Written Version
Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and the author of 12 Rules for life and you’ve most probably seen his videos or heard about him, and that’s for good reasons. Peterson is excellent with words and knows how to present himself. So let’s take a look at how you too can debate like him.
First things first, Peterson doesn’t particularly begin with the aim of debating, i.e having a winner or loser, but instead, he believes in having dialogues like rational people to settle a particular dispute, to get a win-win situation, one that benefits everyone and this mindset is very important if you ever intend on having meaningful conversations or talk about stuff that matters.
There are a lot of videos on youtube explaining his method so I won’t be repeating those but I want to focus on how calm that guy is during any dialogue. You can see that in his posture, it is often relaxed while commanding authority. If you want the other person to listen to what you’re saying, you need to show you are listening through your posture. A hostile body language will not help.
If you’ve ever seen Peterson’s videos or his section with Cathy Newman, you will see how attentively he listens to each and every word the other person utters. In his conversations or dialogues, you’ll often find him trying to clarify what the other person means by asking questions. You see him putting effort into understanding his opponent which also gives the opponent the message that he is really interested in that matter, the one that the opponent most probably holds dear, and this leads to a more meaningful conversation. You need to listen to what the opponent is saying and not be overwhelmed by it, that’s why you see Peterson taking his own time to answer, he doesn’t rush into it. There was an interview where the interviewer was trying to strawman Peterson saying he believes in a particular belief to trap him and Peterson didn’t rush to defend the effect of that statement instead he says “If you’re going to talk about what I said then let’s use the words I used”.
Peterson’s secret for debating is that he borrows from Nietzsche on how to engage in such discussions, which isn’t that surprising considering how much he adores Nietzsche, especially his work — “Beyond Good and Evil”. In the 31st aphorism of BGE, Nietzsche gives the analogy of the youthful years and talks of how we initially perceive things to be “black” and “white” (an idea consistent with later psychological theories like that of Piaget) and eventually grow suspicious of this model of thinking and consider that maturity, however, according to Nietzsche, even this angry reaction against the attitudes of youth is still itself an aspect of the attitudes of youth! (Gareth Southwell, 2009). Similarly, in philosophy we initial condition where they believed in absolute truth and forms but then came the period of suspicion which brought about nihilism and skepticism, which is considered as ‘matured philosophy’, but not for Nietzsche, who finds it foolish to think so. Instead, he advocates a third stage where the individual is more detached and can review all such beliefs without emotion (Gareth Southwell, 2009). Emotion isn’t bad in itself, but it should not be allowed in such dialogues to bias one’s judgment. Often when we debate, we get really anxious and this causes us to attack and go on the offense, some even ridicule the opposition, and this would eventually depend on the “I have to win” thought process instead of focusing on finding a solution. Peterson rarely shows his emotions or lets it influence his speech, you’ll almost never see him get angry and attack the opponent.