Ouch, sorry. I've been fighting this fight for too long against extremely entrenched people so I'm kinda broken into arguing a continuing and sustained back and forth over like 6 threads lol.
I really wish people listened to the entirety of the argument being presented instead of trying to summarize it down to a simplistic, one sentence, strawman.
He didn't say that he's against it just because the people supporting it are bad. There was quite a bit more. He seems to be saying that he would be against it because it's just one step in the greater plan. It doesn't actually go to satisfy them at all. Once that's been passed, then they'll continue forward to dismantle more and more of our traditional societal norms, which he wouldn't be in support of like he is in support of gay marriage.
It's sort of like the gun supporters being against supposedly "reasonable" regulations because they know that it's just one more step in the path to total gun bans. The motivation of the people pushing an idea is relevant to whether you want to support the idea or not.
You're welcome to still completely disagree with him, but at least do so on the basis of his actual argument.
I don't think I'm skipping over anything at all, and my summarization is still accurate taking into account everything you've pointed out. Saying you wouldn't support gay marriage in Australia because of the possibility that it's a slippery slope towards the dismantling of traditional social norms is just stupid. Gay marriage on its own accord is entirely acceptable and ought to be legal, scaremongering about the collapse of tradition if we let gay people have the same rights as straight people isn't a valid argument against it. Not to mention, the idea that gay marriage is the beginning of dismantling traditional values carries with it the implication that gay marriage is somehow an attack on traditional "family values ", which is a pretty shitty opinion to hold in the first place.
Note that he's not coming at it from the religious "family values" angle. He's coming at it from the angle of the traditional structures of society having measurable value to society. So marriage, as a structure, is extremely valuable to a working society. That's why he's not against gay marriage, on it's own. It doesn't actually dismantle any of the traditional structures, and may help gay people better join the greater society.
He isn't saying that gay marriage is one step in the wrong direction, but that it is acting like a gate, that once opened allows the same people who are pushing this legislation to go further, to the the things that he actually does have a problem with. For him, it's a question of balance. Is it worth it to get gay marriage if these people continue further and further? To him, the answer is no.
Like I said, you can disagree, but it isn't nearly as simple as, "I don't like those people. So I'm not going to support what they're supporting because I'm going to stick it to them." Almost no issue stands in isolation.
LGBT activists aren't trying to dismantle the very fabric of society, you absolute banana.
... I'm trying to describe Peterson's point of view.
LIKE I'VE SAID at least 2 times now, please go ahead and disagree with him. That's totally fine, and can lead to good conversation, but just do so while recognizing the actual argument.
I feel like you're trying to create some distinction here where there is none. I never said Peterson just doesn't like gay people, or that he's trying to "stick it" to Marxists. I'm saying that not supporting something which is deserving of support simply because you fear it's a stepping stone to something you really don't support is a bad way to go about deciding policy. It's like saying you don't want to give women the right to vote, not because women's suffrage on it's own is not a worthy cause, but because you're afraid once they can vote, they'll abandon family life and our society as we know it will collapse. You can have one without it leading to the other, and when the truly unjustified "other" eventually arrives, you're welcome to debate it and fight it then and there. But holding people's rights and decency hostage out of fear it'll awaken some destructive spectre in the future is immoral to me.
Jordan Peterson's entire MO is talking much but saying little because if he were to be clear with his words, people would think he's an asshole.
What he does say points to him being an old-school reactionary conservative, who still lives in the Red Scare. I can't say if he does this because it's hip or out of
childish attachment to pre-civil rights Americana. Just talking in terms of political debate, that he uses a buzzword like "post-modernist neo-marxism" is
establishing right off the bat that he isn't looking for discourse, he's at war with what he views as the regressive left by using terminology associated with the left
and drawing parallels to the Soviet Union and Mainland China. The animosity towards post-modernism could be rooted in its opposition to modernism, which
is Peterson's line of thinking but that's just baseless assumption. I take his constant sidesteps and refusal to be clear about his political alignment as cowardice, he wants to be able to talk all the shit he wants without getting hit for it, though he masks that with vague language and gratuitous use of loaded metaphors.
Ironically his self-help books talk about taking responsibility for yourself. I guess it's a matter of "do as I say, not as I do".
The demographic, he believes would summon the end of human civilization, isn't even that big. It's just a bunch of overzealous activists saying
stupid over-zealous shit, as agreed upon by almost everyone, even the left and Peterson, along with the rest of the people led by the nose by outrage culture, act
like it's the fucking Sturmabteilung sturming the Reichstag. Do they even know who is currently in power? That's not to say some criticism of leftist ideology isn't valid but the counter always has to be some scorched earth shit that turns back the clock on years of goodwill and progress for minorities. Y'know, nevermind
that "some criticism is valid" is the biggest "well, duh" thing since language was invented.
If you don't want to be an asshole, remember that the golden rule is "don't do to others what you don't want done to yourself". [/rambling]
Piecemeal gun control legislation creates a precedent that you can impart arbitrary restrictions on what people are allowed to own regardless of what the benefit of those restrictions are to society.
Legalizing gay marriage creates a precedent that gay relationships are equal to straight relationships under the law.
If anything this just highlights how ridiculous Peterson's position is. He's essentially saying there is no argument for gay marriage that doesn't implicitly support the agenda of the scheming anti west postmodern neomarxist insurgency. You would have to be a fucking lunatic to believe support for gay marriage is a "gateway" to Stalinist authoritarianism. But we are talking about the guy who says Stalinist Russia is an example of a "secular humanist" state, so it isn't really unexpected.
... That's like the opposite of what he said. He said that gay marriage is NOT implicitly a negative thing and does not necessitate the whole agenda of what he calls "neo-marxism," but that, in this case, it happens to be the "neo-marxists" pushing the idea.
if you imply that something is only supported and pushed by an ideological insurgency seeking to dismantle society, doesn't that imply that the idea is also bad
it's the equivalent of "I'm not saying women's suffrage is necessarily bad but women's suffrage is a nazi invention and a gateway to national socialism"
He's also explicitly wrong about this. Gay marriage isn't being pushed by neo-marxists or whatever. It's being pushed by gay people who want to get married.
I don't know if you are, but let's say you were extremely anti-gun, and wanted to ban them completely. So one day a law was put to congress that did as much, but you found out that the law was being almost solely sponsored and supported by actual Nazis, and that they also wanted to do a bunch of other things that you really didn't like. Would you be inclined to oppose the bill, even though you liked it in isolation? If I were put in a similar sort of situation, I might very well be.
Peterson didn't say that only "neo-marxists" are supporting gay marriage in every case,, but that this push in Australia is the result of the "neo-marxists."
Note that I'm putting "neo-marxist" in quotes because I really don't know anything about the Australian gay marriage plebiscite and who's been pushing it. I'm just trying to represent what Peterson said as fairly as possible.
No? Why the fuck would I oppose legislation that does something I believe is good because it was drafted by the wrong people? By that logic I should oppose the existence of the constitution itself, since it was drafted by a bunch of slave owning white supremacists.
That's like the polar opposite of how a democracy operates. "Well we all agree on abolishing slavery, but the bill was co written by a member of the Sheep Rapist party so I guess I'm switching my vote to a no."
If you want the anti free speech stuff, I have it here too.
https://youtu.be/Cf2nqmQIfxc?t=493
Here he wants to defund OISE
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/159354/f995797d-c95a-4fca-b7ef-9e437871d9ea/Screen Shot 2018-05-04 at 6.12.49 PM.png
Pictured: what one of the "most dangerous institutions in Canada" looks like.
And this isn't an isolated sentiment of his. He says on Joe Rogan that we can go on "Take a look at a dozen women's studies websites [...] they want to restructure patriarchy what does patriarchy mean? Western Society! What does restructure mean? It means tear it all down!" Source
Also of note in this interview "What do they mean that marxism wasn't tried? Well they mean that "if I was the marxist dicator things would've gone differently" as if that was even the claim (they actually mean that there was no abolition of state or class)
He wants to ban women's studies and shit because he's scared that they're about to destroy all of society.
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/921580052977827840
Here he is calling for the firing of someone because they call poc and women to the front of the class before white men.
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/923652426753744896
This ties in to the previous thing with joe rogan. He has a special definition of communist where they are literally going to destroy the world and the concept of truth which makes it a much more dangerous insult. He directly linked to the pages of two people who cheered that he had a talk shut down (yes, just because they celebrated) and his rabid fans shut them down.
And finally the coup de grâce:
U of T profs alarmed by Jordan Peterson's plan to target classes..
This is a doozy. He was trying to work with an ai researcher to create a bot that searches through course descriptions for "postmodern" or "feminist" content and then mark it for everyone to avoid. Literally creating a prof. blacklist.
I'm really sad that a tweet I had where he outright said that feminist classes should be banned disappeared when Harmful Opinions was banned on twitter ;-;
I've been trying to hunt down source tweets for this stuff for a while for my larger posts about why this man is a genuine lunatic and a threat to academia itself. But I could never quite find them, good to have them as a reference here! I recall coming across them either directly or as retweets but could never for the life of me find them again.
Probably due to accounts being banned once his cult of "lobsters" caught on to somebody insulting daddy.
Bonus if you can find those tweets he deleted where he had a little episode when Trump's twitter has hacked for 7 minutes, and he went on about an attack on free speech and called whoever did it terrorists.
His angle seems to be that if you walk in the same direction as some very bad people you are clearly following them and will inevitably be tempted to cave in to any demands they make once you give them one you also hold. That this position is absurd and necessitates stasis whenever you just don't like the people proposing a thing, and that this is completely antithetical to dialogue and compromise and just basic societal harmony should be obvious to you (and is actually quite ironic considering the rest of Peterson's points about pomos only caring about power and no dialogue).
Also, you've yet to demonstrate what a Postmodernist nor what a Neo-marxist is to you in JBP's view.
My bad, I must have skipped over that part.
I would say that he uses the phrase "postmodern" to refer to the general idea that the traditional, and even biological, structures are meaningless and ought to be destroyed. This would show up in these types of arguments:
1) A desire to destroy any concept of difference between men and women. An example would be starting with the assumption that we ought to see a 50/50 split at every level of the workplace in an ideal world. This can only be a true if you start with the assumption that there is no meaningful difference between men and women. If a real biological difference exists, then it would follow that a difference in workplace choices would also exist.
2) A desire to totally and completely separate the idea of gender and biology, or sex, when there is clearly a connection between the two.
On the other hand, his reference to "neo-marxism" seems to be the looking at society as a bunch of groups competing for power in a zero sum manner. So that one's group identity becomes as important, if not more important, than one's individuality. This might show up in the following areas:
1) The professor quoted earlier who calls on black students before white students. She sees her students as members of a racial group before ever considering them as individuals. Her desire to give preferential treatment to a group she sees as generally oppressed is greater than her desire to see each student on their own merit.
2) Affirmative action, the idea that we ought to treat people as a representative member of their group, as opposed to looking at each individual.
3) The modern attempt to paint white leaders from hundreds of years ago as generally evil because they didn't actively fight to abolish slavery. They are seen as members of an oppressive group as opposed to evaluating the good and bad of each individual in the context of their time.
So you put those things together and you get a person who wants to tear down what would have been considered the fundamental aspects of society all the while evaluating that society as a group contest for power.
So he refers to Postmodernism to mean something a lot more specific and separate from the actual principles underlying the movement, for some reason equating it with a zealous will to arbitrarily control and apply current gender categories in a kind of artificial, equally arbitrary power structure rather than the actual postmodern ethos of being critical of the relationship between social status quo / power structures and the way things are interpreted as truths. A good, consistent postmodernist would have no reason to prop up arbitrary equity measures, and something else must clearly sustain such a will.
Why not use a different, more specific word for this, rather than appropriating a very vague concept that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what he hates in this specific instance (even though it is clear he despises pomo for their committing to doubt the objectivity of tradition for the sake of people who fall outside of it's comfy areas).
Now Neo-marxism... well, I'll just let Oxford's A Dictionary of Sociology speak for itself:
neo-Marxism A term loosely applied to any social theory or sociological analysis which draws on the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
but amends or extends these, usually by incorporating elements from
other intellectual traditions—such as, for example, psychoanalysis (as
in the case of critical theory), Weberian sociology (as in Erik Olin Wright's theory of contradictory class locations), or anarchism (as in the example of critical criminology).
As one can easily see, once again, appropriating a term in a completely different and clearly more specific meaning than the academically prevalent meaning.
Surely you can see how misusing semantics in this manner can mislead a lot of people and just shut them out of reading anything about either of these doctrines, right?
Not to mention the fact he very clearly attempts to couple neo-marxism with totalitarian ideology, and very likely misunderstands what marxism is in the first place.
So the question that this poses is the following: Is he just ignorant, or malicious? Is he aware he misuses the terms for the benefit of his rhetorical points, or does he possibly have no idea what he talks about, attempting to appropriate intellectual jargon to sound like a wise authority figure?
From what I've seen and read of him, I still do not have a concrete answer to this question, but either option diminishes his status as a wise man.
I would contend that he doesn't mean the people in question are completely "postmodern" or completely "neo-marxist." He means that their ideology finds its root in those philosophies.
What other term could he use to be more accurate?
Beats me, perhaps make his own? He certainly has enough social positioning as it stands to make a more specific term and get it to catch on, rather than misusing other terms with complete disregard to how this delusion of understanding he cultivates (whether actively or passively) in the minds of listeners is worse than ignorance.
While he more or less seems to properly grasp postmodernism's main "message" in his mind, it's pretty clear he has never read any postmodern philosopher's works firsthand, and I remain doubtful of whether he grasps what marxism and/or neo-marxism mean as concepts or not. The fact he mentioned a book by a randian objectivist as a source on his knowledge of postmodernism before kinda erodes my estimation of his erudition on the subject.
I'm sure as a professor of psychology he is not blind to the effect his rhetoric has on the minds of his audience, too, so he either encourages it or doesn't care.
Can someone TL;DR this guy, the video and the whole conversation? Its way too long for me to follow through.
some other alt-right fuck has already pitched you everything jordan peterson has to say in far fewer words. he gurgles out something about his psychology degree, says "neo-marxism" or "postmodernism" and winks meaningfully. if you actually know what those words mean then his attempts at assimilating you
end there.
Jordan Peterson is the academic David facing off against the postmodern neo-Marxist left that is Goliath. He is the last intellectual bastion of free speech and personal liberty.
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