Another employee said “people were crying in the meeting about how Jordan Peterson has affected their lives.” They said one co-worker discussed how Peterson had radicalized their father and another talked about how publishing the book will negatively affect their non-binary friend.
“The company since June has been doing all these anti-racist and allyship things and them publishing Peterson’s book completely goes against this. It just makes all of their previous efforts seem completely performative,” the employee added. ...
“I feel it was deliberately hidden and dropped on us once it was too late to change course,” said the junior employee who is a member of the LGBTQ community. The employee said workers would have otherwise considered a walkout, similar to what Hachette employees did when the publisher announced it would be publishing Woody Allen’s memoir; Hachette later dropped the book....
Peterson has maintained a very low-profile over the past year, as he has been dealing with serious health issues, which, according to his daughter, included a medically induced coma as he attempted to detox in Russia for a benzo dependence. In a subdued YouTube video released Monday, Peterson said he had been working on his 12 Rules sequel for the past three years.
Ah! Here's the video:
Posts
142 comments:
"staff cried"
Ai. Maybe they could benefit from reading a few of Peterson's rules.
"Wahhhh! Somebody said something I don't like! Make the bad man go away! Wahhhh!"
Grow up. Get over yourself.
This is all part of the larger picture to stomp on free speech.
The left are marching for it. We already have a corrupt press who will never again utter a bad word about any democrat. Thus making democrats above the law.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
they were crying. lol
Can I buy this book through the Althouse AMZN portal?
AMZN tried to ban a book by Alex Berenson.
Publishing house staff are a dime a dozen. Jordan Peterson is big money. Do the math. Fire the staff, keep Peterson. Fire the staffer with the highest salary first. Pour encourager les autres. Then ask the next one if he/she wants to stay or join the ranks of the unemployed. Continue down the list until all the "concientous" objectors have been queried.
A crucial element of the Idiot Left's world-view is on display here. By the "Idiot Left", I mean the vast and burgeoning collection of thoughtless college graduates who compose the sea in which the Left swims. That crucial element is the solipsistic notion that what I do not do, does not get done. If my company does not publish Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson will go unpublished. Obviously, the people running the company may be Lefties, but they are not Idiot Lefties, and they recognize that someone is going to publish Jordan Peterson's book, and that someone will make enough money that they will still be publishing books, oh, say, a year from now. "Selling out", the Idiot Left calls this.
Mike of Snoqualamie...I like the way you think.
"AMZN tried to ban a book by Alex Berenson."
How do you mean, "tried"? Amazon "bans" lots of books, in the sense that they refuse to sell them.
WAAHHHHH!!
, staff cried and expressed dismay with the publishing giant's decision!!!...
... people were crying in the meeting
WAAHHHHH!!
We're LITTLE BABIES!!!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!!
Make it STOP!!!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!!
We're LITTLE BABIES!!!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!!
Make it STOP!!!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!!
We're LITTLE BABIES!!!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!!
Make it STOP!!!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!! WAAHHHHH!!
i'd say Suck it up; but that would be me, Forgetting , that you're little babies!
Who among us who lived through Stonewall would have suspected that sixty years later it would the sexual minorities who would turn into the biggest Stalinists?
It was "Live & Let Live" until they got into positions of power, and then it's "Conform or Else!".
How does one push back on this without feeding their persecution complex?
Also, imagine if Christians were this intolerant and intransigent about publication of thinkers who don’t throw ticket tape parades for religious people.
"staff cried"
Their problem is that they didn't have a dad who would say "I'll give you something to cry about!" Pussies.
"people were crying in the meeting about how Jordan Peterson has affected their lives"
I laughed.
non-binary friend
"Well he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me"
*ticker tape
thanks iPhone
Mike of Snoq wrote what I was thinking. Although I might start with more than one. And I'd assure the rest that the replacements for the top positions would NOT come from their ranks.
It's part and parcel of the current magical thinking. Higher minimum wages? Just raise your prices. Don't like a (proven, profitable author)? Just toss the book into the garbage. Concerned about bad cops? Burn your city and loot (they are insured, aren't they?) Crushing federal debt? Just mint a handful of $trillion platinum coins.
Are you sad yet Althouse?
These are lower level employees now. But in 10 years they will be mid level employees. In 20 years they will be management.
Except in 10 years the wages of a low trust society will have blossomed and born fruit.
You people are so blind.
Publishing house staff are a dime a dozen. Jordan Peterson is big money. Do the math. Fire the staff, keep Peterson. Fire the staffer with the highest salary first. Pour encourager les autres. Then ask the next one if he/she wants to stay or join the ranks of the unemployed. Continue down the list until all the "concientous" objectors have been queried.
Exactly. Companies like this publishing house need to get their prioroties straight. Judging by the puerile attitudes of these malcontent employees I can almost guarantee that they're fairly useless as human beings and therefore very replaceable.
Good. Helps book sales and publicity.
Think of the kind of world we will have to live in if these get their way.
This year let us give thanks for the blessing our American Universities have gifted our society. Two generations of whiny, totalitarian, violent, triggered cowards, now infecting the workforce.
Universities ruined our Nation through unqualified and unchecked #arrogance disguised as intellectual altruism.
Publishing house staff are a dime a dozen. Jordan Peterson is big money.
And, big money in an era where people don't buy that many books.
Conscious, conscience, conscientious, discreet, discrete, populous, populace ... it's gotten to the point where it surprises me to see any of these words used and spelled correctly.
There actually is a real problem with Jordan Peterson, which is that he is something of a con artist. That, however, is something far beyond the understanding of publishing house minions.
All you people laughing at their crying are idiots.
Your world is dominated by these people.
Twitter actively does just what they are begging for and is in your face about it. Google does it in ways that I wont bother explaining to you because there is math. Facebook is the same.
You cannot send your kids to a University or K-12 school in this country without your kids being under their thumbs.
You cannot watch TV or Netflix without being drowned in their crap.
You think they are somehow ineffectual?
They own you.
serious question
if a random publisher was going to publish a Pro Trannie book....
and some people on their staff complained...
and the publisher announced, that they were FIRING All the staff that complained....
Would the media world:
A) Rejoice?
B) Express Dismay
Remember how some of you said “hey when these college kids get out into the Real World they’ll get straightened out real quick!!”
Good times, good times.
Achilles said...
All you people laughing at their crying are idiots...
They own you.
I KNOW that... I Also know, it's better to Laugh; than to Cry
Nonapod said...
Exactly. Companies like this publishing house need to get their prioroties straight. Judging by the puerile attitudes of these malcontent employees I can almost guarantee that they're fairly useless as human beings and therefore very replaceable.
Sure they are tools.
But they are doing their jobs and they are in complete control of the culture you live in.
Is there a single company in the west that has the backbone to tell it’s children to sit down and shut up anymore?
What is wrong with these people? They have obviously never read or listened honestly to anything of Peterson's to think this about him. Their whole reality is grounded in stupid opinion pieces written to assassinate his character over the last three years.
It's hard to believe that Cathy Newman represents a whole faction of people who can listen to a man's carefully chosen words and, in real time, completely invent an alternate meaning for those words that turns him into a monster.
>>This year let us give thanks for the blessing our American Universities have gifted our society. Two generations of whiny, totalitarian, violent, triggered cowards, now infecting the workforce.
We all live on campus now. Remember that there were employers offering grief counseling and time off for those "traumatized" by Trump's victory in 2016.
Are any employers offering support for those "traumatized" by a Biden victory?
>>Universities ruined our Nation through unqualified and unchecked #arrogance disguised as intellectual altruism.
Perhaps letting people who hate our country teach our children was a mistake...
Why do publishers care what hyper-delicate, ignorant twits think should be allowed to be said and printed? Who gave them the impression that they know much, much more than the rest of us?
Is there nobody in the front office to challenge the casual slur of "white supremacy?" It seems now to mean, "anyone I don't like" -- except that isn't what it means. It's become as trite and meaningless as "Hitler" and "Nazi." All those terms once described terrible beliefs, persons and behaviors -- but now they're the young adult version of "big poopyhead."
The hell with these losers.
But they are doing their jobs and they are in complete control of the culture you live in.
I certainly don't "live in" that culture.
Benzodiazepines are in disfavor with the medical community now, after being a part of my wife’s long term care for chronic pain from a spinal condition exacerbated by bone loss. She is now in the seventh month of a year-plus slow “tapering” to get off the very drugs she was instructed to take up until 2020. They are so dangerous to stop taking that medically induced comas are preferred in many cases to a slow taper. Actually it sounds like Petersen’s foes could use some anti-anxiety meds, to judge from the quotes you presented.
Those ever-so-social wine swillers won't buy this.
Ten bucks says the publishing house drops him.
"He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him" said an unnamed employee.
Will "unnamed employee" be too proud to pick up his paycheck this week?
I didn't think so either.
To think that in the 90s, we all worried about the crack babies destroying society when they grew up. We never saw the greater risk to our social order, the attack of the college educated cry babies.
Unknown said...
Is there a single company in the west that has the backbone to tell it’s children to sit down and shut up anymore?
What happens to companies like MyPillow?
What are we doing to small gyms and restaurants right now? Only the small ones not in Walmart though.
I bet that Biden purposely subsidizes a Chinese competitor to steal Mike Lindell's product and produce it with slave camp labor to put him out of business.
Readering and Inga would cheer when all of his employees are laid off.
People would tell them to "Learn to Code."
To think that in the 90s, we all worried about the crack babies destroying society when they grew up. We never saw the greater risk to our social order, the attack of the college educated cry babies.
With Professional Sports Canceled, Jordan Peterson To Host First Televised Lobster Fights
Nonapod said...
But they are doing their jobs and they are in complete control of the culture you live in.
I certainly don't "live in" that culture.
But we have all bent the knee to it.
The leftist non-binary army is on the march. They have their weaponized tears... they are offended! and ready to take away your access to.... ideas.
Perhaps the non-binary should write a book about it. See if it sells?
"Who gave them the impression that they know much, much more than the rest of us?"
The ones who thought it was a good idea to hand out participation trophies?
Blogger Achilles said...
You cannot send your kids to a University or K-12 school in this country without your kids being under their thumbs.
Everything else censored on Twitter, FB, and the crap on Netflix all stems from the "educators". Just wait until their pensions have to be paid by the idiots they created. But, their #arrogance will never let them admit it, or take any responsibility for what they have done.
And you're right. These crying drones do have a lot of power. But they lack a real education and basic thinking skills. Maybe I'm in denial, but my jury is still out on their might.
"He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book"
Actually, he's martyr of prog arrogance.
"Regardless of the content of his book": the tell.
I guess it's too much to expect any prog to explain what's white supremacist about Peterson.
Benzodiazepines, to be clear, are a class used to treat anxiety, like Valium, klonopin, clonazipam etc. But they can result in pulmonary problems when taken with narcotic or opiate meds. We really need new types of pain meds because this antiopiate hysteria is causing bad things to people who need decent pain therapies.
>>Readering and Inga would cheer when all of his employees are laid off.
>>People would tell them to "Learn to Code."
All they need to do is learn how to deposit government checks, of which there is an unending supply.
Work interferes with a person's ability to become woke in much the same way that rioting does not.
Stop telling people they need jobs, you oppressor!
The left fling "racist! white supremacist!" accusations around to the point where they are devoid of meaning.
Do you know why I think the Left really targets Peterson? I think the real reason is because Peterson is the most effective modern disseminator of the crimes of the Marxist-Leninist regimes of the 20th C, especially the Soviet Union.
The modern Left wants Americans to believe that they are the inheritors of a particularly morally heinous history. They don't want to be asked the question "Morally heinous compared to who?". That question opens up the discussion on just how awful the left-wing regimes of the 20th C were, and how it's impossible to create a genealogy of ideas that doesn't implicate the modern Left in the moral crimes of those regimes. Truth be told, the intellectual forebears of the modern Left all performed unnatural acts on command for Marxist-Leninism, and the modern Left is quick to obliterate and forgive those who worked in their service (e.g. the white-washing of Angela Davis).
Does the "unnamed employee" have a university degree?
If so, then the article's author should identify at least the university that educated and graduated the employee.
Another reason I'm selling the business and retiring. Unless they are indentured servants, these people should quit. It's like a vegan waitress complaining about the new meat dish on the menu.
What so many of us here are struggling with is: 1) the concept of "correct thinking" being so rigid, nothing else can be tolerated, and 2) a "junior" employee's feelings dictate who the business takes on as a client.
Educational institutions have capitulated to these offended people and now businesses are doing the same thing. It's time that businesses differentiate themselves by standing against this attempt at the "new normal of totalitarianism".
"Perhaps letting people who hate our country teach our children was a mistake..."
Yeah, it was. I remember when the various Hate Studies departments started cropping up at the University of Oregon, back in the 90's. I laughed at them. They were obviously full of shit, and I just assumed it was as obvious to everyone else as it was to me. Anyway, I was safe, off in the Physics department.
Boy, was I wrong! So, what the fuck are we going to do about them? Does anyone have any suggestions? We are paying these assholes to ruin our lives.
It seems weird to me that people work in the publishing industry if they are this upset by the publication of a viewpoint they don't agree with. Surely some related, but propaganda-driven field would suit them better.
"We really need new types of pain meds because this antiopiate hysteria is causing bad things to people who need decent pain therapies."
It appears the attitude is "Better 1,000 people in pain are allowed no relief than 1 druggie getting their fix." Forcing people to suffer in pain when it can be alleviated is evil.
Why does anybody pay any attention whatsoever to these types of people? Their entire ploy is attention-seeking for their own solipsistic gratification. They should be treated as if they were adults and fired accordingly.
There's a phrase that these crying people need to hear: "You're fired"
Fire the lot of them. Starbucks is full of baristas dying to put their English or Art History degree to work. Then, if they complain, fire them and start over until the message is received. It's a business, not a college campus.
"Perhaps this isn't the place for you."
Gusty Winds said...
And you're right. These crying drones do have a lot of power. But they lack a real education and basic thinking skills. Maybe I'm in denial, but my jury is still out on their might.
We will find out which way this fork branches before January 20.
It isn't how much power they have. It is more about our commitment to our principles.
MadisonMan said...
There's a phrase that these crying people need to hear: "You're fired"
And they will never hear it.
But if you say the wrong thing you will.
Going for the First Amendment is a prelude to going after the Second Amendment.
Quite a number of LEOs will realize it is not the LEOs who are in charge of law and order.
"Oh, but this is corporate deletion of speech; that makes this different."
This is true only to the extent the private sector can maintain itself without the consented if the governed.
As always.
So a bunch of self entitled brats are upset about a book by a drug addled boomer? WFC.
He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy
I was legit shocked to find out this article wasn't about Trump.
"publishing house staff are a dime a dozen"
True. and more to the point for Peterson, PUBLISHERS are a dime a dozen.
Or just self-publish and probably make even more money.
Publishers are a commodity. Tell me one has a greater distribution network than another. Bullshit. they're all the same.
Kurt Schlichter's book is Amazon Top 30.
Maybe Top 25 by now.
There is lots of room for conservative entertainment out there.
The demand exists.
Where is the supply?
They're in the publishing business, not the censoring business. They're now out of school, but they still act like their back in the classroom. We've managed to graduate an entire two generations unable to govern, unable to lead, unable to differentiate between actual attacks on themselves, and just things that they may not agree with. Yet, they want to run our lives and our country. And they are only too glad to turn the country over to an established elite class that promises to make all the bad words go away.
Even as the establishment gets their new posts in the Biden administration, guaranteeing a further disparity of wealth and opportunity around the country, these people are crying about Jordan Peterson getting a book published by their own company- which should bode well for their own company.
But their feelings!!!
Comedy Gold. I'm just happy Peterson is well enough to pen another book. It's down to Libtards like Jordan and Joe Rogan who will cancel cancel culture.
What a bunch of pansies!
Why do people always use 'transphobic' as a negative? Correctly viewing the world would be a plus in my book.
Fernandinande said...
With Professional Sports Canceled, Jordan Peterson To Host First Televised Lobster Fights
I like this one better, for the graphic alone!
Jordan Peterson Returns To Find Americans Worshiping Golden Statue Of Karl Marx, Breaks 12 Rules For Life In Anger
WTF is it with 'white supremacy'? By calling so much attention to even the concept, it is being reinforced that whites, are indeed, a superior race.
If you keep going on and on about it, aren't you saying it must be true?
When did anyone other than Robert Byrd or the guy with the funny mustache ever spend their life claiming whites were superior?
The people that claim that there are white supremacists under every bed just aren't willing to do the work to compete in life.
Anyone else here (besides Ann, I mean) actually watch the video? Because to me it sounded quite startlingly anodyne, if you'll forgive the contradiction in terms. The closest it got to the whiners' "trigger" topics was a sentence about how we should be wary of single-issue explanations like sex and class. (Race was not mentioned, nor trans status.) Oh, and there was (gasp!) a reference to God.
Otherwise it sounded like the softest, blandest pabulum ever fed to an infant. About how order is good, but chaos is also good. About how we can transform bad past experiences by thinking back on them. &c. Ye gods, I can see some point in all these staffers crying if it means that they've just discovered that this is what sells millions of copies. But as for white supremacy and transphobia? There wasn't any. Not even a smidge. Just large expanses of stuff that (as Saki says somewhere about a magazine) no self-respecting young adult would ever want to devour in private. Yeesh.
Joe Smith: "WTF is it with 'white supremacy'?"
Hard to rile up folks to riot and loot or vote complaining about "white competency." But that's pretty much what the resentment is all about.
oe Smith said...
WTF is it with 'white supremacy'? By calling so much attention to even the concept, it is being reinforced that whites, are indeed, a superior race.
Intellectuals have long grappled with the problem of "white supremacy." If whites are not superior, why did Europe lead the world out of tribal feudalism, and into our present golden age of wealth, health, and democracy?
Jared Diamond says geography is destiny, but if true (his theories have wide gaping holes in them) why is "geography is destiny" better than "race is destiny"?
There is also a popular idea that white supremacy is the result of white wickedness, meaning the amorality & greed of whites has led to their supremacy.
But that is just trading one version of racism for another.
We need to have a no crying at work rule.
Also, the audio and video went out of sync. By the end, they were well over a second apart. Weird.
It is a new marketing strategy - Lefties cry, Righties buy. That is what has happened with the book about transgender girls, that Target tried to take off the shelves when one person cried.
YoungHegelian said...
Do you know why I think the Left really targets Peterson? I think the real reason is because Peterson is the most effective modern disseminator of the crimes of the Marxist-Leninist regimes of the 20th C, especially the Soviet Union.
He's good at that, but he's even better at disseminating what people used to call "common sense" and has developed quite a following among those who have never been exposed to such ideas. That seems to be his real crime.
One by one, normals are seeing all this and reaching their "F it" point. We won't necessarily be the people who are blocking the NYC or SF bridges when it happens, but we won't be surprised or disapproving. We will silently cheer. There will be jury nullification, or at least hung juries, in surprising locales. If LEOs start getting too enthusiastic about mask enforcement, business closures, or gun taxes/confiscations, few normals will be willing to do anything to cause harm to an officer, but their vehicles will be fair game, and modern cops on foot can't do much. It doesn't take much to flatten a tire or pierce a bunch of radiators in the police parking lot from a distance with a .22 rifle.
They shall reap what they sow.
The Overton window can move both ways, and it is moving.
Canadian Jungian. I'll never tire of wondering at that.
Peterson's brand of self-help has indeed helped a lot of people, excluding, it appears, Peterson himself.
Yet he's surprisingly incoherent politically. Like all Jungians, he prefers pattern to historical, observational fact. For every complaint he makes about the leftist thought-police, he compulsively seeks equal fascistic impulses in ordinary conservative politics. Not find it, he warns that it may come because the gods demand it. He essentially misapprehends realpolitik power differentials because he thirsts to fit everything into ying and yang.
What he says about the Right isn't discussed much. We're too grateful for even an erstwhile ally. And the weeping fascists who run everything now, thanks entirely to academic cowardice, don't find such comments exculpatory enough to examine.
So it isn't surprising that he is advising chaos after advising order. He's got mythology brain, which is fine. But he might be less eternally surprised if he did a bit more history and less Golden Bough.
Blogger Hunter said...
What is wrong with these people? They have obviously never read or listened honestly to anything of Peterson's to think this about him. Their whole reality is grounded in stupid opinion pieces written to assassinate his character over the last three years.
I sent a copy of his "rules" book to my Bernie Bro daughter when it came out. She loved it and that was even before her baby which may have had serious psychological effects on her. Good ones. We will have a talk at Christmas.
Birkel,
I'm about 75% into the Schlichter book at the moment. I've really liked the 4 previous books in the series but this may be the best yet.
In the book, President Biden is on his 3rd vp. Kamala had a severe allergic reaction to some brownies "Dr" Jill sent her. Then Tank Abrams choked to death on a ham sandwich. Woo-hoo Warren is currently vp.
John Henry
So great to see JBP alive and well, or well enough, and back in the game.
His lectures on Genesis were brilliant. Eagerly awaiting similar work.
Transphobia
I burned all of my Who albums after they killed those kids in Cincinnati.
Why should Bernie expect anything at all from the Biden admin?
He has never been a Democrat and has made much of that over the past 30-40 years. He has never fund raised for the party or campaigned for it.
He has no more right to expect anything from them than Newt Gingrich.
John Henry
I love that “icon of white supremacy” crap. Sometimes a best selling author can’t be explained by your feverish conspiracy theories, systemic racism among them. Maybe if you progressive snowflakes would stop screaming about race being the most important feature a person possesses then fewer white people would act as if race is being used to harass and attack them. Weird how it works, huh?
They would be better served to read his book and adopt some of his rules. Wouldn't be so quick to cry I bet.
Part of the point of all this hysteria is to tell good little boys and girls that they are not to read or listen to anything coming from Jordan Peterson. There is a clear fear on the left that if people were to read his words without prejudice that they would be influenced.
Now some may be skeptical that mandates like this will work.
But I think it will work well enough enough. Most people are not rebellious, except maybe when they are teenagers, and leftwing hearts long for clear instruction as to what they are to think.
CJ said :
"There actually is a real problem with Jordan Peterson, which is that he is something of a con artist. That, however, is something far beyond the understanding of publishing house minions."
****************
I'll bite: what's the con? How does Peterson benefit from it?
I came across this video yesterday.
I tried to watch it. I jumped around, listening for a bit, then jumping a couple minutes, and so on.
I think it’s interesting that some people seem to like following Peterson’s directions. We are told that he’s about cleaning your room and other sorts of self discipline. But, he’s also about feeling oppressed and/or left out in ways re the wrong and/or bad culture.
I wonder which of these messages is the most appealing to Peterson fans: self-responsibility or yammering about your supposed victimization. Maybe both. The consistent thing is the control, i.e. there’s a motivation to control yourself and others. For some reason I’m thinking of those preachers who fuss about homosexuality but then end up being homo.
There actually is a real problem with Jordan Peterson, which is that he is something of a con artist. That, however, is something far beyond the understanding of publishing house minions.
That's been my general response to Peterson from the beginning. I think he's a total charlatan. But the notion that he is an "icon of white supremacy" is laughably absurd. Nearly as absurd is Peterson's claim that he is "saving" young men from the clutches of the alt-right. But if people find his self-help books helpful or want to contribute to his Patreon or pay money to listen to his daughter talk about her all-beef diet or buy some of his lobster merch, that's their business. I attempted to read his Maps of Meaning but abandoned it about halfway through. I challenge anyone to explain to me what that book means. I'm not sure Peterson knows. His style is straight out of the Jungian school, most typified by people like Erich Neumann and his The Origins and History of Consciousness. He's also taken a lot from Camille Paglia's work.
Any employee of a publishing company (LGBTQ or not) who lobbies their employer (the publisher) to NOT publish something, should be summarily fired.
Doesn't matter what the rationale is.
I’ve always thought he made a really good undergraduate Psychology professor. Would’ve loved his class.
Michelle Dulak Thomson said, "But as for white supremacy and transphobia? There wasn't any. Not even a smidge."
MDT, you are white (regardless of your "skin color") and so steeped in your privilege you simply can't recognize the white supremacy and transphobia oozing from every word Jordan Peterson writes. He is truly an Enemy of the People, and you are accessory to his hateful teachings.
[You do know sarcasm when you see it, I hope].
Tina Trent, interesting criticism of Peterson and much more nuanced than the usual pablum, especially that of the pre-schoolers at Penguin Random House.
No comments at Vice, but I looked at the author’s Twitter, and there is a lot of pushback, including from young people. That is reassuring.
The crucifixion of Jordan B. Peterson has been one of the most mystifying cultural phenomenons of my rather long life. I listened to his lectures after a devastating divorce at age 53, and he saved me from suicide. I'm not writing that flippantly. I'm yet to hear a single sentence from Peterson that would be in the least controversial to the average person. Inspire discussion, yes, but who can take a strong stance against cleaning up your room and focusing on being your best self everyday?
He's Oprah Winfrey for men, only smarter and less motivated by money. And he appeals to dispossessed young women too.
Peterson has saved lives. And pulled young men out of the vortex of hate that is the extreme right. He's my hero.
Mike (MJB Wolf),
It might be easier to just get the anti-opiate hysterics out of power... repealing the 19th would be a good start.
Mike of Sno's is without a doubt better than what the company will actually do... But it's far too incremental.
Going all PATCO on them would be more effective and much more noticeable.
Diversity and exclusion. Political congruence ("="). The Rainbow (ex black, brown, white). Trans/homosexual transphobia. Selective-child, cannibalized-child. Lose your Pro-Choice quasi-religion (e.g. "ethics").
Relax.
Once Biden oaths, all this will go away as we exit the tunnel to Toon Town.
In the future their performance will be measured by the number of books they declined to publish.
J. Farmer said, "I attempted to read his Maps of Meaning but abandoned it about halfway through. I challenge anyone to explain to me what that book means. I'm not sure Peterson knows. His style is straight out of the Jungian school,..."
Well of course it's directly related to the Jungian school because Maps of Meaning is Jordan Peterson's attempt to do the same sort of thing that Jung was doing except from Peterson's perspective. I'm sure that Peterson has more or less stated that any number of times. He's not dishonest about who has influenced him and where some of his ideas are coming from.
When Peterson talks about archetypes he is talking about internal subjective stories through which we organize our perception of the world. Now objectively there must be an infinite number of possible ways to organize an internal reality to organize and perceive that world but very few of these ways will ever be perceived by a human being because we are biological creatures whose minds are partly biologically determined, and that means evolution and hence in part just one path taken out of many possible, and even our subjective perceptions, while not being actual instincts, are still restricted to a finite number of stories that we can perceive the world through.
Both Jung and Peterson attempt to discover and categorize all the stories through which we perceive the world.
Jung did this in an intensely subjective way. That is he tried to write down and make sense of his internal reality including dreams. Part of Jung's method was to intensely believe in what his subjectivity would lead him to believe. So he believed what many of us would think were absurd things to believe. But the method here is to be as true to oneself as possible and see where that leads and then to document it.
Some people would say it led straight to craziness and others would say that they would have made different choices, so that would have led to different archetypes, and although that last sounds obviously true, still I'm not aware of some catalog of different people doing Jungian type explorations on their own and documenting different results.
Regardless Peterson believes that what Jungian recorded does include some of the archetypes shared by at least some other people and possibly all of humanity. I strongly suspect that Jordan Peterson tried to replicate what Jung did on his own and had a hard time of it.
So what Peterson mostly is doing in Maps of Meaning is an attempt to catalog and list as many persistent, long-lasting stories as he can find in religion or the historical record, that is anything that is clearly not just a fad, because anything persistent and long-lasting has surely appealed to a lot of people and therefore is probably an archetype.
Now none of this means I claim to understand Maps of Meaning. I've tried to read it and have had a hard time of it. I tried to read C.J. Jung when I was a teenager and had a hard time of it. I've tried to read C.J. Jung more recently and have had a hard time of it.
But I do think I understand at least the name of the forest that both of these men are trying to explore.
"WTF is it with 'white supremacy'? By calling so much attention to even the concept, it is being reinforced that whites, are indeed, a superior race."
"White supremacy" is not, or not only, the idea that the "white race" is "superior". White supremacy is the racial ideology that underlay colonialism and 19th-century American slavery. The idea that because the white race is superior, it is destined to provide guidance and supervision to the other races, and those races are destined to accept it. Kipling. South Africa. World Dom.
The importance of understanding this is that this ideology is pretty much indefensible, but it is also practically undefended. If there really were hordes of actual white supremacists diligently seeking to resurrect the European colonial empires, the ongoing consternation would be justified, perhaps even unduly restrained. But WS is defunct. Dead. Gone-gone.
The Left encourages the conflation of "white racial superiority" and "White Supremacy". The first is at least arguably a factual assertion, subject to investigation and debate, like "Chinese superiority", or "Jewish superiority". IQ tests exist, and people keep taking them. White supremacy is an ideology, like Communism, and directly threatens billions of people. Or it would, except that Communists are real, and numerous, while white supremacists may not exist at all. The Left is eager to project the moral oppobrium appropriate to the defunct ideology onto those who ask inconvenient questions about race. Because the Left has settled upon race as the tool with which Western Civilization will be dismantled. But the sharpened edge of that tool is the assertion that race is all-important, but also completely spurious. That edge requires constant honing.
Blogger John henry said...
Birkel,
I'm about 75% into the Schlichter book at the moment. I've really liked the 4 previous books in the series but this may be the best yet.
Thanks, I just got started. I liked the first one best and the other two were OK. "Indian Country" was pretty good.
Disgruntled employees need to quit in disgust.
Maybe carry a symbolic mattress.
Performance art.
Their problem is that they didn't have a dad who would say "I'll give you something to cry about!"
Someone else had a father like that?
@mandrewa:
But I do think I understand at least the name of the forest that both of these men are trying to explore.
I think you gave a fair summation of the Jungian perspective. For my own taste, the work is too close to mysticism. It is also not helpful that Peterson writes in a vague and vacillating manner. It isn’t even clear what he means by “meaning.” It is alternately the “manifestation of the divine individual adaptive path” or “ the interplay between the possibilities of the world and the value structure operating within that world” or “an expression of the instinct that guides us out into the unknown so that we can conquer it” or “ when everything there is comes together in an ecstatic dance of single purpose.”
Also, whenever I hear that someone is going to describe something like “belief” using neuroscience, I get extremely skeptical.
I would not be at all surprised to discover that many of the people running China are Chinese Supremacists, in the ideological sense. The Chinese have always regarded non-Chinese as barbarians, and were intensely baffled and enraged by the humiliations inflicted upon them by Westerners. They have been playing catch-up ball ever since, and I am sure they are gratified by their own racial superiority, as measured by the IQ tests devised by the long-noses. The idiotic one-child policy that was foisted upon them in the last century has left them with a huge surplus of young males, and their foreign policy can be seen as a more-sophisticated version of the aggressive trading strategies that fueled European colonialism. I doubt they actually aspire to rule the US and Europe, but they certainly intend to displace us as a superpower. Pursuant to that end, they have developed initiatives like the One Belt, One Road plan, and the Joe Biden presidential candidacy.
@Jupiter:
But WS is defunct. Dead. Gone-gone.
Completely agree. White supremacy is a complete bogeyman. Its last remnants were dismantled in the mid-1960s by the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the US and the Race Relations Act in the UK.
Although, I think the first shot across the bow of white supremacy was the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, when the Japanese sent most of the Russian naval fleet to the bottom of the ocean.
"I attempted to read his Maps of Meaning but abandoned it about halfway through. I challenge anyone to explain to me what that book means. "
The title pretty well describes it. How we derive meaning in the environment and world we are apart of. Everything around us has some meaning that we subconsciously ignore or acknowledge. The significance is a consequence of the meaning. I think he uses this example elsewhere, or maybe in the book as well, but the simple concept is, if you walk into a room, there is an infinite number of things you could observe about it, but we only observe a few things and derive meaning from them as we find utility or significance.
Now look at all of your rooms that you've been in. Look at all the interpersonal relationships and consider them from the room paradigm. Look at the broader society and the world around you. The stories that society tells etc. There is a lot of meaning there that gets created out of something.
His use of "map" in the title is an attempt to show he's providing a tool we can chart a path to analyze the meaning behind the different "rooms", archetypes, etc. that exist across the generations and have given meaning to our civilization.
It's not an easy read. And I think he could have been more succinct. But from the way I understand Peterson, he builds in layer upon layer, upon layer, to help bring the reader (or listener) to a shared foundation or story. It's similar to the format of his 12 rules book. On and on about lobsters, etc, with tangents about birds, brain chemicals, etc. that then come back to "stand up straight".
His style seems to be to creating an entire landscape (a map) and then define the meaning and significance through it.
If you’re going to have a meeting, then set up a table at the back of the room with stacks of pre-printed letters of resignation. Tell the staff that you are going to publish the book and anyone who can’t bear that reality can fill out a letter of resignation, sign it, turn it in, pick up a box, and go with a member of the security staff to empty your desk.
These people are fucked in the head. There's really no other explanation.
However, Jordan Peterson fans shouldn’t complain about crying.
J. Farmer, I hope you don't think that Jordan Peterson is only about C.J. Jung. Peterson does a good job of articulating and putting together quite a slew of different ideas. For instance, he has also been inspired by Jean Piaget.
I recognize these ideas because in addition to Peterson giving credit to Piaget, I recognize them because I read of lot of Jean Piaget's books when I was 19. And unlike C.J. Jung, Jean Piaget makes a ton of sense to me. That doesn't mean Piaget is right about everything. But it is very useful perspective to have.
I wonder about what your influences are. I'm suspect it's mainly Marxism and derivatives of Marxism. Although I'm sure you will disagree.
And I understand why. I'm older than you are but even when I was young there were so many texts that assumed the validity of Marxism that you could bury yourself in them if you wanted to.
I wonder what it's like now at the high schools and the colleges. Has everything else been burned or put in the dumpster?
@c365:
What is “meaning,” as Peterson uses it?
Mike of Snoqualmie stated my general view way up the thread (9:30 AM) and others have offered similar approaches to this "problem." But IMHO it's not a problem, it's an opportunity. This publisher should create a pay-per-view channel where vindictive mossbacks such as myself can watch as these morons are brought before the Firing Squad (a bit like the talent shows) and given a chance to explain their grievance. Then they are verbally whipped, mocked, eviscerated and the bleeding fragments are collected and sent off-stage with severance pay and a letter of non-recommendation.
Seriously: I would pay real money to watch the children encounter reality at high speed.
"White supremacy is a complete bogeyman. Its last remnants were dismantled in the mid-1960s by the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the US and the Race Relations Act in the UK."
Substantially agree, although I would say that the apartheid government of South Africa was both the purest example and the last to succumb.
@mandrewa:
I wonder about what your influences are. I'm suspect it's mainly Marxism and derivatives of Marxism. Although I'm sure you will disagree.
That’s a big question. In terms of psychology, my primary influence is family systems theory, as espoused by figures like Murray Bowen, Carl Whitaker, Virginia Satir, and ultimately Ludwig von Bertalanffy. Politically, I could probably best be described as a conservative communitarian and influenced by people like John Rawls, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Benjamin Barber. Two contemporary works that reflect a lot of my thinking are Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deenan and Conservatives Against Capitalism by Peter Kolozi.
That said, I do think Marx is an important social theorist who had important insights about the nature of capitalism and its effects. He aptly demonstrates why traditionalism and capitalism are self-defeating goals.
"Although, I think the first shot across the bow of white supremacy was the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, when the Japanese sent most of the Russian naval fleet to the bottom of the ocean."
Perhaps that shot was heard before it was fired. Construction began on the "Triangle of Fire" fortifications at the mouth of Admiralty Sound in the 1890's.
Substantially agree, although I would say that the apartheid government of South Africa was both the purest example and the last to succumb.
Yes, I think that is absolutely correct. In a way, you can conceptualize most of the 20th century, from national self-determination to decolonization to the civil rights movement to anti-apartheid, as an effort to undo white supremacy.
J. Farmer said, "In terms of psychology, my primary influence is family systems theory, as espoused by figures like Murray Bowen, Carl Whitaker, Virginia Satir, and ultimately Ludwig von Bertalanffy. Politically, I could probably best be described as a conservative communitarian and influenced by people like John Rawls, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Benjamin Barber. Two contemporary works that reflect a lot of my thinking are Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deenan and Conservatives Against Capitalism by Peter Kolozi."
Well that's mainly a list of people I'm not too familiar with. But we do have an overlap. I do have Virginia Satir's books, or at least many of them, and I have read them.
The assholes are correct. Peterson is an enemy of Stalinism. A big enemy. He must be silenced or their ideal;Gulag is in danger.
@Mandrewa:
To oversimplify it, I don’t believe people really exist as individuals but as members of groups. Thus, I’m highly skeptical of liberalism as espoused by John Locke, Adam Smith, or John Stuart Mill. As Carl Whitaker once remarked, “There are no individuals in the world, only fragments of families.”
Fuck the Left.
With a backhoe.
The Ctrl-Left.
It's in their name.
To oversimplify it, I don’t believe people really exist as individuals but as members of groups.
Since natural selection, which created the human brain and mind, operates far more strongly at an individual level than at the group (e.g. family) level, and because many of the important groups which an individual is a member change over their lifetime, I see the individual as the important unit.
J. Farmer said, "To oversimplify it, I don’t believe people really exist as individuals but as members of groups."
Well, that's how the Chinese see it. In China, if someone commits a crime, the whole family is considered guilty. In the social credit scoring system that the CCP has put in place, your score goes down if a relative does something wrong like express an unapproved opinion.
I was out hiking with some young Chinese women a few months ago and we were have a pretty frank talk about families, and I happened to mentioned that my grandmother, the only grandparent that I really knew, was an orphan and that she grew up on her own. And I saw the flash of dismay, it was almost disgust, and I knew what it meant.
In China you're nothing if you're an orphan. You're lucky to be alive and one's probable future is to be a servant to a family. An orphan has no future in China. It's a terrible thing in a culture where the family is the primary unit to imagine being an orphan.
Now to some extent I agree with you. I think my generation put way to much emphasis on individualism. And it didn't work out to well. There a lots of practical problems that come from pretending a person can be healthy without a supporting group or family around them.
But in defense of that idea if you look at the people that really changed things and that made a difference and that invented this world that we live in, so many of them seem to be dramatically and obviously individuals. Now I think that may be partly an illusion and that we have just forgotten or taken for granted the supporting context which probably surrounded those individuals.
But even so, you know I'm going to say that it's a mix of both -- that we are both individuals and members of families. I don't think we want to be like China. I don't think Chinese history, I mean the real history, is all that wonderful.
Proper response:
1: Fire everyone who was crying. There is no possible legitimate grounds for crying because your employer is publishing JP
2: Figure out who hired the criers. Make them show cause why they shouldn't be fired, too
3: Fire anyone who objects to #1 or #2
4: Alter hiring process. Inform everyone who comes for an interview that you publishing house would consider itself a failure if it didn't publish something that makes each and every employee uncomfortable. If they can't handle that, they should drop out of hte hiring process, right now.
Jobs are hard to come by. under Biden, jobs will be even harder to come by. anyone who wants to be a budding fascist can do it on the unemployment line
Peterson is also heavily influenced by Nitschke
Count me in with those who believe all these babies should be fired.
I read 12 Rules, then Maps of Meaning, and will read his new book. I like Peterson. He is anything but a charlatan: his humility has always been on display. Unlike some others here.
THEOLDMAN
Have a Happy Thanksgiving. Make your bed before you leave the house for mom's gathering. Blessings.
Howard @ 5:37 Peterson is also heavily influenced by Nitschke
I assume this was a typo, but it still made me laugh.
I'm nearly through his "12 Rules" book and think he has valuable insights. It disturbs me that a guy so clearly intelligent can get into a bad situation with pharmacologicals. It's the kind of thing that makes me a little less enthusiastic.
Where is Pol Pot when you need him the most to re-educate these whiny wimpy wallowers
@mandrewa:
But even so, you know I'm going to say that it's a mix of both -- that we are both individuals and members of families. I don't think we want to be like China. I don't think Chinese history, I mean the real history, is all that wonderful.
I don't want to get too deep into ontology, but my worldview is basically "dialectical monism." Heraclitus and Lao Tzu with Hegel as a bridge. I tend to see experience as the mediation of opposing forces, or the "unity of opposites." In terms of human behavior, it is the outcome of the pull of social forces plush the push of internal drive, with the two in a constant feedback loop.
For all of western liberalism's virtues, it may very well sew the seeds of its own destruction. It abhors tradition, venerates the individual, believes that human society can be based in reason and scientific humanism, exalts the way capitalism roots inefficiency out of the social system (regardless of immaterial value like social cohesion), and most dangerously of all is universalist in its orientation. You can call that idea a lot of things, but you most certainly can't call it conservative. It is an idea as radical and utopian as the most avowed Leninist or Maoist.
Consider the areas where western liberalism has its strongest presence: northern Europe and its diaspora (US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). These are the countries suffering identity crises, tearing down their cultural heritage to assuage white guilt, opening their borders to Latino, Middle Eastern, and African immigrants, demanding legal recognition and protections for an unending list of gender and sexual proclivities, and generally trying to exist as a society multicultural at the individual level.
Peterson's great error, and the error of so many of his intellectual brethren, is to lay the blame for identity politics at the feet of Marxism or post-modernism. Its justification lies at the very heart of western liberalism: faith in the individual to construct his own reality untethered from tradition or orthodoxy.
@Fernandinande:
Since natural selection, which created the human brain and mind...
Sure. I think that is a truism. Humans are biological organisms, and our mental capacities have developed through a process of evolution. There isn't much we know beyond the fact that this occurred.
Publisher: "Thank you for expressing your deeply held views. There is the door."
They're all idjits in that pen. Weak-ass idjits.
Sensible Citizen: glad to hear you're doing well. And glad to hear Peterson helped you. Nothing that I said was intended to demean his helpfulness. I think he is really an extraordinary man for doing so much good for so many people.
Transphobia would be a good name for 19th century German kingdom. Kind of like Freedonia.
SensibleCitizen,
I too am glad you were helped by Peterson's stuff.
My misgivings (similar to Tina's, though she put it better than I ever have done) are about the long-term big picture. Look at NorthOf's remark: "He's good at that, but he's even better at disseminating what people used to call "common sense" and has developed quite a following among those who have never been exposed to such ideas" -- That's where much of the danger lies.
And I do have to ask, is your phrase "Oprah for men" supposed to be complementary to any four of the parties involved (Oprah, women, Peterson, men)?
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