rigorousintuition.ca

Thanks Mac, BS, HS.

Nice timing, because I've been feeling like this was just too big a whale to reel in and like it was going to drag me down into the depths, i.e., the overwhelming experience of my own impotence and obscurity. It's sort of ironic that RI-responses would come to my emotional rescue like that (this hasn't been the most hospitable of places in the past).

Mac, if you bother to read the comments of that intro essay, the one in which I mention my marital discord around JBP, you'll see a couple by Cosmic Claire: a trans person (fully transitioned) who comes to JBP's angry defense with this:

You might consider why you haven’t achieved the same level of public approbation ~ probably because you haven’t done the ground work that has gone into Peterson’s life achievement. It’s all totally amusing how you fail to recognise your superior when you see him.

Talk about low blows. So yeah, you could call it courage, or you could call it folly, to hand potential critics the weapons by which they can most easily hurt me - tho I prefer to see it as leaving no stone unturned. The link was shared at Reddit and there were several criticisms that said basically, "This guy admits he's jealous of JBP, so why should we listen to anything he has to say?"

Anyhow, here's the latest, part 1 of the series proper, and an attempt at "steel-manning" JBP before dismantling.

The Cross Marks the Spot: Jordan Peterson’s Treasure Map of Meaning (Answer to Jordan # 1)

Meanwhile, I havent read it yet but the NYT have apparently launched their big guns: Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy
"He says there’s a crisis in masculinity. Why won’t women — all these wives and witches — just behave?"

Expect angry Twitter rants from Peterson.

It’s hard to believe that any women would support JP, but I guess it’s for the same reasons that “Fifty Shades of Gray” has female readership and fans. Sad and pathetic fruit of the culture of domination and abuse that Peterson champions and desperately wants to fortify.

I read the NYT article and your intro Guruilla. Your piece was certainly a lot more honest and interesting than JP’s sickening shtick. (barf)

I remember you as a poster that made valuable contributions. We may not agree on everything but a discussion board needs diverse viewpoints.

We have two new mods and the verbal abuse that was rampant is no longer being tolerated. Already things have gotten better here and hopefully will continue on that trajectory.

And congratulations on publishing a new book and having the courage to get your ideas out there.

Thanks HS

It's always interesting to hear people's (usually women's) visceral reactions to JBP (I do find his high voice and borderline hysterical delivery style off-putting).

That said, I think the assumption that one's visceral (or even intellectual) reactions are 100% reliable and the corresponding dismissal of anyone who has different responses never helps the situation.

As with Trump, presuming that those who like, admire, and support JBP are failing to see something we see surely obliges the balancing admission that they may be seeing something we aren't.

There's some good in what JBP is saying, and if there wasn't, he wouldn't have struck such a nerve. Culture abhors a vacuum and JBP seems to be what the Zeitgeist/collective unconscious has conjured up to fill the black howl (typo, I'll leave it in) of public discourse created by runaway political correctness, ID politics, and extremely disconnected (and I would say destructive) progressive politics.

Question still remains whether the solution JBP seems to (want to) be spearheading will be even more pernicious than the problem. That does seem to be the SOP of the social engineers.

I've never heard Peterson say anything objectively good, whatever that might be, but he certainly does what anyone with his skilled slippery style can accomplish to some degree, which is one of a couple of things related to exposing his interlocutors, who either show how incapable they are of forming anything but a facile argument in response, or put on full display the deviousness of their own position. Neither of these things — as Peterson will/would point out as long as it does not draw too direct a line to his own sophistry or outright disingenuousness — necessarily make his position on any given matter a sound one.

Frankly I find the slew of "debates" getting so-liked and shared around the web video platfora to consist of a whole hell of a lot of talking past issues with very little substance. Despite the "depth of discussion" and general tone of civility — the latter of which, again, does not alone a good thing make — very little is done to separate their content from the standard flame fare one finds in their comments sections.

guruilla » Sat May 19, 2018 7:04 pm wrote:Thanks HS

It's always interesting to hear people's (usually women's) visceral reactions to JBP (I do find his high voice and borderline hysterical delivery style off-putting).

That said, I think the assumption that one's visceral (or even intellectual) reactions are 100% reliable and the corresponding dismissal of anyone who has different responses never helps the situation.

As with Trump, presuming that those who like, admire, and support JBP are failing to see something we see surely obliges the balancing admission that they may be seeing something we aren't.

There's some good in what JBP is saying, and if there wasn't, he wouldn't have struck such a nerve. Culture abhors a vacuum and JBP seems to be what the Zeitgeist/collective unconscious has conjured up to fill the black howl (typo, I'll leave it in) of public discourse created by runaway political correctness, ID politics, and extremely disconnected (and I would say destructive) progressive politics.

Question still remains whether the solution JBP seems to (want to) be spearheading will be even more pernicious than the problem. That does seem to be the SOP of the social engineers.

I probably agree with some of Peterson's views on the dark side of political correctness or how identity politics have gone too far and are fostering "divide and conquer". I'm not going to verify if I agree with him on these points though because I don't have the time, interest or intestinal fortitude to watch or read any more of his output.

The left can be dogmatic and full of yet unsolved problems but I'm certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that embracing long-discredited fascist ideology is not the answer. Why not seek to analyze the whole situation and come up with a way forward that makes sense?

It's troubling and sad that he has the following he does. If there's a hell he will burn in it. Not to even mention the harm that he and his ilk are doing to women, the fact that he's leading a legion of lemming-like confused men over a cliff is evil and destructive.

I haven't read this thread and don't think I have any more to say on this, but if there are any RIers who follow this guy I hope you'll rethink the whole thing. I mean after slavery was abolished there were those who fought to re-institute it but do you really want to be part of this type of movement? i.e "on the wrong side of history"?

I'll post an interesting article on him I read this morning below this one.

The poisoned chalice of traditional masculinity

Ryan Cooper



When I moved to South Africa, I noticed something unusual. Men who were friends would often stand holding hands while they chatted, or while they walked down the street. The question "are they gay?" helplessly leaped into my mind when I first saw it happening — thus providing the instant answer as to why I had not seen it much in America.

It's not just homophobia — indeed, South Africa has some severe problems in that regard — but the particular way in which homophobia and associated norms of masculinity have curdled the American male identity. It's worth considering as people like University of Toronto professor and men's rights hero Jordan Peterson present the case that a return to more conservative gender norms would make for a better society. In reality, the ideology of "traditional" masculinity is a poisoned chalice for men.

Peterson argues that many men are frustrated and lonely in part because of feminism, the sexual revolution, and the decline of traditional families. In a recent New York Times profile, he argued that the logical response to the ISIS-style terrorist attack from an "incel" man — who drove a truck through a crowd, murdering 10 people and injuring 15 more — was to somehow redistribute women. "He was angry at God because women were rejecting him," Peterson said. "The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges."

Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn't make either gender happy in the end. [The New York Times]

It's not hard to see why these kind of solutions — which would basically amount to government-coordinated rape — are attractive to lonely, angry, or disillusioned men. "It's somebody else's fault" is generally an attractive sort of diagnosis. And there may be a nugget of truth in the idea that men have been in some ways left behind by the evolution in gender norms, which has focused a lot more on women's liberation than on providing workable behavioral guidelines and socialization for often-bewildered men. (Though the idea that some woman would be forced to take one for the team and marry a violent terrorist is a pretty good explanation as to why the feminist movement happened in the first place.)

But Peterson's explanation of the mechanics here is revealing. There actually is research suggesting that monogamy might have developed through a sort of cultural selection process whereby monogamous cultures had fewer unmarried men and thus less crime, abuse, and so on, thus allowing them to out-compete polygamous cultures (which used to be much more common). But not only is that a tentative and incomplete hypothesis at best, Peterson has the selection mechanism backwards. Women did not flock to the high-status men, those men took the women they wanted.

The idea that women will only sleep with the top men if given the chance is straight out of pick-up artist garbage pseudoscience. This ideology of "beta" and "alpha" males (the latter getting all the sex) is based on a mangled and since-retracted study about wolves, and bears no relationship whatsoever to human societies. Worse, it instills the false notion that women are largely status-obsessed sluts who will have to be basically coerced into sleeping with anyone but the most attractive men.

To be sure, there are plenty of vain and superficial women who want a man to be very attractive above all else — just as there are plenty of men with those qualities (and probably a lot more of them). But there are vastly greater numbers of women who just want a regular loving relationship with someone they can trust and enjoy being with. It can be tough to develop a relationship in this anxious age, but most any man can manage it if he is willing to put in a lot of time, effort, and always try to behave decently. When it comes to women, often the greatest obstacle for men who have drunk deeply from the trough of Peterson and his ilk is that all this poisonous garbage has made them intolerably annoying and entitled.

That brings me back to male friends and touch. Peterson has also referenced the 1950s as a good cultural model. It turns out that the modern American male aversion to "homosocial touch" developed about this time, as homophobic sexual paranoia took deep root. Look at pre-World War II pictures of American men, and they were very often holding hands, leaning on each other, sitting in each other's laps, and so on. They did this — and still do it to some degree in most cultures around the world — because touching one's fellow species members is a nearly universal primate behavior (as opposed to that of lobsters or wolves), and has all matter of empirically-demonstrated health benefits for humans. It was a bit of a jarring realization to grasp that as an American, I was the weird and probably psychologically scarred outlier.

So not only are these notions of masculinity scientific mumbo-jumbo that deeply harm the men they are supposed to help, they aren't even that much of a tradition even in our own warped country.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with enjoying traditionally male hobbies, clothing, or other such things. But men, let us not be taken in by the idea that we can quickly and easily fix our problems by rolling back the sexual culture six or seven decades. It's not remotely possible, and even if it were, we'd all be worse off for it — women and men alike.

Nice article by Ryan Cooper, HS.

Men and their entitlements including manview, or mansplainin' as they say. Do they not think there are and have always been lonely women? For most of history women have been chained, denied, excluded and treated only as breeding vessels and/or cum buckets.

I don't find anything JP has to say as brilliant, excellent or genius. But it sure explains some of the serious problems with RI's membership.

Blue wrote...

I don't find anything JP has to say as brilliant, excellent or genius.

Sure, yet it's still potentially educational as well as entertaining to observe how a plausible case is made out of bad assumptions.

Thanks Heaven Swan for the Ryan Cooper take on the situation.

But it sure explains some of the serious problems with RI's membership.

Well that was out of the blue.

(Some people do not enjoy either 'liberal' or 'trad' kool-aid.)

Heaven Swan » Mon May 21, 2018 1:47 pm wrote:It's troubling and sad that he has the following he does. If there's a hell he will burn in it. Not to even mention the harm that he and his ilk are doing to women, the fact that he's leading a legion of lemming-like confused men over a cliff is evil and destructive.

Si. Over a cliff and into all kinds of wrong battles in which they won't be most of the casualties.

guruila, thanks for that series, which I read in full over the long weekend. I'm pushed for time here, but I just wanted to say I really appreciate the time and thought you have put into that series and are hopefully still putting into it. Bravo. It's not time spent in vain (and the artworks are also funny and apt). Will have more to say later.

Heaven Swan » Mon May 21, 2018 2:47 pm wrote:I probably agree with some of Peterson's views on the dark side of political correctness or how identity politics have gone too far and are fostering "divide and conquer".

Yeah I find I also stumble into (slouch toward) reluctant agreement with Peterson on similar issues at times. But this never overcomes the basic problem with him: in some ways, he's just not very smart.

I get the sense that he truly does not understand the politics with which he butts heads or their larger context. I imagine he is still perplexed as to why anyone on earth would think he was anywhere near fascism. I genuinely don't think he would be able to place his own position in a contemporary discussion of semiotics/philosophy.

But I also sense a genuinely (IOW not asininely hyperbolic) fascist current among some of his adversaries in their willingness to embrace a strong morality without seriously engaging the state and authority etc. IOW, despite a contingent who would work on prison abolition, I see, in much of the self-proclaimed radical but not really very radical left, a cynical detachment from any engagement with those police and armies who will enforce their moral rules. Like social justice with little to no interest in how that justice is dished out which somehow always makes me think of Mao. As someone who always wondered what it felt like in the immediate follow-up to fascist or totalitarian take-over - which I'm not saying we are, necessarily - I suspect it would've been similar to now - that there was a feeling or almost-non-verbal instinct towards violence that suffused all facets of the body politic. That the fascists were simply - the fascists who won that go-round, not entirely different from the rest of their societies.

I won't ever fall into the trap of defending Peterson but I do find it somehow unsettling that so much of the (likely mostly righteous) criticism of him seems to miss a more innocent aspect of his appeal: he's doing mythology in a time when that's largely taboo or discredited.That's the hook, I suspect, for a whole lot of his fanbase. And it really intrigues me given that over on AD's TIDS thread, there's a piece about how the perfectly different creature named Nick Land's focused investigation into all the mythological source material of Deleuze and Guattari seems like a harbringer of his newer fascist overtones.

PS. Thanks for the Cooper piece too, HS.

The article posted today on guruilla's site by guest author Gregory Desilet regarding Peterson's (mis)reading of postmodernism and Foucault/Derrida in particular is a good read:

https://auticulture.wordpress.com/2018/ ... uest-post/

And does anyone think the Times is misquoting him on this?

"He was angry at God because women were rejecting him," Peterson told the Times' Nellie Bowles. Minassian was a self-proclaimed "involuntary celibate," or "incel," and Peterson added that "the cure" for male-perpetrated violence "is enforced monogamy. That's actually why monogamy emerges."

Though I'm sure he prefers that it's enforced not by the state but by a church and villagers with pitchforks and stones. Then it's not wild youth individual violence but (male-led) group perpetrated violence. For a cause.

I can't help think that if there are JBP supporters reading this thread, the chances of them posting are pretty slim. Is that the desired outcome and if so, why? A debate that banishes one side of the argument isn't much of a debate.

JBP is a fascist demagogue who will burn in Hell and his followers are all lemmings headed for destruction - not exactly conducive to a multi-leveled discussion of the guy, is it?

It's an indication of perspectives that are formed inside an ideological echo chamber, ironically the very kind of soft totalitarianism that JBP is railing against and that has led to there being such a massive upswelling of support for the guy. Do so many people at RI still associate irrational and violent intolerance and oppression exclusively (or even primarily) with the Right and not the Left? It just seems to be missing the mark by such a wide margin to pigeon-hole JBP and his followers this way. Even if it weren't wrong (it is, none of the JBP followers I know are even remotely right-wing or fascist-leaning), it's methodologically unsound to boot.

Supposing the guy were as bad as some people believe and his followers as deluded and as dangerous as they are making out. Isn't that all the more reason to attempt to understand what's occurring, to try and see things from their point of view and figure out what the appeal is, and then develop some more finely tuned and point-specific arguments to persuade them with? As opposed to deride, dismiss, and condemn them? As if that's an effective way to reduce the power and appeal of a dangerous mass movement, when, chances are, it has the very opposite effect.

Ever hear the phrase Know Thine Enemy? I recommend developing and applying the cognitive, discursive, and didactic equivalents of martial arts.

I tend to agree with the idea that the criticism of JP is often of the hyperbolic nature that is self-defeating. The 'fascist' aspersion is objectionable for the same reason the going criticism of conservatism is in general: not that there's no fascism there, but that it lets the going liberal policies, whether ostensibly liberal or otherwise, off the hook, and, frankly, "left is the opposite of right" and "liberal is the ideological opposite of conservative" amounts to the employment of the same lazy analytical crutch that is Peterson's bread and butter.

Case in point, this latest reprise with him and Russell Brand wherein Brand is amusing when he finally outright laughs off the notion posited by Peterson, that post modernism and political correctness are the pre-eminent dangers in our society and counters that it is the very existence of power that is most destructive. Unfortunately Brand just lets him off the hook at every turn, failing to seriously challenge any of his facile whoppers. The worst is at the conclusion of this discussion, where Peterson, in classic concern troll mode, goes so far as to say that "the left", who he gives seeming praise to for their being creative, indeed, the sole source of creative solutions to living, but then backhands the same left for being utterly incapable of organising and in absolute need of conservatism to exist in the appropriate structure. This power structure, which he allows lends itself to corruption and tyranny, is something that it seems to me Peterson sees as his purpose in life to preserve. But only honest criticism of his interlocutors will lead to honest discussion of what is wrong with him and our society: