the alt-right

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.

xp. quite hilarious that he self-identifies as indigenous when he isn't and gets upset if he gets called on it.

pizzagate guy's sci-fi novel sounds hilarious, via @willsommer's kick-ass newsletter pic.twitter.com/m9ObO8dKLW

— Tom Kludt (@TomKludt) March 23, 2018

Serious question: why is the left unable to reach out to the types of dudes who fall for JP's drivel?

― pomenitul, Friday, March 23, 2018 10:14 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, they're p much all white men, and the left/liberals haven't been too keen on them lately.

#KillAllWhiteMen, white male (x), patriarchy, white male privilege, blah blah blah. it's obvious why a lot of white men who weren't actively racist/transphobic would cotton to JP. there's a huge number of social/cultural changes happening very quickly and the dialogue on the left is consistently very anti-white male. if you're not smart enough to separate you as an individual white man from the structural advantages of the white male patriarchy you are a part of and at some level implicitly endorse and encourage then JP is a godsend. you can feel good about yourself again without any of that extreme alt-right stuff.

it blows my mind when white men take stuff like this so personally, how fucking dumb can you be

"why isn't there a white panther" it's basically just that sublimated

The problem is partly in the limitations of that sort of privilege discourse. Most people will never want to live on their knees. Becoming aware of privilege is necessary but it's not sufficient to be an ethos. People want some sort of heroic narrative to define their lives. Liberal culture is a bit schizophrenic on this when it comes to gender right now, where on one hand any association of positive traits with maleness or manliness is dismissed as "gender essentialism" and implicitly negating women, yet there is all kinds of deliberate association of women and femininity with positive traits (girl power, strong women, etc.), including traditionally "male" traits, which is an understandable impulse but the resulting message is "women = good, men = ?". I mean basically you have pressure from one side to be hypermasculine, and the other side just says you need to engage in a lot of reflection and self-flagellation but doesn't offer much of a positive vision.

Chapo pointed out that a lot of JP's success just comes from identifying discontent and offering a purported solution. And some of that "solution," when you strip away the toxic politics and pseudo-jungian bullshit, is just basic self-help, self-respect, etc. We've done a really good job of improving the way we teach women self-respect, but there's just kind of a hole left in terms of how men should be taught it.

You can continue to browbeat anyone who feels the way I described but they will continue to turn to JP rather than the left most of the time.

it also doesn't help that if you're a 14-year-old boy on the Internet 18 hours a day including during school, you probably don't interact with any actual progressives, so whatever bullshit gets screenshotted on 4chan seems as much like a representative sample as anything

yeah for sure

otm

both of u

it also doesn't help that if you're a 14-year-old boy on the Internet 18 hours a day including during school, you probably don't interact with any actual progressives, so whatever bullshit gets screenshotted on 4chan seems as much like a representative sample as anything

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Sunday, March 25, 2018 10:23 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is why i always talk to my students who make "i identify as a toaster" kinds of jokes about gender/sex or think feminists are annoying or have gone too far (ive heard this from cis boys AND girls). and generally they get the concept once we've talked for like 5 minutes because there isnt enough real talk about it trickling into their timelines but there is a "ben sharpir0 owns a lib college student on transgenderism" video coming up often.

like we scoff at JP (and shapir0, who i think is as close as the american counterpart as we have now, the educated "smart" conservative) because theyre charlatans, but the high schoolers i teach dont have enough background knowledge on what theyre talking about to know that. they just seem no-nonsense and confirm some of their biases so they dont really have to engage with this counterintuitive challenge from the left because this smart guy just laid out why theyre dumb.

yea Shapiro is already a marginalized clown tho, JP is burning brighter faster

he def doesnt have the crossover appeal into mainstream audiences, thats for sure

m bison your script for talking to the young people about this would probably be handy for most of the general population tbf

In the experience of this college professor, Jordan Peterson has had a discernibly negative influence on intellectual curiosity and open mindedness in the classroom https://t.co/K3GVbY4gCx pic.twitter.com/FlvBT6EDiD

— Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) March 26, 2018

'neurological addiction to anger and belief vindication'

i like that

Yeah, that's otm. And to be fair, it's not exclusively the province of the alt-right.