Jordan Peterson: Gender Pronouns and Free Speech War

[Cyre2067]

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.

That's what I'm noticing, no mention of psychopaths or how they influence culture. He's identified the symptoms, but doesn't grok the root cause. He doesn't strike me as someone who's looked much into aliens either, but that's my superficial impression based on a handful of youtube videos and some stuff he's written.

Other than that though, he's pretty good. I like this idea of personal growth as an individual revivifies the father (or your culture) which is constantly in a state of entropic decay.

 

[Thomas Alan]

Just a guess. Maybe Jordan is aware of the horrors that the US and Europe are perpetrating and at least some suspicions of psychopathy. But he knows that if he put his ideas in those terms he wouldn't last a month. It would be like someone in Stalinist Soviet Union who sought to expose the system for what it was. Such a person would have been sent to a labor camp very quickly. Probably some did have the courage but were quickly neutralized.

Perhaps Jordan is presenting the truth in a way that considers the well-being of his family and himself. Maybe he hopes that others will extrapolate the larger picture.

Mac

 

[T.C.]

With regards to suffering and "unnecessary suffering", Peterson's definition of evil is "The conscious act or choice to create suffering where suffering is unnecessary."

So, he's speaking about it all on an individual basis. From this point of view, it's not that the focus is so much to judge and alleviate the suffering of others (which, as Joe kind of said, there might be a good, karmic reason for), but that as individuals, we have the ability to not cause suffering to others or make their suffering worse, and we can also alleviate our own suffering, or not do something that makes our own suffering worse.

He covers this in his lectures on existentialism, which posits that rather than the individual being a product of society and what an individual experiences being the result of his placement in it, but that society is the product of the individual - that what we do and the choices we make not only affect ourselves, but affect those around us, who then affect those around them, ad infinitum. (His own thought's on whether the individual is a product of society, or society is a product of the individual is, "Yes." lol, meaning the answer is both.

On the subject of his knowledge of psychopathy, I've seen him on a good few occasions describe in perfect detail the way that psychopaths think and act and I've also heard him use the term, "political psychopathy", too. So he definitely has an excellent understanding of psychopathy and an understanding of what we'd call Pathocracy.

Whether or not he's keeping his cards close to his chest on that understanding, or whether he just hasn't been able to 'go there' in linking the two together, I can't tell. What I do know is that he hadn't read Ponerology and wasn't aware of its existence, but he now has a copy. So time will tell.

 

[bjorb]

Can I place this here?

It seems like an effort of making pedophilia acceptable :

'We can't prove sex with children does them harm' says Labour-linked NCCL'
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/462604/We-can-t-prove-sex-with-children-does-them-harm-says-Labour-linked-NCCL

EVIDENCE has emerged that the views of the Paedophile Information Exchange influenced policy-making at the National Council for Civil Liberties when it was run by former Labour Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.

PIE members were lobbying NCCL officials for the age of consent to be reduced and campaigning for “paedophile love”.

Their view that children were not harmed by having sex with adults appears to have been adopted by those at the top of the civil liberties group.

Today we publish extracts from an NCCL report written for the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1976 when Mrs Hewitt was general secretary.

It says: “Where both partners are aged 10 or over, but under 14, a consenting sexual act should not be an offence. As the age of consent is arbitrary, we propose an overlap of two years on either side of 14.

“Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage.

“The Criminal Law Commission should be prepared to accept the evidence from follow-up research on child ‘victims’ which show there is little subsequent effect after a child has been ‘molested’.

“The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage.

“The present legal penalties are too high and reinforce the misinformation and prejudice. The duty of the court should be to inquire into all the relevant circumstances with the intention, not of meting out severe punishment, but of determining the best solution in the interests of both child and paedophile.”

Mrs Hewitt, 65, was general secretary between 1974 and 1983. After days of intense pressure, the former Labour MP for Leicester West finally admitted last week the NCCL was “naive and wrong” over its ties to PIE.

She said: “Any suggestion that I supported or condoned the vile crimes of child abusers is completely untrue.

“As the NCCL archives demonstrate, I consistently distinguished between consenting relationships between homosexual men, on the one hand, and the abuse of children on the other.

“When Jack Dromey, as NCCL chairman in 1976, vigorously opposed PIE at the NCCL AGM, he did so with the full support of the executive committee and myself as general secretary.”

However Labour MP Dromey’s opposition to PIE has been questioned by its former chairman, convicted paedophile Tom O’Carroll, who claims he felt “welcome” at NCCL meetings where he sat on the gay rights sub-committee.

Mr O’Carroll said: “While they did not like PIE and did nothing to support our objectives, they were afraid of appearing insufficiently ‘right on’.

“Consequently they were nothing like as strenuous and public in their efforts to distance themselves from PIE as they are now claiming.

“Dromey is quoted as saying ‘I was at the forefront of repeated public condemnations of PIE and their despicable views’. That’s news to me. Maybe by ‘public’ he meant imprecations muttered to cronies at his local pub.”

Dromey’s wife Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, was legal officer at the NCCL between 1978 and 1982. She has expressed her “regret” over the NCCL’s involvement with PIE but has pointedly declined to apologise.

 

[obyvatel]

[quote author=Puck]
That's what I'm noticing, no mention of psychopaths or how they influence culture. He's identified the symptoms, but doesn't grok the root cause. He doesn't strike me as someone who's looked much into aliens either, but that's my superficial impression based on a handful of youtube videos and some stuff he's written.

Other than that though, he's pretty good. I like this idea of personal growth as an individual revivifies the father (or your culture) which is constantly in a state of entropic decay.
[/quote]

Peterson uses a lot of concepts from Jungian psychology. In the Jungian view, psychopathy at the social level is more likely to be treated as a symptom rather than a root cause. The environment resulting from lack of psychological knowledge, including knowledge of archetypal evil which is autonomous and beyond human level, can create the conditions for a thriving psychopathic culture. Jung mentioned conscious archetypal evil in his writings, and described it as something beyond evil at the human level. The remedy Jung suggested is in line with what Peterson talks about. So, maybe it is a little different perspective and focus rather than not grokking the state of affairs.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

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.

I think it has to do with achieving a certain level of mastery in life. But not everyone is cut out for it, and people have different strengths and abilities. I think Castaneda would probably recommend taking it in stages, first practicing on petty petty tyrants, and moving up the scale, so to say. It wouldn't do someone any good to go up against a master predator only to be eaten in the process. But once you can deal with a real petty tyrant, there's nothing you can't do.

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.

True, but I think that only goes so far. At some point spontaneous multilevel disintegration has to give way to directed multilevel disintegration.

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.

He said (paraphrasing again) that he knew full well what the consequences would be, but that he couldn't do otherwise. So he didn't deliberately set out to be slandered, but he went into knowing full well that would be the outcome. The alternative would be more horrible for him.

 

[nicklebleu]

Peterson certainly knows the concept of psychopathy, at least on an individual level. He mentions psychopaths a few times in his 2016 Maps of Meaning lectures. But he might not be aware of the macros-social dimension of psychopathy along the lines of Lobaczewski.

I find his lectures fascinating, even though he seems to harbour some sacred cows as yet unslaughtered - but then, who doesn't. For me it has been an interesting exercise in categorizing belief and belief systems and thinking about what constitutes a beneificial system versus an unhelpful, or potentially dangerous one.

He is an oitstanding storyteller, and has made me realise, just how many of our world concepts and stories relate back to arechetypical myths.

 

[Heather]

I thought to flesh out a bit more ideas associated with Jung and the suffering associated with trauma...

An interesting clinical update of Jung can be found in the Youtube videos/books of Donald Kalshed, which I've had some exposure to. His book the Inner World of Trauma is good place to begin, and I've only just begun reading it myself.

This is just a few snippets; there are also worthwhile lectures you can watch of his at Youtube:

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"Trauma exacerbates this process [of alienation], dissociation ensures alienation and makes the fallen state permanent. This is why the minions of trauma from the inner world are all fallen angels. They wish to close the windows of our own original, God-given selfhood."

Casteneda's line about the predator giving us his mind here comes to mind. Interesting too is that the mind's dark archetypes -- although triggered by outside abuse/abusers -- are not solely the product of introjection (of the external predator) given their universal nature. And thus the value of myth and fairy tale in this work, which of course all draw on such archetypes.

[to continue with the above quote] "This fall is a necessary and inevitable process -- trauma is universal in life -- and yet there remains within us a part of the original wholeness that longs to return that great spiritual reality from which we came and about which we have forgotten. This splinter of the divine radiance we call the soul, and the soul's longing for God, Jung called the religious instinct."

From what I understand thus far on this material is that healing is a process in which we (through therapy, for example) integrate the trauma -- and, indeed, this calls forth suffering, often profoundly so -- which makes way for the soul to land in the body.

In other words, allowing the soul to become more and more embodied is the goal here.

http://<iframe width="560" height="...u4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Here he is talking about finding ways to get behind the mind's defense mechanisms as a means of integrating the split off, traumatized parts ourselves. Interesting (and of course not new to this forum) is this emphasis on working with the body, here as per Bessel Van der Kolk's book, "The Body Keeps the Score" (which I'd also like to have a look at).

Sorry to get a bit off track here, but the conversation on suffering brought up for me this idea of trauma and dissociation.

As for "the only thing that humans are really entitled to is access to the truth," I would suggest that that is merely the means. Perhaps what we are all entitled to is wholeness. And as the path to wholeness usually involves great suffering, we are in this invited to learn and practice empathy, which engenders kindness, and a desire for understanding.

One danger is to forget that we are all to varying degrees dissociated. Even just being too much in one's head can become alienating for the person you may be trying to connect with. So, it's the quality of the transmission itself we can become more mindful of.

.. as for the present defensive/offensive tenor of political correctness, from what I've seen of his behavior thus far, Jordan Peterson has shown a great deal of patience, and a desire to engage with those opposing him in a manner that elicits understanding. I believe that's just as important as the content of his argument, and might serve to have a positive effect on at least some of the young people especially who are witnessing not just his words but actions.

 

[Heather]

"Trauma exacerbates this process [of alienation], dissociation ensures alienation and makes the fallen state permanent. This is why the minions of trauma from the inner world are all fallen angels. They wish to close the windows of our own original, God-given selfhood."

Correction: "They wish to close the windows into the beauty of our own original, God-given self-hood."

 

[Hindsight Man]

Just a guess. Maybe Jordan is aware of the horrors that the US and Europe are perpetrating and at least some suspicions of psychopathy. But he knows that if he put his ideas in those terms he wouldn't last a month. It would be like someone in Stalinist Soviet Union who sought to expose the system for what it was. Such a person would have been sent to a labor camp very quickly. Probably some did have the courage but were quickly neutralized.

Perhaps Jordan is presenting the truth in a way that considers the well-being of his family and himself. Maybe he hopes that others will extrapolate the larger picture.

Mac

I doubt it,if that were the case there would be occasional slip ups,from what I've seen (by this point I've watched a lot more of his stuff) he seems to have genuinely bought into ''west is best'' ideology and part of why he's done that is his lack of knowledge on ponerology.After all,would someone who considers truth and speaking truth whatever the cost as their highest virtue really lie to his students and feed them the occasional ''Russia is evil'' and see all communism as being equivalent of Stalin's communism no matter the context?That is of course if he really does consider truth as highest virtue (which I personally think he does,he's just blind in a lot of areas,like dragons being comets etc).

 

[Cyre2067]

I woke up this morning with this gender nonsense on my mind, oddly enough. I've concluded that what is really bothering me about the non-pronouns, even the use of 'they' - is that it's a confusion of the language and blurring of lines that are essential. In other words, having gender distinctions, male and female, is a good thing. It helps us identify ourselves and others - it's a literal requirement for propagation of the species.

Deliberate blurring of the language in this case is like blurring of reality. It acts to obscure instead of resolve. Generally when new words are introduced they have some novel meaning that helps explain a societal phenomenon. Like 'genderqueer' was just added to the dictionary, and basically it means folks who identify as 'non-binary' in terms of gender. Adding that term to the dictionary helps explain a social phenomenon, it resolves non-binary genders into focus.

The problem with this is that identifying in this way is essential for some people (perhaps they're trans, perhaps they're born inter-sex) but is nonessential for others (they're just too fem AND butch to fit into one gender aka special snowflakes). So while trans et al folks may have a biological basis to their non-binary status, other people don't. They just 'feel more masculine or feminine' than their native gender 'allows'.

Like, some days I feel more African American than I do Italian American, that doesn't mean I start telling people that I'm not-white. They'd look at me like I'm nuts! But with this gender nonsense people can make up any story they like and if you don't believe them it's oppression! Puh-lease.

/rant off.

 

[luc]

Here's a recent (written) interview with him - very interesting:_http://www.c2cjournal.ca/2016/12/were-teaching-university-students-lies-an-interview-with-dr-jordan-peterson/

Yes, he seems to have a sacred cow or two, but what I got out from this particular interview was a possible slaughter of another myth (?) that I still sort of believed in: the whole women's rights thing. I'm not yet sure what to think about it and as most things this probably isn't a black and white issue, but Peterson busted a few myths there. The physiological/psychological effects birth control pills have on women (screwing their perception of men) is also fascinating, and sort of goes together with the 'androgynization' of society and the loss of real femininity and masculinity.

 

[luc]

Thinking a bit more about this "West is best" attitude of J.P. - while I certainly don't agree that the West is the best or 'least bad' system, maybe from a certain perspective, Peterson has a point here.

Let's think in terms of Huxley's Brave New World: people are happy, always in a bliss, have enough food etc. So in a sense, it's a 'perfect system'. Of course, it's rotten to the core spiritually and people are mere slaves; our Western civilization has become similar. Now what are you going to do? It seems Peterson's critique of the social justice types and snowflakes is that these people are like Brave New World citizens who complain that they want more food, more movies, more spare time, more fun, more 'rights', and even less pain. Of course, this misses the point entirely - what they should rebel against instead is their rotten slave-existence. They should demand their right to suffering! And in a totalitarian context, you can claim your right to suffering by drawing a line and standing up, just like Peterson did.

So in Western society, many people have A LOT compared to others in other countries. I'm sure my circumstances would be considered paradise by many people on the planet. Yes, thanks to the pathocracy, things are getting more difficult every day even for us Westerners. But many of us still have it very good. It's just that we are slaves in a golden cage, like in Brave New World - where the bars are made of programmed ideologies, political correctness, lies about reality. They are made of the promise of eternal fun, comfort, and suffering-avoidance. So in a sense, demanding 'more equality', 'more government benefits', 'less work', 'more rights' etc. is completely missing the point. It's like the Brave New World guys demanding more Soma - especially if such demands come from metropolitan snowflakes who don't even work hard and hang out in coffee shops and safe spaces.

What they should do instead is accept their own suffering and stand up against those golden bars, prepared to lose everything they have because existence in a golden cage is the most dreadful thing there is.

Maybe this ties in to the increasing of 'external suffering' that becomes more and more apparent in the West as well, such as police brutality, poverty etc. and also earth changes - like a reaction of the cosmos, saying to us that if we are not prepared to suffer voluntarily and instead only demand 'more Soma', it will force the suffering on us. The Cs said something about the earth crust breaking up because of unacknowledged stuff. And against this kind of suffering, we are completely powerless, it's not directly in our control. We can take it to the streets, demanding our rights, but we will only get shot. Maybe it's because we need to learn it the hard way. It's the other side of the entitlement coin.

So, this is one way to look at Peterson's message - if you don't value what you have ("West is best"), and you do have a lot (maybe more than you deserve), and if you don't actively reverse the Orwellian/pathological process by embracing your own suffering and dealing with it, you will end up in the most hellish place imaginable, maybe something like the Cs' prison planet they once described.

 

[truth seeker]

I thought to flesh out a bit more ideas associated with Jung and the suffering associated with trauma...

Thanks for posting the Kalsched videos, I thought they were interesting. I've listened to Van der Kolk's audiobook version of "The Body Keeps the Score" and thought it was really good.

 

[obyvatel]

[quote author=Luc]
So, this is one way to look at Peterson's message - if you don't value what you have ("West is best"), and you do have a lot (maybe more than you deserve), and if you don't actively reverse the Orwellian/pathological process by embracing your own suffering and dealing with it, you will end up in the most hellish place imaginable, maybe something like the Cs' prison planet they once described.
[/quote]

That message is quite practical. This is the same message that Carl Jung gave. Jung studied Asian cultures and had a good understanding of them. He warned against the tendency in the west to uncritically integrate customs and practices from eastern cultures because the western culture had become stagnant and diseased. The revivification of a culture is best accomplished organically through home-grown heroes. It is important for such heroes to have a broader understanding of reality and learn from other cultures, but not transplant them. The reason for this is the nature of the collective unconscious that operates at the social level. And this is as true for the west as it is for the east. Pathocratic cultures in Asia cannot be reformed and revivified through a whole-sale import of western social mores and values.

So Peterson's "west is best" attitude also need not necessarily be a "sacred cow". It is possible that he came to a similar understanding as Jung and carefully chooses his words to avoid similar pitfalls as the New Age pitfalls that Jung was trying to avoid. I do not have much data regarding the depth of socio-cultural differences between eastern and western Europe. That could be a significant factor in understanding to what extent what works for Russia would work for US or UK.