Jordan Peterson

[Alphaville]

Peterson helps such people get off their knees and fight for themselves a little.

yes, for individual therapy and specific issues, i've said so myself, his approach works, and i've used it to help friends in trouble, as a coach.

working to get your life in order of course works, especially in those accustomed to blame others for their troubles. taking responsibility for what you can control is important.

but that's about the extent of its usefulness. it doesn't scale as sound social theory. the individual approach is not a cure-all.

sometimes the little lobsters have to band together to take on the big lobster to avoid getting their claws chopped off. sometimes they have to petition a bigger lobster than their lobster boss to intervene.

and while their lives may often be far from perfect the little lobsters have the right to criticize their world and whatever predatory practices the world allows, rather than naturalize them with lobster comparisons.

[7Wannabe5]

When the number of bacteria in an area reaches a certain number “ quorum”, they emit something like a sticky goo and band together to form a biofilm. So, cooperation is also a pretty core behavior.

[zbigi]

(...)
and while their lives may often be far from perfect the little lobsters have the right to criticize their world and whatever predatory practices the world allows, rather than naturalize them with lobster comparisons.

I think we're in agreement then. I think Peterson is defending hierarchies largely because he's fighting the most radical form of "cultural Marxists" [1], who claim that all hierarchies are a result of an oppressive patriarchy and should be destroyed, preferably in a violent way. I don't think he's against more sensible collective action, but he also doesn't focus on it. The value system he preaches can be viewed as deeply individualistic and thus it triggers a lot of people on the left, but I think that again he does that for therapeutic reasons - in order to treat depressed and apathetic people, you need to create a vision of individual life and goals for them first. Of course, this is not a panacea for society's all problems, but he doesn't claim it is.

[1] To what degree these people really exist is another question. You can see in the Peterson-Zizek debate that P. was ready to criticize many of stereotypical hardcore Marxists claims and was very surprised that they do not represent Zizek's beliefs.

[Alphaville]

I think we're in agreement then.

not quite, we disagree on jordan himself...

I think Peterson is defending hierarchies largely because he's fighting the most radical form of "cultural Marxists", who claim that all hierarchies are a result of an oppressive patriarchy and should be destroyed, preferably in a violent way.

this is a laughable straw man of his own invention, designed to bamboozle, and precisely where he succeeds at youtube but fails as an intellectual. remember zizek asked him to name names and he couldn't?

anyway here are some actual marxists (i think?) addressing the matter:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/jord ... m-ideology

this i've posted not to back marxism (i'm not a marxist) but to illustrate how he charges at windmills claiming they're giants.

and here's a little lobster with a straight back criticizing youtube lobster's scholarship:

https://medium.com/s/story/jordan-peter ... 4633558b75

[zbigi]

Fair enough. I usually mostly check out when JP goes deep into his mythological analyses... They're fairly handwave'y and, to me, you need to make much stronger arguments than he does to support the claims that those myths carry real hard truths in them. I don't think most people are interested that much in them either and, to me, all that handwaving can be an attempt to intellectually elevate something that's otherwise just a fairly common sense, if conservatist, CBT-based approach to fixing oneself, without anything novel or revolutionary in it. To me, JP's main talents lie precisely in communicating previously known ideas and not in scientific/intellectual discovery.

BTW the ads on his podcast are something that made me wary of him for the first time. If your goal is to help millions of people across the world, and you've already made plenty of money via publishing of the book and the book tour, why recite those tacky ads? It's just unsavory to me. Another pet-peeve of mine is the promotion of his annoying daughter. But overall, I think he's just a complicated individual that helped a lot of people through his talents in communicating psychotherapy-related concepts.

[Alphaville]

@zbigi

right, but mythology is fundamental to his fundamentalism, so you can't separate it from his inductive social theory bloviations. if he is wrong on the mythology he is also wrong on what he claims it implies.

i wish he had stuck to psychotherapy, where he could be useful, but his whole ideological edifice ends up poisoning common-sense cbt and deluding his believers.

eta: here's a better video from a more useful and competent researcher https://feelinggood.com/books/

[7Wannabe5]

A classic book in the series edited by Michael Pollan is "We Made a Garden" by Margery Fish. The author enters into a late life marriage with a quite grouchy fellow, and they buy a country house and proceed to squabble about gardening. He wants nothing but clear ground between the pavement slabs and she would prefer something growing and flowing between the pavement slabs. Then he dies, likely of heart failure due to excess grouchiness, and the garden defaults to her growing. flowing design. IMO, this is great example of what Peterson describes as the battle between masculine order and feminine chaos.