Jordan Peterson: Gender Pronouns and Free Speech War

I've been following this restriction of speech phenomenon for quite a while and it kind of intensified with the bathroom nonsense some time ago. From time to time there are a few gems in the press that makes you question whether we're not living in a giant spherical psychiatric asylum. For instance, there was an article according to which babies who do not like spicy food could be racist! Or for example: _http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3209554/Is-baby-racist-Scientists-discover-way-reverse-racial-bias-young-children.html
Yes, babies are racist at the age of three months old and in need of rehabilitation! This planet is finished.

People are so isolated from reality you can convince them of anything. They will identify with it and defend it because they do not think. The most ironic feature of the so-called liberals is that they are authoritarians, an Orwellian inversion so obvious they cannot see it. Also, we can see the effects of the postmodernist doctrine that allows people to live in fantasy world (in addition to television and cell phones) where denial of reality is not only allowed but encouraged. One can see it as blatant destruction of individuals and society (for better control) but also a destruction of their psyche and opportunity for growth. It is by facing reality with its nice and not so nice aspects that we grow and form our individualities. These people, being individualistic in the sense of comfortable hedonism, have no individuality in the sense that they need an external protective womb, even if it is evil and perverted.

My favorite part of the Monty Python's Life of Brian movie (1979) is this:

JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?

LORETTA: I want to have babies.

REG: You want to have babies?!

LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.

REG: But... you can't have babies.

LORETTA: Don't you oppress me.

REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!

LORETTA: crying

JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.

FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.

REG: What's the point?

FRANCIS: What?

REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!

FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.
 
Eye-opening indeed.

The following is a link of Jordan Peterson being swarmed by narcissistic SJW ideologues after a U of T Rally. Observe how he tries so hard to compose rational replies to this cadre of yammering hysterical identity warriors. You can actually see him trying to wrap his mind around the inanity of their rhetoric and bring the focus back to his original point. One can sense his frustration and really understand why he's so concerned with the path this legislation is taking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE
 
Timótheos said:
Eye-opening indeed.

The following is a link of Jordan Peterson being swarmed by narcissistic SJW ideologues after a U of T Rally. Observe how he tries so hard to compose rational replies to this cadre of yammering hysterical identity warriors. You can actually see him trying to wrap his mind around the inanity of their rhetoric and bring the focus back to his original point. One can sense his frustration and really understand why he's so concerned with the path this legislation is taking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE

Wow! It makes me nauseous.... ugh!
 
What really hurts is the sucker-punch feeling of realizing that liberal/progressive values are nothing but an empty shell ideology that conceals total pathology underneath. And it all happened right before our eyes but until it got so blatant with Hillary Clinton and Co., we just couldn't see it clearly.
 
Laura said:
What really hurts is the sucker-punch feeling of realizing that liberal/progressive values are nothing but an empty shell ideology that conceals total pathology underneath. And it all happened right before our eyes but until it got so blatant with Hillary Clinton and Co., we just couldn't see it clearly.
Many of those seem to be a parallel to the love and light New Age crowd, only more aggressive.
 
Oxajil said:
...snip

I came across this video, and I thought he had some really good things to say in a debate with a transgender Toronto professor (A.W.Peet):


https://youtu.be/SiijS_9hPkM

Peet (who is in favor of the mandatory use of disturbing gender pronouns) says: "I encourage people struggling with this to be kind as their first impulse." Peterson's reply was on point: "Kindness is the excuse that social justice warriors use when they want to exercise control over what other people think and say."

Peterson also said that when he sees a stranger he calls them by the pronoun that seems to be in accordance with their presented appearance. Peet suggested to Peterson to put reminders of which pronoun which person prefers in his phone, and that when he sees that person he can look it up. How ridiculous! (Examples of Gender Pronouns can be seen at 2:27 of the video.)

Notice how at the end CBC 'ran out of time' just as Peterson mentioned an assault that took place at the free speech rally held a few days after he released his video and that CBC conveniently ommitted that part in the video clips they showed at the beginning.

Then there are the social justice warrior students protesting against him. I watched a video of such a protest, and interestingly it seems that none of the protesters actually watched any of Peterson's videos.

I'm glad at least that he does have a lot of supporters.

Sheesh the Peet guy/girl/it whatever is so weasel-like.

Uh oh, am i in violation of a hate crime in Canada now :rolleyes:
 
thorbiorn said:
Laura said:
What really hurts is the sucker-punch feeling of realizing that liberal/progressive values are nothing but an empty shell ideology that conceals total pathology underneath. And it all happened right before our eyes but until it got so blatant with Hillary Clinton and Co., we just couldn't see it clearly.
Many of those seem to be a parallel to the love and light New Age crowd, only more aggressive.

The boiling frog syndrome.

Good point on the love and light(up) New age crowd.

One thing that comes glaring across for me from the “grieving” parties, is how identified they are with their physical nature. Truly shows a lack of spiritualism or any sense of anything grater then there physical construct.
 
Laura said:
What really hurts is the sucker-punch feeling of realizing that liberal/progressive values are nothing but an empty shell ideology that conceals total pathology underneath. And it all happened right before our eyes but until it got so blatant with Hillary Clinton and Co., we just couldn't see it clearly.

The left has a lot of 'feel good' slogans, which become rather empty when critical thinking is not applied. And it also perverts what they are supposedly fighting for. I think that their fight for 'tolerance' is to turn society into Pedophile paradise.

Though, things have to get a lot uglier before we get there. But the programming is work in progress.


I recently had a though how this all could mix up in massive exterminations. Since the C's told as that 4STS is keen in destroying the true Semitic bloodlines. Maybe I have been looking in the wrong direction. The Far-Right has become a bit of a cliche of exterminating people and has become to obvious.


Maybe if the Extreme-Left starts to exterminate people who are 'intolerant' many will accept it, since nobody can feel sorry for 'intolerant' people. 'Intolerant' people are just racist scum ...

And with intolerant people I mean people who resist 'gender theory', pedophilia etc.

'Intolerant' people will become the new undesirable.


Many Arab people would resist that. Since their traditional value's are more 'old school' You see, so the 'Extreme-Left' wouldn't kill Arabs because they are simply Muslims. That's only what the far-right would do. But the Extreme-Left will kill Arabs because they are 'intolerant'

It's the holocaust over, just another gameplan.


And what is the difference between a Left or Right Authoritarian anyhow. They both force their will on others. They both like to dominate.

The newer generations are all programmed with 'sensibility' and 'tolerance' And this whole Killary losing part shows how easily triggered they are. With enough programming, what kind of horrors could you make them commit under their holy slogan of 'tolerance' ?

After all, for them it's a fight against the 'tolerant' people VS the 'intolerant' people. And 'intolerant' people to them like to exterminate and be like Hitler. Though, in their fight for 'tolerance' they might become the very thing they are supposedly fighting against.

Like said, the 'Intolerant' people will become the new undesirables.

OSIT.
 
Rhiannon said:
Eye opening! :scared: I seriously had no idea that the PC and Gender pronouns had gotten to such an insane level. After seeing what is going on with the anti-Trump snowflakes protest and this - it is jaw dropping.
Through out human history, Labels are starting point of the discrimination. Most of the times, it is abused for the the disastrous consequences. In some parts of the world, people fight to abolish them. But it looks, it is opposite in this case. Tomorrow, economy becomes tough ( so does discrimination), and will they fight back to remove these labels?. People don't have any thing else to do other than legalize these labels?
 
Nima said:
Wow great video, thanks for sharing.

Political correctness has always made me sick in my stomach.

I love how Jordan describes how you can feel yourself coming apart when you are telling lies and feel whole when telling the truth. Very good description of disintegration IMO.

I also second having him on an interview for a behind the headlines show.

Thank you for posting those video. I was not aware of him, so spent some time perusing his blog, he is truly a fascinating individual. I too think he would be a perfect candidate to interview on a SOTT radio show.

I also thought it interesting how some of what he says in the video parallels what we discuss, particularly what he says about to wanting your being to progress in the best possible way and doing so by committing to telling the truth. He says, with awareness of what you say, you you can feel a feeling of chaotic weakness and dissolution in the body; a sense of self-betrayal, whereas telling the truth pulls you together and strengthens you so you can learn to feel when your words are accurately articulating yourself. (It’s in the second video (beginning at ~22.00).

NormaRegula said:
It sure is an attempt to control reality. Gads. The left truly is more about control than freedom to choose. I'm beginning to see more perception from many on the right - who think the whole PC wagon train is foolish, if not insane.

Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but I have been wondering if there will begin to be some knock-on effects from Trump’s winning of the election in that more people of a conservative bent who are fed–up with the liberal progressive agenda may now feel emboldened enough to start to speak out against it everywhere. The constant haranguing in the leftist media about political correctness and gender issues, may have caused many to keep silent thinking they were in the minority, but perhaps the tide may be turning and people may now feel they have a legitimate voice. On the other hand, such a backlash could be thorny as well.
 
[quote author= aleana]he constant haranguing in the leftist media about political correctness and gender issues, may have caused many to keep silent thinking they were in the minority, but perhaps the tide may be turning and people may now feel they have a legitimate voice. On the other hand, such a backlash could be thorny as well.[/quote]

The backlash is worrying. Whenever the far-left rises, in response the far-right rises with it and visa versa. Both feed each other. And people who disagree with one side will be 'pushed' to join the other extreme side of the coin duo to propaganda they choose to cling into.

We have to wait how things will unfold and which side is more potent to take over.

Whoever wins, both of them cannot tolerate each other very well, the US is a powder keg.
 
That video was funny, Laura. I had been calling myself 'progressive'. But it seems that progressive has now devolved into 'regressive'. Maybe I need to stop calling myself anything. Except my name. LOL

I watched several of the Peterson videos. And read through some of his website as well. I think I'm still attempting to figure out what the heck is going on vis-a-vis all these PC and gender identity politics arguments. Haven't reached any conclusions. Still gathering data and trying to wrap my wits around all this.

In that light, I wondered what others here on the Forum would make of the following video and the comments I've included here. I do not trust my ability to unpack and think critically enough about this stuff yet. It's sort of mind-blowing to consider that there are Left-Wing Authoritarians as well as Right-Wing A's. In hind-sight, it should have been obvious to me. But I feel as if I got hit from left field on that possibility.

Thanks for finding and posting the Peterson videos by-the-way. Very interesting. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_fBYROA7Hk

Title of Video: Where Do SJWs Come From?

Video: PC Egalitarian vs. PC Authoritarian

19:25 minutes discussion

Interview by Lauren Southern of TheRebel

Does anyone have any thoughts about this breakdown and argument presented by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and PhD student Christine Brophy?

Then there were these 3 comments below the video presentation which I wanted to post here for any feedback as well.

Video Comments:

Paul Rothwell2 weeks ago (edited)

Great video! Awesome!

@17:15 "Whereas those who are high in compassion ….. left-wing authoritarianism....they like to commiserate with those at the bottom of the hierarchy...those who are oppressed…

Because they (left-wing authoritarians) have a relatively higher level of compassion, anyone who deviates from the norm, they are going to try to include them but force them to all be the same."

This is an example of a Paralogism, ie; an unconscious violation of one's own logic. It is a very common trap we all fall into as a result of not having thoroughly questioned our assumptions. The assumption here being that the left-wing authoritarian is more compassionate, or is compassionate at all. In other words, that you can have the words "compassionate" and "authoritarian" in the same sentence to describe the same person.

Just look at the available data on the left's higher level of "compassion" in Robespierre's France, Leninist-Stalinist Russia, Mao's China, or Pol Pot's Cambodia? Or, of course, Marx, and today's manifestation of Marxism, Political Correctness which is fast robbing us of our freedom of speech and right to free assembly. PC culture being the obvious breeding ground of all SJWs.

That's not where they come from though, but we're not ready to turn to that yet.

Where is the compassion in these examples? I see phoniness, posturing, the deliberate intent to deceive, and self-deception. More importantly, I see a confirmation of an historical fact that the full terror of human behavior always justifies itself by an appeal to society, equality, freedom and love (as both sides have used those words). But I see no evidence of compassion, and for this reason.

Authoritarians impose their will on others. And to impose your will on others is to violate them. As you cannot use "authoritarian" and "compassionate" to describe the same person, you certainly cannot use "compassion" and "violation" to describe the same personality type. Why not?

Because, if one has a self beneath the roles that we all have to play as part of our admission into society, than so do other people. And one can assert the existence of the self only by recognizing the self in others, through empathy. Not by an authoritarian imposition of the will.

Empathy, by the way, is not to be confused with sentimentality, which is a desire to hear the tune without paying the piper (like crying during a movie, only to turn around and be cruel to the person you're watching it with).

And this is the kind of "compassion" we find in both the egalitarian and authoritarian Left. In the right-wing version of both we tend to see some sentimentality, but mostly cynicism masquerading as realism.

To impose one's will on others, even for the sake of "saving" them is to treat them like an object. It's to treat them, in short, the way the "compassionate" left-wing authoritarian claims that their enemy treats the oppressed!!

A better example of a dangerously deluded psychopath would be impossible to imagine. The temptations for such morally self-righteous people, once they seize power, are breath-taking, as a glance at the 20th century makes perfectly obvious.

So, does the left-wing authoritarian really commiserate? Or would "manipulate" be a more accurate word? Or, better, to put it bluntly, "use", or simply "violate in the name of love."

In any event, the only way out of this dilemma is to abandon the entire Right/Left paradigm. And it can done. In fact, not only can this be done, but it's been going on for over 200 years. Cultural History is filled with examples and from all areas of thought and creativity.

And, though the trend setters in this regard have obviously been mostly White men, that has not been entirely the case. Ralph Ellison, Jimi Hendrix and Martha Graham are excellent examples among many others.

It's something open to all of us. And it shows the most promise exactly because it confronts reality head on and doesn't run from it as the Left does, or pretend to understand it completely as does the Right.

But, because it is true that White men have provided the most powers of example, they are all placed in a bag of "deplorables" and tossed into the garbage heap of history by those who would rather die than think.

And now we arrive at the answer to the question, Where do SJW's come from?

They come from, or, are born out of, the same age old desire to live in a perfect world, a heaven on earth (Left), or, just as bad, one in the after life (Right). Heaven, after all, is a place where no one creates, where no one has to try, or innovate. It's a place where all responses to life's demands are entirely adequate, because there are no demands, and, no problems. Given life's complexities and our longing to avoid them, is there any surprise that every culture around the world has its own version of heaven?

Life is filled with problems, heaven isn't. And the desire to avoid problems, by creating utopias, or, a perfectly comprehensible and predictable world, is the desire to be free from the intellectual tension, psychological disorientation, and emotional disturbance that come with all problem-solving and innovation.

What we are witnessing today is an attack on civilization - not because it is the creation mostly, though not entirely, of White men. That's the red herring of red herrings. No, it's because (and here's our opportunity to practice some empathy, though not unconditional) those attacking it have never learned how to confront reality and the problems it inevitably brings, nor have they ever been properly taught to accept the fact that those problems are inevitable, simply because we are imperfect, not perfect, and life is dynamic, not static. In short, they have not been acculturated into the modern world. As everyone can see, the consequences are immense. We are living with them now.

But why get into all of that when you can just blame someone else? And that is what the Left and Right do. But this response is symptomatic of our problem and in no way an answer to it. In this respect, the Right, it has to be admitted, has lost, and lost badly. Mostly because it doesn't promise heaven on earth. So, it's a hard sell to the thin-skinned and soft-minded who live out their lives in an endless search for new ways of being offended by reality.

But, more importantly, the Right has also failed because it's as much of a dead end as is the Left. This is the conclusion Dr. Peterson comes to at the end of the discussion in this video. He doesn't know all of us who watched this and agree with him and many, myself included, never heard of him until we saw this video. That's an example of a cultural convergence; when people from different parts of the world unknown to each other have similar responses to the problems they face, but are able to resist the temptation to respond with quick fixes and easy answers.

Forget the Right and Left, they are both polarized and polarizing. They are old mental models being applied again and again to new and complex problems that are themselves growing more complex every time the old mental models are applied. It's a vicious cycle. They trap all discourse into a corner and lock up all potential to more adequate and satisfactory alternatives to the the problems we all face today.

In short, they're dysfunctional and mal-adaptive. The Right/Let paradigm is literally an obstacle to survival. The paradigm is certainly a very obvious obstacle to our ability to enhance the quality of life, which is what Western civilization has been about all along (and from this perspective it has nothing to apologize for, and those who attack it have a lot of explaining to do). To many, this is a distressing state of affairs. But for more courageous spirits it represents an opportunity. The discussion in this video is an example.

All theologies and ideologies end up in the same cul-de-sac, sooner or later. And that's why the only sensible response is to ditch the whole paradigm once and for all. Again, it can be done.

Time to replace a vicious cycle with a virtuous one. Instead of identifying with a group that insists on placing itself above criticism, we form collectives of individuals capable of self-criticism without anxiety, who can expose their ideas to a process of continuous feedback and correction for the purpose of living in reality and enhancing the quality of our lives. Maybe then we'll have a real democracy, for the first time.

Free Spirits of the World Unite! You have nothing to loose but your Souls!

Luke Hulm2 weeks ago (edited)

Very well written & expressed. I hold similar ideas and am waiting for a new religion to arise - a religion that has as its first tenant that all who follow it must acknowledge that the religion itself is a work in progress, that its truths are only a best guess at this stage (and in need of modification) and that continuous change and improvement will be necessary. Basically a religion that embraces change but one that does so intelligently, not galloping off in every new direction but one where people adhere to the constant search for truth with open minds and where change comes about via earnest discussion between non-ideologues, for the religion itself excludes ideologues by its nature of trumpeting its incompleteness and lack of perfection. (I am using the word religion here loosely - as I see religion - an explanation of the universes around us as we feel it is or might be. Here as I express it, similar to science and the scientific method - similar in its attempts to explain what is and what might be).

Paul Rothwell2 weeks ago

Thanks Luke. Couldn't agree more. And I get what you mean about the use of the word "religion". It might be better to have a different word just to avoid confusion. Terms like "belief-system", or "value-system." The best one I know of for which there is an historical record is what is known as "Romanticism", which started in 1790 with people like Kant, Goethe, Wordsworth, Beethoven, etc. It culminated with Nietzsche, and continues to this day.

Could go into it more, but maybe it's better to just recommend a book on the subject. "Beyond the Tragic Vision" by Morse Peckham. It's out of print, but most libraries and used bookstores have copies laying around. But he's got some books that have been reissued that should be easier to find. His books are great. His writing is challenging, but not so difficult that one gets discouraged or turned off, and focuses on behavior, is not at all ideological, and never talks down to the reader. He was a Cultural Historian at U. of Penn. He was at home with both the Arts and Sciences (he edited the 100 year Anniversary edition of Darwin's Origin of Species).
 
Interestingly, some of the comments posted by 13 TT above pretty much describe our vision for FOTCM; specifically:

Time to replace a vicious cycle with a virtuous one. Instead of identifying with a group that insists on placing itself above criticism, we form collectives of individuals capable of self-criticism without anxiety, who can expose their ideas to a process of continuous feedback and correction for the purpose of living in reality and enhancing the quality of our lives. Maybe then we'll have a real democracy, for the first time.

Second comment:

I hold similar ideas and am waiting for a new religion to arise - a religion that has as its first tenant that all who follow it must acknowledge that the religion itself is a work in progress, that its truths are only a best guess at this stage (and in need of modification) and that continuous change and improvement will be necessary. Basically a religion that embraces change but one that does so intelligently, not galloping off in every new direction but one where people adhere to the constant search for truth with open minds and where change comes about via earnest discussion between non-ideologues, for the religion itself excludes ideologues by its nature of trumpeting its incompleteness and lack of perfection. (I am using the word religion here loosely - as I see religion - an explanation of the universes around us as we feel it is or might be. Here as I express it, similar to science and the scientific method - similar in its attempts to explain what is and what might be).

However, the first guy comes back with a reference to Morse Peckham... I wrote about Morse in The Wave/Adventures series; he was the mentor of Ira Einhorn, psychopath: http://cassiopaea.org/2012/02/10/the-wave-chapter-61-iras-inner-cesspool/

But now we come to that most interesting of times in Ira’s life, when new players enter the stage. One of these was Morse Peckham, “the prize and pariah of Penn’s English department.” Morse Peckham was a “Renaissance Man.” He was a polymath whose depth of knowledge was matched by its breadth.

For Peckham, the life of the mind was the only life. This had been the case since childhood. He has described his parents as imbued in nineteenth-century culture; his mother read Tennyson to him before his naps. At ten, he was using chess pieces to emulate the stage movements of Shakespeare’s characters. He was the first University of Rochester student to take graduate English work at Princeton, where he earned a doctorate, but not before serving in World War II, where he spent his European tour writing the official history of the Ninth Bomber Command. […] [He was a] large man, more than six feet tall, with fine features and a beard. […]

A lifelong bachelor, Peckham dressed elegantly, and smoked cigarettes in a long white holder. […] The thrust of his work was transdisciplinary scholarship. […] He saw the culmination of [the romantic era] in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, and his book on romanticism, Beyond the Tragic Vision, would be hailed in academic circles as a masterpiece. By the early sixties, Peckham was starting a more ambitious project that would use his cultural knowledge to go beyond criticism of art, music, and literature and probe the essence of humanity itself. […]

At the time Ira Einhorn found his way into one of Morse Peckham’s classes, Peckham was working in virtual isolation, living alone, sharing his intellectual theories and discoveries on a daily basis with no one. […] [T]here was some heavy intellectual bonding between Ira Einhorn and Professor Peckham. While most of the students were gasping for breath at Peckham’s hairpin intellectual turns, Ira would ostentatiously be keeping pace with the master, providing verbal footnotes or suggesting esoteric comparisons to the point under discussion. It was no secret that this mental jam session continued outside of class as well. […] Inevitably, some of Ira’s peers wondered how close the relationship really was. […] There is no reason to surmise that the speculation of homosexuality was in any way founded. […]

[Peckham] considered his mental life intense and thrilling, but it precluded any emotional life outside of the pursuit of ideas. “In Ira,” he says, “I found someone whom I could try these ideas on. Because I didn’t have anybody else.” (Levy, 1988; this author’s emphasis)

What were Peckham’s “ideas”? Some of his early work includes a study of various editions of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. As already noted, he was interested in romanticism. In 1951 he published Towards a Theory of Romanticism, in which he wrote:

Shift away from thinking of the universe as a static mechanism, like a clock, to thinking of it as a dynamic organism, like a growing tree. […] For those who make the shift, the values of static mechanism — reason, order, permanence, and the like — are replaced by their counterparts in an organic universe — instinct or intuition, freedom, and change.

Romantic thought is relativistic and pluralistic; it rejects absolute values, formal classifications, and exclusive judgments; it welcomes novelty, originality, and variety. It is less interested in distinctions than in relationships, particularly in the organic relationship which it posits between man and nature, or the universe, and (less often) between the individual and society. The great chain of being is replaced by an indefinitely extended and complicated live network of connecting filaments, as in the vascular system of a plant or in a mass of animal nerve tissue, by which every phenomenon is tied by countless direct and indirect contacts to every other.

When a new fact appears, it is not just another link in the chain or cog in the machine; it is an evidence of organic growth and development, and its emergence changes every previously existing aspect of the universe. A new characteristic is evidence of a totally new and different world. Therefore a romantic artist will strive, not to imitate an ideal perfection of form which has always existed, but to originate a form which has never existed before and which will uniquely express what he alone feels and knows. To do so, he will rely more on imagination than on logic, more on symbols than on signs or allegories, more on unconscious than on conscious powers. He will believe that he is creating a genuinely new thing and thereby changing and renewing the whole of his organic universe. (Peckham, 1951)

He also wrote Explanation and Power: The Control of Human Behaviour in 1986, wherein his Darwinistic approach to cultural development is made clear:

For human beings, the world consists of signs, and it is impossible for human beings to consider the world, or themselves, from a meta-semiotic point of view or position. The world is an immense tapestry of innumerable threads, emerging and disappearing in the presentation and evanishment of indefinably innumerable designs, and human beings themselves form some of those same threads and patterns. We are figures in the tapestry we observe, and respond to, and manipulate. The old notion that the world is an illusion is sound, for no sign (configuration) dictates our responses. But it is sound only up to a point, because the physical character of the world limits the range of our responses. We can do lots of things with water, but as yet we have no way to build a skyscraper out of it, though the possibility has its charms; nor can we walk on it without doing something either to ourselves or to the water. Or to use another notion, the world is Idea, our Idea, but it is also Reality, Actuality, Factuality. The mind transcends the world, but then it does not transcend the world. Plato’s demiourgos did not create the reality he set about ordering; he set about ordering a chaos, a recognition that human behavior works on material that is really there. Or, to put it in somewhat newer terms, the world is object, and man is subject, and the subject is different from the object but, nevertheless, somehow the same. (Peckham, 1986; this author’s emphasis)

Morse Peckham theorized that it was only through “cultural vandalism” — the aggressive undermining of established values through random, mindless acts of destruction — that social innovation was stimulated. He theorized that humans needed to push themselves to such disruptive extremes; otherwise there was no hope of matching the insects’ astonishing ability to adaptively alter their physiology and behavior in a relatively brief time. Peckham theorized that our mammalian talents for memory and self-reflection serve largely to oppress us with the dead weight of the past. Unburdened by mammalian scruples, insects effortlessly practice the Nietzschean virtue of active forgetting: The adult fly doesn’t remember anything the maggot once knew.

In short, Peckham was glorifying psychopathy, and in Ira Einhorn we see Peckham’s glorified psychopath in action. About Ira Einhorn, Morse Peckham said: “Ira stood out because of his really wide reading and his ability to understand what he read.”

However, after spending some time out of Ira’s direct presence, Peckham began to realize that something was wrong in the interaction. He had the odd feeling that Ira was parroting his own words back at him. “I was still very interested in him and very friendly with him, but I began to feel that talking to him was like being in an echo chamber, just my own ideas being fed back to me without any modification or any thought on his part.”

Just like Ross Baker, Morse Peckham had fallen under the sway of the psychopath. But he had also analyzed the problem, and in his analysis he put his finger on one of the clues to identifying the psychopath. They are parrots, apes, echo chambers. But, as Baker pointed out, it was humbling to realize that, after a period in Einhorn’s presence, he was having difficulty with his mental clarity. Morse Peckham, as brilliant as he was, took some time to come to this realization because he was, indeed, dealing with a brilliant psychopath.

As sympathetic as we may be for Morse Peckham and the fact that Einhorn duped him, there is something else crucially interesting about Morse. Let’s go back to that most interesting remark about Morse Peckham: He did his Ph.D. where? At Princeton. When? Oh, in the same general time period as when Nash was there. Peckham was, as some have described him, an “intellectual raider.” He advocated that in order to be a “cultural historian,” one had to “know everything.” He would read so extensively in a field that he soon could think in the way the professionals in that discipline thought. From looking at his work, we suspect that Morse Peckham was powerfully influenced by Game Theory.

What do we conclude? That Morse was part of a conspiracy? That he consciously was interacting with Ira, preparing him for his future role? Or do we think that Morse was just simply who he was, and Ira was who he was, and maybe there was some “tinkering” with the Matrix to ensure that the two of them would come together so as to pump all those theoretical ideas into Einhorn’s head, with the surety that he would put his own spin on them?

There is nothing simple about any of this. When you start pulling on these threads, you just never know what is going to spring out of the closet. What we discovered is a connection linking Peckham to the telephone company which later “utilized” Ira Einhorn as described by the Bell executive at Einhorn’s bail hearing. “AT&T’s Experiment In Humanistic Education, 1953-1960,” by Mark D. Bowles (The Historian, vol. 61) suggests that Ira’s “network,” was designed to counteract a previous experiment in social engineering that hadn’t turned out quite the way the experimenters wanted it:

The unexpected Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949 triggered a wave of paranoia and anxiety in the United States. As historian Vincent LaFeber wrote, “Few American officials had expected the Soviet test this early.” The result was a new era of “nuclear fear” that spread throughout the culture.…

One of the central reasons for instituting liberal arts training was to preserve the American way during the Cold War, yet the Viteles data indicate that the participants became more tolerant of non-capitalistic political ideologies. After training, the number of participants who believed that liberty and justice were possible in socialist countries nearly tripled (Question 1), and significantly fewer participants believed that democracy was dependent upon free business enterprise (Question 3). Clearly, this represented a threat to AT&T’s corporate leaders; no longer could they continue to support a training program that might undermine America’s own economic system…. English professor Morse Peckham designed the program. (Bowles, 1998)

Again, economics rears its ugly head. The one thing this report tells us is this: Those guys in charge of all this aren’t omniscient. But it was clear that, at the point in time when Ira Einhorn was in close association with Morse Peckham, the program that Peckham had designed, obviously with a particular agenda that supported the economic theories that were being developed around the work of John von Neumann and John Nash, was now known to be a failure. Plan B was obviously going into effect, and Ira Einhorn was central to this plan: Restore paranoia! Restore belief in Russian superiority or Russian evil experiments on mankind!

So we wonder just what kinds of cerebral jamming Ira was doing with Morse Peckham?
 
Back
Top Bottom