I like Jordan Peterson AIBU?

[NeatFreakMama]

With his rise to fame recently it seems like Jordan Peterson is everywhere. Personally I really enjoyed his book and I find his lectures fascinating largely, I think for me, because he's a great orator.

I know he has his detractors and I'd be really interested to hear their opinions on him. I don't really see much not to like about his rhetoric; it feels like he tends to speak mostly on universal truths but just in a really engaging way?

lucydogz, did I see you say you were at the Sam Harris debate? I remember him from the time he got into it with Ben Affleck over Islam and how radicals are a tiny minority. I'd love to see what the ignorant luvvie thinks about the almost 1 billion muslims who would want him executed for fucking the nanny? Are they radicals, Ben? You fucking moron.

i.imgur.com/cgtB8Wz.jpg

I like JP, but you need to sit down and have a nice cup of tea and a *Aggripina

MistressOfTheGarter

Just read something by JP on Derrida and Marx. God, the man knows NOTHING. It is shameful he is treated as if an intellectual with something to say.

Wizard, would you care to share what was so shameful?

Lots us are new to this area and would like to hear opposite sides of the debate.

There's not really a debate Solidarity, with the FemiNuts as I call them. And I'm a Dworkin and Greer fan from old. The new twatty 'radical' feminists hanging around since the mid-80s are just so up themselves but have nothing to say. Hence the "shameful" criticism which means nothing in "intellectual" terms, its just a term of abuse. Criticising his parenting - when they don't even know him ffs - another fatuous load of MN bx.

That’s interesting Noisy.

I have been listening to all of JP recently and really enjoying it. I would love to hear proper counter arguments, but can’t seem to find anything on YouTube. I wondered if it was because the algorithms were so stacked in JP favour due to what I had been watching.

So would really welcome any links to academics giving a counter view.

But not the one upthread which kicked off with mocking JPs voice. It’s impassible to then take anything he says seriously.

TheWizardofWas

Just read something by JP on Derrida and Marx. God, the man knows NOTHING. It is shameful he is treated as if an intellectual with something to say.

Yes please do share.

While I am glad you are now actually reading / listening I remain worriedo about your interpretation - given you assumed "Get your own house in order" was literally about houses (and then mortgages / banking).

Also - you still have not shared

1. an example of where Marxism works
2. how you would fund house purchase without debt

TheWizardofWas

Just read something by JP on Derrida and Marx. God, the man knows NOTHING

As a university professor, what grade would you give one of your students if the extent of their critique (without referencin exactly what you have read) is to simply brand it as "shameful" and then SHOUT "God, the man knows NOTHING"

Is this what passes as a intellectual debate in our universities today? Shouting?

Francine, unfortunately yes it is.

I worked in Universities for most of my working life until two years ago and what has happened to our universities over the last 15 years is tragic. Universities used to be places where independent and original thought was encouraged and rewarded. Not anymore. Both academics and students are engaged in a spiral of competitive conformism where display of extreme adherence to a proscribed set of nominally left wing PC ideas is the only form of discourse they see as legitimate or worthwhile.

I have never come across a generation as sheeplike and conformist and incapable of original and independent thought as the most recent cohort. The ideas they espouse are extremely authoritarian and oppressive but they view authoritarianism and oppression as legitimate as long as they think the people doing it are in the right. They’re far too blinkered to realise that all authoritarian and oppressive regimes from the Nazis to Communists to the Catholic Church were just like them and also believed that they possessed some sort of absolute truth which justified the oppression of the masses.

Our dear chairman Vice Chancellor used to send out weekly missives telling staff and students how to think and vote. How to be good ‘socialists’. This is a man who draws a million pound per year salary plus £800,000 per year ‘expenses’ whilst enforcing pay cuts for the lowest paid cleaners and porters and reducing their pensions and derisory perks.

Yet despite this being a Russell Group University apparently the students are too dim to see the hypocrisy and lap this sort of crap up.

During my career I’ve seen universities change from places where original thoughts and ideas and genuine diversity of opinion where viewed as the touchstone and ideal that should be strives for to places where brainwashed students compete to demonstrate who conforms most and thinks least. Students and staff know that the best academic results and careers go to those who demonstrate the most willingness to conform and submit.

It’s incredibly sad. I am genuinely ashamed of what our academic world has become.

Francine, unfortunately what Leah says is true. However, no point berating someone for lack of reasoned argument and shouting, this is an online forum not a seminar room.

LeahJack

Thank you for your detailed post. It's what I had suspected. TheWizardOfWas is university professor yet s/he can't spot a metaphor or interpret idiomatic phrases. S/he believes there is some magical formula whereby you can fund house purchase without debt. S/he declines to share the maths of how this might work.

The ideas they espouse are extremely authoritarian and oppressive but they view authoritarianism and oppression as legitimate as long as they think the people doing it are in the right.

So true. Orwell led us to believe that the risk of authoritarian control over independent critical thought and free speech was greater from a fascistic / military right wing.

It is so much more powerful from the "right-on" Marxist / left.

So funny your former millionaire chancellor is a socialist.

I think they will end up killing humanities as an academic discipline. It might be a good think. At least science and engineering require evidence, proof and clarity of thought.

*I think they will end up killing humanities as an academic discipline. It might be a good think. A good thing!? We'll be on the way to ruin if we stop studying them.

Yes thing not think.

But are these topics genuinely being studied - with the encouragement of balanced, objective critical thought and curiosity?

Or are they just a slanging match of what LeahJack called competitive conformism to an ultra-PC left wing agenda?

But are these topics genuinely being studied - with the encouragement of balanced, objective critical thought and curiosity? Sadly not it seems.

JP knows nothing about what he professes to describe. On Derrida he makes multiple mistakes and his mode of making an argument is something I would criticise my 11 year DD for. First he notes that Derrida is the leader of the postmodernists. Wrong on two counts, D is not a leader. It is really not how things work in the humanities. Secondly, JD is not a postmodernist. Long argument, but in short postmodernism is an Anglo-US formation of the 1980s, whose main characteristics really had little to do with JD’s poststructuralism, which was a method of literary analysis. Then JP slides in his weird ‘reasoning’ from postmodernism to Marxism, saying postmodernism and JD are a kind of Marxism. Er no, absolutely not. poMo arose to annihilate Marxism. JD was not a Marxist. It isn’t really sloppy arguing, this is like that‘ like this, is like that. Then, even weirder, JP slides fromthere to ramblings about mass murder in North Korea and elsewhere, as if JD, PoMo and Marxism were responsible for those. All in one idiotic paragraph. Then he slithers off somewhere else. It makes no sense.

Last point raises a question asked of me. Marxism has not ‘worked’ in any state, because it is a critical analytical mode, not a mode of governance. If revolution in the name of liberation has happened anywhere is another question. There have been minor victories but long time struggle has been lost until now. By the way, has capitalism worked in government? Ask the majority of the world that one.
Funding house purchase under communism. Not sure if you know anything about Communism, it doesn’t sound like it Francine. Communism means holding things in common. That means, no, there will not be mortgages under communism, because there will not be property in the manner demanded by Capitalism, as its central rationale.

IS really sloppy arguing. Grrr.

I'm sorry WizardofWas but I am actually finding it very difficult to read what you are writing.

I am not defending my own position by saying this I mean that the way you are structuring your sentances makes your posts very hard to read. I wonder if you are angry because you are frustrated that you are unable to be understood and you are making that a failure of the reader.

I mean that I am literally finding it hard to follow any logic at all in what you are typing so therefore person to person I can not understand you, although I am trying.

I have studied Derrida, deconstruction and semiotics etc and although my education is in Arts I do not think my failing is simply that I am too stupid to "keep up."

For example, you say "First he notes that Derrida is the leader of the postmodernists. Wrong on two counts, D is not a leader. It is really not how things work in the humanities."

Are you saying that the humanities has considered wether there can be such a thing as a leader and has long dispelled with that as an idea, therefore leadership doesn't exist within it as a discipline so Derrida can not be called a leader?

I am genuinely baffled.

I would also add that the tone of your posting reads like you are silently fuming in a way you consider it beneath any of us to possibly understand. It is as if we are guilty of not recognising your position or intellect. Based on your behaviour on this thread, several of us have noticed you've yet to be justifiably worthy of respect or recognition in defense of your position.

• sentences, sorry.

I am not fuming at all. You are really projecting there.
And on leaders. In the Humanities, you would be hard pressed to find someone who agrees with the concept of leaders. So e people get famous, like Derrida. Others knock them down. Who would talk about Derrida as a leader. Leading what? I suppose one might talk about leading thinkers, maybe, but that has a different ring. I think the idea of the leader is something hardwired into JP’s head, because that is the only way he can conceive social relationships. So my point is that humanities scholars do not have leaders. Scout troups have leaders. Governments have ,eaders, and in Germany the leader was called the Fuehrer, so even some governments tend not to talk about leaders.

It makes me sad that someone can be taken so seriously when all their ideas are so shallow and reactionary and not very clever.

As to my status, i dont give a flying fuck what any of you think about me.. I get my ‘validation’ from people I respect. Now why dont you answer my points about JP and his misreadings of JD, for whom I hold no camdle. I am a Marxist, remember and have been forthright in my own criticisms.

Great thoughts Wizard, I’m totally with you on Derrida, he is very misunderstood. In my first academic job I was sneered at for my interest in Derrida.

‘Postmodern relativists’ & ‘liberal elites’ are handy terms to whip people up into a frenzy, terms that unfortunately signify nothing.

I'd never heard of JP until I saw this video. Some of it went over my head, mind, but it was amusing.

It makes me sad that someone can be taken so seriously when all their ideas are so shallow and reactionary and not very clever.

TheWizardofWas
As to my status, i dont give a flying fuck what any of you think about me.. I get my ‘validation’ from people I respect

Now why dont you answer my points about JP and his misreadings of JD, for whom I hold no camdle. I am a Marxist, remember and have been forthright in my own criticisms

Wizard could you please share a link or provide a reference for the specific article mentioning Derrida and Marx that has led you to conclude The man knows nothing (because you think JP has misread).

The reason I ask is you read "Set your own house in order" as literally referring to dwellings (and then took this thread down the path of discussing banking and mortgages).

So you'll admit that it is possible for anyone to misread something. You've done it yourself.

Set your own house in order before criticising the world

Francine you seem obsessed with my literal reading of the quote. Maybe I was deconstructing it, ha ha. Of couse I understand it is a metaphor, but the power of JP lies in his apparent ability to take his instances from the world around him. It is also not a metaphor. To set your own house in order means to deal with your own affairs rather than blaming others, capitalism, patriarchy etc, for your woes. So it is also meant to mean keep your house well, keep your affairs in good order, pay your bills on time, and fuck off and die if you conceive yourself as failed by an entity external to you. What I was doing is called ideology crotique, an old Marxist method.

The Derrida did North Korea stuff is p.306 in 12 Rules for Life.