218) Jordan Peterson’s “ideologically free anti-woke university” has launched. And, seriously, WTF?
Just as haters gonna hate, and transphobes gonna transphobe, Peterson gonna Peterson his bullshit more and more broadly as his right-wing hate-funded media machine and fan-base continues to make him richer and richer from his vitriol.
88) Jordan Peterson: Part 7 - Psychology at the Ending of the World; Subsection 2 - The Doctrine of Original Awesomeness
Learning to be a responsible, productive, healthy, moral and reasonably successful human being does NOT come from rules. It comes from having one’s inner goodness nurtured, embraced, accepted and loved PLUS having one’s inner shittiness also embraced, accepted and loved, so that the power of being loved and accepted in our totality teaches us that we ARE “good”! We ARE worthwhile, beautiful, wonderful little beings. Maybe we don’t exactly behave that way all the time, but intrinsically, we are creatures of love, far more than we are creatures of selfishness.
87) Jordan Peterson: Part 7 - Psychology at the Ending of the World; Subsection 1: Where Jordan is Wrong AF
So along comes Jordan Peterson, with his “12 Rules for Life”, promising us the “antidote to chaos.” Like every snake-oil salesman of the past, his advice may very likely be ineffective, OR, ends up causing exactly the problem he is promising to cure. Based on the Judaeo-Christian framework which Jordan argues is the foundation of Western morality and ethics, this would be considered, well, downright evil.
85) Jordan Peterson, Part 6: The myth of "the myth of white/male privilege" - Subsection 2: Flat-Earthers, Climate change deniers, and Jordan Peterson on the Patriarchy
So Jordan, go tell the old Grannies of the world that they grew up just as empowered as their brothers, and emerged into womanhood with just as much power as men. That they had just as much say over their lives as their husbands. That they weren’t shamed for their sexuality (relative to males), impeded from entering business and professional workspaces (relative to males), had the same types of economic opportunities (relative to males), suffered the same amounts of criticism and humiliation and violence in their homes (relative to males), etc.
And when you convince the world’s grannies and aunties that there is no Patriarchy, then ok, you win.
84) Jordan Peterson, Part 6: The Myth of "the Myth of White/Male Privilege" -- Subsection 1: Nobody should care about this essay
The issue, for me, is that Jordan’s claim that male privilege is a myth is so thoroughly absurd that it’s actually difficult to address. Practically all of history, all of life experience growing up in this culture, and countless personal stories, indicate that Jordan is virtually delusional on this topic.
64) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 7 -- The Rebel Alliance
The Rebel Alliance depended on a dead dude, a quixotic Elf who talked like Grover, a wannabe hero with an inferiority complex, an arrogant smuggler, an incomprehensible BigFoot, an annoying and basically useless robot, a super-cool robot who looked like a futuristic garbage can, and a bitchy, bad-ass princess.
63) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 6 -- Lived Experience
Perhaps then, you will start to understand ‘that look’ — that gleam that is so unsettling to the intellectual skeptic or theorist, that unwavering solidity that you see in eyes that are past fear, eyes that have seen so much pain they won’t close to ugliness ever again. When you see the stability in people’s eyes who have witnessed sufficient suffering, you have met a person who can drink in the entire ocean, who can absorb an entire sun, because their hearts are broken into so many pieces they have atomized and become the Universe.
62) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 5 - Love vs. Fear on the Protest Lines
Judging protest as useless and protesters as idiots because someone threw some rocks at windows is kinda like an alien, zooming over the earth, sampling only the murderers and rapists and serial killers, watching a war or two, and then leaving. Conclusion: Humanity is terrible. Planet should be obliterated for the hyperspace super-highway we planned to put through this area of space. No great loss.
61) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 4 - Atheist Indigenous Immigrant Women Should Rule the World
Let’s let the peace-lovers and wisdom-seekers, the poor and disenfranchised, ‘rule the world’ for, say, one generation of humanity, and see if we’re better off, or worse. I have every bit of faith that they’ll do no worse, at worst, than the men, most of whom are very wealthy men to boot, who’ve had the reins for MOST of the past….uh….forever?
60) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 3 - Jordan's Tarantulas
You show me the "class" of people who you think have their house in perfect order, and let's see who these people are and whether the rest of us think we should actually trust them with the fate of us all.
59) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 2 - In Jordan's Own Words
The luminary activist Elie Wiesel said “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.“
58) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 1 - He Who Is Without Sin
Jordan Peterson wants to save the world from the horrors of the Gulag, from the 100 million corpses he talks about. But right here, in Rule #6 of “12 Rules for Life,” he gives us close to the WORST POSSIBLE advice for preventing more chaos, more hundreds of millions of corpses.
49) Jordan Peterson: Part 4: The problem of Collective Assholeification
Assholes tend to think simplistically. Not about all things, of course; when it comes to something they like or know a lot about, they will be happy to argue the nth nuance of the nth detail until the cows come home. But about anything else, nope, it’s black and white, right and wrong, and they’re right and you’re wrong, so shut up. They have a tendency to steer conversations into their fav-talking-points so they can amaze and astound people with their superior knowledge, but they also have a tendency to impose their opinions even into conversations where they really don’t know much about the topic at all, or perhaps they have a smidgeon or two of knowledge and so, they’re “experts”. My mom always said that you have two ears and one mouth for a reason — assholes seem to have forgotten, or rejected, that bit of wisdom.
47) Jordan Peterson, Part 3: The Bucko Mistake; Sub-section 2: Metaphorically Terrible Advice
This is an insidious problem with telling Bucko to sort himself out. This advice is most relevant to people who are struggling, but it is precisely those people who are likely the least equipped to apply the advice skillfully and effectively.
46) Jordan Peterson: Part 3: The Bucko Mistake; Sub-section 1: Literally Terrible Advice
“Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” This is Jordan’s first Rule of Life. It is intended both metaphorically and literally. And in both cases, it is terrible advice.
45) Jordan Peterson, Part 2: More problems...; Sub-section 3: Issues of Scale
We need to ask whether humans predominantly survived the billions of years by functioning at an individual level or at a group level. I believe we are predominantly a group-selected species, and that therefore, our “fundamental human nature” has far more to do with processes that connect us to one another and allow us to function harmoniously together, than with processes of individual power and competitive dominance-striving.
44) Jordan Peterson, Part 2: More problems...; Subsection 2: Bear Food reasoning in Darwinian/Functionalist clothing
In short, just because something WAS functional, or is functional in some ways, does not mean it’s good. Similarly, just because something is ‘natural’ certainly doesn’t mean it’s good. And just because something is “the winner” in some contest, doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the best outcome, or even a desirable one. You can’t reason backwards from what exists now, to infer that it is better than what ceased to exist. Cain was not a better man than Abel; he was just a better murderer.
43) Jordan Peterson, Part 2: More Problems with Fundamental Assumptions; Sub-section 1: The Naturalistic Fallacy
The weird thing about getting eaten by bears is that it IS totally natural, as natural as falling off a log or getting a sunburn. No plastic, metals, electricity or advanced computing required. Not a single human invention is necessary, not a single alteration from Nature in the raw.
Lots of other things we have come to see as undesirable are natural. Ebola. Rape. Eating your own babies sometimes.
Reasoning that follows the basic logic of “it’s natural, so it’s good” is understood as the Naturalistic Fallacy, an elemental error in reasoning.
41) Jordan Peterson, Part 1, Subsection 4: Moral Foolishness
It is very easy for a “sort yourself out” message to get co-opted by the standard individualistic identity project that most of us are already struggling with, as we try to ‘self-improve’ and get motivated and “awaken the giant within” and all that. To the extent that the psychology of motivation gets applied in ways that are unwise, that are not conducive to both individual and collective human flourishing but instead could simply be in the service of a person’s ego, the “sort yourself out” approach, can easily become a force of destruction, like a once-cozy campfire that has gotten out of control….
40) Jordan Peterson, Part 1; Subsection 3: Theoretical Foolishness
But scaffolding is far more subtle than that. It happens not only at the emotional-to-behavioural level, but right down at the millisecond level of human consciousness, the level at which our emotions are guiding our perceptions which in turn are constructing a reality in accordance with our emotions — the level of our implicit story-telling hardware (and software).
The essential, long-term reason why compassion is so important for babies, is because it helps their own neurobiology learn to regulate itself. This is the basic insight of attachment research; receiving attentive care (i.e., compassionate, loving, responsive attunement with others) allows one’s own infant, raging, chaotic neurobiology to be, in effect, soothed by the more stable, grounded, controlled, resilient, more ‘ordered’ neurobiology of the attachment-figures.