After several bouts related to the health of his wife and his own personal struggles, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is back and ready to tour.

Part of that tour includes a stop in two Iowa cities in 2022: Des Moines on March 22, and Cedar Rapids on March 23. He'll be doing lectures on his third book, Beyond Order: 12 Rules More Rules for Life.

Held in incredibly high esteem by other highly regarded creators and thinkers like Jocko Willink, Jonathan Haidt, Bari Weiss, Bret Weinstein, Matthew McConaughey, Joe Rogan, David Rubin, etc., Peterson exploded onto the world wide scene in 2016, after the publication of his second book 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos. His website, JordanBPeterson.com adds that his "online lectures, videos and interviews went viral," in that time frame.

Videos like this, that have a bit of an edited, cheesy, motivational twist:

Another reason that Peterson became so famous so quickly is due to the fact that he was under such attack from the eight percent of people America is largely tired of: the radical left.

In 2016, the Alberta, Canada native received a ridiculous amount of hate for opposing Bill C16 -- a bill that he claims, would impede the right to free speech. In essence, the bill requires Canadian citizens to refer to others under their 'preferred pronouns,' including the following from BBC.com:

alternative pronouns as requested by trans students or staff, like the singular 'they' or 'ze' and 'zir', used by some as alternatives to 'she' or 'he'.

The site continues with a few quotes from Peterson at the time:

I've studied authoritarianism for a very long time - for 40 years - and they're started by people's attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory," he told the BBC.

There's no way I'm going to use words made up by people who are doing that - not a chance.

Dr Peterson is concerned proposed federal human rights legislation "will elevate into hate speech" his refusal to use alternative pronouns.

Here's one of the videos that went viral regarding Peterson and the proposed bill, as he was approached by a protestor at a free speech rally at the University of Toronto (where he is on staff as a professor):

The second video comes from an interview that was conducted between him and Cathy Newman, where Newman repeatedly put words in his mouth, prefacing each of her attacks with 'So you're saying.' Peterson remained calm, dismantling her attempts to put him into a series of corners. The video has had over 34 million views on YouTube:

Amid the uproar, Peterson gained a massive following for the lessons he's learned and taught throughout his life. Largely a gathering of teachings from psychologists, scientists, philosophers like Carl Jung, Jaak Panksepp, George Orwell, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Viktor Frankl, among others, young men and women feasted on each and every bit of information that the thinker put forth, improving their lives in a myriad of ways.

Some of those teachings and quotes include the following from goodreads.com:

When you have something to say, silence is a lie.

 

It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you're going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.

 

If you are not willing to be a fool, you can't become a master.

 

Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.

 

In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.

 

Stop saying those things that make you weak and ashamed. Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that you could speak of with honor.

And my personal favorite:

The purpose of life, as far as I can tell… is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.

If you're looking for a personal testament, I can say this.

I discovered Jordan Peterson after a life-altering breakup in 2017. My dad sent me the previous Cathy Newman video.

I could not be more thankful I decided to listen. I'd like to think that over the last four years I have grown in a dramatic amount of ways.

I tell the truth. I value my family and friends more. I appreciate the world at hand and the structures that uphold it. I'm grateful for free speech and the foundational ideas America was built on. I think deeper about things. I've embraced the struggle that is life by putting my nose to the grindstone and making everyday difficulties worth it. I've hardened. I've accepted responsibility. I've become more dangerous.

And like JP says,

A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.

In many ways, I'd like to think I've become a man.

Thank you, Jordan Peterson. I, like millions of others, owe you more than you know. I can't wait to see you here in Iowa.

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