By David Futrelle
I think I may have found the Jordan Peterson-est post in the Jordan Peterson subreddit so far.
I dunno, dude, maybe DON’T TALK LIKE THAT.
But yabha — clearly besotted with the pompous, reactionary, slap-happy Canadian academic who has become staggeringly popular amongst Men’s Rights Activists, alt-rightists and other terrible men — continues on in this vein, attempting to ask his fellow Petersonheads how he can rebut people who point out that Peterson’s admonition to “clean your room” doesn’t help much if you’re too poor to have a room.
Except he puts it like this:
Oversimplifying here, but there are 2 apparently conflicting models of the world: one in which identity politics is a distraction from individual responsibility, and another in which issues of identity preclude individuals from effective action, and need to be solved before embarking on any projects of the self.
A common reaction to the clean your room directive is that one needs to ensure they have equitable access to a room in the first place.
Can you share some examples of effective discourse with individuals that subscribe to issues of identity (race, gender, sexual preferences, etc.)?
Dude, just because you love Jordan Peterson, you don’t have to try to be as pompously incomprehensible as he so often is.
Some of those who attempted to answer yabha’s convoluted query were a bit blunter than he was.
“Clean your room is a metaphor for focusing on your individual life [rather] than on others,” wrote AmazonExplorer.
So for the homeless person in need of a room, the advice of “cleaning their room” is exactly what they need. Perhaps instead of wishing for a communist utopia, they need to drop that heroin addiction that destroyed their life in the first place, maybe try to land a job, learn some skills.
(Hey, I said they were blunter; I didn’t say they were convincing.)
Another noted with some puzzlement that “everytime I engage in these conversations I end up being accused of bigotry.”
Gosh, why would anyone accuse you of bigotry when you claim that poverty is the result of individual failings and has nothing to do with centuries of, you know, racism and structural inequality?
But I digress. Others answered yabha’s question in language that was nearly as pompous and muddled as his. One commenter started off a vast wall-o-text with this:
I think there are more than the two modes you describe and the space between the two is where you will begin to find the ground upon which discussions are possible. There are many between the two perspectives who both, at the same time, understand that individual responsibility is paramount within our own lives, and that there are truths to be understood when assessing the role that identity plays at the levels of control beyond mere individuals.
Dude, you could have just said: That’s a false dichotomy. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Amazingly. one commenter actually called out yabha for his pomposity.
“[H]ave you always written so formal, maybe even Peterson-esque?” wondered someone called TheOwlInTheTower.
It is definitely not a normal conversational style, more along the lines of the kind of language used in a published academic work. I am sorry if this question makes you uncomfortable, being analyzed isn’t too much fun. I just noticed that there are followers who emulate Jordan Peterson and I feel like some of those people in a way have assumed and defend an “identity”.
Woah.
Alas, TheOwlInTheTower didn’t take this any further, and began backtracking a little in the very next sentence:
I can definitely understand though, that if someone really moves a person in a certain way that they might find comfort and strength in emulating the person who gives them that rock.
That’s a big backtrack. But I still wonder if it’s only a matter of time before Mr. Owl gets thrown out of the cult.
@Moggie, this is true. And I’m amazed (amazed, I tell you) that JP sees a clear difference between his cult and the alt right.
@John
Yah, I sort of slid over that part, but it still stung. Comments like that are hurting more than usual right now – not sure why.
Go and un-sober yourself, forthwith.
The entire point of most reactionary drivel is to obfuscate, confuse and deflect. They are dead set against any semblance of actual discussion or examination of a topic, its context and implications, because they care nothing for any actual truth, only the dissemination of their own views and the silencing of any opposition.
@Mish
https://imgur.com/a/E3CzHUi
Aight, I’m ready.
…
…
…
I was not ready.
@John,
Not sure all the rum in the universe would help here, tbh. If you haven’t already, try the article that Fujimoto linked to upthread. Perfect antidote – and it comes with Gremlins.
@Fujimoto,
Now that I’ve had time to read it: holy crap, bless your face for posting that article. It’s bloody brilliant and I love it to bits.
So this person I know who likes Peterson… Well they’re married and so it’s not a question of “because of SJW:s I can’t get laid”. But this person has a tendency of going into really angry rants, sometimes in situations where it’s really inappropriate… and no shit that’s the kind of thing that can hold you back in your career!
I mean, sometimes when this person goes on about “freeze peaches”, I suddenly realize that hey, the stuff they’re saying isn’t really extreme and crazy, but actually stuff I agree with. But the angry ranting sort of makes you instinctively defensive and not wanting to agree with them.
Like, for example, at one point we’re having dinner with some people from abroad and it’s in everyone’s interest to simply have a good time, and this person goes into angry rant mood and just embarrasses everyone.
This person is actually really talented when it comes to doing research, and also talented when it comes to presenting their research to an audience and make it seem interesting. But they totally lack talent when it comes to, e.g., behaving at a dinner.
I think there’s legitimately a discussion to be had about how demands on “social competence” can be oppressive against people who are, like, autistic or just very introverted or just odd. But the fact is, in today’s world, you’re expected to be socially competent. You’re expected to be able to read a room, to adjust your behaviour to fit the situation, and so on. This goes for dating as well as for career. And I think a fair amount of people imagining that evil SJ:s hold them back actually simply lack the expected social competence.
I find it interesting that right wingers so often disparagingly compare black people to chimps, implying that humans are more highly evolved than chimps, except the black people who are still less evolved. Because that’s exactly how evolution works.
Then, when it suits them, they turn around and claim their misogyny is all natural and right and good because chimp behavior = human behavior.
Pick on or the other, dudes. Either we’re just like chimps except hairy and therefore chimp behavior says a lot about humans or white people are a super special highly evolved species that are superior to the rest of the animal kingdom, including African people, therefore white people can oppress everyone and everything. I mean, neither of those things are actually true, but they really, really can’t be both true at once.
I know a guy who recommended something from Jordan Peterson for organizational skills (he, like me, has ADHD). I thought, “Wasn’t Peterson the asshole who made a fuss about gender-neutral pronouns?” …and yes, ’twas he. Yeah, I’d rather not take my organizational tips with a side helping of bigotry.
@Bina – thanks for this:
When I had to take an extra term to do my Master’s project, and I was feeling isolated and having panic attacks, it helped to get involved with the school’s feminist club – it gave me perspective on something beyond my own problems. Plus, the prof who helped me get my project extension was what the Peterson-ists would characterize as an “SJW” – she taught critical theory with a focus on social justice issues, and advocating for me showed she was concerned about (potential) ableist exclusion in her actions as well as in her writing.
I feel validated since I was also thinking that Peterson’s talks are really hard to follow, he goes on wild tangents and loves heavy language. It is hard to pin down what he really believes from what he says. I laughed because the interview with Cathy Newman seems to feature her repeatedly misinterpreting his words, but looking at the headlines from his alt-right fans they also seem to be misunderstanding him just as badly. YouTube Headline: “J.P. explains why girls want ALPHA MEN” and then the actual video is focused on literary theory.
I interpreted it more as “I am blind to my own privilege, and therefore reject the idea that systemic injustice prevents people of different socio-economic strata from becoming as successful as me on their own pluck and resolve alone. I prefer to write such considerations off wholesale as ‘identity politics’ (which, since it’s only ‘politics’, is irrational and emotionally-based and should well be disregarded). How, then, do I make social-justice types similarly disregard such factors when I talk to them, such that they will have no choice but to agree with my own superior, effective philosophizing?”
Personally I have a different take on the muddled writing you get from so many anti-SJWs. I dare say that some of it is intentional disguise, but I think most of it starts with muddled thinking.
Muddled thinking, therefore anti-SJW. Also muddled thinking, therefore muddled writing. I suspect it’s not usually lack of intelligence so much as their subconscious getting the better of their intelligence.
Fuck Slappy Peterson. I have one acquaintance that either already has or soon will fall down this rabbit hole, and I’m pretty sure I’ll need to block his ass before long. We don’t do much interaction, but we run in the same circles. How much stress has this waste of a psych degree caused the friends and relatives of his cultists? Most people know someone of a different race, or sexual orientation, or gender identity, even if they aren’t aware of it. Imagine listening to someone parrot this shit without caring they’re targeting people they know.
I feel like the pseudo-intellectual anti-SJW discourse is muddled because the people making the argument don’t want to the implications of their point to be laid bare in plain language…
I was just listening to a podcast where two dudes were critiquing the post-modernist idea that demographic differences between people are socially constructed, and this directly affects class mobility. The guys conclude, after much waffling, that of course there are some true biological differences between groups of people, for example height.
but of course, no “SJWs” are concerned with height differences in class mobility. We are concerned with race and gender differences. Why not provide an example of a concrete biological difference between different races or genders that affects class mobility then? Because actually spelling that out in plain language sounds undeniably racist/sexist and they know it.
@epitome, you’re welcome! That’s very validating, and it raises some valid issues about people who, for whatever reason, simply need more time to get things done. Giving them that time, rather than expecting them to conform to an artificially set schedule, levels the playing field, and enables them to shine. In other words: they self-actualize on their own time and terms.
I bet Peterson would say you were a special snowflake who’d been coddled. Ignoring completely the fact that he seems pretty snowflakey himself, and the U of T continues to coddle him by letting him get away with all the shit he has…
…including bad theory that mixes hardline Catholicism (WTF?) with fighting lobsters as human evolutionary models (even more WTF, and bad science to boot). I mean seriously: did a diploma mill graduate him, or what? And aren’t they embarrassed at the bad name he’s giving them? I sure would be…
@Bakunin, you’re not the only one. I unfriended one such dude months ago for posting one shitty Peterson video after another on Facebook and raving about him like an enamored schoolboy. Just recently, I saw him pop up on a mutual friend’s Facebook discussion (around gender and pronouns, of course), parroting the same bullshit discourse. Seeing my friend say “I had no idea you were such a fucking piece of shit” to him so baldly was…satisfying, to say the least.
“How do I converse with people who are not part of my particular community of like-minded individuals?”
Stop fucking your goddamn thesaurus.
Stop trying to use five dollar words to sound more intelligent than the people around you. If you can’t explain your ideas or your worldviews to outsiders without resorting to using intellectual gibberish, then your ideas aren’t worth the time it would take to explain them.
Sure, if you want to talk to people inside your group use their language, but if you want to talk to people outside? Drop the word vomit.
Most people don’t want a vocabulary lesson.
@PI
It’s the stupid person’s idea of what a smart person is like, pretty much. Same as the florid BS Heartiste keeps flinging around. All it does is make them sound like not particularly good neural nets.
Or in other words, you can gild a turd and cover it in jewels, but it’s still a turd and it still stinks like shit.
Another interesting thing in the article I mentioned is this:
To me, this signifies that he knows, on a very personal level, about some of the struggles and the pain involved with disability and mental illness. I don’t know if he’s said much himself about this, but his acolytes absolutely use his work to bludgeon folks with disability and/or mental illness as useless snowflakes.
Aaaaaand in the very next sentence, he claims to have cured his depression through diet alone.
My little tiny glimmer of empathy just died 🙁
About Goodall, actually she was told by the scientific establishment to repress any findings that chimps had emotions or anything remotely resembling human behavior. This was during a time when “nature” was seen as something separate from and inferior to “man”. Animals, being part of nature, were to always be thought of as not any thing like humans at all. This was to enable the scientific establishment and other industries to cruelly exploit any animals (or trees, or any aspect of nature) to whatever extent they wanted without guilt and without facing backlash from the general populace who were to be of the same belief system. This view is still pervasive in science though there is a slow trend in viewing humanity “as a part of” nature.
About Peterson’s Catholicism. There are videos where he is asked point blank if he is a Christian or not and he weasels around (as in a huge continuous circle) the topic. “Well that depends on what you mean by Christian”. Obviously, as an educated person appealing to “muh rationality” he cannot come out and say that he believes in the totally non-rational myths of the Bible that defy the laws of nature. On the other hand he doesn’t want to offend his consumer base. Basically he interprets the myths of the Bible in a Jungian archetypal fashion and feels the ethics and morals of Christianity should be the guidelines for human personal development and society at large. So out of all the world’s religions, the myths and ideas in Christianity are the ones that appeal to him the most.
Jungian archetypes are not Jungian at all. They are Spielreinian archetypes, as I read here (from Bina?) the other day. Had no idea who Sabina Spielrein was and now I do. Thanks! I was never much into Jung and now that I know he STOLE his most famous theory from a woman, am even less so.
Cronenberg’s movie about her, going from the reviews, only covered her relationship with Jung and did not go into her actual work. There’s another documentary about her however that supposedly does. I’ll probably watch both. Appearantly she was a genius but only Jung got credited.
Regarding Ayn Rand’s aesthetic, what was it? What art did she find beautiful and non “savage” non “deviant”? Personally what little I’ve read by and about her, I don’t find her particularly aesthetically appealing.
Mish Catlady, “Aaaaaand in the very next sentence, he claims to have cured his depression through diet alone.
My little tiny glimmer of empathy just died ”
Don’t let it die. It’s possible that his depression was cured through diet. That doesn’t mean he thinks everyone’s will. I do think it’s possible for *some* people’s depression can be cured though diet and other lifestyle changes. Probably the mildest forms of depression.
Hmm, with this cultism around this man, i am expecting soon to see flourishing calls against “Misopetersony”. That could fit with their pompous language.
Edit : my bad, inverted roots…
Oh shit, son, just figured that one out?
@Bina called Peterson “Schrödinger’s Moron”, but I think he’s more along the lines of Schrödinger’s Father Figure. He’s the cool dad that “gets” you and hates the same people you hate (read: SJWs), but he’s also the wise dad that you can go to for sage-like advice or a stern reminder to pick up your room (which Peterson uses as an invective against activism of any kind). If there’s any kind of quote-unquote “genius” to Peterson, it’s that he’s tapped into the Deepak Chopra method of wrapping up obvious truisms in difficult-to-penetrate jargon, only for the disaffected entitled young white guy demographic. I also think they have to be on the dimmer side, because somebody who immediately recognizes the Golden Rule wrapped up in jargon will realize that Peterson just wasted their time by complicating something unnecessarily. For a potential Petersonite, it’s a “Yay, I solved the riddle; I’m SMART!” moment.
Take me for example. I’m a 32-year-old able-bodied white single guy living in a major city. Straight flush of privileges (bisexuality notwithstanding). I have family attachments, but very little formal structure in my life. Beyond preparing lunch for the next day, there’s not much I’m obligated to do most nights. Weekends involve laundry and grocery shopping, but I’m free to spend the rest of my time doing anything I want. In essence, I’m the perfect Jordan Peterson disciple in terms of demography.
And yet I find him a contemptible blight on culture and the body politic. Why is that?
I can think of a couple reasons. The big one is that I’ve struggled with anxiety issues a lot of my life and combined with a natural shyness means brash attention-grabbing arrogance is not in my wheelhouse. I’m quicker to blame myself for something than anything else and I’m conflict averse (both to my own detriment, probably), so I’m not going to go around nursing grievances the way the Petersonites do.
Secondly, being the kind of Aspie guy I am, I’m a creature of habit, so I have my routine which tends to involve gaming and doodling and that for me, that works. I’ve been getting out of my comfort zone with some urban exploration of Toronto, but what’s crucial is that I’ve got things to call my own that don’t rely on dominance games. Whatever snark I might do on Twitter is contained to just my own feed and those I know are like minded.
Third and probably most importantly… I have a very good memory for all things political. While a lot of my schoolyard chums might have forgotten their grade 8 history and grade 10 civics, I still remember Air Farce sketches I watched when I was 10 years old, so I’ve seen the arc of history playing out against marginalized groups. Some asshole coming along and telling me to sort myself out before critiquing systems of oppression insults my knowledge of history.
All that said, if I was an upper-middle class white guy with the straight flush of privileges, but internalized all the entitlement and felt adrift just being a consumer, I could see Peterson’s “Pick up your room, bucko!” moralizing being a big moment of self-actualization. But then, so are the initial auditing sessions of Scientology, and we know where that eventually leads.
Katamount someone posted a link on WWTM yesterday to some guy who used to frequent Newgrounds Forums (never heard ’em) in the early 2000s explaining that all the male teenage angst and ironic hate for jokes vented there back then results in the adult Nazis we hear about today. He says there is a direct link. That the adult white male Nazi grievance culture came from Newgrounds and forums like it. That many of these dudes never grew up, got jobs and grew out of that angsty teenage phase and now they are just Nazis, alt righters, ethno nationalists.
so when Peterson was queried about the alt right and Nazis he said that these guys have to “write a new story”. IOW they have to grow up and clean their rooms i.e. drop the hate, get their lives in order and create something positive.
so is it true that Peterson may be the catalyst for these types of man-boys to change their lives around? are they the types listening to him? are they his consumer base or a part of it? the chris cantwells and the like? if they are I would say at least they are getting a much more positive message than what they are getting from their peers as Peterson isn’t spouting racist Nazi ideas and ethno nationalism. if he can get these people think outside their box, then good.
but who knows if they are part of his listener base or not?
@Idli
Newgrounds? Possibly. I think it was more the SomethingAwful “goons” that originated the ironic hate speech schtick, which eventually went to 4chan’s /pol/ board.
SPLC had a great article on the 4chan to alt-right pipeline: https://www.splcenter.org/20180419/mcinnes-molyneux-and-4chan-investigating-pathways-alt-right
With Peterson, I think it’s a matter of the same white guy angst that gripped the protagonist of Fight Club. You went to school like you were told, got a degree, found a dead-end cubicle job, bought the condo, filled it with furniture… and now what? Spending all night on the Rick and Morty Reddit thread?
If these guys find a little comfort and direction Peterson’s writings, okay great, but it’s important to keep in mind what brought him into the public consciousness: disrespecting trans people. So it’s probably “come for the hate, stay for the self-help.”
It’s probably more constructive that they find a therapist that doesn’t come with that kind of political baggage.
Lots of people went to school like they were told and couldn’t even get that dead-end cubicle job, nor a condo, and their rents are skyrocketing, but didn’t become alt-right …
Maybe the ones who know who their real enemies are. Bankers and other fatcats, and the craven politicians who sell out to them. Not immigrants, women, “teh gayz”, and people of color.
Immigrants didn’t break the social contract. It wasn’t the “gay agenda” that decided to ignore your resume despite your having the required educational attainment, or to make every job in some field require existing industry experience, closing that whole area of work to anyone new and making it an exclusive club. Feminists aren’t jacking up rents three times faster than inflation. Blacks aren’t scheming to take away what little health insurance you have. That’s all on a tiny group of Fortune 500 types who all golf together on weekends and berth their yachts at the same marina. Overwhelmingly white and male, and oftentimes sexists and misogynists themselves, they are the enemy, and the alt-right are their “useful idiots”.
Effectively conversed = pwned. That’s what he means, that’s what they’ve always meant