If Mort Divine ruled the world

[CiG]

I'm alt-right now.

 

[no country for old wainds]

If I were to recommend any video of his to anybody it would probably be his first interview with Joe Rogan.

Second recommendation would be this one.

I don't think he is hamstrung by his faith in Christianity, the fact that you would call it a faith to begin with when he doesn't believe in the faith-based, miraculous, biblical literalist form of Christianity just proves how gimped out your view of him is.

He doesn't believe in a literal Jesus for example, he believes that Jesus is an archetype constructed from what all religions have always valued in their heroes, something like that. He constantly cites Marduk, Horus and other religious figures to buttress his points etc.

i liked this one iirc, but yeah the rogan pods were what i first heard and seem to encapsulate his perspective.

peterson's hardly some visionary genius to my mind and his sycophantic fanbase is pretty annoying, but he's useful as a kind of populist gateway into the ideas of various great thinkers (he'd be the first to admit most of his ideas are cribbed from jung, nietzsche and various others). he's a quality speaker and good at making connections between different ideas/topics, showing how they fit together into his worldview. i sort of agree in a way about him being the 'ordinary person's smart person', to slightly modulate the above criticism, but would consider that tag to be a positive - ordinary people need smart people who are actually capable of communicating with them, even if it's just to help you understand why you disagree with him (and i use the word ordinary not to mean working class but people who aren't advanced academics or specialists, which probably applies to many of us here re: the topics he's talking about). i would also warn people not to take everything he (or anyone else) says at face value either though.

 

[CiG]

Nobody here said he was a visionary genius, just that he's very intelligent, which he is. He has revealed his IQ and though I forget what it was, it was high as anybody would expect.

 

[CiG]

He said the last time he did an IQ test he scored in excess of 150 iirc.

 

[Dak]

It's a subjective question. Your estimation of his great intellect is apparently based on your own observations of watching him talk, so it should be effortless to find the talks that most contributed to your opinion on said intellect.

It's not one talk. One can estimate IQ fairly well up until the 2SD mark with enough familiarity with tests, life outcomes, and verbal acuity. Chomsky would be in the same IQ ballpark and I mostly disagree with him.

 

[CiG]

Personally I appreciate Peterson for his less controversial, less politically entwined views and videos. I just enjoy the psychology stuff.

It is a sign of the times that a man like Peterson is the source of both sycophancy and demonization, when yeah he's not a visionary saying anything new. The very fact that he is controversial says a lot in and of itself.

 

[rms]

I don't think he is hamstrung by his faith in Christianity, the fact that you would call it a faith to begin with when he doesn't believe in the faith-based, miraculous, biblical literalist form of Christianity just proves how gimped out your view of him is.

will you quit acting like i'm arguing as some sort of anti-Peterson scholar? I don't act to know all of his views and i'm not riding a crusade against the guy, get over yourself.

Second, I don't think one can call themselves religious without an idea of faith.

I don't think he is hamstrung by his faith in Christianity, the fact that you would call it a faith to begin with when he doesn't believe in the faith-based, miraculous, biblical literalist form of Christianity just proves how gimped out your view of him is.

So, if Peterson does not then believe in any kind of higher power/faith aspect, then he's really just placing a large value on one singular "hero text" which is even more ridiculous. As his position is that men are struggling/western civ is dying because of a lack of Christ hero, not any hero.

And I watched this fucking 7 minute video where a chick asks him to simplify his position on Christianity where he rambles for 2 minutes about how his position cannot be simplified. But it can be, quite fucking easily! And you can do it in two sentences. And he even does simplify it. Bleh.

 

[Dak]

As his position is that men are struggling/western civ is dying because of a lack of Christ hero, not any hero.

Is this really any different than the claims that people don't do X because they don't have a role model? His thing is not providing a lot of new information, but tying together a lot of somewhat different things into a more cohesive picture. Jung, modern psych, various mythos, and history, for instance.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Peterson's lecture series "Maps of Meaning" has been more helpful to me than any therapist I've ever seen so I have a lot of reverence for the man. And maybe this is just exposing my own ignorance but I don't think I ever realized how inextricably psychology, philosophy and literary analysis were linked until I started watching his lectures and it has made me more interested in all subjects. His views on religion are interesting also. I think I've reached a point of saturation though where I can't really watch any more of his videos because he repeats himself a lot and keeps returning to the same subject (why post-modernism/marxism is the root of everything that is wrong with the world etc.) regardless of the video's supposed topic.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think I've reached a point of saturation though where I can't really watch any more of his videos because he repeats himself a lot and keeps returning to the same subject (why post-modernism/marxism is the root of everything that is wrong with the world etc.) regardless of the video's supposed topic.

This is what I find absurd about his ideas, personally. It’s a horribly reductive definition of “postmodernism,” and no self-respecting humanities academic would conflate postmodernism and Marxism—they’re two entirely different discourses and they address different subjects (and for the most part, Marxists don’t like postmodernists because they view them as apologists for late capitalism). To be as reductive as Peterson is, Marxism is about production; postmodernism is about consumption. But that’s still speaking in economic terms. To go further, Marxism is about economics; postmodernism is about cultural aesthetics/representation.

tl;dr, Peterson is the pop-right’s Slavoj Zizek.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Yeah, I've seen a lot of people make that argument and they probably have a point. He throws those terms around a lot and though I understand what he means by them I'm sure his usage of them is at the very least reductive in the extreme.

 

[Dak]

Ein is acting like it's pure coincidence that the venn of "people who like Marx" and "people who want to destroy the social order" overlaps significantly.

 

[rms]

Is this really any different than the claims that people don't do X because they don't have a role model?

I wouldn't say they are different, but bringing in Jesus/Siddhartha/Mohammed whoever in makes it different than just being a role model.

And I also hate the post modernism thing, but I am not well read on all that shit so I just hate it in silence rather than research his paraphrasing/attacks etc

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

The Glaring Blind Spot of the 'Me Too' Movement

I hope the irony of the authors last name is not lost on her.

 

[Einherjar86]

Ein is acting like it's pure coincidence that the venn of "people who like Marx" and "people who want to destroy the social order" overlaps significantly.

I don’t even know what this means. Plenty of postmodernists have no interest in “destroying the social order.”

You’re acting like it’s easy enough to lump all postmodernists into a convenient category. You’re as reductive as Peterson is when it comes to this shit.

 

[CiG]

will you quit acting like i'm arguing as some sort of anti-Peterson scholar? I don't act to know all of his views and i'm not riding a crusade against the guy, get over yourself.

So you're completely fine with throwing around criticism of him while you also admit you're ignorant of his views? Sure I'll get over myself, I'll use your immensely humble disposition as my standard.

Also, yes you do act like you know all his views and I wouldn't call it a crusade but for someone who pretends not to care about him enough to actually go deeper you sure do post drivel anytime he's even mentioned slightly.

This is what I find absurd about his ideas, personally. It’s a horribly reductive definition of “postmodernism,” and no self-respecting humanities academic would conflate postmodernism and Marxism—they’re two entirely different discourses and they address different subjects (and for the most part, Marxists don’t like postmodernists because they view them as apologists for late capitalism).

This is the kind of thing that annoys me and I wish I could just ignore it and move on, but it's pretty clear when someone says something like this that they haven't watched or read too much of his work. He doesn't conflate postmodernism and Marxism, he often puzzles over why he finds that the two things are linked today, why there is an overlap of people who ascribe to the thinking present in both worldviews.

He's expressed confusion over it many times and has attempted explanations many times.

You’re as reductive as Peterson is when it comes to this shit.

Could you provide an example of Peterson being a reductionist when it comes to postmodernism and Marxism?

 

[no country for old wainds]

well 'postmodernism' is a little like the alt-right (which peterson is always quick to avoid pigeonholing) except even moreso, in that it wasn't a conscious, focused ideological movement, just a loose sprawl of ideas which arose as a response to modernism (which itself was pretty loose and sprawling) - it's a pretty hard thing to define in a satisfying way. peterson does make it clear that he's using the term to mean a disdain for and dissolution of hierarchical structures though, so while you can quibble about whether it's a correct use of the term (i'd say it's limited but not wrong as such, that's surely one of the most common ideas running through it), it doesn't really matter once you know what he means by it. i don't think he equates postmodernism and marxism either so much as believing that postmodernism (as described above) inevitably morphs into marxism because it isn't sustainable as an ideology itself.

all that said, i do wish he'd stop using it in such a buzzwordy way, it doesn't really come across very well and stops a lot of serious scholars from engaging his ideas from what i've seen.

 

[CiG]

and stops a lot of serious scholars from engaging his ideas from what i've seen.

Oh?

 

[no country for old wainds]

i find he's pretty maligned as a pseud on philosophy boards (though he has his defenders too) and his use of 'postmodernism' seems to be the main bugbear people have, especially because he takes a lot of his ideas about postmodernism from a particular book (i forget the name but he mentions it now and again) that isn't very well respected either, and has admitted himself he hasn't read derrida and the like directly because they're 'unreadable'. i do find that pretty pedantic at times though, so long as he makes it clear what he means by the word does it really matter? i don't mind people criticising him whatsoever but many of his critics very obviously haven't listened to him for more than like 10 or 20 minutes (and many of them think that's enough ammo to publish snarky articles about how dangerous he is apparently).

 

[Dak]

I don’t even know what this means. Plenty of postmodernists have no interest in “destroying the social order.”

You’re acting like it’s easy enough to lump all postmodernists into a convenient category. You’re as reductive as Peterson is when it comes to this shit.

Notable writers like Foucault were intensely focused on undermining Western hierarchies. There is similar language of struggle and oppression. Fans of people like Foucalt tend to not also choose Adam Smith as their favorite economist.