I’ve been living in Canada for about 4 years and it’s probably a shame that only recently I got familiar with the work of the “controversial” UoT professor Jordan Peterson. I mean I heard of him and knew, approximately, who he is and why he all of a sudden became a public figure but I never had much desire to read his books or listen to his interviews — not because I think he’s a terrible person or something but, firstly, I’m just quite suspicious of all books on self-improvement and, secondly, I suspected that in a lot of his interviews and Q&A panels the hosts would act in bad faith and I’m not up to this kind of entertainment.

However, one day I decided to broaden my horizons and try reading a non-fiction book and Peterson’s “12 Rules For Life” looked like a perfect option — something completely opposite of what I normally read. I still haven’t finished the book though =) Whereas the 12 rules themselves are adequate and Peterson’s writing turned out to be much smoother and easier to digest than I feared — regular detours in search of religious parallels still make me take breaks. Hopefully one day I’ll make it =)

Anyway, out of curiosity I watched an interview with Peterson on youtube and although I made a mistake of picking a recent one (an interview with a person who’s been and probably is severely ill may be not the best starting point) I still liked the way he spoke. As someone whose spoken English is questionable (not that my writing was much better heh) I really enjoy listening to people who convey their thoughts clearly at the same time using relatively complex and colorful vocabulary. That gives me sort of a goal — “I want to be able to talk about dicks like Moist Cr1TiKaL” =) Professor Peterson doesn’t talk about cocks or anime (or maybe he does and I just didn’t see it yet) but after that first interview I went down the rabbit hole and checked out a bunch of others, from 2-3 years ago. I wouldn’t say that any of them turned my world upside down, except that it has temporarily changed my youtube feed, but it’s also not something I’m going to regret. Ah, one more note — I’m surprised that he did so well for a few years before breaking down, considering the amount of hostility towards him =)