Just today about the change of the anthem, it’s ridiculous to me how upset people are. Is the changing of “Sons” to a sex-neutral word “progressive”/part of the Feminist agenda? Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong [...] If one’s “enemy” says ‘the sky is blue’, it must not be, because admitting it is somehow just gives up too much
This is actually a good point. When I first saw that story, I groaned, but then I thought about why I was groaning. I think I was at a point where I was so used to hearing stupid shit that I just assumed this was more stupid shit, but if you take a beat, I think you can appreciate that maybe this isn't so stupid, and, like you said, without that being a contradiction or a "loss."
His association with so many alt-right figureheads has been less than flattering, though supposedly this is a product of him agreeing to speak with anyone who wants to speak with him. Figures of the left are open to do the same.
1) Why "supposedly"? Are you in devil's advocate mode or do you have reason to doubt his motives (or both)?
2)
Are figures of the left open to doing the same, though? During Steven Crowder's recent appearance on Rogan's podcast (immediately after Peterson's appearance, in fact) they spent some time discussing this. And it's something that I see Rubin and his guests discuss a lot, as well. Is it the anti-leftists (I think that's more accurate than saying "the right") patting themselves on the back by making it seem like they're open to that which the left isn't or have they actually hit on something?
I'd like to see more criticism come from A. people who have more specialized expertise in the domains he pulls facts from, who can debate the merits of those
In the domain of aesthetic philosophy, I've found myself wanting to pull apart countless claims he's made or positions he's taken regarding art, specifically regarding the concept of authorship and the nature of aesthetic experience. I think this is a place where his psychoanalytic sympathies fuck him up and undercut a lot of the things that he wants to accomplish by turning to art.
or B. people who understand the risks of theoretical stacking (ie. using biology to explain psychology or politics) and can pick apart the edifice he's built as a whole.
I thought he wandered into a weird area of contradiction in his recent discussion with Ben Shapiro when they were talking about Sam Harris and the alleged flaws of an atheist worldview. Peterson claims that Harris can't make the argument that the (rational) values of the Enlightenment undergird society while being an evolutionary biologist because he can't have those two time frames at the same time. Interestingly, I think time frames are often what trip people up when they try to assert the primacy of religion, as Peterson inadvertently ends up demonstrating.
As I understand his argument ("So what you're saying is..."
), Peterson is arguing (following on from something Shapiro had said right before, that you can't have a purely rational worldview because
something in your system will be "unprovable" and will require you to take a "leap of faith" [the latter being Shapiro's own words]) that "underneath" one's (conscious, explicitly stated, and presumably rational) philosophy is something vaguely Jungian (let's just say "the archetypes"). Then he takes it one step further and argues that underneath that vaguely Jungian something is something even vaguer.
To me, that's just mysticism masquerading as insight. And to place a premium on "the stories that represent reality" rather than on the reality that those stories represent is just a simple chronological error. To the latter point, I'm reminded of Hitchens' point about the "Good Samaritan" about whom Jesus speaks:
"There's a very famous parable in the New Testament where the alleged Jesus of Nazareth tells a story about a man from Samaria (we call it the good Samaritan) who, finding a fellow creature in enormous distress and pain, goes well out of his way to alleviate his suffering and to follow up to make sure that his sympathy hasn't been a waste of time, to do the aftercare if you like. We know one thing about this person from Samaria: He cannot have been a Christian.
Jesus is telling this story about someone He's heard of who acted, as far as we know, from no other prompting other than elementary human solidarity. What other prompting do we need? Our species would not have survived, we wouldn't be met here, if we didn't have, as well as many selfish instincts, the need, and often for our own sake, to be of use to others, to combine with them, to take an interest in them, to care for them, and to worry when they're in pain. No supernatural authority, as with the Civil Rights Movement, is required for this. Morality comes from us. Religion claims to have invented it on our behalf."
At one point in his discussion with Shapiro, Peterson also concedes that religious belief itself has evolved. Doesn't that undercut his own position? Isn't that to concede that religion is a product of humanity, something that has evolved as we have evolved, something that is by definition
not primary?
I think Peterson is 100% spot-on when he talks about the psychological significance of religious stories and ancient myths. But I think he's off in la la land when he tries to argue, even if only implicitly, that their having psychological significance is evidence (in any sense of that word) of their being a manifestation (
through us rather than
from us) of something above/beyond us.
I wanted to go but another appointment kept me too late and then I was drunk and figured that was a bad combination of things.
the biggest weakness in Peterson's philosophy so far is in its paucity of recommendations for effective collective action.
Can something that is for all intents and purposes anathema (or, at best, secondary) to one's philosophy be a weakness of it? Peterson's philosophy is essentially that of articulating the conditions of possibility for
any action, whether individual or collective. If his philosophy can be reduced to "crawl before you walk before you run," then I don't think there's any sense in talking about the weakness of his philosophy when it comes to running tips until we're all collectively crawling and walking with decent skill.
I found his statement regarding the iterable games and the logos to be somewhat inconsistent. For example - if the iterable games become part of the landscape themselves and we should conduct ourselves within those rules doesn't that suggest that new games can emerge and they become part of the landscape? Which would mean that the games/rules that underpin some of this philosophy can/will change.
Peterson is by no means against change/adaptation. From
Maps of Meaning:
P. 177: "The spirit forever willing to risk personal (more abstractly, intrapsychic) destruction to gain redemptive knowledge might be considered
the archetypal representative of the adaptive process as such."
P. 179: "A new manner of dealing with (that is,
behaving with regard to or
classifying) an emergent unknown is
the gift of the hero."
P. 181: "The most fundamental presumption of the myth of the hero is that the nature of human experience can be (should be) improved by voluntary alteration in individual human attitude and action. This statement … constitutes the truly revolutionary idea of historical man."
PP. 186-187: "We use stories to regulate our emotions and govern our behavior. They provide the present we inhabit with a determinate point of reference – the desired future. The optimal ‘desired future’ is not a state, however, but a process: the (intrinsically compelling) process of mediating between order and chaos; the process of the incarnation of
Logos – the Word – which is the world-creating principle. Identification with this process, rather than with any of its determinate outcomes (that is, with any ‘idols’ or
fixed frames of reference or
ideologies) ensures that emotion will stay optimally regulated and action remain possible no matter how the environment shifts, and no matter when."
P. 275: "He is therefore the agent of change, upon whose actions all stability is predicated. This capacity – which should make him a welcome figure in every community – is exceedingly threatening to those completely encapsulated by the status quo, and who are unable or unwilling to see where the present state of adaptation is incomplete and where residual danger lies. The archetypal revolutionary hero therefore faces the anger and rejection of his peers."
P. 285: "This arrogant traditionalism, masquerading as moral virtue, is merely unexpressed fear of leaving the beaten path, of forging the new trail – the entirely comprehensible but nonetheless unforgivable shrinking from destiny, as a consequence of lack of faith in personal ability and precisely equivalent fear of the unknown."
I also found his statement regarding the logos (the manner in which you conduct yourself) and that part about being the best player means telling the truth when you lay out the rules strange when juxtaposed against some of the criticisms about modern activists. Because isn't that exactly what modern activists are essentially complaining about? That the truth is not being told about the rules, that the rules are being applied one way while everyone is being told that they are applied in another fashion? I think that's a small point given how little time he spent on the subject overall but it struck me as an argument that supports changing the current system, not sustaining it.
Similar to my response to
Caveat, it's not that Peterson is against change. His emphasis is on the conditions of possibility for effective change.
I'd also argue - and Peterson has argued this many times - that your conception of righteous activists drastically overestimates the ethical nobility of that activism. In his book
The Undiscovered Self, Jung asked the following question: "
Who is [protesting, for the sake of this example]? Is it, perchance, someone who jumps over his own shadow in order to hurl himself avidly on an idealistic program that promises him a welcome alibi? How much respectability and apparent morality is there cloaking with deceptive colors a very different inner world of darkness?”
That's what Peterson is trying to get at. He's trying to ensure that activism isn't just a means of escaping one's shadow while at the same time demonstrating when (and the consequences that have stemmed and will likely continue to stem from when) activism is used as such a means of escape.
wow, SJW/Post-modernist cesspool SNL just released a skit about predatory SJW beta males
