I've been trying to get more into all this subject lately because it really seems so important. I didn't realise things were so upside down already so reading this thread has been such an eye-opener for me.
Joe said:
luc said:
This is all very fascinating and challenging for me as someone who was socialized in the die-hard liberal milieu.
It's pretty interesting for sure. I'm sure it also gives you an insight into the nature of ideology, and how easily and more or less subconsciously one can be adopted. Kind of scary when you really think about it.
My thoughts exactly. I'm am in awe by this discussion because I too was socialized in the progressive liberal postmodern milieu and plus, I'm young, so I'm among the "millenialls" age range. Since the beginning of this discussion I have been remembering different ideas taught to us at school (which was a progressive school) and also many ideas that were starting to be held by my peers and seemed a bit awkward at the time but everybody was taking them because you were supposed to agree with them if you were to be accepted as a progressive person. I always thought about this regarding these people. I'm surrounded by all these nice people who are supposedly doing a lot for others, and I admit they do some interesting stuff, yet, I always wondered why they seem to not be able to discuss topics that are labeled as "politically incorrect". So they keep themselves in the "politically correctness" by promoting ideas that are established as "good", i.e.: global warming, vegetarianism is good for the planet, inclusion, multiculturalism, equality, etc... While some of these ideas have multiple angles from which to analyse and they can have a "good side" too (OSIT), they promote the established view of them, which is the "politically correct" view... i.e: "I must be a vegetarian if I care for the environment, even though I don't really know if that's true."
Not so long ago, I had a conversation with an old leftist friend who I think keeps his mind straight still, even though he is right at the centre of one of the biggest universities' students' council and is always involved in young adults social movements and debates. We were talking about how it has become some sort of a rule that if you are to be "progressive", you ought to have a strange sexual orientation, and that if you don't have such, you are retrograde, not really liberal, or just no too self-aware to know it. This is particularly interesting because it reflects a view that is basically black and white. It's the "with me or against me" type of thinking, and that's certainly disturbing. When it comes to all sorts of minorities, you have a bunch of people driven to a fight against everyone for just about anything. I picture Quixote against imaginary windmills. And that also shows a huge level of hysteria, because people are basically living in a fantasy world and fighting fantasy enemies.
As others said in this thread, I think that the way in which Peterson addressed this issue, making it much greater than just the gender pronoun thing has prompted us to see how deep this goes. For me, we are seeing a society turn voluntarily to lalaland, and this ideology is making it right to live in a fantasy, even good, something to admire and to be proud of... you know, "just be yourself and don't listen to what others think". I think this is import too because even though there is some truth in the idea of "being oneself" it has become something exagerated where people are self-absorbed and loose any possibility of growing because they simply can't accept any criticism.
I think I don't have a lot to add to the discussion, but I wanted to share this video (I haven't seen it posted here before). It's a parody that depicts what this politically correctness is bringing to education... and how grim the future looks if this really continues to expand.
Apart from that, I think that this quote from Political Ponerology is very relevant regarding this topic:
[quote author=Political Ponerology]Dreams of a happy and peaceful life thus gave rise to force over others, a force which depraves the mind of its user. That is why man’s dreams of happiness have not come true throughout history. This
hedonistic view of “happiness” contains the seeds of misery and feed the eternal cycle whereby good times give birth to bad times, which in turn cause the suffering and mental effort which produce experience, good sense, moderation, and a certain amount of psychological knowledge, all virtues which serve to rebuild more felicitous conditions of existence.
During good times, people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of others, and an understanding of life’s complicated laws. Is it worth pondering the properties of human nature and man’s flawed personality, whether one’s own or someone else’s? Can we understand the creative meaning of suffering we have not undergone ourselves, instead of taking the easy way out and blaming the victim?
Any excess mental effort seems like pointless labor if life’s joys appear to be available for the taking. A clever, liberal, and merry individual is a good sport; a more farsighted person predicting dire results becomes a wet-blanket killjoy.
Perception of the truth about the real environment, especially an understanding of the human personality and its values, ceases to be a virtue during the so-called “happy” times; thoughtful doubters are decried as meddlers who cannot leave well enough alone. This, in turn, leads to an impoverishment of psychological knowledge, the capacity of differentiating the properties of human nature and personality, and the ability to mold minds creatively. The cult of power thus supplants those mental values so essential for maintaining law and order by peaceful means. A nation’s enrichment or involution regarding its psychological world view could be considered an indicator of whether its future will be good or bad.
During “good” times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient facts. It is better to think about easier and more pleasant things. Unconscious elimination of data which are, or appear to be, inexpedient gradually turns into habit, and then becomes a custom accepted by society at large. The problem is that any thought process based on such truncated information cannot possibly give rise to correct conclusions; it further
leads to subconscious substitution of inconvenient premises by more convenient ones, thereby approaching the boundaries of psychopathology.
Such contented periods for one group of people – often rooted in some injustice to other people or nations -
start to strangle the capacity for individual and societal consciousness; subconscious factors take over a decisive role in life. Such a society, already infected by the hysteroidal23 state, considers
any perception of uncomfortable truth to be a sign of “illbreeding”. J. G. Herder’s24 iceberg is drowned in a sea of falsified unconsciousness; only the tip of the iceberg is visible above the waves of life. Catastrophe waits in the wings. In such times, the capacity for logical and disciplined thought, born of necessity during difficult times, begins to fade. When communities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified at every social scale, whether individual or macrosocial, until everything reverts to “bad” times.
We already know that every society contains
a certain percentage of people carrying psychological deviations caused by various inherited or acquired factors which produce anomalies in perception, thought, and character.
Many such people attempt to impart meaning to their deviant lives by means of social hyperactivity. They create their own myths and ideologies of overcompensation and have the tendency to egotistically insinuate to others that their own deviant perceptions and the resulting goals and ideas are superior.
Shocked and horrified don't quite cover my feelings about this trend toward normalizing pedophilia. Can't.... I dunno. :(
