Wherever he goes, he speaks in sermons about the inevitability of who we must be. “You know you can say, ‘Well isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine’ — well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter because that is how it’s represented. It’s been represented like that forever. And there are reasons for it. You can’t change it. It’s not possible. This is underneath everything. If you change those basic categories, people wouldn’t be human anymore. They’d be something else. They’d be transhuman or something. We wouldn’t be able to talk to these new creatures.”...
Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.
“Half the men fail,” he says, meaning that they don’t procreate. “And no one cares about the men who fail.”
I laugh, because it is absurd.
“You’re laughing about them,” he says, giving me a disappointed look. “That’s because you’re female.”...
Over his bed is a painting celebrating electrification in the Soviet Union. On the wall across from it is a hyper-realistic painting of two nude women with swords.....
“Campus censorship has been a problem when I was at university too,” he says at Hemingway’s one recent afternoon.
I ask for an example.
“One law professor said something like, ‘You young ladies should get married and start families,’ and he got fired,” Mr. Shepherd says. “The message was just you’ll have a happier life if you get married instead of focusing on your career.”
“Certainly not a firing offense,” he says. Except, for now, it is.
May 18, 2018
"Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy/He says there’s a crisis in masculinity. Why won’t women — all these wives and witches — just behave?"
Whoa! That's a pretty insulting title for a new NYT article about Jordan Peterson. The article is by Nellie Bowles who spent 2 days with him, with access to his home — check out the unflattering photograph of him in his home — and listening in to his phone calls and following him backstage at a lecture.
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114 comments:
Why on earth would you let anybody from the NYT into your home?
When you start taking flak, it means you're over the target.
His book must really be having an impact, otherwise the MSM wouldn't see the need to destroy him.
Oh hi, you're a hack with an agenda? come on in!
Who in the hell mixes ox-blood shoes with light gray pants??
If you take the NYT at it's word, you're gullible.
I'm skeptical of every word this woman writes, even and & the.
I'll say it again--the NYT writers don't believe what they hear. They hears what they believes. Wives and witches? Unlikely. Unless he was talking about Lefties, specifically.
“If I hadn’t of believed it, I wouldn’t have seen it!” - Yogi Bera (Maybe, he says he never said half the things he said.)
Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.
Socialized pussy?? What could go wrong??
‘Well isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine’ — well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter because that is how it’s represented."
He's a Jungian. People forget he's a psychologist heavily influenced by Jung. But he's really into the idea of Jungian archetypes. That's why he's blind to certain things. He doesn't understand how kids can be interested in Frozen and not more compelled by Sleeping Beauty. For one thing, the animation and music are far better then anything animated made in the 1950s or 60s, so your average 3 year old is going to be drawn to that.
For myself, I think Jung can be interesting, but only if you don't overdo it. People into Jung can go overboard with this archetype thing. It can get new age-y and next thing you know a bunch of middle age men are running around the woods with Robert Bly and drums and bare feet.
Now, I think teenage boys are more prone to chaos then young women. Teenage boys need good adult male examples in their lives. The Lost Boys who cause chaos and destruction are often times do not have honourable male influences. What's the bet that the person causing the chaos in Texas didn't have constant and good adult man in his life?
Sex differences. Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature.
Once you go Pro-Choice... Well, what and whose choice? Hats off to NYT.
Who is this Mr. Shepherd?
Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"
Discuss the intersectionalities.
Peterson clearly missed an opportunity for persuasion in his men and status argument. He should have made it about Trump.
It fits the left-wing memes perfectly. High status man makes the women he attracts unhappy. Free Melanie!
Enforced Monogamy? Like, you know, what human history has come up with? One man, one woman, 2.5 kids?
Is the NYT saying that "enforced monogamy" is wrong... i.e. that adultery is preferable?
Wonder what the writer's spouse thinks of that argument?
Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution.
Marriage is the grand compromise between the sexes, that popped up independently all over the world. The Woman gets a provider/protector/whatever value you ascribe to men, who will stick around, thereby her offspring is more likely to survive carrying forward her genes, and the man's offspring are more likely to carry their genes.
Plus, there are other follow on benefits: as Ann Coulter says:
Various studies have shown that children raised by single mothers comprise about 70 percent of juvenile murderers, delinquents, teenaged mothers, drug abusers, dropouts, suicides and runaways.
He doesn't understand how kids can be interested in Frozen and not more compelled by Sleeping Beauty.
That’s good.
But those kids haven’t grown up and successfully raised children themselves who are well socialized and who keep civilization alive. It’s all just theory. I just finished his book a couple of days ago, and I am going to answer your objection for him, since he’s not here. He would say that you are buying a pig in a poke, discarding millennia of wisdom about the human condition on a hunch.
Like Althouse says: “Better than nothing is a high standard.” But so much of what America’s culture has embarked on is based on faith, faith that human beings can fully reason these things out, to each important ramification. He repeats often that our own selves are so complicated, we can’t understand them, much less our collective selves.
Janitor of the Patriarchy has a better ring to it.
Peterson is bringing common-sense advice to a mass of people. He is helping teenagers and young men with this combo of clinical advice and male influence.
What's interesting to me is how desperate young people are for this influence. He's taking on the role that apparently is not being filled by a father, youth group leader, scout master and church deacon.
That's why clubs and communities are important for children. Institutions are valuable resources. One of the reasons we bring our children to church is to provide an institution that is, hopefully, filled with role models. Praying at home does not provide the function served by a inter-generational community.
Peterson mentions Trump when he talks about beautiful women and high status men. I don’t think he was talking about Trump as some kind of sex god, absent his wealth.
There was a time in our history, when agriculture was first introduced, that only one in seventeen men successfully reproduced, if these statistical genetic studies can be believed. That’s just the way it is. Male “dairy cows” have a name, “veal calf” except a few high quality bulls. We could go on species by species. Only a Creationist or Crypto-Creationist could imagine that humans are exempt from this brutal reality for men. Species care about species, not individuals.
He does dispense a lot of advice, it’s kind of like a new version of The Road Less Traveled. It’s advice drawn from his working with troubled people. Ways to be less troubled. A lot of it is about raising children, since I imagine a lot of his work is cleaning up the damage of poor parenting.
"I just finished his book a couple of days ago, and I am going to answer your objection for him, since he’s not here. He would say that you are buying a pig in a poke, discarding millennia of wisdom about the human condition on a hunch."
I don't have a big objection to him or Jungians in general. But I just don't buy the Jungian archetype thing.
I am a Christian and a believer, so I don't think I'm discarding millennia of wisdom. He's a Jungian, but he's also an agnostic. I'm a believer. So, Peterson and I are not quite on the same page. But I think he's helping people and I don't have an objection to him.
But I'm not a Jungian. That said, I'm ok with some Jungian influence, like the Myers Briggs personality stuff and myths and stories, but I can't take it as seriously. Bottom line, I'm not a Jungian.
8k years ago, after agricultural, there was this huge reduction in the number of men who reproduced. For each man who did, there were 17 women who did.
We don't know why.
https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success
I'm certain that monogamy was NOT the reason.
To those for whom any of this hit piece makes sense, the status of the NYT and its author is enhanced by this article. To the majority of us this is sadly predictable, affirming our decision to continue to ignore the sources for any further similar "wisdom".
They're getting nervous in that bubble, but their reaction only instantiates their demise.
For them, confronting JBP is like a ten-mile wood of obfuscation meeting a newly purchased John Deere forest harvester for the first time. This time, it's different.
There is immense entertainment and analysis in a podcast with Peterson and Camille Paglia. Enjoy: https://jordanbpeterson.com/transcripts/camille-paglia/
“... giving me a disappointed look ....” LOL!
Can you imagine Peterson having the kind of expectations of a female journalist from the NYT that would give rise to disappointment? This reporter may not have watched his interview with Cathy Newman. Those of us who did ain’t buying “disappointment.”
Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.
Truth to history and power!
“Half the men fail,” he says, meaning that they don’t procreate. “And no one cares about the men who fail.”
I laugh, because it is absurd.
“You’re laughing about them,” he says, giving me a disappointed look. “That’s because you’re female.”...
What is “absurd” about it? Probably that there is no room in her mind to care about it, so it’s discarded. It’s the truth, I have said it before. Women may have sympathy for men, but they don’t have empathy. Right now any woman still reading this comment is likely rolling her eyes. The farmer who separates out the veal calves likely has more empathy for them. rhharden has pointed out that women don’t learn to hide their selfishness until they are in their thirties, which rings true. They learn to hide it sometime about when their sexual attraction starts to move off peak.
There was a time in our history, when agriculture was first introduced, that only one in seventeen men successfully reproduced, if these statistical genetic studies can be believed. That’s just the way it is.
I believe that. Hunter-gatherer transition to sedentary agriculture with high nutritional crops like wheat. Mesopotamia. Slavery rose at that time. Slavery explains 1 in 17 men reproducing. Rape. It's not like the other 16 men or the 17 women are OK with the situation.
That would explain why certain men are reproducing and others are not in a sedentary agriculturalist lifestyle. Physical anthropologists would say humans were hunter-gatherers for a lot longer then they were sedentary agriculturalists.
I mean, when barbarians raided, it's not like the women were happy about it.
Their babies were getting their brains bashed on the ground and 12 year old girls and their mothers were getting raped. They killed the men and took the women into slavery. Killed the babies and children who were too young to work and act as sex slaves and workers. Some barbarian spread his sperm around a LOT. That doesn't mean the women were happy about it.
The reporter seems hung up on "conscientiousness" and "agreeableness" as his frequent descriptors for women, but does not seem to be aware that those are the formal descriptors for Big 5 personality theory, which Peterson taught extensively as a clinical psychology professor. I expect more from the NYT.
Sad!
I like the way he's dressed.
To be fair, women who have too much empathy for men who are poor genetic material were likely selected out of the gene pool countless generations ago. Another brutal fact.
Women who were able to adapt to these brutal realities of conquest and rape certainly had a survival advantage. Just as did the men who committed what we see as abhorrent crimes today. It’s not so much about women being happy or not with conditions and somehow altering their genetic lines, it’s more like certain lines met more or less favorable conditions and the others just vanished. Christianity was a way to deal with these unfortunate facts, and highly successful at it, as Peterson points out. I am like him, I consider myself a “Christian Atheist” though many Christians will say there is no such thing. I think Jesus was a great philosopher, or caused a lot of great philosophy to be written, in any event.
Another thing he does is logically demolish nihilism. I had a joke that went “I used to be a nihilist, but now I don’t even believe in that anymore.” but now it’s true.
Another way to express the realities of our evolution of course is that “we are all fallen.”
Now I will shut up.
Vermont Tim @ 12:55 and 12:38
"To be fair, women who have too much empathy for men who are poor genetic material were likely selected out of the gene pool countless generations ago. Another brutal fact."
I don't think it's a question of men or women feeling empathy. I think empathetic people tend to feel empathy, and non-empathetic people do not.
I feel great empathy for single people -- men and women -- who do not have a spouse or have lost a spouse. It's hard for people to not have someone in their lives. And I support institutions in society that help people to find each other, like church youth groups.
Blank Blank has a finger on it.
I am no psychologist, but the writer gives every indication of being poorly educated, exceedingly parochial, and moreover poorly prepared for the interview.
She is certainly not a Tom Wolfe, who would have learned everything there is to know about Peterson, Jung, personality theories, and whatever else.
Isn't it amazing how the NYT reporter seems to be unable to marshal any empathy at all for the view that human beings have a fixed nature?
It's not like from a scientific, philosophical, or theological viewpoint that the notion of a fixed human nature of some sort isn't a common one in the history of mankind. Why does it seem to give this reporter such heartburn?
If you think the article is bad, wait til you see the comments.
Vermont Tim @ 1:05
“Christian Atheist” though many Christians will say there is no such thing. I think Jesus was a great philosopher, or caused a lot of great philosophy to be written, in any event."
Oh I can see how people can be culturally Christian without being a believer. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Jeffersonian Bible, but ended it before the resurrection. And, maybe, someday, those who are culturally Christian might be more interested in the other aspects.
"Women who were able to adapt to these brutal realities of conquest and rape certainly had a survival advantage."
I would not want to live through seeing my children killed. Those women were used as sex slaves and workers. Maybe their children were absorbed into the group, or maybe they were also slaves. Anytime you have 17 women to 1 men reproducing that suggests a bad situation for most of the people in that society. What is happening to the male children when they grow up? They are born slaves and sent to the local mines and live a short and brutal life. Dying before they can reproduce.
Bottom Line: I think Peterson is performing a valuable service for many young people. For me, the reaction to Peterson is more interesting then what he says. Reporters and people on the left are, well, freaking out in ways I cannot understand.
Other young people seem to need his advice because they are not getting it from other avenues in society. If they cannot get good advice from other places, I'm happy they can get it from him.
Custodian of the Patriarchy
Wow, so he's a Janitor?
The Peterson/Paglia meet-up is a fun watch - the laid-back Canuck & the hyper East-Coaster. I like him, mostly, because he has some common sense. Since he invited the NYT into his home, I'd have advised him to hang some velvet-painting renditions of blaxploitation movie posters. Just for the lulz and misdirection.
I assume Peterson knew he'd get a hit-piece but thought the publicity would make it worth while.
Or he's an idiot.
"Why does it seem to give this reporter such heartburn?"
Because, to her, it is probably an unfamiliar concept, an alien idea.
Something far outside her cultural milieu. Culture shock.
That is the state of American universities these days, and of the clique that emerges from them. They are very badly, narrowly educated.
"Reporters and people on the left are, well, freaking out in ways I cannot understand"
I find it very easy to understand. You just need to understand where these people came from, how they were educated and acculturated. I know where she came from and what she was taught.
I have met many of the type that were her teachers, I have experience with what is done in US universities and K-12, and moreover I have met many people like her. And there are a great many like her.
Which is why I am pessimistic about America.
And this is, note, merely Mr. Peterson, a very liberal middle-aged Canadian academic psychologist well up on the jargon, styles, hangups of her social clique. He knows how to talk to her well enough, whatever her problems in speaking to anyone else.
Imagine this sort of writer attempting a discussion with much more alien people, people outside of her social segment, or genuine foreigners.
"but thought the publicity would make it worth while."
Trump did the same. It is worthwhile. You will get through to the alienated or ready-to-be alienated among the audience. It is communication on a parallel channel.
"I laugh, because it is absurd."
That's one hell of an argument. She sure showed him! I don't know how he can possibly counter that rock-solid logic.
I think you need to do a Bloggingheads on Jordan Peterson. Or with Jordan Peterson.
I'd love to see a BloggingHeads with Jordan Peterson and Glenn Loury.
The article is as unflattering as the photos. Nonetheless, enough of his thought comes through to attract the interest of someone on his wave length. I'd say it was a net plus for Peterson. He wasn't so dumb in granting the interview.......If he is really receiving the kind of adulation that the reporter writes about, then that's more of a risk factor for him than a negative article. Maybe the negative article will serve to inhibit hubris.
We are all of us descendents of rape victims and rapists. Whatever made them victims or oppressors is part of who we are. I don't see how you can deny either part of our genetic nature.
"The term is short for “involuntary celibates,” though the group has evolved into a male supremacist movement made up of people — some celibate, some not — who believe that women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights."
said the female supremacist.
rcocean said...
I assume Peterson knew he'd get a hit-piece but thought the publicity would make it worth while.
Or he's an idiot.
5/18/18, 1:22 PM
Peterson has spoken about how he thinks identity politics of both the left and the right varieties will do us in. He thinks we need to talk to each other. On Bill Maher's show, he asked the leftists to stop reflexively bashing both Trump and Trump voters and told them their hatred was counterproductive. Of course, they replied that Trump and Trump voters are different, you see. They deserve to be hated.
He doesn't want to just preach to the choir. But he is routinely misrepresented and smeared by the leftists so I doubt he'll have much success in starting any sort of conversation. I think he knows that too. But he keeps trying.
To judge this man's work based on how this reporter chose to represent it is very careless. And while Im at it, let me pose a question to cis-gender women everywhere. Would you prefer men who slouch, are slobs and lie to you?
I really want to know what the reporter means by "hyperrealistic."
Hyperrealism is an actual art movement.
“Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.”
Been saying this for some time. Societally, one of the big problems with that is that the alpha males, while willing to screw whomever presents herself to them, can really only marry one of them. And that one gets the benefit of a father in the household raising the kids, thus greatly reducing the number of boys who end up dead or in prison and girls who end up pregnant at a too young age. Not surprisingly, the best route, by far, for a woman to have middle class grandchildren is to marry the father of her children. Compounding the problem is that the sexual attractiveness of females rapidly decreases over time, while it actually increases for males during, say, throughout their 20s. Best time to snag a mate for women is when the guys are in their late teens, or for the college bound, probably early 20s. After that, they are competing against younger and younger women for fewer and fewer quality males.
According to wiki, Nellie Bowles is not married. Jordan Petersen has been married only once, since 1989. i am surprised and relieved that Nellie did not attack his spouse. Since he gives advice relating to M/F relationships, i would expect the left to sneer at his wife. Like they did about the wives of Romney, Trump and Bush.
Peterson communicates well with young left wing people, including a daughter of mine. She loved his book.
Three "back"s in the first two sentences: I think I know where the NYT reporter is going. Add a few unflattering pictures, par of the course when non-progs are involved, and you've got the typical NYT hit job.
Peterson does come across as a bit naive about the world, partly because he's too invested in his his own categories, but I don't think the piece surprised him, not after the famous BBC interview. Besides more publicity, it gives him confirmatory evidence.
‘Well isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine’
Lyapunov metric is a chick - who knew?
The Times published a hit piece on Jordan Peterson? Good Gawd, but I’m gobsmacked!
rhharden could write his book again using RomComs instead of sacred texts, He could call it “Maps of Meaning, This Time It’s Personal.”
"Best time to snag a mate for women is when the guys are in their late teens, or for the college bound, probably early 20s. After that, they are competing against younger and younger women for fewer and fewer quality males."
I dunno about this. I'm not arguing against finding someone young. I found my spouse when I was 18 and he was 19. Best thing that ever happened to me, and I recommend it to everyone. Married after we graduated University. It's worked out great for us. But it would be a lie for me to say that's what all of our friends did. We get teased for meeting young. Lots of our friends met and married between the ages of 28-35.
But...Meghan is 36, three years older then Harry, and if a Prince who was in the army isn't Alpha, who is? {I know I"m breaking the Blog Boycott on the Royal Wedding here, but I think we should talk about it at least a little bit!} George Clooney is someone who did not marry someone in her younger 20s when it came time to marry. Amal is 40. Clooney dated a lot of young models before he choose a older woman to marry.
Brad Pitt is rumoured to be dating a MIT professor in her 40s -- not that I expect this relationship to last.
Some people get married because of the ticking clock or to "just get married." We watched those people get divorced. Better to find the right person and make it last.
The smarmy comments are pathetic, but they effectively respond in agreement with what was unfortunately something of a hit piece, anyway.
Encouraged as I've been by corporate America to summarize what I can in bullet-points, I'll say the following:
1. Nowhere does it mention his huge caveat: Population-based differences are not the same as individual strengths and weaknesses.
2. Men contribute disproportionately to evolution by having greater selection pressure on them to lead and/or outcompete other males before being deemed worthy of procreation. Women, OTOH, can (and usually want to!) breed simply on the basis of being fertile - (i.e. young and pretty/symmetrically proportioned, in aesthetic terms).
Western society can counteract this tendency if it wants to, but refusing to distinguish between nature and society, facts and goals, is illiberal, PC bullshit. I can be a liberal and disagree with Peterson's conclusions/prescriptions while acknowledging that your're an illiberal asshole to presume any PC-based objection to his overwhelmingly well-supported premises. They come closer to a scientific canon of what decades of biological and psychological research into gender research has shown than any alternative.
His comment about enforced matrimony seems almost certainly tongue-in-cheek. Did the gender warriors in the comments who failed to get that have something to say about the relative success of male comics and satirists vs. females in those fields, as well?
Talk about making oneself the butt of someone else's joke.
3. The NYT, unfortunately for whatever it represents of mainstream Democratic intelligentsia, proves that it has not got off the obsessive identity politics bandwagon. This is both sad and foreboding.
"3. The NYT, unfortunately for whatever it represents of mainstream Democratic intelligentsia, proves that it has not got off the obsessive identity politics bandwagon. This is both sad and foreboding."
It can't get off that bandwagon, because it is a part of the suite of tribal symbols that pertain to that lot. Identity is a powerful thing. People die for it.
Hi. Nice to meet you, sir. I really don't agree with your opinions, and that makes me really dislike you. I hope you fail at convincing people with your ideas. Did I mention that I don't like you or the men you remind me of?
Now, would you mind if I follow you around and then write and publish a story with my opinion of you?
In other words, Let me in, or I'll huff and puff and blow your house down.
I mostly like Peterson, but a Canadian cannot be custodian of the Patriarchy. The whole country is one big pajama boy with beer.
They are so scared of him. For that alone I support him. With money.
@wwww - there are exceptions to every rule, and the numbers and statistics are what really matter. Still, you have seemingly picked examples where most of the men are noticeably older than the women. How old is Clooney anyway.
Interesting Twitter response from Peterson about all this:
@jordanbpeterson: The usual suspects on Twitter are having a conniption fit about [the NY Times article]. I quite liked @nelliebowles (the writer).
"@wwww - there are exceptions to every rule, and the numbers and statistics are what really matter. Still, you have seemingly picked examples where most of the men are noticeably older than the women. How old is Clooney anyway."
We, my DH and me, stand out as odd that we found each other so young. So, it's something I find interesting. A friend from Japan told me woman are seen as, their versions of "old maids" by 25. I think that's a cultural difference from North America.
Clooney is in his 50s I believe. Prince Harry is 33. Brad Pitt, younger fifties I think. Pitt is dating someone in her 40s, Harry marrying someone 36 and Clooney is married to a 40 year old. Obviously they could be with 21 year olds if they wanted to do so.
Still, it seems to me a noticable difference if a woman in her mid-30s is seen as marriagable. Different from what was expected of Prince Harry's father, which was to find someone in her early 20s. {I'm talking about the royal marriage again. Clearly I'm hoping for a blog post on this!})
That said -- I do strongly recommend marrying someone young if you are lucky enough to find your love. Don't let them go. The Old 97s song, "nineteen".
The fact that he is so hated by the institutional left shows how threatened they are.
The young left are interested in his work and opinions. The left leaders cannot tolerate that.
It's as if someone suggested that Democrats have not done anything for blacks.
Blogger tim in vermont said...
There was a time in our history, when agriculture was first introduced, that only one in seventeen men successfully reproduced
The big shift came when the Yamnaya people came through driving horse drawn carts. They replaced the people of Europe and Britain. Not to mention Iran and northern India.
These shifts have happened at other times. The Mestizo people of Mexico have Spanish Y chromosomes and Amerindian mitochondrial DNA.
The Mongols did the same thing.
" A friend from Japan told me woman are seen as, their versions of "old maids" by 25."
In that case, old maids are as plentiful as chop sticks over there:
"The marriage rate has plummeted, and with it the birthrate, since out-of-wedlock births are rare in Japan. In 1975, just 21 percent of women and 49 percent of men under 30 had never been married; by 2005, the figures were 60 percent of women and 72 percent of men."
http://theweek.com/articles/453219/everything-need-know-about-japans-population-crisis
"Why does it seem to give this reporter such heartburn?"
Judas Priest, you must not know any SJW's or read/watch the MSM.
ANYTHING, I repeat ANYTHING that doesn't fit into "The Narrative" they were taught at college, read in the New York Times, or watched/listened to on Network TV or NPR is either "crazy" "racist" "Right-wing" or "blah blah-ist".
And that goes 10x for MSM Journalists. They are dumbest, most left-wing, most intellectually incurious, college graduates. Listen to Trump press conference. They are fucking morons - who ask the same dumb questions over and over again.
What I have noticed in my own children and their friends, is that other than the gender stuff (Love is a Many Gendered Thing!) the youngest tail-end millennials seem more conservative. Leery of the worthless majors and steep debt their older siblings got sucked into by lefty university professors, etc.
"Everything-need-know-about-japans-population-crisis:
Japan is NOT in a "crisis"
Japan is country the size of California - with lots of mountains - and has 120 Million people.
They will experience a population decline. In 30 years, there will be 110 million Japanese. At which point, the old and young ratio will once again be in balance. And they will be Japanese. In 30 years, Britain will be UKastan.
"I really want to know what the reporter means by "hyperrealistic."
Hyperrealism is an actual art movement."
-- I just assumed that's exactly what she meant.
johns said: "i am surprised and relieved that Nellie did not attack his spouse."
The anti-JP folks are probably just keeping that card up their sleeve for future use if necessary.
wwww wrote:
Now, I think teenage boys are more prone to chaos then young women. Teenage boys need good adult male examples in their lives. The Lost Boys who cause chaos and destruction are often times do not have honourable male influences.
The symbol is a way of ordering a chaotic reality, it is not reality. A young man can father hundreds of children in a year, a young woman can give birth to one child per year, yet for some reason a young woman, and not a young man, is a fertility symbol.
There is no natural end-point for the trend of collapsing fertility.
Japans (and elsewhere) population will fall faster and faster and faster, getting older and older as it goes. Moreover there is not one bit of understanding of why fertility is collapsing.
Just taking the plotline into account, regardless of any new knowledge, what hope is there for young people to start families in such a place, that will be burdened by hordes of sick labor absorbing unproductive ancients? More and more of the functional population will be fully occupied in keeping the dying alive just a bit longer. Until the remnant is doing nothing but that.
This experiment has never been tried anywhere in human history.
The young woman is the critical resource in fertility.
They are the limiting factor. How many you have and their attitude towards procreation is the margin of your cultures' survival.
Something is suppressing human reproduction in every advanced technological culture, and until that phenomenon is understood sufficiently to control its effects, there is no reason to think that whatever it is will not lead, ultimately, to the effective extermination of all of them.
Quite the hit piece, really. It's like Cathy Newman showed up with a pad and paper and recorder in Toronto.
"How many you have and their attitude towards procreation is the margin of your cultures' survival."
Maybe we'll only be left with homeschoolers.
Quite the hit piece, really. It's like Cathy Newman showed up with a pad and paper and recorder in Toronto.
Exactly. And what a damn joke the NYT is really turning out to be. You'd figure that after the Cathy Newman debacle anyone seeking to interview Peterson would know better than to assume not to take him seriously or to approach him steeped in the mess of their own self-righteous PC sensitivities.
"This experiment has never been tried anywhere in human history."
Take any trend. Extend into infinity. Conclusion: Disaster.
People thought the Baby boom would last forever. Result: 1 billion Americans and disaster. Go watch "Solyvent Green".
And People in the 1930s thought there would be Depression forever.
The population rate goes up. The population rate goes down.
And it so it goes.
-- I just assumed that's exactly what she meant.
Without seeing the painting, I'm not so sure what she meant. Did she mean:
Realistic?
Photorealistic?
Hyperrealistic?
Peterson is a serious collector of Soviet paintings -- some from the Suprematist movement; many in the social realism milieu. There's another realism for you.
As I understand it, Peterson believes that the natural world is chaos. The human mind imposes a narrative on this chaos and creates the order that the human mind desperately wants -- but while this ordered narrative is more than an illusion, it is less than reality. Chaotic nature will disturb this imposed narrative, often in terrible ways (cancer coming to a loved one with no warning, for example). The ordered aspect of reality is symbolized by men, the chaotic aspect is symbolized by women. Neither the ordered or chaotic aspect is good or bad, reality is made up of both, and a satisfying life consists of ordering the chaos. You can't have a satisfying life dominated by either chaos or order.
This idea is not original to Jordan, of course, but he expresses it well.
Something is suppressing human reproduction in every advanced technological culture
Narcissistic indulgence. Social progress.
Serious question, Ritmo:
I agree with you about Peterson and about the media take on the situation in Israel. Has it occurred to you that if the media are so grievously dishonest and stupid on these topics that they might just be getting a lot of other things wrong as well? In other words, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
A young man can father hundreds of children in a year, a young woman can give birth to one child per year, yet for some reason a young woman, and not a young man, is a fertility symbol.
5/18/18, 8:00 PM
Because a woman's fertility matters more. Sperm is cheap; eggs are expensive from a biological POV. What is expensive is prized.
And what a damn joke the NYT is really turning out to be.
Nellie Bowles was involved just last month in another mess at the Times, when she wrote that it was simply following far-right conspiracy dictates to say that Palestinian terrorists were paid by the PLO.
the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:
Maybe. The antidote is facts and reason - which don't prevail on "alternative political media" sites either and where the editorial bias is even clearer and narrower.
Not all topics are as correctible with facts though, or apparently even reason. Stories about human events or world politics have less of a scientific body - or none, even - upon which to frame and build them. Even facts can be biased by simply being the facts that humanity has chosen to discover or investigate. But that doesn't mean I agree with conservatives in preferring traditional stereotypes or conventions or institutions or superstitions to reason as a basis for political thought.
To reason one must have all the relevant facts. Experience and history teaches that getting facts is expensive, knowing all the relevant facts is unlikely (the unknown unknowns), and its terribly easy to get the facts wrong (decades of headaches re metrology and instrumentation, welcome to the world of worries about facts). And the problem may well be too complex and chaotic to respond to analysis.
Its not that simple. Thats the empirical POV.
The Burkean position is one of humility, of respect for the empirical.
You won't know what facts are relevant without reasoning through them first. And even then you may miss some. While this is unfortunate, it doesn't obviate the process - let alone the importance of facts in the first place. Modern American conservatives have nothing in common with Burke because they reject any fact they don't like altogether. I don't think you can truly call them conservative if Burke or empiricism is your measure. They are just out-and-out ideological partisans locked in a perpetual struggle against Marx and the USSR and other things that came and went while the problems of maintaining a socially cohesive constitutional republic remained and continued to go unaddressed (as they always have) by the conflict right.
I don't think the right in America really has any focus or direction, really. You can really call them "conflictitarians" based on how they only define themselves based on all the many modern and socially important things that they're against, rather than on any one decent set of things that they can actually agree that they're for. They define themselves through what their reflexively defined enemies oppose. It's a disease that has spread a little bit even to the left, unfortunately.
Peterson is smart and catholic and negotiates with the left and values moderation and partisan compromise. The American right OTOH has defined themselves purely through political power and zero-sum competition and think that obliterating the left should be their goal and envision Marx and Lenin as eternal bugbears that will be destroyed by erasing the left politically.
I think that you should start your own "Sons of Herbert Croly" club for progressives, Ritmo. I'll design an armband for you, if you wish, but you may not like the design.
But that doesn't mean I agree with conservatives in preferring traditional stereotypes or conventions or institutions or superstitions to reason as a basis for political thought.
5/18/18, 11:16 PM
Nobody is asking you to agree with conservatives on everything. Just admit that, you know, we might have a point or two sometimes.
I am not asking you to move to the other side, Ritmo. I am asking to accept that good-hearted and intelligent people can look at the facts and draw different conclusions than you do.
I have long considered myself a Burkean conservative. I voted for Trump very reluctantly - and yet I find he's doing things that I like. I know he's a sleazy character, but I like the results I am seeing thus far. And I am finding myself defending him more and more just because the Left has become so unyielding. Do they realize what they are doing? They are expelling people on their side who do not subscribe to every tenet of leftist thought. That means they are making their pool of True Believers ever smaller, which is terrible strategy. You'll be declared a heretic yourself, Ritmo - no better than a deplorable in some hick town in Georgia, because you defend Israel. If Peterson, who has tried his best to steer away from political labels, can be deemed an conservative reactionary, well, what hope is there for anybody else?
The American right OTOH has defined themselves purely through political power and zero-sum competition and think that obliterating the left should be their goal and envision Marx and Lenin as eternal bugbears that will be destroyed by erasing the left politically.
Project much?
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/03/31/how-barack-obama-destroyed-the-republican-party/ <<-Smiling Obama on the cover.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2013/10/1/1243199/-For-America-to-Survive-the-Republican-Party-must-Die
https://www.facebook.com/destroygop/
But it is better to ignore stuff you don’t like! It increases your certainty that you are right so it makes you feel smarter! Both good things! Use words like “purely” to show us that you are never in doubt about anything!
Peterson is a serious collector of Soviet paintings -- some from the Suprematist movement; many in the social realism milieu. There’s another realism for you.
I can’t believe you are arguing about an offhand comment made by a stupid twat. The real New York Times you are thinking about died during the Clinton scandals, when they were actually going after Clinton (correctly, it turned out) and got so much pushback they became the low quality partisan rag that they are today.
So... what was the point of the tattooed security guard picture?
Also: If she's going to object to the chaos-as-feminine thing, why not at least not be intellectually lazy and point out that in the Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, the feminine is what tames the wild man?
On the bright side, at least the NYT acknowledges that Communism is horrifying finally:
"Mr. Peterson’s home is a carefully curated house of horror. He has filled it with a sprawl of art that covers the walls from floor to ceiling. Most of it is communist propaganda from the Soviet Union"
Also: What's the deal with all these journalists doing a slice of life about someone and interjecting themselves into it so much they become part of the story? We saw it with that guy and his wife who were alt-right too, where the journalist felt the need to interject themselves into the story, as if they wanted to assure their reader: "Just cause I'm writing about this person doesn't mean I agree with them. Look at me put them down. Look at me hate them. Please, forgive me for exposing you to these monsters."
Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, the feminine is what tames the wild man?
My favorite line is when the queen demands that Gilgamesh grab her pussy. “Touch our vulva!” (Royal plural, of course.)
I have long considered myself a Burkean conservative. I voted for Trump very reluctantly - and yet I find he's doing things that I like. I know he's a sleazy character, but I like the results I am seeing thus far. And I am finding myself defending him more and more just because the Left has become so unyielding. Do they realize what they are doing? They are expelling people on their side who do not subscribe to every tenet of leftist thought. That means they are making their pool of True Believers ever smaller, which is terrible strategy. You'll be declared a heretic yourself, Ritmo - no better than a deplorable in some hick town in Georgia, because you defend Israel. If Peterson, who has tried his best to steer away from political labels, can be deemed an conservative reactionary, well, what hope is there for anybody else?
I don't need anyone's approval. I berate non-conservatives all the time. Dozens of calls I get from Democratic operations each year? You want to sit in on or record them? I think you would find them enjoyable and instructive.
Trump may pull off some foreign policy achievements due to ignoring convention, but his history is solidly against it. North Koreans are not U.S. bankruptcy courts; it doesn't seem he can convince them on the basis of marketing his name as he did five times to the creditors here that he failed so miserably. And his mobster mindset is of questionable value in dealing with his fellow thugs abroad.
I don't buy the bullshit. Or yours, really. Like Michael K. you have a history of getting vicious to settle a vendetta against me in the middle of a conversation that has nothing to do with anything personal. That's Trump's problem, too - I notice. Maybe it's a kind of personality-based identification, but I maintain that lots of reluctant Clintonites loved Bill Clinton, too. He was the evangelistical sniffer of his own bullshit. If he could convince you it was true, he figured it might as well be believed. Trump doesn't seem much different but is far more practiced in getting away with it.
Trump may be the chill pill for the right, helping them to work out their many intensely repressed and passionately irrational frustrations, so I don't assume that he has no value. Just not one that I ever saw much need for.
Things may get marginally better for the working class, in which case I have more to condone in his utility as a sort of biblical, Book of Prophets, political punishment tool. If the left can't appeal to the working class, they don't deserve votes. But that doesn't mean I think he's giving them much more than peanuts while handing out buckets of candy corn to his friends at the top - like all Republicans do.
And it also doesn't mean that I'll ever condone someone so hostile to science and the environment upon which our very existence hinges in the first place. Along with all his other corruptions, Scott Pruitt was a creationist. Betcha didn't know that. This is the guy who mass exiles his agency's scientists and throws out all epidemiological study due to his stunning ignorance of why medical data is anonymized. This is the guy who decides whether we're going to enable industries to get rich off of poisoning us or cooperate with maintaining a habitable countryside that nourishes our physical existence.
Whatever any of this has to do with PC, who knows. But suffice it to say that I can make my own case about that bullshit and don't feel that I need a presidential political savior to fix that problem, let alone to bring all his own stupid right-wing white male identity politics baggage along with. It sort of underscores the chasm between the way people prioritize national problems - given how petty that one is.
"Like Michael K. you have a history of getting vicious to settle a vendetta against me in the middle of a conversation that has nothing to do with anything personal."
Oh, please, Ritmo. You are pointing your finger at others and accusing them of viciousness after you do all in your power to provoke them? You have more self-awareness than that. But perhaps not.
"I don't need anyone's approval. I berate non-conservatives all the time."
So you're an annoying, obnoxious sack of shit to everyone - good to know. One consolation is knowing people across the entire political spectrum are lining up for the opportunity to punch the daylights out of you. That's bipartisanship we can all get behind.
Buwaya
You used “pertain”. Althouse will not be happy.
If the New York Times can’t understand Jordan Peterson, that debunks their claim to be super-intelligent. He is not hard to get.
Funny enough, I actually went to law school with "Shepherd". He was in my year, which comprised about about 200 of us, divided among small groups of about 20. ("Shepherd" isn't his real surname, by the way, although he conducts business using it.)
I can't say I ever recall any professor being fired for anything remotely resembling the incident he relates. None of my classmates recall it either, and I expect one of us would have.
Besides, this is the faculty which lionized members such as Joel Bakan (the guy who made "The Corporation"). Modern "education" being what it is, it's unbelievable to think the faculty would not have purged such members long ago.
I dislike the NYT's hit job on Peterson as much as anyone, but I am certain this professor story is nonsense.
" Michael K said...
Peterson communicates well with young left wing people, including a daughter of mine. She loved his book"
Controlled "opposition" will do that.
Insulting NYT heds are their specialty!
Scott Adams smiles upon this thread, in which a clever leftist commenter grudgingly acknowledges Trump's potential for accomplishment while emphasizing his incompetence.
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