Another interesting interview with Jordan Peterson, this time by Helen Lewis. As far as I could tell JP was his usual self and had me laughing more than a few times with comments such as the "rampaging hordes of male plumbers" when discussing the patriarchy. Helen seems well entrenched in her ideology but at least she's a little more articulate than some other interviewers, which gives JP the chance to dissect some of his ideas a bit more.
I liked this one!
The interviewer had done her homework; she compiled and competently presented in one convenient video all the choice 'killer' arguments concocted by JP's detractors over the past 12 months.
And he shot them down one after another. Easily.
-Because, (let's be honest), most of those show stopper arguments exist at the same difficulty level of,
"If god loves us, then why is there suffering in the world?" Junior High Philosophy Club reduction.
"You are conflating Identity Politics with Tribalism. They are not the same thing!"
I don't think he spelled out each argument to my own full satisfaction, and certainly not well enough to win over the interviewer (or I imagine, anybody committed to the Leftist ideological stew), but well enough to perhaps set normal viewers to thinking through each logical puzzle on their own and thus learn the concepts more thoroughly than if they were simply handed over fully assembled. (I don't know if this is a deliberate stylistic teaching approach on JP's part, or just a consequence of being hammered with the same silly questions over and over and assuming a basic level of informed rational capacity on the part of the viewers as he flicks them away).
In any case, this video did once again raise my wonder and awe at the stubborn blindness of his debating opponent/s!
How do people proceed in their old beliefs when their arguments are broken down, demonstrated to be faulty, and then effective alternative reasoning afterwards provided? That should be the end of the story! The rational response should be, "Oh! I never thought of it like that!" -Maybe not instant agreement, but at least, "I need to think about that some more."
But instead we see a stony faced non-response, skipping to the next line of attack as if the words just spoken were not heard or not computed. I really don't get that! I've seen it myself many times. It requires one to somehow shut off their facility to understand and process language for the duration of those selected moments when the debate is not going in one's favor
. -Deafness! Not a retort. Not a counter argument, but to simply not hear and to not adapt, to just continue as though a primary logical pillar hadn't just been vaporized! It's really disturbing and frustrating to witness in people.
Ah well. That's nothing new. It's commonplace. It's the bedrock mental mechanism of entire swaths of the population. It may even a primary state of the human psyche.
But damn, it's still really weird to see in action! It's one of those key areas which differentiates "player characters" from "non-player characters".
but I'm hopeful that he will gain a LOT of support from the Dutch youth.
That's something I'm trying to work towards to as well, which is not easy!
