Jordan Peterson

[solr]

Any thoughts on Jbp? Im from scandinavia, dont know much about him. People keep nagging me to check him out, but im preoccupied with other resources atm. Is he worth the time?

[robdl]

It depends - what do you want? 

Do you want to be more achieving, successful, respectable, etc., or do you want to understand the movement of thought-self (ego) which seeks success/achievement/respect/self-improvement in the first place?  He doesn't really provide much in terms of the latter.

Edited July 11, 2018 by robdl

[solr]

11 minutes ago, robdl said:

It depends - what do you want? 

Do you want to be more achieving, successful, respectable, etc., or do you want to understand the movement of thought-self (ego) which seeks success/achievement/respect/self-improvement in the first place?  He doesn't really provide much in terms of the latter.

In terms of spiral dynamics im not interested in an orange teacher if that's what you're implying. 

[robdl]

Just now, solr said:

In terms of spiral dynamics im not interested in an orange teacher if that's what you're implying. 

I'm not familiar with spiral dynamics/what the colours mean.

[RoaldKamman]

The man is legendary in his temperament and conviction yet open to the possibility to being wrong. An intellectual supermind being able to compile most of every psychological aspect of people up to orange. Which makes me believe that he does think in systems. He is moren than bloody well worth checking out. I have spent about 40 total hours on his content and must say that after that there is not much new to find. Im very glad that I spent that time tho. 

[Edvard]

I know a proclaimed Coral in spiral dynamics who seems to be a fan of him, TJ Reeves. He's a member of this forum, and I follow him on IG. 

Edited July 11, 2018 by Edvard

[robdl]

22 minutes ago, Emerald said:

 

But I could see being really jazzed up to listen to what he says as a man, because he inspires men who feel powerless to own their masculinity and gives them narratives around the idea of manhood for climbing the hierarchy. But he tends to be somewhat critical of women competing in "male dominance hierarchies" and focusing less on motherhood/wifehood because he thinks it makes women less happy and makes society fall apart.

 

Yeah, Peterson feeds the (traditional) male ego-identity, which is why half his youtube video titles (titled by his followers) are "Peterson OWNS transgender activist", "Peterson DESTROYS feminist professor in debate", "how to be a real man," "how to be a true alpha," "how to earn the respect of other men," etc.  A lot of fear there when it comes to protecting and strengthening the male identity within ego.

Edited July 11, 2018 by robdl

[robdl]

13 minutes ago, Emerald said:

Absolutely. It's really toxic.

 

And to seek ego-identity in male-ness is not really any different than seeking identity in being American, communist, christian, atheist, conservative, etc.   Of course, you may be a male -- that is a biological fact.  But it may also be a fact that you are an American citizen. Or a fact that you are a lawyer for a living. But to derive ego-identity out of it is altogether different. That's when it becomes a movement of fear, seeking security in identity.

[robdl]

4 minutes ago, Emerald said:

I agree completely. Jordan Peterson probably has had a high degree of success living by these narratives of manhood.

Right, just like how someone could have a high degree of success living by a narrative that it's a brutalistic, dog-eat-dog world, and that one has to out-work, out-compete everyone and fight for everything they want.  The fruits of the narrative can validate the narrative, but the narrative may very well be a complete ego-mind fabrication.

[robdl]

19 minutes ago, Outer said:

Ok... The transgender activity and feminist professor has nothing to do with men.

 

 

I'd say it absolutely does, in terms of the male ego identity.

As the greyness/murkyness of transgenderism undermines/threatens the traditional male ego identity, which is based on male vs. female.  Transgenderism muddies those waters.  It's like white nationalists who are totally uncomfortable with bi-racial/mixed people, because they muddy the waters as to what it means to be white vs. black.  They blur the lines, so to speak, and the ego depends on distinctions, lines -- whether the white identity or the male identity.

And for feminism, with its progressive values and critiques of men, questioning the whole male-female structure of our social system, also undermines/threatens the (traditional) male ego-identity, naturally.

Edited July 11, 2018 by robdl

[solr]

Well, this did not spark my interest at all. "Alpha", debating, feminism.. bleh. 

[robdl]

22 minutes ago, Outer said:

You're basing too much on a title, that transgender activist might've said a lot of nonsense you know... It's just a description. Just search Theryn Meyer Jordan Peterson.

He doesn't have anything against trans people, neither JP's followers...

Neither do they have anything against feminists.

You're the one seeing the world in groups.  I.e "Jordan Peterson OWNS feminist" doesn't mean he owns all feminists...

The content of the video is beside the point.  I'm questioning the click-batey nature of the video titles to pull in Peterson followers to give them what they want to see (to see Peterson "OWN" a transgender activist, to own a feminist).  Lots of videos there also about Peterson "owning a leftist", "dismantles a liberal."  These are videos with 100's of thousands of hits.  Clearly lots of tribal identity politics going on there with left-right, male-feminist, etc., and the need to beat the "other side."  It just reeks of conservative-male ego identity.  It's self-evident, really.  And the leader reflects the followers; and the followers reflect the leader.

Edited July 11, 2018 by robdl

[Clayman]

Its interesting to observe.

People go into self-help, personal development. they learn the ways of the social constructivist, Anyone can be anything, babies are a white piece of paper, differences are insignificant, the end goal of your life is to be happy, self esteem, waaa. .... That is how you get into self-help. People let that sinks very deep, a foundation it becomes. It stays there...Quite empowering paradigm, but quite limited also.

And than you find a guy like this lumped into personal development circles, telling you: Not anyone can be anything, babies are not a white piece of paper, differences are significant, the end goal of your life is not to be happy. Imagine the trigger.

Yes the obvious reply is, ego games blah blah, ofc. Dual perspective, blah. Sure that. But speaking of the "human world" there are quite a few pros/cons coming with the biological shell you are inhibiting. And sadly it has become a taboo, to point that out in our modern society. Fingers are pointed, words like racist, homophobic, bigot are uttered at every turn. Avoiding some pieces of the puzzle at every turn.

If you avoid fitting the puzzle on these basic "human levels", how can you go to the "beyond human levels" ....ones that are so much more difficult. 

Edited July 11, 2018 by Clayman

[Clayman]

1 hour ago, Emerald said:

 

Now, Jordan Peterson didn't say anything about getting rid of low IQ people or eugenics. But about half the comments section consisted of people advocating for eugenics. There were also a ton of people talking about race and how 'the average black person has an IQ of 80', and combining that with the eugenics arguments other people were using.

And I'd bet money that this isn't on accident on the part of Jordan Peterson. It's 100% intentional. 

He implies just enough to get people thinking in the direction he wants them to think. But he doesn't go far enough to lose the air of plausible deniability.

He also points out that IQ is good for some things, it also has negative effect. And that there are many other things of value in people that have nothing to do with IQ. Also criticizes far right groups on many occasions, especially when it comes to radicalization, and talking in racial waters.  So, it does not compute.

 

Edited July 12, 2018 by Clayman

[Clayman]

1 hour ago, Outer said:

What's an oppressive social structure? Point directly to one.

That's no problem mate, you can point at exactly any structure you desire and be right. There is a tyrannical aspect in any system, in any structure, he likes to preach that, maybe because he got it quite right.

The reason he preaches that I would say is because of the failure of many people to see the non-tyrannical and protective part of it. They preach of oppression against some ... group. At the same time sitting on a laptop, eating chia, under a roof with no danger to be attacked or killed by anything.
 

[Clayman]

2 hours ago, Emerald said:

I've heard him temper his talks with these kinds of 'nuances' peppered in. And it's why he can be mainstream and have so much of an impact.

If he came right out and said, "People with low IQ are a burden on society, so we should get rid of them." No one would listen to what he has to say except for the most radical people. And if he didn't criticize the far Right a little bit, that would be suspicious given the amount that he rails against the Left. 

But you can tell what his intentions are by the amount of time and emotion he invests into a particular topic. So, the nuances are carefully placed within his rhetoric to disguise the rhetoric.

That way, he just seems like an open-minded intellectual in search for truth no matter what comes up. When in reality, he is a fierce ideologue whose end goal is to bring us back to a "Blue" social structure.

I ll say its  its way more sophisticated than that. 

-Ideologue that tells the both sides of the story, not really an ideologue.
-Person that promotes individualism to such a big degree is leading people out of blue into orange. Not wise versa. 
-I would agree that he has an agenda, and that he is purposely repeating the same things at every speech, as a political leader, using it instrumentally, one might say. But I would strongly disagree that he is doing this for the given reason. I would say its for promoting individualism as a way to stabilize the left-right identity politics mania. In that regard he is fighting against the radical-left as much as the radical-right. Its just the left that is popular and less demonized. So I get it why he likes to spit on them so much. 


There was an interesting case in my country. Trying to be more egalitarian and inclusive, we are an EU candidate. They lowered the body weight and strength requirements for fireman, so there would be more women, it was unfair and oppressive, woman could not get in and be the cool fireman.

There was a fire, a family of 4 people died, 2 of them under the age of 5. the firegirl didn't have the sufficient strength nor weight to go trough the door. When her colleague came and helped her break it, it was too late.

If you lower the requirements for being a engineer to 80 IQ, in the name of eliminating systemic oppression. We should not wonder why that building fell and killed all those people. 

"You are wise when you know that "evil" is not elsewhere" would be the proper quote.

It has just a nice ring to it you know, when you are trying to eliminate systemic oppression, be more inclusive, tolerant, you must be good , good hearthed also,  doing the good and the right things, and that guy over there doing the same things as me, must be doing them for the same reason... what can go wrong. Its actually simple, it makes sense. This is the stuff he is warning against. 

Edited July 12, 2018 by Clayman

[lmfao]

@solr Jordan Peterson is quite the intelligent psychologist. I found some of his university psychology lectures to be interesting and his lectures aren't usually loaded with jargon, which means he's easy to follow. If you want to learn a few things within psychology in a fun/interesting way, his youtube lectures are the way to go. I've been listening to stuff from this playlist, although there are others.

For me, his lectures on the "Big Five Aspects scale" are quite memorable. The Big Five Aspects scale is a model for describing and measuring personality. In this model, there are five dimensions of measurement: Agreeableness, conscientiousness, Extroversion, Openness to Experience and Neuroticism. It provides a nice way of conceptualizing personality. These 5 traits are things you can observe in the people around you, and can be used to explain why people behave in different ways. Each trait has two sub components, e.g. conscientiousness is composed of orderliness and industriousness. In his conscientiousness lecture in this playlist he talks about how conscientiousness predicts political orientation and life success, and how racial prejudice and avoidance of your "out group" may in part be an evolutionary adaptation (of course he isn't morally justifying this). This is because unfamiliar groups of people can carry pathogens which can kill you. For example, when Europeans came over to meet the Native Americans it is estimated that 90% of Native Americans were killed from pathogens that Europeans were carrying. He speculates that racial prejudice can be the result of "orderliness" going out of control in order to avoid infection. He talks about Hitler in general as well as example of orderliness taken to extremes, and he talks about how Hitler in his speeches and writings would describe Jews using words related to medical disease. 

 

As you've obviously seen from the responses in this thread, Jordan Peterson is more well known for his political stances. And when Jordan Peterson engages in conversation around politics, he explains his world view and people like to debate his world view. I personally find his political stuff less interesting. Although I do find some his interpretations of the Bible to be sort of interesting. 

 

 

[Clayman]

2 hours ago, Outer said:

Yes I know and I agree, but the emphasis on tyrannical tends to be when the structure doesn't have the non-tyrannical and protective parts. There isn't many of those in Western society. That's why there was silence.

I would agree, the benefits seem outweigh the oppression aspect my a significant margin. It takes extreme amount of ignorance not to see that.. Also people tend to see systems in some form of isolation. O, its capitalism, and there is oppression. Than oppression must come from capitalism. This is the standard linear thinking people take, i mean i don't blame them, that is the default way.

It never occurs to them that maybe the oppression thing has nothing to do with capitalism, the west, or humans themselves. Maybe its some other system far out from all of this human mess...... mess.... perfect mess..

Edited July 12, 2018 by Clayman

[CreamCat]

Despite the fact that traditionalism has problems, the changes people neurotically suggest do not seem any better because they force answers to come out of their egos. Answers that you force out of your egos are low quality answers. People are trying to peg a square block into round holes.

Answers will emerge organically. Don't force answers out of your egos. Accept the fact that we may not know a better answer for a while. Be patient. Trust that high quality answers will naturally emerge out of infinite intelligence.

I don't care much about traditionalism, but Jordan Peterson is right in that short-sighted neurotic answers coming out of human egos are not going to solve problems.

Lots of neurotic answers people suggest are dogmatic and inflexible.

Let the problem simmer in your subconsicous mind. The answers may not come from you, but others.

Leo said that while we are formulating a theory, we should have ability to act in opposition to our forming theory and keep doing what we have been doing until a good theory emerges. Theories change everyday, and we can't change what we do everyday.

Why are people so eager to push new theories down others' throats before the theories are tested? We need scientific politics.

Edited July 12, 2018 by CreamCat

[Clayman]

2 hours ago, Etherial Cat said:

Last Sunday as I was debating JP on this forum, I was casually sitting on the couch with my laptop almost eating chia (it was melon) while my mother suddenly got called a b*** by a drunken guest, who enjoyed calling me "Fatima" when my name isn't remotely close to it (I have a latin name). He ended up screaming everywhere that he hated arabs for literally no reason. I am mixed race (and not arab at all btw) and he assumed I was muslim. This man made several remarks during dinner that I was not belonging and handed me a plate of meat to check if I was eating pork. 

But yes, no oppression here. 

Its and attitude of a person. We have to deal with that, it does not make it some human made systemic oppression.
Even if all the people did that to you, its still does not make it. It is influence that goes way beyond humans and their doings.

Its quite intriguing and scary at the same time... how people do not realize their smallness, they think they know big, they can point stuff. fix stuff, because they perceive it being wrong. In the end they end up  making it way worse.