He's a fascist.
Peterson, Harris, etc....
- Thread starter prath92
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I'm not sure hes an idiot or a fascist but hes definitely really, really weird. Was that tweet in reply to something or is he just throwing it out there? Every part of that tweet is just ... wtf?
Jordan Peterson was at Oxford Union.
He’s looking for attention with tweets like that but his point is fairly obvious. And it doesn’t make him a fascist or an idiot to make that point.
He’s got a bee in his bonnet about the mental health of young men. It’s what he spends most of his time working on. In his opinion (which people are free to disagree with) the cost of being more progressive about gender roles has been mainly born by young men, who are less and less certain of their place in society and, hence, their mental health is suffering and they’re more likely to get involved in crime or drugs.
Like I said, you can disagree with that opinion (I know I do, even though there is a hint of truth in there somewhere) but calling people fascist idiots for expressing this sort of opinion is counter-productive IMHO.
*Kermit voice* Daaaaaad, chaos is usurping me again
I still think its a pretty fecking bizarre tweet. The way he expresses his worry about males place in society is kind of weird to kick it off with whole 'usurp' thing. Throwing a prophesy and some scaremongering / paranoid delusion in there with the last 2 lines just puts the cherry on top. Its a 3 line tweet and every part of it is fairly mental.
He’s a supernazi.
Jaysus, that’s a tough watch. He’s so damn obtuse. One of the reasons why he’s got such a cult following might be because he’s such a waffler that people can take whatever the hell they want from what he says.
He just looks so damn pleased with himself.
When you get down to it, he's not much more than a very effective WUM. He has pinpointed the insecurities of a lot of young men and uses that to attract a following. It's very effective if not terribly helpful for our society. Though in the end it's quite clear Jordan isn't trying to help anyone, who's just an attention loving narcissist. An eloquent one, but one all the same.
When you get down to it, he's not much more than a very effective WUM. He has pinpointed the insecurities of a lot of young men and uses that to attract a following. It's very effective if not terribly helpful for our society. Though in the end it's quite clear Jordan isn't trying to help anyone, who's just an attention loving narcissist. An eloquent one, but one all the same.
My main problem with Peterson and his ilk is this constant defence of the idea that man's "place" in society is at the top and that women should not try to rock the boat in terms of equality of opportunity and pay lest the poor blokes egos suffer. Yet the same, predominantly white, males who follow his line of thinking will in their next paragraph decry Islam for wanting to keep women in the dark ages. It's all about maintaining your own unearned privilege because you can't be arsed to pull your finger out and sink or swim in a true meritocracy and whether it's coming from a radical imam or an alt-right mouthpiece it's the same bullshit that has no place in the society most of us want to live and raise our kids in.
There undoubtedly has been a shift in man's role in society but that is not down to feminists, gay rights or positive discrimination, it's solely down to a change in industry, automation and the "ludicrous" notion that an employer should not have the right to risk the lives and the health of their employees in dangerous situations when safe alternatives can be employed for a little more money. It was understandable that the first generation of miners and manual labourers would struggle to adapt to a change in role but we're 2 generations past that shift in the UK and US now so the men who can't see their role in society today have been let down by parents' unrealistic portrayal of the good old days when you got an honest days pay for your blood, sweat and tears, by education failing to prepare kids for the current workplace and by government for failing to ensure that workplace was there and that there was adequate support for those who did not transition over quickly enough.
Peterson may not be a fascist idiot but the drivel he spouts is lapped up by the ever increasing number of fascist idiots and providing them with a faux fur of intellectual justification for their cold hearted bigotry.
Yeah, I think I would more or less agree with all of that. Plus there's a strand within the conservative slant on how to be a man which feeds into the way that men are supposed to button up their emotions, bury trauma and stop being such a wimp. Which usually does more harm than good. Petersen himself preaches something very similar with his "stick your chest out" and "tidy your room" rhetoric, as though manning up and toughing things out is the solution to all life's ills.
I'm a little bit more charitable to him in general, though, having heard him talk about journalling and how helpful this can be for mental health of young men. He talks well on this issue and there does seem to be some good evidence behind the work he is doing.
@Bury Red
Peterson often specifies that you have to be a idiot or something like that if you don't welcome equality of opportunity. It's forced equality of outcome he speaks against.
Apart from that I don't have much to add.
Peterson often specifies that you have to be a idiot or something like that if you don't welcome equality of opportunity. It's forced equality of outcome he speaks against.
Apart from that I don't have much to add.
@Bury Red
Peterson often specifies that you have to be a idiot or something like that if you don't welcome equality of opportunity. It's forced equality of outcome he speaks against.
Apart from that I don't have much to add.
I'm sure he's eloquent enough to ensure he never confuses or conflates equality of opportunity and equality of outcome himself but the subtle semantic difference is far, far too fine for most of his current fanbase, as opposed to the PhD level sociology courses he should inhabit in relative obscurity and anonymity. You only have to listen to their rabid frustration with social justice warriors, liberals and lefties and the hilarious hypocrisy with which they label the left as snowflakes and ***** whilst crying into their cornflakes over how beastly society is to the poor downtrodden white male to know they are missing the subtlety of his point.
There's valid points in his work about the need for societal balance between conservatism and liberalism and he knows his background well enough but the bulk of his speech is pseudo intellectual waffle that would be marked down were his students to reproduce it whilst his audience largely believe liberalism needs to be eradicated demonstrating still further how little of his speech they understand.
Is my reading comprehension faltering here or are you saying that the difference between opportunity & outcome is semantics?
There is a clear & important difference between equality of outcome & equality of opportunity.
Being disabled myself means I'd be gaining loads on equality of outcome, but it would be nuts to demand the same pay and lifestyle as someone who works damn hard to build and keep a company healthy. Whoever does the best should have the best jobs & naturally the best pay to drive people to be the best.
This doesn't describe anyone who I know follows him at all. It might describe his online troll following though.
It is a semantic difference and I do think many of his audience don't see the difference or the videos posted online would not have titles such as Jordan Peterson destroys feminist etc
It's definitely the online alt-right following I am referring too. I've no problem with anyone who gets people to listen to intellectual debate that challenges their understanding but Peterson, Harris, Shapiro et al are being used in soundbites to justify much of what I perceive is wrong in society and given that his topic is sociology and neuro-science the misinterpretation or deliberate misrepresentation of his words are particularly dangerous.
Why does a public intellectual have 'fans'? As with many of our personal heroes, a discerning thinker acknowledges that those heroes have flaws, and that not all of their of their opinions will be objective. Peterson is a willing enabler of some of the most worrying elements of society, and a stooge of the established order.
I agree with this. I find Harris the most interesting of the 3 to listen to. Sound bites aside, I find Shapiro an argumentative arrogant hateful man when you dig deep, as well as on the surface. Peterson is at least introspective, even if he's wrong about many things.
No wonder Paglia likes him.
Because Mourinho left United supporters no other choice but to 'support' politics instead.
I'm kidding I like Mourino But yeah it's a bizarre concept.
In Peterson's case he's pretty up front about the fact most of his audience is young men who need to grow the fcuk up.
He of course fails to admit that a good start in doing so would be to stop watching his videos and stop taking life so fcuking seriously (as he seems to do).
The weirdest and creepiest stuff I've seen is the tweets from deeply religious/conservative young girls gushing over Ben Shapiro after they've met him or the types who talk about how they spent their friday night watching his videos. I mean each to their own and all that but I find it really weird.
he became famous by not understanding a law so yeag kinda
His opening gambit into public life was having a go at a law that stops discrimination against trans people. Notably criticising it for something it didn't do.
In all seriousness, if he wasn't on a stage giving a 'lecture' and you seen him in public somewhere talking like that, you'd assume he was a homeless person who had lost their marbles (or had a drink/drug problem).
He actually believes the opposite. He believes that one should take control of life by grounding oneself in responsibility (family, career, etc). Without responsibility people lack purpose and lose their way in life.
Oh wait, hang on, it's just fallen into place, is it this cockheads fault I've had to argue with people about whether Canada has made it illegal to call people by the wrong gender pronouns?
yeah
Peterson is astrology for white dudes.
The consistent strand I've noticed is that there is a palpable concern in hard left circles (what he would call the identity politics crowd) that he has come out of nowhere and become a YouTube celebrity who has now crossed into the contemporary TV world, which is in turn challenging the existing orthodoxy of how we regard many of the issues he talks about. Therefore the ideas he espouses are getting a mainstream platform where people who may not ordinarily be avid YouTube viewers wind up buying his books and watching his interviews on national television in multiple continents. This has in turn spawned quite a few Twitter troll accounts dedicated to cherrypicking un-contextualized random quotes he has made in various longer videos, as evidence that he is some sort of thinly veiled alt-right advocate and all things inclusive of being branded as such. Bar one of two write ups I've read I don't get the impression that many of his critics have read his books in their entirely or watched his videos in full length to get a better context of his work. Opinions are instead being formed by short soundbites lifted out of longer videos, which imo does little to help matters.
That's merely an opinion, and entirely depends on one's definition of a successful life.
I fully agree. I was just contending the notion that Peterson would ever admit to stop taking life so seriously. He would probably not say something like that because he thinks meaning in life comes from responsibility and that involves taking life more seriously, not less so.
@Raoul that is my impression also.
I've not read his books although I have subjected myself to a few of his excruciating lectures and debates in full before formulating my opinion of him. I don't think that makes my view any less relevant though I didn't need to read Mein Kampf or attend the Nuremberg rally to know that notions such as racial purity or eugenics have no place in decent society. As for people cherry picking his comments to make him look bad, for someone supposedly so intelligent and articulate surely there shouldn't be too many examples like the one above yet they keep cropping up.