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Lobster Boy (was: This Jordan Peterson Guy)

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    OH FOR FUCK SAKE.

    Sorry.

    Oh fucking give me SAKE.

    As you were.

    Comment


      Originally posted by Reginald Christ
      I suppose one could conduct an interesting experiment to determine to what extent Peterson's worldview overlaps with the alt-right by watching one of his videos and then seeing what it does to your YouTube recommendations. Fucked if I'm doing it, mind. Short of child pornography or snuff films I can't think of a less-welcome prospect in a sidebar than videos of Milo and Peterson under the heading "You might also like..."
      I watched a video called 'Alternate Views on the movie "Psycho"' once. I am fairly sure that any recomendations based on word choice are going to be... possibly troubling. Although if they helped me to spell recommendations, it would be a good thing.

      Comment


        FWIW I don't think saying he's not far from Plato is a defence in this instance. That would depend on how far and in what direction.

        Watched the Youtube clip. Then watched some others. So, to summarise, he's not right wing because he says he isn't? And he'd never have gotten away with it if he really was.

        However, he also says 'Milo is an amazing person... he's the court jester who tells the truth." He also says 'White privilege isn't real" (you asked me to show my working on that, IIRC). He opposed M103 because he doesn't like the word Islamophobia. He's concerned that gay marriage is part of a marxist wedge. He's lauded by the alt-right, 'conservatives', the neo-nazis, the trolls, the white supremacists and the fascists. So he's clearly saying stuff they like. So if it it walks like a duck...

        As for compassion - your reading of what he wrote is charitable to the extent of wishfulness.

        No, he doesn't mention self-interest or sentimentality, but that's what his illustration utilises. Of course compassion isn't simple or unidirectional. He's the reductive, simplistic tool. Oh, compassion is looking after your cubs, but what about the guy who gets eaten? And he's a fucking professor? Compassion is fucking difficult. It's far more complex, demanding, subtle and nuanced than anything Peterson appears to have to say - which largely boils down to traditional + free speech = good. Equality = marxist = bad.

        He's not stupid enough to say whites and men are superior, because he'd be evicted from his well-feathered nest, but he enables those who say exactly those things by dragging the range of acceptable discourse that way. He may not actually be a fascist, but he's clearly less bothered by fascism than the equality agenda.

        I'm not going to waste any more of my time on this repulsive twat.

        Comment


          Originally posted by Bruno
          But the larger point is that child-rearing is not, or not in an uncomplicated way, in the mother's immediate self-interest. It's at least in part a self-sacrificing endeavor. It would be more in her self-interest not to have a child and be freer, wouldn't it?
          Biologically it is. You're ensuring that your genes survive after you.

          Comment


            Yeah but bears aren't.

            Can we at least agree that all his analogies from the animal kingdom are ridiculous and serve only to make him look like a fucking idiot?

            Comment


              You know what would make him more disposed towards him? If he didn't choose to communicate via fucking video. I loathe videos and I'd far rather read an article or an essay. I get it that many "milennials" seem to like to get their input via video but I can't be arsed. If there was an article in which he laid out his view of white privilege I'd read it. But I can't be arsed to watch a video.

              I recognise this is my problem not his but I'm not sure I can go any further with him. (I could read his book obviously but I'm not inclined to spend money on it)

              Comment


                You seem to have made an awful lot of posts on the subject given you "don't really care if people take to him or not".

                Can we now expect similar numbers of posts on the Films thread about blockbusters you're not really interested in?

                For clarification I have never called Bruno a Nazi or Nazi sympathiser. I said Milo was at the very least the latter.

                Comment


                  From page 7 of this thread on Milo, "he is literally a nazi, yes." MILO IS LITERALLY A NAZI

                  From page 8: "The aim is to get acceptance for Nazi ideas. And then for antisemitism and racist murders."
                  I POSTED A LINK

                  From page 9 about me: "I just read you making excuse after excuse for people who are either full on neo nazis, or an academic happy to engage with them on social networks and expresses sympathy when he flirts the idea of using his fans as a Lynch mob to scare, or worse a journalist."

                  From page 10: "Sounds sympathetic to me"

                  and "I don';t think people who hang out with neo-nazis are attention seeking. I think they're neo nazis."

                  MILO

                  and "I think you have a lot of sympathy with Peterson and more than you'd like to admit with Milo and co."

                  and "you justify any behaviours where your guy reaches out to the neo nazis. you ignore evidence that your toher guys are neo- nazis."

                  I THINK THAT's BEEN YOUR BEHAVIOUR, YES. I DON'T THINK IT"S BECAUSE YOU'RE A NEO NAZI SYMPATHISER. I THINK YOU"RE JUST VERY ODD

                  From page 11: "I think you'd have been a toady and a creep. I don't know if you'd have explicitly supported the Party but you'd probably have picked up some bargains at the forced auctions of jewish property. Maybe you'd have moved into the house of one of your neighbours when they were deported. After all, they weren't using it. You might have offered to look after something for your Jewish neighbours,. you'd have had a fair idea that they weren't coming back but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

                  YOU ASKED A QUESTION. I ANSWERED IT, THE BEHAVIOURS I CHOSE ARE NOT THOSE OF NAZIS BUT OF MANY GERMANS WHO WERE NOT VICTIMS OR ACTIVE SUPPORTERS OF THE NAZIS BUT DID NOT OPPOSE THEM AND TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THE SITUATION

                  From page 12: "Well for somebody who objects to being called a "Milo-sympathiszer" you've been remarkably symathetic to him."

                  YOU HAVE GIVEN MILO, REPEATEDLY THE BENFIT OF THE DOUBT>

                  and "If you're really not a fascist- or fascist sympathiser you need to get out more."

                  and "Just don't be surprised when other people assume, on the basis of what you actually write, that's where your sympathies lie."

                  and then finally you try to dial it back with "I wouldn't necessarily call Bruno a Nazi sympathiser. On this thread though he has been sympathising with a man I consider a nazi or at best a fellow traveller."

                  NOT DIALLING ANYTHING BACK. JUST CALLING IT AS I SEE IT. YOU HAVE MINIMISED OR EXCUSED THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN PETERSON AND MILO AND ALSO BETWEEN MILO AND SWASTIKA CARRYING NEO_NAZIS. I DON"T THINK IT"S BECAUSE YOU'RE A NEO NAZI. I THINK IT HAS TO DO WITH YOUR TECHNIQUE OF CONDUCTING ARGUMENTS>


                  So all of that added together doesn't amount to calling me a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer. Sure okay.

                  Comment


                    My $.02:

                    Peterson is of the right. But he's a nineteenth-century christian reactionary, not a fascist. His whole basic philosophy is a) we need rules as a society, without rules things quickly become chaos, b) tradition and myths give us rules, c) don't fuck with tradition and myths. So, for instance this is why he thinks movies like Frozen are dangerous propaganda is because they subvert traditional gender roles. (more generally, he thinks order is male and chaos is female, because of some weird definition of yin-yang he seems to have picked up from a cereal box). I think my favourite bit of his book is where he talks about how important it is for people to have role models. The male example he gives is John van Neumann. His female examples are Anita Ekberg and Monica Bellucci.

                    He has been adopted by the alt-right to some extent, not because they have read or understand him (because fuck is he ever tedious), but because he triggers people on the left. I think he enjoyed the attention from that quarter for awhile and there are certainly photos of him with a pair of Cdn white nationalists holding a pepe flag and smiling. But he has more recently denounced them. Decide for yourself if that makes him a fellow-traveller. Angela Nagle (author of the fantastic "Kill all Normies", which is an amazing history of the online alt-right) views him as a positive, restraining influence compared to the Milos of the world. I personally am not inclined to be quite that generous, but make of it what you will.

                    Comment


                      I've just gone back to the start of the thread and realised UA already put my $.02 in for me by linking to my review. Sorry for what amounts to a double-post.

                      Comment


                        Well, he’s Canadian, so...

                        I just think he’s the Dr Oz of long-winded public intellectuals. Maybe he was once a legit expert in his narrow field, but now he’s just peddling bullshit for a buck.

                        Comment


                          Originally posted by Bruno
                          And this is hilarious

                          France is an extremely insular culture, always has been. Everything is in France and nothing is anywhere else, anything that’s anywhere else doesn’t matter.
                          Ha ha, indeed, hilarious, and bang on the money.

                          I remember holidaying there in farm cottages (through Gits de France) in the 1980-90s and trying to chat with the locals about deconstruction, Derrida, Saussure etc. They thought I wanted to take down the gite’s curtains with my Doc Martens… Dunno, maybe it was my French but I doubt it, I’m pretty fluent. Nice enough people but I couldn’t believe how insular and ignorant they all were TBH.

                          By contrast, I’ve also holidayed in North America, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Greece etc. and every time I broached these subjects with the locals (who were equally conversant with logic positivism, structuralism, Lacan etc.), they would spontaneously engage with me and we would debate animatedly on these weighty matters, they'd often proceed (unprompted) to give me a precis or even a lecture on the finer points of whatever doctrines we happened to be discoursing about.

                          But in France, forget it, it’s all about Camembert, Maigret and Maurice Chevalier there, just as Chomsky says, they haven’t moved on and I doubt they ever will. And he should know of course, he is a pretty modern sort of guy with a near-native command of the language, an excellent grasp on current French trends and the broader aspects of French culture, he’s got his finger firmly on the pulse of all things French, he certainly isn’t the sort of guy who could be suspected of being stuck in a timewarp with a trunkful of axes to grind for company, absolutely not.
                          Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 18-03-2018, 17:10.

                          Comment


                            Feel like I’ve aged five years since this thread blew up. I am tired, I am weary.

                            Comment


                              Originally posted by Bruno
                              Right. Humans are dealing with a more complicated tension between biological self-interest and immediate self-interest aka self-gratification.
                              Heterosexuals.

                              Comment


                                Oh, and wasn't Maigret slightly Belgian?

                                Comment


                                  Originally posted by Bruno
                                  Peterson that is, obv, not Chomsky.

                                  It's the same in my field with France, insular as fuck, albeit with a few notable exceptions.
                                  I wasn't talking about your field but about what Chomsky says in the clip and how he frames it. In a nutshell, he is basically 90% wrong. There is, as ever, a kernel of truth in what he says but his angle is very very narrow so that totally invalidates his whole point. I could explain to you why he is 90% wrong but I get the feeling I'd be wasting my time so I'll move on.

                                  I need to educate myself about your bloke Peterson now, never heard of him before perusing this thread this afternoon.

                                  Comment


                                    90% wrong, but with a kernel of truth in some of the things he says, although those are often close-to-invalidated by the nonsense in the rest of his arguments - is pretty much a good description of Peterson, I'd say.

                                    Comment


                                      Originally posted by Bruno
                                      Sure okay.



                                      I think I'm more about avoiding exaggeration if I can, which to someone who's more of a maximalist will look like minimalizing. I have no desire to excuse Milo for any bad behaviors and haven't done. I had no kind things to say about him here, although I assume he's not, you know, pure evil. I have to say it's awfully weird to talk about a "neo-Nazi" who's as vociferously "anti-authoritarian" and "pro-free speech" as he is. Nazis are pro-authoritarian and anti-free speech by definition. So I would guess, based on the evidence I've seen, that he's not a neo-Nazi but rather a shameless unfunny irresponsible troll. If that's minimalizing to you, I'm okay with it.

                                      The "connections" that I've seen between Milo and Peterson appear slight. Peterson is naively taking an "I don't have a political agenda, I'm just about the truth and talking to everyone" strategy, so he's not going to treat someone like Milo, who, whatever you want to say about him, was accepted in polite company for a while, as radioactive. (I watched Bill Maher interview Milo and conclude that he was wrong about tons of things and Milo acts like a smug prick but does, does exhibit concern for defending some liberal ideas.) The FB post that Peterson linked to wasn't overtly political, it wasn't a "neo-Nazi" post, it was a typical anti-PC-brigade salvo. Peterson does, though, appear to have more respect for Milo than I do. He's referred to him (months before the karaoke story broke) as "an amazing person"; if you listen to it in context, he appears to mean amazing more in the sense of a remarkable set of contradictions. He calls him a court jester, comedian, provocateur, egomaniac, and "trickster," "saying things that no one will say." He credits him with "telling the truth" and being "brave". Some of that is fair description, but I myself have a more contemptuous view. It's not enough to make me call Peterson a "Nazi sympathizer," certainly, which to my mind should come down to "open sympathy for Nazi ideology."

                                      I've gathered that the bar here for labeling people Nazis or fascists, which are both political and personality labels nowadays, is lower than what I'm used to. My "technique of conducting arguments" entails, to the best of my ability and in good conscience, not jumping to extreme conclusions about people without sufficient evidence.
                                      Thanks for your response. I'm glad that you are more contemptuous of Milo then Peterson is. (I've not called Peterson a Nazi sympathiser either. I think he's playing with fire and rather flattered by the attention of some very unpleasant people. I also think he's not as smart as he thinks he is. )

                                      I don't think he's worth the detailed attention you've given him. There are better people to have debates about. I agree that why people get fascinated by someone like Peterson is an interesting question, but I think it has very little to do with what he actually says, let alone the intellectual content of his argument.

                                      Comment


                                        Originally posted by Bruno
                                        I did pick up on your irony, and I called the video hilarious because of how polemical Chomsky is in that calm way specially designed to infuriate people who'd disagree. It's hilariously catty. With that said though, the insularity thing is more than a kernel of truth according to anyone in my field I've ever heard from with direct experience of it.
                                        Nah, he's lost the plot. He doesn't infuriate anyone, certainly not me, I've known him since the 1980s.

                                        Comment


                                          Anyway, back to Peterson.

                                          I don’t know him well at all, I’d only vaguely heard of him before perusing this thread today (must say, he doesn’t exactly set the pulses racing, he really comes across as dangerous but then, all authoritarian loons do whatever their political persuasion - crikey, we've had more than our share of nutty leftwing intellectuals in France!) but I’m just going to focus on the self-help side of things here.

                                          I’ve long been sceptical of self-help books in general, although I’m sure that the quality of the self-help literature varies a lot across the industry (quality control would be necessary but probably impossible) and Peterson’s books could well be excellent, I’m not passing a judgement on his work here.

                                          I know, and have known, a number of people who have used such books and I’d say that not only do they not work IMO but they can be dangerous too as they tend to mislead people into thinking that the problems they’re trying to solve are of their own making.

                                          I think that the original self-help literature (of the Dale Carnegie type) was probably good for what it tried to achieve. Users would generally be people who wanted to be more confident, or more charismatic/successful etc. with the odd person who maybe suffered from stress. These problems were probably benign enough for those books to address them reasonably effectively on balance, or at least have no detrimental effect. And still now, at a basic level, I’m certain that good self-help books can help.

                                          However, the exponential rise in sales in the last decade or two betokens the fact that the problems self-help books seek to address are much wider and more serious than previously, often encroaching on social and mental health territory. As sales have skyrocketed, so have the causes such books try to solve and therein lies the rub.

                                          To me, the major flaw with self-help books it that they focus on individual solutions to problems that are often very complex (usually of a social, economic and/or emotional nature, or to do with low self-esteem, health, sentimental life etc.) and because of this focus, irrespective of context, they promote the idea that the individual him/herself is the source, and solution to, any difficulties they face.

                                          And that’s dangerous because it can mean in effect that the individual is blamed for everything (financial, professional, health-related, emotional issues etc.). Therefore, instead of helping, those books, and their often simplistic mantras, can contribute to (increasing) the very fears and insecurities they try to assuage.
                                          Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 18-03-2018, 21:37.

                                          Comment


                                            French culture is insular, but I find it hard to believe that it's any more insular than US culture. For one thing, all French people learn a second language at school, and they're constantly exposed to US culture (as well as a fair bit of other foreign cultures) whether they seek it or not, whereas I very much doubt the reverse is true.

                                            Comment


                                              Originally posted by Bruno
                                              Oh, I'd never suggest they're less educated. The suggestion, as I've always heard it, isn't of being provincial but of being exclusive.
                                              OK, I'm not sure I know what you mean here but I don't think it's something I recognise.

                                              Comment


                                                Originally posted by Fussbudget View Post
                                                French culture is insular, but I find it hard to believe that it's any more insular than US culture. For one thing, all French people learn a second language at school, and they're constantly exposed to US culture (as well as a fair bit of other foreign cultures) whether they seek it or not, whereas I very much doubt the reverse is true.
                                                It is all relative, I think we all agree on this, which is my point (post #426).

                                                It's more:

                                                a) the way Chomsky generally presents it

                                                b) what he says in the clip (watch it, it's interesting)

                                                c) the examples he takes, he's very selective and disingenuous IMO (he focuses almost exclusively on the communists and communist/very leftwing intellectuals - without giving hardly any names, he mutters a name, can't remember who. But there were were plenty of other intellectuals in France post the 1950s-1960s era and especially post Hungarian uprising of 1956 and post 1968, even leftwing ones, who certainly didn't wait until the 1980s to denounce the horrors of communism. Of course the French parti communiste were never going to go down that route, they were bankrolled by Moscow!)

                                                d) the extreme approach he takes (eg the sentence I extracted: "France is an extremely insular culture, always has been. Everything is in France and nothing is anywhere else, anything that’s anywhere else doesn’t matter."

                                                e) his time frame and his narrow angle: he stops his analysis at, roughly, the 1980 decade but uses the present, France is an extremely etc. always has been, everything is etc. And there is an awful lot he is not taking into account here.

                                                And probably a few other things too... I think he has some sort of beef against some French intellectuals, he doesn't seem adverse to a bit of gratuitous French-bashing, I think his prejudices have clouded both his vision and his judgement. He's also admitted himself in the past that he didn't understand Derrida for instance (understandable as the latter is not the most accessible of philosophers).
                                                Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 18-03-2018, 22:30.

                                                Comment


                                                  Heh, maybe Chomsky filled a similar role as Peterson for a certain type of lazy but with pretensions of clever male (who 20 years back was probably on the left. Now the taboo of being of the Right has gone). A Chomsky on an acquaintance’s bookshelf, you just knew you were in for a good hour of dudesplaining before you’d get any slatey stuff to go from the fucker.
                                                  Last edited by Lang Spoon; 18-03-2018, 22:45.

                                                  Comment


                                                    Are you saying Chomsky is a hack or just that carrying his books is a similar kind of signaling/token thing?

                                                    Chomsky at least writes and speaks clearly and has contributed a lot to his academic field - which I don’t know much about - aside from his activism.

                                                    Having said that, I haven’t read much of his stuff. He seems to say the same thing over and over. He’s usually right, though sometimes he shoehorns in his basic theory about the world into places it doesn’t apply. The geopolitical version of “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

                                                    I’ve also never read A People’s History of the US. It doesn’t have footnotes and, as far as I can tell, Zinn wasn’t much of an historian. Great activist, of course.

                                                    Maybe people who got a really shitty high school history education need someone to show them there’s more to it, but it’s not like he invented social history. I know how to identify and read real history books from real historians and journalists.

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