What to learn from Nicosia’s place on world tour?

Psychologist Jordan Peterson divides opinion but the man with the sometimes controversial ideas has included the island on his ongoing tour

News that sometimes controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson will be coming to Cyprus as part of his Beyond Order world tour took many on the island by surprise, although the split opinions on how welcome he would be didn’t. He has drawn deeply polarising views, with people shouting down his lectures and others crediting him with improving their lives.

Given how small the island is a on world scale, the inclusion of Nicosia on the tour does seem questionable at best.

However, organisers said his book sales on the island have been remarkable and there has been a huge flurry of interest for tickets. Case in point, the event on Thursday is not being held at a theatre or lecture hall, but rather Eleftheria stadium, able to accommodate some 6,000 people.

Since his rise to fame in 2016, Peterson, now 60, has been waging a war against ‘wokeness’, which has led to him being branded as transphobic, sexist, misogynist and plenty more. His fans credit him as being a bastion of free speech, refusing to buckle under pressure to conform to the ‘liberal agenda’.

Peterson’s research began in familial alcoholism, eventually switching to personality, where he has been influenced by writers such as Jung, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. He has been cited over 20,000 times.

In the years since he shot to prominence, Peterson has resigned from his position as tenured professor at the University of Toronto. Though he now has the title of professor emeritus, one of the reasons he cited for stepping away from the post is the realisation that if he hired young researchers their association with him would lead to them not finding a job in the future.

It paints a picture of how deep the controversy goes.

Peterson shot to prominence over his views on Canada’s C-16 bill after he posted a number of videos expressing his opposition to the matter, stressing that legislating the use of gender pronouns would become ‘compelled speech’.

This would subsequently impact freedom of speech and freedom of thought, he warned, leading students to demonstrate against his views they deemed transphobic, while others praised him for his outspokenness.

Central to his argument is that freedom of speech inevitably comes with a risk of offence – but this should be part of the parcel in a democracy if we are to avoid spinning into a totalitarian state.

Peterson has certainly not shied away from risking offending people – some would say spewing hate speech rhetoric. He was suspended from Twitter after the social media company found his tweet went against the “hateful conduct” guidelines over transgender actor Elliot Page.

He had posted: “Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician.” Page came out as transgender in 2020, going with the name Elliot as opposed to Ellen. Peterson’s tweet was accused of ‘deadnaming’ the celebrity.

His account was restored by Elon Musk after he took over the platform.

The latest scandal Peterson has been embroiled in stems from a re-education training he was asked – and refused – to undertake, after a number of complaints filed against him last year. An avid tweeter, Peterson said The Ontario College of Psychologists sent him a letter stressing his complaints were deemed harmful to people.

His refusal to undertake the training will mean a mandatory public disciplinary inquiry. Peterson may also see his clinical licence as a psychologist suspended.

He claims the complaints did not come from clients of his and in any case, he stopped seeing clients in 2017.

In one of the offending tweets, Peterson called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “puppet”. Another tweet was deemed to be an inducement to suicide, when he responded to a post discussing overpopulation with “you are free to leave at any point.”

But his guidelines for honest but compassionate self-evaluation and empowerment have won him many fans, especially among young men, with his 12 Rules for Life book on how to improve your life and that of others receiving wide acclaim. In it he has been credited with taking a rule-resistant subculture suspicious and sold it an instruction manual.

His views on climate change have also been contested and his stance on Covid-19 has not gone amiss. Though he got vaccinated after contracting Covid, Peterson said he would only get a booster shot over his dead body and thought he would have been “left alone” after he got the first vaccine.

One of the contentious tweets he was reported about said: “Enough. Enough COVID mandates. Drop the damn masks and the idiot rules and get on with life. Today.”

In late 2019 Peterson underwent a stint at a rehab facility after he became addicted to clonazepam, a benzodiazepine. He reportedly began the medication to deal with anxiety but upped his dose when his wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2017.

“I’ve become opened up to the trouble that people have in a way that far exceeds even what I experienced as a clinical psychologist,” Peterson told the National Post shortly before entering rehab.

The academic eventually was taken to Russia for treatment where he was in a medically induced coma for eight days at a facility in Moscow.

Though he has been in full swing for over two years and dealing with the latest controversy (over the risk his licence might be revoked), his book sales have continued to skyrocket, and the noise surrounding Peterson has reached Cyprus, where he will stop by for a three-hour talk.

Ticket prices start at €80. More details here.