Jordan Peterson thinks it makes sense to compare humans with lobsters
- Thread starter Woebot
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sus
Moderator
What? Are you confused? All the justifications of selfishness come under the auspices of self-care "you don't owe anyone anything mentality." Where in Peterson's ideas are a justification of selfishness? I don't know the guy's work well but AFAICT responsibility, obligation, and duty—traditional lower-case conservative values—are the bulk of his sermon. His is directly, consciously, deliberately a torque against a cultural narcissism as described by Lasch—not its defense.
All economic rationality is fundamentally self-centred. Where liberals and modern conservatives (and, social democratic leftists, even, share the same methodology.) When Marx subtitled capital a critique of political economy he really meant it, economics must not only be criticised to be developed (ricardo did that well enough) but it must be critiqued as a discipline in and of itself to be utterly demolished for the pseudoscientific pretentious guff it is.
Calling Peterson a traditional conservative seems odd to me, he does not believe in Canada being a feudal monarchy with a clear paternalist hierarchy, last I checked. He's just a centre right liberal.
There's no such thing as postmodern marxism, there's postmodernism and post-structuralism, but ironically the approach of a Deleuze has more in common with Peterson than it does Marx, which is where the hilarity is. The difference is that Deleuze exalts individual psychological vectors, fissures, ruptures in the social fabric and discourse as sites of resistance, whereas Peterson exalts them as sites of self-actualisation, the conformist at her maximum potential.
mixed_biscuits
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sus
Moderator
(1) They feed off the unmet psychological needs of their respective gender demographics
(2) They have some real bangers in their canon—there's a valid steelman in which they're important cultural figures who have produced important cultural work
(3) There's an enormous amount of cringe as well, especially w/r/t the behind-the-scenes personas—they are fundamentally silly and self-deluded people, and it is difficult to square their genuine wisdom against their persona
(4) Hyper fans can't shut up about them, and are usually delusional/worth disregarding
(5) Moderate, bracketed, considered appreciation is the correct stance toward them
(2) They have some real bangers in their canon—there's a valid steelman in which they're important cultural figures who have produced important cultural work
(3) There's an enormous amount of cringe as well, especially w/r/t the behind-the-scenes personas—they are fundamentally silly and self-deluded people, and it is difficult to square their genuine wisdom against their persona
(4) Hyper fans can't shut up about them, and are usually delusional/worth disregarding
(5) Moderate, bracketed, considered appreciation is the correct stance toward them
linebaugh
Well-known member
I think the 'bangers in their canons' are so fundamentally different it collapses the whole analogy
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
He got to be a Harvard academic through this no-content, I take it?
version
Well-known member
sus
Moderator
This just isn't remotely true, you clearly aren't familiar with his body of work, which is much more significant and larger than Dunham's (altho of course he has had many more decades to produce it). The meme JBP of the 2010s/20s is not the same JBP as the 80s/90s/00s theorist and lecturer, who wrote a lot and made non-trivial contributions to intellectual history
sus
Moderator
As a friend says, "The best argument for JBP's ideas are his Harvard lectures. The best argument against his ideas are his personal/family life."
On the one hand, I mean, the guy really is embarrassing himself, and he should've drifted off post-benzo incident. The apple cider stuff, the Lion diet, some of his motte-and-baileys re: transness/pronouns, it's all really embarrassing and discrediting and I sorta can't blame the left because it's such an easy target
On the other hand, none of that really matters, does it? The ideas are what count. Of course, this is how intellectual discussion always goes—each side picks the easiest targets, and ignores the hardest battles. It would be great if there was a discussion of substance about the relative merits of traditionalism & self-discipline vs progressivism and liberty, about when and to what extent these approaches are better or worse. (I can believe that the family structure dissolving might be a disaster, and also that I support legal marijuana & gay marriage.) The balance between order and disorder, structure and subversion, tradition and innovation—that's a tough dialectic, but maybe we can come up with good rules or heuristics for navigating when to favor one approach vs another.
sus
Moderator
And look, JBP's ideas—he's done a very good job (or did, back in 90s/00s) of synthesizing and interpreting a bunch of Biblical and art historical and literary ideas about tradition, duty, discipline, meaning, myth. His ideas aren't especially innovative, but (at peak form) he represents one of the best distillations and presentations of a set of lowercase-c conservative stances, and why they ought to be taken seriously.
Liberalism's never adequately dealt with these issues.
Liberalism's never adequately dealt with these issues.