I have followed a few of these people off and on for the past year or so, since I discovered (late to the game) what varied content is available on Youtube. I no longer watch television in fact.
Hello
@HoustonSam I am exactly in the same place, albeit with enough technical expertise that I was not late to the game... But I cut the cord to cable maybe some 4 years ago or so, and I can say with profound insistence, that I do not miss it in the least.
Such monochrome babble, and I really do mean it just that way. It is nothing short of mind-numbing indoctrination. I am flatly embarrassed to have ever called it entertainment at all, and am incensed that I shelled out more than a hundred bucks a month for years, nay, decades in such a robot-like fashion. It is, in a word, drivel, from one end to the other. I cannot foresee a moment in my life that I might allow it back into my house.
Now on to the topic.
Jordan Peterson has to be the archetypal example right now, and since his thinking is all about hierarchies and archetypes I'll boldly identify my expression here as distinctly appropriate.
I must admit, Jordan Pederson is a curiosity. How he has amassed so much sense anchored in psychology is a wonder to me. I have actually considered going back and re-reading Jung to see where he gets it from. The man has a stunningly clear method to his thought.
[...] on the question of Christ he is evasive.
That is not entirely true. He is at least nominally Christian, and has done an extensive exposition in defense of the Christian religion. I will try to find some of it and link it to you... It is really quite good, if you forgive his almost mechanical lapse into analogous psychology (hierarchy and archetypes) , which I can do - It is his wheelhouse after all, and to a hammer, everything is a nail.
In my mind that doesn't make him a distinctly bad person, but it does give me an important perspective on his thought. I think Peterson is doing the world a lot of good simply by bringing serious thought to an audience which has never experienced it.
Ah, this. And herein, let's expand the point: Here we are, Conservatives, many rock-ribbed, and hard core, extolling the minds of liberals and libertarians, some even openly gay... WTF is going on?? It is, exactly as you put it, serious thought. It is in fact the lively argument of the town square. And it is awesome. I said up thread that I admire people who think. Those who can begin their premise on a principle thing, and argue it, in the classic sense of argument, whittling it down to a fitting end, to prove that it is true. Alignments have no basis in such a thing. because truth, in the end, is truth. If the liberal gay guy is speaking to Conservative principles, that he is liberal or gay doesn't mean that he isn't speaking the truth. And I am alright with that. I do not have to agree and march in lockstep.
Less noteworthy as a pure intellectual is Ben Shapiro, but I also like and respect what I've seen of him.
I think Shapiro competes quite nicely in the field of ideas. His tongue is sharp, which is not found in Pederson, nor in Molyneux (who comes from a classical philosophy position), or even Paglia, which can make Shapiro out to be a bit of a bomb-thrower. Like Crowder, he is taking it to the liberals, and credit due - But that makes him more of a thrust and parry guy than a guy arguing the strict idea.
Dave Rubin is probably the figure who is now most challenging to the left, if we exclude Milo Yiannopoulos.
Yes that's right - Though he tends to host the debate. He is excellent in that position, interjecting where he might... But he truly listens and encourages the debate with his questions rather than guiding it to an end. It makes him one of my favorite hosts.
As to Yiannopoulos, No where in the field, by my opinion... A showboat and a bomb thrower.
Back to Peterson : I wonder whether his ability to use Youtube and Patreon will pioneer a return of discourse to an earlier day, when scholars drew most of their income from "side gigs" of teaching as independent thinkers, based strictly on the reputation they had gained through publication and the skill they displayed in instruction.
I would certainly hope that is what is happening. Professors and Journalists sit upon their fat haunches in ivory towers spinning horrid little tales and repeating them to each other until they all have it memorized. Then someone names a wing, and someone builds a statue, and another useless Nobel prize is issued. And the thing becomes a settled fact, whether it is true or not.
If anything at all, that has to be changed. Truth is what they are supposed to be about.