Jordan Peterson: Gender Pronouns and Free Speech War

Jordan Petersons most recent interview on youtube. Looks like his health is improving and he can laugh again (as he states in the video as well)! Go Jordan! I'm really happy to see that. :thup:

He also revealed that his book is slighting around number one and two on amazon Kanada, USA, Australia and Great Britain. His book is also number one on pretty much every mainstream english bookseller list. So basically the whole english speaking world is exposed and yearning for that material. I guess the matrix didn't expect that one! I think Petersons popularity is something the PTB didn't expect and this book is just to much for them in some ways.

Wonder how the PTB want to handle that one, a book that basically teaches work concepts for self improvement and abiding and embracing the truth. I've read it and I think it is a highly motivating and good book for anyone interested in improving himself and the relationship to others. It seems like, in times of universal despair and craziness people like Peterson can make a real and positive difference. I also have the feeling that we might have contributed in the success in some non linear way in how we handled things on SOTT the last couple of years and on other personal and collective outlets.

 
I do wonder if what we see here in regards to Peterson emerging in the west and Putin emerging in the east, if those two people and their networks are some of the other groups on the planet that are working towards STO, that the C's talked about at some point (can't find the exact quote)? Groups and people that do not necessarily know from each other, but work on the same goal from different angles and from their current understanding of the world in a non linear fashion?

It seems like one could argue that neither Peterson nor Putin have the "whole banana", so to speak, in a number of areas, and we neither I would say, but that there is something else that nonetheless seems to unite us all. A path towards STO. Embracing truth over lies from our current understanding.

At least in regards to Peterson, it seems like he has made enough sacrifices and is seeing the terror of the situation to an extent that he might be in direct contact with STO forces in some way. His channeling experiment at the end of the book sounds like this could be the case. So maybe Peterson, as well as Putin, and we, are being helped right now in our own particular ways from "us in the future"?

I have to say, it is all very curious to watch right now.
 
I was wondering about that too, and it made me think of those “help is on the way” comments the C’s would periodically make. I do wonder if Peterson is part of that help (as well as Putin still keeping things in check, in a sense buying us time). Although, the recent interview with his daughter got a lot of traction and I can only imagine that would be really helpful for increasing SoTT’s reach! So there’s that too.

I did also come across this interesting clip, where the uploader analyzes the way Peterson gets his point across. He titles it “how to command respect” but I think it’s a bit misleading. Sure, you can call it that but I don't think Peterson does it with the goal of making you respect him. His aim to is convey his thoughts and the respect thing is a side effect of the way he articulates what he wants to say. Anyway, what he does kind of remind me of the techniques in Crucial Conversations, and I think are good qualities to emulate when trying to create open dialogue with other people. Particularly in everyday situations where chances of encountering extremely polarized people are more than likely, and conversations can take an ugly turn rather quickly if you're not careful with your words.

 
fabric said:
I did also come across this interesting clip, where the uploader analyzes the way Peterson gets his point across. He titles it “how to command respect” but I think it’s a bit misleading. Sure, you can call it that but I don't think Peterson does it with the goal of making you respect him. His aim to is convey his thoughts and the respect thing is a side effect of the way he articulates what he wants to say. Anyway, what he does kind of remind me of the techniques in Crucial Conversations, and I think are good qualities to emulate when trying to create open dialogue with other people. Particularly in everyday situations where chances of encountering extremely polarized people are more than likely, and conversations can take an ugly turn rather quickly if you're not careful with your words.


Watched the above a while ago too and I think he indeed makes quite a number of good observations about how Jordan engages with people. I agree as well that it is not really about respect as the commentator suggests, but more like a very effective and considerate way of engaging with people, even if they don't share his views, or worse, are hostile (see Cathy interview for example). Having said that, I think a respectful, polite and decent attitude in conversation is part of his success and why many people react so positively to what he does, even those that don't share his views. I think Putin handles it similarly. I guess long years of practise in engaging with people as professor, as well as in his clinical work with people, his talkative nature, and personal lessons, has teached him a number of lessons there. Indeed I think those are good qualities to emulate. In a similar and in some ways more sufisticated level (IMO) Putin has a similar "talent" (which is rather based on long and hard practise I think, for both).

I can't find it right now, but in one video I watched a while ago, Putin said (or it was suggested), that his main strength is to be able to communicate with and truly listen to all sorts of people, while pretty much always staying calm, rational, not letting his emotions take over, never getting loud or aggressive and trying to search for common ground and a line of communication even when faced with "petty tyrants" where there is not really a common ground.

As the guy in the video above makes clear, if you approach difficult persons and situations in this calm, polite and non aggressive way, you can handle pretty much anything and anyone. When Putin or Peterson talk with "impossible people" it seems they can calm the situation down by this calm, polite truthful behaviour.

Peterson also explains in his book how he learned to handle difficult situations and people by not beating around the bush and sticking to the truth, as best as possible while engaging with them. He talked about how he had to engage with paranoid and aggressive people and how that forced him to truly listen and communicate with them in a truthful, honest and considerate manner.

Here are some relevant passages from his book:

12 Rules For Life said:
TELL THE TRUTH—OR, AT LEAST, DON'T LIE

[...]

I started to practise telling the truth—or, at least, not lying. I soon learned that such a skill came in very handy when I didn’t know what to do. What should you do, when you don’t know what to do? Tell the truth. So, that’s what I did my first day at the Douglas Hospital.

Later, I had a client who was paranoid and dangerous. Working with paranoid people is challenging.
[...]
Paranoid people are hyper-alert and hyper-focused. They are attending to non-verbal cues with an intentness never manifest during ordinary human interactions. They make mistakes in interpretation (that’s the paranoia) but they are still almost uncanny in their ability to detect mixed motives, judgment and falsehood. You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

I listened carefully and spoke truthfully to my client. Now and then, he would describe blood-curdling fantasies of flaying people for revenge. I would watch how I was reacting. I paid attention to what thoughts and images emerged in the theatre of my imagination while he spoke, and I told him what I observed. I was not trying to control or direct his thoughts or actions (or mine). I was only trying to let him know as transparently as I could how what he was doing was directly affecting at least one person—me. My careful attention and frank responses did not mean at all that I remained unperturbed, let alone approved. I told him when he scared me (often), that his words and behaviour were misguided, and that he was going to get into serious trouble.

He talked to me, nonetheless, because I listened and responded honestly, even though I was not encouraging in my responses. He trusted me, despite (or, more accurately, because of) my objections. He was paranoid, not stupid. He knew his behaviour was socially unacceptable. He knew that any decent person was likely to react with horror to his insane fantasies. He trusted me and would talk to me because that’s how I reacted. There was no chance of understanding him without that trust.

[...]

My client meant what he said, however, and sometimes he really did become someone’s nightmare. He was the bad guy in No Country for Old Men. He was the person you meet in the wrong place, at the wrong time. If you messed with him, even accidentally, he was going to stalk you, remind you what you had done, and scare the living daylights out of you. He was no one to lie to. I told him the truth and that cooled him off.

My Landlord

I had a landlord around that time who had been president of a local biker gang. My wife, Tammy, and I lived next door to him in his parents’ small apartment building. His girlfriend bore the marks of self-inflicted injuries characteristic of borderline personality disorder. She killed herself while we lived there.
Denis, large, strong, French-Canadian, with a grey beard, was a gifted amateur electrician.

[...]

We would hear a knock at night. Denis would be at the door, swaying precipitously, upright, and miraculously conscious.

He would be standing there, toaster, microwave, or poster in hand. He wanted to sell these to me so he could keep on drinking. I bought a few things like this, pretending that I was being charitable. Eventually, Tammy convinced me that I couldn’t do it anymore. It made her nervous, and it was bad for Denis, whom she liked. Reasonable and even necessary as her request was, it still placed me in a tricky position.

What do you say to a severely intoxicated, violence-prone ex-biker-gang-president with patchy English when he tries to sell his microwave to you at your open door at two in the morning? This was a question even more difficult than those presented by the institutionalized patient or the paranoid flayer. But the answer was the same: the truth. But you’d bloody well better know what the truth is.

Denis knocked again soon after my wife and I had talked. He looked at me in the direct skeptical narrow-eyed manner characteristic of the tough, heavy-drinking man who is no stranger to trouble. That look means, “Prove your innocence.” Weaving slightly back and forth, he asked—politely—if I might be interested in purchasing his toaster. I rid myself, to the bottom of my soul, of primate-dominance motivations and moral superiority. I told him as directly and carefully as I could that I would not. I was playing no tricks. In that moment I wasn’t an educated, anglophone, fortunate, upwardly-mobile young man. He wasn’t an ex-con Québécois biker with a blood alcohol level of .24. No, we were two men of good will trying to help each other out in our common struggle to do the right thing. I said that he had told me he was trying to quit drinking. I said that it would not be good for him if I provided him with more money. I said that he made Tammy, whom he respected, nervous when he came over so drunk and so late and tried to sell me things.

He glared seriously at me without speaking for about fifteen seconds. That was plenty long enough. He was watching, I knew, for any micro-expression revealing sarcasm, deceit, contempt or self-congratulation. But I had thought it through, carefully, and I had only said things I truly meant. I had chosen my words, carefully, traversing a treacherous swamp, feeling out a partially submerged stone path. Denis turned and left. Not only that, he remembered our conversation, despite his state of professional-level intoxication. He didn’t try to sell me anything again. Our relationship, which was quite good, given the great cultural gaps between us, became even more solid.
Taking the easy way out or telling the truth—those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing.

Manipulate the World

You can use words to manipulate the world into delivering what you want. This is what it means to “act politically.” This is spin. It’s the specialty of unscrupulous marketers, salesmen, advertisers, pickup artists, slogan-possessed utopians and psychopaths. It’s the speech people engage in when they attempt to influence and manipulate others. It’s what university students do when they write an essay to please the professor, instead of articulating and clarifying their own ideas. It’s what everyone does when they want something, and decide to falsify themselves to please and flatter. It’s scheming and sloganeering and propaganda.

To conduct life like this is to become possessed by some ill-formed desire, and then to craft speech and action in a manner that appears likely, rationally, to bring about that end. Typical calculated ends might include “to impose my ideological beliefs,” “to prove that I am (or was) right,” “to appear competent,” “to ratchet myself up the dominance hierarchy,” “to avoid responsibility” (or its twin, “to garner credit for others’ actions”), “to be promoted,” “to attract the lion’s share of attention,” “to ensure that everyone likes me,” “to garner the benefits of martyrdom,” “to justify my cynicism,” “to rationalize my antisocial outlook,” “to minimize immediate conflict,” “to maintain my naïveté,” “to capitalize on my vulnerability,” “to always appear as the sainted one,” or (this one is particularly evil) “to ensure that it is always my unloved child’s fault.” These are all examples of what Sigmund Freud’s compatriot, the lesser-known Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler, called “life-lies.”149

Someone living a life-lie is attempting to manipulate reality with perception, thought and action, so that only some narrowly desired and pre-defined outcome is allowed to exist. A life lived in this manner is based, consciously or unconsciously, on two premises. The first is that current knowledge is sufficient to define what is good, unquestioningly, far into the future. The second is that reality would be unbearable if left to its own devices.

[...]

If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character. If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will, inevitably. You will hide, but there will be no place left to hide. And then you will find yourself doing terrible things.
 
Thanks for posting the excerpt, Pashalis. So beautifully written and what a powerful message Peterson brings across. My copy of Peterson's book arrived a few days ago, I haven't had a chance to get to it yet. To my surprise & delight my 15 year old son started reading it, and I know it's making quite an impression on him. I also want to get the audio version, I can only imagine the depth of emotion with Peterson himself narrating it. It seems like his message is not just coming from his heart but the depths of his soul.
 
Arwenn said:
[...] I also want to get the audio version, I can only imagine the depth of emotion with Peterson himself narrating it. It seems like his message is not just coming from his heart but the depths of his soul.

Indeed. The audio version is quite inspiring and touching.
 
Pashalis said:
Arwenn said:
[...] I also want to get the audio version, I can only imagine the depth of emotion with Peterson himself narrating it. It seems like his message is not just coming from his heart but the depths of his soul.

Indeed. The audio version is quite inspiring and touching.
I was thinking along those lines also. Although I'm waiting for the library version of the book, I think I will get the audio as well.
 
The first time I listened to Peterson on the Rogan podcast he instantly became my favorite person. He was able to articulate so many of my thoughts/feelings in a way that I would never have been able to. The way he melds scientific and religious themes is inspiring.


and I never get sick of watching that Channel4 interview
 
Just watched his interview with Russell Brand and I must say that he looked a bit tired trying to keep up with the all over the place-ness of mr. Brand, but it was a rather interesting talk specially since it approaches the problem of observed inequality due to something many may call the system.

He doesn’t deny it, but he explains that first is not because of capitalism and second that the solution to this is not systemic imposition in an attempt to change the outcome by force, rather that the solution is a psychological one that must initiate at the individual by his own will.

Rather interesting!

_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL61yQgdWeM&feature=share
 
Alejo said:
Just watched his interview with Russell Brand and I must say that he looked a bit tired trying to keep up with the all over the place-ness of mr. Brand, but it was a rather interesting talk specially since it approaches the problem of observed inequality due to something many may call the system.

He doesn’t deny it, but he explains that first is not because of capitalism and second that the solution to this is not systemic imposition in an attempt to change the outcome by force, rather that the solution is a psychological one that must initiate at the individual by his own will.

Rather interesting!

_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL61yQgdWeM&feature=share

I listened to it earlier today and it was quite interesting. I just wish that Russell Brand would have kept quiet and let JP speak more. In some questions, Peterson was replying and obviously just getting warmed up in order to get more interesting points across, and then Brand would interrupt with another question on something JP mentioned in passing - which was a bit annoying. To Brand's credit, although he openly said he didn't necessarily agree with everything JP said, he was making a genuine effort (in his RB way) to engage him on his level and he seemed to understand and agree with most of what JP said.

The part about inequality and capitalism, and left vs right was interesting. One thing that caught my attention was that JP said that out the people who wrote to him, more thanked him for saving them from the 'right' than from the 'left' (around minute 56), which is interesting considering that the media paint JP as an 'alt-right' person. Also, JP said that temperamentally, because he scores high in openness, he would be a 'leftist', but actually he is more of a 'conservative' in the sense that he thinks that social changes must be done very carefully if at all; so far all attempts to get rid of inequality have failed catastrophically - and actual change must take place in one's personal life, psychologically, rather than ideologically. (Or words to that effect - I'm paraphrasing from memory.) As usual, JP's answers showed that he thinks in complex terms, unlike almost anything else we hear on the media these days which is quite limited to the 'juvenile dictionary', to borrow a phrase from Laura.

At some point Russell Brand offered a quote: "Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance" - Albert Maysles. (Reminded me of Ark's "The devil is in the detail".) JP liked that, and so did I. I think it's an excellent way to understand the world we live in at the moment. Since nuances these days are so rare in public discourse, we are in trouble.
 
Windmill knight said:
In some questions, Peterson was replying and obviously just getting warmed up in order to get more interesting points across, and then Brand would interrupt with another question on something JP mentioned in passing - which was a bit annoying.

I'm only about half way through, but on this point:

I think Peterson 'Cathy Newmans' Brand very early on. Peterson said something about trait openness that I've never heard him say before (so it's statistically significant).

He says, "One of the things is that people high in openness have a hard time catalysing their identity", or words to that affect.

I think he was talking directly about Brand himself, because if you look at how Brand's acting and speaking in the beginning of the interview, it's quite different to how he's acting and speaking by the time you get half way through.

Then, Peterson talks about the open personality in terms of lateral thinking, and one idea sparking off other new, related ideas, in a kind of flitting around.

Again, he's speaking to and about Brand directly.

It then follows that the interview is flitting and bouncy and a bit chaotic, and Peterson's quite comfortable with that because he knows this kind of personality has advantages as well as drawbacks, and it allows the discussion to move in interesting directions.
 
Thanks for your take T.C. It lessens my annoyance at Russell (much as I like him) at not letting JP develop what could have been different interesting lines of thought. I haven't heard JP take on inequality in the terms Russell was wanting to talk about. If only he'd actually let JP give a full answer!

Pulling a "Cathy Newman" is one of JP's great strengths. I've watched a lot of his interviews, and his ability to meet each host at their own level and connect with them is amazing. Oh the lucky people who got to have him as a therapist before all this blew up.
 
herondancer said:
Thanks for your take T.C. It lessens my annoyance at Russell (much as I like him) at not letting JP develop what could have been different interesting lines of thought. I haven't heard JP take on inequality in the terms Russell was wanting to talk about. If only he'd actually let JP give a full answer!

Thanks for posting the link - I quite enjoyed the interview, even though RB was a bit all over the place. But I liked that he was bouncing ideas and concepts off JBP and that created quite some different angles of things he had already talked about before.

To me it seemed that JBP enjoyed the interview - two induviduals with high openness, as he put it himself.

And I am always blow away by his ability to deconstruct questions thrown at him and to give a deep and meaningful answer!
 
Watched Petersons recent interview with Dr. Iain McGilchrist, author of the book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, discussed here:



While in the UK, recently, I had a chance to sit down for an all-too-short half-hour with Dr. Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary (description below). Our conversation was taped by Perspectiva (http://bit.ly/2EOCiU0), who described it as follows: "An extraordinary half-hour conversation about the brain, chaos, order, freedom, evil, mythology, being, and becoming between two of the leading thinkers of our time."

Dr. McGilchrist's book (Amazon description: a fascinating exploration of the differences between the brain’s left and right hemispheres, and how those differences have affected society, history, and culture) is available here:

It was quite a fascinating an interview and Dr. Iain McGilchrist work sounds like it could be quite an interesting read. McGilchrist also talkes about a new book that is in the making with a title like "There are no Things". He explains in the video what there is instead, namely always ongoing processes or something like that.
 
T.C. said:
Windmill knight said:
In some questions, Peterson was replying and obviously just getting warmed up in order to get more interesting points across, and then Brand would interrupt with another question on something JP mentioned in passing - which was a bit annoying.

I'm only about half way through, but on this point:

I think Peterson 'Cathy Newmans' Brand very early on. Peterson said something about trait openness that I've never heard him say before (so it's statistically significant).

He says, "One of the things is that people high in openness have a hard time catalysing their identity", or words to that affect.

I think he was talking directly about Brand himself...

I knew this was significant.

Peterson also 'did a Gurdjieff' in that moment, too :lol: I think he highlighted Brand's 'Chief Feature' and 'stepped on his corns' by doing so. But in a gentle, considerate way.

It was like he pulled something out of Brand and just sat it on the table for Brand to look at throughout the interview.

Until, at around 1:08:10, they're talking about problems on the macrosocial level, and Brand says he agrees with Peterson on the necessity for including spirituality on an individual level, and Peterson asks him how he came to that personal realisation. And Brand gives an impassioned speech on his own failings and limitations - a self-remembering and recapitulation that leads one down to the path to the 'moral bankruptcy' that is the beginning of the Work.


"I have been driven to this conclusion by the experiences of personal failure and personal limitation. By the failure of individuation. By the failure of my own grandiosity. By the failure of my own ego. The failure of fame and power and money and sex and drugs. The inability of them to reach me, in the belly of the beast, deep, deep, deep down, where the leviathan is."

Brand is a 12-Stepper, which is where he got his drive to 'take a moral inventory' (step 4) of himself and 'came to believe that a higher Power could restore him to sanity' (step 2). Because, his lack of a solidified identity manifested in the various addictions he mentions above - and each of those, the fame, the sex, etc., have been real pathologies for him.
 
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