Jordan Peterson on Moral Law

[Emerald]

@Outer I'm trying really hard to explain this to you, but it's not working out too well. I will try one more time.

You are still not able to open up and hold space for paradoxes and shake free of the uni-perspectival paradigm that you're currently stuck down in. You will never be able to evolve out of Orange unless you see the validity of Green and release resistance to it.

So, when I talk about the subjective, practical, and down-to-Earth perspectives about race as being valid AND the scientific perspective about race being valid at the same time, it doesn't quite make sense to you. You're still in the notion that there is one perspective that is correct (or more correct) and that all other perspectives are invalid. So, you're in an "either/or" mindset about race, instead of in a holistic/integrative perspective on it. So, you try to invalidate the practical perspectives on race as an experiential reality, by cleaving to truths about race that are reductionist, deconstructionist, and detached from the subjective human experience and the emotional reality of being alive.

So, when I say that race is a real experiential reality that has practical implications for how individuals are treated and systems run, this is true. When you say that race is an illusion form the scientific perspective that there is no clear delineations between racial groups other than by phenotype, this is also true.

So, it is in being able to reconcile the paradox that both of these perspectives, though seemingly contradictory, are true from the standpoint of certain paradigms. 

But if we are looking to improve the status quo and to remove barriers to consciousness for humanity at large, one of these truths is helpful in aiding awareness and the other is usually used to obscure the truths that are aiding awareness. And this is what you and so many others are doing. 

So, claiming that race is an illusion is just using the truth to create blindspots that serve the function of keeping you stuck in your current paradigm where you feel safe and secure. In order to become more conscious, you must learn to let go of your attachments to the beliefs that make up the paradigm you currently reside within.

[Forestluv]

6 minutes ago, Outer said:

Not sure what that means.

 

It is a mode of being, which includes logic and is more expansive than logic.

[Outer]

@Emerald I don't deny the experiential reality of race for many people, what I am denying is that to hold on to that as if it was true is not only, in most cases, backwards for society, it is also scientifically questionable. If I'm talking with anyone I will tell them that yes you might group homo sapiens into races, but it is scientifically questionable, and it is in most cases not useful at all. If someone is being discriminated because of their race, by a racist, I will then tell them that that racist is founded upon and attached to the unscientifically classification of groups of people into races. I will also tell them that we're more like consciousness if we take the time to question who or what we think we are or who or what people have said we are, if the situation is ripe for that.

 

 

[Outer]

Actually in Green society, racism is defined to be systems of beliefs, concepts, worldviews or ideologies where the human species can be divided into races. I think that is accurate, as it is the foundational belief of racists in an Orange or lower society. I'm not saying it isn't above Orange. I'm just trying to state that by this definition many people in the U.S, who aren't racist by their definition, would be racist.

You can look up racism on the norwegian or swedish wikipedia for instance and translate the first sentence or two.

Edited November 21, 2018 by Outer

[Emerald]

1 minute ago, Outer said:

@Emerald I don't deny the experiential reality of race for many people, what I am denying is that to hold on to that as if it was true is not only, in most cases, backwards for society, it is also scientifically questionable. If I'm talking with anyone I will tell them that yes you might group homo sapiens into races, but it is scientifically questionable, and it is in most cases not useful at all. If someone is being discriminated because of their race, by a racist, I will then tell them that that racist is founded upon and attached to the unscientifically classification of groups of people into races. I will also tell them that we're more like consciousness if we take the time to question who or what we think we are or who or what people have said we are, if the situation is ripe for that.

Someone who is an overt and intentional racial supremacist is someone who could benefit from the insight that race is an illusion. This is true that ultimately they are projecting too much meaning onto race as an existential reality that implies some value or lack-there-of onto a particular race. That's why I said before that this truth was helpful when society as a whole were at an earlier point of development where we were less conscious is general and projected a lot more meanings onto race. Understanding that insight really helped us get out from under the most overt forms of institutionalized racism.

But in present day, we're dealing with the racism at a deeper and more subtle level that is still mostly in the collective shadow. And it is only people who are in Green and above that will be able to perceive of the existence of more subtle systemic patterns of racism. People in Orange will be largely unconscious to these patterns because they are directly in the blindspot of the Orange worldview. And because Orange values meritocracy, the realization that there are certain systemic riggings within society is very dangerous to Orange's beliefs in the world as being fair and meritocratic.

So, thinking of racism as something that comes only from overt racists also tends to reflect the idea of Orange Individualism in thinking of racism as a relatively uncommon character flaw that an individual has. People in Green and Yellow think about racism as a pattern within systems that are best dismantled... which requires a high degree of awareness relative to the subjective experiential truths about race to avoid feeding into (at Green) and avoid feeding into and actively dismantling (at Yellow).

Orange doesn't possess this awareness, so it cleaves to its ideas about how individual racists intentionally cause racism... so don't hate anyone and you won't be complicit in racism. Race is an illusion, so we shouldn't pay attention to it anyway. We should strive to be color blind because that means we, as individuals have character. So, it is not able to notice collective "invisible hand" patterns that maintain a status quo based in racial hegemony. So, it doesn't see any practical value in focusing toward the collective perspective.

[Outer]

Let's see if Emerald ignores this.

25 minutes ago, Outer said:

Actually in Green society, racism is defined to be systems of beliefs, concepts, worldviews or ideologies where the human species can be divided into races. I think that is accurate, as it is the foundational belief of racists in an Orange or lower society. I'm not saying it isn't above Orange. I'm just trying to state that by this definition many people in the U.S, who aren't racist by their definition, would be racist.

You can look up racism on the norwegian or swedish wikipedia for instance and translate the first sentence or two.

 

[Emerald]

28 minutes ago, Outer said:

Actually in Green society, racism is defined to be systems of beliefs, concepts, worldviews or ideologies where the human species can be divided into races. I think that is accurate, as it is the foundational belief of racists in an Orange or lower society. I'm not saying it isn't above Orange. I'm just trying to state that by this definition many people in the U.S, who aren't racist by their definition, would be racist.

You can look up racism on the norwegian or swedish wikipedia for instance and translate the first sentence or two.

That's an Orange view on racism. Orange views racism as an individual character flaw and overt bigotry levied by intentional racial supremacists who have certain beliefs, concepts, worldviews, and ideologies on race. So, Orange people tend to think of themselves as not racist, and will be blind to their own implicit biases and contributions to negative patterns within the social system. And if a Green brings up the blindspots the Orange has and tells them they're being complicit in racism, they will get really offended and take it personally as they feel like they've been accused of having a character flaw on the caliber of David Duke. 

Green, however, views racism as something that exists in collective systems that are maintained by individuals both conscious and unconscious of their implicit biases based upon race. And their solution is to demonize and discourage those maintainers of the status quo of the racism within systems to punish and discourage them from continuing. They are aware of the systemic issues... but they often don't think systemically about the solutions to them. 

Yellow views racism as something that is a systemic invisible hand issue on both the collectivist and individual levels. So, they think systemically on the individual and collectivist level and see how the two perspectives inform eachother and maintain the system. The difference is in the lack of demonization and understanding that misunderstanding and unconsciousness is the lion's share of the problem. And they will be more focused on raising consciousness then on punishing wrong-doers, as they see how easy it is to succumb to unconsciousness. They want to really understand all the perspectives and workings within the system to address the issue at its core in a real way.

[Outer]

13 minutes ago, Emerald said:

That's an Orange view on racism. Orange views racism as an individual character flaw and overt bigotry levied by intentional racial supremacists who have certain beliefs, concepts, worldviews, and ideologies on race. So, Orange people tend to think of themselves as not racist, and will be blind to their own implicit biases and contributions to negative patterns within the social system. And if a Green brings up the blindspots the Orange has and tells them they're being complicit in racism, they will get really offended and take it personally as they feel like they've been accused of having a character flaw on the caliber of David Duke. 

Green, however, views racism as something that exists in collective systems that are maintained by individuals both conscious and unconscious of their implicit biases based upon race. And their solution is to demonize and discourage those maintainers of the status quo of the racism within systems to punish and discourage them from continuing. They are aware of the systemic issues... but they often don't think systemically about the solutions to them. 

Yellow views racism as something that is a systemic invisible hand issue on both the collectivist and individual levels. So, they think systemically on the individual and collectivist level and see how the two perspectives inform eachother and maintain the system. The difference is in the lack of demonization and understanding that misunderstanding and unconsciousness is the lion's share of the problem. And they will be more focused on raising consciousness then on punishing wrong-doers, as they see how easy it is to succumb to unconsciousness. They want to really understand all the perspectives and workings within the system to address the issue at its core in a real way.

Racism in a system is because of racism in individuals. A system is merely a conceptualization of a group of individuals, the effects are at individual interactions between for instance a customer and a client, a doctor or patient, or government employee and citizen. You will know that as you start thinking instead of speaking in platitudes. For instance how do know a hospital is racist? Or a restaurant? By the interactions of the doctor and patient and the customer and the restaurant. If the interactions are not racist, the restaurant and hospital isn't either. Because that is how you measure it.

By definition, what I wrote is how Green sees it as it's from two green societies. If you went there and spoke about how there are different races to enlighten everyone on the street, what reactions do you expect?

Edited November 21, 2018 by Outer

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, Outer said:

Racism in a system is because of racism in individuals. A system is merely a conceptualization of a group of individuals, the effects are at individual interactions between for instance a customer and a client, a doctor or patient, or government employee and citizen. You will know that as you start thinking instead of speaking in platitudes. For instance how do know a hospital is racist? Or a restaurant? By the interactions of the doctor and patient and the customer and the restaurant. If the interactions are not racist, the restaurant and hospital isn't either. Because that is how you measure it.

By definition, what I wrote is how Green sees it as it's from two green societies. If you went there and spoke about how there are different races to enlighten everyone on the street, what reactions do you expect?

This again, seems to neglect the validity of the collectivist perspective and shows a tendency to fall back on the superiority of the individual perspective. While it is true, that a collective system is made up of individuals, there are issues that cannot be solved from the individualist perspective. And to always draw everything back to the individualist perspective invalidates truths that can only be seen from a big picture collectivist perspective. Likewise, someone who's always looking from a collectivist perspective and is attached to that lens will be blind to truths from the individualist perspective.

To give an example of why being stuck in an individualist perspective is limited, imagine that there is a forest. You could say that the forest is an illusion because a forest is essentially just a collection of individual trees. And there is technically no forest to be found on the level of trees. It is just a way that human beings conceptualize a grouping of individual trees.

That said, if there is a problem within the forest, then you can't necessarily discern the solution to that problem by looking at individual trees without regard to looking at the larger system that is the forest and how the smaller systems react within that larger system.

This is the same situation with regards to complex systemic issues like racism, as it isn't necessarily driven on by the intentions of individuals. You have to look at the entire system to discern why things are happening the way they are and what is happening. Only then, can viable solutions come about. And the individualist perspective, is not conducive to the awareness of systemic solutions to these issues as the individualist lens is to reductive to have efficacy in that situation.

So, again, it is failure to be multi-perspectival to always default to the individualist perspective as the superior or correct perspective. 

This kind of thinking leads to myopia and sheds light on the meaning of "missing the forest for the trees."

 

[RichardY]

If morality is another name for regulated behaviour, not sure how you can make a law out of it without god. Lot of labelling, no code of behaviour, just what ever is in, anything other then Moral Relativism?   

I don't get the race thing. But when I hear various nationalities regional groupings, I tend to think. 

Scotsmen - Frugal
Welsh (meaning slave or foreigner in saxon) - two people and you have a choir. "It's not unusual to be loved by anyone!"
Saxon - Slow burn hatred.
English - Madmen
Nord - Cold.
Irish - Friendly crazy.
West African - Plantation slave, Eunuch or Beast.
East African - Good runners.
Dutch - Drugs & Hardcore sex.
Italians - Motherfuckers. 
Arab - Professional thieves.
Berber - Food and farting.
Persian - Quarrelsome.
Turks - Bloodthirsty.
Russian - Insane.
Spanish - Bullfighters.
German - Machines.
Frank - Crazy
Japanese - Run if smiling.
Chinese - Counterfeit.
India - Telesales.
Pakistan - Nuclear.
Native American - Wildmen

[Outer]

31 minutes ago, Emerald said:

complex systemic issues like racism

Give an example of systemic racism. I still don't share your definition of racism but I do agree with you if there is a bundle of individuals who are over and over racist or if there is a group in which there is more racism, that does warrant further study as to why that is. There are definitely racist organizations however. The definition of racism that I gave you, if an organization reflects that definition it is applicable to it.

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, Outer said:

Give an example of systemic racism. I still don't share your definition of racism but I do agree with you if there is a bundle of individuals who are over and over racist or if there is a group in which there is more racism, that does warrant further study as to why that is. There are definitely racist organizations however. The definition of racism that I gave you, if an organization reflects that definition it is applicable to it.

Think of systemic racism like a huge Rube Goldberg machine, where the ball drops and a flag goes up and that makes dominos topple over which makes a gun shoot which makes even more dominos topple over and a ball go into a cup that tips over and a string is pulled, etc. So, it's a complex and idiosyncratic system that creates a lot of unexpected outcomes.

And also, it's important to understand that the vast majority of negative effects toward people of color come from unconsciousness as opposed to direct malicious intent. Now, that's not to say that there aren't people with malicious intent toward people of color. It's just that the majority of racism comes unknowingly from unconscious well-meaning people. But the people with malicious intent know this, and can use those people as pawns to spread their agenda. 

So, let's take a very small and mundane aspect of the system of racism as an example. Band-aids are made to match white skin tones. The paint color "nude" is also a white skin tone color. 

Now, these are seemingly relatively innocuous examples. But they are actually a reflection of a much more pervasive systemic issue. Namely, that white is seen as the default race and that all other races are a variation on the white norm. I call this white defaultism. 

This is also reflected in the terms that we use to describe Americans who are of different races. Black people are called African Americans, and this is true no matter how long their family has resided in the United States. The black family and their ancestors could have been living in the United States for 400 years, but they are still called African American.

Meanwhile, we don't refer to white people as European American. And even if a white person's parents came from Europe, if that white person was born in the United States then they will just be referred to as an American. So, white people don't get a signifier like all other races and ethnicities, which also is a reflection of white defaultism.

And all minorities that live in the states get signifiers that suggest they are variations upon the white default. Even Native Americans, have the signifier of being "Native" as the qualifier upon being American, despite the fact that they have the most right to just be called American.

Then, if someone says, a person walked into a bar, the image that comes to mind is usually a picture of a white man walking into a bar, as person as an idea = white person. 

And this is an implicit bias that we get inundated with from a very early age because of cultural understandings and representation in the media. 

So, it takes a lot of awareness of this issue to not project this white defaultism onto reality, as it is such a cultural and psychological groove that enforces a lot of harmful mindsets around race and belonging. So, it even branches out and has many other effects on how people interact with and perceive people of color. 

Edit: Also, to be white and seen as default has the effect of coming off as "race neutral" to most people. So, white people get the benefit of not having people react to their race very often, as it is seen as the norm and blends into the background. So, white people get significantly fewer uncomfortable reactions to their race, where people of color would have to take other's reaction to their race into consideration really often. 

Also, being race neutral creates a comfort zone of racelessness in white people's minds. So, white people tend to become really sensitive and avoidant of matters that deal with race. White people tend to get upset and uncomfortable when they're in a situation that their race becomes a focus because they're not used to it. And that anxiety tends to get projected onto people of color, so people of color have to carefully navigate the waters in discussions about race with white people. And white people tend to not listen to grievances relative to race because they feel blamed and put on the spot. And they often have world-views that minimise the focus on race in general. So, it is difficult for people in minority groups to get people in the majority group to listen because of the majority group not being used to having attention drawn to their race and having anxieties and guilt around racial issues being brought up. 

Edited November 22, 2018 by Emerald

[Outer]

1 hour ago, Emerald said:

So, let's take a very small and mundane aspect of the system of racism as an example. Band-aids are made to match white skin tones. The paint color "nude" is also a white skin tone color. 

So you think band-aids that are made to match white skin colors  and a "nude" paint that matches white skin color is an example of systematic racism?

[Emerald]

Just now, Outer said:

So you think band-aids that are made to match white skin colors  and a "nude" paint that matches white skin color is an example of systematic racism?

Like I said above, these are two minor things that are merely a reflection of white defaultism, which is a huge systemic issue.

So, despite that band-aids and paint colors on their own would be non-issues, they reflect a much more insidious and pervasive systemic force that has profound effects on the social system relative to race. 

So, take these as very minor symptoms of a deeper and more serious illness.

In the same sense that cancer has some symptoms that don't look that serious on first inspection, it is the same for these minor tells relative to much more deeply ingrained racist patterns. 

[Outer]

2 minutes ago, Emerald said:

Like I said above, these are two minor things that are merely a reflection of white defaultism, which is a huge systemic issue.

So, despite that band-aids and paint colors on their own would be non-issues, they reflect a much more insidious and pervasive systemic force that has profound effects on the social system relative to race. 

So, take these as very minor symptoms of a deeper and more serious illness.

In the same sense that cancer has some symptoms that don't look that serious on first inspection, it is the same for these minor tells relative to much more deeply ingrained racist patterns. 

I'm asking again, are band-aids that are made to match white skin colors  and a "nude" paint that matches white skin color examples of systematic racism?

To me it's kind of trivial, but there have been transparent band-aids for many years and recently other colors that will match more skin colors. I don't think many people paint but if someone is and a company has a paint color called nude that's white I guess you can boycott that product or company.

[StephenK]

@Emerald Just out of curiosity, do you believe that white racism is more prevalent and important than, say, Black racism, or Chinese racism? Do you think this issue of racism is disproportionately prevalent among white people? 

Edited November 22, 2018 by StephenK

[SOUL]

1 hour ago, Emerald said:

So, take these as very minor symptoms of a deeper and more serious illness.

This is problematic, too. Suggesting it's an illness like cancer which further demonizes people and actually perpetuates racial bias. Let's seek to transcend it, not just flip it around or change the roles of it. We can attempt to expose it and resolve it without creating another obstacle to overcome in doing so.

[Leo Gura]

Has this horse been beaten to death yet?

[Outer]

59 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Has this horse been beaten to death yet?

It has been off-topic for a couple of pages but it was some good discussion imo.

[Emerald]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Has this horse been beaten to death yet?

These are the main aspects of the collective shadow that society at large is on the verge of becoming conscious of in order to make a transition from an Orange paradigm to a Green paradigm (to speak from a Spiral Dynamics perspective). So, the horse is still very much alive. This is why this topic will continue to come up again and again and again and again until collective consciousness has integrated these perspectives.

So, if it were truly a dead horse, it wouldn't be absolutely EVERYWHERE.

This is the cutting edge of collective consciousness. So, even if it's nowhere near Turquoise, these conversations are important to have to encourage forward momentum.