Jordan Peterson

[Perimental]

dl-tube.com/watch?v=UFwfJVv9P34#.Wvvtj8Hnqjk.link

Thoughts on this man......

Do you consider yourself to be in a community in Bashar al-Assad?

Should you be held responsible if his actions cause some people to draw conclusions about the behaviour of men?

I can assure you that I do not consider myself to be in a community with Nadine Dorries.

Quite right - nobody should have a social identity imposed upon them (and Peterson is against Identity Politics). And if someone presents themself as speaking on behalf of you - including you in a community you do not want to be considered as part of because you're female / Black / Muslim / White / Whatever, then the most effective voice in dismantling that is your own. When the Nation of Islam says they represent Black people, I can legitimately criticize that. But it's not half as effective as a bunch of Black people saying the same thing. Just as Jordan Peterson is saying here that it's more effective for women to criticize people who try to present things as on behalf of women than for him to do so. And I think that's self-evident. He's also making the point that men have difficulty dealing with women who depart from civil discourse. He seems to believe that women are better able to deal with women who do this than men, therefore.

Should you be held responsible if his actions cause some people to draw conclusions about the behaviour of men?

No. And if someone says "Men are against this", I will speak out as a man to say you don't represent me. Because that is effective.

So it's very interesting to observe where people draw those boundaries of civil discourse.

The fine details of where that happens (calling someone a Nazi, lying about what they said, no-platforming someone) can be debated, but we can all accept that it's possible to depart from civil discourse.

Not RTFT but I am obliged to paste a link to this piece on Jordan Peterson's thinking on every thread on him

www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve

It begins:
If you want to appear very profound and convince people to take you seriously, but have nothing of value to say, there is a tried and tested method. First, take some extremely obvious platitude or truism. Make sure it actually does contain some insight, though it can be rather vague. Something like “if you’re too conciliatory, you will sometimes get taken advantage of” or “many moral values are similar across human societies.” Then, try to restate your platitude using as many words as possible, as unintelligibly as possible, while never repeating yourself exactly. Use highly technical language drawn from many different academic disciplines, so that no one person will ever have adequate training to fully evaluate your work. Construct elaborate theories with many parts. Draw diagrams. Use italics liberally to indicate that you are using words in a highly specific and idiosyncratic sense...

Anlaf That's one Hell of a hit-piece. The guy is a professor of clinical psychology. One would expect him to be precise about his words and offer supporting context. Especially when every single little thing he says gets pulled apart (citation: this thread).

Far from offering simple platitudes, he provides extensive research to support the things he says. Dare I ask for examples of things he said that he shouldn't have said or which he said in an overly-intellectual fashion? Because I find him unusually plain speaking. In fact, one of the things he's known for is his direct manner of making his points.

That article is a baseless attack. It doesn't match up with him at all. It says "he has nothing of value to say". Jordan Peterson has done a huge amount in highlighting the over-reach of trans activism, he has lectured in psychology for years and received overwhelmingly positive responses from his students, he has crafted psychological self-help programs that have benefited thousands, he has talked on some very interesting subjects in mainstream news (Cathy Newman interview is one of many). He has hundreds of hours of interesting lectures you can watch on YouTube on psychology, myth and religion. You can tell what you posted is a hit piece because it has baseless attacks in it like this.

Anlaf

Up front - I am a fan of jp but I thought I would read your article in the spirit of balance

I think the irony is that it rambles more than the man it critiques! I have read 12 rules - the messages it contains are indeed quite simple but in some ways that’s the whole point - in complex and technical societies folk are losing their way and forgetting some basic truths about their lives

I see him as the antidote to an increasingly angry society in which minority voices seem to have a disproportionate say.

That piece I linked has many direct quotes- including a long one at the end that you will receive a prize (no prize) for reading to the end of.

Here is the first quote from that piece- direct from the JP's writing.

Procedural knowledge, generated in the course of heroic behavior, is not organized and integrated within the group and the individual as a consequence of simple accumulation. Procedure “a,” appropriate in situation one, and procedure “b,” appropriate in situation two, may clash in mutual violent opposition in situation three. Under such circumstances intrapsychic or interpersonal conflict necessarily emerges. When such antagonism arises, moral revaluation becomes necessary. As a consequence of such revaluation, behavioral options are brutally rank-ordered, or, less frequently, entire moral systems are devastated, reorganized and replaced. This organization and reorganization occurs as a consequence of “war,” in its concrete, abstract, intrapsychic, and interpersonal variants. In the most basic case, an individual is rendered subject to an intolerable conflict, as a consequence of the perceived (affective) incompatibility of two or more apprehended outcomes of a given behavioral procedure. In the purely intrapsychic sphere, such conflict often emerges when attainment of what is desired presently necessarily interferes with attainment of what is desired (or avoidance of what is feared) in the future. Permanent satisfactory resolution of such conflict (between temptation and “moral purity,” for example) requires the construction of an abstract moral system, powerful enough to allow what an occurrence signifies for the future to govern reaction to what it signifies now. Even that construction, however, is necessarily incomplete when considered only as an “intrapsychic” phenomena. The individual, once capable of coherently integrating competing motivational demands in the private sphere, nonetheless remains destined for conflict with the other, in the course of the inevitable transformations of personal experience. This means that the person who has come to terms with him- or herself—at least in principle—is still subject to the affective dysregulation inevitably produced by interpersonal interaction. It is also the case that such subjugation is actually indicative of insufficient “intrapsychic” organization, as many basic “needs” can only be satisfied through the cooperation of others.

It's not a hit piece btw, it properly discusses his ideas (in as far as it is possible to make sense of them), and the impact his ideas have on his followers.

I have also not enjoyed reading anything so much in some time.

Enjoy!

Anlaf

I suggest you read 12 rules and make your own mind up - it is very accessible (probably explaining in part it’s popularity)

The man has decades of back history in academia - if you want to try and find inpenitrable passages with which to batter him I suspect you won’t need to look far!

But - 12 rules is largely very clear and contains some very interesting stuff about finding value in life

And it's worth saying- the impact Jordan's ideas have on his followers is (I think) the most interesting part of this. Perhaps the most frightening part. It reminds me a great deal of people I was exposed to in my youth - self-described preachers, healers, soul therapists etc. Basically small-time cult leaders- and wow were they incoherent.

Here's more from that long Current Affairs piece- the italics are Peterson and the bold the piece:

The multiplicity of possible interpretations is very important. It makes it almost impossible to beat Peterson in an argument, because every time one attempts to force him to defend a proposition, he can insist he means something else. For example, he sees the world as fundamentally divided between the forces of “chaos” and the forces of “order,” and explains the difference:

[Chaos is] what extends, eternally and without limit, beyond the boundaries of all states, all ideas, and all disciplines… It’s the foreigner, the stranger, the member of another gang, the rustle in the bushes… the hidden anger of your mother… Chaos is symbolically associated with the feminine… Order, by contrast, is explored territory. That’s the hundreds-of-millions-of-years-old hierarchy of place, position, and authority. That’s the structure of society. It’s the structure provided by biology, too…It’s the flag of the nation… It’s the greatness of tradition, the rows of desks in the school classroom, the trains that leave on time… In the domain of order, things behave as God intended.

It’s very easy to hear the echoes of authoritarianism, even fascism, in this: strong men create order, which is what God intends, and the social structure is preserved by deference to authority, tradition, hierarchy, flags. (Heck, he even talks about the trains running on time!) But the moment one tries to critique this, to talk about the dangers of adhering to flags and traditions for their own sake, Peterson will angrily insist that you have misunderstood his theory: order is symbiotic with chaos, not superior to it! (“Order is not enough.”) The feminine is necessary as well, because chaos is associated with “possibility itself, the source of ideas, the mysterious realm of gestation and birth.” If you try to suggest that he has justified patriarchy, he will tell you that when he refers to the “symbolically masculine” he does not mean “men.” But it’s usually unclear what he does mean, and any attempt to figure it out will be met with a barrage of yet more jargon.

More in here: www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve

Anlaf - you seem to have an axe to grind

Have you actually read his book?

there's a (hit) piece on Peterson in the NYT

www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html

Glad you found it helpful heydug but I've read enough of 12 Rules to want to sling it out the nearest window. It reminded me of that awful tract The Celestine Prophecy, gifted to me as a youth.

More from Nathan J Robinson in Current Affairs:

The inflating of the obvious into the awe-inspiring is part of why Peterson can operate so successfully in the “self-help” genre. He can give people the most elementary fatherly life-advice (clean your room, stand up straight) while making it sound like Wisdom. Consider this summary of principles from the end of 12 Rules for Life:

What shall I do to strengthen my spirit? Do not tell lies, or do what you despise.

What shall I do to ennoble my body? Use it only in the service of my soul.

What shall I do with the most difficult of questions? Consider them the gateway to the path of life.

What shall I do with the poor man’s plight? Strive through right example to lift his broken heart.

What shall I do with when the great crowd beckons? Stand tall and utter my broken truths.

These are pompous, biblical ways of saying: tell the truth, be true to yourself, see challenges as opportunities, set a good example, and, uh, give confident and long-winded lectures to your adoring crowd of fans.

Anlaf - you keep quoting and pasting reams of this (itself poorly composed) article...

what’s your view having (tried) to read his book? What is it -his style aside - YOU disagree with?

Anlaf - you seem to have an axe to grind

In the style of Our Great Prophet Jordan B Peterson, Anlaf's Rules:

Which axe shall I grind? That which smacks of the charlatan.

Shall I also grind an adze? Grind hardest that which sounds like women are quelle surprise the subhumans in this new charlatanism

What even is an adze? Stone age cutting tool still in use today, apparently

My own summing up of 12 rules is this:

Change in human society is happening faster and faster. But our underpinning biology and societal structures have taken millions of years to develop and are ‘hard wired’. To try and align ‘new’ notions (for example, absolute equality) against such long lead development isn’t wrong per se, but needs to be taken in its proper context

For me this goes back to the left wing of politics seeing the world as they think it should be - not as it actually is

What shall I do with the poor man’s plight? Strive through right example to lift his broken heart.

Not work to dismantle the structural inequalities within our society so that some people aren’t confined to poverty within a system that stacks some people’s cards much higher than others?

Not help the poor practically and use your platform to fight for the voiceless?

Just show a good example and they’ll help themselves.
Great.
I can see why that advise is popular.

Anlaf - do you have anything to add that isn’t just a cut and paste...

Anything!!?

Teacup

On you point about unequal structures in society - A quote from Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

It doesn’t have to be one or the other though does it. We can help the poor and work at dismantling structural inequality within a capatalist society.
Showing an example isn’t much help at all to someone who doesn’t have access to the means to help themselves.

Teacup

I would respectfully disagree that inequality can be completely eliminated.

Give two different people ten pounds and you will get two different outcomes. One person might waste the cash. Another might grow the cash by using it to start a business

At what point does government have a right to step in and hit reset on that process? Won’t that just reinforce that on the one hand wasting opportunity has no consequence while on the other hand ambition will be penalised by the government, so why try?

Yes, the problem with JP so far (not as immersed as some around here; ~2/3 way through the book and watched a couple of videos) for me is his lack of recognition of structural inequalities. I profoundly disagree with him about that.

I've never read any Peterson, but I have noticed that whenever he is brought up on here there always seems to be a rush of people to defend him, a lot of whom seem unwilling to brook any criticism of him or his ideas. It does all seem a bit cult-like.

Flowers - see my point above - can you give me an example of such a structural inequality?

Genuinely interested - not baiting!

When I was in 16 and my mother was sectioned and I had to move out of the family home, it wasn’t the example of other people that got me out of poverty. It was the fact that the government thought that I should be able to access education until I was 18 so I could get income support to finish my a levels. It was practical help that enabled me to finish my a levels, get into one of the best institutions in the world for what I studied and start up a business when I graduated (I have pairs back in tax far more than I got in income support).
I clawed my way out of poverty and it was really hard work but I 100% wouldn’t have been able to do that without the help from the state and practical help from kind people (my landlord let me build up huge arrears for example as my housing benefit didn’t cover the full rent, which I paid back when I got my first student loan).

Investing in people practically is GOOD For society. If I hadn’t been able to do my a levels I’d still be in the poverty trap now, I have no doubt about it.