Jordan Peterson: Telling Betas They are Alphas

[s0me0nesmind1]

Good point! Good thing I didn’t so that!

Read the thread: it’s worth your time.

JP is clearly anti femininity, the above is my summary of the philosophical/political world view he sells.

Haha, you're funny.

 

[Moonbeam]

Anyway............ and in addition there is the problem that truth is nearby when you deal with paradox. I have heard this describes in terms that go roughly like this. There is the affirming, the denying, and the resolving. Two things are true that are the opposite, the resolution of the opposition happening at a different level of understanding. Everything meaningful in life is true and false at the same time. So when people normally hear things they go true or false but I am stuck as I am with Peterson. I see where he is right and where he is wrong also as where he is wrong and where he is right and on the same points why I think that is. And that means I agree and disagree with everybody. I have Mulla Nasrudin to thank for helping me develop that to something of a habit but once I was abjectly deep in misery and a second later completely free. That does something to you, I think.

 

[Moonbeam]

Haha, you're funny.

Well, if masculine and feminine are parts of a paradox that lead to truth and understanding at a higher order, then each is both good and evil. The feminine without the masculine is evil and the masculine without the feminine is evil If you analyze each separately you can make either case. But neither can really be understood or exist without the other. They need to be viewed in integration. However, you can only talk in temporally about only one at a time. If he critiques the negative side of the feminine, the side that in extremes will reject its necessary masculine counterpoint, he will be talking about how feminism can be evil.

 

[cytg111]

Anyway............ and in addition there is the problem that truth is nearby when you deal with paradox. I have heard this describes in terms that go roughly like this. There is the affirming, the denying, and the resolving. Two things are true that are the opposite, the resolution of the opposition happening at a different level of understanding. Everything meaningful in life is true and false at the same time. So when people normally hear things they go true or false but I am stuck as I am with Peterson. I see where he is right and where he is wrong also as where he is wrong and where he is right and on the same points why I think that is. And that means I agree and disagree with everybody. I have Mulla Nasrudin to thank for helping me develop that to something of a habit but once I was abjectly deep in misery and a second later completely free. That does something to you, I think.

And this, Peterson has surely already pondered upon, so why is it he only champions one POV? Where is the source criticism? He is like "this is what the data supports", basta, and as you point out here, no its not, the data is open for interpretation, what does the data say that conflicts with the conclusion you are making?

 

[pmv]

Anyway............ and in addition there is the problem that truth is nearby when you deal with paradox. I have heard this describes in terms that go roughly like this. There is the affirming, the denying, and the resolving. Two things are true that are the opposite, the resolution of the opposition happening at a different level of understanding. Everything meaningful in life is true and false at the same time.

Hmmm. So thesis, antithesis, synthesis? And is that "the unity of opposites" you have in there?

Mostly I've heard that stuff from, er, Marxists. Are you saying JP is in fact a Marxist?

 

[Moonbeam]

Hmmm. So thesis, antithesis, synthesis? And is that "the unity of opposites" you have in there?

Mostly I've heard that stuff from, er, Marxists. Are you saying JP is in fact a Marxist?

While I have no idea what you are talking about, I do sense you are trying to put words in my mouth and I suspect if I knew what they were, I would agree that they are as absurd as you seem to think they are too

 

[cytg111]

Yep, still got that vibe .. what is it, oh yea,

his work is never quite done.

 

[Moonbeam]

cytg111, post: 39690239: And this, (Don't know what you mean to include in whatever you mean here by this) Peterson has surely already pondered upon(I assume you are referomg back to this this, whatever it is), so why is it he only champions one POV? (Didn't I mention that speach is temporally organized so that you can only do one point of view at a time and if you pick the time and assume it is universal, you will distort his intentions, or may do so. Where is the source criticism? (No idea what this means. Can you make clear what the criticism is you refer to specifically so I have a shot at sourcing it?) - He is like "this is what the data supports", basta, and as you point out here, no its not, the data is open for interpretation, what does the data say that conflicts with the conclusion you are making?(I can't concretize these abstract references back to the specific things he has said so I am not sure what you are talking about.) What data did he say supports what points and what is wrong with it?)

 

[pmv]

While I have no idea what you are talking about, I do sense you are trying to put words in my mouth and I suspect if I knew what they were, I would agree that they are as absurd as you seem to think they are too

Not only are you obscurantist and verbose, you don't have much of a sense of humour either!

 

[Dr. Zaus]

While I have no idea what you are talking about, I do sense you are trying to put words in my mouth and I suspect if I knew what they were, I would agree that they are as absurd as you seem to think they are too

He’s pointing out an ironic parallel between JP and Marxist thought (specifically in that Marx is a materialist Hegelian).

 

[Moonbeam]

Not only are you obscurantist and verbose, you don't have much of a sense of humour either!

Oh. That's interesting because I feel I use as many words that I need to be as clear as I can and with as much precision as I can to explain what I want to say and to do it with humor where I can. Perhaps, because I am willing to spend great effort in those directions I may have succeeded sufficiently to have cause you to fee some sort of envy.

But, since I intend to participate in this forum and can only do so with the abilities I have and can't magically perfect them, if it happens that you are right, then congratulations, but I hope you don't mind if I don't lose any sleep over it.

I always try to state in a different and even clearer way where I can to anybody who has a question as to what it is I am trying to say and asks for clarification.

 

[Moonbeam]

He’s pointing out an ironic parallel between JP and Marxist thought (specifically in that Marx is a materialist Hegelian).

I am sure there must be a way to point the actual behavior you see in JP, the specifics of his ideas as he has expressed somewhere in his own words to the specific ideas of Marxism, and in particular Hegelian materialism, to which you are drawing the parallel. This is just meaningless academic gibberish to me. I am sure you intend to make good sense and you have encapsulated and abbreviated your explanation immensely by using such specific language, but since I have no idea what any of your shorthand refers to, it remains incomprehensible to me. I am betting that if I were to take the time and endure the torture it would require for me to speak fluent Marxism and the rest of it here, I could make that parallel clear in plain old ordinary English. And I would do that out of a desire to make myself clear despite the extra words I would have to use, because I feel the responsibility to make things understandable falls on me and not the person reading. Sorry, but I still don't get and can't share in the irony. My mistake, perhaps is in understanding so little of what he said I should not have allowed myself to feel anything about what he might be saying, specifically that he was trying to put words in my mouth.

 

[pmv]

Oh. That's interesting because I feel I use as many words that I need to be as clear as I can and with as much precision as I can to explain what I want to say and to do it with humor where I can. Perhaps, because I am willing to spend great effort in those directions I may have succeeded sufficiently to have cause you to fee some sort of envy.

But, since I intend to participate in this forum and can only do so with the abilities I have and can't magically perfect them, if it happens that you are right, then congratulations, but I hope you don't mind if I don't lose any sleep over it.

I always try to state in a different and even clearer way where I can to anybody who has a question as to what it is I am trying to say and asks for clarification.

You could work on your formatting though. It's not hard to use paragraph breaks. You manage it here, but somehow forget again in you subsequent post. To write in great walls of text is rude, and even a bit arrogant.

 

[pmv]

I am sure there must be a way to point the actual behavior you see in JP, the specifics of his ideas as he has expressed somewhere in his own words to the specific ideas of Marxism, and in particular Hegelian materialism, to which you are drawing the parallel. This is just meaningless academic gibberish to me. I am sure you intend to make good sense and you have encapsulated and abbreviated your explanation immensely by using such specific language, but since I have no idea what any of your shorthand refers to, it remains incomprehensible to me. I am betting that if I were to take the time and endure the torture it would require for me to speak fluent Marxism and the rest of it here, I could make that parallel clear in plain old ordinary English. And I would do that out of a desire to make myself clear despite the extra words I would have to use, because I feel the responsibility to make things understandable falls on me and not the person reading. Sorry, but I still don't get and can't share in the irony. My mistake, perhaps is in understanding so little of what he said I should not have allowed myself to feel anything about what he might be saying, specifically that he was trying to put words in my mouth.

I get the impression that Dixycrat has studied these things formally and with academic rigour and knows what he's (hmmm, I'm _assuming_ they are a 'he'... just realised I might be entirely wrong!) talking about. Whereas I was just amused by hearing in your comments obfuscated echoes of stuff I heard all the damn time as a child (I don't claim to have properly studied any of it - it used to make my ears glaze over back then).

And that is related to why I'm suspicious of wanna-be-gurus who mix-and-match bits of real philosphy and other disciplines, with their own added mysticism, in order to build a "grand system" that attracts the needy and the lost as followers.

I don't think you are a bad fellow. My guess is you have had some tough times and have picked this mysticism as a form of support, and hence are deeply invested in it. I tend to think 'fair enough, whatever works for you'.

But on the other hand, it's causing you to cheer-lead someone who is actively on the side of dangerous and harmful people. Which is a bit irritating.

Your comment appeared to be an obfuscated paraphrase of 'the dialectic', which is one ingredient in Marxism. Don't know where you got it from (from JP himself?), but it was amusing to me. I guess all these grand systems take from the same sources.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

I am sure there must be a way to point the actual behavior you see in JP, the specifics of his ideas as he has expressed somewhere in his own words to the specific ideas of Marxism, and in particular Hegelian materialism, to which you are drawing the parallel. This is just meaningless academic gibberish to me. I am sure you intend to make good sense and you have encapsulated and abbreviated your explanation immensely by using such specific language, but since I have no idea what any of your shorthand refers to, it remains incomprehensible to me. I am betting that if I were to take the time and endure the torture it would require for me to speak fluent Marxism and the rest of it here, I could make that parallel clear in plain old ordinary English. And I would do that out of a desire to make myself clear despite the extra words I would have to use, because I feel the responsibility to make things understandable falls on me and not the person reading. Sorry, but I still don't get and can't share in the irony. My mistake, perhaps is in understanding so little of what he said I should not have allowed myself to feel anything about what he might be saying, specifically that he was trying to put words in my mouth.

The thing I would like you to read is my best effort at making the philosophical/academic simple.

But it’s hard work, because far from being specific, philosophical terms are precisely aiming at NOT being specified by a bunch of other words.

So to get away from all the other things specific words mean, we make up new words. That way we can only get at one very general idea at a time.

A dialectic from a Hegelian sense is that there are a whirling buzz of statable pre-suppositions (thesis), a substantial difference that reveals and contradicts this supposition (antithesis), and a way that brings the two together and makes them both new (synthesis). This is how Hegel answers the question of “how sensations of thoughts turn into perceptions” (phenomenology is spirit).

Thus everything we feel like we think, and always thought, is actuall a new creation based on new problems.

Marx and Engels form the philosophical basis of their ideas on this, but applied to the material world. This among the truest great insight of Marx:

“[Historical Materialism] shows that history does not end by being resolved into "self-consciousness as spirit of the spirit", but that in it at each stage there is found a material result: a sum of productive forces, an historically created relation of individuals to nature and to one another, which is handed down to each generation from its predecessor; a mass of productive forces, capital funds and conditions, which, on the one hand, is indeed modified by the new generation, but also on the other prescribes for it its conditions of life and gives it a definite development, a special character. It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.”

 

[Moonbeam]

You could work on your formatting though. It's not hard to use paragraph breaks. You manage it here, but somehow forget again in you subsequent post. To write in great walls of text is rude, and even a bit arrogant.

Hehe, you are right about my formatting. It sucks and it happens, I think because, when I write, I have an aim as to where I am going and what I want to express, and am almost unconscious as I do so of the best places in the text where one bunch of words should end and another begin. I have, instead, when my attention is to polish things up, to reread what I have written and determine those breaks as a separate task all in itself.

So I write stream of conscious or somehow in a way those words seem to fit, and then, thereafter, at least in the latter parts of this thread, I have gone back over what I have written to fix wording mistakes, as many things as I can find that might be read in ways I didn't intend or might be unclear, (what pronouns refer to etc.)

That has meant that I have spent a great deal of time and attention here to what I have said and my occasionally conscious realization of formatting needs, out of a desire to be done with my post, has caused that awareness to slip. So, despite the effort I have spent, I am still guilty of being lazy myself.

In my defense, I remember many, many years ago now, when it became the fashion to pronounce the use of all capital letters to be 'shouting', and I, who mostly types looking at the keyboard, would sometimes wind up with a whole paragraph of them, and I would get rather savagely reminded of it, as if I were the devil and had committed a grave and CAPITAL offense.

Since that time I have wasted untold hours of my time having to retype such mistakes, and all, in my opinion, because of the fact that people are looking for errors to criticize other people with instead of an interest is what is being said. And I wonder and still wonder how it is that capital letters got associated with screaming and became such an offense. I attribute it, of course, to the fact that people are sheep and essentially brain dead and that saying things along those lines, those last few words, are, at least to me, much closer to what rude and arrogant mean.

So, while I can immediately see where I have had the capital key stick to on and have conditioned myself to simply sidestep what I consider to be an absurd issue and retype everything, your criticism has more merit to me and I will try harder not to fall into the trap of assuming that just because there is only one truth and it covers everything, it can't all be said in one paragraph. Thank you.

 

[bshole]

But on the other hand, it's causing you to cheer-lead someone who is actively on the side of dangerous and harmful people. Which is a bit irritating.

The operative question is: dangerous to whom? Currently there is a massive deplatforming effort going on in social media. This attack is emanating from payment intermediaries like Patreon, Stripe, Paypal and MasterCard. Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin and the IDW are attempting to set up an alternative system to counter the censorship. See the video below.

Here is where the irony comes in. The payment intermediaries Patreon and Stripe got much of their funding from Joshua Kushner's company Thrive Capital. Joshua Kushner is the brother of Donald Trumps son-in-law Jared.

Which side is dangerous and harmful on this issue? Jordan Peterson and the content creators who are funded by fans or Donald Trump's in-laws and the billionaire banking class who are impeding fans from paying their favorite content creators (in an attempt to impede political speech they disagree with)?

 

[PJFrylar]

This thread is a bit odd, I think you all are trying to hard to figure out the meaning of life. I reckon there isn't much of one, maybe you guys could just live it instead of trying to unlock some deep secret meaning that probably isn't there.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

I feel like @Moonbeam just revealed a poison hidden amidst our social fabric.

Thank you for such revelation. That level of projecting is so common of late that we seem destined to stop listening, to stop talking, and start pushing one another. The OP would have us believe the man is a pied piper for Incels. When instead he appears be willing to honestly engage them in an effort to stop them. To resolve the issue, rather than cause the issue.

Quite a conflict of realities here.

But damn, that so called interview you linked is brutal. Not only for itself but for society as a whole. I have a feeling that, in my experience, that method of slander and libel is pervasive beyond measure. It has become our narrative instrument for taking down people we perceive to be "other". That all of us may be behaving in a more destructive manner than constructive. Perhaps we've learned by example. But the question is... how do we unlearn it?

How do we build bridges when our whole lives trained us to destroy them?

Oh, for sure, he’s being character assasinated in a hamfisted way.

The accurate countet points (see the climate change discussion for an example) require explaining carefully the rhetorical fallacies he relies on.

My argument is that while some people do benefit - and while perhaps his status as a mid-right icon gets his message to some of those people - many people would be better off with people that don’t connect the feminine they encounter with the chaos they face in their lives.

To be clear, he is precise in his “voice from nowhere” formulation of chaos associated with femininity - but he takes no account of how in reading this many men will have the worst, instead of best, aspects of masculinity bolstered. Indeed, he has many opportunities to criticize patriarchy and suggest another way; but he instead takes the patriarchal myth foundation of society as essential to having society.

This thread is a bit odd, I think you all are trying to hard to figure out the meaning of life. I reckon there isn't much of one, maybe you guys could just live it instead of trying to unlock some deep secret meaning that probably isn't there.

I’m more interested in the meanings people make - and the processes by which they make them.

 

[PJFrylar]

Life is what you make of it, why waste time thinking of the meaning when you could be getting down to making your own meaning.

Edit: For you though, I'll talk about how I came to mine. I was depressed since high school, 14 years in total ... don't quite know how I kept going. I was nihilistic and all that garbage, then I just woke the fuck up - antidepressants might have helped lol.

 

[realibrad]

I get the impression that Dixycrat has studied these things formally and with academic rigour and knows what he's (hmmm, I'm _assuming_ they are a 'he'... just realised I might be entirely wrong!) talking about. Whereas I was just amused by hearing in your comments obfuscated echoes of stuff I heard all the damn time as a child (I don't claim to have properly studied any of it - it used to make my ears glaze over back then).

And that is related to why I'm suspicious of wanna-be-gurus who mix-and-match bits of real philosphy and other disciplines, with their own added mysticism, in order to build a "grand system" that attracts the needy and the lost as followers.

I don't think you are a bad fellow. My guess is you have had some tough times and have picked this mysticism as a form of support, and hence are deeply invested in it. I tend to think 'fair enough, whatever works for you'.

But on the other hand, it's causing you to cheer-lead someone who is actively on the side of dangerous and harmful people. Which is a bit irritating.

Your comment appeared to be an obfuscated paraphrase of 'the dialectic', which is one ingredient in Marxism. Don't know where you got it from (from JP himself?), but it was amusing to me. I guess all these grand systems take from the same sources.

What harmful people is he on the side of?

 

[realibrad]

Oh, for sure, he’s being character assasinated in a hamfisted way.

The accurate countet points (see the climate change discussion for an example) require explaining carefully the rhetorical fallacies he relies on.

My argument is that while some people do benefit - and while perhaps his status as a mid-right icon gets his message to some of those people - many people would be better off with people that don’t connect the feminine they encounter with the chaos they face in their lives.

To be clear, he is precise in his “voice from nowhere” formulation of chaos associated with femininity - but he takes no account of how in reading this many men will have the worst, instead of best, aspects of masculinity bolstered. Indeed, he has many opportunities to criticize patriarchy and suggest another way; but he instead takes the patriarchal myth foundation of society as essential to having society.



I’m more interested in the meanings people make - and the processes by which they make them.

What you are advocating for, is for promoting something that is false to get the right understanding. That is the foundation of a church. Sure, god is not real, but, you are better off believing in something not real because it produces a better outcome.

Chaos is Feminine, Tyranny is Masculine. Neither is good alone, and you need both for a balance. Every time I have seen him discuss feminine chaos, its always been in the context that the other end is tyranny which is masculine. Will dumb people pick what they want to hear, sure. We should not handicap the social discussion(s) to dumb people though. Doing so is a big reason we have made no progress on climate change.

 

[brycejones]

The ultimate whining beta has shown up.

 

[Moonbeam]

Life is what you make of it, why waste time thinking of the meaning when you could be getting down to making your own meaning.

Edit: For you though, I'll talk about how I came to mine. I was depressed since high school, 14 years in total ... don't quite know how I kept going. I was nihilistic and all that garbage, then I just woke the fuck up - antidepressants might have helped lol.

Here is some general information on depression you may or may not be familiar with. I offer it because I think it is very easy to generalize from the personal and that can cramp understanding.

As just a theoretical example, since nobody knows the full story on depression, suppose a person is depressed because they are low is some particular brain chemical. Some drug that restores the chemical to the needed level would cure depression. It could be that it adds the lacking ingredient, blocks what is causing it to be low, supplies precursors that are the actual source of the lack, or treats some persistent mental mental state that causes the release of substances that are psychologically harmful, etc. It is in this latter area that you called looking for the meaning of life and suggested it to be a useless endeavor, I would suggest that may not quite be the way to put that case.

Imagine for a moment that a person, by taking a pill, can fix a negative condition, one that might be caused by some mentally exhaustive effort to suppress some negative feeling picked up in childhood, say some unconscious and therefore amorphous fear, and that, working through it in therapy, those feelings get faced and resolved such that there is no longer a psychological distress caused by repression active anymore, illuminating not only the real cause but but providing a medicine free cure for life.

The point then, is that thinking about what the meaning of life, which is to live, isn't the real focus here, but the understanding of, how to live life, is. You had a switch that was flipped, but do you know how to flip that switch for others. I think that is what we need to explore. There is a great deal of mystery, in my opinion, about how that switch gets flipped.

 

[Moonbeam]

What you are advocating for, is for promoting something that is false to get the right understanding. That is the foundation of a church. Sure, god is not real, but, you are better off believing in something not real because it produces a better outcome.

Chaos is Feminine, Tyranny is Masculine. Neither is good alone, and you need both for a balance. Every time I have seen him discuss feminine chaos, its always been in the context that the other end is tyranny which is masculine. Will dumb people pick what they want to hear, sure. We should not handicap the social discussion(s) to dumb people though. Doing so is a big reason we have made no progress on climate change.

If you are going to suggest there is a way to know a better outcome from a less desirable one, can I please see your proof that it is better by showing me the inner standard or yard stick by which you are basing your analysis. Or is it possible that you simply have a faith in your capacity to do so that can't really be proven by evidence? If so, how are you different than someone with a religious faith? Why would you say their faith is in something that doesn't exist but your faith is sound. I hope my question is clear. I think I am asking something like this: How is a belief there is a good any different in a belief there is a God. I ask because my own thingi I could call a mystical realization or Ah Ha moment or any number of other things, happened because I rejected both. There is no God and there is no good and the fear of existential suffering is the cause that makes us believe. So if delusion is the cause of belief in the first two, the third would have to be a delusion too, and one that disappears the moment faith if the first to disappears finally. We suffer from the loss of what is not real and since we were born perfect and full of being joy we return there when our delusions evaporate.