Best Critique of Jordan Peterson I've heard so far

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I think his message is probably best served for the kids who grew up with a massive sense of entitlement and no orientation. To those who've gone left to the point of schizophrenia (thinking of the walk-outs at the University of Portland lecture that lost it over the idea that sexual dimorphism is real and people of their ilk) it might be exactly what they need a dose of.

I do worry about a lot of the things you and NCM have brought up - ie. the zero sum game effect. I worry sometimes, because I want to live in a safe environment or, with worries about existential nihilism or depression I want to have the funds for free movement or to be able to do the things I need to do to keep myself alive - I realize that yes, I have the talent to have a job that can pay for that but at the same time a guy (or girl) with a family to feed isn't getting that spot. I can't think of a decent way to make moral sense of what to do with that kind of situation when we use class as a means of 'meritocratic' punishment for those who are on the bottom or in lower income brackets.

Also like with what you brought up I do worry that all kinds of things I do just to stay in the game reinforce some of its worst characteristics (like you mentioned funding sweatshops and the like). I then go to work and hear what people do with their money and it sounds like a non-stop flow of conversation about new toys and tech gadgets, swapping out last years model every year to stay up with the most current version, and a sense of dread hits me when i start coming to the impression that as a race we're suicide machines and would walk right over the point of no return together just so long as we got to keep our position on the social and 'look what I have!' hierarchy.

This will clearly be a century of hard lessons, I'm hoping nothing like what we saw in the first half of last century with respect to violence, but our distaste for sanity is really what's raising alarm bells. With Jordan I'm mostly in it for the Jung, close second for the introspection on what our religious history has meant, and I do like his drawing of people back to some semblance of common sense or the awareness that there are natural consequences to things (as Bret Weinstein also brings up), that all of material reality isn't a negotiable social construct. My OP had Gordon White for good reason - ie. his criticisms tend to stay with what I appreciate and tend to hack at some of the particular angles that I thought were getting sacrificed a bit.

I don't think those people would ever listen to Peterson though. His audience is youtube anti-SJWs who have their own brand of entitlement. Knocking down the lowest hanging fruit on the left just to feel better about yourself doesn't really fit with what Petsrson says about having your own house in order before you criticize others.

A lot of his fans seem to have this mindset...

"I'm in my mid/late 20s working minimum wage and living with my parents without a wife or family. Conservative boomer culture/society tells me I'm a loser for this. Therefore I will watch stupid lefty college kids who are younger than me and have even less life experience than me just to feel better about myself".

It's definitely not part of Peterson's core message, but he seems to be milking this sentiment for his own popularity. I mean, I watched that video he voiced for PragerU and it just annoyed me in it's hypocrisy. Bash antifa as an easy target on the "enemy" side, but just ignore the toxic internet culture on the right (you know /pol/ racists and trolls).



I agree somewhat, but I don't feel there's any practical use to being plagued with guilt. I don't think its a problem that can be solved by individuals working alone. We're all stuck working within the system we have for now. The only real solutions are political, but the world can only really be changed gradually. I think the problem is a lot of people can't put up with this cognitive dissonance. That's why it's easier to retreat into some heroic mythology of individualism.


I agree somewhat. When I see some elements of the left becoming completely divorced from reality it scares me. I'm actually more afraid of the far right in terms of violence, but the left is pouring a lot of fuel on that fire unfortunately.

I'd have to class myself as the kind of person who, when I hear messages of the sort that life is very difficult and that to face it you should aim as hard as you can for moral and ethical true north (and leveling the controversial suggestion that there is such a thing), feels not just wholesome but revivifying.

A friend was replaying his podcast re-read what I believe was chapter six of 12 Rules for Life and he brought up the quote by the TS Elliot story character who was at a party, unhappy about where she was in life, and told someone that she was hoping that her problems were her fault, because if they were her fault she could fix them, if they weren't her fault it meant she was doomed. That's really quite close to how I've felt for years and if there were any bit of unhappiness that I could push on and get 25% return on my efforts but that return would stick I'd gladly take that even if it were a problem caused by other people's sloth and that it would take a whole bunch of other people almost no effort to change those things - simply because I have no faith that those people will ever change those things and I feel like I'm the only person I can depend on to come through for me.

I think that's a pretty big sector as well of his fan base - ie. men and women who feel beliegered by life and their battles with it, have been starting to feel hopeless in their fatigue, and what they caught - for the first time in a long time - was a high sign from the top level of society, for the first time in decades perhaps, saying 'I see you, I acknowledge you, and I edify what you're doing - keep up the good fight'.



I'm much less optimistic about governmental action. I think Bret and Eric Weinstein have it right on the Game B ideas, ie. technologies or cultural innovations that get under bad habits or socially pernicious conveniences and replace them with better ones. Any battle against human self-interest is an uphill battle, and I've noticed too often that any time there's a movement to shift resources the bad actors who can wear whatever form of victimhood or oppression come to the font, push everyone else out of the way, and make a complete farce of whatever people were hoping to achieve. #Metoo was a classic example of the tragedy that collective action, even when it's most necessary, leads to and the bitter mockery of it's original intent that it ends up at once the bad actors have their way with it.

I also think it's important to have, if not a spiritual path, at least some type of exercise that handles similar needs. Without some kind of internal ballast we're too easily magnetized by what's going on outside of us and it seems like our grounds for integrity start running into problems without some kind of long-term plan or clear sense of identity. Having good communication with our own subconscious minds seems to be critical as well if we want the kind of integration that keeps us away from acting out in ways that we don't understand and which all too often seem to fall into rather base natural pathologies of one type or another which almost always seem to make the situation worse.

^^
when I hear that all life is suffering and so on, I tend to think: that person has no love for something.
And I mean something, not someone. Something they really like doing, making, an interest that transforms into Craftsmanship.

something to do. alone. at which you get better, and expand your knowledge and skills and understanding of something.

I often wonder how often that's accessible to people. It's not always a choice, some people aren't able to find those sorts of passions, and for a lot of us they tend to come and go in various ways where we have them some of the time but not always.

I suppose the situation where you're stuck taking care of someone with a crippling condition, or if you have that crippling condition yourself, the times where you might be stuck unemployed or in some other spot where your time and freedom are on a dwindling lease - a lot can happen.

What I don't understand is why this Jordan Peterson character is so wildly popular at the moment. I mean, it's not as though he's come up with a solution to one of the world's major problems, or stumbled upon strong evidence that our reality is fake, or anything else truly groundbreaking. His ideas (at least the ones I've heard him spout, anyway) are nothing new, nothing revolutionary. Have I missed something here?

People are just that horribly uneducated by our public school systems. Also Carl Jung, Manly P Hall, Joseph Campbell, etc. haven't been on a reality TV show or Ariana Grande video lately and no one had a clue what an archetypal story was. Aside from that he's famous for giving the archetypal story the evolutionary psychology and existentalist treatment while at the same time refusing to take it in either a theist or necessarily naive materialist context. In that sense he helped elevate the IQ and nuance in the room considerably, also served as a bridge in some ways for people to be able to listen to and understand guys like Bret and Eric Weinstein as their ideas are similarly nuanced and complex.

Talking about his rehash though, I would find it interesting if anyone's pressed him on the question of Hamlet's Mill and astrotheology (ie. that most of the old western religions are loaded with stories based on the night sky). That was more Hall's expertise, my guess is that JP's trying too hard not to offend his Christian audience or to get them to think in broader ways about the bible that he'd avoid such guilt by association as agreeing with a '33rd degree Mason' - which is sad but it's how things tend to go with dealing with big political groups.

No matter how 'smart'
A person gets in terms
of words and concepts;
until they Master a Soul
of Regulating Emotions and
Integrating Senses that requires
only a Dance and Song with no
Prescription
of Words
and
other Pills
from Before;
chances are, the so-called
smartest of folks will fall to
their 'Shadow' never mastered
And do something as 'childish'
as threatening to slap someone
and calling them names like a
child-
hood
bully;
Jordan has a whole
lot to lEarn beyond any
words he brings to any table now.
I'd rather have an IQ of 70
than be a 'midget' of Soul;
been there done that already
in Trump and other Current
'Jordan' Ways of Expressing
what's left of a Soul of Humanity;
(i was a kid and left that behind)
It would go a long way if Jordan could
admit his deficiencies in Public and Clean his room
now and carry on to be a role model that might otherwise
be trusted now more than a Trump Way of relating 'Lobster Speak'
away from
the Highest
Ration of
Human
that is Love;
Real and Expressed as such without
fear and 'little' men raising 'fists' they don't have.
I can't remember Jordan ever saying the Word Love; it seems
he just
may
be missing
A most important
Educational Lesson oF aLL.

I didn't realize but Gordon actually wrote a blog about Jordan back at the end of 2016 and detailed a somewhat similar array of thoughts:

https://runesoup.com/2016/12/ideologies ... entations/

A couple more things back at Lintar on why he's popular:

Digging out the obvious cognitive holes in certain professions like psychology and psychiatry:



Outspoken against biology denial:



Tis the season for people who are trying to make sense to actually gain both popularity and notoriety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcCp7488puc

Speaking of Critical Thinking in terms of Cognitive Executive
Functioning and Imagination and Creativity of Deeper "Default
Mode" thinking in what has been a 'Right Brain' Metaphor of Thinking too.
Jordan Peterson in the Discussion Below as linked in the first 12 Minutes or so
indicates that an ability to move between both states of Art and Reason is Paramount
For Excellence
in Creating
Truly Original
Works of Art as they
go on to speak of Flow
too and how Flow of Creativity
is rather opposed by Mechanical
Cognition type thinking and this can
of course be extended to Religious Metaphors
like Holy Creative Spirit as it would be much more
difficult for a person engaged in Mechanical Cognition
in what is often a Beta Wave State of Mind to move on over
to the Border of Alpha and Theta and Deeper to Trance
out in ascendent way a more Ascendent way
of Creativity in terms of the overall Ecstatic
Ocean Whole 'Poem' of the
Subconscious
Mind arising
to Mindful
and Imaginative
and overall Co-Creative
Awareness; particularly, for those
who may be able to toggle back and
forth in Flow of More Creative Intelligence
and Analytical Intelligence at Will as a sort
of 'Volunteer' to provide Structure that makes
Greater Meaning than more abstract Art alone.
It's true; 'normally', in Cognitive Mechanical Cognition
Mode our Awareness in Mind and Body drains away from the
Ocean Greater of Subconscious Mind as Potential Shores of Ocean
Whole Mind and Body Becoming a Dance and Song of Life much Larger
than what may
solve
Structured
Math and Science
and General Plumbing
in Fixing a toilet alone.
Of course, with all things Neuroplasticity
and Epigenetics; Practice Brings a Greater
Expertise in Experience for what ever Diverse
Human Intelligence may be used and gained more
as Struggles are met and the Environmental Stimulus of
Struggle that may seem a little like pain brings much greater
Advances in a variety of Intelligences far beyond what a Structured
Form like Standard IQ Measures More in Crystalized than Fluid Intelligence;
As in all things life of
course it does come
back to the Metaphor
of Yin and Yang for
to use one Metaphor
of HeMiSPHeRE oF LiVing
over any other without bounds
of Potential Human Intelligence is to
Lose the HE or ART out of heART MorE
NoW as around a 60 to 40 Percent percentage
of Art to Reason works for the Art of me in continuous
Bliss of a Life of Art and Science too. Each person may find
their own sweet spot; but to suggest that one or the other is not worth
it, is to suggest basically less Human Potential Realized now; for is the case
of folks who do not understand the simple value of a tear that brings both Comfort
And a Raising of Dopamine Levels after Grief to motivate greater Creative and Productive
Endeavors for those who 'think' 'mush' in Emotional Intelligence is of no great importance
when in reality we are talking
about Mind and Body
Juice to Power the
Force of Creativity
and Productivity too in
all the Neuro-chemical
and Neuro-Hormonal and
other Frequencies and Vibrations
of MicroTuble Strings in Axons of
Nervous System from Head to toe too;
Along With Social Cooperation more too;
As yes; the Body thinks too in Feelings and
Senses more when all Lit up in a Grace of Balance
that Works in Positive way of Feeling and Sensing Life
more now too; for me at least, I more often advance when
I overlook what I may see as the Deficiencies of others to continue
to learn from where they shine; and while I would never resort to something
as immature as calling someone names on Twitter and suggesting I am gonna
Physically Harm them for something they say to me that anyone with any real
Mastery of their Emotions and Integration of their Senses would not even imagine
doing now. It's true; that's just another kind of intelligence that Standard IQ does not
touch but in
deed that
is the kind
of intelligence
that can and will
mean literal life and
death in real world situations;
as it doesn't matter how great
Jordan could slap when facing the
other end of a gun or a knife when
his bluff is blown. And as recent events
show; one just never knows who is at the
other end of the 'bullying conversation' now;
it doesn't take a 'real man' to pull a trigger by far far
as in general those who live by fisticuffs suffer by the
same; no matter sword or slapping little men more or less now.
Those are the kind of distractions that kill human potential in many
more
ways
than one
when the
Gun of Fisticuffs
becomes more important
than a God oF LoVE WiTHIN
Realized and put into real life action too...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7dxkEu3cbk