They're most just well-articulated academics or journalists with opinions. I'd imagine within minutes you could find a ton of journalists/writers etc who are just as knowledgeable if not more so on a ton of societal and political issues but who're a lot less arrogant because they're not surrounded by a bizarre personality cult.
Peterson, Harris, etc....
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They're most just well-articulated academics or journalists with opinions. I'd imagine within minutes you could find a ton of journalists/writers etc who are just as knowledgeable if not more so on a ton of societal and political issues but who're a lot less arrogant because they're not surrounded by a bizarre personality cult.
I read...well most of this. It is a long read, like you said. I've personally found Peterson's lectures on youtube to be more interesting than his written work. Likely because he does tend to overdo the language of his ideas, and that's more palatable to watch than to read. I do think his reputation is starting to overwhelm his actual substance, but some of the very simple things he imparts, especially regarding young men, I've found quite powerful. He's been able to articulate concepts around motivation, perseverance and sacrifice that I've personally responded to quite strongly.
Care to share an example of those?
For anyone who pigeon-holes Harris as a borderline racist, islamophobic right wing atheist I would urge you to listen to the “White Power” episode of his podcast. Really interesting stuff and he comes across as a much more compassionate and kind person than you’d think from various debates when all he’s there for is to bang the anti-jihadist drum.
I think he gets caught up in the rhetoric and the competitive aspect of debating. He can look very cold at times and a bit petty and vindictive really. I imagine hes a very different person in different circumstances.
He's obviously none of the things you mentioned, but at the same time, I wish he would add a bit more nuance to some of his arguments than the usual reason v religion or civilized western values v totalitarian religious ones; type debates.
In work so not sure if that's what you're after.
The first video I saw of his was called Reality And The Sacred. It was before the whole pronoun fiasco and I just stumbled upon it while looking for videos on consciousness or AI or something like that. It's definitely not one of his "best" / most fluid lectures but the content really gripped me back when I first watched it.
Watched most of his lectures since and a good few of his interviews etc since. Really enjoyed them for the most part.
He gives his account of things in his most recent podcast. I'd encourage listening to that or maybe even actually listening to the podcast that instigated all this.
All this moral panic from 'progressive' writers over Harris and Murray is absurd. It's character assassination to make themselves look superior.
I was more after an example of one of the things Peterson said that resonated strongly with @Bebe.
But I listened to that as well and can't say it really strikes me as legit despite being really close to what is assumed to be the victim group here (young male students). Men are told that they are patriarchical tyrannists and to blame for rape culture? Not in my experience. There is feminism that says western culture is an evil corrupt partiarchy? Not in my experience. He even argues that this is the common stance for humanities at universities. Strong strawman show imo but that's not to say the self help bit he described at the beginning isn't working or isn't worth it.
I think there is some merit in discussing this whole masculinity thing, after the Parkland shooting there was a twitter thread which linked shortcomings in masculinity (or something like that) and shootings and I remember that I thought it somewhat plausible at the time, but I don't really understand the psychology background so don't feel confident to comment on that.
What do you think is true or important that he says in the video?
Perhaps wasn't the best video to link as it was quite short and seems to apply more to people at universities. His message is very simple (as stated in the clip), but it seems to be one that is overlooked - tell the truth, aim yourself towards something that you value, take responsibility for the things in your life and fix the things that you can fix so that they don't get worse at the very least.
In my experience from completing a humanities course (politics) it was very much the case that the professors were very left wing - one was a full blown communist and another was a radical feminist, the others were all very far left as well, with the idea that the West is an oppressive capitalistic system with no redeeming qualities, so it should be dismantled, in short.
I think these are things that are mostly confined to the universities and once you get out into the real world you soon find that your ideals of a communist utopia are very much just ideals (and bad ones at that, although that took a lot longer to find out) and that most people don't think that the West is an oppressive patriarchy. I do agree with Peterson that the ideas that start out in the universities start to show themselves in society 5-10 years later, when the people that have learnt all of this trash in universities are out in the real world, but don't think it's as pandemic as he makes it out to be - where I live anyway, tribalism trumps revolution.
With regards to masculinity it does seem to be a bit of a taboo subject and that it should be discouraged as it is only oppressive. I would have to look into it a bit more, but I remember seeing Gavin McInnes championing masculinity with his "Proud Boys" nonsense, so he must see it as a way to get people on his side as it's not something that is really talked about by the left.
What I don't understand is the link between universities being taken over by left wingers (if we assume that to be true, would need stats for that) and the message at the beginning (bold part) which I can certainely relate to and would classify as good advice although it does seem a bit trivial but nevertheless nothing wrong with it. Is he suggesting the former runs contrary to the latter or what?
Just speaking for myself I found the University I went to to be very left wing. Even at A-Level at Tech my History teacher was some kind of Anarchist Feminist. But obviously I can't speak for other people and have no data to back up the claim that universities / the humanities are saturated in hard left ideology, especially across the pond.
He is suggesting that the ideology of the hard left, at it's core, is to overthrow capitalism / Western society - as it's oppressive, unfair and all the rest. People are taught this in the humanities and with the rise in womens studies and all of the other "studies" courses people are coming out the other end of their courses (along with the general left leaning consensus) with these batshit crazy ideas. I say batshit crazy as these young adults think that the entire system is corrupt and should be dismantled, and the fact that young adults (mostly) know fa about anything and have no real life experience are trying to dismantle society because they are taught that it's corrupt is stupid at best and dangerous at worst.
No one is saying to students, our society isn't perfect but it's the best it's ever been and if you straighten yourself out then you specifically will make the world a better place and your life will be better for it and you can derive meaning from taking on responsibilities and shouldering the burden of life. Don't try and blame the system or the government or the economy for your life not being the way you want it, if you can't even "clean your room" you're not going to help things by meddling in the very complex world of how our society functions.
So it's 'hard left' professors teaching hard left ideology => 'hard left' students leave uni => have no skills => get disillusioned with the world. Then Peterson comes along with his 'clean-your-room' advice and people see that this actually works. That does have some inner logic going on. But why is it that it's seemingly not the 'hard left' students that respond to his message but the conservative minds? They should be - e contrario - quite happy with the world. Edit: Peterson doesnt seem to adress the missing skills so it cant be that.
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nursing and psychology are bullshit courses now? someone tell peterson his degree's been relegated
Not just having no skills but their general outlook on the world itself.
Up until a couple of years ago I would have classed myself as pretty far left, but there was something that never quite sat right with me, quite a few things actually, but when your overall outlook on the world is that the whole thing is wrong then it's hard for people to break through that vision.
As @hobbers said as well.
Edit: "Cleaning your room" is a very basic simplistic take on things. If you watched some of his lectures it would obviously be a lot more in depth and touch on a lot of other things, but it does basically boil down to personal responsibility, and telling the truth.
how does an article about women doing better in their formative education and making up a majority of university students get misinterpreted as being about leftist bullshit higher education, it's a very short article, it's hard to get it so twisted
Unless you are of the opinion that female students don‘t care about being taught bullshit it can‘t be the reason male numbers are tanking. Besides is it actually declining or just relative to female students?
more specifically, it's poor white males being left behind in their formative years thanks to chronic underfunding, rather than fewer choosing the humanities, the gaps in the hard sciences are closing
Perhaps it's because males are seen as the cause of many of the evils of the world when viewed through this ideology?
what's more likely, poor males are being left behind by chronic lack of funding, or that teenage males applying to university courses have an all seeing eye-ball that tells them exactly which course at which university will annoy them and it's only a coincidence that the number of females in higher education is over-representative of the population?
Haven‘t heard that one before. Maybe it‘s true?
Honestly don't know myself. But taking courses that say that you're responsible for the sins of your ancestors and that you as a man are oppressive etc by default (and being a white privileged man puts you right at the top of the shit list) doesn't really sound like something men will be jumping at the chance to sign up to.
it's a good thing this doesn't happen then
Actually, it does.
where
The US.
Wait what? I‘m responsible for what my ancestors did?
Hope you didn‘t pay for that shit. Although I must confess that I have trouble believing that to be true. It could be argued that there is some responisbility to not make their errors again but otherwise sounds ridiculous.please be more specific, the US is a big place with a lot of higher education institutions
and their course make up should have no effect on UK student choices
I don‘t believe that these people actually think everything is wrong with how things go. That‘s obvs. clearly the wrong outlook. With ‚clean-the-room‘ I simply meant to pool these ideas you laid out. The thing is that the Current Affairs article basically argues that there is no debt and it‘s backed up.
I feel like the problem with the Peterson video on the previous page is that while there are perhaps one or two valid points touched upon he makes a lot of wide-ranging generalisations without doing anything to back them up at all, speaking in the sort of overly emotive tone he'd probably criticise opponents for using.
Academia is primarily left-leaning and will tend to take more liberal stances on most things, but that doesn't mean all men taking those academic subjects are being encouraged to think that they're all patriarchal oppressors who're evil. I do think he makes a fair point that when we're consider male privilege - or any variation thereof - it should be considered that to a lot of men who're fairly disillusioned or disadvantaged in their own social situations, the idea they're in any way privileged in probably going to seem silly and dismissive of any problems they do have. Naturally as a man I can appreciate there are certain societal benefits I receive others lack - but people tend not to like to be grouped into singular groups which are supposed to define their entire identity, and thus it's not always an ideal approach.
But still - he's largely blowing his own trumpet and is filled with his own self-important arrogance, telling others how people came up to him to say he'd changed their life as if he's some sort of fecking prophet instead of a guy with opinions, some of which are a bit controversial.
Academia is primarily left-leaning and will tend to take more liberal stances on most things, but that doesn't mean all men taking those academic subjects are being encouraged to think that they're all patriarchal oppressors who're evil. I do think he makes a fair point that when we're consider male privilege - or any variation thereof - it should be considered that to a lot of men who're fairly disillusioned or disadvantaged in their own social situations, the idea they're in any way privileged in probably going to seem silly and dismissive of any problems they do have. Naturally as a man I can appreciate there are certain societal benefits I receive others lack - but people tend not to like to be grouped into singular groups which are supposed to define their entire identity, and thus it's not always an ideal approach.
But still - he's largely blowing his own trumpet and is filled with his own self-important arrogance, telling others how people came up to him to say he'd changed their life as if he's some sort of fecking prophet instead of a guy with opinions, some of which are a bit controversial.
Wait what? I‘m responsible for what my ancestors did?
I'd say that this is more for US students to be honest. I did have to take a course in Feminism and write an assignment on how Identity Politics is good. I could have written that it's not but to be honest, I thought it was good at the time, as being against it would make me some kind of racist schmuck.
I actually thought that capitalism was the root of all evil!
That reproducibility issue has been demonstrated in a bunch of other fields too. Including the likes of economics and medicine. It’s just that psychology was one of the first disciplines to start testing this hypothesis. Publication bias and the “desk drawer effect” means a lot of false positives can creep through the net. It’s certainly no reason to dismiss psychology as a “bullshit course”.
Conveniently, stats exist.
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/03/05/the-actual-politics-of-professors/
I'm using this one in particular because it is the only one that bothers to seek out Communists in particular from a sea of undifferentiated liberals. Note that social democrats are considered radical.
yes that is the nature of humanities, just because a first year fine arts students isn't painting as well as rembrant doesn't sink their pursuit of painting*, similarly, gender studies isn't a pure science to begin this, it's a mixture of history, queer studies, sociology, culture studies, religious studies and so on, it's a very narrow field that's concerned with cataloguing and understanding gender expression in different peoples, times, places cultures etc. expecting it to produce reproducible studies would be like expecting everyone to agree on whether the nuclear bombings of japan were justified**
*although, the fine arts (in western countries) moving away from technical excellence and technical teaching was a mistake
**the second 100% wasn't, even if there's disagreement on the bombings effects overall
If we’re to start dismissing degrees on the basis of students being given “worthless hokum” to do in certain modules then we might as well scrap all qualifications other than those issued by City and Guilds.
Example A:
Also, silly diagrams..
idk, I've filmed a lot lectures that are part of the mandatory minimum work to maintain those qualifications, and even some of the work in professional qualifications can easily be described as worthless hokum
I'm not sure how you expect me to be more specific about colloquial evidence, or what UK courses have to do with it .
I was responding to a claim that these leftist have driven men out of humanities courses in the UK, according to UCAS - despite UCAS research showing that it's because poor white males fall behind in their formative years and men are generally underrepresented in higher education.
I asked you to be specific because every time this comes up it turns out to be a wilful misrepresentation of the module people are criticising.
Peterson on Maher last night...