Deconstructing Jordan Peterson
{In trying to find a category for this thread, I realized that it really doesn't fit into any category, it doesn't belong in the debate section, and it certainly doesn't belong in the lounge, therefore I decided on General Philosophy, as it is a critique of a general contemporary philosophy.}
In this thread I will critically examine the writings of Jordan Peterson. I will periodically update the thread from time to time with new criticisms.
The first thing to be said is that Peterson uses Nihilistic language with the insinuated promise of offering a solution or having found a way out of a tragic dilemma. (Never mind the fact that much of contemporary despair is generated by religious thought in response to its own collapse). Religion wagers ideology against life, and when ideology loses, religion viciously strikes out at life in a desperate attempt to retain its authority in the world.
Proof that Peterson is fond of Nihilistic language:
"The idea that life is suffering is a tenet, in one form or another, of every major religious doctrine, as we have already discussed. Buddhists state it directly. Christians illustrate it with the cross. Jews commemorate the suffering endured over centuries. Such reasoning universally characterizes the great creeds, because human beings are intrinsically fragile. We can be damaged, even broken, emotionally and physically, and we are all subject to the depredations of aging and loss. This is a dismal set of facts, and it is reasonable to wonder how we can expect to thrive and be happy (or even to want to exist, sometimes) under such conditions." Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, from RULE12 Pet a Cat When You Encounter One on the Street
It's not that Peterson is wrong, the facts of life are dismal, but he is ignorant on at least two fronts: 1) The role that religion plays in poisoning life and 2) that the solution is simply a greater conformity to conservative categories and values. In reality this is an admission that one doesn't actually know what to do and so they retreat to the idyllic past, but here the image of the past is itself distorted, projected as a kind of utopia from which mankind has departed. Such a response to the increase of cultural sophistication, which is a response of fear, makes one out to be a reactionary.
"In political science, a reactionary or reactionist is a person or entity holding political views that favour a return to a previous political state of society that they believe possessed positive characteristics that are absent in contemporary society. As an adjective, the word reactionary describes points of view and policies meant to restore a past status quo." Wikipedia
Further, when Peterson posits that life is dismal, he very likely means something more by it than the fact we have made it dismal. For Peterson, there is a God behind the world, and mankind is in a fallen state, this means humans are, in one sense or another, predestined to the production of negativity. This is a false metaphysics that religion has assaulted mankind with for thousands of years. It has also been a vital point of justification for tyranny and violence, that is, man "must be controlled" as opposed to nurtured.
What I find most disturbing in Peterson's thought (and this should be enough for any serious thinker to walk away from Peterson forever): he actually denigrates thought:
[b]"But is there any coherent alternative, given the self-evident horrors of existence? Can Being
itself, with its malarial mosquitoes, child soldiers and degenerative neurological diseases, truly
be justified?... I... don’t think it is possible to answer the question by thinking.
Thinking leads inexorably to the abyss."[/b] Ibid RULE12
And yet the answer he goes on to give, which is simply an affirmation of mindfulness, was itself generated by thought. "When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations—in the depths—it’s noticing, not thinking, that does the trick." Ibid. RULE12
It is perhaps instructive to note that Peterson actually equivocated in attempting to give an answer. He begins by speaking of reality generally and then goes onto to talk about one's mental state. These are two separate things, though they are interconnected.
The reader needs to be clear, Peterson is a Nihilist, which simply means he accepts the false presumption that value must be rooted is some kind of Eternal, Absolute Idealism in order for value to exist at all. This means Peterson's entire approach to the world is dictated by the substrate of a false, negative idealism. When he says "thinking leads to the abyss," he has resigned himself to the unspoken premise that life must submit itself to delusion if it wants to partake of quality. Hence, his clinging to Christianity. His admonitions to conform are motivated by his deep fear of reality. In Peterson one simply gets a Nihilist void of intellectual resistance. This is the very opposite of what it means to be a thinker.
Consider a cultural pundit like Peterson contrasted with a master thinker like Adorno. Adorno is the exact opposite of Peterson, he knows that only by thinking through things, by facing the "abyss," can one ever hope to overcome it. It is not by looking away that one masters life, as Peterson confidently prescribes, but by pressing through the negative:
"There is an American saying that there are no atheists in the trenches; the old German proverb that danger teaches us to pray points in the same direction [. . .] This argument is illogical because the situations in which people are forced to think 'positively' simply in order to survive are themselves situations of compulsion, which force people back on pure self-preservation, and on thinking only what they need to in order to survive in such a situation, to a point where the truth content of what they think is hopelessly undermined and utterly destroyed. It is possible that, had Beckett been in a concentration camp, he would not have written The Unnamable or Endgame; but I do not think it possible that this would have made what he wrote better or truer. The idea you will come across again and again in this context, that one has to give people something, has to give them courage—all these things are conditions which restrict the thinking of truth, but which may well bring down on someone who thinks the truth the odium of inhumanity [ . . .] But I also think that this mode of thinking, this demand placed on thought, does an injustice to the people in whose honour it is ostensibly made. Although this demand is seemingly made out of a charitable concern for the victims, in fact it reduces them to the objects of a thinking which manipulates and calculates them, and assumes in advance that it is giving them what they need and want. By the evaluation manifested in such ostentatiously noble injunctions, the people they pretend to serve are in reality debased. They are treated by metaphysics in fundamentally the same way as by the culture industry. And I would say that the criterion to be applied to any metaphysical question today is whether it possesses or does not possess this character of connivance with the culture industry. [ . . . .] If there is any way out of this hellish circle—and I would not wish to exaggerate that possibility, being well aware of the weakness and susceptibility of such consciousness—it is probably the ability of mind to assimilate, to think the last extreme of horror and, in face of this spiritual experience, to gain mastery over it. That is little enough. For, obviously, such an imagination, such an ability to think extreme negativity, is not comparable to what one undergoes if one is oneself caught up in such situations. Nevertheless, I would think that in the ability not to feel manipulated, but to feel that one has gone relentlessly to the furthest extreme, there lies the only respect which is fitting: a respect for the possibility of the mind, despite everything, to raise itself however slightly above that which is. And I think that it really gives more courage (if I can use that formulation) if one is not given courage, and does not feel bamboozled, but has the feeling that even the worst is something which can be thought and, because it falls within reflection, does not confront me as something absolutely alien and different. I imagine that such a thought is probably more comforting than any solace, whereas solace itself is desolate, since it is always attended by its own untruth." Adorno, Theodor W. Metaphysics: Concept and Problems [lecture series, 1965], edited by Rolf Tiedemann, translated by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 124-5
[The second post on Peterson, PETERSON AND THE POISONED METAPHYSICAL ROOT, is contained on page 6 of this thread.]
In this thread I will critically examine the writings of Jordan Peterson. I will periodically update the thread from time to time with new criticisms.
The first thing to be said is that Peterson uses Nihilistic language with the insinuated promise of offering a solution or having found a way out of a tragic dilemma. (Never mind the fact that much of contemporary despair is generated by religious thought in response to its own collapse). Religion wagers ideology against life, and when ideology loses, religion viciously strikes out at life in a desperate attempt to retain its authority in the world.
Proof that Peterson is fond of Nihilistic language:
"The idea that life is suffering is a tenet, in one form or another, of every major religious doctrine, as we have already discussed. Buddhists state it directly. Christians illustrate it with the cross. Jews commemorate the suffering endured over centuries. Such reasoning universally characterizes the great creeds, because human beings are intrinsically fragile. We can be damaged, even broken, emotionally and physically, and we are all subject to the depredations of aging and loss. This is a dismal set of facts, and it is reasonable to wonder how we can expect to thrive and be happy (or even to want to exist, sometimes) under such conditions." Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, from RULE12 Pet a Cat When You Encounter One on the Street
It's not that Peterson is wrong, the facts of life are dismal, but he is ignorant on at least two fronts: 1) The role that religion plays in poisoning life and 2) that the solution is simply a greater conformity to conservative categories and values. In reality this is an admission that one doesn't actually know what to do and so they retreat to the idyllic past, but here the image of the past is itself distorted, projected as a kind of utopia from which mankind has departed. Such a response to the increase of cultural sophistication, which is a response of fear, makes one out to be a reactionary.
"In political science, a reactionary or reactionist is a person or entity holding political views that favour a return to a previous political state of society that they believe possessed positive characteristics that are absent in contemporary society. As an adjective, the word reactionary describes points of view and policies meant to restore a past status quo." Wikipedia
Further, when Peterson posits that life is dismal, he very likely means something more by it than the fact we have made it dismal. For Peterson, there is a God behind the world, and mankind is in a fallen state, this means humans are, in one sense or another, predestined to the production of negativity. This is a false metaphysics that religion has assaulted mankind with for thousands of years. It has also been a vital point of justification for tyranny and violence, that is, man "must be controlled" as opposed to nurtured.
What I find most disturbing in Peterson's thought (and this should be enough for any serious thinker to walk away from Peterson forever): he actually denigrates thought:
[b]"But is there any coherent alternative, given the self-evident horrors of existence? Can Being
itself, with its malarial mosquitoes, child soldiers and degenerative neurological diseases, truly
be justified?... I... don’t think it is possible to answer the question by thinking.
Thinking leads inexorably to the abyss."[/b] Ibid RULE12
And yet the answer he goes on to give, which is simply an affirmation of mindfulness, was itself generated by thought. "When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations—in the depths—it’s noticing, not thinking, that does the trick." Ibid. RULE12
It is perhaps instructive to note that Peterson actually equivocated in attempting to give an answer. He begins by speaking of reality generally and then goes onto to talk about one's mental state. These are two separate things, though they are interconnected.
The reader needs to be clear, Peterson is a Nihilist, which simply means he accepts the false presumption that value must be rooted is some kind of Eternal, Absolute Idealism in order for value to exist at all. This means Peterson's entire approach to the world is dictated by the substrate of a false, negative idealism. When he says "thinking leads to the abyss," he has resigned himself to the unspoken premise that life must submit itself to delusion if it wants to partake of quality. Hence, his clinging to Christianity. His admonitions to conform are motivated by his deep fear of reality. In Peterson one simply gets a Nihilist void of intellectual resistance. This is the very opposite of what it means to be a thinker.
Consider a cultural pundit like Peterson contrasted with a master thinker like Adorno. Adorno is the exact opposite of Peterson, he knows that only by thinking through things, by facing the "abyss," can one ever hope to overcome it. It is not by looking away that one masters life, as Peterson confidently prescribes, but by pressing through the negative:
"There is an American saying that there are no atheists in the trenches; the old German proverb that danger teaches us to pray points in the same direction [. . .] This argument is illogical because the situations in which people are forced to think 'positively' simply in order to survive are themselves situations of compulsion, which force people back on pure self-preservation, and on thinking only what they need to in order to survive in such a situation, to a point where the truth content of what they think is hopelessly undermined and utterly destroyed. It is possible that, had Beckett been in a concentration camp, he would not have written The Unnamable or Endgame; but I do not think it possible that this would have made what he wrote better or truer. The idea you will come across again and again in this context, that one has to give people something, has to give them courage—all these things are conditions which restrict the thinking of truth, but which may well bring down on someone who thinks the truth the odium of inhumanity [ . . .] But I also think that this mode of thinking, this demand placed on thought, does an injustice to the people in whose honour it is ostensibly made. Although this demand is seemingly made out of a charitable concern for the victims, in fact it reduces them to the objects of a thinking which manipulates and calculates them, and assumes in advance that it is giving them what they need and want. By the evaluation manifested in such ostentatiously noble injunctions, the people they pretend to serve are in reality debased. They are treated by metaphysics in fundamentally the same way as by the culture industry. And I would say that the criterion to be applied to any metaphysical question today is whether it possesses or does not possess this character of connivance with the culture industry. [ . . . .] If there is any way out of this hellish circle—and I would not wish to exaggerate that possibility, being well aware of the weakness and susceptibility of such consciousness—it is probably the ability of mind to assimilate, to think the last extreme of horror and, in face of this spiritual experience, to gain mastery over it. That is little enough. For, obviously, such an imagination, such an ability to think extreme negativity, is not comparable to what one undergoes if one is oneself caught up in such situations. Nevertheless, I would think that in the ability not to feel manipulated, but to feel that one has gone relentlessly to the furthest extreme, there lies the only respect which is fitting: a respect for the possibility of the mind, despite everything, to raise itself however slightly above that which is. And I think that it really gives more courage (if I can use that formulation) if one is not given courage, and does not feel bamboozled, but has the feeling that even the worst is something which can be thought and, because it falls within reflection, does not confront me as something absolutely alien and different. I imagine that such a thought is probably more comforting than any solace, whereas solace itself is desolate, since it is always attended by its own untruth." Adorno, Theodor W. Metaphysics: Concept and Problems [lecture series, 1965], edited by Rolf Tiedemann, translated by Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 124-5
[The second post on Peterson, PETERSON AND THE POISONED METAPHYSICAL ROOT, is contained on page 6 of this thread.]
Comments (167)
I think this needs to be put in context. What does he mean by 'thinking'? Trying to think it through and come to some kind of conclusion or resolution? Perhaps he is right in this but it is a good thing to think and see that 'naive' thinking won't resolve the issue; there is no Eureka moment. He goes on the say-
Quoting JerseyFlight
So things can be resolved? When thinking ends, being begins. Being is a more exalted form of thought. You might be interested in Simone Weil's 'The need for roots' which deals with these issues.
But Anyway, {quote= Jordan-the-Moron} Wiffle waffle. {/quote} will format your quotes nicely if you replace the curly brackets with square ones, like this:
[quote= Jordan-the-Moron] Wiffle waffle. [/quote]
Quoting a post is even easier; select the bit you want and a quote button appears and a click does the same thing wherever your cursor is in your reply.
The absence of thought is not a solution, it's a resignation. Further, as I mentioned above, Peterson could only arrive at, his equivocated and superficial solution, through the medium of thought. You have not even made contact with my point. His action presupposes the negation of his prescription.
I think what he is saying - S. Weil says something similar - is that abstract intellectual cogitation will not resolve the issue. One must find something better.
The quotes I provided are more than proficient, more could be referenced. Does Peterson believe man can arrive at meaning absent the premise of supernaturalism? The answer is no. So entrenched is he in this idealism that he has even fallaciously tried to attribute it to Nietzsche, claiming that Nietzsche knew morality/values could not be bolstered without some kind of supernatural foundation(???). This is Nihilism! This is also a distortion and woefully incompetent mischaracterization of Nietzsche's position [see Peterson's exchange with Susan Blackmore]. (This proves that he is exactly the kind of Nihilist Nietzsche warned about.)
I do wonder if you were able to comprehend Adorno's position? Would be interesting to see where you object?
See above.
My advice: don't waste any time on Jordan Peterson, whether as criticism or not. Better off digging a ditch and filling it back up.
Think there's some value in him. Well. About him. What concerns does he speak to that made him so popular? What is it about his language and work that was appealing?
(1) Self help that
(2) has a veneer of academic respectability targeted at
(3) millenial white dudes with little sense of personal identity that
(4) are all too happy to palliate their terrible social adjustment using
(5) pseudoscience dreck pretending it's Enlightenment Modernism which
(6) synergizes with far right nostalgia that permeates dude culture on the internet by
(7) promising that individual enlightenment will neuter the unacknowledged social ills that
(8) produce all of the above as a symptom.
Deepak Choprah for woke rationalist buckos.
This is indeed the proper and initial response, but there is a serious problem here. The attitude you embody, though it truly does come from a place of higher critical intelligence, fails to see that Peterson is doing damage in culture. Whether one likes it or not, he has become relevant, people are influenced by him, they look up to him and see him as the very thing he is not, an intellectual example. When intellectuals like yourself withdraw from the advancing public discourse, the narrative is lost to people like Peterson, it regresses. What is required is an intellectual fight. Those who actually read literature across the domain of the social sciences, know that this fella is a charlatan, the problem is that we expect other people to know it as well, but they cannot connect the dots. In the shadow of religion's collapse many have become Nihilistic, they feel the weight of reality without the crutch of God. Peterson comes along and says, "don't worry, I feel the same Nihilism that you do, but I have real answers, I know the way forward." Tragically, his answers are entirely reactionary, conformity to authority, "go back to the old slave masters and you will feel safe again." People are so intellectually bankrupt and frightened that they will take anything they can get, hence the strong man doctrine, hence a return to authority, the mindless affirmation of delusion on the basis of pragmatism: religion, because it helps us cope with our Nihilistic feelings of terror.
Your argument seems to take the form:
Some of Peterson's statements are akin to nihilism
Therefore Peterson is a nihilist
Nihilism is bad
Therefore Peterson is bad.
So what? This sort of argument could be applied to any original thinker who thinks outside the (stultifying) norm.
Strawman. See above, reply to whollyrolling.
Lol .. its your OP!!
This is not what Nietzsche knew, this is Peterson's mischaracterization of Nietzsche. What Nietzsche knew is that Christian ideals had been so entrenched into western culture that people would (as Christianity engineered) fall into Nihilism. The Nihilism was not the result of an inability to handle reality or construct more intelligent values (we have been doing this for hundreds of years), this Nihilism was the direct result, pre-programmed, cult reaction to having the error of Christianity ripped out of the brain. Peterson tries to make it sound like Nietzsche believed man needed the ideal of God! This is false. The culprit is not reality, but the negative indoctrination that Christianity has done to culture.
Here the formal game does not work, but more importantly, it will not save you. Nihilism is the denial of existential positivity, it is the militant affirmation of the negative. Those who preach the happiness of another life are always in the business of condemning this one. The question still stands, and indeed has already been answered, Peterson, like so many religionists, teaches that value cannot exist in the absence of supernaturalism. And to make matters worse, maybe he wants to follow Lewis and admit that this supernaturalism is really just a game of delusional comfort? The outcome is simply more Nihilism. (Here reality is projected as being so negative that one must turn to delusion, one must swallow this delusion as though it were reality, merely to cope with what is projected).
If you affirm existential value then you are not a Nihilist. However, if you only affirm value, via the premise of supernaturalism, then you are a Nihilist because you deny existential value. No formality can save you from this.
His popular stuff is all self help and DESTROYing the left. It's one thing to talk about his arguments, it's another to consider why he's appealing and to what demographics. (Some) People find him helpful, he's reassuring and inspiring. Thinking about Peterson as a narrative event is kinda different from thinking about him as a scholar.
Quoting whollyrolling
I'm not gonna criticize his views here, I'm gonna look at what they do as a narrative intervention (which seems to be in the spirit of the thread). What conversations and values does he promote/enable? What conversations and values does he silence/disenable? How does he fit into discourse?
Essentially, he's a Youtube star. A few years ago there was that memetic clip of him arguing about leftist opposition to Free Speech and Stalinism in a Canadian court that was discussing hate crime legislation against transgenders and nonbinary people at the time. He did so eloquently, and he leveraged a few tropes (as I remember) that link really well into American influenced discourse.
The Free Speech and Stalinism thing fits right in; people saying that leftist counterprotest and deplatforming is against free speech is at least as old as Oswald Mosley and Carl Schmitt. Anyone who frequented news sites and blogs that had a similar ideological climate to Breitbart will have seen the Free Speech thing in that context at the time. The Left is against Free Speech is a handy trope that also follows from anti-Soviet propaganda efforts - a closed loop of leftism=authoritarianism=free speech restrictions. He was fire on top of kindling.
After that video of him criticising trans hate crime legislation in Canada went viral, people discovered that he had a large Youtube repository of lectures that flesh out why he thinks what he thinks. He's dealing with themes of modern social isolation, the powerlessness of modern life, pent up and barely held in anger, and changing cultural concepts of masculinity/femininity. He does so using psychology and psychoanalytic references as well as textual analysis of old stories and moves like the Lion King. It's accessible, , he speaks well, he's quick on his feet when improvising. This is his political/cultural posture, these are the issues his ideas weigh in on.
He's styled as a prof who speaks hard truths accessibly and has a frame of interpreting them; a hodge podge of the Protestant work ethic, Jungian terms, and psychotheraputic interventions. He manages to tie the three together in a consistent science-flavour aesthetic that speaks to cultural issues. The personal transformation and anti( anti - X ) politics side well with center right values and individualist emphasis.
Put the politics that he's negating together with the cultural posture he's cultivated; his messages' target demographic are those who feel uneasy with those political developments he negates and their contexts (anti-sexism, anti-racism, anti-transphobia stuff...) - allegedly apolitical socially alienated white blokes. He sells a journey of personal transformation and self discovery as against the political positions his target demographic was uneasy with anyway. That's a convenient scapegoat - the suppressed shadow of left liberal politics being authoritarian imposition - sold to the suppressed rage of his target demographic. Now it's not about them. it's about (blah). And that frees them. They can work on themselves now that they're disburdened of feeling like maybe they're the problem (spoilers: complicity requires emotional work to deal with and even then that's not enough!). He's basically managed to sell milquetoast conservatism to millennial white gamer dudes through an aesthetic of personal transformation. An intellectual voice for the old Youtube atheism demographic.
This is exactly it, and tragically these young people don't have the resources to place him in context as an intellectual. There is nothing there. Even in the domain of psychology this guy is a joke. The amount of revolutionary research and progress in psychology, in the last 20 years alone, is breathtaking. Peterson exemplifies and embodies none of it. He is still trying to preach the moth-eaten narrative that will power is the agent of human psychological salvation. We know this is nonsense, many other factors are at work. Like I accurately said, he's a conformist and a reactionary. But what is most tragic is that he's not turning out thinkers, he's creating more like himself, those who mindlessly validate the status quo. It should be noted, this is the direct opposite of what it means to be a thinker.
What do you mean by this?
With all due respect, I don't find it very productive to engage with you.
A great deal of psychology is a tautology; they have renamed and relabeled many elements of the psyche and bleached it of spiritual reality. What is the psyche? Ask a psychologist. I doubt that many of them care much so long as the tautological edifice is self sustaining. At least Peterson realizes it is not an abstraction.
So we have a rather new member that hates Jordan Peterson (or what Jordan Peterson is supposed to stand for). Ok, that's a very popular stance among the leftists here.
Quoting JerseyFlight
So even before the OP starts to look at what is said, it's already mentioned that, "never mind", the whole thing collapses. Wonderful objectivity here.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Really? He wouldn't be wrong???
Quoting JerseyFlight
Which seems to be for you self evident. How does religion poison our life?
Quoting JerseyFlight
If so, please give the direct quote for this.
Quoting JerseyFlight
This seems to show just why you are so against of Jordan Peterson, the larger than life metaphor for what is so wrong in conservatism and with religion. For thousands of years.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Now showing the true feelings about the issue...
Quoting JerseyFlight
At least I don't know what the context is here, what coherent alternative is Peterson talking about? Sorry, but a simple reader loses the red line here.
Quoting EnPassant
Quoting JerseyFlight
Ah, so you are also condescending.
Right, It figures.
Don't engage.
You obviously are correct. Why bother?
Eh, I'm somewhat sympathetic to him. The social issues he's speaking about are pretty real. Even if he presents some of them in an inverted reactionary form. If you grew up in the 80's or 90's and you're a white dude in the political north, the societal norms and expectations you grew up with involved stable careers ending in a pension+retirement, social mobility tied to educational attainment, and widespread belief that formal legal equality had been attained for all "identity politics" issues. The culture screams it at you, get a job, get a skill - "pick your sacrifice" as Peterson terms it.
But now the peers are educated, the gig economy is a thing, industrial jobs got outsourced or automated out of existence, white worker political institutions like unions (which your parents + grandparents relied on and benefitted from) have less and less influence (how could they keep it?) and worse still we might mostly be dead by then from the climate change pressure cooker. There's widespread distrust in "mainstream media", and we form these little online spaces based on largely consumer interest. Occupy happened and was ignored. We're living through the death rattle of (something), there's widespread awareness that it's a death-rattle... so... What?
The left's vague slogans about community and solidarity don't tell you what to do, and in all this ambiguity and weirdness, it makes sense to invest in nostalgia - clinging onto anything that makes it all seem like it's gonna be okay, and reassure you that doing the things that people've always done (IE, our parents expected to be...) will restore order and make sense of life again. No coincidence that Peterson's a Christianity inspired therapist! "Pick a frame" as Peterson puts it in the same breath as "you get to pick your sacrifice". I have the same nostalgia but channel it into unions and protest. Hell, a good conversation in person with a stranger would be fandabbydosy (no, 4chan mayoboys recognising a kindred spirit from my sandals and odd socks in a bar don't count).
Peterson has all the right creds to sell confidence; he's a therapist (and we're all pretty fucked up right about now), he can cite scientific studies (very badly, lobster anthropology and not in that cute Deleuzian way, thinking the alpha wolf study had ecological validity). He's a damn prof for god's sake, but he speaks critically of the social conditions generating all this malaise.
And as much as I hate to admit it, it's not like left critique is going to sell his target demographic anything but horrific superego flagellation (a phrase I learned from @csalisbury). So what? Leave them to it?
Yeah probably. A missed opportunity. The right has Jopo, the left has BreadTube. Pick your gateway drug and tune out reassured for the evening.
It would seem to me that this is not necessary, Peterson's position evidently presupposes this. This is not my mere invention. Allow me to connect the dots, if man can indeed achieve positivity apart from the supernatural, then there is simply no reason to run to God, or in Peterson's case, argue he is necessary! Such an act would be a violation of the premise of positivity. When Peterson makes the claim that God is necessary for value, he presupposes all kinds of unspoken things. One of these things is that man cannot produce the positive without God. (As I already demonstrated, he is such a fanatic in this sense that he tried to attribute his own error to Nietzsche). And let's be frank, Peterson is a Christian, Christianity contains the idea of original sin, it asserts that mankind is fallen and must be born again. When you imply that Peterson must directly assert this line for line in order to prove that he believes it, this is false. All one needs to do is calculate backward from his conclusions. One merely has to presupposes something in their position in order to be charged with it. In fact, this is how most high level philosophical thinking proceeds.
What I gather is that Peterson doesn't even like the question (of being a believer in God) and is somewhat between what Religion and using the scientific method give as an answers. From what I can understand Peterson notices the difference between the objectivity of science and subjectivity of religion. I assume that the how seriously he takes Religion or Christianity (which he obviously knows) makes him seem as very religious.
I just have not followed Peterson so much that I would know just where and when he has said that " God is necessary for value" or that "man cannot produce the positive without God". If these are quotes from his books, please tell me.
The quote I cited above* where he distorts Nietzsche is enough, unless Peterson claims to do what he says Nietzsche could not? I should have use the word "implies" instead of "claim," although I honestly don't see much difference, because the implication implies the claim whether spoken or not. Clearly Peterson is not claiming that values can be constructed in the absence of God? If that was the case his entire approach to civilization would be uprooted and nullified. He tries to make it seem like Nietzsche was an advocate of his position, namely that values could not be created apart from God.
*In another place I extracted the same quote from his exchange with Susan Blackmore.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Quoting JerseyFlight
Quoting JerseyFlight
You're a kind of anti-evangalist, right? I personally don't see 'religion' in terms of 'attaining positivity' (and I put 'religion' in quotes, because there is no such thing as a monolithic 'religion', it encompasses an enormously divergent range). IN any case, i see it as a longing for a goodnees beyond all opposites, often glimpsed but rarely realised.
I'm not a particular fan of Peterson, as I'm the wrong generation. I first heard about him through some young relatives who were impressed by him 2 or 3 years ago. He seems to have had a positive effect on them. I've heard a couple of his lectures. Actually he appeared on Australian television 18 months ago and from what I could see, wiped the floor with anyone who tried to tackle him.
As for the Adorno quote - it seems like waffle to me. What about Viktor Frankl, whose book Mankind's Search for Meaning was essentially written in one of the concentration camps?
I think 'nihilism' is simply the conviction that nothing is real, or that nothing matters. Nihilism is very common in modern culture, due to the absence of a shared moral code; it doesn't have to appear dramatic or sturm-und-drung, it might simply be a shrug, a 'whatever'.
I am against stupidity and ignorance, most especially when they come to occupy a place of authority.
Bravo. Exactly right. But still not worth your time writing it.
Maybe. But you could say the same about many other issues as well -- Creationism, QAnon conspiracies, 9/11 truthers, Anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, etc. If we spend all of our time doing battle with this nonsense, we'll never move on. It's a bottomless bit. We'd have better luck trying to argue people out of Christianity or Islam -- which is to say, very little.
It's a strange phenomenon these days: once someone has locked into a dogma, it's like a black hole -- there's no coming out of it. One wonders what attracts people to these black holes in the first place, but that's why we need to stick to rational argument, evidence, science, etc. -- and hope most people are sane enough to accept reality. Turns out, most people are -- we already have the numbers in this country and around the world. Better to shore up these people and get to work collectively than bother with a minority of those who are too far gone to be rescued.
This assumes we can move on without doing battle with it. I admit, if the cult is small enough and does not pose a threat of future proliferation, to the best of our calculation, then better to let it alone. However, I have seen exactly your approach lose the culture to fanaticism in nearly the space of fifty years. There is real danger on gambling against error. What you are doing is assuming that your level of awareness and education will win out at the end of the day. This is not what we learn from history. Intelligence is always on the defensive!
Quoting Xtrix
I agree, we do need to do all these things. But we must also refute error, if we do not it will gain simply because it's attempt to deceive goes unchallenged and the ignorant have no defense against it. As intellectuals we have a social responsibility in this direction.
Quoting Xtrix
Here, my friend, your optimism is misplaced. Hitler brought himself into power through the zealous actions of a minority. Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman shifted the entire nature of American economics in the direction of capitalism. When they were on the scene intellectuals said the same things about them that you are now saying about Peterson. Our resistance to this kind of stuff matters. I do not do it because it brings me pleasure or I have some kind of obsession, I do it because ideology is dangerous, it destroys lives and sabotages democratic freedom, paving the way to irreparable systems of violence.
I have listened to Peterson quite a bit and I am not entirely sure what values you think he is preaching, common decency and personal responsibility mostly?
Quoting JerseyFlight
Peterson talks quite a lot about how the "left is not negative enough" and the most horrific aspects of life can be viewed to not be human constructs but an interplay of forces that goes beyond human civilisation. That is "the lobster" which aims to prove that hierarchies are not a human construct, he likens wealth inequality to how the tallest trees acquire the most sunlight. He posits that many forms of inequality are just the natural results of people making choices which are in their best interests which he uses to argue against equality of outcome. He suggests many of the problems which are conceptualised as the deficiency of civilisation are in fact badly conceptualised and thus the solutions offered are poorly thought out. So I am finding it difficult to see where you're coming from here, seems to be the antithesis of his views.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Interesting usage of the term nihilist here, I consider this to be the antithesis of the nihilistic position. Though, I reject the interpretation of "nihilism" talked about by Nietzche as actual nihilism - which is the position that there is no truth value to the meaning of life. The various consequences of can be reasonably disagreed on. I would warn against arguing with me on this term "nihilism", it is not a great term to begin with and I can see that your usage is different, I am happy for you to just consider my usage wrong if it pleases you.
I am not really surprised to see Peterson being unpopular on a highly left-leaning platform but while I don't agree with him on everything, I find his criticisms of the left to be very useful and instructive. I think most of what he says is fairly common sense and likely to produce the good results he claims it will.
Your whole argument from the OP onwards is indistinguishable from biased naïve opinion, which you are quite welcome to of course; but it is not philosophy.
This is indeed the dilemma: how does one convince culturated slaves of the evil of slavery? Along comes a man and tells them to adhere to their masters, deep down they have always felt this to be true, when they heed the advice they notice the world makes more sense, their existential angst vanishes, they feel a stronger sense of purpose and they can detect order in the world. All of these things are the products of conformity, they are the result of validating the false truth of what is administered, but this cannot be the way of thinkers. Little does the one who obeys comprehend that his existence is predetermined by a process of production, of the which, he is merely a cog in the wheel. If he never stops to question the system he finds no discontent with it. Let us then praise the preachers of conformity! Let us adhere to their pious ways! After all, there is nothing wrong with the system, the problem cannot be systemic, the fault lies with the individual's inability to re-frame his discontent. "Stand up straight, put on a suite, go out and face the world with confidence, for all is equal and fair, opportunity awaits, banish every negative thought."
But what we really have here are lies, we have a kind of regression posited as a form of progression. What we really have here is a system of oppression and power, which through conformity, escapes detection. If it is wrong to question power then it is wrong to live, there is no way around it. The great conspiracy is not conformity, but invincible stupidity, repeatedly presented as intelligence.
If one is born a slave, is raised as a slave, it is no surprise that one should come to believe in the invincible virtue of slavery. But the slave has nothing to fear, because he knows, that if there was anything wrong with slavery, he would certainly be able to detect it! And the fact that he only perceives slavery to be a virtue, is proof that it is a common good. Let us then praise the preachers of conformity! Let us adhere to their pious ways!
Peterson advocates for the empowerment of the individual while acknowledging the difficulty of life as well as the wonderment of life. I think his framing is well designed to give the individual resilience as well as hope, promoting competence and taking responsibility. What power do you think he avoids questioning? Also, are you interested in debating this or would you prefer to give a sermon?
Quoting Wayfarer
I kinda get the opposite impression: That he argues that individuals should care about themselves and not try to change the world around them. That the world around them is properly run by forces that are beyond the individual, which are expressed in traditions, and one should best accept those as they are. Only very exceptional individuals should ever try to think about changing the world.
Real empowerment, based on your real position and abilities within society. He argues that you should take care of yourself, then if you get that right, try to take care of your family, if you succeed there then try to play an active role in your community. He merely points out that if you can't even get your own shit together then how are you qualified to be explaining to the rest of the world how the economy should function or how law or society should function. Isn't that just common sense? Your value isn't determined by how much you change the course of the nation, one should focus on things in their immediate area first where you can actually make a difference and when they're able to handle that kind of responsibility.
Like state atheism?
The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism".[50][51] It sought to make religion disappear by various means.[52][53]
Within about a year of the revolution, the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed (a much greater number was subjected to persecution)
More than 200 clerics of various faiths were imprisoned, others were forced to seek work in either industry or agriculture, and some were executed or starved to death.
a government-sanctioned demolition work crew drove a bulldozer over two Chinese Christians who protested the demolition of their church by refusing to step aside
Human Rights Overview reported in 2004 that North Korea remains one of the most repressive governments, with isolation and disregard for international law making monitoring almost impossible.[134] After 1,500 churches were destroyed during the rule of Kim Il Sung from 1948 to 1994,
The Mongol leader at that time was Khorloogiin Choibalsan, a follower of Joseph Stalin, who emulated many of the policies that Stalin had previously implemented in the Soviet Union. The purge virtually succeeded in eliminating Lamaism and cost an estimated thirty to thirty-five thousand lives.
On June 14, 1926, President Calles enacted anticlerical legislation known formally as The Law Reforming the Penal Code and unofficially as the Calles Law.[146] His anti-Catholic actions included outlawing religious orders, depriving the Church of property rights and depriving the clergy of civil liberties, including their right to a trial by jury
the Mexican government persecuted the clergy, killing suspected Cristeros and supporters and often retaliating against innocent individuals.[151] On May 28, 1926, Calles was awarded a medal of merit from the head of Mexico's Scottish rite of Freemasonry for his actions against the Catholics
Calles' insistence on a complete state monopoly on education, suppressing all Catholic education and introducing "socialist" education in its place: "We must enter and take possession of the mind of childhood, the mind of youth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism
The People's Republic of Albania had an objective for the eventual elimination of all religion in Albania with the goal of creating an atheist nation, which it declared it had achieved in 1967. In 1976, Albania implemented a constitutional ban on religious activity and propaganda.[14] The government nationalised most property of religious institutions and used it for non-religious purposes, such as cultural centers for young people. Religious literature was banned. Many clergy and theists were tried, tortured, and executed. All foreign Roman Catholic clergy were expelled in 1946.[14][15] Albania was the only country that ever officially banned religion.
The Khmer Rouge attempted to eliminate Cambodia's cultural heritage, including its religions, particularly Theravada Buddhism.[18] Over the four years of Khmer Rouge rule, at least 1.5 million Cambodians perished. Of the sixty thousand Buddhist monks that previously existed, only three thousand survived the Cambodian genocide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antireligion
It was the banks that brought him to power. https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/hitlers-bankers-finally-face-up-to-their-sorry-past-26400645.html
Common sense usually is neither common nor sense.
Apart from that, there is two problems: For one this is an impossible standard. Everyone has problems. But more importantly, it doesn't follow. You'd first have to establish that there is an inherent connection between your ability to have a happy and fulfilling personal & family life and your ability to analyze society. Are we going to judge the writings of Plato, Kant or Wittgenstein by whether or not they got their family life right?
There is also the slight problem that, according to Jordan Peterson, we shouldn't listen to Jordan Peterson.
Quoting Judaka
But this is instrumental advice. It applies regardless of your aim. Peterson isn't arguing that you should "think globally act locally". He isn't saying start fighting climate change by changing your diet and consumption habits. He's saying focus on your personal fulfillment and leave climate change to the people in charge.
There's a huge difference between quoting what someone has said or written and what one thinks a person is implying.
Chapter 6 of Peterson's book is "Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world" but he obviously doesn't mean that literally. He's not saying only people whose houses are 100% clean are entitled to try to change the world. Nor does he says that only people whose family lives are perfect are entitled to opinions.
In the chapter he uses Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as a model: Solzhenitsyn didn't just curse his fate in the gulag, he poured over the details of his own life "with a fine toothed comb" and engaged in the type of self-reflection to make his work a masterpiece. All Peterson seems to be asking is that people approach the world from a standpoint involving humility and responsibility before criticizing the world. He's not saying you're not allowed to, I don't know, raise awareness for the chinese concentration camps if you're family life isn't perfect.
When the "right" is represented by an narcissistic idiot like Trump, it's no wonder that a reasonable academic conservative like Peterson gets attention and ends up in the target hairs of the left. In truth the quality of modern political discourse is really appalling.
Peterson came to public attention by criticizing a Canadian bill, the "Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (Bill C-16)", hence he instantly got the media focus ....and the notoriety in leftist circles. Especially when his self-help instructions got popularity, this seemed (somehow) as a political following to leftists.
So, what does he say, in your interpretation? What's the connection between setting your house in order and criticizing the world?
Peterson's style is to blend self-help with political philosophy. As self help, concentrating on what you yourself can do to deal with your situation is good advice. That's where the Solzhenitsyn example works well. But as a political philosophy, it's a call towards indifference towards social and economic issues. A call which happens to line up very well with the interests of the people who promote Peterson as a philosopher.
Quoting ssu
Peterson explicitly makes political statements. The culture war between the "post modernist cultural Marxists" and the classical liberals is invoked frequently in his lectures and talks. It's not like "leftists" started attacking him because they're against cleaning your room.
And as I mentioned, his commentary on the Canadian bill was an obvious issue about "culture war", just smacked right into it. Yet what he made his talks about I think were typically closer to his academic job.
But yes, he's been talking about cultural marxists, when at least in my view basically it's more about the effects of post-modernity or anti-modernism of our times rather than a plot of marxists (simply because there's so few actual marxists around).
Hence it's fitting to name this thread "Deconstructing Jordan Peterson".
He means set yourself/your mindset in order.
Peterson starts off the chapter talking about the Columbine killers and Carl Panzram - both of whom hated being and described so in detail in their manifestos or biographies. The Columbine killers hated pretty much everything. And they were right in regard to a lot of it - life is often pain, life is unfair, injustice happens constantly. But if you're just criticizing and coming at things from this type of perspective it's a monstrous and nihilistic way to approach the world even if you happen to share some opinions with normal, rational folks.
In politics there might be some use for these people, but Peterson is always speaking to the individual. Political philosophy or theory tends to deal in groups, Peterson does not.
I will say, your response can be directly applied to how people respond to philosophical pessimism. In other words, when the pessimist casts aspersions on being born and life itself, pointing out the structural deficiencies and negative aspects of that structure, people will turn it around on the questioner. It must be a deficiency in the person seeing the deficiency, but never the system itself. You can call it existential gaslighting.
Also because Marxism is the polar opposite of a post-modern view. For Marx, history itself had an objective purpose that could be known.
But one good video to look at for Petersons political stance is in his interview with Steven Pinker, the author of enlightenment now. Watching it, it was very obvious to me that Peterson at every turn brought up "cultural maxism" and "post-modernism" as the bogeyman that threaten our achievements, while Pinker, while sharing some of Peterson's views, was much more neutral. The "culture war" is not just an aside for Peterson. It's the main focus of his philosophy. He conceptualizes it as literally an archetypical fight between light and darkness.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Good advice, certainly, but what if an unordered mind comes up with something rather important?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Which seems to be saying that if you don't set yourself in order first, your arguments are going to be bad. But this implies that Peterson already knows the arguments are bad, so obviously he has a way to decide that based on the arguments themselves. Why then shouldn't they simply be part of the "marketplace of ideas", which Peterson presumably holds in high regard?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I think quite the opposite is true. Peterson cares a great deal about groups. Behind the self-help is a political philosophy that's very worried about the wrong group being in power.
So very true. The reason is because humans cannot handle psychological pain, and reality is painful, it is frightening = hence, humans cannot handle reality. Most thinkers simply bury their heads in the sand... no, this is not true, that would be easier to deal with, most thinkers construct a delusional narrative to counter the negative reality. In Peterson's case it's simply conformity, validating the false truth of the administered world as though it comprised totality. This mindless approach to the world was ripped apart by the Frankfurt School, precisely because 1) it's false and 2) it sets the social stage for genocide and totalitarianism. Of course, those who are merely conforming do not perceive any of this, their approach to the world is not critical but intuitive, and this means their intuition blinds them to the negative development of reality. There is something very wrong with any thinker who is telling us to forsake thought in exchange for comfort. This is not resistance but resignation, it is functional Nihilism, even if it doesn't adopt the name. Thinkers are better than this, thought is a greater power!
Yes, as long as we don't make that the full time job. If we chase every crazy claim, "debating" and "refuting," etc., we go nowhere. It's best to have a positive direction, a plan, a better way of life, a better way of thinking, etc., and let people join in with that -- questioning ourselves and correcting mistakes along the way, but not getting sidetracked by "debunking" things (unless there's a real chance that it helps). The same is true of "debate" -- a ridiculous concept, really.
No -- Sizek is another posturing charlatan.
Quoting JerseyFlight
No, it isn't. Because it's not about optimism or pessimism -- it's just a matter of fact: we have the numbers. On almost every issue, from climate change to nuclear weapons to healthcare to Jordan Peterson and QAnon (in the last two cases, the vast majority disapprove).
Quoting JerseyFlight
Like I said, it's fine to do if you think it's beneficial. But much like political hobbyism, one can think they're doing a great deal when they're really just wasting their time -- no one is changing their minds and nothing is getting done. Better to seek real power in terms of politics, and to organize with like-minded individuals (of which there are many) to enact real change and prevent the next Hitler or Friedman or whomever.
Tell me what you know about the class structure of society? Tell me what you know about systemic oppression? What do you know about inherited trauma and how that trauma is generated in class systems? Hell, what do you know about trauma in general? [Do you claim that the individual components of a system are not affected by the overall structure and process of the system?]
I would be shocked if you were not an American, and even more, are probably one that escaped poverty, the projects, etc. (Indeed, let us try to sell Peterson's ideology to Syrians).
Oh, and this is all relevant, so very relevant. His framing is designed to ignore concrete systemic issues, as well as psycho-biological factors. His presumption of will power has been totally refuted, we can even make light work of it here and now. What happens when your brain doesn't produce the right amounts of Grey Matter? (After you have figured this out) then tell me how we should deal with people whose brains are deficient in Grey Matter? Is it really just a matter of taking responsibility? I wonder where you think this idea leads? I wonder, has Peterson truly thought deeply about the concept of responsibility and what it means? Have you for that matter?
Let us begin then, since you raised the term tell me what responsibility means?
How does a thinker know when he's not wasting time?
I strongly disagree with you that Peterson advocates for conformity. One only has to look so far as when he talks about Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn or Nazis. All are stories of entire societies getting wrapped into conformity resulting in, as you say, genocide and totalitarianism. He uses these stories as warning to what can happen when a collection of individuals allows themselves to be consumed by ideology without scrutiny or thought. The stories are brought up to encourage people to wrestle with the part of themselves that would allow for ideological possession to the point of being an accessory to genocide. He champions the individual because it is what needs to be most respected in a functioning society.
When he's talking to those who can think and hear. Also, it's a relative thing -- it may not be a complete waste to teach someone something for 10 years, and then finally have them understand it or change their mind. But compared to other endeavors, perhaps it's not the best use of one's time.
How does he know when this is the case? And further, does this have to happen within a set perimeter of time?
As per your revision: "Also, it's a relative thing -- it may not be a complete waste to teach someone something for 10 years, and then finally have them understand it or change their mind."
If it is a relative thing then how do you know what you're talking about? I thought I heard you say, "they're really just wasting their time -- no one is changing their minds and nothing is getting done." How do you know this?
It's quite clear that the PR or Human Resources departments of large corporations aren't suddenly staffed by "cultural marxists" and the vast majority of university students aren't indoctrinated to marxism, yet public discourse and the discourse of the culture wars have obviously changed. I think this change has been noted and explained well for instance people like Steven Pinker.
Quoting Echarmion
I wouldn't it's his main focus. Perhaps it would be similar to say that the main focus of Noam Chomsky's philosophy is to criticize US foreign policy. That he obviously has done in several books, but I gather the linguist who calls himself a left libertarian would have more to say about his personal philosophy. And so too with Peterson.
And on the other hand, there are many leftists who don't like the SJW nonsense either.
Sounds like an ideology, and a rather extreme one at that, like Libertarianism. Societies depend on collective cooperation, so that needs to be respected as well, right?
Praxis is here spot on. Everything that makes up an individual is determined by the system into which he is born... for all objectors and haters -- good luck refuting this! The last fifty years or more have seen the social sciences verify this premise over and over and over again, and it is not in danger of being refuting because no human could survive without society, it is a physical and psychological impossibility. So what we get in Peterson is exactly that, "ideology," the myth of the self-made-individual. There is no such thing! Peterson is pushing a delusion, the very idealism that leads to totalitarianism, rugged individualism. All one has to do is follow his premises to their logical political conclusions. One ends up distorting the ontology of the individual as well as the ontology of society; one ends by resorting to violence as a way to deal with contradiction. This is what happens when thought is removed from the equation, and this is exactly what Peterson has done. However, what he doesn't realize is that this is not actually a way to rid the world of tension, it is merely the act of burying one's head in the sand, or worse, erecting a dogmatic delusion, immortality system (see Becker), in order to cope with the tension. When this system is threatened, because thought has been removed from the equation, the only recourse is that of violence, the delusion must be defended against those who seek to refute it! What's at stake, in Peterson's delusional, reactionary world, civilization itself! This is how the violence eventually gets justified.
Wow, has Jordan Peterson honestly never read Nietzsche? Not only is this a mischaracterization, this is pretty much the literal exact opposite of Nietzsche's actual position. I've seen Jordan Peterson's strawman arguments about Marx, so I'm not overly surprised to hear he does similar violence to Nietzsche, but... woof. What a clown. He should definitely stick to psychology and leave philosophy to those with at least some familiarity with or talent for it. From what I gather, he was a competent if not especially distinguished academic in his primary field, but from everything I've seen or heard about his philosophical and social/cultural erm.. "contributions" (using this term generously), he's woefully out of his depth and should definitely consider staying in his lane.
What's most interesting is that he has a history of distorting intellectual's positions. He did the exact same thing with Jung... now, I don't know all the details about this one, but my friend who is exceedingly well versed in the field of psychology watched one of Peterson's lectures on Jung, where he tried to defend Jung from Nazism, my friend went into detail about how Peterson totally distorted the facts in order to make Jung look better. My only question is, how many times is an intellectual allowed to do this, without correcting themselves, before they lose credibility?
He can't even be trusted in this domain, actually, it's even worse. His pop-psych stance is one of complete cherry picking. Let me cite just a few revolutionary names to prove this, Peter Fonagy and Allan Schore, ground breaking work in Attachment Theory. But there are so many more incredible advances in Social Psychology and Cultural Psychology, Peterson conveniently ignores them all, his consciousness reflects none of it. He is not bringing young people into the modern world with all its advances in the social sciences, he is regressing them to primitive values! This is directly against Nietzsche's position, exactly as you say. I just want young people to know, I want the people who are being duped by this man to see that we have better answers to Nihilism, that moral conservatism is not a path to enlightenment, it is just the opposite. Conformity is not a way to go forward but a way to go backward. I long to see young people, and people in general, liberated to the power of thought -- not my thought, not Peterson's thought, but what they can make of thought.
You'll know when you see it. If you're not able to tell, then you're the one who can't think. There are no recipes or algorithms or equations to figure it out.
Quoting JerseyFlight
See above. True, maybe there's some use in banging your head against a brick wall as well. How do you know for certain it won't do any good? Etc.
Then clearly you assign a limit of time to effectiveness. This seems most strange to me, as I am still being affected by thinkers who are long dead that never even spoke to me. Also, this must mean, if one cannot "see it," then it must not be there, but what if it is there, but one cannot see it? What if one's intellectual labor only bears fruit in the distant future? Clearly you would not call this an impossibility? It would seem the history of culture stands against it. What if the intellectual decided not to speak because he could not see that his work would have value in the future? It seems you are simply telling me to order my intellectual life according to what I feel?
:yawn:
If you want to spend your time arguing with people about Jordan Peterson on an Internet forum, you're welcome to. Maybe little things like that help, and someone has to do it I suppose. I do not recommend it, however -- I think time is better spent elsewhere.
Cheers.
That is just the knowledge I am trying to get at, how did you determine this?
Peterson paraphrases archetypes, synchronicity, and an archaic version of Darwinism in a defence of CIS masculinity.
And that all-meat diet didn't work out so well, either.
It's all a bit sad, really. As are his defenders.
But what is really sad is that so many people would rather (selfishly) perpetuate lies than face the truth.
Mmm. Indeed.
What are we to conclude from that truism?
The only reason I accepted Asif's banning was because he engaged in personal attacks in a large majority of his posts. Personal attacks, repetitive, lack of philosophical content, goodness, how about some self-awareness? How could YOU give those reasons for having someone banned, I was amazed to hear it. You go around smugly mocking people from the perspective of the same ideology and with bare-bones (if any) argumentation. Your contribution to nearly every thread you're involved in is some smug one-liner that puts someone else down.
Is this how thinkers should think? Prejudice and stereotyping?
If one only asserts, instead of argues and justifies, then since I can't tackle the argumentation all I can do is assert back in the opposite direction. Which is pretty much your entire response. Try to stick to one or two topics at a time, explain why you're talking about it and what it means.
This is not what Nietzsche knew, this is Peterson's mischaracterization of Nietzsche. What Nietzsche knew is that Christian ideals had been so entrenched into western culture that people would (as Christianity engineered) fall into Nihilism. The Nihilism was not the result of an inability to handle reality or construct more intelligent values (we have been doing this for hundreds of years), this Nihilism was the direct result, pre-programmed, cult reaction to having the error of Christianity ripped out of the brain. Peterson tries to make it sound like Nietzsche believed man needed the ideal of God! This is false. The culprit is not reality, but the negative indoctrination that Christianity has done to culture.
Do you mean Christian ideals or religious ideals because it seems the loss of religion in general would create the nihilism you speak of. I don’t know what Peterson believes, but Nietzsche believed society needed something as powerful as the belief in god, that why he offered the idea of the ubermensch. Perhaps Peterson believes it would serve the general population better having some Christian foundations. But to blame the effects of the lack of religion entirely on Christianity shows your blind spots. And to think the general population and philosophers need the same existential foundation isn’t the case.
I am against stupidity and ignorance, most especially when they come to occupy a place of authority.
Man, that is such a foolish thing to say. I’m not a religious person, and maybe my knowledge of history might help me understand this better, but you say that standing on the graves of your ancestors, have some respect. Christianity has been a force of good throughout history, everything done in its name hasn’t been good, but Christian scholars recognized this. Human nature is almost always the culprit.
Does the culture one is born into affect their view of reality? What about one's economic status?
Deconstruction is not my cuppa. So I'm not overly sympathetic to the critique in the OP. For instance this:
Quoting JerseyFlight
That's not what I would call Nihilism. But drop that term and your point stands.
Right.
A clinical psychologist writes a self help life advise book through essays and in the end what's at stake, according to JerseyFlight, is civilization itself.
That surely is "deconstruction" at it's best.
Quoting Echarmion
Ok, this is not what Peterson is saying. Of course a disordered person can produce a good argument. Peterson isn't concerned here with the type of arguments being produced by a disordered person.
Peterson is speaking to the self here more as a therapist or a coach, not as a philosopher who is purely concerned with the rigor of one's arguments. Nor is he speaking as a political activist who is trying to rally people for some cause and will use whoever he can get. He is saying before you actively try to change the world and put yourself in those leadership positions maybe take a step back and gain some maturity and perspective.
I kind of agree with you. If I heard a political theorist say something like "before you criticize some government, put yourself in order" I would be suspicious. However, with Peterson he begins the chapter talking about people who are just anti-being. It's not a political thing. There are some people who just criticize virtually everything because they fundamentally hate being. Take off your philosopher goggles and put on your therapist/life coach ones. Keep in mind that for Peterson the good precedes the right/the rational.
What positive direction do you believe in?
How do I determine that time is better spent doing something other than "debating" people on an Internet forum? Because I'm an adult. Take your Socratic questioning elsewhere -- I'm bored.
Quoting fdrake
Depends on what we're supposedly reacting against. If it's climate denial, for example, simply present the evidence -- that's a positive direction forward. If its pseudo-intellectualism, then counter it with actual intellectualism (re: Peterson), etc. Not complicated.
Oh. I misread you then. I thought you had a competing life model/model life to Peterson's.
Peterson has no model of anything. It'll change as the wind blows. Total pseudo-intellectualism and charlatanism. Has many strident followers, I'm sure. So does Trump. If you take it seriously, that's your business.
Yes, well-stated. With philosophical pessimism, I feel it is similar to the critical stance you mentioned. It is a rebellion against the structural/necessary negatives of being a human animal in the world. There is a sort of default cultural ideology, bolstered by various social and psychological biases for why people vehemently oppose and don't fully consider implications of suffering. The problem is see, you are not self-helping your way to a better, happier you! You cannot implicate the situation itself. You must be Stoic statues, utility maximizers, and zen motorcycle mechanics. You must radically accept the situation like a maniacal Nietzschean hero. You must sit in your comfortable rocking chair in your English garden as an old gent, pondering your accomplishments, with dignified outrage at whatever recent bit of news you read in the news. You must find yourself in the wilderness shouting from a mountain top, or in social endeavors and enterprises. The one thing you can never do is look negatively at the whole system itself. For this, philosophical pessimism is reviled.
I don't take what he's selling seriously. I take why people buy it seriously.
But that is trivial. People like easy answers and comfortable answers better than true answers and no answers. They like to be empowered even if it is a fantasy of power. They like cheap. They like to get Brexit done and make America great again.
Here here, friend. Exactly the case, and because of this we all, as thinkers, if we are serious, must examine ourselves for this bias as much as we possibly can. None of us are immune to it.
It would indeed be comical to see the Peterites attempt the argument that this is why intellectuals are rejecting Peterson, you know, "what he's saying is just too uncomfortable." And yet comfort is the entire direction of his belief structure. It's one of the high benefits of conformity.
I've never known you to use "they" like that when talking about an elephant in the room regarding people. I say this despite being critical of Peterson; why him and now? What issues is he palliating in his target demographic? Who are they? I think he addresses a bunch of needs for them; and I don't want to throw the considerations of need out along with the ideas he addresses them with.
Where where? Hear hear!
I've listened to quite a few JP vids, interviews and whatnot. I'm no expert on him. I agreed with some of the stuff he said, disagreed with some and thought some was a bit wacky. Do we have to be either fans or anti-fans? Am I allowed to agree with some of it? Can I cherry pick? Or is it like the Bible: I have to either swallow it whole or reject the lot?
Yes, of course, one can do whatever they so like in the domain of ideas. I have never said and would never say that everything Peterson says is wrong and that the man is just pure evil. I would only note that the truths he does confess are shallow platitudes. Our world is full of so many tremendous thinkers and researchers at this time, Peterson is not one of them. If you like McDonald's eat it, even pretend that it's a Michelin-starred French restaurant if you like, the only problem arises when you demand that other people validate your delusions.
Got it.
Conformity. Submission as opposed to thought's resistance.
Here we have a serious thinker without species consciousness?
Here we have a serious thinker without class consciousness?
Here we have a serious thinker without a dialectical awareness of political systems?
Here we have a serious thinker that manifest zero knowledge of the advances that have been made in Psychology and so many surrounding fields, Sociology, Neurobiology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, Education, Social work practice, Law, Economics etc.?
At some point something has to give.
Internet phenomenon. but see also any number of charismatists. Why Loreal? Because you're worth it. Why Mcvomit's? Because I'm loving' it. Why David Ike? Why Jim Jones?
Find a common vulnerability - exploit it. This is not a new thing, it's a venerable tradition; people do not like being told that love means taking up your cross and getting crucified, they want to hear that it's being very nice and popular, and having friends and admirers. They want to hear that if they pretend to enjoy being exploited, they will stop being exploited. Peterson is selling soft soap cunningly disguised as hard rock (for real men). But look out, them commies want to steal your freedom!
The nearest answer to 'why now?' is that the generation that kew what fascism was is dying. The furthest answer is that the loss of all social control has resulted from a century of psycho-social manipulation - we have driven ourselves mad.
Can't help it, makes me think of Viagra. Hard rock for real men. :lol: :lol: :lol:
The validity of your observations and how you use them are separate things. You should never use your opinions about a class of people to inform yourself about an individual, I fail to see how your justification doesn't also justify racism, classism, sexism and any other kind of bigotry. Really, your entire response to me wasn't an argument at all, you just first questioned whether I had any idea what I was talking about, then started guessing my demographics. You've written two lengthy responses and neither of them contained any actual argumentation, just a heap of unfounded assertions and some ad hominem. If I wanted to play the same game, what could you do about it jerseyflight? How does the power of thought stack up against bigotry?
Actualy, this was pretty good:
Quoting JerseyFlight
It's congruent with what I have said elsewhere concerning the inability of the privileged to see their own privilege, needing instead ot have it pointed out. In contrast Peterson reinforces and justifies privilege for his readers.
It was pretty good because you agree with it or it was a pretty good argument?
Since this is the foundation of your complaint, I am happy to probe it with you. What makes an argument actual?
Actually I was suggesting it as contradicting your "your entire response to me wasn't an argument at all".
Quote the argument.
This is an important point, because if we were to engage with such a person, they would, as they always seem to do, simply argue that their experience is a normative standard, all the while ignoring the social benefits that account for their quality. This is indeed a serious problem.
It's interesting that you say he reinforces and justifies privilege. Where do you get that? I get it if it's just a general critique of capitalism or the right but if we're talking about Peterson specifically his position is a little more nuanced.
Here's a segment I was able to dig up from Peterson on privilege. You only need to watch from the 2 minute mark to around 3:30 or maybe 4 minutes (someone made a song out of this, by the way. You can see it on youtube.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-8slOBngqk
I did.
How odd.
Spot on.
You're such a joke.
Come now, you can do better than this. You just tried to give a rebuke on arguments. I assume you don't think this is one, further, from your own words, you wouldn't want to be a "bigot," right?
I watched the recommended section. The problem is that you are part of your culture, just like slaves were part of theirs. They didn't see anything wrong with it. So when a smart fella like Peterson came along and said, "the problem with the complaint of slavery is that it's true, and then you have to start thinking about all kinds of complicated, fragmented things, look, just forget that, go back to the plantation, obey your masters and life will be good."
This is exactly an example of his message of conformity.
Yep. And you have difficulty dealing with it, so you attack me instead of my argument.
Go ahead, continue the attack. That helps us understand the defenders of Peterson.
Peterson isn't specifically talking about the culture here, he would consider it just a general truism of life that people are oppressed or fall short of the mark in one way or another. It probably doesn't even matter the type of society.
That's all fine and well, but if he admits there's a problem, which he does, he even validates the word "oppression," what caused it? Is his approach to the problem actually targeting the source? We already know the answer, his reply is, forget about the complicated details of reality and just fall back into the Matrix.
Fundamentalist conformity.
Yes, indeed, that is not an argument, it is just an opinion. I am not trying to have a debate with Banno, his opinions on what I said aren't of interest to me. It does seem to me that you can see the difference between argument and opinion, why then, do you need it explained? I am not saying that your argument isn't "actual" I'm saying that you've merely given your opinion without justifying it or giving your reasoning in any way. What Peterson has said that you're even characterising remains in the dark. It's basically just a narrative that you've written and you've yet to prove it has any validity or value. I don't even understand your opinion, I just know your conclusions.
Difficulty dealing with what? Your argument is rehashed material, you should already know what I think. You say the privileged need their "privilege" pointed out but your perspective is uniquely insidious and "privilege" is a subjective characterisation, it is not a truth to be pointed out, it's based on an ideology that I reject. Then you say "Peterson reinforces and justifies privilege" full well knowing that I disagree with the privilege conceptualisation to begin with. You actually thought this was new material and that I'm having difficulty with it after we've already argued about it. I wasn't lost for words then, but you were, you had really nothing to say except to restate your beliefs. It makes me wonder why you even bother being here but then I remember the smug one-liners.
Well friend, you made the charge, which is all fine and well, but you may mean something very different by it, which is what I suspect.
Quoting Judaka
Here we have a clearer exposition wherein you refute your original objection. So the complaint is not that I failed to make an argument, but that I failed to provide rational justification?
Arguments are interesting things. Do you agree that all men are mortal?
I did not refute my original objection but it is certainly quite similar to the response it was criticising, which I admit, there is a sense of irony to that.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Sure.
Do you agree that Newton was a man?
Sure.
Well then, Newton was mortal. There you have a rational argument. If you want to attack it you must go after the integrity of the premises. (I must also confess, I am not much interested in this exchange. I consider high level thought to have the ability to work from strong premises, meaning, two skilled thinkers don't have to seek justification for every premise, because they already have a great deal of knowledge they can actually make progress in thought. These are the exchanges that most interest me because life is very short).
I think he'd say there's a billion different reasons that could have caused one to be "oppressed." I think if we, as a society, were to honestly target all of the sources of oppression we would turn into something like the dystopia Kurt Vonnegut described in Harrison Bergeron - basically a society where everyone is equally disadvantaged by reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator.
EDIT: This is not to say that Peterson is against fighting oppression. Of course he supports fighting certain forms of it.
From the moment you made your anti-Peterson stance clear and I made my pro-Peterson stance clear, you had to have known that you couldn't take your base presuppositions for granted and expect that to fly. I will be frank, I think many of those you've agreed within this thread would not be able to paraphrase your position in a way that would satisfy you, simply because have skipped crucial steps in explaining your views. Most of the discussions you've had on this thread are really just shallow and meaningless. Two people don't like Peterson, they agree he is a bad influence on people, the end.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting JerseyFlight
There is no previous response from Xtrix, really, this is what you are responding to. "Don't waste any time on Jordan Peterson".
From this you assert:
1. Proper initial response but there is a serious problem here
2. The attitude you embody, though it truly does come from a place of higher critical intelligence fails to see that Peterson is doing damage in culture
3. Xtrix is an intellectual withdrawing from the advancing public discourse
Can you see how utterly meaningless and pathetically shallow your response is? You have absolutely no idea what Xtrix thinks about Peterson, there's a fair chance he didn't even read your OP and just said "fuck Peterson" because he saw the thread title. The basis of your agreement is so shallow that all subsequent conversation between the two of you is a joke because neither of you could even attempt to paraphrase the position of the other, you don't even know the extent of your agreement or disagreement. It is reasonable to assume that I think Newton is a man and men are mortal and so you don't have to explain it.
Going back to the comments you made to me, the list of assumptions you make are just staggering, only someone who really hated Peterson could agree with your characterisations. However, because you don't explain your reasoning or make any argument for your positions, the burden of proof is shoved entirely on me to dislodge or challenge every claim you made and honestly, I can't even do that because I'm not entirely sure what you're even referring to. It's just a narrative you constructed based on your interpretation and feelings on Peterson. You are free to just rant on Peterson all you like, call those who agree with you esteemed intellectuals and those who disagree ignorant and inept but you are deluded if you think you can have an actual conversation of substance with this type of behaviour.
Once again, another distortion and false presentation from Peterson. The Christian response was not philosophical! It was, "the emperor cannot be God because our God is the only true God!" This was in fact, and still is, the Christian response. Here Peterson is trying make Christianity sound general and philosophical, socially intelligent.
"It’s brilliant. You can see how difficult it is to come up with an idea like that, so that even the person who has the power is actually subordinate to a divine principle..." Ibid.
Another false presentation. Christianity did not come up with this idea, its idea was that the Christian God was the supreme ruler of the universe, a celestial dictatorship, therefore it naturally follows, not due to any brilliance, that the emperor could not be God. Christianity simply demanded that every other idea was explained in terms of itself. This is not brilliance. Further, there is a negative side to what Peterson is here saying, because Christianity did not respond as Peterson falsely characterizes, but actually responded in terms of brute fundamentalism and authority, when Christianity did come into political power, it shattered both the neutral idea of law as well as the practice of social freedom. Theocracy is synonymous with totalitarianism.
We have already done this and continue to do this, and in so many cases it has helped us to pass more intelligent civil laws. Your reason for not doing this is merely a negative assertion which amounts to the fallacy of poisoning the well. It is clear that you have mindlessly resigned to the error of Peterson's reduction. This merely proves that he's socially dangerous.
We have not already done this. We have come nowhere close. Answer me this: Why are there still ugly people? Why are there still tall people? Why are there still charismatic people while others are socially awkward? Why do we have those who can speak fast while others must speak slow? Why do some have to worry about their tourettes while others don't? Why are some people born with certain genetics which makes it easier them to lose weight?
You want equality and absence of oppression? Start there.
?
Quoting Judaka
No, I am not in the habit of consciously striving to put forth "meaningless," "pathetic" and "shallow" responses. If I saw this I would refrain from putting them forth.
If they are in fact, all the negative things you claim, one would think this should make them very easy to refute.
Quoting Judaka
Well, I do gladly admit that I don't like him, as I don't like charlatans, authoritarians and conformists in general, but I wouldn't go so far as to say, I hate him.
He probably didn't read your OP, if he followed his own advice and said "don't waste your time on Peterson" without giving any reason as to why and you said his attitude was that of a higher critical intelligence and you don't see that as meaningless and shallow? You guys then discussed his impact on culture - yet you still don't have the slightest clue of why he thinks you shouldn't waste your time on Peterson. If you want to have that kind of discussion, fine.
JerseyFlight - Dun like Peterson
Me - Peterson good
Okay, let's skip the lengthy paragraphs and agree to disagree.
You mean this is an objective category?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Because there are people who are able to get the right nutrients, rest, have the genes for it, etc
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Socially awkward? You mean, people that have social anxiety, poor social skills? Well this usually results from trauma, abuse, neglect etc. Has to do with the development between the right and left brain.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
See above answer, but this could also be brain damage. It could also be due to lack of nutrients.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Well, I think this is classified as a neurological disorder, so I think that would explain it.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
My understanding is that genes are past down, so this means the answer is because of the past nutrient experiences of parents and grandparents etc. However, I don't know enough about genes that cause fat to answer this with any kind of authority.
Jersey, I'm asking you how do we, as a society, fix the inequality/unfairness/oppression of these issues? You say you want to target all forms of oppression. Tell me how we fix this.
That depends on the nature of the oppression, and before we can know how to fix it we must do what Peterson is telling us not to do, we must look into it, we must follow its fragmentation and trace it back to its source and then use intelligence to obliterate it. I'm pretty sure that's what an advanced species would do.
If you are more specific about the problem, but then again how you could you be, Peterson told you not to be specific, then I can do my best, using my intelligence, to tell you what I think we need to do to fix it.
Great, well I'm thrilled to hear it. I love getting specific, there's just so many issues to address.
Lets start with the issue of attractiveness in men. Now I want you to consider the full spectrum here - everything from models to.... you ever see 90 day fiancee? Just google search "ed from 90 day fiancee."
I don't think I need to go over with you how attractiveness is an obvious advantage socially speaking, and it's also one in the workplace.
In any case how do you create a world where attraction is no longer an advantage for one and a disadvantage for another?
Cultivate a stronger cultural emphasis valuing quality of character above that of physical appearance.
Got it, so we just need to teach people to value quality of character over attractiveness and we're all set. Attractiveness no longer matters.
You really understand humanity.
It'll no longer make a difference whether a girl is a 9 or a 2, us men will only judge her on her character and not even notice her outward appearance.
Considering the fact that the value of physical attractiveness is set in place through the emphasis of culture, if you want to alter the values of a culture then you have to alter its emphasis. The good news is that this can be done on the basis of intelligence! (However) when you jump to the conclusion of saying, attractiveness no longer matters, this depends on what you mean by "matters?"
I don't believe that physical attractiveness is just a cultural phenomenon. I don't believe humans are endlessly malleable through culture, either. There are biological realities which you're going to need to deal with at some point. I get it, you can try to use culture to patch them over or make them less of an issue, but the fact of the matter is these realities are intractable features of life and unless you want to exterminate the entire human race you will have to deal with them.
These biological realities help form our individual identities whether we like them or not, and despite all of this talk of "progress" we really don't know what's truly going on inside the minds of others. To claim that we just need the right culture to bring about complete uniformity of attitude or instinct or reaction towards something is just too much for me, personally. I don't mind if you believe but it's just not worth it for you to try to convince me on that.
If values are not established by culture, where do they come from? Much fatalism you have here. I wonder if the people you find attractive in your culture would be equally attractive to the members of another culture? Some tribes drastically alter their bodies, if you are lacking these cultural alterations, it is doubtful you would be attractive to the people in that culture.
Although I am quite sympathetic to this project, and the points brought up are interesting, I think discussing Peterson in philosophical terms is only useful after a discussion of his thinking in glib terms. Peterson seems quite genuinely unaware of what the philosophical problems are.
In philosophical language perhaps it is true that Peterson can be characterized by:
Quoting JerseyFlight
However, Peterson doesn't use this language himself. It's already psychologizing Peterson to say he "fears reality". Arguably true, considering his "anxiety" that developed after his debate with Zizek, where, as I noted at the time, it seemed Peterson wanted to be co-founder of Marxist Zizekism, just without the label Marx to make it more palatable. And Peterson's A-game is psychologizing his opponents, whether in his imagination like the "post-modern cultural Marxists" or then real opponents such as the LGBTQ activists, and so we shouldn't follow his example.
Rather, I think we should first point out the obvious contradictions in Peterson's analysis.
The first obvious contradiction is that his claim to expertise is in psychology. Where this is a contradiction is that he believes in "competence hierarchies", but propounds what are clearly meant as expert opinions in all sorts of areas (mainly political, philosophical, theological, logical, as well as other sciences from time to time) in which he has no basis to have climbed the competence hierarchy. By his own creed, he should submit to the experts on the top of other competence hierarchies: [insert quote of Peterson saying kids should submit to the competence hierarchies around them even if they don't understand why]. If post-modern neo-marxists have taken over knowledge institutions, just means they are the top dogs on the knowledge competence hierarchy and Peterson must go to his room, think about what he's done, give it a good vigorous scrubbing and only come out when he's ready to apologize and submit.
Of course, elsewhere Peterson praises his kind of "brave radical" ready to contradict established competence hierarchies with new truths (such as himself standing as a tiny David in the winds of the mighty transgender Goliath), without realizing this simply collapses his entire apologetics of conservatism as it provides no standard in which to judge a competence hierarchy's truthiness other than in hindsight because the new truths won out; i.e. winning is truth (when his issues win), which is why Peterson is so comfortable around fascists who are "just trying to win", even if they are at the bottom of the competence hierarchies they are trying to overthrow using the exact same post-modern neo-cultural-Marxist tactics Peterson decries.
Why Peterson can prattle on indefinitely without addressing such contradictions is simply because his analysis is glib, never goes farther than psychologizing his friends or his enemies; the harms caused by his friends are understandable whereas the harms of his enemies are condemnable, but he proposes no standard upon which to make such a judgement nor even analyse the harms in question beyond anecdote.
Of course, I don't want to pull a Peterson and never actually quote my opposition. All this is best represented on Peterson's views on Health-Care:
Quoting The Canadian vs. the American Healthcare System - Jordan B Peterson Clips
Several things are amazing about this quote.
First, he simply outlines the Nordic model social well-fare state argument and saying this would "appeal to conservatives also". What's so glib about such a statement is that he makes the false equivalence that the US right and left want the same thing and it's purely a question of administrative efficiency to achieve it (which the left happens to be right about), while at the same time throwing in his signature apologetics for the right that "except at the high end". However, the conservative argument against universal healthcare is that it's "not fair" to take people's money and redistribute it, even if it leads to better social outcomes measured in one dimension overall. More amazing, Peterson doesn't address corporate lobbying as a potential explanation of why the US doesn't already have universal health care but insinuates that it's a good faith debate that "fiscally conservative socialists" in Canada happen to have won on and implemented responsibly, but the other side is winning the debate in the US at the moment; or then maybe the idea is US socialists are not "fiscally conservative" so don't deserve to implement universal health care just yet. But it gets even more amazing when Peterson wraps all this up in the great apologetics trope of "polarization" and (as described above) the left is responsible for the harms caused by this polarization and must be called out on it, but the Right (we can only assume because of the only positive note for them in this analysis that "except on the high end") we need not discuss.
Peterson is unable to even create the mental space in which the hypothesis can be formulated that "perhaps if universal Canadian styled healthcare is 'preferable' then maybe it's the people denying or blocking this social advancement in the US that are the cause of the 'polarization' and share most, if not all of the blame."
Furthermore, Peterson talks like health care is some fringe issue to the "radical moves" the left really wants, rather than a central flagship issue, not only in itself but in being a microcosm of other flagship issues such as money in politics, corruption, a critical step in more equitable race relations, important example of people losing their homes to unjustifiable bankruptcy from a "social outcomes" point of view, and that if the general social welfare argument is true for healthcare maybe it's also true for other things like education, public housing, and the rich need to be taxed to pay for it. Again, incapable of creating the mental space in which implementing the "preferable" universal healthcare system might result in preferable results more generally, and alleviation of some of the young-white-man suffering because at least society functions with less overheads.
Most importantly, and most fatally to Peterson's project, he is clearly unable to conceive of the possibility that left wing radicalism is a completely reasonable response to right-wing money in politics in the form of inundations of propaganda, corrupting not simply politics but the judiciary and bureaucracies, exploiting to the limit gerrymandering and minority rule flaws. That, due to money in politics and minority rule, the left cannot advance with simply "friendly banter" between civilized people (i.e. white people who have nothing to gain from political change) as Peterson clearly views as the alternative to "dangerous radicalism" (as seen by the company he keeps), and so trying more and more radical things to overcome money is simply a reasonable response; unless, of course, money is truth (success on a competence hierarchy in Peterson's lingo).
Once it's firmly established that Peterson simply doesn't engage with any of the critical issues, and rather is simply bailing straw into the furnaces of his own locamotive (i.e. Asi conmigo enfrente ella se hace la gata en celo contigo, te cotorrea el oído pa tenerte en alta. Ella muere por ti, tu por mi es que matas. Sigo tranquila como una paloma de equina: mientras ella se pasa en su [BLM] - Cicero), then it makes sense, in my view, to address the question of what sort of philosophical framework might be inferred from Peterson's project as a potential heart if some wizard among us would be so kind as to make one: the heart we might place into the tin man of our own fabrication in this analogy. After doing so, we might ask why those frameworks don't really cohere to Peterson's project for the simple reason that he has no such framework and it would be a miracle if he just so happened to unwittingly represent one; in otherwords, that at best, we can only construct an apologetic for Peterson's conservative apologetics; which maybe interesting to explore why such an apologetic of an apologetic is unsatisfactory, but it should be made clear it is far removed from anything Peterson actually says and it seems clear Peterson himself doesn't seem to understand what the philosophical issues we are trying to resolve for him actually are in the first place.
No, I don't need to watch any of it. Ten minutes wasted.
There might be a worthwhile exercise in examining the relation between oppression and privilege; it's not as clear as is assumed in your presenting this video as a rebuttal of what I said about privilege.
Well done.
I just don't believe people are blank slates waiting to be filled up by whatever the culture presents. I think if we were we'd be seeing an insane degree of uniformity of thought and attitude within a culture when even within strong cultures we see a diversity of that if we dig below the surface. I know Steven Pinker and Chomsky have done some serious work on this, and their work shows that the mind comes pre-programmed, in other words some things are innate. Our minds are not just blank slates waiting for the world to write on anything them, and I honestly think this idea is dead scientifically speaking. Of course there's room for culture in influencing us but to say it's 100% is just too much.
I don't think what I'm saying it fatalism. Think of it this way: If we are just 100% culture, do we even have a self? If there's nothing permanent about you, then who are you? There is no you.
As for the tribe comment I'd just need to see more research done. There has been research done into what humans find attractive, and there has been some research which claims a universality of some features such as facial symmetry being attractive. I know of no culture where men prefer women with masculine faces. I'd like to see culture try to teach that attraction.
EDIT: Consider homosexuality - it exists in every culture. If people are truly blank slates and endlessly malleable then we should be able to cure homosexuality through social reprogramming. These efforts have failed miserably where ever they've been tried.
I think @JerseyFlight's post is a pretty straightforward argument written in a polemical way.
(1) Accepting an ideology can have a palliative function for people.(see here)
From linked paper:
Intuition pumps:
Contrast "everything is going to work out in the end" with "The end might well happen within 50 years (citation citation citation citation)"...
Contrast: "If you work hard, you'll go far" with "How you end up depends a lot on where you start, and you can't control where you start (citation citation citation citation)"
(3) People instinctively understand the palliative function and don't want to lose it. Like I felt anxious without my nursing blanket when trying to sleep as a wee kid.
(4) (3) splits along left+liberal/conservative lines (see linked paper). Systemic critique is generally a leftward thing. It is explicitly opposed to system justification narratives - critiquing+agitating against systemic injustice vs not seeing it as a relevant political category/explicitly justifying it as fair or as unavoidable.
(5) Adopting viewpoints that result from systemic critique tends to put you more left along the split in (4), which correlates with losing the palliative function in (3) since you invest less in it.
:up:
Fair enough, you've shown there was an argument and my criticism was wrong.
@JerseyFlight and @Banno I apologise for my comments, I said there was no argument but I think I was being self-serving with my logic here, that or, perhaps didn't fairly assess what I was reading.
It's hard to parse left polemical arguments unless you're used to them, I think. It's not just a you thing!
This is exceedingly impressive, it is one of the rarest things I have ever seen within the context of an online format. In general we all just defend, defend, defend, no one ever wants to admit to their error. Judaka, I join you precisely in this, I believe it is really the only way to move in the direction of high level thought. The thinker who merely defends is usually trying to avoid the pain of a reality he fears. I hope I can do the same thing when I am in the wrong.
I wasn't aware that it was a disease. Why not cure heterosexuality, after all, it is merely an assertion that the species should propagate itself. Perhaps intelligence lies in the other direction? Life always assigns itself a value regardless of justification.
Thx for the kind words and for accepting the apology.
Thank you for your detailed contribution and clarity. I agree with many things you said.
I'm not exactly sure what language you are specifically referring to? (But please note), I don't think an exchange on this is really worth it. Further, I am not merely psychologizing the man, and even if that's all it was, just so long as it was accurate, the fact that I was doing it, would neither be a refutation or prohibition, it would merely be a statement of fact premised in the negative. One does not need to come out and say they are a Nihilist in order to be charged with Nihilism, one merely needs to condemn the positivity of existence, either through radical skepticism or some kind of imaginary Other that gives them the leverage to overcome positivity. One does not need to use a specific language to be guilty of specific content.
Quoting boethius
This seems quite pretentious to me. Why give a Spanish citation of Cicero?
Quoting boethius
This is your own assertion.
Peterson doesn't have some comprehensive program. The guy is a conformist and back-seat Christian. His entire polemic is founded on the idea that myth resides at the base of all human psychology. He is so impressed with this premise, because he feels like it provides the philosophical grounds of justification for all his conservative views, that he has gone out into the world to preach it. It's the kind of thing people hear and think, "wow, that's amazing, I've never heard anything like this before" [enter intuition] "yeah, that makes a lot of sense." The listener affirms the premise and never gives it a second thought. Now they credit Peterson with enlightenment.
Tragically, Peterson isn't even a believer in his own ideology, it didn't work for him, his life fell into shambles and his will power failed. I saw him complaining, traveling around the world to find doctors that would tell him what he wanted to hear so he didn't have to face the truth. Most addicts don't have the luxury of doing this, they have to detox in abject poverty crushed by guilt and shame. His myth beliefs have not delivered him from the hard bite of being (a hardness which results from the unnecessary tyranny of a backward system). He knows this, he is still searching, and that is why he can neither be an example or a guide. I see nothing more than a frightened man clinging to a shallow notion of God. Contained within his confession of myth, behind it is the ultimate negation of reality, the very Nihilism of which Nietzsche spoke, is the false presupposition that humans need delusion in order to survive and thrive. For Peterson unconscious myth is the foundation of order, when in reality, this virtue belongs to intelligence.
Such an explicit apology is an extraordinary thing. Respect.
The specific language would be describing Peterson as a nihilist. Peterson doesn't describe himself as a nihilist and, indeed, perceives himself as fighting the nihilism and/or relativism of the post-modern cultural marxists.
As you also note:
Quoting JerseyFlight
Which is debatable whether conformism and back-seat Christianity, as you put it, is a form of nihilism. Conformists generally find meaning in their conformity. Peterson proposes no coherent defense of why one should conform; and, worse, cherry-picks topics in which to be not "politically correct" and brandish about his courageous radicalism from the mainstream, while simultaneously, and unironically, reifying the enlightenment which was, at least a central part, about breaking with the conformity of feudalism.
If by "doesn't have come comprehensive program" we agree he has not coherent world view at all, my point here is that this should be firmly established as first step in a critique of Peterson.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Claiming someone "fears reality" is psychologizing, likewise "Peterson isn't even a believer in his own ideology", and "He knows this, he is still searching, and that is why he can neither be an example or a guide", are all psychologizing statements claiming to know Peterson's inner life. The problem with psychologizing a person's arguments is that claims about inner-life are not falsifiable.
Not necessarily uninteresting, as you say, they could be true, but an apologist will simply give a different, likewise unfalsifiable, account of Peterson's inner-world.
What can be much more constructively debated is if there's inconsistencies in Peterson's arguments and actions, then these inconsistencies can be exposed and a challenge to his supporters (or Peterson himself) made to resolve them.
Speculative psychologizing can support such an argument by providing potential explanations of why Peterson is motivated to maintain inconsistencies, but, at least for me, it's best to say things like "these contradictions seem to me evidence of a man 'complaining, traveling around the world to find doctors that would tell him what he wanted to hear so he didn't have to face the truth' " rather than positively claiming to know Peterson on the inside. In other words, the critical wound is exposing contradiction in an opponents own terms, that the ideology makes no sense in itself. Psychologizing is simply adding salt to the wound to make the sting more painful and aid in helping rouse supporters to the defense of the "injured deer, being separated from the heard" or then make it more clear they have abandoned their fellow dearling to the blinding headlights of critique, to be hit by its full force as they turn their cheeks away from the carnage.
However, I preambled my comment as my own view on how best to approach this sort of interlocutor. My goal is not to convince you that you should definitely adopt my method of first firmly establishing Peterson offers only glib analysis, and that, one of his main problems is psychologizing everybody and never engaging with the actual issues (such as the citation on health-care clearly demonstrates). Once Peterson's supporters abandon attempts to resolve these problems or apologize for them, then, again in my view, is the moment to discuss if what we see may express some deeper nihilism or delusional psychological problems, or both, and what we can learn from such tin-manning.
For instance, with your method the conversation quickly turned to "human nature" or then simply psychologizing you as psychologizing Peterson such as the following:
Quoting Judaka
Which is an argument that cannot really be advanced. Judaka likes Peterson and attributes positive vibes to the man and so rejects your negative psychologizing of Peterson.
However, in simply bringing out what Peterson actually says and pointing out how it makes no sense and seems simply completely ignorant of who Peterson is talking about, we can see if Judaka is able to resolve such contradictions. If he or she can't, or she or he won't, then it maybe fruitful to move on and speculatively psychologize about why Judaka is unable or unwilling to do so.
Apologists for Peteron, as apologists generally do, usually want to quickly move the conversation to the "big" questions (human nature vs. socialization, relativisim vs. universalism, redistribution vs. competition, collective interests vs. individual interests etc.) which serves the function of first credibilizing Peterson by making it appear he genuinely engages with these issues in a coherent way as well as fruitful ground to fabricate the fallacy that as long as there is one credible position in such a philosophical debate we could imagine, that can be somehow associated with Peterson, then Peterson therefore has a credible position, while also focusing the conversation on issues that have not been resolved for thousands of years and there are plenty rebuttals for everything on-hand.
However, by focusing on what Peterson actually says outside the attempt to make some theory Peterson is imagined to be representing or then a theory of what ulterior motives Peterson has, but rather just the simple self-expression of the man and whether it's coherent or incoherent, then the challenge to supporters is much more acute: they must actually deal with Peterson and not their own noble conceptualization of Peterson.
For instance, in the citation on health-care, Peterson supports policy A, as it seems obvious to him that A is superior to B, and then somehow concludes with the idea that the people that also support policy A are to blame for the divisiveness between A and B supporters; therefore, it's his duty to oppose supporters of A. He does not even mention the possibility that if A is superior and A doesn't happen, then that's a recipe to making a worse society that will cause all sorts of problems that may manifest in all sorts of ways, including the people that support the obviously better A will get more and more angry and radical about it. Rather, he seems to think that conservatives have simply not encountered the idea that A maybe better for being more financially efficient for society, but if they do hear about it maybe they'll be tempted to jump on board (or then he simply feels his conservative children have no onus to think and take responsibility for their positions and can merrily jump and play while Peterson carries out the fearless defense of their peaceful idyllic shire, the calm of which need not be troubled with policy debate).
If is unable to resolve this, then clearly he or she is not a serious thinker and we can conclude is likely just projecting his or her own bad faith onto you.
This is not an original argument on my part it was Nietzsche's formation.
The statements I made are falsifiable, they are deduced from both Peterson's positive and negative affirmations, as well as his actions. What you don't seem to comprehend is that there is a negative side to a positive affirmation, the same is true of negative affirmations. Further, this is a superior way to proceed because one is using the subject's own premises to arrive at a contrary conclusion.
Quoting boethius
That is, you have here admitted that his supporters are not drawn to him for the reasons you say, but precisely because he is good at "making it appear" that he has "genuinely engaged these issues" and arrived at comprehensive answers. I will continue to attack him precisely at this point. People want answers to the "big questions."
Quoting boethius
You have admitted that this "noble conceptualization" results from Peterson's ability to posture on the "big questions." Then you go onto the topic of healthcare, claiming that the ability to show inconsistency here will result in the demise of the "noble conceptualization." I think not friend. I will stick to attacking Peterson on the "big issues."
It seems obviously debatable to me, unless Nietzsche is a standard of truth. Furthermore, it's also debatable that Nietzsche's "God is dead, and we killed him" type arguments are saying "post-God" "Christians" are already nihilistic, or then this process of secularization is leading to nihilism or then the fear of nihilism. It seems debatable as we are debating it. I would definitely argue that conformists are generally not nihilists, but implicitly or explicitly assign universal truths as justifying their conformism (often the simple truth that "they" are good and the "other" is bad); now, it maybe true that a conformist that genuinely engages in trying to formulate a justification for conformity, will likely fail and be faced with either nihilism or needing to embrace some new radical truth (and it maybe true that Peterson is in such a state right now), but insofar as a conformist undertakes no such introspection I would not dismiss the meaning they find in their comforts and accomplishments (and I would say, in our culture, the bedrock of conformity is the full commitment to undertake no such introspection ever, and so the conformist is quite secure ... insofar as their external environment continues to reflect this internal peace of mind, the conformist need only to consume to fill the void; I would not dismiss the possibility that it truly is filled).
Quoting JerseyFlight
Statements about internal psychology are not falsefiable; psychology already had to face this in the 70s (because it was not a science and, unfortunately, did not rectify the fundamental problems since). Peterson seems to have not gotten the memo, psychologizing entire groups all the time (both real and imaginary).
Now, we can assume people do have some internal nature, but we cannot really claim to know anything about it. How would we prove that someone "fears reality"?
Quoting JerseyFlight
This would be true if Peterson was coherent enough that his own conclusions were clear.
Witness his lecture on the question of God: https://youtu.be/TUD3pE3ZsQI.
His main question is the consequence on one's actions if one believes in god or not, while also proposing the bizarre idea that one may need to feel a "right" to believe in god. I don't have the time to transcribe the most ludicrous parts (starting with his complaint that "it's a private matter" without any sense of irony with his self-appointed position of providing critique and mediation of and between Christians and secular liberals) but even a cursory browsing should be enough for anyone to conclude Peterson is simply unaware of the theological debate that has been going on for thousands of years (that it can be discussed outside the context of Christianity ... which, again, he seems to be genuinely unaware of the most basic theological arguments; yet is constantly defending).
However, apart from Peterson's poor understanding and analysis of theology within Christianity, seemingly oblivious to theological debates within philosophy more generally (not to mention other religions), the his most fatal misunderstanding is that he seems genuinely unaware that one's concept of "good" in which to evaluate "will believing in God make me a good person" may change depending on whether one believes in God or not. And, this basic error of taking good and bad for granted, then proceeding to psychologize some groups as "good" because (regarldess of what they believe and if it is true) they are lead by these beliefs to do good things according to Peterson and psychologizing other groups as "bad" because (regardless of what they believe and if it is true) they are led by these beliefs to do "bad" things according to Peterson, is clearly just begging the question over and over and over again.
Rather, I would argue Peterson has no premises and has no conclusions, he goes in circles dizzying and mesmerizing his audience as he does so.
If this is the case, it seems simply more efficient to ask supporters of Peterson to contend with what he actually says, such as his views on health care or his speech on God.
Whereas, the weakness of bringing Peterson's premises to different conclusions creates an endless quagmire of what his premises and conclusions actually are; which are very unclear. To even make the attempt requires what I call tin-manning: reformulating Peterson in some plausibly coherent way in which to analyse the premises of such a tin-man; not to say it is isn't a useful exercise, but it is not Peterson, only a fabricated tin version, and his supporters are right to point this out. His supporters will simply say his "intentions are good" and "he's helped people" and invent all sorts of alternative tin-man versions of Peterson with different gears and hinges; seems more to the point to simply point out that's the core philosophical contention of ethics and make the simple challenge to his supporters, or Peterson himself, to find in all of Peterson's moralizing where he ever addresses this central issue, without which there is no foundation for anything he says. If the challenge can't be met, Peterson is simply empathetic and understanding of his friends and dismissive and scornful of his enemies, while professing allegiance to a religion that teaches: For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
This was the first and only time I ever saw anything of Peterson. He basically stated right from the get go he hadn't even read Marx apart from cramming the night before - or effectively so - on the Manifesto. That made the debate seem more like a publicity stunt than a serious debate. Hadn't given him any thought since this thread popped up - apparently he has a couple million followers on YouTube now.
"Well, we don’t know what’s happened in Sodom and Gomorrah, but we know that God’s got wind of it, and that that’s not good. We know that sin means to miss the mark, and so we know that whatever’s happened in Sodom and Gomorrah means that something about the natural, ethical order of things has been seriously violated. There’s a strong intimation in the Old Testament— which I think, by the way, is completely correct—that, if the proper order of being is violated, and that’s something like the balance of chaos of order, then all hell will break loose. One of the things I can tell you from reading a very comprehensive set of myths from around the world is that that’s a conclusion that human beings have come to everywhere: stay on the goddamn path, and be careful, because if you start to mess around, and you deviate—especially if you know that you’re deviating—things are not going to go well for you. That idea is everywhere. I think the idea is right because there aren’t that many ways of doing things right, and there’s a lot of ways of doing things wrong. If you do things wrong, the consequences of doing them wrong can be truly catastrophic." Jordan Peterson's Bible Lectures, May 17, 2018, XI Sodom and Gomorrah.
There is no such thing as a "natural ethical order," this is pure fiction; it is Peterson's attempt to ascribe attributes to the universe that the universe does not contain in an attempt to comfort himself against the hard reality of chaos. He is much sheltered, as are we all, by the soft conditions of earth.
Peterson speaks of "the proper order," enter here the roots of fascism! Notice the silent fear hidden behind this exposition... what will one do, what must be done in order to maintain "the proper order?" We need to hear more about this "proper order!" If one transcends cultural values (The Proper Order) then one must face the horror of chaos, disorder will ensue? Is this accurate?
At one time it was The Proper Order that women should not participate in democracy, those who were not born white were considered slaves, but low and behold, we broke The Proper Order! Down with the conformists and their ignorant attempt to condemn the world to primitive values! And what happened when we liberated the oppressors from false values, did the world collapse into chaos? Did the sun unhinge itself from the reaches of space, did we tumble through oblivion? All these fears are unfounded, they are an overreaction, a desperate attempt to hold onto what is familiar and therefore comfortable. As evidenced from what has been cited, Peterson is motivated and driven by his psychological fear, how then can he be a liberator of those who are afraid?
"Stay on the goddamn path, do not deviate, things will not go well for you little child... fear! fear! fear! the consequences of everything I say: run back to conformity and you will be safe. I know the wild winds caught you, and you crouched in the shallow brush, come back to the fold and you will be safe."
"If you do things wrong" ? Moral language, behold the language of the Gods! But why not just use the word intelligence? 'Do not act foolishly my son, be wise, navigate the world with intelligence.' This seems more fitting, one has no need of the Gods.
Peterson is his own myth, his mythology is comprised of absolute ignorance regarding class structures and systems, it is an ignorance that extends to the quality of the individual, what it seeks to create is not a liberated specimen or species, but a serf, both content and oblivious to his chains.
The message of the thinker (in contrast to the conformist) is to learn how to resist tyranny, is to study and comprehend, to learn how to overcome unintelligent systems, not only does our own quality hinge on this activity, but also the quality of our children. How human society is organized and valued plays the largest role in the quality of human life.
What lies buried beneath Peterson's exposition is the false claim that the reality into which we are born is a standard for life's quality. To depart from this, thinks Peterson, is to destroy the world. Dialectical awareness comprehends that this naivety is a kind of false consciousness, one that the specimen is fond of imposing on himself and others. Where are the thinkers!? Are we so dull that we are but the mere replicants of culture, only to mindlessly advocate the same? To properly contextualize Nietzsche, this is not the way of The Higher Man, he is not a mere replicant, but his thought is fiercely and courageously bent in the direction of intelligence. If one cannot see through the stupidity of an ignorant such as Peterson, how can one hope to move in the direction of a higher species awareness, how can one possibly be the Creator of Higher Values?
Peterson is not so intellectually large, my young friends, the problem is that he is too small! Thought-power has always resided with the non-conformists, and though their ideas are rejected in every epoch, it is the form of history that they often become the guarantors of a better future. Seek out the non-conformists, seek out the thinkers, do not run to men like Peterson to quell your fear. Learn to face it and overcome it by the power of thought, as so many quality thinkers have done before you.
The criticism here is twofold: 1) Peterson is propagating a conspiracy theory and 2) the liberal project is in an impoverished state if such conspiracy theories can pass themselves off as knowledge or critique.
His core belief is that the eons of human evolution have not only developed and determined our physical adaptations, instincts, and survival habits but that equally powerful cultural behavioral codes are also embedded in our unconscious and perhaps coded in our DNA. And some of this manifests in our art, religion, and mythology. What we are looking at here is a kind of Neo-Jungian reload.
It may help to understand that Peterson doesn't need a personal supernatural creator god at all. Those billions of years of evolution embedded within our body and mind are in fact god. (whether he will admit it or not ). Religion, Myth, Archetypes are the conscious ripples of deeply embedded and inescapable wisdom of the ages, possessing within themselves all the secrets and complexities of the creator. (For those who have read maps and/or viewed his lectures, I would be fascinated to know how you read this)
I can't decide how to make a full assessment of Peterson but I like him and confess that I find his core foundation thought-provoking. For Peterson, a BIble story is no more or less profound than Greek, Nordic, Egyptian, or Indigenous Mythology. He believes those stories are packed with timeless/infinite wisdom with deep layers of meaning.
This might seem like a recipe for an inherently conservative perspective. But we find that the central theme in all his myth unraveling always advocates reform and renewal. Always, warns of the dangers of a tyrannical order leading to the corruption of civilization.
I have yet to find a genuine critique and criticism of Peterson that is mature and coherent - I think he would welcome it himself.
"and so they retreat to the idyllic past, but here the image of the past is itself distorted, projected as a kind of utopia from which mankind has departed."
Curious as to whether you have lived in this past to have such a clear view of the distortion. Interestingly politics has separated itself from a utopian view of the future whereas religion still believes in utopia but recognises we are heading towards dystopia. Religion is relaxed about the threats to its existence as throughout history it has been under attack. It still remains the default place to shelter when all else has failed.
Religion encompasses billions of people over thousands of years in every corner of the globe. It comes in too many forms and flavors to begin to list. Even within single denominations there is typically substantial ideological diversity. Individual congregations contain a multiple of people who are in attendance for a multitude of reasons. Even within the minds of a single individual one's relationship with their religion can change from day to day.
Good luck finding that mature and coherent criticism of anybody today.
Rule 13: Don't Go On An All-Meat Diet
Rule 14: Read More Than Just The Communist Manifesto When Debating Marxism
Rule 15: Never Try Benzos
Rule 16: Don't Travel to Russia With Your Daughter
Hope that he's in better shape now.
Oh well, since in March 2021 you don't have Trump anymore as President, there's at least then "alt-right" Jordan for you to ridicule, dismiss and/or to get upset about.
Peterson still has a ton of adoring fans. That book is gonna sell out instantly.