Jordan B Peterson; Anyone Else Following This?

[Herbie]

Did you expect a comedy book or a love story?

I expected the gulag archipelago to be a romcom on some exotic islands.

 

[dbh25]

If only what he was saying would be original or not trying to pander to libertarians . . .
I'm not sure if he's consciously or unconsciously trying to parrot talking points of the "alt-right."

Is he libertarian or alt-right or what other label gets assigned to him?

 

[theLaw]

Is he libertarian or alt-right or what other label gets assigned to him?

Yet Peterson, the now-world famous clinical psychologist from the University of Toronto, has described himself politically as a “classic British liberal” and has abjured any connection to modern liberalism or conservatism. He says that some of his beliefs lean left, while others place him closer to the right.

Jordan Peterson Claims He’s No Conservative

The "alt-right" are just conservatives that disagree with certain ideas in classic conservatism, which happens with each and every broad "ism", and is equally as useless as the label it's derived from.

 

[MigFon]

Btw, his very statement gives it away - i.e. serotonin is crucial for establishing and maintaining "hierarchical structure". Those structure are the very bedrock of authoritarianism. Free human beings, with access to sufficient resources, do not form such structures. They only form under stress.

This is the old Noble Savage idea from Rousseau: "we would all be good people if only the world were perfect since the beginning of our lives". There is no such society, as far as I know, and even if it did, human beings are not animals, we need more than just "resources", we are a little more complicated than that (which Peterson also pointed out somewhere).
We need things such as sex, intimacy, affection for instance, and those require willing human beings for satisfaction, not resources.
On the other hand, some pedophiles or psychopaths who "feel the need" to kill/rape or get satisfaction from that, were never abused themselves and still feel the compulsion to do those things, in a sense they were born that way. So the "perfect stress free environment", whatever that means, can't fix everything, because we are not a "Tabula Rasa" from birth and because not all of our needs are dependent upon resources for satisfaction.
I guess you can argue also, that biochemical measures like lowering serotonin with Cyproheptadine for instance in the case of psychopaths, could potentially fix those needs somehow, but if that was to work, it would also mean that we are nothing but complex biochemical machines who aren't functioning right, which is not totally wrong, but might not be totally right either.
In other words, and correct me if I am wrong, but you and Peat seem to me, at times, to discard the "human mind" from this equation, specifically it's unconscious' contents seem to be considered irrelevant or of less importance compared to the relationships/interactions between the different physical constituents of the body. The idea is: "If I have an inborn paraphilia it is only because my machinery isn't working right", so you fix the machinery with cyproheptadine or increase metabolism with thyroid, and all will be good eventually, even for a traumatic situations the approach is the same. That seems to me like Reductive Materialism and I'm not sure it is that simple or that we understand enough about the mind to claim that.

That being said and since there is no way to create a stress free environment, hierarchical structures are inherent to all living beings and also to the way human beings organize themselves, otherwise how would we function? We need to solve problems all the time, we can't learn everything about everything all the time. Therefore:
If I am better at making a fire than you are, people will turn to me first to make a fire, therefore I am higher than you at the "making fire" hierarchy. If we remove the hierarchy and someone needs advice on how to make a fire, they will have to ask everybody, and even then, who will they ask first if they can't ask everybody at the same time? I guess you can just try to learn the skill by yourself, but why in the world would go through the endless trial and error process if you knew there was someone who knew how to make a fire effectively that could/would be willing to teach you, it would be such a waste of energy to go through the process especially if you were in urgent need.

You can't operate in the world without hierarchies, and in fact, a personality is, in a sense, a hierarchy of values. "Do you keep all the money you earn to yourself, or do you give some away?" "Do you participate in discussions or do you prefer to keep quiet? (extroversion vs introversion)", "Do you play videogames until the morning comes or do you get some sleep in order to be productive at work the next day? (sacrifice the future for the present vs sacrifice the present for the future)"As long as you have to make choices in the world you need a hierarchy of values to make a decision, there is no way around that.

 

[MigFon]

1

 

[Whiteheart]

Peterson's Lectures helped my brother get through a hard period of time in his life and he emerge on the other side a very hardworking and truthful person

 

[haidut]

some pedophiles or psychopaths who "feel the need" to kill/rape or get satisfaction from that, were never abused themselves and still feel the compulsion to do those things

It is not only abuse that causes such behavior to develop. Maternal stress during pregnancy and childhood stress, especially in the first 2 years of life, also have a very large impact. Paternal stress in the last 3 years leading up to impregnation is also a big factor. Name one of these psychopaths/killers/perverts and let's see if their like or the life of their parents were really that stress-free.

 

[Badger]

"You can't operate in the world without hierarchies, and in fact, a personality is, in a sense, a hierarchy of values." That's right, and this is another way of saying what I said about Maslow's hierarchy of values. Each level has it's own pot of stresses. The level of getting food and shelter has stresses quite different from the level involving self-esteem, which entail other stresses. Of course, it's true that excess exposure to such chemicals as serotonin is a piece of the puzzle, but not the only piece. There's other pieces.

This is the old Noble Savage idea from Rousseau: "we would all be good people if only the world were perfect since the beginning of our lives". There is no such society, as far as I know, and even if it did, human beings are not animals, we need more than just "resources", we are a little more complicated than that (which Peterson also pointed out somewhere).
We need things such as sex, intimacy, affection for instance, and those require willing human beings for satisfaction, not resources.
On the other hand, some pedophiles or psychopaths who "feel the need" to kill/rape or get satisfaction from that, were never abused themselves and still feel the compulsion to do those things, in a sense they were born that way. So the "perfect stress free environment", whatever that means, can't fix everything, because we are not a "Tabula Rasa" from birth and because not all of our needs are dependent upon resources for satisfaction.
I guess you can argue also, that biochemical measures like lowering serotonin with Cyproheptadine for instance in the case of psychopaths, could potentially fix those needs somehow, but if that was to work, it would also mean that we are nothing but complex biochemical machines who aren't functioning right, which is not totally wrong, but might not be totally right either.
In other words, and correct me if I am wrong, but you and Peat seem to me, at times, to discard the "human mind" from this equation, specifically it's unconscious' contents seem to be considered irrelevant or of less importance compared to the relationships/interactions between the different physical constituents of the body. The idea is: "If I have an inborn paraphilia it is only because my machinery isn't working right", so you fix the machinery with cyproheptadine or increase metabolism with thyroid, and all will be good eventually, even for a traumatic situations the approach is the same. That seems to me like Reductive Materialism and I'm not sure it is that simple or that we understand enough about the mind to claim that.

That being said and since there is no way to create a stress free environment, hierarchical structures are inherent to all living beings and also to the way human beings organize themselves, otherwise how would we function? We need to solve problems all the time, we can't learn everything about everything all the time. Therefore:
If I am better at making a fire than you are, people will turn to me first to make a fire, therefore I am higher than you at the "making fire" hierarchy. If we remove the hierarchy and someone needs advice on how to make a fire, they will have to ask everybody, and even then, who will they ask first if they can't ask everybody at the same time? I guess you can just try to learn the skill by yourself, but why in the world would go through the endless trial and error process if you knew there was someone who knew how to make a fire effectively that could/would be willing to teach you, it would be such a waste of energy to go through the process especially if you were in urgent need.

You can't operate in the world without hierarchies, and in fact, a personality is, in a sense, a hierarchy of values. "Do you keep all the money you earn to yourself, or do you give some away?" "Do you participate in discussions or do you prefer to keep quiet? (extroversion vs introversion)", "Do you play videogames until the morning comes or do you get some sleep in order to be productive at work the next day? (sacrifice the future for the present vs sacrifice the present for the future)"As long as you have to make choices in the world you need a hierarchy of values to make a decision, there is no way around that.

 

[Badger]

I was waiting for you make the claim I was making "unprovoked attacks" on you, another lie. Some weeks ago I was addressing someone else in another thread and out of the blue you dropped into the conversation with an attack on me, pointing out sources I mentioned that had white nationalist connections, and the tone or manner you did this implying dark things about me, at this link you did this sh*t: https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/is-it-harder-for-a-guy-to-get-a-girlfriend-then-a-girl-to-get-a-boyfriend.21107/page-7#post-336701 Since you very closely follow - seemingly - everything I write here - I don't understand why you don't notice - or maybe you pretend not to notice? - that I draw on a very large number of POVs, religious, philosophical, political ideas and more insofar as I find they have value. I've discussed this before in other threads. Just because I take something from Buddhism does not make me a Buddhist, or something from Marxism, Maoism, white power or does not make me a Marxist or Maoist or a fuc*ing Nazi, can you get that through your thick skull? Re-read it if not, until you get it. I'm willing to see value in schools of thought ranging from being almost all correct to those that are 99.99% wrong in everything they say, but I will take the .001% from them that is correct if nobody with an overall better reputation is saying it. And this does not even begin to figure in your cherry-picking parts of what I am saying and quoting things out of context, or offering no proof or logic for your accusations. Your procedure as regards all this can summed up in three words: you are dishonest

So, ok, you unprovokedly attack me out of the blue, then I did it to you, for well-deserved payback. So go ahead, LOL at that. And you say I am have a "hard-on" for you? You talk about "projections" yet you are doing it right now, in your classy use of a crude sexual image. As I am saying, for the record, you started attacking first.

I’m not going to waste much time with your rambling denials, projections, and ad hominem insults. Not much to gain given your fierce resistance to new information and continual attacks on people who share it. I suppose Ray is a clinical paranoid as well for speaking of a controlled media.

But just to help you unravel one of your many defensive projections, you are the one who keeps making the unprovoked attacks, twice in the last few days, here and on another thread, lol. I am not sure why you have such a hard-on for me, but being aware of the problem would be a good start.

 

[x-ray peat]

I was waiting for you make the claim I was making "unprovoked attacks" on you, another lie. Some weeks ago I was addressing someone else in another thread and out of the blue you dropped into the conversation with an attack on me, pointing out sources I mentioned that had white nationalist connections, and the tone or manner you did this implying dark things about me, at this link you did this sh*t: https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/is-it-harder-for-a-guy-to-get-a-girlfriend-then-a-girl-to-get-a-boyfriend.21107/page-7#post-336701 Since you very closely follow - seemingly - everything I write here - I don't understand why you don't notice - or maybe you pretend not to notice? - that I draw on a very large number of POVs, religious, philosophical, political ideas and more insofar as I find they have value. I've discussed this before in other threads. Just because I take something from Buddhism does not make me a Buddhist, or something from Marxism, Maoism, white power or does not make me a Marxist or Maoist or a fuc*ing Nazi, can you get that through your thick skull? Re-read it if not, until you get it. I'm willing to see value in schools of thought ranging from being almost all correct to those that are 99.99% wrong in everything they say, but I will take the .001% from them that is correct if nobody with an overall better reputation is saying it. And this does not even begin to figure in your cherry-picking parts of what I am saying and quoting things out of context, or offering no proof or logic for your accusations. Your procedure as regards all this can summed up in three words: you are dishonest

So, ok, you unprovokedly attack me out of the blue, then I did it to you, for well-deserved payback. So go ahead, LOL at that. And you say I am have a "hard-on" for you? You talk about "projections" yet you are doing it right now, in your classy use of a crude sexual image. As I am saying, for the record, you started attacking first.

Maybe you should add persecution complex onto your long list of projections. Mentioning that the source of two of your posts were white supremacist websites is not a personal attack. And despite your claim of amazing powers of discernment, those posts contained little truth but rather reeked of the illogical hate common to those sites.

Ironically the several weeks old post you linked to was from your angry little feud with Seraphim, not me; must be hard to keep all your imagined enemies straight. lol

I appreciate your letting me live in your head rent free for so long, but would suggest rereading your last two bitter ramblings against me (and those against Seraphim) and ask yourself why you're so angry and easily triggered. I think you'll also find that I never stooped to such a low-level of personal attack that you seem perfectly comfortable using with me.

 

[x-ray peat]

Scrolling through youtube and seeing the titles of compilation videos people are making of him (example: "Jordan Peterson DEMOLISHES smug feminist", "Jordan Peterson on the Jews", etc., etc.) and seeing that in those videos he's really saying no such thing, is making me start to think that the next wave in creating tense dichotomies by powers that may or may not be (note 1: in this case--'alt-right' vs left, hierarchy vs anarchy, liberalism vs socialism, patriarchy vs post modernism, etc) (and note 2: whether or not one side is more correct/useful than the other, as I believe belongs to JP's side in this one) doesn't even involve literally funding counter-culture groups (like the CIA did with Black Panthers, Leary/LSD intro in the 60's, etc.) but is as easy as having youtube accounts shape the narrative by the names they put on videos of the person in question. Reporters then simply respond to this strawman presentation and...well we're seeing what happens in this case as a perfect example.

Careful, that's bordering on clinical paranoia for some. /s

 

[x-ray peat]

Another interesting interview from everyone's favorite pop intellectual.


and another failed sandbagging

 

[Fractality]

Jordan Peterson misses the fundamental underlying driving force for humans: the need to quell unconscious death anxiety by attaching to illusions of enduring value and meaning (religion, progress, culture, money, success, fame, nation, etc). The larger the cultural apparatus and various simulacra get, the more neurotic we become.

 

[haidut]

Jordan Peterson misses the fundamental underlying driving force for humans: the need to quell unconscious death anxiety by attaching to illusions of enduring value and meaning (religion, progress, culture, money, success, fame, nation, etc). The larger the cultural apparatus and various simulacra get, the more neurotic we become.

Yes, and an extreme form of avoiding this anxiety is nihilism - i.e. its justification being that if life is meaningless then so is death.
Peatarian Response To Nihilism And The Meaning Of Life?

 

[x-ray peat]

delete

 

[Fractality]

Yes, and an extreme form of avoiding this anxiety is nihilism - i.e. its justification being that if life is meaningless then so is death.
Peatarian Response To Nihilism And The Meaning Of Life?

There really is no way to avoid the anxiety. The best one can hope for is a minimally damaging activity; something like art. As an aside, I know how to reliably induce nihilism in experiments; administer a large dose of cyproheptadine. It must be the dopamine antagonism.

 

[Badger]

The repression of the denial of death - as you would know, very well articulated by cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker - isn't the last word. Mystical religious traditions would say it's as good as far as it goes when you're referring to a dualist world, which is the only one most people inhabit. But does not in a non-dualist world, which some do. A Buddhist POV on Becker's ideas says, is seen here in a very small example:
""The Kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughly dead.
(Eckhart)

"We are in a world of generation and death, and this world we must cast off." (William
Blake)

Blake's quotation (from The Vision of the Last Judgment) points the way because it implies that we are not seeing clearly but
projecting when we perceive the world in terms of the dualistic categories of birth and death."

Eckhart, I would add, speaks of those who have "cast" off the world of generation of death via elevated transcendent consciousness.

http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/Articles/The Nonduality of Life and Death_PEW_Loy_1990.pdf

 

[haidut]

There really is no way to avoid the anxiety. The best one can hope for is a minimally damaging activity; something like art. As an aside, I know how to reliably induce nihilism in experiments; administer a large dose of cyproheptadine. It must be the dopamine antagonism.

That anxiety seems to only exist in cultures that see the world as living beings who then die. In cultures/religions, which see the world as a continuous transition between various states there is no such anxiety. Of course, the counterargument will be that these cultures/religions developed to fend off that anxiety. However, there is no evidence for that - i.e. some archaeological artifact showing a change of religion/philosophy from life/death focused to transcendent/continuality focused.
So, the existential fear seems to be mostly a cultural phenomenon and I do not think it is the same as the instinct of self-preservation (which is innate to a large degree, BUT is also flexible). The nausea-inducing anxiety of life/death, which Sartre/Camus spoke about, is unique to the Western world.

 

[Dhair]

That anxiety seems to only exist in cultures that see the world as living beings who then die. In cultures/religions, which see the world as a continuous transition between various states there is no such anxiety. Of course, the counterargument will be that these cultures/religions developed to fend off that anxiety. However, there is no evidence for that - i.e. some archaeological artifact showing a change of religion/philosophy from life/death focused to transcendent/continuality focused.
So, the existential fear seems to be mostly a cultural phenomenon and I do not think it is the same as the instinct of self-preservation (which is innate to a large degree, BUT is also flexible). The nausea-inducing anxiety of life/death, which Sartre/Camus spoke about, is unique to the Western world.

So you think the existential dread is a bug and not a feature of humanity? I think the counterargument would be that the innate fear of dying (or living) is simply a function of being an intelligent organism. Christopher Hitchens often said that a belief in a higher power was a kind of evolutionary misstep which grew out of our fear of the inevitable (presumably because of our highly developed brains), but he was a materialist and I'm not sure you agree with that line of thinking. I suppose it's a question of what "highly evolved" thinking or feeling is in the first place.

 

[haidut]

So you think the existential dread is a bug and not a feature of humanity

Yes, mostly a bug or a metabolic dysfunction that leads to overanalyzing/oververbalizing. Animals do not seem to have that overanalyzing state (as far as we can tell), they only seem to have instinct of self-preservation and many of them are not less intelligent than humans. Serotonin is intimately involved in that fear and literally the feeling of nausea mentioned by the existentialists. I am sure you know 5-HT3 antagonists were developed as anti-nausea drugs. LSD recently completed several large human trials and it completely eliminated fear of death in terminally ill people, which once again highlights the role of serotonin in these existential anxieties.
It would be interesting to see a study on the expression of serotonergic receptors (especially 5-HT2, elevated in suicidal people) and serotonin levels in existentialists and people who ruminate on death excessively.