First off, excuse me for doubleposting but I want to make a different post about this as it's different stuff.
I've learned to accept inherently that the attitudes that many have here when confronted with the potential or impending mortality of others, while repugnant, are almost inevitable and not worth being appalled about.
Outside KF, though, I went pale when I read people practically dancing on his man while he's dealing with a crippling addiction to drugs he was prescribed-- first for his anxiety resulting from the reverberating effects of a severe allergic reaction on his psyche, and then for the general burden of his wife's illness. Hardly even any discussion on whether or not he did this to himself-- it's as if they think this is automatically karma for being the ideologue that he was, or that he just didn't follow his own advice (and thus this supposed hypocrisy invalidates it all) or that the situation he finds himself in (a matter of life and death) isn't pitiable enough to at least acknowledge without whinging on and on about that one time he said something about black people that's arguably incorrect.
I always found negative reactions to Peterson rather vicious. Like, particularly vicious. As if said people were waiting for any slip in a long (or at least voluminous) career as an ideologue to triumphantly proclaim it as evidence that he didn't just screw up, but that he was always a screw up. The kind of vitriol that seemed disproportionate (and also un-nuanced) for someone you disagreed with, even if you found them pompous or vacuous.
I've heard of the "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory", to be sure, but the people I speak of were willing to attach their own names to such statements. Has the internet so thoroughly stripped us of compassion that we're incapable of even taking half a moment to appreciate even the life/death struggles of those who are merely ideological opponents, and has it so thoroughly stripped us of nuance such that we're unable to even acknowledge them, even when still set on criticizing their persons? Do we even consider ourselves talking about people, at this rate?
I dunno, I suppose I've seen this in action with entire groups of people (see the 2016 election-- and onwards-- and the denigration of Trump's voterbase by Democrats who decried them as automatic racist sexist homophobes), but it's harrowing to see it happen with a man who's at worst said things and hasn't even had any palpable effect on the legislation that flows from the culture he interacts with. Fair enough, I'm neither a fanboy nor an A-logger of his, and the voluminosity of his content since he entered the kulturkampf does mean that tracking his views (and thus verifying the grounds of the complaints against him) is quite the task for which I haven't much time... but I don't think he could have changed much since I last dropped off (when he took a shine to viewing the Bible through psychoanalytical archetypes).
I cannot help it but deeply disagree with the Penny Arcade's GIFT.
It isn't the internet, anonimity or an audience what makes people's assholes, people are inherently assholes by their own volition, and I think the Standford Prison Experiment is excellent at pointing that out.
Peterson is a Christian, I know this may sound to you like some fedora bullshit but I'm not actually an atheist, so hold on with me on this one:
To wish someone dies and suffers in this world pales in comparison with desiring to someone to burn in Hell.
Not just Christians, most religious people that follow Abrahamic Religions never really think about this stuff, but fact of the matter is that Hell isn't a place for retribution, it's a place for eternal punishment.
Eternity is, obviously, eternal, that means infinite.
Let's say that a cannibalistic pedophile kills three children and eats their corpses, he will go to jail and possibly face assaults by immates and the death penalty, let's say the next 60 years of his life are a nightmare, then he dies, and, if there is no afterlife, it's all over.
Now let's say he goes to Hell, after 1 billion years he will still be punished, after 1 trillion years he will receive punishment, after 500 gazillion years more of the same.
Forever means ∞ , it's something the human mind cannot understand.
Christians, except Calvinists, argue that Free Will exist and that the sinners chose to be punished. But again I've nothing against Christians in special.
Other theologicians like Aquinas argue that sinners have a debt towards God that can't ever be paid
Lewis argued that sinners voluntarely choose to deny Jesus' grace.
For most modern Christians, the idea of “going to heaven” is a key belief. But early Christians had very different ideas on the subject
time.com
en.wikipedia.org
I don't care because it changes nothing in this context, a lot of religious people desire that their enemies will go to Hell.
Desiring people like Peterson to suffer for some decades is nothing in comparison to desiring your politicals rivals to suffer eternally in Hell, which is something that Peterson does in a whim without giving it much thought.
For all I care, people should be free to desire the entire family Peterson to be raped, enslaved and feed to pigs, tbqh to an extent I do desire so myself
Thought isn't a crime.
TL;DR: If desiring Peterson to suffer makes you an asshole, then people like peterson are infinitely assholes. Fact of the matter thought isn't a crime.