Abandon your ideology? | Cognitive psych reading of Peterson’s Beyond Order

What crowd-funding alternatives do y'all favor, as opposed to Patreon?

Ah yes, Peterson saying that in order to have value in life, we need to take up burdens. Perhaps, a man needs to take up a sort of man's burden. Perhaps even a particular type of man should take up perhaps a particular type of man's burden.

It seems like high level responsibility to demand from society what you and others are owed.

The entitled stereotype is now being used against gen z as they are 'entering the workforce'. It kind of makes me laugh because seeing as gen z starts in in 96 or 97, we've already been part of the workforce for a while 😂 and just like millennials, we aren't actually entitled 😂 we just want better working conditions and a more equal society so we don't have to be collectively tired and dead inside like we all feel we are 😂

Russel's Ideology Paradox: Believe in all those ideologues, and only those ideologues, who do not believe in themselves.

Marasmus femininus is such a ridiculous concept.

God forbid societies started adopting more feminine coded values and principles, like caring for others, attending to the needs of the vulnerable, fostering community, protecting our young instead of having them become cannon fodder for imperialist wars….

If anything, Nietzsche's literary delirium only strengthens some arguments that feminist psychoanalysts brought forward a few decades later.

44:25 What would the replacement be? And would it be great? In theory, of course.

Sorry, just had to put that in there.😋

46:30 I have to push back on that a bit. Socialism can't encompass the authoritarian nightmares etc. It can only encompass realizations of ideas which have at their core that "the bulk of the means of production is under social, democratic control," because that is the single thing which qualifies something as being a branch of socialism (check out the Plato Stanford article on socialism. Also look into the various branches themselves and see what they have in common. You'll come to see that Maoist and Stalinist interpretations don't hold those things in common except in lip service for some unknown future date…maybe. If you're good and class conscious enough). To drive home the point, describe a pillow and then instead of actually producing a pillow as an example of a pillow, you instead whip out a machine gun and say "that's a pillow." It isn't that the example of a pillow isn't a "pure" or "true" or "real" pillow, as the No True Scotsman fallacy pushes insist, but that it doesn't MOSTLY meet the description of a pillow. If the bulk of the defining features of a system do not hold true to the concept of what the system purports to be, then it is not the system it purports to be. (This is also why capitalists trying to say "that's not real/true/pure capitalism" are full of crap. What they're describing DOES fit the description of capitalism quite closely, with only minor discrepancies that are typically impossible to actually make happen, like "perfect competition" and other nonsense.)

Socialism, and by extention the evolution past socialism of the "stateless, classless, moneyless society" of communism, can't, by virtue of the foundational concept of democracy, be authoritarian as in the USSR and China, because those reject that foundational concept in favor of party rule. To put it into terms commonly thrown around, those were not "dictatorship of the proletariat" because the entire proletariat as a class did not rule the state through democracy, but was in reality ruled by the state by a small section of the party in alliance with the intelligentsia, and thus they were "dictatorship of the party" OVER the proletariat. In fact, the whole point of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" was to contrast it to the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie," where the bourgeoisie ruled the state through direct and indirect means, without any real need to be organized as a class owing to the fact that they were few in number, and that their shared class interest of keeping the proletariat down didn't require them to do anything but what they did as individuals at the top of society, as owners of capital whose goals were to increase their ownership of capital at any cost to the public.

To put it more clearly, you can't profess to be working towards a fully democratic society while in reality centralizing the power to make and enforce decisions into a small leadership class in a top-down system that is largely autonomous of the society, follows its own agenda, etc. In making that claim, you are effectively pointing to a machine gun while saying "that's a pillow because I said so, identifying features be damned." (No, this same logic doesn't apply to gender identity etc, because that's a completely different story of self-identification according to internal traits unique to the individual that can't reasonably be measured, and so self-identification takes precedence over external features or social norms.)

Again, to qualify as a branch of socialism, there is a single defining feature which must be met: "The bulk of the means of production is under social, democratic control." If that isn't met, it isn't socialism.

Also, 47:00 "can be" is wrong. "Must be" is necessary. And communism and democracy aren't incompatible. They are the same thing. The difference between what we imagine of as democracy and what communism is supposed to be is that democracy isn't elected officials making decisions for the masses, but the masses making decisions amongst themselves through democracy. Democracy is "rule of the people," but in a republican form of government, "the people" are a select body of individuals typically controlled by or part of the elite. In socialist society "the people" is the whole of society, which means that they don't merely vote for who will rule over them, but actively take place in the discussions and solution-formulation which result in decision-making. Or else it wouldn't be "democracy," "rule of (kratos) the people (demos)." That's why "republic" is not "our democracy," but is instead "their democracy," "they" being the few who are allowed to participate in actually making decisions. Socialism allows for a state mechanism to exist during the transition away from capitalism and top-down systems of government, but the less the people directly control the government, the less socialist it is.

Communism is the next step beyond socialism in the transition, where the NEED for a state has been done away with throughout the phase of socialism by transferring the duties and responsibilities of the state mechanism to the democratic societies, normalizing them as common practices and social responsibilities. Democracy isn't done away with, but instead becomes the normal method of settling disputes, addressing problems, etc etc etc.

Now, if that's what you were meaning, Cass, then great. But it sounded like you were going a different direction with what socialism and communism are.

Peterson is just Evil Matthew Lesko (wacky infomercial guy with question mark suit)

Loved the intro, still would enjoy criticism of Peterson because the guy is bonkers, but there's the Peterson parody voice again. I just cannot. Unsubbing 🙁

Also. Peterson thinks of his self-pity as suffering. Peterson reminds me of a scene in The Boys where Stormfront tells Homelander that nobody suffers like him.

Nietzsche was radically anti-nationalism in any guise. That was a major factor in his infamous falling out with Wagner. He certainly didn't support war but supported strong-willed individuals following their passions, even if those passions had negative consequences (he references Beethoven, Goethe and Napoleon). I believe he is as fierce a critic of the capitalist ethos and runaway materialism as he is suspicious of certain socialist tendencies. A subtle, difficult and remarkable thinker–often self-contradictory. As opposed to Peterson, who is little more than a Canadian Alex Jones—a venomous crackpot and textbook con artist. Nietzsche would have found Peterson thoroughly repulsive and probably stabbed him multiple times.

This guy set off my b.s. detector as fast as Drs. Phil and Oz, which is as fast as that crazy ass Ramtha lady back in the day. Petersen’s arguments have holes you could float an oil tanker through. I’m continually baffled by the arguments of these intellectuals on the right. I don’t think I’m THAT smart, but most of their arguments are simply insulting, often assuming facts simply not in evidence.

Of course, I tell folks my political primer was Frank Herbert’s Dune books. His, exclusively. His son’s is fanfic at best.

He talks about bureaucracy protecting itself and advocates for diversity in nearly as many words because everything is improved from multiple viewpoints. Real boats rock. A boat that isn’t rocking isn’t being a boat. It’s not performing its😅 intended function.

Also Charisma is not competence, religion is manipulative horseshit, and power may indeed corrupt, but it almost inevitably attracts the corruptible.

Oh… and absolutes are a sucker’s bet. There are no messiahs. Political or otherwise.

Democracy is work.

I commend you for reading his books, I tried reading one in the library ( I do not want my money going to him) and only got about 20 pages in, I guess I'm smart enough to understand him.
He was on tv here ( NL) on a talk show and I wanted to know what all the fuzz was about, it turned out mr peterson and the host of said show were both very bad for my old man blood pressure.
The scariest part imo is seeing one of his books on your good doctor's desk….LoL

Re: Christianity and slavery, Peterson sort of brushes by what is almost a point made by leftists. In Losurdo's Liberalism: A Counter-history, Losurdo argues that the main bulwark against slavery was the Catholic Church. This was most prominent in the law that said Christians couldn't take other Christians as slaves, but also had many rules about what one could do with slaves and their produce. For instance, a slaveowner was not able to prevent two slaves from getting married and having kids, furthermore those kids weren't slaves as they were a product of this holy union.

However, material interests won out, resulting in the politically disempowered church we have today and capitalism that we all know and love. Over, like, 300 years or so. Losurdo argues that the US separation of Church and State was specifically to safeguard the interests of slaveowners against the historical restrictions imposed by many religions.

Jordan Peterson is beyond parody when he says 'we can't make up our own ideals', when he has very clearly done that. He doesn't claim to have divine revelations, he doesn't claim to be in contact with God. Jordan Peterson wants us to believe that he figured out his ideas himself, sure they hold deeper meanings, but he did come up with them. He's not a sincere actor, he's an authoritarian and convincing everyone else that his beliefs are true in some mystical way is how he gets people to follow him.

Does Peterson ever reference Thatcher, specifically her "there is no society" spiel? It seems like it'd be right up his alley

I find one of the most hilarious things about JP is that he vehemently speaks out against Nihilism, and yet preaches the words of what Nietzsche called " The Last Man."

As a anarcho-communist I have to emphatically disagree about communism and democracy being antithetical. In fact I believe communism is impossible without democracy. Communism is a stateless, moneyless, classless society. And in anarcho-capitalism no unjust hierarchies (so most hierarchies). The only way a system like this could work is if the power is in the people rather then a figurehead. As someone like Stalin has all the wealth and power and thus created a new hierarchy. He also withheld resources out of spite. No one person can have that much power. Even the president of the USA has too much power. The power belongs to the people. Not a figurehead, or idol.

…

Does he think it's harder to change what pronouns you use for someone then it is to fucking TRANSITION?

Years ago I first learned Nietzsche from Peterson. It took me years to unlearn what he said. His interpretation of Nietzsche is just bad and sloppy. Nietzsche is far more interesting when you study how he utilized concepts rather than using him as a diagnostician. It’s ironic too because the “postmodern” philosophers he references (Derrida and Foucault) were heavily influenced by Nietzsche as well. Sometimes I think Peterson is the postmodernist he fears most.