The Jordan Peterson Thread

yeah that is a good point and an important distinction

re: degeneration / devolution

I'm no WFB fan but comparing this mouth-breathing halfwit to him is a joke

― k3vin k., Sunday, November 4, 2018 5:22 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the point wasn't that they're similar people but rather that they serve(d) similar purposes. if you consider yourself a smart person but you still have that deep tribal urge to support the republican football team, how do you do it today? in the bush era the neocon intellectuals still presented something resembling a coherent worldview. (those guys are the notably the only never trumpers left.) bush's republican party still had some academic economists on their side, now we have larry kudlow and nutjobs advocating trade wars.

an academic defense of trump's republican party is basically impossible, so the clever slight of hand is to just avoid the subject and dig down on stuff like political correctness and 'identity politics' - subjects where the left still has some internal debates going on, it's not that hard to find some college student saying something stupid. wfb would probably be on a similar beat because...what else is there? dems pretty much have a monopoly on the whole spectrum of coherent political philosophy.

basically I think that peterson wouldn't be a celebrity today if mitt romney were president.

I think that’s possible. I also think he rode a similar wave as trump—this kind of ambient grievance of many white men that needs an outlet. Peterson is more engaged in cultural politics than politics politics—you don’t hear about his views on the war in yemen.

i think the convergence between self-help and biz-seminar entrepreneurship and web 2.0 tech guruship and deinstitutionalized expertise and low-bar information accessibility and quick-fix lifestyle enhancement and self-radicalizing politics enabled by the internet and other trends - exemplified by the existence of ted talk videos - basically explains this chump as an opportunistic epiphenomenon of his time

^^^I think that's basically it. One metric I personally use for defining a cult-mindset is the need for constant reinforcement. I'm not convinced the contemporary form of right wing politics (as distinguished from the traditional sort) can survive without this reinforcement because it has only a tenuous connection to any actual/empirical experiences you might have. JP--much like someone like Rush Limbaugh or Fox News generally--provides a service for his audience by mitigating against a potentially hostile or ideology-threatening (and banal) reality. You know how sometimes you catch yourself arguing with someone in your head? These people more or less live this way and JP (or Rush, etc.) helpfully externalizes it. It's almost therapeutic.

Well, the demagogues like rush limbaugh and now the US president make life exciting by giving listeners enemies and framing current events as a conflict driven narrative. Peterson is almost like a more refined version of this. He is telling his listeners that they, individually, need to maintain ethical integrity against the hordes of “ideologues” and he even ties it to a jungian idea of the “hero’s journey.” Antisocial right wing paranoia is the therapy he offers and he offers it *as therapy*

This guy is so abundantly full of shit

Jordan Peterson regurgitates Koch brother BS when asked about climate change. He is basically that Republican idiot who stood in Congress with a snowball in his hand as proof global warming doesn't exist, except he's considered a brain-genius by his lobster boy fanbase pic.twitter.com/QoF2qCB54Y

— ☀️👀 (@zei_nabq) November 4, 2018

One metric I personally use for defining a cult-mindset is the need for constant reinforcement. I'm not convinced the contemporary form of right wing politics (as distinguished from the traditional sort) can survive without this reinforcement because it has only a tenuous connection to any actual/empirical experiences you might have.

Wilhelm Reich described this phenomenon in 1933.

Raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta, Dr. Peterson has flown a hammer-head roll in a carbon-fiber stuntplane, piloted a mahogany racing sailboat around Alcatraz Island, explored an Arizona meteorite crater with a group of astronauts, built a Native American Long-House on the upper floor of his Toronto home, and been inducted into a Pacific Kwakwaka’wakw family

lmao

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/223436_action_man_raid_on_island_x_windows_front_cover.png

He really is the Steven Seagal of 'psychology'.

the US presidency isn't a factor in his popularity outside the US, and I suspect he'd do well there regardless as he has elsewhere bc he's hammering at these fault lines. he's had most success destroying journalists who are sufficiently convinced of his dumb-full-of-shitness that they come with lazy questions that betray some woolly thinking which he can unpick. there's more than enough bad thinking on the left for someone to make a career taking it apart.

a lot of his fans are especially impressed by his alleged calmness, which strikes me as odd since he seems to suffer through interviews, always on the verge of erupting in anger or bursting into tears, but I think he's addressing ppl who feel miserable and put upon in similar ways and who empathise with his noble struggle to remain a calm, rational destroyer in the face of self-satisfied lefties trying to score cheap points.

Correct. In Canada, especially, I don't get the sense that his popularity is directly tied to Trump's presidency. If anything, every JP fan I've met tends to strongly dislike the Donald.

Surely this one? xp

http://www.actionmanhq.co.uk/figures/adventurer-1970/action-man-adventurer-1970-1.jpg

Hanging out in the wild, sippin' on a mancan, roaring at normies – the markings of a true neo-Jungian bro.

I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about how genuinely stupid this guy is

I think he's addressing ppl who feel miserable and put upon in similar ways and who empathise with his noble struggle to remain a calm, rational destroyer in the face of self-satisfied lefties trying to score cheap points.

I do sometimes wonder why so many people feel this way. (Unless there are more ilx lurkers than i thought). It seems like it’s not “the left” they resent as much as it is the elitist attitude of the educated, professional class. For people who feel ill at ease due to their lack of education, political correctness/woke culture can feel like just another sadistic language game, where they weren’t told the rules in advance but nevertheless risk being called a racist or sexist if they slip up. It doesn’t help that most people hear about the left’s changing social mores and standards from fox news, who paint it precisely this way, as a kind of persecution mania targeting people who aren’t caught up that gender is a social construct and racism is about strucural oppression not personal prejudice, etc.

I’m not sure it’s only white people who feel this aversion to woke culture either, although minorities do not have the option to turn right wing because the right in America is now explicitly racist. I’m sure this article made the rounds here.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/

Three quarters of African Americans oppose political correctness. This means that they are only four percentage points less likely than whites, and only five percentage points less likely than the average, to believe that political correctness is a problem...

While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college think that political correctness has grown to be a problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate degree share that sentiment.

I think he's addressing ppl who feel miserable and put upon in similar ways and who empathise with his noble struggle to remain a calm, rational destroyer in the face of self-satisfied lefties trying to score cheap points.

For people who feel ill at ease due to their lack of education, political correctness/woke culture can feel like just another sadistic language game, where they weren’t told the rules in advance but nevertheless risk being called a racist or sexist if they slip up.

I think it must be nice to have these things be this abstract. I wish I didn’t have to think about how someone who draws much of his support from fairly unconcealed misogyny and authoritarian fantasies was so popular with men. There are clearly enough men out there who think women need to be put back in their place and are increasingly vocal about it. You can talk about how the apparently suffocation of political correctness is forcing people into this charlatan’s arms, but that sidesteps some fairly obvious messaging about how the pay gap isn’t real, about how women use rape as a weapon, about how women are taking too many jobs and that’s why you can’t get one, about how women gravitate to rich men and you get nothing. There’s nothing subtle about it.

I think about growing up in Ireland when divorce, abortion and gay marriage were illegal, and how that’s basically his ideal country, and it gives me chills.

The standard of public debate and the level of thinking of the people invited to discuss things on, for example BBC radio 4's The Moral Maze, is so far beneath the standard of what I can get from ILX or a few other places that you do have to wonder why certain people get to be heard all the time when they have so little of substance to contribute, and of course its down to privilege and nepotism and the power of establishment and the idea of constructing a "balanced debate" implemented by producers who don't understand the issue, but the point is that this is the shitty world Jordan Peterson exists in, and in this world he isn't really that exceptional, we are only discussing him at all because he's managed to market his bullshit to alt-righters.

There are flaws in the study for sure—“political correctness” has negative connotations to begin with, which I’m sure biased the respondents—but it’s still interesting. I think for at least some part of the population the appeal of figures like peterson comes from his ability to strike rhetorical blows against the culture of the educated classes. Trump may have been the same way. This is comforting, actually, beause this means that for *at least some* of these people who feel threatened by change, the change they fear isn’t necessarily a more diverse society where women have a higher status, it’s a world where they are simply out of the loop and looked down upon. Which is actually understandable.

xps

Many xps - The term "political correctness" has been used as a weapon to attack the left for decades now, and it needs to be either reclaimed or disavowed as a slur immediately if that is possible. I suspect the people surveyed would have quite different ideas about it if you described it using any other terminology.

Of course most people say they dislike 'political correctness'. It's like asking people what they think about 'high taxes'. It's not interesting at all.

This is comforting, actually, beause this means that for *at least some* of these people who feel threatened by change, the change they fear isn’t necessarily a more diverse society where women have a higher status, it’s a world where they are simply out of the loop and looked down upon. Which is actually understandable.

Except they feel that they are out of the loop because of the status of women. If they didn’t feel that the two were linked, they’d see through this guy. All his bullshit is rationalising misogyny in a pseudo intellectual way that makes them feel that their feelings are not just valid but rational.

I mean, I made a note of that

Xp frederik

And the 'woke' boogieman is not the 'educated class', in the debate on Universities the battle lines are drawn between noble professors defending ideals of academic freedom vs hordes of coddled students destroying civilization in their need for trigger warnings and safe spaces. It's about the fear of the othered masses.

Treeship, I just don't think you can say 'it's a bullshit survey, but it's still interesting'. No it's not. It's bullshit. We learn nothing from it.

I mean, I made a note of that

Yes, I definitely felt that you understood and gave a fuck about my point. His whole thing is based on women being bad and ~chaotic and disruptive, whereas men represent order and rationality. You don’t buy into that shit unless you’ve got at least some negative feelings towards women.

in the interview with helen lewis one of the points they agree on is that twitter is quite unhealthy. JP says that the format of twitter encourages ppl to be provocative, which I think is true. ppl from across the political spectrum feel fatigued/disgusted/offended/intimidated by the discourse on social media, I don't really think anyone is completely immune to it, the differences are in what you cling to in the face of it

I’m not defending Jordan Peterson’s ideas or excusing people for being drawn to him. They should be able to see through the bullshit and identify the misogyny. I was specificallt addressing the question of why there is such a hunger for youtube videos of him “taking down” figures from “the left,” who usually end up just being journalists and not even activists. I think for a lot of people “the left” is associated with the educated.

Treeship, have you ever heard this cum town bit (the first three minutes or so of this video)? it's ableist and crass etc, but I think it really gets at something about Peterson's appeal that more high-minded critiques sometimes don't

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVXiXn8Oec8

the contempt for universities/students that you get on the right/centre sometimes overlaps with a more general anti-intellectualism, but he relies on his renegade intellectual image and appeals to a paranoid anti-establishment culture war-type sentiment. ppl who are against education in general are probably not going to be swung by a jungian academic

It’s more like they’re against the culture of the educated/professional class. Peterson has the credentials but he’s coming back and saying it’s bullshit, which they see as validating.

I just think there is a semi-unconscious class dynamic here

he's had most success destroying journalists who are sufficiently convinced of his dumb-full-of-shitness that they come with lazy questions that betray some woolly thinking which he can unpick. there's more than enough bad thinking on the left for someone to make a career taking it apart.

Expect a whole lot more of this as he's due to appear on Question Time this Thursday. In fact the BBC is doing a sterling job of promoting him and disseminating his ideas - he couldn't pay for this sort of publicity and support.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06qcgdv

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b2gsct

It's like those various Living Marxism/Spiked clowns - Claire Fox, Brendan O'Neill, Ella Whelan et al - broadcasters love them, they make 'good television'... apparently.

I just think there is a semi-unconscious class dynamic here

― Trϵϵship, Monday, 5 November 2018 13:19 (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm sure you're not actually claiming this prissy middle class milksop of an academic draws his support from the disenfranchised, alienated working class. That would be silly.

Aren’t his supporters all like, underemployed, underachieving men who need someone to tell them to “get teir shit together”? I think these people feel alienated by what they believe to be the mores of elite society, sure. Whether they 1.) are correct about what those are or 2.) have a right to feel wronged are different questions.

John Sacks had a bbc 4 program where he was forcing poor students to listen to one of JP's lectures and then having a "discussion" with them about his ideas with the obvious bias that he completely agrees with him, but done with that faux "let's just see where this takes us" bs! It is deeply annoying to be paying a license fee for free advertising for this fucking bell-end.

Aren’t his supporters all like, underemployed, underachieving men who need someone to tell them to “get teir shit together”?

These people don't exist in the middle class?

When did I say they were the dienfranchised, alienated working class or even that they deserved sympathy?

You did go mention a 'semi-unconscious class dynamic'.

Though I'm not exactly sure what you were referring to tbh.

... tbf not tbh.

Aren’t his supporters all like, underemployed, underachieving men who need someone to tell them to “get teir shit together”?

No

they're mostly men tho

which feels more relevant than the class elements that i'm sure are also in play

Using the language of "class" does muddy things imo, Treesh. If there's a class dynamic at work here, it isn't really in the Marxist or even the socioeconomic sense.

Worth noting the reverential tones in which Fox & Friends hosts address him as "professor" and tell him how smart he is. It does suggest that the anti-intellectualism that exists on the right is related to some kind of sour grapes, that they really want and feel they should have more scholarly respect and credence than they do. xps to Treeship