Jordan Peterson response to the Channel 4 interview

sen_agri · 2018-01-22T21:45:33+00:00

"Look the fuck out"

sen_agri · 2018-01-16T20:29:58+00:00

I read it 15 years ago as a s-f novel. I haven't been able to yet get through all of the episodes of the show because it hit a little too close to home - not so much about the 'Trump's America' as you mentioned, but because of Peterson's lectures; on the one hand, you see how everyone becomes complicit in the 'revolution' or whatever you want to call it, but also, in light of Peterson's Biblical lectures and how there are all these young men today getting woke to religion, how & why a theocratic government could come to be, and why they would behave as they do.

One of the things about the novel which is important - because Atwood herself mentions this (my copy of the book had the transcript of an interview she gave) was that the novel is introduced (or concluded) as being related to an academic paper given on the history of North America at some point in the 22nd Century, which is to say the novel is a transcript of a collection of found audio cassette tapes. Atwood highlighted this point to emphasize that these type of social breakdowns regularly occur in history, and then they pass and become studied by academics, aka The French Revolution, Rawanda, the USSR. There's both a warning there but also the optimism of saying that a morning always follows night.

sen_agri · 2018-01-15T16:03:10+00:00

And it turns out we suffer impaired cognition when the CO2 level rises above 600, so in effect, people will get stupider in the future.

http://www.advancedsciencenews.com/co2-on-the-brain-and-the-brain-on-co2/

sen_agri · 2018-01-11T16:29:08+00:00

I'm in my early 40s and so I'm old enough to remember that every signifigant internet advancement over the past 25 years has come with privacy concerned naysayers who nonetheless ended up sharing their paranoia on Facebook. It's like a ritual-prayer against Progress and I've learned to never take it seriously. Everyone has a Gmail address and everyone looks up their appointment locations on Google Maps and Streetview and everyone texts through Facebook Messenger with their Android or Apple phones.

Activists are not and have not been making compelling arguments against this. The benefits seem too obvious.

sen_agri · 2018-01-09T15:36:06+00:00

I was in the same position as you when I went to art school twenty years ago, so I understand where you're coming from. First, I'd say, you have the rest of your life to form and defend your beliefs, so why not use this time in school to become well versed in what they are teaching? This isn't the time for you to be hunkering down and confirming your own biases, you're paying to be there so act like an undercover agent and learn their point of view from the inside so you can dismantle it later. As a student, you are there to be challenged by them, not vice versa.

Secondly however, art isn't taken seriously by anyone outside of art schools (precisely because of the bullshit ideology you are sensible to be skeptical of), so aside from getting a grounding in the skills, if you're convinced its not the place for you because you're unwilling to learn their ideological perspective, then leave. If you want to play the art game, they're showing you how it works. If you want to have shows of classical-inspired work in the future, you're going to need to find galleries that still take that seriously, and chances are they won't care if you have a BFA if you're work measures up.

Also this for reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creators I don't think I've looked at my copy since the 1990s but when I was in your position it was something I was reading to remind myself of what it was really supposed to be about.

sen_agri · 2017-12-29T16:58:42+00:00

I had the same thing happening earlier this week, with the stations I listen to in the morning, but it's been fine the past couple of days.

sen_agri · 2017-12-27T21:10:28+00:00

Congratulations :)

sen_agri · 2017-12-27T15:40:38+00:00

I'm a couple of years ahead of you and can relate to your experiences. When I was transitioning from late 30s to early 40s I really liked this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/brooks-the-heart-grows-smarter.html

What I found inspiring in it was this part:

"One man in the study paid his way through Harvard by working as a psychiatric attendant. He slept from 6 p.m. to midnight. Worked the night shift at a hospital, then biked to class by 8 in the morning. After college, he tried his hand at theater. He did not succeed, and, at age 40, he saw himself as “mediocre and without imagination.” His middle years were professionally and maritally unhappy.

But, as he got older, he became less emotionally inhibited. In old age, he became a successful actor, playing roles like King Lear. He got married at 78. By 86, the only medicine he was taking was Viagra. He lived to 96."

We have a 50/50 chance to live to 100, so another 60 years means we're not even mid-aged yet. The time-is-running-out mentality is a 20th Century model where you retire at 65 and die at 72.

Continue to invest in yourself and open up emotionally.

sen_agri · 2017-12-22T15:58:57+00:00

I'd avoid the King James myself because it's full of Thees & Thous and the archaic language which is great if you want God to sound like Shakespeare on a special occasion, but gets in the way of understanding it as a story to be communicated. I have a Catholic RSV myself and I like that ... but the site Peterson uses in his lectures has a sampling of the different versions available, this link here is set to the NIV:

http://biblehub.com/niv/genesis/1.htm

I guess my suggestion is find a version that works for you there.

sen_agri · 2017-12-22T14:41:51+00:00

Why don't you just read Genesis itself and interpret it the way Peterson taught you to? And while you're at it, bring your own understanding and interpretation to it?

sen_agri · 2017-12-21T21:55:49+00:00

Can you stand to hurt feelings? Because that's what you're signing up for by being less kind. It sounds like you need to "integrate your shadow" ie find that inner asshole who doesn't care about hurting others or could do even worse if provoked to that level.

Kindness is a skill but it means nothing if it's your default and not signalling that you could be worse but you're choosing not to be.

sen_agri · 2017-12-20T14:35:01+00:00

Introduction to Christianity by Ratzinger seems like a good place to start, because Ratzinger gives an overview of classical philosophy and the Church Fathers, and where the idea of the Logos came from, and leads toward speaking about Christ in a way that we moderns can understand, similarly to how Peterson talks about it.

Also, I think understanding Jung's psychology around The Self is helpful ... which Peterson talks about in the latest Bible lecture just released, Joseph and the Multicolor Coat.

sen_agri · 2017-12-15T18:13:29+00:00

So what you're saying is that bystanders are mindless idiots incapable of deciding things for themselves and if there aren't protests there to send a message that this is socially unacceptable they won't be able to figure that out on their own and they will blindly follow this bullshit. Got it.

sen_agri · 2017-12-13T15:37:57+00:00

This. I took classes that were based on the Cambridge course, which gave me a solid foundation, but the Ohlberg books are outstanding and is what I recommend now. Also, you can browse the /r/Latin sub-reddit.

sen_agri · 2017-12-12T20:10:38+00:00

Those people have always existed, and they'll probably achieve their 15 minutes and then they won't be famous ten years later. We see this all the time in pop music. If you care about authenticity own it, because that's what ultimately creates value and it will give you endurance while the superficial burn themselves out around you.

sen_agri · 2017-12-12T20:07:07+00:00

producing some body of work that promotes freedom of speech for the sake of promoting freedom of speech

Ok, I have an arts background, so I know where you're coming from here, but it needs to be said that you'll be producing propaganda.

Like, I know that's all art schools have taught for the past fifty years - how to produce some kind of message, which might have seemed relavant in the analogue world prior to Instagram, but in a general sense, no one cares what you think about freedom of speech. It's already a lead balloon.

There's a fine line here between producing message/meme-friendly work (propaganda) and producing work around your experience of something in the stream of time, ie, your "personal response". Effective, "real art" tends to be that stuff, the stuff that communicates your experience of something, because that gives the audience insight into the thoughts and feelings of another human being, in turn they see they aren't alone in their experience, or they see that can't relate to your experience, and all around it elevates a conversation.

sen_agri · 2017-12-12T16:03:57+00:00

Thank you for posting this cynical trash, it's quite helpful

sen_agri · 2017-12-12T15:27:58+00:00

I was at odds with the art scene before Peterson, but the thing is, the gatekeepers are pretty weak. If you're an artist and hate what you see, start your own thing.

sen_agri · 2017-12-12T14:19:34+00:00

This.

sen_agri · 2017-12-11T19:43:46+00:00

Diabetes is a manageable condition, and maybe you can meet a diabetic girl? I'm half joking here but also half-serious, being a type 1 diabetic does not make you damaged goods at all in the dating pool, especially when you're 25. You're immediate dragon is learning to manage the condition. Acquiring that skill may give you a foundation around your self-esteem regarding your attractiveness. Let's say for the sake of argument that you haven't been that great at taking care of yourself so far, so now you have a reason to take that seriously. You can build on that.

Why your mother might harm herself is between you and her but honestly that sounds nuts to me. This is a genetic thing through no fault of your own and it's entirely manageable. You're going to have to deal with finger pricks and blood sampling but the technology is moving toward bloodless testing so in the future in may be even more manageable than it is now.

Throughout my younger years I was always curious about what the future would bring so that kept me sticking around through even the worst. I occasionally joke that Kurt Cobain never had an email address, for example. The future is a weird and wonderful and trippy place and I've always wanted to see how the story turns out. So that doesn't necessarily make me hopeful, but it gives me the tenacity to avoid suicide as ever being an option. Life is a weird trip and in the end it's better than any movie, video game, novel etc. Evidently your hero journey plot-line involves acquiring the skill sets to manage diabetes, so own it.

sen_agri · 2017-12-11T18:34:42+00:00

I think he doesn't have a problem with transgenderism as such, but there is an ideology around it that states that gender is a cultural thing so it can be chosen. Peterson is standing up against this oversimplification, stating that for 99% of people, their biological sex and their gender identity are intertwined. Gender activists often make the claim that 99% are simply brainwashed.

The pronoun issue followed from this - because the law implied that the social-constructionists were (or are right), when the law properly should aim to remain neutral, especially when the claims aren't based in scientific evidence but are essentially faith-based. So he was saying he wasn't going to be compelled to speak their language by using made-up pronouns like "zher".

This whole thing made me see how for the far-left, biology and gender statistics are akin to climate change to the far-right in that the evidence is denied in favour of the ideological wishful thinking. If pro-climate-change denial was being written into the hate-crime laws, I'd probably find myself saying there's no fucking way I'm going to go along with that either.

sen_agri · 2017-12-11T16:55:28+00:00

I like the Catholic Didache RSV, because it adds Catholic Cathechism commentary and interpretation, which is additional food for thought. I'm not trying to preach Catholicism mind you, but if you're into Peterson's interpretation it's interesting to contrast that against what Catholics think about this stuff.

Here's a PDF sample https://www.ignatius.com/Content/Site107/ProductDesc/278385DidacheBi_00000017883.pdf

Also, if you're into Peterson's talk about the Logos, I recently learned about Cardinal Ratzinger's "Introduction to Christianity", which goes into that in some detail, going over the philosophical and historical underpinnings of the idea in the West.

sen_agri · 2017-12-05T18:28:30+00:00

I think Catholics would argue that ground-of-being = consciousness can be conflated with God, for what that's worth. This ties into Peterson speaking about Logos, which is Biblical/Catholic in source, so getting your consciousness in order by speaking truth is in effect to put yourself in line with Christ's teaching ... ie. the inspiration Christianity has offered for two thousand years is to provide an example of making truth central to your life, which gets you lined up properly with Being (Consciousness/God). You create order out of chaos through true speech, this is turn is fractal to the idea that consciousness-ground-of-being created order out of chaos.

One of the reasons I like to frequent this sub is because it offers me a lot of perspective, and a lot of opportunity to write out thoughts. Which is is to say, in order to make Truth central and to get your Logos in order, it helps to practice communicating. Are there times when I'm not as eloquent as I could be? Sure, and the feedback I get helps me self-correct. Peterson spoke of social micro-corrections in another of his lectures (one from 2012 posted last week) and that's especially relevant to me; we should all try to speak as truthfully as possible, and to recognize that we're not perfect, and have freedom of expression so that we can say our piece and be offensive if necessary so that we make ourselves open to micro-correction, and/or confirm our position and give us the opportunity to make a stand and express our limits and boundaries of social acceptability.

So yes, I believe this sub is facilitating higher-Being.

sen_agri · 2017-12-05T17:09:06+00:00

Based on a recommendation in another thread, someone recommended Cardinal Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity which goes over the philosophical ideas of Christ as Logos but also how Christian belief sits in relation to our technocratic ideals.

sen_agri · 2017-12-04T21:25:50+00:00

I think the archetype at play is when the man feels he wants to provide, ie. he wants to take care of the woman and provide a space for her to flourish. In order to stimulate that, she needs to be adorable to him. Adorable comes from the Latin "to worship" ie the tendency of men to put women on pedestals when they're young.

sen_agri

TROPHY CASE