heartiste posted on his blog the other day... that's not one of his repeat talking points. The bible lectures are full of insights like that.
Some other common well-poisoning and rhetorical attacks I've seen that tend to have a nugget of truth but are invalid in the bigger picture:
Peterson is just saying stuff that is obvious - But not so charismatically or eloquently. It's probably not as obvious as people think, especially in the media. A lot of the so-called "obvious" stuff that Peterson talks about are things that too many people take for granted-- which is why they've allowed the radical left to run amok destroying our culture and heritage.
Peterson's not saying anything that other smart professors don't also say - yeah well, fine, feel free to link up some better content (they never do). Peterson has a very entertaining style of speaking and has been on the faculties of two of the most prestigious Psychology Departments in the world (Harvard and UofT).
Peterson isn't a real Christian - boring semantic nitpicking. To the extent he identifies as Christian, he doesn't make an issue of it.
You'd be better off just reading Jung and Neitzche - Those guys are pretty damn hard to read and they got various things wrong. Perhaps most importantly, one of Peterson's main value-adds is a solid grounding in scientific thinking and evolutionary psychology in particular.
Peterson doesn't understand postmodernism - Kind of a no true scotsman fallacy and this criticism doesn't usually demonstrate comprehension of Peterson's point against postmodernism.
So the bible stories are really metaphors? How is that groundbreaking? - peterson repeatedly points out that "metaphor" is an insufficiently deep meaning to accurately describe what he means. His assertion is;
1. Reality is beyond our ability to comprehend consciously. The most complicated thing that is both most relevant to our lives while we know almost nothing about it is the nature of human consciousness.
2. Humans need workable models of reality in order to be able to act. These models must be at a low enough resolution to comprehend but a high enough resolution to be useful.
3. Humans have evolved capacity for abstract thinking, which sets humans apart from other mammals.
4. These abstract models of reality are real in the sense that numbers are real. They are tools that humans use to both understand and interact with the world.
5. They are conveyed in the form of religious narratives, archetypes, and super-ordinate principals.
Many of these old biblical stories, whether done consciously or not, have conceptual models of the human experience that are very useful. Many of these conceptual models that involved what we now consider to be "physical reality" are obsolete. Although still actually as useful as they need to be, when you think about it. Does your daily life really change much, knowing that the sun does not actually "move" through the sky during the day? However, since we still don't understand human consciousness, many of these old "metaphors" are still highly useful.
How is the bible different from any other myth? - Peterson is fairly liberal with his use of different mythology around the world. The idea that he's dismissive of non-Christian mythology seems baseless to me. At the very least he's discussed Mesopotamian myths and Taoism. He talks about Pinocchio and Harry Potter. In fact he even answered a question about Tolkein in one of the lectures. He said something like: yeah, what JRR Tolkein was doing was creating a modern mythology, and he did a pretty good job of it. But what you don't get with Lord of the Rings is the whole host of great related works from the long history of Christianity (like Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Divine Comedy.) Finally, he also makes the point that the biblical stories are just flat-out great stories, because a lot of very useful ideas can be extracted from them. He seems to think the reason for this is that they are stories that represent hundreds of years of prehistoric humans observing each other and telling stories about what they observed. For example, in Genesis God says to Eve: your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. That's an incredibly true statement about human sexual dynamics packed into such a small sentence.
And speaking of Q&A, Peterson is great at answering questions. A few times during that Harvard talk, I thought he kind of got a bit ranty and keyed up and missed the point of one or two questions. But for the most part, he has an amazing ability to listen to a complex question, comprehend it, and develop an honest and usually insightful answer right on the spot. A lot of smart people attend his lectures and he's gotten some really interesting philosophical questions.
Finally, there are various people who take issue with his criticism of Postmodernism, Marxism, and Neo-Marxism but I haven't really seen anything beyond knee-jerk flailing yet.
Some other common well-poisoning and rhetorical attacks I've seen that tend to have a nugget of truth but are invalid in the bigger picture:
Peterson is just saying stuff that is obvious - But not so charismatically or eloquently. It's probably not as obvious as people think, especially in the media. A lot of the so-called "obvious" stuff that Peterson talks about are things that too many people take for granted-- which is why they've allowed the radical left to run amok destroying our culture and heritage.
Peterson's not saying anything that other smart professors don't also say - yeah well, fine, feel free to link up some better content (they never do). Peterson has a very entertaining style of speaking and has been on the faculties of two of the most prestigious Psychology Departments in the world (Harvard and UofT).
Peterson isn't a real Christian - boring semantic nitpicking. To the extent he identifies as Christian, he doesn't make an issue of it.
You'd be better off just reading Jung and Neitzche - Those guys are pretty damn hard to read and they got various things wrong. Perhaps most importantly, one of Peterson's main value-adds is a solid grounding in scientific thinking and evolutionary psychology in particular.
Peterson doesn't understand postmodernism - Kind of a no true scotsman fallacy and this criticism doesn't usually demonstrate comprehension of Peterson's point against postmodernism.
So the bible stories are really metaphors? How is that groundbreaking? - peterson repeatedly points out that "metaphor" is an insufficiently deep meaning to accurately describe what he means. His assertion is;
1. Reality is beyond our ability to comprehend consciously. The most complicated thing that is both most relevant to our lives while we know almost nothing about it is the nature of human consciousness.
2. Humans need workable models of reality in order to be able to act. These models must be at a low enough resolution to comprehend but a high enough resolution to be useful.
3. Humans have evolved capacity for abstract thinking, which sets humans apart from other mammals.
4. These abstract models of reality are real in the sense that numbers are real. They are tools that humans use to both understand and interact with the world.
5. They are conveyed in the form of religious narratives, archetypes, and super-ordinate principals.
Many of these old biblical stories, whether done consciously or not, have conceptual models of the human experience that are very useful. Many of these conceptual models that involved what we now consider to be "physical reality" are obsolete. Although still actually as useful as they need to be, when you think about it. Does your daily life really change much, knowing that the sun does not actually "move" through the sky during the day? However, since we still don't understand human consciousness, many of these old "metaphors" are still highly useful.
How is the bible different from any other myth? - Peterson is fairly liberal with his use of different mythology around the world. The idea that he's dismissive of non-Christian mythology seems baseless to me. At the very least he's discussed Mesopotamian myths and Taoism. He talks about Pinocchio and Harry Potter. In fact he even answered a question about Tolkein in one of the lectures. He said something like: yeah, what JRR Tolkein was doing was creating a modern mythology, and he did a pretty good job of it. But what you don't get with Lord of the Rings is the whole host of great related works from the long history of Christianity (like Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Divine Comedy.) Finally, he also makes the point that the biblical stories are just flat-out great stories, because a lot of very useful ideas can be extracted from them. He seems to think the reason for this is that they are stories that represent hundreds of years of prehistoric humans observing each other and telling stories about what they observed. For example, in Genesis God says to Eve: your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. That's an incredibly true statement about human sexual dynamics packed into such a small sentence.
And speaking of Q&A, Peterson is great at answering questions. A few times during that Harvard talk, I thought he kind of got a bit ranty and keyed up and missed the point of one or two questions. But for the most part, he has an amazing ability to listen to a complex question, comprehend it, and develop an honest and usually insightful answer right on the spot. A lot of smart people attend his lectures and he's gotten some really interesting philosophical questions.
Finally, there are various people who take issue with his criticism of Postmodernism, Marxism, and Neo-Marxism but I haven't really seen anything beyond knee-jerk flailing yet.