The Jordan Peterson Thread

my early teenage son was JP curious for a time (possibly still is). i think the self-discipline message goes down easy, and the culture war stuff kind of oozes in after that. don’t forget they are exposed to this stuff in context-free blipverts on social and shared among friends.

we were fairly careful not to go full nuclear in retaliation, which would only have resulted in doubling down IMO. but he was thoughtful and seemed to get it when we explained why we weren’t fans.

we are probably a fairly “woke” household and my partner and i will have a good grumble about patriarchal/colonial/heirarchical structures. i don’t like to think that this creates a situation where our sons feel uncomfortable about being young white males and gravitate towards people who tell them that “traditional values” are eternal truth… but y’know maybe it does.

There are at least two different types of flyers on telephone poles in the neighbourhood organising protests against his shows.

Oh Bondage, Up Yours Woke Moralists!

So for a lot of teenagers, Peterson is likely their first experience of psychoanalysis and the Jungian flavor of this body of thought is probably the most compelling to young people. Basically, they learn from him that they have an unconscious — or for Jung, a “shadow” — that they must struggle to integrate or else it will take control of them. This is a powerful message and as far as it goes probably true. (I prefer Freud and Lacan, who were more circumspect about the possibility of integration. Jung and Peterson are both reactionary insofar as they frame inner struggle as a battle that can be “won,” a synthesis that can be achieved rather than a kind of armistice.)

Anyway, the problem with Peterson is that he tells white men that minorities, trans people, and women are standing in the way of their journey toward self-actualization because they want you to be afraid of your shadow. It’s the shift from psychoanalysis to culture war that is toxic. Ironically, Peterson’s scapegoating of others for his own shame and fear is a classic example of projection!

I think teens who are into Peterson should be encouraged to read Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Freud, especially the essays on art and literature. Just go to the source. It doesn’t do any good to deny that Peterson is speaking to something deep within these kids; the problem is that Peterson is using that to turn them onto a political project. But the journey of the self is not and cannot be political. If you mistake your inner issues for social issues you will always be confused, always chasing windmills.

I had a weird situation a few days ago when a Black student in my online rhetoric class approvingly used one of his lectures. He wrote quite well and I made a point of remarking on how his submission ranked among the top five (which is true). I did mention too that I disagreed violently with Mr. Peterson. The student thanked me for grading him fairly.

xp call me don quixote. maybe that's my problem or maybe you're wrong

personally i feel freud, jung and campbell have enough influence in the culture already, can we have something else? i'm sick of all these films that tell the same story over and over because of archetypes man

yeah, so i haven't read the paper but this student was likely responding to something in peterson's work that doesn't have to do with the bigotry. and it is likely that what he enjoys in peterson he could find elsewhere, perhaps in another psychoanalytic theorist. on a side note, it is odd to me that peterson is a jungian and he broke through online in this way as psychoanalysis had seemed so outdated. maybe this means we still crave it after all these years...

treeship have you ever read Fanon?

i haven't but i'd like to. i have a copy of black skin, white masks at my parent's house. would you recommend that one?

yes, mostly because it's the only one I've read myself lol, but I thought of it because of the confluence of politics and psychoanalysis (plus Left's point about hearing from other voices)

I bailed on a budding relationship a while ago over peterson fandom, brought up in the context of interesting ideas about human nature and society. I could have handled it better but I really didn't have any interest in engaging with him after that. I'm sure he has a petersonian explanation for my irrational reaction

perhaps. psychoanalysis is an awful thing when wielded against other people as a way to discredit them as irrational. it is a useful thing when it allows people to forgive *themselves* for the ways in which they are irrational and other than who they take themselves to be.

peterson has absolutely no humility and doesn't even seem to recognize that his own, like, obvious eating disorder and drug addiction are symptoms he should attend to, as they suggest that he haven't actually made peace with himself and is, in a way, in the same position as the young men he chastises for not "cleaning their own room." he remains committed to the battle of "order" over "chaos" even though it is killing him.

that's the weirdest thing about him. like he is so unhappy. perhaps some of his advice makes sense, but his prescriptive story of how people are, how society is, and how one should comport oneself within society just cannot be 100% true based on what his life is like. he must be missing something. (which i have compassion for, not scorn, btw. i don't have the answers either, but i don't claim to and he does.)

all scorn all the time for me

I have scorn for his bigotry, not for his personal difficulties like depression and drug addiction.

this is actually something i've been mooting writing a blog post on in a while. i was listening to a behind the bastards episode on andrew tate, and it turns out they spent the whole episode without really talking about tate at all, but about the background of it, which is something called the mythopoetic men's movement.

which is interesting to me because i was actually involved in the mythopoetic men's movement in the '90s. i guess there probably aren't a lot of women who were. one of the "passage to manhood" retreat weekends in '96 was actually the first time i tried to come out as trans. in retrospect it's kind of hilarious.

anyway the podcast episode is worth listening to. my feeling is that this whole thing is less "not even wrong" than _almost_ right. like, clearly they know there's a problem and that they have to do something different, but they're utterly, utterly off base on what that different thing is. my feeling is that it's impossible to build a sense of communal manhood unless you recognize and value the ways in which the experience of those who are _not_ men differ from their experience, and most guys, they don't just seem to _get_ that shit on a basic conceptual level.

what i'd _like_ to see out of a men's movement, what i would have _liked_ to have seen in 1996, is that when i came out to them, talked about my gender shit to them, instead of staring at me like i had suddenly grown an extra five eyes they would've had the knowledge and wisdom to say "oh, wait, hold on, have you considered that you might actually not be a man at all? like you're welcome to stick around here, you're already here and shit, but here, let's get you the number of a transfem support group. also, check out genderdysphoria.fyi ." none of that, obviously, would have been possible in 1996, but today?

was this like a transitional thing between the radfem adjacent men's movement from the 70s (analagous to white panthers) and today's men's rights BS? did you do drumming in the woods or something?

I feel like you have to acknowledge that patriarchy exists and we need to abolish it and to many people that would be tantamount to destroying men so idk how much coherence it could maintain as a men's movement. there have been various "good men" initiatives online which have turned into total shitshows. the "working class must abolish itself" part of socialism was always the hardest to put into practice

I've heard so many men complaining about how partriarchy has hurt them (in different words) but as soon as you name it they get defensive and act like they're being attacked

was this like a transitional thing between the radfem adjacent men's movement from the 70s (analagous to white panthers) and today's men's rights BS? did you do drumming in the woods or something?

I feel like you have to acknowledge that patriarchy exists and we need to abolish it and to many people that would be tantamount to destroying men so idk how much coherence it could maintain as a men's movement. there have been various "good men" initiatives online which have turned into total shitshows. the "working class must abolish itself" part of socialism was always the hardest to put into practice

― Left

yeah total drumming in the woods bullshit, absolute shit-tons of cultural appropriate which even at the time my dumb white ass knew was cringe. i had a hippie uncle who invited me and i was like what the fuck, i got nothing better to do.

my feeling is that it's fundamentally necessary for the ongoing survival of men that they acknowledge and work to abolish patriarchy. outside of patriarchy the only thing "masculinity" has to offer the world is bullshit con artists like andrew tate and the liver king. guys who buy into that crap, whether i have sympathy for them or not, they're actively dangerous to everyone else. i mean really blaming women for all the problems that toxic patriarchy is foisting on them isn't actually going to fix anything, and we're reaching the point where they're just too incompetent to effectively maintain the historic system of patriarchal oppression.

i meant _under_ patriarchy, not "outside of patriarchy".

JFP's presentation of masculinity is weirder to me than Tate's, which is a lot of trad macho posturing, to the point of cartoonishness. Peterson is, what? The stern but loving father who had his bottom whipped at Eton?

patriarchal mythopoesis?

I think teens who are into Peterson should be encouraged to read Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Freud

I had a professor in grad school who would fail any paper that cited Campbell or Jung.

patriarchal mythopoesis?

Yeah, seeing him as a descendant of the Iron John stuff makes sense, he's just such an enervated curdled version of it.

I guess Jeremy Irons is too old to star in the JBP movie that I want Todd Haynes to make.

Yeah, seeing him as a descendant of the Iron John stuff makes sense, he's just such an enervated curdled version of it.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

agree, but in all honesty, there just wasn't much life in middle-aged white guys with daddy issues (and the occasional confused trans girl trying to figure out her gender shit in the worst possible way) waving around smudge sticks out in the woods. i mean, i think it's important for guys to work out their daddy issues, i'm not putting that down, but there's probably better ways to do it.

For sure.

Whenever I think Jordan Peterson’s presentation of trad masculinity seems weird, I’m reminded that so was Hitler’s. Which is not to say Peterson is comparable to Hitler, just that it’s not always predictable who people seeking that kind of figure respond to.

on a side note, it is odd to me that peterson is a jungian and he broke through online in this way as psychoanalysis had seemed so outdated. maybe this means we still crave it after all these years...

Facebook made its first $50 billion on the back of horseshit personality tests, the leap from Myers-Briggs and enneagrams to Jung is less a leap than a slight shuffle step.

Whenever I think Jordan Peterson’s presentation of trad masculinity seems weird, I’m reminded that so was Hitler’s. Which is not to say Peterson is comparable to Hitler, just that it’s not always predictable who people seeking that kind of figure respond to.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

i mean when it comes to that so was theodore roosevelt's and so was baden-powell's, haha. in fact i can't really think of a version of trad masculinity that makes _sense_, it's like the gender version of the rapture or something

Part of the contradiction is that trad-masc virtues supposedly include a non-whining stoicism that just gets about its business and does not spend hours carping online about the imagined offenses of the woke mob. Jeremiah Johnson didn't air grievances on Twitter! But the leaders of the Make Men Men Again movement (besides Peterson I'd include Tucker, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh) are only about grievances, just one grievance after another. And that's what people really want, to vent their grievances and have them affirmed and flattered.

(Hitler obviously had a few grievances himself.)

DJT is the king of eternal grievances too

Hitler was just one of these guys, his crimes have overshadowed what a boring and familiar type of thinker he was

Nazi? More like Normie.

hitler was your standard right wing conspiracy incel

the funny thing is these guys hate grievance, which is a weapon other people use to keep them down. they don't see their entitled whinging as grievance they see it the brave hero slaying the dragon of chaos or whatever. it sounds way cooler

Yeah jbp dorks call advocating for justice a “victim mentality”, it’s impossible to square the strongman shit with the abject mewling that constitutes every clip I’ve ever heard of the prick

it's huge projection basically, because if they weren't sad being crybabies all day and blaming minorities for taking away their naturally owed MAN RIGHTS, they may have to take some personal responsibility for making changes to their own sad lives. it suits them perfectly to stew in self righteousness because it excuses them from doing anything practical to improve themselves.

was quite amused by some recent video of Jordy basically saying all humanities - english literature, sociology, anthropology are all EVIL and have ruined universities by pushing their OPINIONS. bro is obviously under the mistaken impression psychology is a hard science because somehow he sees it as totally separate. I would have less of an issue with someone using Dr as their title if they genuinely thought all psychology was biologically proven FACT, but come on dude - you're using Jung here. there is absolutely no consistency behind his worldview.

Yeah actually these comments are very clarifying -- of COURSE the preferred avatar of these people isn't going to be a super-masculine ubermensch, it's going to be an empowered, energized, somewhat more masculine version of *them*. Someone they can see themselves in who gives voice to their grievances. Someone they can imagine themselves becoming.

Walter White with a Kermit the Frog voice

I don't want to link directly to it to give him any clicks or eyeballs, but lol @ this dude getting big mad on twitter when confronted with a sign requesting him to not use more paper towel than necessary.

People’s inability to ignore him is staggering. He sucks, just let it go.

Nice try, person who sucks

ok thanks

Concerning

idk, it will probably always be hilarious to me when a grown man that purports to be some sort of "thought leader" is made irate by a sticker on a paper towel dispenser

towel dispenser calls jordan peterson 'wet ass hand-havin old man' pic.twitter.com/gmaJZYDosf

— Fred Delicious (@Fred_Delicious) February 22, 2023

Alpha males use huge wads of paper towels. They also throw them on the floor, and leave the toilet seat up.

Up yours, woke towel dispenser.
We'll see who cancels who.

put the exposed part of the towel in your back pocket and then walk out of the restroom and go on with your day. real men take the remainder of the paper towel rolls and leave a trail of towel behind them wherever they go to show non-men what it looks like to have plenty of towel on hand