One thing we forgetting.

"

erdelyii wrote:

"

Jordan Peterson Is Divisive Because of His Weaknesses, Not His Strengths
Jordan Peterson is merely the 2018 version of Robert Bly and the mythopoetic movement of the 1980s

Michael Barnard

Spoiler

Jordan Peterson is many things. He’s a former clinical psychologist and a former University of Toronto professor. He’s a best selling author of Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote To Chaos and he’s a YouTube and Patreon star who makes a reported $100,000 a month. He’s become famous in large part for his refusal to address students by their preferred gender-neutral pronouns.

He’s been called the most influential public intellectual in the Western world and the intellectual we deserve. He’s also been called an intellectual huckster, the stupid man’s smart person, a secularized televangelist, and dangerous.

So why is he so divisive? Why are so many intelligent, educated people deeply leery of Peterson while so many others are deeply enamored of him and his ideas?

His Academic Merit
Peterson was a serious academic with rock-solid credentials and academic publications within his discipline. He has a PhD from McGill University, one of Canada’s best universities, taught and researched at Harvard University, and was a tenured Professor at the University of Toronto. However, the philosophical background for his book, 12 Rules for Life and his YouTube popularity over his gender pronouns debate arise not from his area of academic expertise, but from non-adjacent areas in which he has no academic expertise. Many of his supporters extend his academic expertise and bona fides to his popular writings, but many don’t; therein lies one divide.

His Social Ideas
Peterson is a social conservative of a particular type. He’s Christian. He thinks men are inherently different than women and that is a positive versus merely interesting thing. He has a theory of masculinity, which is patriarchal in nature. He has a strong belief — see his lobster metaphor — that humans are inherently and innately hierarchical and that men should be more dominant. He’s on record as espousing enforced monogamy. He refuses to use gender-neutral pronouns. Some social conservatives find his stance appealing; some social conservatives don’t. Therein lies another divide.

He Patronizes Extremists
His comments on enforced monogamy, especially, have made Peterson the patron saint of incels, MGTOW, and men’s rights activist-types. These are men who, because of their toxic misogyny, have significant problems having any type of beneficial relationship with women; men who are much more likely to be violent to women, often fatally. Peterson is giving them quasi-intellectual cover for their misogyny and has been for years, often in one-on-one Skype counseling sessions for which he charges $200.

He does not draw a clear line. Instead, he allows his better ideas to be expropriated and turned into vileness. His propensity for authoritarian demagoguery, as noted by his former mentor, means he says more of the things the masses like to hear. He echoes their echoes and makes a great deal of money from it.

For misogynists, this doesn’t seem problematic. For the rest of us, it’s an ugly and venal aspect of Peterson that makes us even less interested in what simplistic nuggets of guidance he’s actually right about.

Carl Jung
Within the mythopoetic men’s movement, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung is a rock upon which entire philosophies of thought, belief and action can be built without qualm. For the rest of us, Jung is an interesting historical character, who had a few good insights but has been superseded by empirical reality. Peterson is all over Jung, as Robert Bly was in the early-1980s. Most of Peterson’s readers have vaguely heard of Jung and gain most of their knowledge of him through reading Peterson. People who have moved on from Jung shake their heads over his recurrence.

The Quality of His Advice
Some of his advice is good, but incredibly obvious; some of his advice is head-scratching; and some of his advice is pure farce. Here is the complete list of Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life:

Stand up straight with your shoulders back
Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
Make friends with people who want the best for you
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
Tell the truth — or, at least, don’t lie
Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
Be precise in your speech
Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
Be truthful, don’t be friends with people who are going to backstab you, make your bed. Sure. Okay. But that’s dime-store wisdom. Pet a cat? Shoulders back? Don’t let your children make you hate them? This is fatuous stuff, even by the standards of genre of self-help books.

As for “be precise,” as all of the critics point out, Peterson couldn’t be precise if his life depended on it. And the humility part is not his strong suit.

There is a strong division between people who think Peterson’s rules are amazingly wise and offer valuable guidance, and those who look at them and think that they are trite, obvious, or merely silly.

His “Inherent Genius”
His followers and advocates seem to think that Peterson is an unrivaled genius; most of the rest of us think he’s a bright guy who’s showing strong signs of being unhinged.

Peterson is merely the current front-man for the recurrent and always mythical crisis of masculinity. Last time around it was Robert Bly, Joseph Campbell, and Robert Johnson who were the foci. This crisis of masculinity occurs in relatively affluent younger, white males with too much time on their hands. The focal points for action are always older white father figures. The repetition is merely tiresome and predictable.

The excesses of the adherents to the crisis of masculinity movement are mostly harmless, except that we are in an era of self-radicalization on the internet; incels are turning into mass murderers and the single biggest predictor of mass violence is previous domestic violence against women. We are in an era when absurdly puffed up strongmen are leading countries.

Those of us who think Peterson is dangerous point to his worst and most dangerous adherents and ask why he isn’t actively talking them down instead of talking them up.

That article is full of claims that are deliberately misleading, starting from the second sentence of the article: Jordan Peterson is a current (and, technically, former) professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. If you did cursory fact-checking you'd be suspicious of this piece from the outset.

Other dubious claims include, but are not limited to:
- Christianity: Peterson has claimed in an interview to be Christian, but this claim doesn't mesh with most any understanding of Christianity. For instance, Peterson has described his own agnosticism in detail. When asked whether he believed Jesus resurrected from the dead, his answer (paraphrased) was that we don't have enough data to definitively know the answer, and thus, quite reasonably according to him, he hasn't made up his mind one way or the other. That's a remarkable level of agnosticism, and an astonishing rejection of a belief atheists would hold as self-evident, but not really Christianity. In short, he's an agnostic who blatantly dogwhistles to Christians and was quotemined into the Christian label.
- Lobster metaphor: It isn't a metaphor. Lobsters literally react to the same sorts of antidepressants that work on humans, and in similar ways, because the chemical neurology of both species, according to Peterson, processes social hierarchies. Lobsters literally feel the types of stresses that antidepressants treat (which is admittedly a fairly good argument for ethical veganism).
- Male lobster dominance: This article implies that Peterson uses lobster neurology to argue for males to behave in a more dominant manner. Peterson doesn't connect these two things, at least not directly.
- His popular ideas are outside his expertise: This is like saying the his comments about lobster hierarchy are outside his area of expertise in the neurological effects of antidepressants (on humans and otherwise).
- Enforced monogamy: I'll let Peterson defend himself on this one. TL;DR: All he's saying is that social norms against cheating on your significant other — in short, both male and female slutshaming mechanisms — are socially useful. Definitely not a prohibition on either temporary or permanent female celibacy.
-"He does not draw a clear line": See link above (and, to be fair, the criticism I agree with below).
-MGTOW/incels: It would be fair to say that deceptively-quoted misrepresentations of Peterson's comments on enforced monogamy have indeed made Peterson the patron saint of "low-information" incels, MGTOW, and men’s rights activist-types (which means: almost all of them). In reality, his criticism of sexual cheaters isn't something these groups would oppose, but it's not exactly supporting them either.
- "Those of us who think Peterson is dangerous": Did you read that list of 12 rules? I can maybe see the "common sense, boring" argument, but that is not the manifesto of a dangerous extremist.

I will give the article one good point though: for someone who proclaims precision of speech to be a cardinal virtue, Peterson sure is confusingly vague as fuck sometimes. As a psychologist Peterson should know that verbosity and precision aren't synonyms. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Jordan Peterson is many things. He’s a former clinical psychologist and a former University of Toronto professor. He’s a best selling author of Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote To Chaos and he’s a YouTube and Patreon star who makes a reported $100,000 a month. He’s become famous in large part for his refusal to address students by their preferred gender-neutral pronouns.

I don't know who the heck this dude is, so thanks for your review of what's been presented so far. :) That's why I'm quoting you - So I can pontificate on some of your specific point. (If I knew who the heck this guy was, I'd probably be able to say I'm in unquestionable agreement with you.)

"

He’s been called the most influential public intellectual in the Western world and the intellectual we deserve. He’s also been called an intellectual huckster, the stupid man’s smart person, a secularized televangelist, and dangerous.

He seems to me to be some sort of evangelist. The world is littered with "Self-Help" prophets. To me, most of them seem to think they've got some new idea they want to share, but their ideas aren't usually fully-formed and they're most certainly not new... So, wtf are these people, then? Somehow, they've aquirred a soap-box and they're gonna use it...

"

His Academic Merit...

I agree with your synopsis and will add: There is no "Self Help" degree nor is there a class called "All the answers 601." Are there a few broad-based subjects available that can give us some insight? Sure. But, there are far more subjects involving what questions to ask, how to identify problems, and, by the way, here are some solutions that seem to work for large groups of people. For specific persons, the questions that apply to them, the strategies for overcoming adversity, it's always hit-or-miss and everything has to be tailor-crafted to arrive at a suitable solution. There ain't no "group therapy course" schema that's going to fix everyone's issues.

"

His Social Ideas

... are not new. They, according to what I've read in this thread, seem to be his personal view of social "ideals." Well, "OK, thanks for playing" and "we've already done that, so why didn't it work."

Until someone comes up with a plan that ensures everyone is happy and nobody hurts anyone else, anyone espousing a "Utopia" is missing the point, entirely, and they're more likely referring to their own ideals and biases. You can't "force" people to adopt a belief or social system and then pronounce it "perfect." Those subjugated peoples probably don't have that opinion, do they? :)

"

Peterson is a social conservative of a particular type...

He certainly sounds like one, but one who has invented his own social platform and then, without any direct evidence available in the real world in regards to its viability, has announced it to be entirely valid and workable... Yay? If I have to live in a swamp and someone tells me the best way to live life is not to live in a swamp, then... wtfdude? :)

His somewhat wishy-washy agnosticism is, of course, his own personal issue. But, if he starts applying that to how others should live, then I think he's missing the point, entirely. One can't adopt a non-answer to a question and then declare it as an answer. But, it's perfectly fine to answer with "I don't know." I do it all the time and it seems to work...

"

...in one-on-one Skype counseling sessions for which he charges $200.

Bingo.

I'm not someone who thinks others should give away their hard-earned expertise in practicing a profession "for free." But, he knows that "psychological counseling" isn't something best done remotely... He's being disingenuous to the profession and is certainly not using "best practices." That's fine, if he's doing it for free and including suitable advice to seek direct counseling. But, if he is practicing as a licensed psychologist, therapist, or counselor, and is doing that across "State Lines" (outside of the jurisdiction which governs his existing professional license) and charging people for the service, he's gonna get whatever license he has revoked and will possibly open himself up to some civil charges if not worse.

A licensed professional has higher standards of practice to maintain than a layman. That's why they're "licensed." If he's getting paid for it, he's definitely a "practicing licensed professional." That brings on a whole new set of rules, too, that go far beyond just asking some "dude" for personal advice... His "title" carries an implied authority that can easily cause a lot of damage to someone when used in conjunction with unsupported, unlicensed, therapy techniques.

"

For misogynists...

Someone in recent history has decided that the word "misogyny" can be applied to everything and that it can be used as a weapon to define "them." "Them," in this context, seems to be anyone that the observer disagrees with. It's become far-too-overused these days and is a hotspot of controversy because nobody pays attention to how it's really defined.

If I say "Thank you, Ma'am," which I do, because I'm an American "Southerner," a lot of groups will start screaming "misongyny" and then start adding stuff about sex and what people do with their jangly bits and, before I know it, I'm some heathen woman-hater deviant...

This is why few reasonable people pay attention to "teh internetz" and their use of that word. There are far too many people with their own extreme social views appropriating that word for their own uses.

Just my opinion, of course. :)

"

Carl Jung

"Ooooh, sounds all "intelligent" an' stuff, since someone mentioned a "philosopher."" Whenever someone can't find a way for their proposed "philosophical" opinion to withstand close scrutiny or achieve merit on its own face, they invoke the ghosts of the ancient dead in order to attempt to gain some measure of their credibility. Too often, they don't realize those people, when living, were pretty darn screwed up individuals... :) And, as you point out, that's pretty much what is happening, here.

"

The Quality of His Advice

From what I have seen of it, here, it's just simple stuff. It hardly qualifies as "Advice."

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this."

"Well, then, stop doing that."

That's actually pretty good advice. :) But, it doesn't solve that person's specific problems, does it?

Peterson's "Life Advice" seems to exist in a Utopia where there are no intrinsic mechanisms that actively work against actually achieving his ideal state of someone being able to truly apply all his advice. That's not unusual, since most prophets that develop complex "life advice" systems generally adopt the same strategy of ignoring any problems of practical implementation. :)

"Do this!"

"But, I can't achieve that, so what do I do."

"You must be doing it wrong! You are fail! Do the thing! Do it moar betterer!"

/sigh

"

Some of his advice is good, but incredibly obvious; some of his advice is head-scratching; and some of his advice is pure farce. Here is the complete list of Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life:

Here's a secret. I'm not charging for this, so don't let anyone else know, ok? Thanks! ;)

Whenever you want to get someone to agree with you, start off with something that they will agree with before you introduce the thing that you know they may not agree with. You'll easily get them to start agreeing with you and they're more likely, because of that, to agree with the thing they wouldn't normally agree with. At the very least, they'll be more likely to accept that your controversial point has a lot more merit and should be considered in a more positive light. After all, they've been agreeing with you this whole time, so they couldn't be making a mistake in doing that, right?

"We shouldn't hurt people, right?"

"We shouldn't let other people hurt us, but we have protect ourselves from bad people without hurting them, too, right?"

"People generally want to be happy, right? We want to be happy, don't we?"

"We, as a collective "people," have tried all sorts of things to be happy, haven't we?"

Heck, I could go on, but the theme should be clear, right? :) In every point, I'm stating "agreements," not friggin' "Ways of living one's life." But, if I state enough "agreements" I can greatly influence the probability that people will agree with stuff they wouldn't normally agree with. And, if I can misappropriate the well-regarded opinions of others, especially "famous intellectuals" I can borrow their implied authority for my own purposes. If I think include some other well-regarded things that my audience holds in high esteem, I can take advantage of human social responses to gain acceptance for whatever the heck I want my chosen audience to accept...

This is, to me, easy stuff. And, it's written out here with examples and easily understood methods one can apply, right now, to achieve a variety of goals that involve influencing others. One can apply these things to almost any social situation one wishes. And, you know this is absolutely true because I have just created enough support for that conclusion, given one's probable agreement with the generally neutral statements...so this statement must also be true, too... right? :) YAY! I HAVE SOLVED ALL THE ISSUES WITH INLFUENCING TEH OPINIONS OF TEH OTHERS PEOPLES! Now, go start your own bajillion dollar company and take over the business world. I should write a book! /sigh

If this guy has truly come up with "all the answers" then all he has to do is write them out on one sheet of paper, since they're so simple, and he'd never have to say anything else. That's how "having all the answers tied up neatly in a short list of principles" really works.

But, for some reason, he's still babbling about stuff and doing silly things like "counseling people for money." If they can read, their problems are solved, right? So... wtf is going on, here?

Note: On friggin' lobsters. I have no idea what example he's trying to pull from lobsters, but let's be clear on something - Lobsters are friggin stupid. I know this because there's a bunch of lobsters in the tank at "Red Lobster Restaurant." They could get out of there, but they don't? Why? Because they're stupid. Well, stupid when compared to a human, at least.

A new study, a real one, was released a few days ago. It's pretty exciting stuff. It seems some smart scientists have finally nailed down something really special going on with human neurons that they can't find duplicated in some other species they've tested for. (Apologies for no link, but it made the media circuit, so it shouldn't be difficult to find.)

To sum it up: It appears that human neurons transmit electrical signals a bit slower than those of the animals tested. (Rat brains, due to their close similarity, were mentioned.) That seems a bit strange, right? Faster is more betterer, right? Not in this case. In this case, what that means is that each neuron transmitting the signal has much more influence on it than in the tested neurons of other species. This breaks the mold, so to speak, of the conventional arguments for human intelligence that are traditionally argued about. It's not necessarily the numbers, the complexity, or the structure, but a factor that multiplies the influence individual neurons have. This could, in effect, magnify all those other things traditionally examined, too, resulting in exponential increases in our cognitive ability when compared to that of other animals.

On ethology, evolutionarily derived behaviors, complex social behavior in animals, etc... If one is studying these things, and one has, then one learns that direct application of learned or even many evolutionarily reinforced behaviors in animals do not always apply to similar behaviors in human beings in modern groups. There can be very distinct and inarguable relationships, though, like stress mechanisms, hormones, physiological traits and organ function, similarities in social structures and groups, etc.. These are almost always "mechanics" dictated by their classification. But, when it comes down to the underlying causes and similarities of human behavior being compared to that of animals, the direct correlations equaling to "1" are almost nonexistent.

And, he's drawing comparisons with "lobsters?" They're friggin stoopid. I have eaten them because they are more stoopider than me. (I don't really like lobster meat, though, so they fail twice, in my opinion.)

He should at least go for examples in primates if he is trying to make invalid comparisons seem plausible. But, I expect those examples wouldn't fit his ideals. Learning that many primate groups are actually controlled by matriarchal relationships and matrilineal sub-group social structures... Well, that would go against his idealology, wouldn't it? Derp! Better not use primates as an example for his social utopia, right?

I guess he used Wikipedia entries until he found a suitable animal to use as an example... WAY TO GO, MODERN-DAY-PROPHET DUDE!

The media loves making a caricature out of Lobster Daddy. What counts for me is that he's helping thousands of young people (mostly men) to become a better version of themselves, which in turn makes the world a better place. He's also very memeable which is a bloody nice bonus. And that's no joke.

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鬼殺し wrote:

"

Morkonan wrote:

Funny stuff about Jordan 'he said with a posed look' Peterson

It's simple really. Right time, right place. Emphasis on 'right', of course. He achieved moderate fame for opposing a certain bill in Canada that squarely positioned him as the alt-right's Thinking Man, because they already had a Hypocritical Clown in Milo Y and a Real Life Woman in Ann C.

The alt right despises Jordan Peterson because Jordan Peterson continuously points put how white identitarians are essentially just anticommunist SJWs.

Not that I'd expect you to avoid painting mere conservatives, or centrists for that matter, with an alt-right brush. To be honest I don't even expect you to be aware that you're doing it.

But if you decide to clue yourself in: Peterson could reasonably be considered an attempt to revive the defeated evangeloconserve (that is, old, traditional and NOT alternative right) paradigm by reforming it via "Christian-safe" secularization. Arguably as a backlash from within the conservative movement against the increased visibility of the alt-right itself,although I'd say the surprise embrace of neoconservatism by the left (e.g. McCain) also plays a major role.

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鬼殺し wrote:

That's always been interesting me actually -- how openly Dionysian Nietzsche always was rather than Apollonian, despite sporting his own monumentally masculine moustache. The Dionysian, who is concerned so deeply with 'getting in touch with the self' and preferences pleasure and dance and song and above all *experience* over the Apollonian stance of observation and sculpture, architecture and above all *ordered distance*, strikes me as quite feminine if we consider that stoicism, stiff bearing under pressure and 'standing up straight with your shoulders back' are traditionally quintessential masculine behaviours. Holy Jesus that was a sentence.

"

Nietzsche includes Romanticism in his list of ‘false intesifications’ to be found in the arts, stating; ‘in romanticism: this constant Espressivo is no sign of strength but a feeling of deficiency’ (Nietzsche, 1968, p. 436). Thus, Nietzsche finds Romanticism to be a weak art form.

Seems I'm not the only one who this painting has always made me think of the other Friedrich

Interesting. I've never read Nietzshe...

"

And yet! There it is: The Will To Power, Nietzsche's greatest legacy by way of Heidegger (and definitely Nietzsche's toxic-as-fuck sister) -- the uberest of uber-masculine drives, and favoured philosophy of fascists everywhere (never mind that Nietzsche himself openly criticised those who would later take him up -- something, as you noted, Peterson lacks the fortitude to do himself even in the moment). Again, we have his sister to thank for this. She misappropriated his work long before anyone else, although it's possible he wouldn't be as widely known had she not.

The dude was such a fiercely strung bundle of contradictions, and that's why I just laugh when one group or another tries to appropriate him for their cause.

Well, Wikipedia sees fit to accept this as a source, so here you go. It concludes, very rightfully:

"

But in the end, people find in Nietzsche’s work what they went into it already believing.

The reflective quality to his writing, combined with its seemingly contradictory density and sinuosity, means that if you don't go in with an open mind, you'll come out with an even more galvanised closed one. Proud to say I went in blind and came out a little less so. I certainly didn't emerge a racist or a fascist. Mostly I came out of the experience of Nietzsche immersion in my early 20s a more receptive individual appreciative of just how many different ways a person can dance through their lives. Oh, and how it's not always a bad thing to think about suicide, or as I read it, the concept of a world in which one no longer dwells. What place we have in it. What place we do not. What we would leave behind. What we would take with us. In Nietzsche's words, I find these thoughts of myself in relation to everything else 'comforting on a long winter's night'...and although he didn't stress it, I think the key word is of course 'thoughts'.

And that's why the easiest way to see how badly these groups read Nietzsche is to read Nietzsche yourself. Unlike Peterson, he doesn't just collate, echo and dumb-down. Thus Spake Zarathustra is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, and my first copy's black spine has turned white from all the creases. But then I get to Beyond Good and Evil or Human, All Too Human and I'm occasionally left less impressed, because that's when the mirror tilts and stops reflecting me as a reader. Twilight of the Idols and Ecce Homo bring back that easy profundity, and to whom does the idea of 'philosophising with a hammer' not appeal!? As for The Will To Power, it is mostly amenable but has a shitty backstory, having been published posthumously by his sister with the express intention of ingratiating herself with the anti-Semitic movement. Modern editions are 'corrected' but they're still not a book Nietzsche himself wrote as a book. That book we'll never actually see. Instead we're left with a tangled mess of thoughts completely lacking his mental dexterity. Some treasure buried, certainly, but not enough to compel me.

And I need to dig up a quote about his favourable views on miscegenation that deeply appealed to me as a Eurasian raised in a Sydney suburb with precisely two Chinese families, and we were of course related somewhat distantly. I THINK it was in BGE. Will see.

I can't add anything or reflect other than to say Thus Spake appeals to me more to read now, and do find the quote.

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鬼殺し wrote:

"

erdelyii wrote:

Oh now, Electric Kool-Aid is quality stuff.

I may read that. I may not. I'm very much disavowed when it comes to drugged influence on writing (if not necessarily other art forms), believing it's at best a destructive short-cut, and at worst an excuse to write about the creases in fabric for pages on end. The whole farce calls to mind this zinger from near the end of Fear and Loathing:

"

That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit.

Oh but Tom Wolfe didn't partake, which makes the work more delightful:

"

In 1987, Wolfe spoke to Terry Gross about writing The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and about his trademark three-piece white suits, which he continued to wear while following Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

"To try and fit into that scene would have been fatal, perhaps literally fatal," he explained. "Kesey had this abiding distaste for pseudo-hippies — the journalist or the lawyer or teacher who on the weekend puts on his jeans and smokes a little dope."

Wolfe said that Kesey would often test visitors and try to determine who among them was a "weekend hippie" and who actually followed the hippie lifestyle.

"He would say, 'All right, let's everybody get naked and get on our bikes and go up Route 1,' " recalled Wolfe. "They did. This separated the hippies from the weekend hipsters very rapidly. I didn't have to worry because I was in my three-piece suit with a big blue corduroy necktie and the idea that I was going to take any of this off for anybody was crazy."


The suit, he said, functioned to differentiate him from the people he covered in his pieces — and made it clear to his subjects that he was not one of them.

"I have discovered that for me, it is much more effective to arrive in any situation as a man from Mars than to try and fit in," he said. "When I first started out in journalism, I used to try and fit in. ... I tried to fit into the scene. ... I was depriving myself of the ability of some very obvious questions if I fit in. ... After that, I gave it up. I would turn up always in a suit and just be the village information gatherer."

"

鬼殺し wrote:

I'd rather take the long way around instead of rolling the dice on seeing whether or not I'd emerge intact. You'd better believe I shared space with some pretty hardcore psychonauts over the years and pretty much all of them did emerge intact. STILL, it is a gamble and I'm not a gambling man. Or rather, I never gamble what I can't afford to lose, and my particular form of insanity is very much on that list.

Edit: That said, I did read and enjoy stuff like Confessions of an Opium Eater and, of course, Coleridge's everything. Getting back to Dionysian vs Apollonian, Coleridge's Dionysiac approach will crap all over Wordsworth's stodgy structural enslavement any day of the week. But I reckon Coleridge could have done what he did even had he not been such a dope fiend. In fact, maybe he'd have finished a few more poems.

I think they might have rubbed off on you in a good way, and I completely understand and respect the desire to protect your grey matter.

DeQuincey has one of my favourite passages:

"

“I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.”

<3

Coleridge...

"

He recorded his meetings with these three men in his travel memoir ‘English Traits’. His description of these great characters whom he met on his travels, and who were so generous in giving their day to the unknown and unpublished American is a tilted balance of slight praise and unreserved disappointment. His disappointment in his meetings with these men is most obvious in his journal entries whilst he awaited his return ship at Liverpool.

Indeed, he viewed Wordsworth as a rather tired, stern, insular man whose opinions were of no value — he spoke a lot of nothing but did so with a great sense of moral conviction. Emerson was repulsed by his conformity to the wisdom of the time. He had assumed Wordsworth, given the beauty of his poetry, to be an eccentric character, someone who had a unique perspective to share.


His visit to see Coleridge was tiresome and of no use except that Emerson could now put a face to the colourful words he had read back at home. It was a brief spectacle, without the substance of an enjoyable conversation and he left with little memory of what Coleridge had told him.

Which perhaps says more about the visitor than Coleridge story here

On to Jordan Peterson:

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Edit: as I said, though, it's all very easy to ignore. The man says nothing new and his followers think nothing new. They mostly hearken for the Better Days of the 1950s, when men were Men and women were housewives, not these pesky free-thinking possibly-educated venomous harridans they've become today. Such creatures are far too apt to decide you, as a man, just might not be worth their time. OH NOES.

That was hilarious, but it's sad that it strikes a chord in 2018.

"

Xavderion wrote:

The media loves making a caricature out of Lobster Daddy. What counts for me is that he's helping thousands of young people (mostly men) to become a better version of themselves, which in turn makes the world a better place. He's also very memeable which is a bloody nice bonus. And that's no joke.

What do you think a better version of themselves is?

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Morkonan wrote:

But, for some reason, he's still babbling about stuff and doing silly things like "counseling people for money." If they can read, their problems are solved, right? So... wtf is going on, here?

Note: On friggin' lobsters. I have no idea what example he's trying to pull from lobsters, but let's be clear on something - Lobsters are friggin stupid. I know this because there's a bunch of lobsters in the tank at "Red Lobster Restaurant." They could get out of there, but they don't? Why? Because they're stupid. Well, stupid when compared to a human, at least.

A new study, a real one, was released a few days ago. It's pretty exciting stuff. It seems some smart scientists have finally nailed down something really special going on with human neurons that they can't find duplicated in some other species they've tested for. (Apologies for no link, but it made the media circuit, so it shouldn't be difficult to find.)

To sum it up: It appears that human neurons transmit electrical signals a bit slower than those of the animals tested. (Rat brains, due to their close similarity, were mentioned.) That seems a bit strange, right? Faster is more betterer, right? Not in this case. In this case, what that means is that each neuron transmitting the signal has much more influence on it than in the tested neurons of other species. This breaks the mold, so to speak, of the conventional arguments for human intelligence that are traditionally argued about. It's not necessarily the numbers, the complexity, or the structure, but a factor that multiplies the influence individual neurons have. This could, in effect, magnify all those other things traditionally examined, too, resulting in exponential increases in our cognitive ability when compared to that of other animals.

On ethology, evolutionarily derived behaviors, complex social behavior in animals, etc... If one is studying these things, and one has, then one learns that direct application of learned or even many evolutionarily reinforced behaviors in animals do not always apply to similar behaviors in human beings in modern groups. There can be very distinct and inarguable relationships, though, like stress mechanisms, hormones, physiological traits and organ function, similarities in social structures and groups, etc.. These are almost always "mechanics" dictated by their classification. But, when it comes down to the underlying causes and similarities of human behavior being compared to that of animals, the direct correlations equaling to "1" are almost nonexistent.

And, he's drawing comparisons with "lobsters?" They're friggin stoopid. I have eaten them because they are more stoopider than me. (I don't really like lobster meat, though, so they fail twice, in my opinion.)

He should at least go for examples in primates if he is trying to make invalid comparisons seem plausible. But, I expect those examples wouldn't fit his ideals. Learning that many primate groups are actually controlled by matriarchal relationships and matrilineal sub-group social structures... Well, that would go against his idealology, wouldn't it? Derp! Better not use primates as an example for his social utopia, right?

I guess he used Wikipedia entries until he found a suitable animal to use as an example... WAY TO GO, MODERN-DAY-PROPHET DUDE!

I can't find that slower brain thing, but it sounds interesting.

I'm not too sold on humans being smarter than other animals, Certainly we can do a lot of cool stuff like invent the internet and go to the moon but we're also unfathomably stupid here's a starter.

Not only all the big bad dumb stuff, but on average --

IQ, or intelligence quotient, is a measure of your ability to reason and solve problems. It essentially reflects how well you did on a specific test as compared to other people of your age group. While tests may vary, the average IQ on many tests is 100, and 68 percent of scores lie somewhere between 85 and 115.

That means around 17% is below that.

Now I think us crowing about that is dumb, and we should appreciate the spectacular intelligence of bees, sharks, and cheetahs as much, equally, and with respect.

"

Equally important, a person who exhibits or does not exhibit aptitude in one area can only be compared within the relevant frame. It’s impossible, for example, to compare Mozart’s musical talent to Einstein’s facility with physics. As with animal intelligence, measuring human intelligence runs into problems when extrapolation extends beyond its boundaries. That is to say, the SAT might be a good measure of preparedness for college coursework, but no test can put a number on a person’s innate intellectual ability across all domains.

So is Maebe a genius with her nose?

All that can be deduced is that, compared to humans, her ability to smell is spectacular. But "smart" and "dumb" are irrelevant in cross-species comparisons. Maebe occupies a different niche, and, for her, as with all animals, the main reason for testing 'intelligence' is to reveal the skills necessary for survival in her niche, not to examine how she would fair if she occupied the human one.

article here

On the chimps and lobsters
--

Chimpanzees and bonobos, despite being closely related hominoid primates, differ in female gregariousness and dominance style. Violent male aggression is not atypical in chimpanzee societies and is vented against both other males and females in intra- as well as inter-group conflicts; relationships amongst females are rather weak. Bonobo societies, on the other hand, are female-centred; reports[Comp1] about inter-group conflict are rare to absent but there are numerous reports of blood-drawing injuries inflicted upon males by coalitions of females.

here

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

- Lobster metaphor: It isn't a metaphor. Lobsters literally react to the same sorts of antidepressants that work on humans, and in similar ways, because the chemical neurology of both species, according to Peterson, processes social hierarchies. Lobsters literally feel the types of stresses that antidepressants treat (which is admittedly a fairly good argument for ethical veganism).

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

His popular ideas are outside his expertise: This is like saying the his comments about lobster hierarchy are outside his area of expertise in the neurological effects of antidepressants (on humans and otherwise).

Actually, he doesn't even seem to know much about the latter -

"Treat"?

Oh dear no, making the lobster thing a stretch.

"

But just because antidepressants are popular doesn't mean they're helpful. Unfortunately, as we now see from this report in The New England Journal of Medicine, they don't work and have significant side effects. Most patients taking antidepressants either don't respond or have only partial response. In fact, success is considered just a 50 percent improvement in half of depressive symptoms. And this minimal result is achieved in less than half the patients taking antidepressants.

That's a pretty dismal record. It's only made worse by the fact that 86 percent of people taking antidepressants have one or more side effects, including sexual dysfunction, fatigue, insomnia, loss of mental abilities, nausea, and weight gain.

No wonder half the people who try antidepressants quit after four months.

another source -

"

Depression is a potentially life-threatening disorder affecting millions of people across the globe. It is a huge burden to both the individual and society, costing over £9 billion in 2000 alone: the World Health Organisation (WHO) cited it as the third leading cause of global disability in 2004 (first in the developed world), and project it will be the leading cause by 2030. The serendipitous discovery of antidepressants has revolutionized both our understanding and management of depression: however, their efficacy in the treatment of depression has long been debated and recently been brought very much into the public limelight by a controversial publication by Kirsch, in which the role of placebo response in antidepressant efficacy trials is highlighted. Whilst antidepressants offer benefits in both the short and long term, important problems persist such as intolerability, delayed therapeutic onset, limited efficacy in milder depression and the existence of treatment-resistant depression....

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2045125312445469

So what expertese does Peterson bring to his ideas on gender identity?

Peterson may be best sticking to

Stand up straight with your shoulders back
Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
Make friends with people who want the best for you
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
Tell the truth — or, at least, don’t lie
Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
Be precise in your speech
Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
Be truthful, don’t be friends with people who are going to backstab you, make your bed.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

MGTOW/incels: It would be fair to say that deceptively-quoted misrepresentations of Peterson's comments on enforced monogamy have indeed made Peterson the patron saint of "low-information" incels, MGTOW, and men’s rights activist-types (which means: almost all of them). In reality, his criticism of sexual cheaters isn't something these groups would oppose, but it's not exactly supporting them either.

Patron saint of those guys. THIS is why I object to Jordan Peterson.

I have closed Global Chat several times over the past few weeks (I know! I know!) and probably will stop having it on altogether as it's depressing and disturbing to be around that cohort, who are mostly young American males. But I guess rape jokes, hate of gay men and dumb fear of vaginas is maybe what men the world over from Afghanistan to San Fran like to speak about in jovial all male company round the ol' campfire, eh?

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

- "Those of us who think Peterson is dangerous": Did you read that list of 12 rules? I can maybe see the "common sense, boring" argument, but that is not the manifesto of a dangerous extremist.

The list wasn't the dangerous thing, and you know it.

You called him the patron saint of "low-information" incels, MGTOW, and men’s rights activist-types (which means: almost all of them).

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Human consciousness is a singularity. When our physical bodies expire, our souls, egos, consciousness, (whatever you want to call it) will manifest itself in some other way, somewhere else in the universe. Matter in the universe is recycled, so is consciousness.

What I tell people who're considering suicide, is that if you do it, it's extremely likely that your next "existence" will be considerably worse than your current one. You already pulled won the galactic lottery by taking a human form. You could have been a sand-snail on planet P2X495.

"

MrSmiley21 wrote:

Human consciousness is a singularity. When our physical bodies expire, our souls, egos, consciousness, (whatever you want to call it) will manifest itself in some other way, somewhere else in the universe. Matter in the universe is recycled, so is consciousness.

Nonsense. When the hardware is destroyed the software simply stops running. I wouldn't go so far as to say humans don't have souls — to say that would be to underestimate the complexity of the software — but there is no such thing as an immortal soul, any more than there is such a thing as hardware-independent code.

"

MrSmiley21 wrote:

Human consciousness is a singularity. When our physical bodies expire, our souls, egos, consciousness, (whatever you want to call it) will manifest itself in some other way, somewhere else in the universe. Matter in the universe is recycled, so is consciousness.

What I tell people who're considering suicide, is that if you do it, it's extremely likely that your next "existence" will be considerably worse than your current one. You already pulled won the galactic lottery by taking a human form. You could have been a sand-snail on planet P2X495.

Haha I like this speech you tell people contemplating suicide. Read about hell it's even worse - maybe integrate that too.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Dude, just write a book already.

I was digging through my literature today (it's mostly in boxes in a closet as I prepare to overhaul the shelving here in the study -- Ikea, before you ask; practical AND versatile!) and found every damn Nietzsche book I own but for Beyond Good and Evil, which I suspect has that quote.

Anyway, let me process the rest of what you said and respond in due time.

Hahahaha! Oh yeah. You sound almost terse, maybe stern. Yeah, I'll go with stern. But what about?!

IKEA does have its moments. Hopefully you've got the statue there still.

Ah well, maybe you'll find the quote.

No worries on responding, it's kind of stale by this point - perhaps I should keep abreast of the forum more regularly, eh?

So, I was watching the Shining just now, and got about half way through while also searching stuff on my phone, perhaps slightly less bad than watching Lawrence of Arabia on an iphone. Flawed as the shining undoubtedly is (god the book is amazing) this steady shot is just incredible.

That carpet/floorboards wheels sound might just be what I Dude out to.

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MrSmiley wrote:

What I tell people who're considering suicide, is that if you do it, it's extremely likely that your next "existence" will be considerably worse than your current one. You already pulled won the galactic lottery by taking a human form. You could have been a sand-snail on planet P2X495.

Let's imagine you're right about your etheric energy being transferred somehow to another living form. That would imply some kind of elaborate galactic energy transfer system that could put you there in a timely manner when a spot opens up. Who's to say the sand snails on planet P2X495 don't run that on their lunch breaks?

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Nonsense. When the hardware is destroyed the software simply stops running. I wouldn't go so far as to say humans don't have souls — to say that would be to underestimate the complexity of the software — but there is no such thing as an immortal soul, any more than there is such a thing as hardware-independent code.

I wasn't being serious. I heard something similar to that somewhere, and just decided to share it. I believe when your body expires, the only thing that lives on is your DNA, if you procreated.