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Lobster Boy (was: This Jordan Peterson Guy)

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    You don’t have to be weird to be weird. Wise words from MES as always. Sometimes a fascist is just a fascist and playing around with Horus or whatever doesn’t change things. Other fash of a certain age and culture were obsessed by the Grail.

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      The Ones who favour order, quickly exterminate the ones who want chaos after the takeover.

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        This. So many brownshirts.

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          The useful idiots, to be thrown away at the first chance, doubt liquidating need be physical these days.

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            Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
            Possibly not, but the collective zeigeist certainly feels different, and not in a good way. It may be true that we are more aware today. Or that many people then were aware but more tolerant, or — conversely — more intimidated. Of course I'm definitely checking my privilege when I say that, I speak only from my own experience, and my sense of others I know well. There are other factors though. The scale and and speed at which information and misinformation travels. The lack of privacy. A sense of disembodiment in our personal interactions. All these are disorienting and, in the long term, serve to separate rather than unify I feel. But I honestly don't know that. I just wish I felt better about the condition of road I've been traveling on for seventy years than I did when I stepped out on it. But I don't.
            It’s Durkheim’s anomie, isn’t it (when extrapolated to society as a whole).

            Anomie, also spelled anomy, in societies or individuals, a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals.

            The term was introduced by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his study of suicide. He believed that one type of suicide (anomic) resulted from the breakdown of the social standards necessary for regulating behaviour. When a social system is in a state of anomie, common values and common meanings are no longer understood or accepted, and new values and meanings have not developed. According to Durkheim, such a society produces, in many of its members, psychological states characterized by a sense of futility, lack of purpose, and emotional emptiness and despair. Striving is considered useless, because there is no accepted definition of what is desirable.
            And more generally, this. And this (wiki links).

            It also has strong echoes of Bourdieu’s prescient theories on neoliberalism, as expounded in his essay The essence of neoliberalism, on which I posted last October in the Brexit thread.

            (In summary: the methodical destruction of collectives that hinder the logic of free market leads to the alienation and estrangement of workers. Sixth paragraph down in the link: "Neoliberalism tends on the whole to favour severing the economy from social realities and thereby constructing, in reality, an economic system conforming to its description in pure theory, that is a sort of logical machine that presents itself as a chain of constraints regulating economic agents.")

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              According to Durkheim, such a society produces, in many of its members, psychological states characterized by a sense of futility, lack of purpose, and emotional emptiness and despair. Striving is considered useless, because there is no accepted definition of what is desirable.

              Very close to that, yes.

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                https://twitter.com/SuzeMarsupial/status/977244414300053505

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                  What a fud he is. He’s going to start quoting the Bell Curve next. Anyone who’d make a video with that title, what a sniveling wee fuck he is. A Hero Of Our Time. And look at what he’s enabling and providing an intellectual veneer to.

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                    What the hell is JP’s twitter profile pic?

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                      Cover of his book

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                        Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                        According to Durkheim, such a society produces, in many of its members, psychological states characterized by a sense of futility, lack of purpose, and emotional emptiness and despair. Striving is considered useless, because there is no accepted definition of what is desirable.

                        Very close to that, yes.
                        That’s close to the existentialists idea of the absurd.

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                          If you like. But, I never really was one for berets and Gauloises.

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                            That article is really quite good. A bit Florrid though, and tough going in places.

                            The thing that I find curious about the whole thing though is the failure of the left to find an alternative to dealing with the fundamental changes in the economy since the second world war, to wit, the invention of the cargo container, the Jet airliner, the Forklift truck, the computer, and the sudden discovery that people anywhere can make anything. These are all events that happened anyway, what has followed wasn't inevitable at all. The era of free trade played out very differently on the confident. The European union is full of countries with the same levels of equality that the UK had through the 60's and 70's. The UK's Gini Coefficient fluctuated between 0.26 and 0.28, until Thatcher blew it up to 0.34 in a very short space of time. It wobbled around for a bit, and fell under Major, before rising fairly steadily under the first and third labour govts. And to be honest, I consider that unforgivable. That a supposedly left wing party could rule like kings for 13 years and not only not try to address these problems (and it's easily done) but instead make them worse.

                            Of the non former eastern bloc countries, In the Eu, Denmark, norway(I know) finland, belgium, sweden, Austria, luxembourg and germany, all have levels of inequality directly comparable with the UK in the 60s and 70's. It's worth pointing out that all of these countries are much richer than the UK. The slovak republic, Slovenia and the Czech republic are all right up near the top of the league table. These countries are catching up with the Uk quite quickly. In the last 20 years ireland has done the Thatcherism impact exactly in reverse, . Greater inequality isn't an inevitable byproduct of the changes to the economy. That's just a choice. Neoliberalism seems to largely consist of saying that it is. That's a result of failing to raise enough tax income from rich people. Neo liberalism to me seems to be taking every part of the economic changes and hijacking it to the benefit of the wealthy at every single opportunity. The underpinning of it is less important that what it actually does in practice.

                            I get why neoliberals think the way they do, They're sociopaths. But that doesn't explain how the left in England spent the first six years of thatcherism tied up in the lunacy of the miners strike, and then intellectually gave up. I was reading through the 1983 labour manifesto there, and while a some of it is visionary, and would have been transformative, and the most striking thing about it is that it is written by people who are clearly capable of empathy (Which is very rare nowadays) a lot of it is simply trying to wish away the modern world, and reminds me a lot of the impulse that underpins brexit. I mean, it contains Brexit for a start. The problem is that the various good bits of it would have been completely obliterated by the impacts of all the essentially backwards looking bits of it.

                            I was reading through it and it wound up reminding me a bit of Unionism, wed to a vision of an industrial mass employment past, divorced from any sense that the foundations it rested on fundamentally shifted. Unionism only makes sense if you remember that it was essentially created in 1912, when Belfast was the biggest shipbuilding city in the empire, and the fastest growing city in the world. (the World War I arms race was great for belfast) It's fundamentally based on golden age nostalgia. The British economy that this document is predicated on is the post war one, which is still built on the premise that it's servicing the market of the biggest imperial power in the world, and literally has a captive market of a quarter of the world's population to sell to. this fundamentally changed in the 25 years after the war, but the negative impacts were masked by the rising tide effect of the post war European boom. But when that subsided, things started to go terribly wrong. This is around the time that my parents stopped buying Hillman hunters because the last one they got was such a fucking nightmare in every conceivable respect, and bought a Datsun. I can't help feeling that that was the last spluttering cough of the canary

                            Lets try and go back to the way it was when things weren't going very well, or Burn it all down. What a great fucking choice for people in 1983.
                            Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 26-03-2018, 01:37.

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                              Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                              The UK's Gini Coefficient fluctuated between 0.26 and 0.28, until Thatcher blew it up to 0.34 in a very short space of time. It wobbled around for a bit, and fell under Major, before rising fairly steadily under the first and third labour govts. And to be honest, I consider that unforgivable. That a supposedly left wing party could rule like kings for 13 years and not only not try to address these problems (and it's easily done) but instead make them worse.
                              Between 1997 and 2010 it bounced around between .34 and .36. Under Harold Wilson it bounced around between .25 and .27. Not sure there is an enormous distinction to be made there.

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                                Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                                If you like. But, I never really was one for berets and Gauloises.
                                Some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

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                                  I suppose they do, without considering either what that is, or what degree of it they'd like to be — assuming they even a choice in the matter. I can't really empathise I'm afraid. When I was younger I want to be anything but normal, and pretty much failed.

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                                    Camus said it.

                                    I always struggled with all that. I don’t want to conform to anybody else’s idea just for the sake of being normal. More often, I’ve spent a lot of mental energy on resisting all kinds of peer pressure.

                                    But I’m not comfortable standing out or being in the spotlight. And when I find myself being unusual or going against the flow, I fear I’m just doing life wrong. But whenever I see one of those click bait articles saying “such and such you must watch” or “if you’re not listening to this, you’re doing it wrong,” I want to drive to the author’s house and smack them in the face.

                                    It’s a conundrum.

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                                      Originally posted by Anton Gramscescu View Post
                                      Between 1997 and 2010 it bounced around between .34 and .36. Under Harold Wilson it bounced around between .25 and .27. Not sure there is an enormous distinction to be made there.
                                      well for a start it's nearly 10 points higher, That's a fucking massive difference that they did nothing about. They responded like everything was fine. The other thing is that it rises through the first labour govt, up until the 2001 global dip after september 11, which leads to a temporary fall, until it starts to rise again. The three problems I have with that is that they didn't a) see it as a massive problem that they should do something about, through adopting a normal european style taxation and redistribution regime, and a standard European level of govt spending b) simultaneously increasing working conditions for people on lower wages. c) they were happy to let it steadily rise, as though it was none of their concern.

                                      It's a fucking disgrace.
                                      Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 26-03-2018, 10:44.

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                                        You take your eye off this thread for a few days and it pops back up looking at the Gini coefficient. But yeah, TAB's right on this one, the difference there is significant. In terms of OECD countries, for example, being around 40 puts you in USian levels of inequality. Being sub-30 puts you with with the BeNeNordics.

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                                          Yes, but TAB, they only had a working majority larger than all but three governments since 1945, so I guess we should be satisifed with Sure Start.

                                          My hatred for the squandering of that opportunity knows no bounds. Even befroe Iraq, Blair was a fucking disgrace.

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                                            Originally posted by Kevin S View Post
                                            You take your eye off this thread for a few days and it pops back up looking at the Gini coefficient. But yeah, TAB's right on this one, the difference there is significant. In terms of OECD countries, for example, being around 40 puts you in USian levels of inequality. Being sub-30 puts you with with the BeNeNordics.
                                            and Ireland. It's amazing that ireland managed to do what New Labour should have been doing in spite of Ireland being run by thatcherites, and the UK being run supposedly by social democrats. Then again our electoral system requires even thatcherites to share it around.

                                            It's amazing how fucking bad your politicians are at running your country.
                                            Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 26-03-2018, 11:12.

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                                              Yes, but TAB, they only had a working majority larger than all but three governments since 1945, so I guess we should be satisifed with Sure Start.

                                              My hatred for the squandering of that opportunity knows no bounds. Even befroe Iraq, Blair was a fucking disgrace.


                                              I came across an article I wrote in a college magazine in 1998-99, attacking tony Blair for essentially being a tory in drag, and complaining that labour were squandering a huge opportunity to fundamentally change britain for the better, by serving up Thatcherism with a smarmy smile. He didn't seem to fundamentally understand the point of the labour party, and came across as a smarmy vicar. Smarmy came up several times. The other thing was that it was clear that the tories weren't going to get back for at least one, or two elections, even if labour killed every first born during their first term, so what were they worried about.

                                              so it was clearly obvious at the time.

                                              Anyway back to self regarding peddlers of comforting stories to the comfortable, and justifiers of the status quo.
                                              Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 26-03-2018, 11:13.

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                                                Originally posted by Bruno
                                                For more context, here's what Peterson has said on IQ:

                                                "IQ is a particularly ugly aspect of science, because the IQ literature reveals that which no one would want to be the case, which is that there are profound and virtually irremediable differences in people's cognitive performance, and that those differences have a very solid biological and heritable basis. No one wants to hear that. They don't want to hear that it's biological, they don't want to hear that it's heritable, they don't want to hear that it's permanent, they don't want to hear that it's irremediable, and that it actually has a practical consequence.... The gender differences in IQ look relatively trivial, but there are differences in ethnicities that don't look trivial. The Ashkenazi Jews, for example, have on average a 15-point advantage over the rest of the Caucasian population, which is sufficient to account for their radical over-representation in positions of authority and influence and productivity. And just so that it's absolutely clear, I am not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying there's a real reason for it that no one wants to contend with."

                                                I haven't read The Bell Curve and am aware that it's regarded as a deeply politically incorrect and indeed racist book. I don't know that I personally would have the right training or background to evaluate it. I don't know what the other scientific literature on IQ says, or if there's any scientific consensus about ethnicity and IQ. I presume Peterson isn't just pulling the 15-point figure out of thin air, don't know where he got it, and I can't conclude from the above that he has a racist interest in "stopping the Jews." I would have no idea how to separate cultural from biological factors when it comes to IQ, and maybe Peterson wouldn't either. "Over-represented" is a neutral statistical term of relativity meaning a disproportionately large percentage.

                                                This review of The Bell Curve claims that it's been widely mischaracterized by people who haven't read it or understood it.

                                                http://quillette.com/2017/03/27/a-ta...o-bell-curves/

                                                It allows that some of the book's conclusions could be wrong but that they're not argued unreasonably. I don't have an opinion on it, but I know that people here think I'm a sexist racist fascist right-wing Peterson-loving idiot and will assume I'm acting accordingly by posting this.
                                                Haven't read the bell curve and i won't because i think its premise is flawed and the only conclusions it could possible reach are racist ones.

                                                Three things:
                                                1) race science is pseudo-science. Anyone who talks about "race" as a real, scientific construct as opposed to a social construct is a charlatan. Anyone who talks about "blacks" and "whites" as though you can divide the US population on a genetic basis in that way has an agenda.
                                                2) IQ is culturally dependent
                                                3) Science is not culturally neutral

                                                Charles Murray sounds pretty racist to me.

                                                Good 23 year old article about the racist roots of the Bell Curve's science. Anyone rehabilitating it now has an agenda.
                                                http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994...he-bell-curve/
                                                Last edited by Bizarre Löw Triangle; 27-03-2018, 12:36.

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                                                  Bruno, IQ tests were initially designed to prove that eastern European Migrants were borderline handicapped because they couldn't complete famous current advertising slogans in english. They have massive cultural biases built into them from the beginning. The best predictor of doing well on an iq test is familiarity with IQ tests. The man is a fucking gibbering idiot.

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                                                    Well, in the passage you quote he says it's biological. He doesn't say it's cultural. And he makes no attempt to separate out the two.

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