the alt-right

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

ha whoops

who's got the stomach to read this?

http://quillette.com/2018/03/22/jordan-b-peterson-appeals-left/

(I don't, at this time)

that is too long

Tried earlier. Love the 3rd para which starts with "argument is simple" and ends with "It is an ambitious project that no other public intellectual has dared to provide". Loved it so much I stopped it there - his fans won't ever buy it on that level, which is why I can't see more than 15 mins for this guy. xxp

Yeah, here's the whole paragraph:

Peterson’s argument is simple: repeated cultural symbols, in large part, represent aspects of our psychobiological nature, and many of these symbols have been expressed universally across cultures through myths, legends and archetypes. Such symbols may include the snake swallowing its own tail (chaos) and the heroic individual (the Self emerging out of chaos). This Jungian work may be difficult to read, and to validate empirically, but it is not subjective mist. Its basic assumptions derive from neuroscience, evolutionary biology and developmental psychology. Unlike postmodern thought, Peterson’s work is built on synthesising what we know from the behavioural sciences with the vast accumulated record of mythological story-telling and what these stories tell us about human nature. It is an ambitious project that no other public intellectual has dared to provide in an age that is exhausted and cynical of grand narratives.

The problem in a nutshell is that this is bullshit. When literally the second great idea you locate as being 'universal' is 'the heroic individual' the whole thing just reeks of banality.

I figured it was gonna be cack but nice to have it confirmed so swiftly

Also, of course the idea of a 'psychobiological nature' that is unchanging throughout time and space is connected to Petersons transphobia.

the first sentence of the writer's previous piece in the archives is:

There is no more quintessential a model of the failed hero than Elliot Rodger.

All you need to know.

lmao jesus fuck what

the "failed" part is right at least

When literally the second great idea you locate as being 'universal' is 'the heroic individual' the whole thing just reeks of banality.

Much more reassuring to nod along with the smart, handsome & successful father figure saying "toughen up, you weasel" while sneering at feminists and transpeople.

Wait, are we still talking about JP?

The whole thing is bullshit. At one point he decries that the left doesn't take credentials seriously and that Jordan Peterson is a trained psychologist and clinician. The next he is explaining that a lecture is actually really about the history of the Soviet Union. The idea that other scholars might take JP for a charlatan exactly because he takes scientific tools into areas where they don't work, and have been repeatedly shown to not work, doesn't seem to worry the writer.

someone mentioned James Hillman above--that's actually a very good place to send kids who are interested in JP's derivative shtick.

when y'all call Peterson 'transphobic' is that only because of his opposition to the canadian pronoun/language bill, or is there more to it than that?

frogbs OTM

not acknowledging chosen pronouns is inherently transphobic

yeah wait what more do you need sleepingbag?

when y'all call Peterson 'transphobic' is that only because of his opposition to the canadian pronoun/language bill, or is there more to it than that?

― sleepingbag, Friday, March 23, 2018 10:42 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry, that bill doesn't exist

ok human rights bill that he hysterically/opportunistically chose to interpret as "maybe someday i'll be forced to use trans ppl's pronouns because political correctness has GONE MAD"

relatedly re: JP and identity, if this got linked earlier I didn't spot it

Jordan Peterson has claimed on several occasions to be a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation in BC. That appears not to be true. https://t.co/sW6BMAjJ1D

— ishmael n. daro (@iD4RO) March 22, 2018

It's a whole other question whether that bill even does what Peterson thinks it does. In any case, Peterson is weaselly about whether he refuses to use preferred pronouns only because it's 'compulsory' or because he doesn't believe they map onto reality.