Jordan Peterson

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huckelberry
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by huckelberry »

honorentheos wrote:
Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:56 am
Kishkumen wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2023 11:02 pm
My guess is that most of us are not his target audience anyway. He is a cultural critic. If he were a Marxist cultural critic, no one here would even know who he is. It is because he dared to oppose publicly the illiberalism of leftists these days, and was kind of a prick about it, that makes him an easy person to object to. A fair number of young people respond positively to his advice, and it may be that he is fairly innocuous in the final analysis. The lefty outrage about him is even dumber than his critics believe him to be.
The challenge here is the issues he is engaged in aren't binary. I don't disagree with him over free speech issues on college campuses or elsewhere in society in a categorical way, nor do I think he lacked an argument when it came to his early positions on the gender pronoun issues. His views on gender roles and social order are incredibly backwards in my opinion. His attempts to assert the relevance of traditional.beliefs, values, and structure? Well. His forward to the 50th anniversary edition of The Gulag Archipelago is really what caught my attention as he framed it as very relevant in a post-Soviet world due to Solzhenitsyn being equally critical of post-modernism. But it was also what left me thinking he might be an intellectual Don Quixote which, for better or worse, remains my impression. I don't use that literary reference casually here. His causes seem akin to the Man of La Mancha seeking to return the world to a time of knightly chivalry and romanticism. Peterson as romantic at war with post-modernism seems fairly accurate.
Honorentheos most everything you observe here makes good sense to me. It strikes me a accurate. Well there is an exception. I do not understand what you are seeing about his views on gender roles and social order as incredible backward.It is well possible he has said things I have not followed in recent years. I remember him being clear that he supported women pursuing whatever career goals they wished. He does note that when they do that not as many of them focus on math and physics as do men. Peterson doubts that that is totally a result of social pressure and expectation so thinks a campaign to make sure physics classes have lots of woment is misguides.. I do not see any way to be sure how correct he is but to watch how it changes in the future.
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Re: Jordan Peterson

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Hi huck,

His arguments are essentially that cultural gender differences are biologically assertive rather than culturally derived. He usually springboard this into an argument that socialism and Marxism are post-modern power seeking ideologies opposed to traditional social orders.
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Re: Jordan Peterson

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Gadianton wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2023 11:40 pm
Well look at it this way, If you're a young right-winger brought up on Fox News, Trump and DeSantis (DeSantis is hardly dumb, by the way; he's much smarter than Trump, he's just a raging opportunist), and you hear Jordan Peterson for the first time, then it must be like being led from Plato's cave, because Peterson does actually discuss ideas and he does have the ability to follow a logical train of thought, it's just all so sophomoric. But if he's the first intellectual you've encountered, I imagine you could really learn something. Nibley was the first real intellectual author I ever read and I'm sure it was similar.

Speaking of Marxism, I watched a debate (for a short time) between Peterson and Slavoj Žižek, who is an unhinged Marxist. They were to debate Marxism vs. Capitalism. The dumbest thing about the debate was thinking the two live enough within the same universe that they could even have a discussion. Peterson obviously has no idea what contemporary Marxism is. I'm not sure I do, to be honest. The smartest thing about the dabate, from wiki:
the event had more tickets scalped than the Toronto Maple Leafs–Boston Bruins playoff on the same day, and tickets sold on eBay for over $300
It was pointless. Peterson's preparation was to read Das Kapital and then explain why he thinks Marxism won't work and Capitalism is better. His insights weren't terrible if he were presenting for a Freshman economics course, or even High School. It's probably the best introduction to economics any student of Prager U. is going to get. But, it was pointless for engaging a premiere postmodernist.

Now, in contrast, I also watched a discussion between Žižek and Kotkin. Žižek seemed pretty damn interested in what Kotkin had to say -- if you wanted to see the practical limits of Marxism, that would be a much better place to start.
I love Slavoj! He is quite a wild man. I don’t have a problem with these public intellectuals. It is nice to have some of these banging around to balance out a world of empty-headed celebrities and journalists. I say let people be hooked by this light fare, and maybe they will end up another Dean Robbers one day.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Jordan Peterson

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honorentheos wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2023 7:28 pm
in my opinion, Peterson ended up on the public stage for being at odds with his university and laws regarding gender pronouns. He put his views out there via YouTube rather than being pushed in to public view, saying something about his personality and intentions. His field likely influenced his views on the role of religion in society, but it's not really clear why he holds such strongly patriarchal beliefs. I suspect that, whatever their initial state, he became more entrenched in them as he debated publicly over gender identity, the role of free speech in society, and as his celebrity increased.

I don't think I've read or heard anything he's ever said that I found to be novel or of personal value. I think it says something more about his audience that they are often males who found a father figure in him who expects them to make their beds every morning and cusses.
Yeah, I can see that. Totally. He is not exactly my cup of tea, but I do appreciate anyone who is willing to call out some of the excesses of speech policing that we see on campuses these days. Grad students get into a grad program, assume that they have been marked out as a super-smart person who knows all kinds of important things, and then they want to beat everyone over the head with the latest fashionable cause. As a professor, I find it kind of tiring. I am there to teach my subject, not to get embroiled in debates about gender and pronouns. Tell me your gender and pronouns, and I will be polite and respectful because I try to be a decent human being, not because of the latest moral panic.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Kishkumen
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Re: Jordan Peterson

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honorentheos wrote:
Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:56 am
The challenge here is the issues he is engaged in aren't binary. I don't disagree with him over free speech issues on college campuses or elsewhere in society in a categorical way, nor do I think he lacked an argument when it came to his early positions on the gender pronoun issues. His views on gender roles and social order are incredibly backwards in my opinion. His attempts to assert the relevance of traditional.beliefs, values, and structure? Well. His forward to the 50th anniversary edition of The Gulag Archipelago is really what caught my attention as he framed it as very relevant in a post-Soviet world due to Solzhenitsyn being equally critical of post-modernism. But it was also what left me thinking he might be an intellectual Don Quixote which, for better or worse, remains my impression. I don't use that literary reference casually here. His causes seem akin to the Man of La Mancha seeking to return the world to a time of knightly chivalry and romanticism. Peterson as romantic at war with post-modernism seems fairly accurate.
As a Don Quixote of sorts in my own atom-sized fishbowl, I have a little sympathy for him. I am a Classicist. If I had my way, every student in the US would have to take at least two years of Latin or Classical Greek, and I make no apologies for that belief. I believe that Western civilization is a valid and convenient way to organize education in the Humanities in the United States. I do not think it is superior to all other civilizations, but, for practical purposes, it is the most useful set of materials to train students in to make them better citizens in our system. All of this stuff is very unpopular to say right now, and the people who shout it down behave like total bullies. I have seen it with my own eyes.

On the gender issue: Not everyone wants to live the new gender orthodoxy. I imagine there are some people who want to be male or female, and who want to live out lives in old-school gender roles. They want to raise kids to share their values. It wasn’t where I ended up in my family, but I don’t think it is a bad thing. There really are people out there, bullies, who like using the latest fashionable cause to abuse other people. They like the power the cause gives them. Just like there are bully apologists and bully ministers. I thought it was pretty courageous of Peterson not to back down when the bullies of the gender cause felt they had the right to shut him down. I want reasoned arguments, not shutting off the microphone. I didn’t like that at the LDS podium, and I really hate it at a university.

Can a person who has had a tough life coming to terms with their gender issues turn around and be a self-righteous bully? Yes.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Alphus and Omegus »

Kishkumen wrote:
Mon Mar 20, 2023 3:39 am
honorentheos wrote:
Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:56 am
The challenge here is the issues he is engaged in aren't binary. I don't disagree with him over free speech issues on college campuses or elsewhere in society in a categorical way, nor do I think he lacked an argument when it came to his early positions on the gender pronoun issues. His views on gender roles and social order are incredibly backwards in my opinion. His attempts to assert the relevance of traditional.beliefs, values, and structure? Well. His forward to the 50th anniversary edition of The Gulag Archipelago is really what caught my attention as he framed it as very relevant in a post-Soviet world due to Solzhenitsyn being equally critical of post-modernism. But it was also what left me thinking he might be an intellectual Don Quixote which, for better or worse, remains my impression. I don't use that literary reference casually here. His causes seem akin to the Man of La Mancha seeking to return the world to a time of knightly chivalry and romanticism. Peterson as romantic at war with post-modernism seems fairly accurate.
As a Don Quixote of sorts in my own atom-sized fishbowl, I have a little sympathy for him. I am a Classicist. If I had my way, every student in the US would have to take at least two years of Latin or Classical Greek, and I make no apologies for that belief. I believe that Western civilization is a valid and convenient way to organize education in the Humanities in the United States. I do not think it is superior to all other civilizations, but, for practical purposes, it is the most useful set of materials to train students in to make them better citizens in our system. All of this stuff is very unpopular to say right now, and the people who shout it down behave like total bullies. I have seen it with my own eyes.


Peterson does not share your enthusiasm for the classics. He's wholesale adopted the false reactionary American view that western civilization is based on the Bible. It's basically his core message nowadays and it's the biggest reason why he's bollocks.
On the gender issue: Not everyone wants to live the new gender orthodoxy. I imagine there are some people who want to be male or female, and who want to live out lives in old-school gender roles. They want to raise kids to share their values. It wasn’t where I ended up in my family, but I don’t think it is a bad thing. There really are people out there, bullies, who like using the latest fashionable cause to abuse other people. They like the power the cause gives them. Just like there are bully apologists and bully ministers. I thought it was pretty courageous of Peterson not to back down when the bullies of the gender cause felt they had the right to shut him down. I want reasoned arguments, not shutting off the microphone. I didn’t like that at the LDS podium, and I really hate it at a university.

Can a person who has had a tough life coming to terms with their gender issues turn around and be a self-righteous bully? Yes.
I think some people go too far in trying to yell at speakers they don't like. But in all honesty, this is a very rare phenomenon. What is far more concerning are the actions of people like Ron DeSantis and dozens of Republican state governments that are trying to criminalize classroom instruction, including in colleges. Public libraries (in addition to school libraries) are having to deal with threats of violence and armed people showing up at meetings. Other towns are defunding libraries rather than risk that the public be allowed to read books the leaders don't like.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/co ... -rcna44026

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-ban-l ... n-library/

These are the real threats to free speech, not some annoying green-haired perpetual students acting like jerks.

And of course, Peterson does not talk about these threats against librarians or criminalizing teaching.
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Re: Jordan Peterson

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My anecdotal experience with people struggling with gender identity issues is that it's difficult to say anything definitive that applies to all.

For example, when our daughter was a freshman in high school she joined a team that required try outs. She was excited to be selected as a freshman, and made friends quickly with the other freshmen on the team she had not known from middle school. Early in the year they held a fundraiser and I offered to help out. When we arrived, my daughter commented I was going to meet Kit (name changed) as if that were going to mean something more than meeting the other members of the team. Kit was another freshman and, as soon as we walked up, she came up to me with her arm around another freshman girl to declare, "I'm Kit, this is ___, and we're lesbians!" I nodded, told he I was our daughter's dad, and let that hang in the air. She gave me a look and asked if it didn't bother me that they were lesbians? I told her it wasn't my business and where was the table I was supposed to help out at? Kit turned out to be her preferred shortening of her given name, Katheryn (name also changed).

Kit had almost no filter, and was as extreme an extrovert as they come. Over the next year, we talked quite often as my wife and I had volunteered to help with the team during events as well as fundraisers. And Kit was always sure to have something to say, usually from an angle to see what button they could push with people.

Kit's parents were extremely born-again religious, and apparently Kit had participated in a few "Witnessing to Mormon" events. So she especially enjoyed bringing up Mormonism or some other subject she thought would fluster me or put me off. It was kind of funny in a way.

I found out later that over that same year Kit had been struggling at home and had strong feelings of not belonging, not being their true selves, and found the advice at home was harming rather than helping. So she turned to the internet and found the sort of "help" one finds there. I don't know the details, but by the start of Sophomore year, Kit had become Lared (name changed here as well for identity protection). Their parents refused to allow the school to refer to them as anything but by their given name, and they went through a rather tumultuous year of exploring who they were.

We ended up having a rather long conversation during this time at my daughter's birthday party. Lared had decided to sit out a game of laser tag the other kids were engaged in, and we chatted about how things were going. They told me more about their parent's feelings and resistance, I offered that it was likely difficult for them to reconcile their religious views with what they, Lared, were going through, so while I supported Lared, I suggested they keep in mind that their parents probably were doing what they felt was the best and therefore from a place of love if not acceptance. So the best I could offer was to keep in mind that theri parents certainly meant well, and if nothing else high school was a short period of time so no matter what happened, in a couple of years they'd be their own adult person. It seemed like we connected well over it.

Senior year we ended up with Lared staying with us for a week when their grandparents were not able to take them in during an episode with their parents. Normally they went to their grandparents so this wasn't the first time they had to leave home for a bit, usually for being kicked out over something said, done, discovered, or whathaveyou.

Lared recently joined our D&D group after moving in with my daughter and her roommates a few months ago after things at his other place became unhealthy. He has been transitioning through hormone therapy and his pronouns are decidedly male. I occasionally mess up. I've known him when he used every single one and them some so it's difficult to not do so. And I feel bad for him. I don't think things were predestined to go this route had things been different in the home, had they found someone other than the internet to confide in early on, had their been more support for figuring life out one step at a time. I think adulthood is just barely starting to settle down for him, too.

I don't know. Kish. I just try to be a person who sees someone else's humanity and do the best with that I can. No answers, not even good questions, really.
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Kishkumen
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Re: Jordan Peterson

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honorentheos wrote:
Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:10 am
I don't know. Kish. I just try to be a person who sees someone else's humanity and do the best with that I can. No answers, not even good questions, really.
Thank you for sharing that, honor. I would like to think that I could and would have done the same, but you may be a little more patient than I am when dealing with kids who are rude. There is a reason I never tried to become a high school teacher. I am not all that patient in dealing with verbally aggressive kids. That's obviously my cross to bear, not the kids'. I agree with the importance of seeing someone else's humanity and doing the best one can. Again, I would like to think I endeavor to do the same, although I am sure I fall short.

What I object to is not the individual person's experience so much as the demand that everyone accept the assertions people make about gender issues. I was musing to myself in retrospect about how my academic peers had a largely "culturally constructed" view of humanity, insisting that biological determinism in any degree was absolutely wrongheaded--I recall my dissertation advisor warning me off of any topics that might suggest otherwise as career killers--and now, on this particular issue, it seems that the position is flipped. Or maybe not. I have a difficult time telling exactly what the position on gender is these days. It feels like it can't be questioned because it is largely determined by what nature has doled out to the individual, but then, once one decides/realizes/chooses they are one thing or another, no one is to question them because the oddly conflicting facts of nature's lot, self-realization, and the inviolable right to choose cannot be gainsaid.

This is not the kind of thing I would ever say to someone who asserts a particular identity to me, inviting me to treat them in accordance with that identity. My default is to do treat people as they ask to be treated. But, to call anyone a "hater" who has questions about the scientific and intellectual foundations of these identities and their ramifications in various areas of society and the family is extreme, to put it mildly. If someone tells me there are 72 genders, I am not rushing out to the store to buy the guide to the 72. I am more likely to wait to see what comes of this after a few years. People who are excessively belligerent with others for their failure to adopt the latest trends in identity categories I will look at with equal measures of sympathy and suspicion.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Jordan Peterson

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Kishkumen wrote:
Mon Mar 20, 2023 3:25 am
honorentheos wrote:
Sun Mar 19, 2023 7:28 pm
in my opinion, Peterson ended up on the public stage for being at odds with his university and laws regarding gender pronouns. He put his views out there via YouTube rather than being pushed in to public view, saying something about his personality and intentions. His field likely influenced his views on the role of religion in society, but it's not really clear why he holds such strongly patriarchal beliefs. I suspect that, whatever their initial state, he became more entrenched in them as he debated publicly over gender identity, the role of free speech in society, and as his celebrity increased.

I don't think I've read or heard anything he's ever said that I found to be novel or of personal value. I think it says something more about his audience that they are often males who found a father figure in him who expects them to make their beds every morning and cusses.
Yeah, I can see that. Totally. He is not exactly my cup of tea, but I do appreciate anyone who is willing to call out some of the excesses of speech policing that we see on campuses these days. Grad students get into a grad program, assume that they have been marked out as a super-smart person who knows all kinds of important things, and then they want to beat everyone over the head with the latest fashionable cause. As a professor, I find it kind of tiring. I am there to teach my subject, not to get embroiled in debates about gender and pronouns. Tell me your gender and pronouns, and I will be polite and respectful because I try to be a decent human being, not because of the latest moral panic.
Kishkumen I think your views here make sense. I think it ok if I find a few things of Peterson admirable and worth thanking him for. I can still disagree seriously with him on other things. In fact I find him a refreshing reminder that we should think about the ideas people present and not just pigeon hole them and praise or disparage them based on party loyalty. I think it is a good reminder to recognize the invitation to praise Peterson for a few things and say he is full of himself and malarky on some others.

Pushing people to think is a positive thing he does. He intentionally make ambiguous and challenging observations to make people react. I suppose he likes people to open themselves up to alternative views but failing that hostile reactions can do.

It is possible he does not know for sure how far right his stance has moved from his socialist beginning. I do not know how conservative he has actually become. Well far enough to make a silly claim about the Pope being in error on something I feel strongly the Pope is most correct about.
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Alphus and Omegus »

huckelberry wrote:
Mon Mar 20, 2023 10:04 pm
Pushing people to think is a positive thing he does. He intentionally make ambiguous and challenging observations to make people react. I suppose he likes people to open themselves up to alternative views but failing that hostile reactions can do.

It is possible he does not know for sure how far right his stance has moved from his socialist beginning. I do not know how conservative he has actually become. Well far enough to make a silly claim about the Pope being in error on something I feel strongly the Pope is most correct about.
He might at some point have tried to help people think, but it seems very apparent since his meat freezer hotel stay that he's gone off the deep end. Just recently, he has obsessed over:

Toilet paper:
https://www.newsweek.com/jordan-peterso ... ny-1783426

A swimsuit model he thought was overweight:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jo ... 81094.html

English fetish porn which he mistook to be a Chinese semen extraction prison:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/c ... _tweeting/

Whatever brains he may have had early in his career seem to be gone by now. This is a good overview on what a joke he has become:

https://archive.is/20230314092436/https ... lage-idiot
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