the alt-right

The left is definitely able to reach out to a ton of disaffected youth these days. See a billion think pieces about how identity politics are ruining academia. Or your local Bernie Sanders rally.

of course it doesn't guarantee quality of life improvements, even materially, never mind mentally or spiritually.

nothing is guaranteed but even the left today concedes that self-help like going to college should be made available to everyone so obv we think that it matters

you can improve your min wage through a union-type action (tho less and less likely in 2018 that such a thing will succeed) but even that has a cap on what you can do. if you aspire to more - like becoming management yourself, or accumulating capital, aka the American dream, collective action is not sufficient.

― Mordy, Friday, 23 March 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Many could take part in collective action, gain confidence through that and gain new skills in organising etc.

i don't really believe you read the last 50 posts bc i've addressed that exact argument

The left is definitely able to reach out to a ton of disaffected youth these days. See a billion think pieces about how identity politics are ruining academia. Or your local Bernie Sanders rally.

Basically what I was alluding to earlier, with more snark.

Different things in different posts clash with in your other posts - its a pretty incoherent worldview you have. xp

If we're asking why the left can't reach the type of ppl who're reached by Peterson's self-help stuff saying it's down to bigotry makes little sense because as mentioned in this thread tons of ppl who fall for it aren't aware of Peterson's personal bigotries at all.

It's also pretty insane to think "think pieces about how identity politics are ruining academia" are a young person thing but that's a different discussion.

even the left today concedes that self-help like going to college should be made available to everyone so obv we think that it matters

admittedly i find myself frequently at odds with what "the left" broadly speaking thinks is worth using or salvaging from the current infrastructure. that might be privileged daydreaming. in terms of this society now i agree.

i do think there's a useful distinction between structuralist critique and leftist critique

Different things in different posts clash with in your other posts - its a pretty incoherent worldview you have. xp

lol ok thumbs up be well bro

It's also pretty insane to think "think pieces about how identity politics are ruining academia" are a young person thing but that's a different discussion.

I think the point is that those pieces are written by old people who are complaining about young people who ARE being reached by the left, as a sign that, yes, the left is reaching disaffected youth.

Edit for grammar as you like

Mordy, Pankaj Mishra has been really good at connecting JPs fascist mysticism to the historical materialist context, and I definitely agree that of course it has to do with the economic crises we've been in for a decade at this point. I just react to the constant search for any and all explanation beyond the bigotry. As if bigotry isn't both a powerful personal force, and in many cases a rational response to the ongoing loss of privilege.

I just think this idea that there must be some idea, some potion, that will turn their hearts to a better way, is wrong. The left can't do that. And I don't consider that pessimistic. Because what we can do, though, is creating coalitions and fight them. But that takes looking the problem in the eye.

otoh aren't you often arguing that those think pieces are overstating their cases all the time? both things can't be true. xp

Ah ok, I misunderstood then, sorry Fred. xposts

If the problem is that they fall for the self-help without knowing about the bigotry, then point out the bigotry, and that should do the trick, no?

Mordy, I just don't think identity politics are ruining academia. I definitely think a lot of students are into identity politics, that was the case when I studied at UCSD, and I have no reason to think it would be different now.

Btw I wasn't suggesting that the left is incapable of reaching disaffected young men (I was primarily thinking of them and no so much of women in this one instance). I'm more curious about why its discourse is so repulsive to the JP crowd. Granted, some of them are no doubt in positions of privilege and hence self-consistent in their egotism, but others could conceivably have gone the other way were it not for [insert answer here]. The latter is what I'm curious about, not least because their ideological adherence to alt-right snake oil is potentially reversible. What is it about the left that fails to speak to that particular subset? (Trying to further clarify my question here.)

i was speaking more to sund4r who i think has made the case before that these think pieces are overstating their cases and most ppl in the academy are not into idpol.

I just react to the constant search for any and all explanation beyond the bigotry. As if bigotry isn't both a powerful personal force, and in many cases a rational response to the ongoing loss of privilege.

hatred of the Other is a constant in human history but i think that if we don't acknowledge what motivates different bigotries you end up with a weird ahistorical almost metaphysical picture of the human condition (i get the impression Coates agrees w/ that fwiw so maybe i shouldn't be surprised). i.e. you have more in common w/ orthodox jews who say that the Holocaust happened bc Eisav soneh et Yaakov (Eisav/Rome hates Yaakov/Israel) than with historians who blame the rapid collapse of the German economy during the Weimer Republic. i'm not anti-metaphysical explanations for bigotry but i don't think they do much in terms of dictating strategy. you think that the conclusion is that we shouldn't waste our time convincing bigots but everyone hates the Other a little bit - no one is free of racism (i thought this was also like a foundational idpol belief???) so we don't really have the luxury of rejecting all bigots.

fwiw I interact with students a lot and some of them definitely take idpol to ludicrous extremes - not at all convinced it's happening at any institutional level tho

theres definitely a subset of people who get off on say believing the exact opposite of everything Lena Dunham says

No one is free of racism isn't to me to idpol is about (its not about any one specific thing to me) - if you are going to be a bigot then you must be rejected. There isn't any place for acting like that in public and it should not be tolerated. xps

no i'm saying that the only way to improve your quality of life in a capitalist society (where the human body is the commodity) is by improving the condition of the commodity. learn a new skill, improve your physical appearance, smooth out the rough bits of your personality

huh? even within your own assumptions here, wouldn't you improve your quality of life by getting that commodity valuated higher? that is, by getting paid more? like by agitating for wage improvements? or demanding other quality-of-life things out of your employer, like health care?

"(tho less and less likely in 2018 that such a thing will succeed) " - er? the fight for 15 comes readily to mind. labor organizing is, if hardly ascendant, certainly active and scrappy and innovative and winning gains in particular workplaces and particular sectors of the economy in ways i don't think it was a decade ago. not to mention active grassroots organizing for things like medicare for all, or even just the huge wave of activity last year to preserve the ACA. these are fights to improve one's quality of life within capitalism. and the thing is that whether they have succeeded yet or not, and as far as self-esteem and sense of control over one's life and so on (the things that self-help gurus presumably step in to provide), i think being involved in these campaigns, having consciousness-raising conversations, realizing it's not just you and you're helping in a a larger fight... this all gives people a sense of meaning, purpose, agency. this is observable i think and not speculative, this is a thing that happens in real life right now.

I literally acknowledged what could motivate bigotry in the two sentences you quoted, Mordy.

ok enough argue w/ fred + xyzzz this is not a good use of my time. you blokes seem like good ppl but this isn't v productive. re casino:

this all gives people a sense of meaning, purpose, agency.

$15/hr is a great idea but it also is not going to make anyone wealthy. it'll help patch the gaps in society but ppl aspire to more ime. (we pay our lowest level labor employees $15/hr and i'm very happy that we do it but i can also see the lives they live and they aren't getting wealthy off that rate.) if you want an upper middle or upper class lifestyle you need more than just a higher minimum wage.

ok i have to actually work ttyl

i think being involved in these campaigns, having consciousness-raising conversations, realizing it's not just you and you're helping in a a larger fight... this all gives people a sense of meaning, purpose, agency

Such calls for collective involvement can be quite off-putting for certain personality types (assuming this notion is at all meaningful here).

That's not incorrect, even on lefty subreddits and stuff I read a lot about people having a hard time making it to meetings, canvassing, etc due to extreme social anxiety

ok enough argue w/ fred + xyzzz this is not a good use of my time.

Not arguing I am just shouting at your posts when I'm bored instead, not a problem.

$15/hr is a great idea but it also is not going to make anyone wealthy.

It will fulfill their spirits though.

Peterson makes his audience feel powerful, whereas if you're a young man, the left critique of racism and sexism isn't necessarily an inspiring moment of self-empowerment. Often it's a chore to hear about, and it takes some rational effort to bracket your own interests and biases. It's super easy to spot the annoying aspects of left discourse and fixate on them instead.

i was speaking more to sund4r who i think has made the case before that these think pieces are overstating their cases and most ppl in the academy are not into idpol.

Yeah, I was mostly explaining Fred's point there. I do think that David Brooks thinkpieces are less persuasive as evidence of anything than the measurable number of young people who turn out for things like Occupy, Sanders, DSA, which I don't think is driven primarily by neo-Marxist (or w/e) domination of academic faculty.

I'm not against those acknowledgements, but they have a tendency to drown out everything else. And I'm sorry, Mordy, but you writing 150 words to explain why I should acknowledge something I've already acknowledged is a pretty good example.

Another: The idea in the basic income thread, that Democrats could run on a federal jobs guarantee everywhere in the US. One quick thought about American history should be enough to realize that that idea is completely absurd, of course it won't be popular in the South without compromises.

Who would want to feel empowered, sounds awful

a factor in this, I think, is the near-constant stream of bland "self-help"-adjacent glurge that gets pumped into schools via health textbooks, posters, etc. this hypothetical perfect high school kid, who does not exist, who sleeps 8 hours a day and thinks out loud to himself when reading and celebrates tolerance in small ways that can be illustrated via clipart. it's well-intentioned -- who doesn't want people to have integrity or compassion? -- but it is also prescriptive and free of actual virtuous substance. in other words, it's bullshit, and kids can smell bullshit, particularly when they're immersed in it 40 hours a week. so they go online looking for people to confirm it is bullshit, and along comes this Internet-famous man to tell them so! plus a thousand other horrifying things, and so their slide continues.

and while said glurge is neither conservative nor progressive -- it's bland, offend-no-one centrism -- it's usually positioned against whatever conservative Republican culture exists in the area. sometimes it's explicitly positioned against it -- think of all the evangelicals complaining about "God being taken out of the schools" -- sometimes it's just implicit. thus, by comparison, it becomes "liberal," and thus the thing to rebel against.

there's also the perennial teenage fixation on the idea of the popular vs. unpopular kids -- the constant references to "Chad," etc. -- and those kids *also* get coded as liberal and people to rebel against. despite that often being the opposite of their political views!

(a fun sidebar to this is that this same process also happens for girls, frequently. just with them, it often results in their YouTube idols or whomever grooming them or worse.)

booming posts from katherine and doc casino

Mordy, I don't quite follow where "become wealthy" arrived in the discussion. Lots of or even most people would like to become wealthy, sure, but is promising "wealth" (as opposed to comfort/stability/control/sense of "improvement") the key criterion for a successful appeal (by a guru or those who would displace said guru)? Obvs there are tons of self-help schticks with wealth as a major theme (e.g. " Rich Dad, Poor Dad") but is Peterson even promising "follow my advice and you'll be rich?" If not, why do alternatives to him have to be about becoming wealthy in order to be relevant here?

probably that goes back to the idea that money gets you girls

(there might be elements of new money envious of old money, or middle class envious of them both, but I think it's more simple than that)

As bananaman says, the American left is and has long been associated with all sorts of individual self-help movements and practices: psychotherapy, yoga, ostensibly natural foods & lifestyles, new age spirituality, etc. These aren't based in a structural view of social inequality (which motivates collective self-help, e.g. organized labor, feminism, and the civil rights movement), but instead seem to derive from a "progressive" interest in finding new solutions to old problems.

Nevertheless, Mordy has a point. Individual responsibility for individual outcomes is a cornerstone of right-wing philosophy in America. All power, all agency, all possibility to effect change is located within the desiring and autonomous individual. Therefore, no matter what a person's situation in life might be (and no matter what structural critiques might apply to that situation), their individual outcomes remain wholly self-determined. Motivational self-help shares that philosophy, so I can see how the two might support and reinforce one another.

This the perverse allure of capitalism, which tells the struggling individual that they are alone in an uncaring world and solely responsible for their own problems (you are damned), but also that they can change things for the better if they only "apply themselves" to the proper levers (salvation lies within reach). Each end of that equation arguably leads to the other.

Deeming all of this "capitalism" is a bit reductive. These are the products of social cultures that intersect with religious traditions.

hey contendo is back, thread finally delivers

If people are getting into Peterson strictly as a self-help guru, and don't even know about his political activism (which seems funny from my perspective but w/e), what exactly is the harm that we are concerned about?

the proud boys are just a group of guys that like to get together to drink beer.

the self help, "get confident stupid!" market has been poisoned by the red pill pua scene for quite some time now which leads directly to pepe memes and "rheeee are you assuming my gender" insults.

Deeming all of this "capitalism" is a bit reductive. These are the products of social cultures that intersect with religious traditions.

― Moo Vaughn, Friday, March 23, 2018 9:10 AM (six minutes ago)

Peterson makes his audience feel powerful, whereas if you're a young man, the left critique of racism and sexism isn't necessarily an inspiring moment of self-empowerment. Often it's a chore to hear about, and it takes some rational effort to bracket your own interests and biases. It's super easy to spot the annoying aspects of left discourse and fixate on them instead.

― jmm, Friday, March 23, 2018 3:19 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think this is a simple summation--I'm not uninterested in the other unpacking going on here but it's good not to lose sight of the basics: people will avoid doing emotional work and avoid feeling at fault and avoid guilt and shame pretty much every time without some powerful motivation to do otherwise. Maybe it would be productive to talk/think about how to cultivate sources for that motivation?

More pod of Nathan J Robinson bagging on JP

oh yeah i listened to that yesterday - robinson's pretty good but matt binder is a pretty terrible interviewer

People are stubborn. It's a lot easier to point to a professor "well actually"-ing everyone rather than doing actual work to change the way you think about using pronouns.

xxp

give every disaffected youth a copy of the new Andrew W.K. album. not only does it kick ass but he's 10x the philosopher that Jordan Peterson is

the only think i REALLY hate about him is that he always ruins jim jarmusch movies but thats jim's fault