Jordan Peterson thinks it makes sense to compare humans with lobsters

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
I'm not knocking him for trying. I'm knocking him for telling others not to.

Now I get it. I did miss read you a bit there. It does look like we're agreeing on stuff after all ❌


You haven't actually read what I've been saying then. My logic is that nobody's ever gonna be completely sorted, so telling them to get their own house in order before trying to do anything outside of it would result in nobody ever doing anything outside their own house. You're gonna get a lot more people taking leadership positions if they're allowed to have their own problems whilst trying to do something bigger.

As above. There's a lot to talk about wrt activism and some good ground was covered in that other thread. I'm on team mass striking. But in a way peterson point is true because what would we do after we won? A thread on that could be interesting.
 

version

Well-known member
There's a clip of him being questioned by (an admittedly very irritating) audience member on an Australian panel show about how personal responsibility as he's advocating it solves things like climate change, the housing market and whatnot and he just says that people should look to their own insecurities and that will allow them to develop a career, become an upstanding citizen etc. Meanwhile he's spoken at free speech rallies and set up a platform intended to foster uncensored speech.

To me, that suggests it's the goal of the activism he takes issue with. People should spend decades sorting themselves out before trying to do anything about climate change or the flaws in the economic system, but he'll be right at the front, encouraging it, as soon as people are protesting and campaigning in favour of something he agrees with - regardless of whether or not they have their houses in order.

His suggestion that people should essentially buy into the system before trying to change it also completely neutralises any attempt to change it and I think he knows this. It's much harder to change something once you're that invested in it and stand to lose the things you've gained in buying into it.
 

chava

Well-known member
His suggestion that people should essentially buy into the system before trying to change it also completely neutralises any attempt to change it and I think he knows this. It's much harder to change something once you're that invested in it and stand to lose the things you've gained in buying into it.

You cannot escape the system. We have all ourselves invested in it. Better to realize that before trying to change it.

When he is saying sort yourselves out before criticizing the world he's addressing the cardboard politics of the left (and right and centre) when taking on very complex problems like gender 'trouble' or climate change. Look at video that first made him wellknown where he is confronted outside the university. Those students talk like bots, and he is right in that they are obsessed or even possessed.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
After a bit of reading I see that the free speech crisis was a Canadian University wide phenomenon which I've found zero evidence pointing to Peterson involvement in orchestrating. The only flirting with the alt right I've found is one photo with a pepe the frog on a flag, and then the fact that peterson likes to use pepe in his social network posts. I think it's pretty severe to assume, based on this, he's some right wing mastermind. But droid says it was repeatedly, so I will do a bit more digging. So far, it looks more like the right have latched onto him because they hate political correctness and this is a big theme for Peterson.
 

version

Well-known member
You cannot escape the system. We have all ourselves invested in it. Better to realize that before trying to change it.

Maybe so, but you certainly can't by fully committing to it. The more you give yourself over, the less chance you have, unless you're some sort of superhuman who can work your way up to being a billionaire without becoming compromised.

When he is saying sort yourselves out before criticizing the world he's addressing the cardboard politics of the left (and right and centre) when taking on very complex problems like gender 'trouble' or climate change.

It isn't really the right and centre though, is it? The fact you tacked on those two in brackets says it all really. It's pretty much exclusively the left he says this stuff to. You might get the odd line on the right like at the start of his interview with Douglas Murray, but then he tries to blame the left for the right's behaviour.

Look at video that first made him wellknown where he is confronted outside the university. Those students talk like bots, and he is right in that they are obsessed or even possessed.

That's just people in general. Go and look at footage of any Trump rally, take a look at some of the right-wing communities online. That's how people behave. They say the same things, they get angry and emotional, they emulate each other.
 

luka

Well-known member
Patty and Chava what are the aspects of his teaching you have found the most helpful and enlightening and interesting? What's the good stuff?
 

chava

Well-known member
That's because he is a professor and mostly deals with academia which is as he said.multiple times very left wing and also will be tilted that way. And if he was a businessman he might be railing against the right.

He is not even a typical conservative. He has some admittingly pretty social conservative views on family, sexuality etc, but his thinking and general philosophy is not. His view of the individual aren't a classical conservative one in my view either. I think the left should warm up to his ideas and engage with them instead of just dismissing him on the most obvious causes.

Go for his discussions on creativity or his debates with Iain McGilchrist or John Vervaeke - much better than all the political/controversial stuff anyways.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
have to admit i started off fairly sympathetic to him a few years ago, but lately, with all the stuff version's been mentioning, not so much. i'm sure he has some interesting points or good advice but i'm not convinced, given all the other bs, that it's worth ardently defending him over.

it seems like the standard path for a "public intellectual" is to start off doing fairly respectable work in their own field, then increasingly reach beyond their area of expertise to make overgeneralized, lazy arguments about complex social issues as they become more famous. being famous makes you dumber.
 

version

Well-known member
it seems like the standard path for a "public intellectual" is to start off doing fairly respectable work in their own field, then increasingly reach beyond their area of expertise to make overgeneralized, lazy arguments about complex social issues as they become more famous. being famous always makes you dumber.

Yeah, scaling your chosen mountain then trying to jump to an adjacent summit rather than working your way up once again.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
have to admit i started off fairly sympathetic to him a few years ago, but lately, with all the stuff version's been mentioning, not so much. i'm sure he has some interesting points or good advice but i'm not convinced, given all the other bs, that it's worth ardently defending him over.

Victim of his own success.
 

chava

Well-known member
Patty and Chava what are the aspects of his teaching you have found the most helpful and enlightening and interesting? What's the good stuff?

Who's doing cross disciplinary work for the layman to understand but him?
He is genuinely right about what to do with the alt-right types. It's a masculinity crisis, but not how people usually think
His defence for free speech is much much deeper and interesting than anything else
He is an icocnoclast on almost every topic : his views on DMT, fascism, music, ADHD, technology, dependency etc
Doesn't any away from any topic and willing to stick his head out

etc
 
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