The Jordan Peterson Moment
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
All: If you want to have ideological arguments like this, HN is not the site you're looking for. The idea here is unpredictable curiosity, not battling samenesses.
The NYT actually got this right. Jordan Peterson is explicitly targeting his message for that type of men, because he feels that they need it. It applies to everyone, of course, but that's his primary target.
And your source for that assertion is?
Edit: the article actually uses the vague term "the implied readers"... which I guess means it's the author's own implication. I have to agree with the above, heavily-downvoted comment above as such baseless speculation appears to serve the writer's agenda over the need to inform the reader.
Uh. Doesnt youtube have like billions of users at this point? Do you have any stats demonstrating that more men use youtube?
I certainly get the impression (though I don't have the data) that JP's clinical practice does not have the same gender disparity, so it is at least plausible that the medium is a greater factor than the message.
—Sir Charles Petrie, THE VICTORIANS
I don't think this is a fair characterization at all. The issue with pronouns is just a microcosm of a larger issue, which is not just the erosion of free speech, but the influx of compelled or forced speech, which is insidious and must be named and stopped early lest it gain more of a foothold.
As for the alt-right - if you're going to make the argument that some group liking their interpretation of what you've said means that you're one of them, you've got an uphill battle ahead of you. It's plainly illogical to assert this.
Postmodernism and Cultural Marxism
What really is the difference between between ex-Googler James Damore and the young man holding the sign saying "Communist Jews behind Race Mixing" in the civil rights era. Both seem like respectable members of their communities. Yet both think that social progress is actually a plot by evil-doers to destroy society because that is what their elders have taught them.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRlQquk...
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTcWkHj...
(Links via Google as some of the images are hosted on rs isn't sirescele rating "the good old days")
He never refused to call anyone by the pronouns of their choice nor he ever said that he wouldn’t do so.
Go to ~9:30 in this video: https://youtu.be/O-nvNAcvUPE
He claims that he wouldn't use preferred pronouns even if there was no law mandating it.
I'm not condemning this choice, just pointing out the falsehood.
David Brooks will forever be David Brooks.
Reactionary? As far as I understand it, a 'reactionary' is someone who wants a return of monarchy. There doesn't really seem to be anything in Peterson's dialogue about that. Unless you mean something different by that, and it was just a poor choice of words?
Calling his argument sophistry without any actual reference to them is in and of itself sophistry. Most of what he's saying, once understood, is material that would have been common sense to virtually anyone a few generations ago, and the arguments still stand very strong.
> There's not enough hours in the day to devote to deprogramming a true believer who in the long run is severely mangled as an intellectual being by internalizing his garbage.
Are you going to make reference to any of this 'garbage' or are you simply going to assert this without evidence? Such a brave position to take. I'm sure you think of yourself as the sole voice of reason muchn of the time. So are you suggesting the opposite of Peterson's claims - should young Western men simply shrug their responsibilities and be happy hive-dwelling consumers, the "salad men" as the Japanese call it, continuing to fail at their attempts to build meaningful lives?
You offer no alternative and you don't even admit to recognizing there's actually a crisis. Shame.
This approach leaves a lot of room for disagreement, because of course there will be things left out, scholars not mentioned, and plenty of inconsistencies.
But I've yet to hear a real example of such a disagreement. All I hear is anger and contempt for him.
I'm sure there are some reasonable qualms with some of his views - and further, I'd be willing to bet he'd be willing to explore them with someone who's actually offering an open conversation to discuss their concerns rather than an attack.
It's just not the common approach, especially in public dialogue.
Saying that I know something without saying what you believe I know is not helpful in assisting me in understanding what you are communicating.
This is one of a series of lectures where Jordan Peterson argue against the postmodernist and marxist tendency to define people by identity groups, and defining a oppressor/oppressed hierarchy between those identity groups.
The core goal of his argument is to show that this post-modernist thought pattern is similar to marxist thought patterns around identity groups and oppression. He argues that this thought pattern is oversimplified as a person can belong to countless different identity groups, and that identity groups themselves does not properly account for individual differences within the group.
He argues that oppression hierarchies between identity groups are meaningless in describing individual circumstances because it is a univariant analysis that doesn't account for the complexity inherent in the problem.
He argues that this thought pattern was/is a catastrophe in all communist countries where it has been applied and has lead to deaths of millions of people. He also argues that this thought pattern suppress the very mechanisms of free expression and ideal of equal opportunity that has made the western culture successful.
In the end he seems to suggest working hard for equality of opportunity instead of removing opportunity using identity group oppressor/oppressed hierarchies.
I would love to see a well-reasoned counter-argument to this viewpoint.
I have a lot of problems with postmodernism, some of which he raises here, but its motivations can't be understood divorced from colonial politics, which is how he tries to present it here. In many ways, his presentation exemplifies exactly the kind of ignorance postmodernism was developed to combat.
And his claim that Marxism led to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, and that Western liberal values stand in opposition to that, ignores the hundreds of millions of graves Western society is built on (I don't know where the two World Wars fit into his worldview, just for starters), and the enormous economic pressure Marxist countries were under as a result of the aggressive resistance and suppression they faced from Western countries, from 1917 onwards.
Lets handle one thing at a time. What are some specific examples of where you think he gets postmodernism wrong and why?
> And his claim that Marxism led to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, and that Western liberal values stand in opposition to that, ignores the hundreds of millions of graves Western society is built on (I don't know where the two World Wars fit into his worldview, just for starters)
Western society has definitely had a lot of external aggression through war and colonialism. However, I think Jordan Peterson is more focused on the war on your own society and its social structures.
Marxism argues that the old ways of organizing society became a block--a fetter--on the potential for further developments in production. And the conflict could only end, as Marx and Engels put it starkly in The Communist Manifesto, "in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
In order to facilitate this revolutionary reconstitution marxist countries have enforced identity politics in a way that led to the deaths of millions of people and has necessitated policies of thought control where 1/3 of the population spies on the other 2/3 to keep everyone in line.
Because of this I think that although you are making a good point, you are talking about external violence while Jordan Peterson is talking about internal violence inflicted to cause a revolutionary reconstitution.
> and the enormous economic pressure Marxist countries were under as a result of the aggressive resistance and suppression they faced from Western countries, from 1917 onwards.
Communism in practice appears to fail in promoting work ethics and motivation, and that is more likely to be the biggest contributor to the fall of this system. For example, in a study conducted in the former USSR, over 50% of the work force admitted to drinking alcohol while on the job. Furthermore, unbeknownst to the communist party, nearly 40% chose to work a second job privately to attain more wealth. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/commu...
> In his videos, he analyzes classic and biblical texts, he eviscerates identity politics and political correctness and, most important, he delivers stern fatherly lectures to young men on how to be honorable, upright and self-disciplined.
All that being said I don't really "get" Peterson. I find his YouTube videos to be rambling and incoherent as he wanders and flits between topics that appear to be only tangentially related. (Though occasionally I'll detect some interesting nugget of an idea).
Initially this seemed to my mind to be a weakness and flaw but now I think it's actually the core of this appeal. His style requires listeners to make the connections on their own, to bring themselves into the lecture as active listeners. A searching young man primed by ennui will make those connections and will self-initiate into Peterson's philosophy, the listener will take ownership of the ideas. This contributes to the perceived clannishness of Peterson adherents.
>I’d say the lives of young men can be improved more through loving attachment than through Peterson’s joyless and graceless calls to self-sacrifice.
One of the many asinine misrepresentations littered throughout this hit-piece; the entire point of Mr. Peterson's work is to allow people to experience joyful, meaningful life, instead of living in abject misery.
Besides, what kind of activities creating "loving attachment" among men, or women for that matter? Voluntarily associations of like-minded individuals working together towards a common-goal; an expression of their ability to get things done will earn not only the respect of others but, more importantly, themselves.
(2) You don't care if secondary or tertiary points are illogical? If they're not important, or if the logical flaws can't be fixed, why do such secondary/tertiary points continue to be included along with the central point? It makes no sense to blame Peterson's camp for this in any case. The opposition should fix their damned arguments.
(3) Can you cite an example of a logical argument presented by JP's opposition that is dismissed with "that's not an argument"? Please make sure what you cite is an actual logical/dialectical statement, and not rhetoric/sophistry... that's the typical problem with neoliberal/postmodern/progressive language.
JP's philosophy needs to be attacked on several fronts, most notably his ridiculous attempts to give religion and particularly Christianity a validity beyond mere myth and collections of historical cultural wisdom, such as it was. But the complaints you raise are absurd.
> (2) You don't care if secondary or tertiary points are illogical? If they're not important, or if the logical flaws can't be fixed, why do such secondary/tertiary points continue to be included along with the central point? It makes no sense to blame Peterson's camp for this in any case.
When you are discussing social movements the "opposition" is open ended. When you can pluck your examples from literally thousands of arguments and articulations, it's easy to pick out some ill-conceived notion, or simply misinterpret by taking it out of its context.
For instance, I watched a video where he talks about White Privilege (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbDggKqt3KA), and he quotes one seminal piece (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_McIntosh#Invisible_Knaps...), but that essay simply introduced the phrase to many people and opened a conversation. And he points out that some of the items may be class privilege instead of race privilege (though of course he wouldn't say "class" because that's Marxist!) So?
> The opposition should fix their damned arguments.
No one's going to go back 30 years and rewrite the Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack to clarify whatever confusion Jordan Peterson had with it. There's no hope so long as he plays the critic and selects the material he prefers to refute.
He's decided to engage with social movements. It's why he's popular, he's reacting to something that feels familiar to many people. If he engaged with any specific argument most people wouldn't care what he said, because most people don't care about any specific argument. You can't engage logically with a social movement, because there's no single logical basis, and there's no underlying authority which can be refuted.