Einherjar86
Active Member
I can't watch that right now, but the very fact that it's titled "The Feminine Unknown" is so ridiculous.
Please, explain it in your own words.
Please, explain it in your own words.
If Mort Divine ruled the world
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CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
I know my own expressive limitations so I'm not going to change this into a thing where I have my comment picked apart instead of JP's views on this subject, so I'll just do this.
From Maps of Meaning:
Feminine symbolism and its relation to the concept of the unknown (synonymous with chaos in this context) isn't something JP invented btw, contrary to your earlier implication that he mythologizes it into cosmic chaos. He's referencing thousands of years of symbolism from a multitude of different civilizations.
From Maps of Meaning:
Feminine symbolism and its relation to the concept of the unknown (synonymous with chaos in this context) isn't something JP invented btw, contrary to your earlier implication that he mythologizes it into cosmic chaos. He's referencing thousands of years of symbolism from a multitude of different civilizations.
Einherjar86
Active Member
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Well it's certainly not as convincing as feminism which says that feminine symbolism is powerlessness and oppression.
I love how thick-headed, terse and snotty you become in relation to JP. It really bucks my view of you and it's funny to see.
Einherjar86
Active Member
*sigh* Listen man, the fact that you get wet like a little schoolgirl around him really bucks my view of you, and I'd say that it's funny but I really don't like seeing you get all wiggly and shit. It's not becoming of a man.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Except that's not true because I'm not that smart but thanks for trying. Also nice attempt at holding me to masculine stereotypes, what next, you're going to take my things away and leave me a toy truck?
It's just obvious that the guy triggers your inner zealot and closed-minded biased ideologue or something.
Einherjar86
Active Member
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
^ That was a joke, I don't actually think you're going to replace all my things with a truck.
You're the guy *sigh*ing here buddy.
Einherjar86
Active Member
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Dak
mentat
Peterson's videos have a lot of repetition, but no more than any academic would who teaches the same set of classes over and over. Furthermore, critical theory/post-modernism (particularly the pop-culture adjusted versions) are at least as bad. Ever do a control-f on some Feminist theory for the word "oppression"? Your browser memory will be overloaded.
Most academics aren't intellectuals, if we use the word "intellectual" to mean someone who synthesizes a broad amount of information in a very wise/perceiving way. Unfortunately, academics are generally persons who consider an intellectual to mean one who "agrees with the ivory tower accepted views". I have many professors who are at least 1SD above average in intelligence and very knowledgeable within their domains. My personal mentoring professor is absolutely most likely +2SD and knows far more than I will ever know about his niche, and in addition understands the business aspect of his niche as well. He's probably one of the generally smartest and practical people at my university (and holds positions ranking as such), and I'm not sure I would consider him an "intellectual", primarily because he's ignorant of philosophy outside of caricatures of Descartes etc. In short, being judged an "intellectual" is highly subjective, and academia has no monopoly on the term.
Edit: As a side note, the "Chaotic feminine" is, as far as I understand his use of Chaos, is referring to the unknown aspects of femininity, from a male perspective. Chaos is defined as the unknown, so by that definition it follows that for men, women are chaos to some degree.
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CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Einherjar86
Active Member
By this logic there's a chaotic masculine too; but this term doesn't show up in Peterson's "maps of meaning."
I think it's more than simply an effect of male perspective for him, since he also aligns the masculine with culture and order--the feminine is untamed and chaotic. This suggests there's something universal about the distinction for him. He's extending gender archetypes to modern civilization. Women represent the tendency toward disorder for him.
We could say that he's simply speaking from his perspective as a man; but this strikes me as a very non-scientific view.
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
Hmm, I don't think Dak is representing JP's view correctly. If you watch that video CIG posted above, JP starts by saying that chaos is traditionally represented as feminine, then goes on to explicitly differentiate between 'female' and 'feminine', then proposes a possible reason for the association of chaos and the feminine (that women, as the primary sexual selectors, are what prompt men to change.)
Einherjar86
Active Member
I think my problem has to do with his general acceptance of the reasons for mythological archetypes, and his belief that such archetypes can renew our broken postmodernist culture. Basically, he suggests that we should return to certain mythological notions of masculinity and femininity.
I'm going by what I've seen here: https://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/08/31/podcast-335-using-power-myths-live-flourishing-life/
The decline of mythical beliefs doesn't translate into the decline of meaning. Peterson really speaks to a very specific subset of fragile men, and authorizes their frustration by appealing to conservative ideologies of masculine power.
EDIT: I'm not accusing anyone here of being fragile, I think the general support of Peterson here is less impassioned than it is inquisitive.
Dak
mentat
From Maps of Meaning, p 106 (btw, it's funny people think he's simply trying to sell his book when it is available for free on his site):
I wasn't precise enough in my language, I was specifically thinking of the unknown aspects of birth.
Well his perspective is Jungian, so if you don't find have much use for Jung, then you most likely would the problem you just mentioned.
Peterson says very succinctly in multiple videos that taking responsibility is the source of meaning in life. I think it is true that taking responsibility is, or at least has become, conservative. Extending from that, one must speak the truth or you are dividing rather than integrating the different parts of yourself.
I wasn't precise enough in my language, I was specifically thinking of the unknown aspects of birth.
Well his perspective is Jungian, so if you don't find have much use for Jung, then you most likely would the problem you just mentioned.
Peterson says very succinctly in multiple videos that taking responsibility is the source of meaning in life. I think it is true that taking responsibility is, or at least has become, conservative. Extending from that, one must speak the truth or you are dividing rather than integrating the different parts of yourself.
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
I don't think he's as prescriptive as you make him out to be. I've watched a lot of his lectures and I don't think he advocates a "return" to anything. He acknowledges that the advent of the birth control pill has completely overturned traditional gender dynamics and I don't recall hearing him propose a vision of how things should be. He's just appealing to people to not discard the wisdom encoded in old stories and beliefs.
Einherjar86
Active Member
He uses "borne" improperly. I noticed other errors in the longer excerpt CIG shared. His writing is also really bad, but that's beside the point.
Associating the primordial chaos with the womb (i.e. "matrix") and emergent structure with masculinity carries an implicit value judgment, and I'm sure he's aware of this.
One reasonable and legitimate interpretation for these mythical binaries is that they derive from attitudes toward womanhood and femininity in early civilizations. The word for womb (matrix) derives from the word for matter (this is also how we get the Latin word for mother, "mater"). This isn't because there's any originary connection between the womb and the "birth of forms," or whatever we're talking about, but because early cultures attributed primordial formlessness to the potential for motherhood. It's a value judgment that reflects the role of women in a cultural order dictated largely by men (gimme my powerz relations pleez).
Yeah, that's an issue for me. It's not psychological either, as far as I'm concerned. It's rudimentary literary analysis.
Well, I don't where to begin. I just disagree. Plenty of progressively-minded people are responsible. I think you're imposing political values onto the notion of responsibility.
Fair enough. I don't think he presents his views clearly enough to know one way or another; and as far as his attitude toward birth control goes, I'm fairly certain he has maligned what he perceives as the consequences of its increased use. But maybe I'm wrong.
Dak
mentat
Progressives take personal responsibility, from my perspective, only in so far as they do not behave progressively. For instance, you behave in personally responsibility-taking way yourself: You identify a career path, you take actions to pursue that career path, and you fulfill duties that correspond to the positions along that career path. You derive meaning from this at each step of the process, and it is an intensely individual project. I see the antithesis of progressive politics in this line of behavior.
As the counter example: Someone who does not identify a career path, who does not provide for themselves, who takes on little to no personal responsibility, winds up unhappy and in a poor SES position. For this person, the political progressive recommends more not-taking-on-of-responsibility, because "it isn't their fault". Protests do not amount to taking personal responsibility practically by definition. However, that's only the easy half of the picture to caricature, and this isn't necessarily even Peterson's target audience, because those people have for too long fallen victim to the idea of rights without responsibility. Instead, he is talking to those people who may be muddling through the bare minimum, but without purpose. College students who are there simply because it's what you do, with an attitude of "Cs get degrees". As a male, he's particularly challenging males to take on responsibility for themselves, in society which has a pathological aversion to it. We are supposed to take responsibility for the actions of dead others, but not our own actions and futures.
In response to the other things related to poor writing, mythological history, and rudimentary literary analysis: I haven't read Maps of Meaning straight through or even significant excerpts, because it is a sprawling text (and probably poorly written) and I'm not all that interested in the detailed connecting threads of mythology across culture and time, other than a cliffnotes format saying "hey look at these continuous themes". It's true that there are old value judgments in these mythologies, but Peterson's point isn't that we can or should return to these specifically, but rather that we need to be aware of how these inform our presuppositions and society, and how they derive from us biologically to some degree. This is the same reason he made the point about lobsters in the Channel 4 video. Hierarchy, sex differences, etc are in our DNA and go back much farther than our verbal or written mythos. The degree to which societies fail are in the degree to which they ignore these things. To put it in vulgar terms, The New Soviet Man starved to death.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I would challenge where you're drawing the line between progressivism and conservatism, but I understand why you draw it.
This might be true, but I'm suspicious of how distanced he really is from the mythological overtones of his language.
If he thinks we need to be aware of how myths inform our presuppositions, I'd ask why we need someone to tell us this. And furthermore, I'd ask him whether he thinks that our myths might be informed by our presuppositions.
None of this is to venture an extended critique, but I don't feel that his writing or his video appearances really warrant it.
And finally, I find it really annoying that his material is only available in either a) countless videos online, or b) a poorly written monograph. I'd like to see an essay or something somewhere, but he seems to cater primarily to the online video crowd. I find it far more valuable to assess a position when it's in writing.
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