Jordan Peterson

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James_0011
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by James_0011 »

@thedino

Wouldn’t the monogamy as a rule thing fall into the same category as other biblical “rules” such as those about food?

That is, monogamy probably helped stopped the spread of disease before the invention of condoms and std testing but isn’t relevant in the modern context.

Similarity, food rules made sense before we had a clear understanding of how disease is spread.

This is one of the major flaws I see in Jordan’s reasoning as it doesn’t take the context of a cultures scientific knowledge into account.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@James_0011
There is an underlying assumption in that argument; that we know all we need to know about this subject.

The liberal/progressive view is " try new stuff, we can make the system better. We know so much more now! "
The conservative view is "there are unknown unknowns and unintended consequences. Do what has always worked before and you won't be caught of guard."

JBP says you need both. Tradition and old institutions are "what has always worked before." It is Order, built up by several generations of now-dead people who's descendants now thrive because of what they built. New ideas are the Chaos that hasn't been tried yet.

Individual humans aren't smart enough to know which argument is right on any given subject. But a society of them disagreeing about everything tend toward the right answer, even if none of them can ever see the whole elephant.

George the original one
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by George the original one »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Thu Feb 15, 2018 12:19 pm
Individual humans aren't smart enough to know which argument is right on any given subject.
Individual humans might know what's right for themselves, but they definitely won't know what's right for all individuals because "individuals" constitute a population, a collection of individualities who are not identical.

James_0011
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by James_0011 »

@thedino

I know you’re speaking in general terms. But regarding monogamy, I would say that it is a new untested form of relationships.

There is a book called “sex at dawn” that presents evidence that the human species has mostly lived in non monogamous conditions (hunter gatherer societies) and that monogamy is relatively new in evolutionary terms.

I think it also depends on how you define monogamy. I would say that a married person who watches porn is not monogamous- yet many married people do just that.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@James, if it's not obvious, I'm not 100% on board with Jordan Peterson's philosophy. I am partly defending my understanding of it so others here can help me take it apart.

I think the monogamy argument makes sense if it's a "rule" (in scare-quotes) that's only loosely followed. I mean, I think JBP would argue that lifelong monogamy is The Way. I'm more of the opinion that there are a lot of competing valid motivations for and against.

For one thing, it's in the evolutionary benefit of both partners to maximize the genetic diversity of their children. There is obvious and undeniable selection pressure this way, which would explain why being monogamous is not so easy. For another thing, I've read somewhere that most relationships start to go stale around the same time you'd expect the first offspring (if there were any) to be able to walk as fast as adults. Meaning serial monogamy might be more natural. Neither the bible or JBP explains that.

ETA:
You don't need a society to tell you to be sexually liberal. Your biology does that for you. You need society to oppose your hormones to balance the fact that many people will be sexually liberal anyway. Chaos and Order. Ying and Yang.

pukingRainbows
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by pukingRainbows »

@fiby41 - I'm also curious to know what you mean in regards to Dharma and Krishna and JBP's ideas. I don't quite understand it.

In general, I think JBP is working with his knowledge set, which is based on Christianity. I think if he was Hindu, he would be drawing from that body of work instead. I'm not sure I understand what you and @thisDinosaur are looking for in terms of similarities or differences with different religions. Are you looking for corroborative thinking? And would that then bolster JBP's ideas or detract from them in your mind?
George the original one wrote:
Thu Feb 15, 2018 12:43 pm
Individual humans might know what's right for themselves, but they definitely won't know what's right for all individuals because "individuals" constitute a population, a collection of individualities who are not identical.
I think addressing this truth is essentially what archetypes do. They look at humanity across time, and draw out the common ideas and experiences that characterize a mode of being that elevates us or doesn't. Essentially, the lessons across time for humanity.

What's also so interesting to me, is that even though it's looking at humankind across thousands of years, it ultimately boils down to the importance of the individual and their thoughts and actions. I think that's incredibly encouraging for each of us as individuals.

It's also why I don't think anyone is excluded from this line of thinking, or "doesn't exist" as was expressed by @7wannabe5 and @fiby41

As @ThisDinosaur explained, there is the constant renewal of the culture which comes about through the struggle, (for lack of better word) between old ideas and new ones. So if your ideas don't fit into the current culture's norm, it could be that you're on the vanguard of what will be good and accepted in society's evolution. Or maybe you won't. All you can do is be honest and forthright in the world which is what JBP suggests.

For the record, I'm not a fan of polyamory at this moment. But perhaps it's just my ignorance and inexperience and later on, I'll have evolved into a different way of thinking.

From a social perspective, I can see how polyamory would have a destabilizing effect on society historically as the more desirable individuals would accrue more and more partners to the growing dissatisfaction of others. I imagine it would be like income inequality now, but with partners instead of money.

On a personal level, I believe my ideal relationship requires a dedicated lifetime of effort to satisfactorily complete.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

James_0011 wrote:I think it also depends on how you define monogamy. I would say that a married person who watches porn is not monogamous- yet many married people do just that.
Well, bit of an infinite regress possible here since you could extend to "married guy who reflexively checks out the young cocktail waitress when she bends over to pick up napkin" being not monogamous. Also, since I was "married" to a man from region where women were required to dress opposite of cocktail waitress or porn star, I can assure you that there is no possible layering of clothing or separating of the sexes that will prohibit fantasy. My "ex" imagined that some of the pattern shapes in Persian carpet designs were what the bare legs of females looked like. Humans are not monogamous in that sense, with only possible exception being the period of limerence which attaches salience to another particular human. Monogamy is a chosen practice. The question here being whether it is the only or most moral practice and/or whether it is even a viable enough option to retain merit.

A recent study that examined the lineage of British surnames with genetics discovered that in a relatively conservative monogamous society, most of the children born out of wedlock (not to be confused with conceived prior to wedlock) were the offspring of single females and men who were married to other females already. The same study revealed that previous guesstimates of the number of children of other fathers born to married females were too high. IOW, in context of conservative monogamous culture, married men cheat and married females do not. The legitimate children of affluent married men thrive, and their illegitimate children do not. This was as true in Rome prior to Christianity as it was in 18th century Britain. So, I'm going to call it as primarily Politics/Economics/Power-Structure rather than Religion/Anthropology/Social-Biology. IOW, all you have to do is follow the money to easily ferret out individual motivation, so higher or baser motivations are kind of moot.

In modern America, where married women often have more power and money and access to other partners, they have extra-marital affairs at a rising rate, approaching 30% to the male slightly over 50%. My grandmother had an affair with a co-worker in the early 1960s and left her second husband on the hope that he would leave his wife too. He didn't, so she bought her own little house and rounded up a Russian-immigrant BF who lived across the bridge in Canada. Her older brother was always trying to boss her around, but she just yelled right back at him, because she had her own house, her own job, and her own money, so she could do what she wanted to do. It's hard to objectively judge whether people in history were really doing what they wanted to do if they didn't legally have any right to own property or they risked being stoned to death by a crowd if they behaved out of line with societal expectations. I am happy to be able to report that my paternal ancestors who were in Massachusetts early on testified on behalf of an accused witch rather than vice-versa.

That said, I would definitely agree that monogamy and paternity are mutually beneficial concepts, and since my father was my primary parent, I definitely believe that having two parents is better than one. In fact, I stuck it out with my ex until my kids were in their late teens for just that reason. However, when it comes to question of overall moral functioning, given the fact that the Bible does not offer very clear instructions for how the whole moving humans to other planets procedure is supposed to go down, it might just be possible to suggest that most people might choose to limit highly engaged parenting phase of life to a fractional portion of their lives as sexually active adults within a framework of sound moral judgment. I mean, even in the Qur'an, women past the age of menopause are given freer rein in their behavior. Unless/until we undo the technology that gives us the ability to experience sexuality without reproduction, we will continue to make economic decisions in alignment with this new reality.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

pukingRainbows wrote:For the record, I'm not a fan of polyamory at this moment. But perhaps it's just my ignorance and inexperience and later on, I'll have evolved into a different way of thinking.

From a social perspective, I can see how polyamory would have a destabilizing effect on society historically as the more desirable individuals would accrue more and more partners to the growing dissatisfaction of others. I imagine it would be like income inequality now, but with partners instead of money.

On a personal level, I believe my ideal relationship requires a dedicated lifetime of effort to satisfactorily complete.
Interesting. Probably what I mean when I say that I have never been very romantic is that I have never really had an ideal relationship concept. In fact, and I know this will go down like a lead brick with this audience, LTRs absent children strike me as very Hansel and Gretel or velcro twin hug monkeys. Like the world is so tough, you have to have a peer partner holding your hand to withstand it. I guess my perspective has always been very individualistic, even though I almost always have had at least one partner.

A female friend of mine who is married to another women told me that when she was a child she always imagined that she had a little friend who lived in her mailbox who would always be there to talk to her, and her wife is like the ideal personification of that childhood fantasy. My earliest childhood memory is of being a toddler running back and forth barefoot along a wooden floored hallway, as my grandmother and great-grandmother each humorously call out to me from their rooms for me to come cuddle in her bed for nap time. I am happy inhabiting that tension where I am loved, but also on my own feet running, free to decide which door to enter.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Kriegsspiel »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:37 am
I think the monogamy argument makes sense if it's a "rule" (in scare-quotes) that's only loosely followed. I mean, I think JBP would argue that lifelong monogamy is The Way. I'm more of the opinion that there are a lot of competing valid motivations for and against.

For one thing, it's in the evolutionary benefit of both partners to maximize the genetic diversity of their children. There is obvious and undeniable selection pressure this way, which would explain why being monogamous is not so easy. For another thing, I've read somewhere that most relationships start to go stale around the same time you'd expect the first offspring (if there were any) to be able to walk as fast as adults. Meaning serial monogamy might be more natural. Neither the bible or JBP explains that.
The evidence points towards polygamy as being most natural. It facilitates women being impregnated by the most fit genes. This would lead to a minority of men fathering children, which is what's reflected in what I've read. Among the Ache, of South America, men have wide reproductive distributions (few men make the babies with a variety of women). I don't know about the time-limit on relationships, but I suspect that women didn't have too many qualms about hooking up with alpha males of their group. If the criteria for alpha was that you could accumulate resources bestly, then this would be a smart strategy. Alternatively, women married to lesser men might have evolved to cheat on them with alphas for baby-making, since women's sexual preferences evidently change around ovulation as was noted in Sex At Dawn. The ratchet was tightened after agriculture:

"4,000 to 8,000 years after humanity invented agriculture, something very strange happened to human reproduction. Across the globe, for every 17 women who were reproducing, passing on genes that are still around today—only one man did the same.

Another member of the research team, a biological anthropologist, hypothesizes that somehow, only a few men accumulated lots of wealth and power, leaving nothing for others. These men could then pass their wealth on to their sons, perpetuating this pattern of elitist reproductive success. Then, as more thousands of years passed, the numbers of men reproducing, compared to women, rose again. "Maybe more and more people started being successful," Wilson Sayres says. In more recent history, as a global average, about four or five women reproduced for every one man."

It has continued into "modern" times, as 7 noted. Matt Ridley also mentions in The Red Queen, "In a block of flats in Liverpool, Baker and Bellis found by genetic tests that fewer than 4/5 people were the sons of their ostensible fathers... they did the same tests in southern England and got the same results."

enigmaT120
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by enigmaT120 »

"limerence", a new word for me. Thanks.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Kriegsspiel wrote:"4,000 to 8,000 years after humanity invented agriculture, something very strange happened to human reproduction. Across the globe, for every 17 women who were reproducing, passing on genes that are still around today—only one man did the same.
Right, because SOP agriculture wasn't nuclear family on 100 acres. It was based on human slavery. In a good many cultures based on patriarchal inheritance, relationships with slave girls (or boys!) don't count. Kind of like when a very successful aspirational class member friend of mine was horrified to discover her husband was having an affair with a massage parlor girl and giving her money, but she would have been more blown away if he had actually divorced her to marry the girl. I am super-jaded, so I totally predicted something like that would happen when she started making more money and working later than him.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Kriegsspiel »

I don't know what you mean by SOP agriculture, but slavery may have had something to do with it. I'm just riffing here, but how about with the advent of new technologies, first-adopters had an unmatched combat advantage and quickly overran other peoples. I'm thinking something like the Proto-Indo-Europeans. For instance, haplotype R1a and R1b spread from Central Europe, along with PIE language, at about the time the 17-1 squeeze is purported to have happened.

I see I didn't include the link that quote was from... https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-r ... .arkqxux04

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fiby41
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by fiby41 »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Thu Feb 15, 2018 10:42 am
Please tell me more about what you mean by this.
Invading the Sacred

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jennypenny
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by jennypenny »

I almost put this in the gun thread but I thought maybe it was better to keep JBP's thoughts all in one place. I'm posting this because of the recent high school shooting.

Here are his thoughts after the Vegas shooting (jumps to relevant part which is only 5 min) ... https://youtu.be/JwkzFKDJzwo?t=35m56s

Another youtuber put a few of his comments on the subject into one video .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HKFiH4jhnw

His relevant discussion of Cain and Abel (long) ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44f3mxcsI50

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by ThisDinosaur »

Thanks jp for rescuing the thread. I accidentally hijacked it with the biblical morality discussion, and I think JBP has other interesting things to say.

Re:Mass Murderer Mass Media. I think he's right that a high yield intervention is not to make these kids famous, cause it just encourages the next one. CNN, to their credit, has a policy against naming the shooters.

Two other JBP ideas I've been meditating on recently:

1)The things you do everyday that seem trivial are the things that define your life. Just mathematically, you spend more of your time in your habit and routine than you do anything else.

2)Whatever things in your life causes you anxiety/fear/negative emotions are your dragons of chaos. You either confront them head on or they will sneak up and attack you when you're least prepared.

"Who do you want to be when the flood comes? Do you want to be the one who built an Ark?"

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fiby41
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by fiby41 »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Sat Feb 17, 2018 10:41 am
You can invent a religion de novo if you want (i.e., scientology), but if you expect it to last a thousand years or more, it better be connected to existing tried-and-true ones.
One can design and build any number of different kinds of computers by selecting from a vast range of components, including disk drives, screens, operating software, memory, printers, and so on. Each type of component is available from multiple vendors offering different features, e.g., there are many kinds of screens available. So there is a myriad of possible ways to configure perfectly legitimate systems depending on the combination of components one selects. And yet they all have certain common standards and architectural principles. This is why one can mix and match a screen from one manufacturer with a keyboard from another, for instance.

Some sophisticated consumers are the do-it-yourself types who can select and build a system from the components. Others prefer to rely on a pre-packaged system supplied by a credible supplier – known as a 'systems integrator' – who selects the components best suited for the client and puts the whole system together.

The systems integrator is the intermediary who simplifies the enormous complexity of choices and trade-offs for his target clientele. His role is threefold:
(i) to select, configure and put the whole system together, (ii) to install the system, and
(iii) to give it identity as a brand name.

The Hindu 'sampradaya', or an individual guru, is the systems integrator who chooses the various components which constitute a 'total system solution' for the spiritual life of a particular client. He installs this through initiation and training and provides ongoing support. Many sampradayas are like brand names in that they are characterized by, or identified with, certain symbols, manner of dress, and so on. Using this model, dharma may be seen as:

• An open architecture for the spiritual quest as well as guidance for one's mundane living – many choices and more choices being added over time by new suppliers.
• A variety of components that fit into the architecture based on individual choice. One can choose one's own ishta-devata and other devatas, rituals, day of the week to fast (if at all), pilgrimage sites, festivals, sacred texts, cosmological worldview, and so forth. The diversity of components that can fit into this architecture provides pluralism, and many of the components are constructed for each social context and period.
• Pre-packaged religious systems available from sampradayas each of which provides a total-life solution. This is for the consumer who does not want to, or simply cannot, put together his or her own spiritual path from the options available.
• A do-it-yourself option for the sophisticated practitioner which bypasses all suppliers. This practitioner has to be advanced in sadhana in order to be able to work with this option.
• Various ongoing R&D houses (individuals or sampradayas) which periodically come out with novel ideas and practices and introduce these into the marketplace. Many innovations fail, while others succeed.
• Like the Internet, this dharma has no centre, no owner, no founder, and alternative offerings are always subject to argumentation and change. There is no singular authority that has ever decided for all dharmic consumers what is 'right'. Nobody has been able to destroy the other options. There is no history of destroying rejected components (cf. burning books); they simply fade away when newer ones get adopted by consumers. The marketplace of consumers and suppliers has always been dynamic and nothing is resolved by the use of absolute force by theocratic rulers.
• To participate successfully using this open architectural system does not require one to study the history of the system itself, i.e., who created the Internet, and other trivia about its beginnings.

Such a culture is a constant reworking based on numerous innovations which emerge in unpredictable ways and places. The system is self-correcting, adaptive and avoids the problems of long-term exclusivity and fixations on a specific history. The spirit of openness toward the multiplicity of possible answers to complex questions is why pluralism is deeply embedded in the notion of dharma.

The Judeo-Christian religions lack the fundamental R&D to be able to change to the same extent and to be able to offer the same choices and openness. As we have seen, they do not believe that the first principles of truth can be discovered by humans on their own; hence, their obsession with claiming historically unique events.

This closed-mindedness leads them to insist that nothing is legitimate except their own product – a monopolistic practice. They lack the tools and technologies that the dharma traditions have developed over several millennia. Whereas the dharma traditions resemble Silicon Valley innovation and freedom, the Judeo-Christian religions come across like controlled, state-supplied, monopolistic products. Like the Soviets who believed in allowing only one airline, one brand of car, one toothpaste, etc. (despite the fact that consumers have many needs), most Christians believe in allowing only one approach to religion; many in the Jewish tradition do likewise. Just as Christian institutions have discouraged or outright banned mystics (the R&D labs to discover new approaches and challenge old ones), the Soviets did not allow entrepreneurship as it threatened their monopoly.

Flexibility comes with serious challenges. There is not just one Hindu book or one Buddhist book but many, and each may offer a different solution to the same question. The following question arises: Since there is no single institutional authority to mediate such issues and provide command, on what basis is a practitioner to determine the right book to choose, the right course of action to take? The answer is that there are at least three approaches whereby a practitioner may determine the ethics for a particular instance: scripture, lineage (sampradaya, or guru), and personally achieving a higher state of consciousness. There are no canonized ethics, as such, that can be applied blindly as 'universal'.

It is important to establish this contextual basis of Hindu ethics (a very postmodern idea), because the main criticism levied by Christian proselytizers is that Hinduism suffers from moral relativism. This charge of relativism is often expressed in ways that could be misunderstood as positive – millions of gods, lots of scriptures, many gurus, total freedom, and so on. The contextual nature of dharma has been discussed in Chapter 4.

~Appendix B: A Systems Model of Dharma and Abrahamic Traditions of the book
Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism


Sampraday - unbroken chain of disciplic succession
Guru - spiritual master
Ishta-devata- presiding deity : your favourite personal God

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@fiby41
If I'm following you, you're saying that "Hinduism" as westerners understand it, is not actually one religion, but lots of them? And that Christianity is more strict about dogma?

I'm still vacillating between thinking Peterson is brilliant and on to something vs. that he's "not even wrong." I just listened to his second conversation with Sam Harris. Sam quotes an example from his book about taking a cookbook off a bookstore shelf and reading deep metaphors into the ingredients lists. ["The salt and pepper represent our good and evil natures..."] I wanted JBP to counter that Sam's example would be better if the cookbook were thousands of years old, preserved by multiple civilizations, and formed the core of philosophy for several empires that had incredible prosperity for centuries.

I want to believe.

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fiby41
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by fiby41 »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Sun Feb 18, 2018 9:18 pm
you're saying that "Hinduism" is not actually one religion, but lots of them?
Hindus and Muslims have been killing each other over religion for ages. That makes them two different religions. Since the crusades being a religious war, the two sides are different religions. Similarly, the Reformation wars
were fought over religion making the two sides Protestant and Catholic two different religions. Until a war is found that was waged by a Hindu on another Hindu for the sole reason that he worshipped a 'false' god or went to a wrong house of worship, we will continue to assume Hinduism is one religion.

Besides, all traditions profess authority by quoting the Vedas.

For the definition of Hinduism, see this post:
viewtopic.php?t=7833#p119813

If above three reasons are insufficient, then you will have to read Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity.

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jennypenny
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by jennypenny »

JBP is on today's episode of Econtalk ... http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2018/0 ... erson.html

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jennypenny
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by jennypenny »

That podcast was good. Roberts touched on some of the crossovers between JBP's and JLF's ideas and helped me see why JBP appeals to some forumites.

His comments about chaos and order and how to be content were brilliant.

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