That was hard to watch at times.
Also that Dyson dude is funny but the angry white dude stuff was really unnecessary.
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Jordan Peterson - The "Intellectual" We Deserve
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That was hard to watch at times.
Also that Dyson dude is funny but the angry white dude stuff was really unnecessary.
This is just him going, as expected, lol I didn't mean actual enforced monogamy.
But the US, and most western countries in general, already have a form of socially enforced monogamy. He should be clarifying what exactly he wants society to do to fix the issue from his viewpoint. But instead he's just playing semantics games.
I think when he says enforced monogamy - he means that he wants society to encourage monogamy because it's not necessarily intrinsic to the human condition - ie, we aren't like some animals who are instinctively and almost inescapably bound by their innate desire for monogamy (that's not to say that there aren't exceptions to this, just that humans are not on the same category of like some very monogamous foxes or birds).
His position is that the reason why religious texts and non-religious social and political patterns of 'social coercion' let's call it, seem to consistently pop up across the world and through human history (ie, monogamous marriage) - is that it was in response to a problem that is manifest in the increasing violence of the incel movement - that sexual competition drives young men to violence, and the increasing liberation of femme/female sexuality leads to dynamics that that should be having us ask ourselves 'is there something here in this "enforced monogamy" thing'.
That being said, I utterly disagree with the idea that we SHOULD be ramping up our enforced monogamy language. Let's put aside my personal opinion on monogamy, I think fundamentally it's untenable and an impossible solution to this problem. This de-emphasis on monogamy isn't a result of of a concerted attack on monogamy itself, but a side effect of the ever increasing liberty we apply to men, women and all people - to the extent in which they can identify in whatever sexual/gendered/social dynamics and relationships that they see fit. We don't live in the world where 1) the value of monogamy (let's pretend for the sake of argument those are decreased war, disease, and whatever else) are outweighing the value of those individual freedoms because we have MANY other tools and systems in place to protect us from violent and angry young men and 2) it's not a real solution - a real solution has us addressing this human condition fundamentally in a way to de-emphasis it's power over us, not kotowing to it.
Let's talk about how one of those papers has never been cited by any other research paper and had fewer than 100 views. Like fuck off Peterson had read that before he made those statements lol
The other clumsily links together a bunch of other theoretical papers. They haven't really accounted for many variables other than married or not married. Or perhaps married women are less likely to report crimes to begin with
https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...no-getting-married-doesnt-make-a-woman-safer/
The number of marriages in the US have stayed around the 60 million mark for over a decade now, despite rising population levels. Divorce levels have decreased dramatically in the past few decades. Yet at the same time we've seen crime decrease dramatically.
The other clumsily links together a bunch of other theoretical papers. They haven't really accounted for many variables other than married or not married. Or perhaps married women are less likely to report crimes to begin with
https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...no-getting-married-doesnt-make-a-woman-safer/
The number of marriages in the US have stayed around the 60 million mark for over a decade now, despite rising population levels. Divorce levels have decreased dramatically in the past few decades. Yet at the same time we've seen crime decrease dramatically.
Seeing folks I know saying that those who disagree with Peterson are attacking a strawman, despite stuff like the Current Affairs piece, the ContraPoints video, the Dillahunty discussion, the NYTimes literally just repeating his exact words in writing...
How are people THIS delusional about this guy? How do you break the glass so they can see that the criticisms are legitimate and not in "bad faith" at all?
How are people THIS delusional about this guy? How do you break the glass so they can see that the criticisms are legitimate and not in "bad faith" at all?
I think the challenge is that some people DO argue against strawmen when it comes to Peterson, so now this is a perception that's hard to shake.
I think if it's people you feel like you can really talk to this about, try and understand what it is that appeals about JP to them, and discuss those points in a way that doesn't attack his character, but really just highlights the lack of originality in his social ideas. Of course, maybe even keeping an open mind - I think it helps to empasize ideas you like vs dislike and not directly associate it with the character of him, that puts people's backs up I think. Just stuff like 'hey I think it's great when he talks about taking control of your life, I even like his x or y ideas, but I think his adherence to some traditional social structures is misguided and short sighted for these reasons'.
I find doing it that way reframes the discussion in a way that makes it easier for people to be critical of his ideas.
It's a cult, they usually have to come to self-realization to properly leave it.
I totally get his meaning, it's just that monogamy isn't the issue. The issue is that women have more liberty in who and when they want to marry which is very different from polygyny, a system in which a single man may have multiple wives (monogamy was enforced only for women during that time). A minority of men aren't monopolizing women, especially now that women can divorce and then remarry. Enforcing monogamy is a solution the comes from the direction of polygyny, dropping the number of wives a man can have from many to one.
In our current society, men typically do not have multiple wives at the same time. Same with women. A dwindling sexual market isn't being caused by the monopolization of women (anyone else feel gross commodifying women like this. Goddamn you, Sexual Marxist Jordan Peterson!) So I don't think monogamy as he puts it is the correct solution and everyone can see that. There is a general stigma about cheating and I believe that monogamy is the ideal goal even if people cheat or whatever. Monogamy is already enforced culturally. So when Peterson says that the solution is "enforced monogamy" well, we already see that monogamous relationships are enforced through social stigmas surrounding cheating and the like, so we cannot help but equate enforced monogamy to giving every man a woman.
Basically this:
Just saying "enforced monogamy" without clarification is just going to make us think the wrong thing, but then again, Jordan Peterson uses P R E C I S E S P E E C H
I think I'm in general agreement, and this is something I've seen from him pretty frequently - as much as he can sometimes be clear, he's so often saying something that forces you down a path of clarification only to finally end up in a place where you're like 'oh that's what you mean?' - leaving you with this unsatisfied feeling.
Like a side quest in a video game that you do a lot of work for just a weak health potion
He thinks it's necessary to reduce violence. But marriage rates are down and violent crime rates are also down, so who knows what the hell he's on about.
This is all bullshit and you have no idea what women go through. They do not have more liberty in any way then men.
You misunderstand what he said, which is that women have more liberty now compared to before. Not compared to men.
I get that this is just a jab at how inconsistent his ideas are, but no, unless you're content with erasing existing Marxist analysis of gender and sexuality and reducing Marxism to some variant of distributism his comments on "enforced monogamy" are not applying Marxism to relationships. Similarly, his claims about truth being whatever is most successful aren't postmodernist, because Peterson views power as constituting truth itself and not our conceptions of it.
People need a "burden of being" in Peterson's eyes.
Also, nobody goes to bed in the Americas starving.
"Intellectual powerhouse" at work, everyone.
Exactly! If reducing crime and violence is the goal, free education, better paid teachers, comprehensive welfare, universal healcare would all help more than socially pressuring women to marry undesirable men more than it already does. Or forcing, if you take him at his word.
I think I need to lie down. The framing of the "incel" issue as an economic supply problem instead of a social conditioning one is just utterly insane to me. I am a 27 year old man who has never been in a romantic relationship. I have social anxiety, but I am otherwise healthy. Not once in my life have I felt like my lack of a romantic partner has led to a heightened state of aggression or anger. I am not in some state of hormonal madness as a result of my virginity. I would like to meet someone someday, but the fact that I haven't met him or her yet isn't driving me fucking insane. Am I really such an anomaly? Should I be throwing my shit at the walls like a baboon in constant distress over my lot in life? Is that what Peterson thinks monogamy is about, to prevent the males from transforming into ravenous zombies, and not because it presents some mutual emotional satisfaction?
The way I see it, Peterson's only feeding into the culture of entitlement these young men have been indoctrinated into by trying to cast their emotional distress as a natural consequence of virginity. He fails to examine the premise that a virgin male MUST be more violent and disturbed, and completely neglects looking at the social pressures and learned behaviors that contribute to the anxiety young men face for not achieving the masculine ideal.
These people are being motivated to violence by the very same manifold social pressures Peterson wants to exacerbate! These men think they deserve perfect, obedient waifus at their beck and call because society is telling them they do! They believe that a life without a lifelong, monogamous relationship isn't one worth living because THAT'S WHAT THEY'VE BEEN CONDITIONED TO BELIEVE.
This new argument is predicated on the notion that the feelings and motivations of "incels" are true and inevitable, and frankly I find that idea PERSONALLY offensively because it's implicitly trying to push people like me into the pattern of thinking that I AM being oppressed and that I AM entitled to a woman's life. I doubt he's aware he's doing this, much like he's not aware of most of the implications of the things he says, but it nonetheless makes me extremely frustrated, especially considering his audience undoubtedly intersects extensively with these incels.
Goddamn I need a nap.
This was really good, thanks for sharing. Michelle Goldberg is a dimwit.
Yeah, this is massively sad. I haven't watched the debate and know Fry is coming at free speech from the other end of the bat but it does feel tone deaf. Still, while it's clear that 'free speech' has been turned into a dog whistle for right wing cultists I do think it's really, really, really, really important that they not be allowed to take possession of the idea. Point out what they're really doing when they bring up 'free speech' (ie. shutting down criticisms of their own ideas), don't fall for the trap and waste time talking about how there are sensible limitations to free speech that we all embrace because they'll just see that as a dog whistle too - attack, attack, attack.
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Maybe because despite the legit criticisms, his book is basically self-help and apparently it's working for some people. Most people won't require that he be perfect, as long as he has a few helpful ideas.
A) None of the salvageable ideas are original - most of them are banal or obvious
B) In response to the bolded: is it? The image of Peterson devotees is that they're dysfunctional, social incompetent manchildren blaming everyone else for their own problems.
a) Doesn't matter, it's the self-help field. It's an industry where new ideas are rare and most of them just repackage old ideas. Somehow hundreds of new books come out every year and they all sound familiar. There always has to be a new hook to keep people coming back and trying again.
b) "the image?" whose image? yours?
I would be scared if i was a woman, and aware the only reason my husband isn't an insane animal, beating other women or killing men is because of bed stuff D:
It's very common for these people to be characterised as young, white 4chan/Sargon youtube comments-types, whether the characterisation is fair or not. We've had a few of them in here, talking about how they don't agree with JP on everything but they like his ideas on *insert advice so basic it's almost not worth writing down*. Then they proceed to defend all the ideas they say they disown while also saying he's been misunderstood for pages and pages.
Regarding a): it's obviously not the harmless shit people have a problem with, it's the smuggling of horrible shit in via bland ideas you could get from anywhere.
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I don't what a 4chan/Sargon youtube comments-type is but it sounds like you're about JP fanboys. Every e-celeb out there has its fanboys but don't you think they are in the minority considering how mainstream he has become? My point is, some people know to just take the good ideas and discard the bad ones. Unless you are saying that some of his worse ideas might seep in subliminally? What "horrible shit" are you talking about?
As a huge fan of Stephen Fry, seeing him on the same side as Jordan Peterson in any capacity disappoints me a great deal.
There are no "good" ideas. There's boiler plate shit you can get anywhere and then there's basically masturbatory fiction catering to culturally western, straight, white men.
Peterson has nothing of value to say to anyone who isn't a straight white man looking to have their ego stroked. That's the problem here. While it might "work" for some it isn't about the horrible shit seeping in, they're there because the horrible shit is what resonated with them and some scant amount use the boilerplate shit too, in theory, if there's anyone his shit has actually worked for in a constructive way.
Self-help is, as you said earlier, repackaging of all the same ideas with some kind of new hook attached. Peterson's hook is the argument of cultural superiority inherent within western culture, a culture that has been dominated and shaped almost exclusively by and for single white men. His big rallying cry comes when that demographic is feeling their first slight decrease in priority.
Sadly, it isn't even real. The western world still caters just about as much to the straight, white male as it ever has, but because the others are simply asking to not be overtly persecuted and the white male power fantasy has (obviously) created massive wealth inequality, the straight white men at the bottom feel oppressed and are unwilling to acknowledge the real source of their failure - being trapped in a rigged system where success is increasingly rare for all parties so that the successful can have a more grandiose experience at the top.
so that masturbatory fiction catering to culturally western, straight, white men is the horrible shit? what fiction are you talking about?
And are you saying that most of the people who read his book and left reviews are the fanboys who mostly just care about his refusal to use gender pronouns and that sort of thing? Where did you get the numbers from?
It isn't really subliminal at all though. Peterson's message is pretty stark, and it's not a coincidence that his audience is almost exclusively young white men. The "some people" who know to separate the good and bad ideas don't follow Peterson's lectures. As you said, the self-help field is crowded and there's plenty of speakers who don't go on sexist tirades. The people who follow Peterson do so because they agree with his terrible opinions, but also know it's not always socially acceptable to just outright say so.
Nah, it's just some airhead from a newspaper failing to pay attention to what hes saying and so they hyper reduce everything to a hot take.
Unless you want to start a double conspiracy. You in? I'm in. Seize the means of cleaning your room!
Do you think it was his intention to get the most extremely mysoginistic people on his side? I don't see how they are helping him. They make him look like a crazy eceleb with a cult following like alex jones or stefan molyneaux. I don't think he wants that. I thought he was trying to be really moderate and his movement got hijacked by extremists. Unless I missed some of his more extreme opinions. I have been trying to get people to tell me exactly what this really horrible shit is that he is saying.
I mean you're posting in a 69-page thread about his opinions. Feel free to click on any page at random and read some of them.
He got famous by lying about a bill that would add transgender people to the list of groups protected against discrimination, arguing that it would get people thrown in jail for misgendering someone. Maybe that's not what he expected the catalyst to be that would launch him onto an international platform, but he's sure as hell been embracing it since then.
I've been looking and haven't seen anything too horrific. I've seen a lot of posts where people say "he basically does this..." without a specific quote. The reason I want to know is what are you afraid is going to happen if more people hear this "really horrible shit."
Where did you get the numbers from that his "self help" angle has worked for anyone who isn't looking for a straight white male power fantasy?
You words:
The only unique hooks to any of Peterson's rhetoric is in the service of western cultural norms of the recent past and aggrandizement of western culture from that same time period. That is directly tied into a straight white male superiority angle as it celebrates a culture dominated by and in service to straight white men.
His gender pronoun argument is the tip of the iceberg. The recent quote in the NYT about enforced monogamy is Peterson letting the message fly a touch too close to the sun, and now he's trying to walk it back. It ultimately comes back to his view that western world culture is the peak of human civilization and we should, at least based on all his suggestions, continue to promote and protect it above all else. That the culture is directly built around preferential treatment of straight white men might just be a coincidence for him, I can't read his innermost thoughts, but the correlation of Peterson fans with thinly veiled white male supremacy worldviews sure does overlap an awful lot.
See the above. Peterson and his supporters sell him as an enlightened voice but in reality he's giving us all the same neo-con talking points of the past 50 years. He argues against the acceptance of ideas outside of free market capitalism as even being viable. He attacks and denigrates any cultural movement away from the Judaeo-Christian "moral" norm. He then blankets it all in the same old libertarian trope of individual responsibility and personal freedom.
i.e. he's a hardcore bootstraps, small government guy who suddenly does a jackboot heel turn the minute there is a cultural trend that isn't biased in favor of the white male prerogative (women's sexual liberty most recently).
Unrelated to the above, I wish data was available on the crossover rate for Bill Maher consumers becoming Sam Harris consumers becoming Jordan Peterson consumers. They all bait the hook with that radical Islam shit. Maher claims to be a liberal while really being an I got mine libertarian who wants less pangs of guilt from social inequality. Harris is a pseudo-intellectual who is basically the highest evolved form of "just asking questions", which is the way those benefiting from inequality try to "think through" these feelings of guilt without it costing them anything tangible (like money). Peterson is the "just asking questions" rhetoric turned around into overt white mansplaining all the world's problems away. I'm guessing the bottom of that slide lands one firmly on either one of a host of 4chan forums or R/The_Donald, looking for a good sale on tiki torches.
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Well when you listen to the other side's speeches you'll understand why lol.
If he's a neocon then I don't think you have anything to worry about because neocon ideas haven't been popular in this country for a long time. Even trump didn't rely on neocon ideas.
So what are you afraid he is leading to? I thought he was just trying to get young guys to shape up and get a life. But I was going by the reviews on amazon and such. maybe his fans are mostly internet extremist types. but we don't know the numbers right?
Oh, like saying forced monogamy that will prevent young men from shooting up schools
Saying men have a 50% higher chance at failure in life because apparently women have had complete agency over their bodies and have never been relegated to second class citizens. All that which directly ties a man's masculentity and self worth into sexual conquest, which totally has nothing to do with young angry men going around shooting up schools or ramming their cars into sidewalks
Calling women who wear makeup at the workplace hypocrites if they ever complain about sexual harassment, because wearing makeup is apparently asking for it
Calling the children's movie Frozen a piece of feminist propaganda because women don't need to he religagted to damsel in distress archetypes
Want me to go on? Or is that within the scope of "not really horrific"
You should read what I wrote again.
Why are you going by Amazon reviews?
Genghis Khan had so much sex that something like half the people born after his death and a quarter of those born before his birth are descended from him and by all accounts he was a very chill guy.
Whatever his evolutionary justification for encouraging wider monogamy, the genie came out that particular bottle in the 60 and it's never going back in.
There have been plenty of bandwagon jumping, critically immature, knee-jerk reactions to this guy's world view. I agree with some of it (grow a backbone and take responsibility for your life, extremism is dangerous on all sides and should be called out) but wading into the incel "debate" was always a strange cross to die on.
He's basically the anti-millenial, but his biggest audience is millennials, as are his biggest haters. It's interest to watch it develop.
There have been plenty of bandwagon jumping, critically immature, knee-jerk reactions to this guy's world view. I agree with some of it (grow a backbone and take responsibility for your life, extremism is dangerous on all sides and should be called out) but wading into the incel "debate" was always a strange cross to die on.
He's basically the anti-millenial, but his biggest audience is millennials, as are his biggest haters. It's interest to watch it develop.
If it makes you feel any better, his point of view was so different to JP's that he actually mentioned it and then JP shook his head disapprovingly, lol.
The whole thing was a mess. Goldberg probably did the best although she failed to make any truly powerful points to match her oratorial limelight-stealing partner, Dyson was fine until he got JP to fill his diaper over being called an angry white man and turned the crowd on him, JP was just falling back on his diatribes about postmodern neomarxism and Fry was both somehow adhering the most to the topic but also derailing it the hardest by being as generic and unspecific as humanly possible.
Personally, I'd say it's because people largely don't care or don't even really know who he is and when they do hear about him it's from people who are strongly in opposition to him. SOME of that opposition is based on strawmen or misrepresentations or outright lies and some of it is based on truth. Being unable to separate the good stuff from the bad stuff just leaves people either shrugging and choosing to ignore it all OR puts them on Peterson's side.
Especially when Peterson supporters can hold up the bad stuff and say "see they are lying about him". Most normal folks will just say "yeah, they did lie, that's dumb" and then not think about JP again that day, or that week, or until the next time he is brought up. That's a win for Peterson.
Like even if ContraPoints completely demolishes him? Who would really care? Peterson has 1.4 million subscribers on Youtube and Contrapoints has around 115 thousand. Compare to the disastrous Cathy Newman interview which has 9.7 million views.
For the longest time, Jordan Peterson was just "a guy I've heard about". I've never read one of his books. Have seen him here and there on the odd Youtube clip but mostly recently he's just someone that people on ResetEra like to give out about.
Oftentimes what I find is that people will make claims about him that turn out to just be not true. So it's kind of an annoyance.
I don't care about or like this guy but I also don't like being lied to. I really really f*cking hate being lied to.
ResetEra has less than 40,000 members but still when a poster posts stuff about someone that isn't entirely true and expects then entire forum to just believe it? It's insulting honestly. Like they think I'm too stupid to look stuff up and come to my own conclusions? Or they know I'd be too scared to speak up?
The Cathy Newman interview represents that. A lazy interviewer who thought they could demolish him publicly but was relying on the audience being too passive or too stupid to see what she was doing. Instead he completely owned her. In front of millions. That's a big win for him.
The Contrapoints video represents the sensible approach. Show where there are actual real problems and flaws in his ideology. Show where he is wrong. It's not really sensationalist and it can be taken at face value and you can walk away understanding that Peterson isn't THAT great. That's a loss for him.
Unfortunately it's a Peterson win broadcast to 9.7 million viewers vs Peterson losses (Contrapoints video and Dillahunty discussion) broadcast to less than 1 million total.
Now look back through the thread and ask how many posters are doing a Cathy Newman and how many are doing a Contrapoints. I say we've got too many Cathy Newmans and not enough Contrapoints.
Scale that up to audiences of millions and you can see the problem. The people who are lying about him or telling half truths or just getting outright hysterical are making the most noise and so a large number of neutral observers are siding with Peterson based on the fact that they don't like being lied to.
Every time someone says something like this, I wonder what extremism needs to be called out on the left. He seems to be more concerned by ideas from the left than he is about ideas from the right.
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