Jordan Peterson: Gender Pronouns and Free Speech War

[luc]

The whole podcast is really fascinating, but it is long and if you don't have time for the whole thing right now the last hour I think it is really worth your time, as T.C. describes above.

I agree, I watched it completely yesterday and the last hour where he talks about religion is the most fascinating - there is lots and lots in there that corresponds to things we have been discussing here for years!

Thanks PoB for posting this on Cuba and some of the controversies. It really does seem Peterson has a blind spot there - maybe his anti-Marxism stance also prevents him from taking into account the horror show that is/was Western foreign policy, which of course is often detailed by authors with a left/communist background. Such books and articles are not part of the 'accepted' canon in academia, so that's maybe one of the reasons he hasn't considered them. He also said he admires Western civilization, and while that may contribute to his blind spots, I guess we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater here.

Me too, I admire him - he drew the line, went public and took an immense amount of heat, and grew and inspired millions of people in the process. I think it's possible that he might have single-handedly changed reality in a non-linear way with regards to this whole PC totalitarian issue. It's an example of what is possible if you risk everything and stand up for the truth in a smart way. Powerful stuff.

 

[luc]

Here's a new one - a conversation with an artist who creates traditional Christian art:

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Ah, need to go to a meeting now and stop watching these videos :D

 

[Alana]

I agree, I watched it completely yesterday and the last hour where he talks about religion is the most fascinating - there is lots and lots in there that corresponds to things we have been discussing here for years!

Thanks PoB for posting this on Cuba and some of the controversies. It really does seem Peterson has a blind spot there - maybe his anti-Marxism stance also prevents him from taking into account the horror show that is/was Western foreign policy, which of course is often detailed by authors with a left/communist background. Such books and articles are not part of the 'accepted' canon in academia, so that's maybe one of the reasons he hasn't considered them. He also said he admires Western civilization, and while that may contribute to his blind spots, I guess we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater here.

Agreed. I did find myself arguing with him in my head on a few points during his 3-hour interview with Rogan (it took me 2 days to finish it!).

I think that he takes sides because he might be missing the element of pathocracy and ponerology. He would be more objective if he saw that every ideology can be corrupted in the hands of the wrong people, and that even the ideologies he despises have elements within them that are not all bad. It is weird, because he sees this lattest, he talked previously on the profile of people who are attracted to marxist ideology and he said they rate as highly compassionate, they care about others and want what's good for all. And I do agree with him that ideologies in general are a waste at best (they don't account for our reality as is or humans as they are) and dangerous at their worst. Can humans live without ideologies, just in accordance with nature and the natural laws? I truly have no clue. But sometimes he sounds like a leftist who finally saw the horrors of what leftist ideology has done to the world, and now has swung to the opposite side. Like ex-smokers who "after they see the light" become some of the fiercest anti-smokers.

And yes, he seems to like Western civilization way more than I could. The history (older and current) of western civilization is as brutal and bloody as the Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia if not more. I mean, at the moment it is because the western way of living is so screwed up, so inhumane and such an unnatural environment for human beings, that all these social justice warriors are springing up to change it (some guided by their pathology and others by just being misguided). Most people feel the need for some kind of change, but they don’t really know the what, the whys and the hows, they just know it intuitively and they want to do something about it. And it is in this aspect that I have the highest regard for his other work (no just for standing up for the gender pronoun nonsense). When he starts talking about the archetypal myths and the program he created to help (especially young) people become the best version of themselves in this world, when he tells them that changing the world starts with changing themselves, there is silence then in my head, no more arguments with him. I then give him my admiration unreservedly, because like the rest of us, he is only human and he is still also learning. And I am prepared to argue in my head with him more down the road, it helps with my own processing of thoughts and feelings, and finding my own ground and where I stand :P

 

[Carl]

And yes, he seems to like Western civilization way more than I could. The history (older and current) of western civilization is as brutal and bloody as the Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia if not more. I mean, at the moment it is because the western way of living is so screwed up, so inhumane and such an unnatural environment for human beings, that all these social justice warriors are springing up to change it (some guided by their pathology and others by just being misguided). Most people feel the need for some kind of change, but they don’t really know the what, the whys and the hows, they just know it intuitively and they want to do something about it. And it is in this aspect that I have the highest regard for his other work (no just for standing up for the gender pronoun nonsense). When he starts talking about the archetypal myths and the program he created to help (especially young) people become the best version of themselves in this world, when he tells them that changing the world starts with changing themselves, there is silence then in my head, no more arguments with him. I then give him my admiration unreservedly, because like the rest of us, he is only human and he is still also learning. And I am prepared to argue in my head with him more down the road, it helps with my own processing of thoughts and feelings, and finding my own ground and where I stand :P

That bit really got me interested in him, as well as the religion part, and generally the whole latter half of the podcast. Yea he has the blind spots mentioned above. I don't think I'd be too interested in hearing his views on global warming, vaccinations, geopolitics etc. But he understands the spiritual aspect of STO/STS deeply IMO, as well as the psychology. Anyone who speaks in such a way to people, and has a decent platform like him, is very rare.

 

[T.C.]

I then give him my admiration unreservedly, because like the rest of us, he is only human and he is still also learning. And I am prepared to argue in my head with him more down the road, it helps with my own processing of thoughts and feelings, and finding my own ground and where I stand :P

That bit really got me interested in him, as well as the religion part, and generally the whole latter half of the podcast. Yea he has the blind spots mentioned above. I don't think I'd be too interested in hearing his views on global warming, vaccinations, geopolitics etc.

Agreed. After finding his work, I could tell I was putting him on a pedestal, and then the first time I realised he's just a person was when he was doing a lecture and talking about the 1% of richest people, and then he said to his class - a large group of young people who are putty in his hands and likely to believe the majority of whatever he tells them - that if he had to guess who was the richest person in the world, "It's probably Putin."

Ouch. It was actually painful to hear him say it. How could such an intelligent man get anything so wrong? But then I started to laugh at myself for falling into such black and white thinking, and it was actually nice to finally be able to see flaws in his knowledge and understandings.

It also highlights something that others have noted in the thread: that he's isolated. It shows how lucky we have all been to find SOTT and the forum and to be able to join the fellowship, and learn from all the valuable information and analysis by Laura and the elders and network together. That no matter how brilliant you are, you can only get so far on your own.

 

[Renaissance]

Agreed. I did find myself arguing with him in my head on a few points during his 3-hour interview with Rogan (it took me 2 days to finish it!).

I think that he takes sides because he might be missing the element of pathocracy and ponerology. He would be more objective if he saw that every ideology can be corrupted in the hands of the wrong people, and that even the ideologies he despises have elements within them that are not all bad. It is weird, because he sees this lattest, he talked previously on the profile of people who are attracted to marxist ideology and he said they rate as highly compassionate, they care about others and want what's good for all. And I do agree with him that ideologies in general are a waste at best (they don't account for our reality as is or humans as they are) and dangerous at their worst. Can humans live without ideologies, just in accordance with nature and the natural laws? I truly have no clue. But sometimes he sounds like a leftist who finally saw the horrors of what leftist ideology has done to the world, and now has swung to the opposite side. Like ex-smokers who "after they see the light" become some of the fiercest anti-smokers.

And yes, he seems to like Western civilization way more than I could. The history (older and current) of western civilization is as brutal and bloody as the Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia if not more. I mean, at the moment it is because the western way of living is so screwed up, so inhumane and such an unnatural environment for human beings, that all these social justice warriors are springing up to change it (some guided by their pathology and others by just being misguided). Most people feel the need for some kind of change, but they don’t really know the what, the whys and the hows, they just know it intuitively and they want to do something about it. And it is in this aspect that I have the highest regard for his other work (no just for standing up for the gender pronoun nonsense). When he starts talking about the archetypal myths and the program he created to help (especially young) people become the best version of themselves in this world, when he tells them that changing the world starts with changing themselves, there is silence then in my head, no more arguments with him. I then give him my admiration unreservedly, because like the rest of us, he is only human and he is still also learning. And I am prepared to argue in my head with him more down the road, it helps with my own processing of thoughts and feelings, and finding my own ground and where I stand :P

I haven't dug into the Marxist influence on the current ideals of the left as much as I'd like, but my guess is that Peterson might be segmenting the current manifestation of the Left too much from it's early development. The crusades and 'modern' Christianity, the thinkers from the Age of Enlightenment, imperialism and so on paved the way for the current form of neo-liberalism, which covers both the left and right in the West. By pinning snowflakism primarily on Marxist influences, I think it's easier to miss the bigger picture and accept aspects of the West that aren't worthy of acceptance. That said, I am really enjoying his talks I've watched so far and am getting a lot out of them.

 

[luc]

I think that he takes sides because he might be missing the element of pathocracy and ponerology. He would be more objective if he saw that every ideology can be corrupted in the hands of the wrong people, and that even the ideologies he despises have elements within them that are not all bad. It is weird, because he sees this lattest, he talked previously on the profile of people who are attracted to marxist ideology and he said they rate as highly compassionate, they care about others and want what's good for all. And I do agree with him that ideologies in general are a waste at best (they don't account for our reality as is or humans as they are) and dangerous at their worst. Can humans live without ideologies, just in accordance with nature and the natural laws? I truly have no clue. But sometimes he sounds like a leftist who finally saw the horrors of what leftist ideology has done to the world, and now has swung to the opposite side. Like ex-smokers who "after they see the light" become some of the fiercest anti-smokers.

Well, he does say (in the context of religious tradition) that we need both: the rigidity and rules that come with the tradition, AND the willingness to change/open mindedness, and that in the middle of that conflict we need to observe reality and work on our being (something like that). So in a sense, he seems to recognize that we also need some kind of rules, i.e. 'ideology'.

He also seems to recognize that all ideologies can be corrupted - an important point he makes is that there are always different angles, like when he says that yes, religion is opium for the masses, but it is also 50 other things. When he argues in favor of inequality/justifying that people get rich, I think he says it to counter the radical egalitarian perspective that leads to a sense of entitlement, no matter hard work and talent. And I'd say he has a point - kind of: yes, the capitalist system is a just system in that it rewards hard work and talent, but it is also 50 other things :P

About the compassion thing, this disturbed me as well, but I think what he's actually talking about when he criticizes people with "too much compassion" is the exploitation of compassion. I think he should make that clearer, but maybe the thought hasn't crossed his mind. I think he himself is a very compassionate man, it seems he helped many people as a psychologist and it shows in the way he speaks. It's just that he understands that 'compassion gone wrong'/pity is not compassion at all; to really help people you must first get yourself in order, otherwise there can't be compassion. He doesn't say it like that, but I think that's kind of his reasoning.

I hope that he will figure out a few things eventually (about Putin and Western atrocities, for example). But even if not - heck, here is a well-established professor who taught at Harvard, lecturing people about self-work, good and evil, standing up for the truth, the world of archetypes, the need for a spiritual perspective and how this relates to science, and who even comes close to understanding hyperdimensional reality, so I'd say more power to him.

 

[Joe]

And I do agree with him that ideologies in general are a waste at best (they don't account for our reality as is or humans as they are) and dangerous at their worst. Can humans live without ideologies, just in accordance with nature and the natural laws? I truly have no clue.

[quote author=Luc] About the compassion thing, this disturbed me as well, but I think what he's actually talking about when he criticizes people with "too much compassion" is the exploitation of compassion. [/quote]

I was thinking recently about his comments on the ideas of "equality of opportunity" vs "equality of outcome", which are a succinct way of described the "capitalist" vs "marxist" ideologies that are the supposed bones of contention today, particularly highlighted by the gender pronoun "snowflake" issue that Peterson finds himself at the heart of.

The "snowflakes" and other minorities are accused of demanding that everyone have equality of outcome, that no one, effectively, should be allowed to or left to suffer the onslaught of normal life. If anyone suffers, especially any minority or self-described minority, then it must be addressed as a 'human rights' issue. The "snowflakes" and other "liberals" do seem to be guilty of this, and as we've discussed here already, it seems to a result of a particular "leftist" ideology (political and social) that has been promoted in the USA and Western Europe where a decent percentage of the most recent adult generation have been brought up in such a way that they believe themselves to be entitled to things that they are, in fact, not entitled to.

So the point seems to be that life involves a decent amount of suffering, and to recognize that fact and accept it and the responsibility to deal with suffering, gives us the best chance of actually learning something valuable from life and even evolving in the right direction. Humility in the face of the suffering that life throws at us, rather than arrogance, narcissism and rejection of that reality.

But from this perspective, we might wonder about the idea of what we should, or should not, do about suffering. If suffering is one of the major ways that we ignorant people actually learn important lessons, and that it even "turns on DNA", then should any of us be trying to reduce the suffering of others on a wholesale level? Might we not be contravening a kind of 'prime directive' of nature by doing that or wishing for suffering in general to end for all people?

I know Peterson sort of addresses this point by referring to "unnecessary suffering"as something that should be fought against, and he often cites the Soviet gulags as an example of this, but is there not even a problem there also? Could the suffering caused by the Soviet gulags not be part of this "prime directive" to offer millions of people the chance to suffer? The same could be said of the invasion of Iraq and the massive deaths and suffering caused there by the USA.

Maybe there is another "prime directive" that says that, 'yes, to learn people must suffer' but they must also be allowed to learn not to suffer and have the opportunity to reduce and even end their suffering if they learn well enough how to do so, precisely through (if necessary) the experience of suffering'. If the entire population of this planet (and all future humans) were condemned to live on a sort of 'prison planet' where they were born into and lived and died in slavery, with no chance to learn and grow as a result and use that knowledge to change their situations, then maybe that would be a 'bridge too far' (mainly because it would be closed system that could not possible go anywhere, thereby violating some creative law).

But apart from that, maybe in the end the only thing that humans are really entitled to is access to the truth. And maybe that is the only "ideology" we should be consciously following: to make the truth, as best as we can discern it, as widely available as possible to other humans, and let each choose to learn now, or suffer first and then learn. Seems to me that most people tend to choose the later because, as the saying goes, 'a wise person learns from their mistakes, only a genius learns from the mistakes (or experiences) of others'.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

But from this perspective, we might wonder about the idea of what we should, or should not, do about suffering. If suffering is one of the major ways that we ignorant people actually learn important lessons, and that it even "turns on DNA", then should any of us be trying to reduce the suffering of others on a wholesale level? Might we not be contravening a kind of 'prime directive' of nature by doing that or wishing for suffering in general to end for all people?

I know Peterson sort of addresses this point by referring to "unnecessary suffering"as something that should be fought against, and he often cites the Soviet gulags as an example of this, but is there not even a problem there also? Could the suffering caused by the Soviet gulags not be part of this "prime directive" to offer millions of people the chance to suffer? The same could be said of the invasion of Iraq and the massive deaths and suffering caused there by the USA.

I don't see the suffering as a good thing in and of itself. It's value-neutral in my mind. If suffering in general were truly GOOD, then the more suffering the better. I think that implies a moral absurdity of sorts: "Suffering is good, and more suffering is better, therefore the more rape, torture, and murder in the world, the better. If I want to assist the universe in manifesting this good, I should therefore create more suffering in the world, thus giving other people the opportunity to learn and grow."

Rather, suffering can have value, or it can destroy a person. Some people don't suffer enough in the right ways, and lose out in the long run - they never grow. Others suffer too much in the wrong ways, and lose out in the long run - they become broken. That's the hazard of life in a free-will universe where nothing is certain.

Plus, I think Gurdjieff was right to differentiate between types of suffering. He wasn't saying that people should find themselves a good psychopath to torture their bodies and souls. In fact, he did his best to avoid certain types of suffering. He got himself and his students OUT of Russia, because he could see where it was going. So I'd say there is harmful suffering, which can break a person beyond repair, useless suffering, and valuable suffering. Sometimes others are needed to help heal the harmful suffering (like what Peterson and other psychologists do for their patients). Sometimes you need to get over your narcissistic useless suffering. And if you want to grow, you have to engage in conscious suffering to correct the errors installed in you by your biology, socializing, and all the compounded mistakes you've made throughout your life. No one can do that for you.

Maybe there is another "prime directive" that says that, 'yes, to learn people must suffer' but they must also be allowed to learn not to suffer and have the opportunity to reduce and even end their suffering if they learn well enough how to do so, precisely through (if necessary) the experience of suffering'. If the entire population of this planet (and all future humans) were condemned to live on a sort of 'prison planet' where they were born into and lived and died in slavery, with no chance to learn and grow as a result and use that knowledge to change their situations, then maybe that would be a 'bridge too far' (mainly because it would be closed system that could not possible go anywhere, thereby violating some creative law).

Or, see suffering as a corrective mechanism, or a warning system. We're here to learn, to discover the truth. To roughly (probably poorly) paraphrase one of the things Peterson says: when you master something, you can tell because things turn out the way they should, but when you believe lies or are ignorant, reality lets you know through your own failure and the suffering that results. Suffering is the collision of illusion and reality, it's a sign you are not "in sync" with reality, not being true to your nature, individually or collectively. Some suffering is avoidable in theory, but the hazard of a free-will environment means you might confront an unacknowledged reality and learn the hard way. Like the examples in Gift of Fear. But if you happen to read Gift of Fear BEFORE that experience, you might avoid getting raped or murdered.

Other suffering is consciously taken on. Using Peterson as an example again, he is exposing himself to one form of suffering (hate, slander, harm to his reputation and career) to avoid another type of suffering (sinning against his own soul), in pursuit of a higher value: truth. Then there's the conscious suffering of letting the truth expose you to your own illusions, admitting your faults and errors, struggling through the process of learning to master a new way of being, and failing repeatedly along the way.

But apart from that, maybe in the end the only thing that humans are really entitled to is access to the truth. And maybe that is the only "ideology" we should be consciously following: to make the truth, as best as we can discern it, as widely available as possible to other humans, and let each choose to learn now, or suffer first and then learn. Seems to me that most people tend to choose the later because, as the saying goes, 'a wise person learns from their mistakes, only a genius learns from the mistakes (or experiences) of others'.

Yeah. I think that's the only thing anyone is entitled to. And the universe is structured in such a way that the truth is always accessible (even if it may be near-impossible to see). But I think a secondary aspect is that while people are not entitled to having their suffering taken away from them, we have the duty to not only make the truth accessible, but also to afford some level of help to those who require it. And that's an individual or collective/societal choice. For example, if you see someone who has just been run over on the side of the street and whose leg has been severed, you should probably stop and help them instead of coming up with a list of reasons why it is their own fault and the suffering is good for them.

It's a very large and complex balancing act. On the individual level, it depends on context. Sometimes it is useful to let a kid hurt themselves so that they learn to avoid something. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes a "personal intervention" might be the best choice; sometimes it's better to leave the person on their own. And things only get more complex as you try to determine how to approach such things on the level of an entire society.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Very good points. Particularly Joe's last paragraph about the only thing humans are really entitled to is access to the truth. And making it as widely available as possible is what this network has been doing for a long time....

ADDED: Just saw your new post, Approaching Infinity.

 

[Joe]

I don't see the suffering as a good thing in and of itself. It's value-neutral in my mind. If suffering in general were truly GOOD, then the more suffering the better. I think that implies a moral absurdity of sorts: "Suffering is good, and more suffering is better, therefore the more rape, torture, and murder in the world, the better.

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that, but rather the approach we should take to broad-scale suffering of others of that nature that we really can't do anything about in a direct way.

Plus, I think Gurdjieff was right to differentiate between types of suffering. He wasn't saying that people should find themselves a good psychopath to torture their bodies and souls. In fact, he did his best to avoid certain types of suffering. He got himself and his students OUT of Russia, because he could see where it was going.

But then Gurdjieff did take his students on a long and torturous trip through the Caucauses. Obviously their is a conscious responsibility, and biological imperative, to keep body and soul together, possibly even so that a person can continue to benefit from carefully choosing the suffering that life has to offer! :/

And then there was Castaneda who did seem to encourage seeking out "petty tyrants". Obviously there has to be some reason involved, and it would not be a good idea for anyone to subject themselves, in this way, to suffering beyond their ability to deal with, and I don't think anyone but a crazy person would do such a thing.

And if you want to grow, you have to engage in conscious suffering to correct the errors installed in you by your biology, socializing, and all the compounded mistakes you've made throughout your life. No one can do that for you.

Although people also seem to grow through unconscious suffering.

Using Peterson as an example again, he is exposing himself to one form of suffering (hate, slander, harm to his reputation and career) to avoid another type of suffering (sinning against his own soul), in pursuit of a higher value: truth.

Does he say anywhere that he is doing that consciously? Just wondering.

For example, if you see someone who has just been run over on the side of the street and whose leg has been severed, you should probably stop and help them instead of coming up with a list of reasons why it is their own fault and the suffering is good for them.

Yeah, that's taking it to an absurd level where you would deny your own 'instinctive' drive to help someone in need. To come to that conclusion in the face of a person who is suffering would not even be in keeping with the idea that suffering is "good", because the injured person is already suffering greatly. Callously letting a person die in such a situation would no longer concern considerations of the supposed benefit of suffering but about you and your own descent into inhumanity.

It's a very large and complex balancing act. On the individual level, it depends on context. Sometimes it is useful to let a kid hurt themselves so that they learn to avoid something. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes a "personal intervention" might be the best choice; sometimes it's better to leave the person on their own. And things only get more complex as you try to determine how to approach such things on the level of an entire society.

It sure is complex, but useful to reflect on I think, especially in these current times when so many suffer and where the suffering is likely to increase to possibly horrible levels, and we are faced with having to face into it. Thanks for your thoughts AI.

 

[luc]

Plus, I think Gurdjieff was right to differentiate between types of suffering. He wasn't saying that people should find themselves a good psychopath to torture their bodies and souls. In fact, he did his best to avoid certain types of suffering. He got himself and his students OUT of Russia, because he could see where it was going. So I'd say there is harmful suffering, which can break a person beyond repair, useless suffering, and valuable suffering. Sometimes others are needed to help heal the harmful suffering (like what Peterson and other psychologists do for their patients). Sometimes you need to get over your narcissistic useless suffering. And if you want to grow, you have to engage in conscious suffering to correct the errors installed in you by your biology, socializing, and all the compounded mistakes you've made throughout your life. No one can do that for you.

Yes, I think the distinction between conscious/unconscious suffering is important here, as is Gurdjieff's 'law of three': there's good, bad, and the situation that determines which is which.

To use Peterson's analogy, if we experience a fire (both in the present and in the form of past, unresolved trauma), this is actually a "cry for mastery", i.e. we need to expose ourselves to the fire, suffer, and master it. That's how we grow and how we actually reduce suffering - by suffering consciously, by 'paying in advance'. If we just call the firefighters every time to do the job for us, we don't grow and don't learn. If we let the fire consume us, if even unconsciously, we don't grow and learn either. If we just try to avoid it, no progress.

Which brings us back to truth as the ultimate objective: we need to learn to 'map' the landscape of fires, which fires to 'take on' and when, which types of fires there are, and navigate the 'fire reality' consciously and in a smart way. And this entails speaking the truth: telling others about the fires and what we learned about them, in order to help them navigate the 'fire reality' on their own.

So how about situations that demand we help others directly, like when we witness an assault and need to take action? Maybe this isn't so much a case of avoiding the 'fire' for the other person, but going through our own 'fire' - finding the courage to stand up for the truth. Not taking action in such a situation would be just avoiding the 'fire'. In other words, the fact that all these 'fires' are needed for our development doesn't make them 'good', at least from our perspective - they are still dangerous fires. But we can learn about them, master them step by step, and grow.

But one thing is for sure I think: we can't directly create a reality where there are no fires, i.e. an ideological utopia. For this we need faith: faith in the universe that it will extinguish/change the fires according to our individual and collective learning and mastery.

OSIT - it's complicated.

 

[obyvatel]

I don't see the suffering as a good thing in and of itself. It's value-neutral in my mind. If suffering in general were truly GOOD, then the more suffering the better. I think that implies a moral absurdity of sorts: "Suffering is good, and more suffering is better, therefore the more rape, torture, and murder in the world, the better.

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that, but rather the approach we should take to broad-scale suffering of others of that nature that we really can't do anything about in a direct way.

I think after witnessing a lot of large scale suffering which one is powerless to do anything about in a direct way, one comes to a state of acceptance with such a state of affairs. I can lament or rant as much as I want, singly or collectively, about the state of affairs - but that is just me (or us) processing the experience of witnessing suffering. And that is one way, the emotional way, of processing the experience. There are others.

By acceptance of the state of affairs, I do not mean resignation. Resignation can lead to denial or repression. Then one goes about acting very hard to convince oneself and others that things are actually fine. The state of acceptance is different. It says yes it is happening and yes I am powerless to prevent it. This can be, for some at least, a form of suffering that can be useful. It allows the energy that arises from the experience to be used in a context and psychological type specific way. As a common person without access to large scale resources that can actually alleviate the situation, what one can do is listen to the stories of survivors, empathize with them and help them in whatever small way one can (if feasible through practical help like economic aid, volunteering in refugee rehabilitation centers etc) and learn from them about how they survived, what worked and what did not. This can be a moving center or sensing type response. One can abstract out and analyze the historical events and attribute causes and effects -an intellectual response. One can also learn about psychology (which deals with values and experience more than intellectual abstractions) along with historical timelines to try to read patterns behind the events. This would combine feeling,intellect and intuitive faculties .

These are pertaining to vicarious experiencing. IMO, such approaches help to conserve and utilize energy at the personal level. They also mesh well with our collective heritage at the instinctive level. Like some Jungians and Jordan Peterson says, humans learn from stories which show how others like us faced unexpected or challenging situations. If one is a politician or military general, the scope of learning and range of options are different than if one is a common man.

The responses can be different when one is actually experiencing the suffering versus when one is vicariously suffering through witnessing injustice. In the former case, usually all of one's resources are mustered to deal with the experience directly. It is like when one is being chased by a lion one is fully engaged with escaping instead of getting scared/angry/offended, or engaging in intellectual abstractions.

Using Peterson as an example again, he is exposing himself to one form of suffering (hate, slander, harm to his reputation and career) to avoid another type of suffering (sinning against his own soul), in pursuit of a higher value: truth.

Does he say anywhere that he is doing that consciously? Just wondering.
[/quote]

Maybe he is doing what he does - educating people to the best of his knowledge and ability, both as a teacher and as a psychologist. The way I understand Gurdjieff's "conscious suffering", it means working out in advance that doing what one is about to do will incur suffering and still going about it anyway. It also involves aim. Sometimes aims have to be worked out explicitly - sometimes the aims are implicitly tied to one's being. Doing as an expression of one's essence may not be associated with a consciously articulated aim. It is less contrived and more natural. Speculating here that maybe Peterson's response is more spontaneous than consciously worked out.

 

[Joe]

Peterson notes that suffering is what creates genocidal maniacs. Again though, he seems to be unaware of psychopaths in positions of power. Then again, he also makes the point that too much suffering endured by the average person, or humanity at large, and people will eventually "wish for the destruction of being, of everything", which obviously would play into the hands of psychopaths in power not to mention the agenda of "higher up" evil dudes.

 

[Timótheos]

Back to Jordan Peterson. Dunno. Maybe for the purpose of studying human capability of evil, especially on a society scale it's better to focus on the past and closed history chapter. Maybe the traumatic dreams and obsession from the Cold War era keep him somehow imprisoned in those times. Or maybe there are things he doesn't talk about publicly.

I think perhaps that some the reasons Peterson focuses primarily on the horrendous crimes perpetrated by the totalitarian regimes of both Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany is because these two present the most overt examples of political ideologies taken to the extreme, caused the greatest amount of death and human suffering in the last century, and have the most documented historical evidence to support it.

The understanding of similar crimes perpetrated recently by western governments (no less heinous or ideologically motivated) against smaller nations are still largely under the purview of the alternative media, and if one isn't a regular reader of sites like sott and others like that, it would be difficult to see. Especially if one generally accepts the overall narrative reported by the mainstream western press.

The perspective I have of Peterson is that he is incredibly smart within his chosen field of study, the milieu of the University where his focus is on psychology, history and the study of authoritarian regimes, and that any blind spot he may have about similar evils coming from the west is simply a result of lack of exposure and awareness of these issues.

We are able to see the situation more clearly because we have been studying and reporting on it for many years. Speculating here, I suspect that if professor Peterson were to be made aware of what we have discovered about the true nature of western governments, he would likely agree with us.