What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?
chronicle.com
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But that synthesis is complex, nuanced, and requires a lot of time to think about. There are problems with it, and it deserves to be criticized (Peterson would be the first to agree). There are also profound insights that can help elevate your thinking if you can incorporate them. Lots of people don't have the intellectual background or ability to do so. But everyone can form a 2 second hot take on one of his more recent controversial statements, so that is what gets discussed.
His series on the Bible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w&index=1&list=PL2...
is generally regarded (by those I know, at least) as Jordan at his best. He goes through the first few stories in the Bible and tries to bring meaning to them, not from the fundamental Christian lens of "this is absolute truth," but more like:
"Here are some archetypal patterns about the world and how to act in it that our ancestors have discovered over thousands of years and distilled into stories. Maybe they hold truth that isn't the 'word of God' truth, but observations about the world that have utility to us even as a modern, rational, scientific civilization. I'll back this up by tying it to studies on psychology, neuroscience, evolution, and animal behavior, and show that variations of the same archetypal stories appear in non-Judeo-Christian societies all over the world."
You can be a hardline atheist and still get tons of value out of these lectures.
I also found his 2017 Maps of Meaning lectures particularly interesting, and personally more relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8Xc2_FtpHI
He does a similar thing with the story of Pinocchio instead of the Bible for the first few lectures, which might be more palatable for some. There's a lot of overlap with the Bible series as well.
I thoroughly enjoyed his old lectures, but I've avoided watching any of his newer stuff for fear of finding out if he's begun to pander to his (largely) awful followers.
I think he did pander a bit, but then realized how far to the right many of those followers were, so drew a clear line in the sand that pissed off and alienated all the fascists and racists (something about ethnic nationalism being an "idiotic ideology" or words to that effect). Peterson is no alt rightist.
However, if you look at places like /r/JordanPeterson, most of his followers were more alienated centrist and liberals than the alt rightists even before he made clear exactly how he felt about the far right/alt right.
I definitely get frustrated when I hear people on the left call him dangerous. I feel like these aren't even "alt" left people either, it sounds like they are largely plain old liberals who never heard of him, and blindly toss him in with the like of Steve Bannon.
You can think of Jordan Peterson as going just a bit farther than Sam Harris, when Sam Harris says that we should learn from religion by practicing things like meditation. Jordan Peterson comes from the position that things like myth and religion co-evolved with human beings and human society. Even if the literal epistemology of religion and myth is dead wrong on the conscious/rational/scientific level, it still contains insights into the nature of human beings' self regulation because of that co-evolution. Often, these things operate at below the level of consciousness, as we would expect such things to, given that they co-evolved with us from a time before sentient consciousness.
1. It just feels too good to hear him talk in those maps of meaning lectures. But if you don’t „follow“ and instead analyze what he is saying and how he forms an argument, then you realize that he is not arguing but just putting metaphors together and interpreting them as he sees fit in the moment. That’s why it’s so appealing. But quite often it’s not logic and even less conclusive.
2. His often repeated „life is suffering“ is in the presented totallity not a useful nor true worldview. Life is suffering and joy. (I say this as a pessimist.)
3. If you then check out his reading list you find mostly very disturbing titles and no silver lining.
2. and 3. put his followers in a depressed state where he can uplift them with 1. No wonder he has a sect like following.
His conservative debates are more to the point but I‘m not sure if it is not just advertising for his „religious lectures“.
That’s what I find dangerous about him.
Pretty much like a TED talk. Actually, if you look up TED talks about how to be an effective speaker, you will find the advice to talk in simple language and to use metaphors. Also, they advise you to throw in sentiments to which your audience will agree.
2. His often repeated „life is suffering“ is in the presented totallity not a useful nor true worldview. Life is suffering and joy. (I say this as a pessimist.)
Do you actually think he says that life is only suffering? Sorry, but that seems like a deliberate misrepresentation of his views. What evidence do you have that Dr. Peterson is anti-joy? Here's an exercise: find evidence in what he says that shows he values joy.
3. If you then check out his reading list you find mostly very disturbing titles and no silver lining.
Let's go right for the most disturbing: The Gulag Archipelago. It's disturbing as an indictment of the worst human beings can do, while those same people are spouting the most positive sounding utopian ideology. It's not going to depress anyone in the West, unless they have already tied up their identity and self worth in a similar ideology.
As for a silver lining -- to buck up, bear your burdens, and strive to live a worthwhile life -- strikes me as a worthwhile and positive message.
2. Fair enough. I shall try if I ever hear his stuff again. With all the metaphors flying around it shouldn’t be to difficult. But can you point out where he says it’s so great to be alive?
3. If you call „I survived the gulag where thousands perished“ as a silver lining you must have a pretty grim world view.
You agree that the Gulag Archipelago is not a relevant reference point to 95% of his western audience. If you don’t find it depressing you must have a very strong character, I would assume a good portion gets depressed (in mood; clinical depression is out of my judgment).
In that they are public speaking and they are not a thesis. They are public speaking, and those aren't logical and conclusive. The point you're trying to make could only stand if all the speakers you like and feel represent your world view have 100% logically rigorous speeches.
But can you point out where he says it’s so great to be alive?
I don't need to, to refute your silly assertion that he's somehow anti-happiness. None of these videos are direct statements about joy, because they are from talks where he is making an entirely differnt point, but it's clear that he's like any human being who thinks children are wonderful, and likes to have fun and laugh.
Talking about the potential of children, and of a pristine relationship with one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg9TY8uwaSY
Humor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyWwuv1UkRg
Stoner Comics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jisfAwMOhrQ
3. If you call „I survived the gulag where thousands perished“ as a silver lining you must have a pretty grim world view.
Again, not what I said. You said that he put forward books to depress his audience. That's obviously not true. The Gulag Archipelago is meant to alarm and meant to make a personal, emotional connection to the magnitude of the possible evil of such flowery sounding utopian ideologies.
If you don’t find it depressing you must have a very strong character
Or, one could be sure that one is in opposition to such ideologies. My father's older brother disappeared due to one regime with a collectivist ideology. My family here in the US is only here because the US military defended their lives from another regime with a collectivist ideology. Why should The Gulag Archipelago make anyone depressed, as opposed to angry? As opposed to resolute in the opposition of disguised evil?
I can only imagine it makes someone depressed if they identify with such an ideology.
What's more, I explicitly cite Dr. Peterson's message, "As for a silver lining -- to buck up, bear your burdens, and strive to live a worthwhile life," as a silver lining. I find it problematic that you ignore that and try to stuff a different position in my mouth above.
So intellectual pop chords and power riffs...
As for the quasi-alt-right flirtation a while back I started calling a lot of that stuff "intellectual edgelording." Some on the left are guilty of it too, but the far right has really mastered it.
I’m sure he does help some of his followers. But I doubt that most of his followers profit long term from him. At some point they should move on for their own good.
He is against being compelled to use a variety of gender pronouns by legislation which is internally inconsistent, scientifically inaccurate, and additionally lacks clarity by punting process and standards to the Ontario human rights commission which can change their process and definitions without involvement from an elected legislature.
I've never had to think about how my outlook might change if all of that got a lot more inconvenient though (if more people start requiring ever more varied pronouns, or if so many words get soft-banned as being offensive that it's difficult to communicate with clarity). Much less have I thought about what if I were compelled by force/law to do the thing I've been doing voluntarily all along. I can understand and be sympathetic to Peterson's position in that sense, although I'm not sure if I agree.
Have you never made a mistake in common courtesy? What if any mistake in common courtesy meant that you could be hauled before a kangaroo court which can use a scientifically dubious "test of unconscious bias" against you as evidence? What if that kangaroo court could get you kicked out of your job? Go and read the law Jordan Peterson is complaining about.
It's hard for public or mass communications with people who have rapidly-evolving preferences and sets of things that can cause offense.
Peterson sounds like a dick in his methods, but there's a dangerous regressive trend picking up in mainstream circles of treating disagreement as heresy. We've picked up the worst habits of religion. (And the "right" is too intellectually dishonest to notice that this treend of whining/heresy/safe-spaces-desire trend is deeply entrenched in evangelical and right-wing America, with private schools, "wars on Christmas", etc.)
I'm not convinced of this. "Hi all" works as a salutation, in public speaking, you can substitute ladies and gentlemen with lots of far more engaging variants (eg: "Dear friends", "my fellow students" (a favourite of one of my best instructors in college), "distinguished guests", etc), announcers have been using "attention all passengers" and other formal identifiers for a while.
But I'm thinking more of things like "creating a gender drop down box for a tool where demographic info was desired." Or do we just drop the idea of even having a meaningful response to such a question? Sometimes it's relevant, though, especially in medical industries.
Also, enshrining into law of scientifically false statements. (Anyone remember the bit about Indiana doing that with pi == 3?)
Besides, although I said what I did to make a valid point, I mostly said it to be humorous. Sorry I did not put in the humor tags.
So he more or less had to create a controversy out of nothing. The great majority of people consider the question a matter of courtesy and hold no strong feelings.
This is a pretty low resolution summary of their correspondence. It’s also pretty easy to argue that his behavior is better described as refusing to play the victim. For him, the loss of his rights is more impactful than the consequences of not complying, so he refused to play a part in the quiet loss of his rights.
From my understanding, it is purely the attempt to compel behavior from him that is his issue.
Well, this is now enshrined in Canadian law, so it doesn't matter much what the great majority of people feel. It only matters how courts will interpret the law.
Well, something is enshrined in Canadian law, but the heat of the debate over whether what Peterson claims Bill C-16 does is a desirable thing for a law to do sometimes obscures the fact that people—including people who are experts in law, which Peterson is not—have challenged his characterization of what the law actually does.
I'm perfectly able to be understanding in these cases, but I'm not capable to be psychic.
> I take issue with being held to a standard of somehow needing to "know" that ahead of time, and respect it, with no effort on the part of the woman in question.
I'd like to postulate that it's not just ahead of time. It's really hard to change your usage of he to she or him to her, when you are visually presented with a man. The brain doesn't easily change, so don't get mad when it doesn't change as fast as you want.
I know two trans individuals, I address them by the correct pronouns probably 80% of the time if I'm being a little kind to myself. The other 20% they've been totally understanding. Anecdotal yes but I feel like this is the vast majority of trans people; they know it's out of the ordinary and respect that, and handle the inevitable slips with social grace.
I agree that this would be an unreasonable standard. But I've yet to see that standard being applied to anyone (And I run in circles where I'm exposed to quite a bit of very outspoken trans/nonbinary rhetoric).
What I see, time and time again, is people who explicitly refuse to call someone by their preferred pronoun, whether it's on the grounds of pure petulance ("You can't make me!"), or of some biological essentialism ("HE, because Y chromosome").
So unless you have any examples of people being attacked for a single, innocent mistake, I'm inclined to see this as a strawman (straw-person?) argument.
At some point, what someone literally says they are or aren't against starts to pale in comparison to the perception of their stance. And if that perception persists, at some point, one has to call into question their sincerity.
A lack of condemnation can, not unreasonably, be construed as a tacit endorsement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP3mSamRbYA
Many people see him as an enemy because of his conservative viewpoints. His most recent debate with Cathy Newman from three days ago:
God, that was a terrible interview. The interviewer refused to understand a single thing that JP was saying. I am no fan of Peterson (in particular, I am left liberal), but he makes quite a lot of good points.
It's interesting to note that Chomsky was at a point also targeted by the postmodern "left", when he defended free speech.
One thing I think Peterson could do better (though I imagine he wouldn't do this purely on principle, if he was even capable) is adapting his speech and rhetoric to meet his target audience. He was answering her questions in a calm and well-meaning manner, but just the tone and vocabulary of his explanations was going completely over her head, making her draw the wrong conclusions from what he was saying. That is, assuming that she wasn't trying to be combative on purpose.
Of course the same might have been said at one time about Nietzsche and Jung. Some Nazis loved Nietzche but it was not all that mutual.
Well, given that Peterson has repeatedly pissed them off by saying that ethnic nationalism is an idiotic ideology (I'm paraphrasing), I'm not sure how many of those followers he now has left.
He definitely has a very vocal cult-like following among a certain type of young adult. While they can be annoying, they're not typically the fascist/racist type. Far from it.
> Of course the same might have been said at one time about Nietzsche and Jung. Some Nazis loved Nietzche but it was not all that mutual.
Seems like he has no love for the alt-right:
> But when [Peterson has] been lumped in with what’s come to be called the alt-right, as happens fairly regularly, Peterson has pushed back, calling it "seriously wrong." The erstwhile socialist considers himself a classic British liberal, and he has castigated the far right for engaging in the "pathology of racial pride."
I forget if it was this article or the interview (the two of which constitute my entire familiarity with the man, so I'm not strongly for or against him), but he makes the point that he has had many letters from left and right extremists who have reported that Peterson's teachings have moved them to the center. So my inner optimist would like to believe that his far right (and left) fans are in flux, mwaning it's socially ideal for these people to be in the ranks of his "followers". Although the notion of a philosopher with followers does sort of creep me out, rightly or wrongly.
He's arguing that he should not be coerced into using preferred pronouns. Ok, that's fine. But he should use preferred pronouns anyway, in order to not be an asshole. Because refusing to use preferred pronouns isn't standing up to oppressive postmodern SJWs. It's being an asshole.
And this is the real headache with Jordan Peterson. He may be thoughtful and interesting. But for thousands of followers, he's just providing intellectual cover for bigotry and emotional sadism.
"Being an asshole" isn't some universal quality. If someone is complaining that someone else is "being an asshole," what is essentially meant is that person "is doing something for which they should be socially shamed." There's nothing inherently right or wrong with having a system of shaming in a society, but it's something particular to a culture and a time. These things come about through consensus and if there isn't some consensus that that's the way things are, then those attempting to impose new norms are ironically also "being assholes."
When you have moral society in recent decades changing very rapidly in terms of what is being considered acceptable or not (whether or not you consider that positive progress), it's going to feel like whiplash to people who are not on the vanguard of the latest new definition of what's acceptable. People say, "Wait a second, I was taught to be a decent person, I think I'm a decent person -- who are these people telling me that I'm now a hateful person for doing or not doing what seemed reasonable up until a couple years ago? Do the people telling me this have moral authority in my eyes?"
Cultural practices take time to adjust or to be adjusted externally. Move too fast and people won't be happy about it, and that should be understood.
Yeah, it's hard for us. Hell, I'm 52. I have a lot of adjustment to do. But I try to do it, because I respect my friends. (Patton Oswald did a really excellent speech about this, btw.)
For my own part, a lot of my frustration is the loud and sincerely meant (if wrongheaded) declarations of victimhood by the privileged, simply for being asked to be nice to others. So when I hear Jordan Peterson say he's being oppressed by the evil forces of Marxist postmodernism for being asked to use preferred pronouns... I hear a comfortable, privileged person complaining about how he's a victim. And when he doubles down and says people shouldn't get to choose their own pronouns, their own identity, and instead society should choose for them? Then he's a hypocrite. And an asshole.
But you've never heard that. You've only heard him reject being coerced to do that. He's even on the record as saying he's fine with addressing people as they'd like to be addressed, so long as it's all done civilly. What you're doing is projecting a caricatured position onto him.
For my own part, a lot of my frustration is the loud and sincerely meant (if wrongheaded) declarations of victimhood by the privileged, simply for being asked to be nice to others.
A law that empowers kangaroo courts isn't "simply asking nice." A law that empowers those courts to use an unscientific "unconscious bias" test that claims to get into your head isn't "simply asking nice." A law that can result in dismissal from your job isn't "simply asking nice."
I hear a comfortable, privileged person complaining about how he's a victim.
He doesn't claim he's a victim. What he claims is that the law is a potential abridgement of freedom. You could make a claim that Lindsey Shepherd claims to be a "victim" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpFUvfAvKs4 -- but then you'd be presenting evidence that Dr. Peterson's assertions about the law are correct.
And when he doubles down and says people shouldn't get to choose their own pronouns, their own identity, and instead society should choose for them? Then he's a hypocrite. And an asshole.
A coworker at my work announced her transition, and everyone just started using the feminine pronoun. Everyone was civil about it, and everything was fine. (And I am certain that she was happier and a more vibrant and complete person for making the change.) Again, you are misrepresenting his position. More accurately, a person exists within society (and hopefully a community) and identity is something which is effectively negotiated between the person and society. It's the parties who are being emotionally dishonest, playing games with emotional blackmail, and being crappy people who are "being assholes." From where I'm sitting, it's a lot of emotionally imbalanced trans "activists" who fit that description. Jordan Peterson gets mail from trans people, the majority of whom are supporters or sympathetic to him. Their collective position is that they just want to not be singled out and live their lives in peace.
I'd like to underline this statement. Making this into a law that will impact employment, sentencing, etc., is not a polite request. It's the power of the state. When that involves a certain way of speaking, or thinking, a lot of us civil libertarian types get very uneasy, regardless of the merits of the issue at hand.
My actual godddamned POINT is that, whatever the logical merits of Peterson's position coming from him, the practical effect is for a hundred thousand red-pill assholes to share excerpted clips around, and thinking it means that a wise philosopher agrees with their joy in being mean to people over their gender identity.
The solution is to have reasoned dialogue. If you follow Peterson's message, he seems to have explicitly decided to minister to lost young clueless right-wing men, by urging them to clean their rooms, and live worthwhile, responsible lives. In fact, I remember the video where he talks about becoming aware that so many of his followers were effectively Alt-Right, and seeing him hesitate, then say he didn't know what to make of that.
He also talks about the mechanisms by which a crowd can suborn a speaker, so I think he's actively fighting against that.
thinking it means that a wise philosopher agrees with their joy in being mean to people over their gender identity
It seems to me that a lot of people did exactly that, coming from the far Left, in the name of Intersectionality. It was also done with racial identity. (Google "Feminist Cringe" & "Dartmouth College Library Activists")
Which in no way means intersectionality is a Bad Idea. Intersectionality is a major advance in the understanding of oppression.
I hope Peterson can actually wake up some of his red-pill followers, and do more harm than good in the long run. But for now, he really needs to apply that intellect to dealing with something he wasn't ever prepared to deal with - being a symbol of intellectual authority to a movement that stands for things he no doubt despises.
Freudian slip? As George Orwell noted in Road to Wiggan Pier, leftists often don't so much as love the poor, but hate the rich.
But for now, he really needs to apply that intellect to dealing with something he wasn't ever prepared to deal with - being a symbol of intellectual authority to a movement that stands for things he no doubt despises.
For one thing, I can imagine him basically paraphrasing that sentence. How come I don't often hear anything like that kind of introspection coming from the left about the depredations of unbalanced followers? When it does come, why is it that others on the Far Left then try to kick them out of the Left? Then too, I hear and read things like, "It's okay to hate your oppressors." I think I know what it means when people start to say it's okay to hate on a group of people based on outward and inherent characteristics. I grew up being on the receiving end of that.
And I'm quite sure he'd agree with my assessment here.
No. It's one thing to advocate that everyone should be nice and say "hello." It's an entirely different thing to advocate for a law that says you will be dragged before a kangaroo court for failing to say "hello," where a scientifically dubious "test of unconscious bias" will be used as evidence of your guilt. Either your bias is showing, or you're missing the distinction.
So in Peterson's worldview, the difference between being asked to use ze and zim by someone, and sending Solzhenitsyn to a Siberian death camp, is merely a matter of degree, not of kind.
If you study the detailed legal history of the Weimar Republic, then you'd be prone to agree. The Nazis didn't have to change the Weimar laws a whole lot, because the Left-leaning Weimar republic left loopholes in the law that basically amounted to, "...unless the state deems it for the common good."
If you let "activists" erode due process and create "crimes" of "unconscious bias," then you are creating legal means for people to engage in the sorts of accusations which sent people to the Gulag. The Magna Carta and particularly Habeas Corpus came about because laws which were about one thing were abused out of poltical expedience.
And it's yet another thing to criticize a law for saying that when, in fact, the law says nothing of the sort.
Q: WHAT DO I SAY TO MY SON'S GAY FRIEND BOB'S LOVER AT MY SON'S WEDDING???
A: How do you do? My name's Judith.
To your point, failing to accommodate this, and expecting everyone to immediately change because you have, is its own flavor of "being an asshole."
So imagine the typical college professor. They've got what? Three or four classes of up to 50 or 60 students?
So you want them remember not only each student's name, but also which of these new pronoun class they prefer, as well as the proper declination of that pronoun class?
And if someone prefers not to do this, it's because they're an asshole?
My guess is that Peterson would have been happy to try to use preferred pronouns for his students, if only he weren't being forced to do so by some human rights act about pronouns and coerced by various activists groups. He's basically said as much before.
For the record, I'm in favor of most transgender rights issues (re: employment, anti-violence, identity documents, etc). But you can't go passing laws to force changes in attitude. US lawmakers did the right thing by passing civil rights laws in the 1960s, but those lawmakers didn't then go and outlaw the use of the n-word. That would have been a bridge too far. People have to learn from those around them what is and isn't appropriate. You can't just force them to think and speak the way you want by force of law.
Or at least, we don't typically try to do that in free societies.
We're not talking about 200 students in this case. We're talking about one on one conversation with one person. That's when pronouns matter.
Being unhappy about coercive regulation is an entirely separate issue from trying to do the decent and not terribly difficult thing. And using the coercion as justification for not doing it is, bluntly, an excuse. It's turning around and claiming yourself the victim of what you do to others.
Professors never engage in one-on-one conversation with their students? And they never refer to their students in the third-person within the classroom?
> And using the coercion as justification for not doing it is, bluntly, an excuse. It's turning around and claiming yourself the victim of what you do to others.
I don't think Peterson sees himself as a victim, at all. I think he's alarmed and outraged that proscriptive laws governing his speech have been passed. And as an American who's pretty happy with our 1st amendment, I agree with him.
I mean, forget for a moment that this is concerning transgender rights. If a country like Canada continues to outlaw certain ways of speaking, at what point would that concern you? Or would it ever?
Just because he doesn't use the word "oppression" in that context doesn't mean it isn't his broad meaning. Coercion and oppression are more or less interchangeable.
https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54?t=21m39s
23m16s is where he states he would use preferred pronouns.
And yet, a hundred thousand assholes gleefully share the video clip of him getting in the face of someone confronting him about pronouns, him talking about how it's oppressive, and they take it as the intellectual seal of approval for their refusal to use preferred pronouns, based on their contempt for those who ask for it.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Would you consider writing what someone has specifically done wrong, rather than the insult? It’d be more clear, and we wouldn’t need to guess whether your overall assessment of people is reliable.
AFAIK, he does use preferred pronouns.
Because refusing to use preferred pronouns isn't standing up to oppressive postmodern SJWs. It's being an asshole.
If one is faced with oppressive ideologues who refuse to engage in dialogue and just want to coerce you, the proper response is to stand up to them.
He may be thoughtful and interesting. But for thousands of followers, he's just providing intellectual cover for bigotry and emotional sadism.
I genuinely think that the critiques of Postmodern Social Construction are thoughtful and interesting. I also think they provide intellectual cover for bigotry and emotional sadism, dressed up as "activism."
Let me ask you, do you think requests for preferred pronouns are rooted in a correct understanding of human nature? Or are you merely accommodating something you believe to be mistaken so as to not hurt someone who likely be (on net) hurt by a more honest approach?
I'm utterly shocked (not really) how many people proudly wave a flag of liberty, but are quite content for society to denounce and punish harmless individual expression, if they aren't comfortable with that expression.
That's actually not true and not workable. A very obvious example is a criminal who identifies as a good, upstanding person.
IMHO there are actually two kinds of identity (at least). They are separate things, but related and often confused.
1. Self-identity: the identity that someone applies to themselves based on their own thoughts and aspirations. This is very closely related to one's inner life. This is the identity that you're referring to above.
2. Applied-identity (for lack of a better term): the identity that each person applies to someone else based on their own thoughts, beliefs, and experiences with that person. Someone's reputation is an example.
If you try to force everyone's applied-identity of you to conform with your self-identity, that's also a form of oppression. What and how they think of you is their own business.
My question was whether you think such identity claims are true.
Now maybe you don't think it matters, and that we should use preferred pronouns regardless. But at that point you are saying that people should lie for the sake of politeness. The request isn't just "Please don't say that"; it's "Please say this other thing even if you don't believe it's true".
But I think I disagree with your third paragraph. People who have thoughtful, interesting things to say should say them. (They should also take care to specify what they don't mean, to discredit "followers" who run off in bad directions. Or else, if they agree with those followers, non-followers will conclude that the bad directions taint the thoughtful and interesting things.)
And even then, people will hear what they want to hear. However carefully Peterson speaks his thoughts on this manner, there will still be a lot of people who now think it's the intellectual thing to do to beat up a dude in a dress. Which makes speaking one's mind, however truthfully, an ethical dilemma.
This is the hole below the waterline in the sinking ship of radical honesty. This is why "Don't be an asshole" is more complicated than it sounds.
I kind of hate to beat on Peterson too hard for this, though. He's suddenly acquired a large and unexpected following that he didn't actively pursue. But he needs to deal with the ugly reality of what kind of people make up the bulk of that following, and how his words and ideas affect them. It's an ongoing learning experience.
You can make it harder for them. But you can't stop them.
I've only been studying theory for a few years but how is this interpretation of postmodernism possible? It seems to run counter to one of what I understand to be the foundations of the movement - the rejection of metanarratives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5rUPatnXSE
Good video where he discusses these things in terms of political correctness.
While postmodernism claims it rejects metanarratives, like the one in Marxism, the derived ideologies share a lot of parallels in effect. They both result in opposing groups which can't effectively talk to each other, so must coerce each other by force. (Doesn't this remind you of the Intersectional "Stack Ranking" and the "Oppression Olympics?") They both effectively result in a rejection of logic. They both effectively create their own forms of obscurantist alternative "logic." The ideological effect of both Marxism and Social Constructionism is to come up with a pretext for rejecting existing standards and tearing society apart -- one which is ideologically sealed against negotiation, logic, and adaptation to evidence.
That being said, many strands of postmodernism in universities have come to teach that there is nothing outside of language itself (that's a common reading of Foucault and Derrida), so everything can be seen as a language or sign system. Want to change "reality" (as if there is such a thing!)? Just change the language.
Another stand holds that there are only two really important groups: the powerful / powerless, which could also be seen as the "oppressors" and "oppressed." Everyone is supposed to be in one of the two groups. This gets grafted onto identity politics in rather unpleasant ways (IMO).
So in the pronoun debate, people who are transgendered or non-gendered are the oppressed and need help; everyone who is not "helping" them is the oppressor and must be opposed.
This, anyway, is the line of thinking, though it isn't my own view of the world. To say that everything is linguistic seems unlikely. When I was in grad school in English (note: don't do this: https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befo... ) and would hear this argument, I liked to observe that everyone, given the choice between getting punched in the face or having someone say something mean to them, chooses the latter. This would seem to me to argue that not everything can be reduced to language, even apart from all the other very good and obvious-seeming arguments along those lines.
> Another stand holds that there are only two really important groups: the powerful / powerless, which could also be seen as the "oppressors" and "oppressed."
Those aren't really separate stands, the latter is a consequence of the former: if language (or, rather, beliefs which is transmitted between people by language) is the defining factor in reality, then the ultimately meaningful differentiation between people is whether they are influential in shaping belief (powerful) or not (powerless).
It's also directly contrary to the central theme of Marxism, which makes the association of these particular postmodernist viewpoints with Marxism bizarre. (Certainly, there are people who moved from Marxism to this kind of postmodernism, just like there are people who have moved from Marxism to capitalism or from Marxism to democratic socialism or from Trotskyism to neoconservatism.
And yet, activists who claim to be Marxist seem to be very well aligned with others who claim postmodernist derived ideologies.
It's still great to read but rereading I noticed at the core the same oppression narrative that seems to appear out of all postmodern discourse at some point and which JBP associates with Marxism. Here the programmer is oppressed by stuck up programming languages, Perl reverses the roles and is happy to be like a butler/slave. Which is fine for a programming language, but offers problems when reversing the oppressor/oppressed roles is the only solution you can think of, the only interpretation you wish to dwell on however flimsy the interpretation is (which seems to be where postmodernism went wrong / taken over by Marxists), and each side involves real people.
The only way I can make some sense of it is by drawing a correspondence between postmodernism’s “there is no absolute truth, only convenient fictions” and marxism’s class warfare.
"Decolonize Science" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXMG7YajHA0
Anyway, his lectures for psychology students on youtube are quite nice to listen, even though I find it problematic how often he treats hard facts off-handedly to speak in favor of his overall narrative. I wonder if there are more courses (especially on non-technical subjects) of the same quality freely available on youtube.
After watching that interview I've tried to make my body language more expressive like hers.
Camille is OG feminist, the real deal. Not the 3rd wave Feminists, that are lying around in the media and academia now a days.
I find this response from her hysterical:
https://twitter.com/100millionbooks/status/91309969607542784...
Individualism and wariness of ideological collectivism seem to be tenets of what he espouses. No surprise, then, that ideological collectivists are his most vocal enemies.
He sounds like a hardcore libertarian but I think it's a smokescreen for ideologically-driven oppression under another name.
(Not necessarily saying Peterson is a fascist or a racist, but that's a separate question.)
> Another stand holds that there are only two really important groups: the powerful / powerless, which could also be seen as the "oppressors" and "oppressed." Everyone is supposed to be in one of the two groups. This gets grafted onto identity politics in rather unpleasant ways (IMO).
> So in the pronoun debate, people who are transgendered or non-gendered are the oppressed and need help; everyone who is not "helping" them is the oppressor and must be opposed.
Same thing applies here. Take note of who is applying these -ist labels, and who they are being applied to: anyone in the outgroup.
I would be floored to discover if the majority of these strawmen "fascists" and "racists" are a collective by any definition other than "not on board with the cause."
Because they aren't very bright and also don’t pay attention when he tell them how stupid their ideology is?
http://conatusnews.com/rise-intellectual-dark-web/
edit:
I made a thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16189120
YouTube debates held by self-made moderators are a sort of spectator sport where differing schools of thought are battling it out rhetorically. The audiences are people who are honed by online debate groups and have experience in one-liner Tweets and trolling to prove a point.
When you think about it, it's not all that new of a concept -- the classical philosophers had their "schools" but they weren't like formal institutions with faculty. Philosophers had their followers or acolytes, not matriculated registered students. Maybe the more calcified academic structures we see starting to break down are the aberration rather than the norm.
Notably, but not in the article, Harris interviewed Peterson again, two months later.[1]
[0] https://samharris.org/speaking-of-truth-with-jordan-b-peters...
This inversion from intellectuals welcoming disagreement to shunning it is a terrifying movement to those who value science and truth-seeking, because in a worst case scenario it could very realistically lower us into a new dark age. Just the necessity of an "intellectual dark web" is itself an extremely concerning reflection of today's intellectual climate, which is becoming hostile to tenets of rationality and civilized discourse.
When we subtract dialogue and reason from the picture, all we are left with is emotional conflict -- and rarely do two extremely conflicting emotional views of a topic resolve automatically without the intervention or guidance of rationality.
But is JP really the one who is controversial and polarizing?
- JP is against the Pomo stuff that passes for scholarship now a days. https://twitter.com/realpeerreview?lang=en
- We have professors university calling for violence against his political opponents. http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/14/criminal-justice-professor...
- We had a Antifa professor who nearly killed a guy hitting someone with a heavy bike lock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qKCl9NL1Cg (WARNING: GRAPHIC)
Is JP really the one who is polarizing and extreme here? The left academic really dropped the ball not pointing out their own dirty laundry and cleaning out their own cesspool of fake academics and violent thugs.
He is controversial and polarizing: many people hate him and many people love him.
https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/Jordan_Peterson_Memes/ are kind of cultish. It's a very ironic cult, but a bit of a cult nonetheless.
Where non-progressives are demonized, he dispels the myth that non-progressives deserve to be demonized.
And so forth -- we are en an environment where progressives are increasingly assertive and increasingly hostile to non-progressives, for whatever reason.
We can wax poetic about the quality of his zealots' character until the cows come home but it doesn't address the fact that people will always seek an icon to revolve around. The only solution to such a situation, like insurgencies in war-zones, is de-escalation and re-integration (of militant progressives and social conservatives into a cohesive society where they both achieve political representation and fairness in the eyes of the law).
Unfortunately modern-day progressives (regressives) have no interest in this and as such social conservatives will continue to gravitate towards those that they don't fully understand but nevertheless find appealing.
Edit: This is a sincere question. If a more useful description or label exists I would like to know it.
"It's okay to hate your oppressors."
"X = Prejudice + Power"
"By Any Means Necessary"
It goes at least as far back as Karl Marx, but probably further.