That was an excellent article, and I’m glad it showed up. Hitherto I hadn’t been entirely certain what to think about Peterson, if only because I kept seeing people summarise his twitter posts in ways which did actually mischaracterise them. So I was willing to offer just a sliver of credit to the theory that maybe he was being unfairly lynched.
the top lobster, by contrast – occupying the best shelter, getting some good rest, finishing a good meal – parades his dominance around his territory, rousting subordinate lobsters from their shelters at night, just to remind them who’s their daddy. The female lobsters (who also fight hard for territory during the explicitly maternal stages of their existence) identify the top guy quickly, and become irresistibly attracted to him. This is brilliant strategy, in my estimation. It’s also one used by females of many different species, including humans.
Nnnnnope!
And good heavens but his view of those school shooters is, uh, out there.
Also, my thanks and gratitude to those people above who double-checked that absurd nonsense about lobsters’ brains dissolving so I didn’t have to.
Yes. The mix of reasons include everything from large-scale societal shifts right down to some of the common-sense obvious ones addressed by Peterson in “his” rules. I’m sure that his initial advice, just like the entry-level advice given by $cientology or the Bhagwan or [insert yout grifting guru here] can be truly helpful to damaged and vulnerable and ignorant people seeking direction in their lives. But when charlatans hungry for money and power are involved it’s always followed up with a pile of garbage and woo and exploitative hierarchies and scapegoating.
Peterson needed a way to distinguish himself from Dale Carnegie or Stephen Covey or Tony Robbins and found it in making appeals to alt-right talking points that are bearded by a free-speech argument. I’m sure the message that “you’re being held back from your true potential by censoring postmodern neoMarxist culture” sounds very appealing to some schnook who has (at best) a vague idea of what those various terms mean*, especially if those on the alt-right are willing to “explain” things further to him.
[* taken together they’re utter self-contradictory nonsense]
Hopefully people read this whole article. Life needs variety and I’m getting tired of the go-to “chaos the eternal feminine” quote every time someone wants to get their Peterson hate on.
[quote=the article] In his defence, Jordan told me if he refused to pay the fine he could go to jail. That is not the same as being jailed for what you say, but it did ennoble him as a would-be martyr in the defence of free speech. He was a true free speech “warrior” who was willing to sacrifice and run roughshod over his students to make a point. He could have spared his students and chosen to sidestep the issue and refer to them by their names. And if this was truly a matter of free speech he could have challenged the Human Rights Act, off-campus and much earlier, by openly using language offensive to any of the already-protected groups on that list.
Perhaps this was not just about free speech.
Not long afterwards the following message was sent from his wife’s email address exhorting recipients to sign a petition opposing Ontario’s Bill 28. That bill proposed changing the language in legislation about families from “mother” and “father” to the gender-neutral “parents.”
“A new bill, introduced in Ontario on September 29th, subjugates the natural family to the transgender agenda. The bill — misleadingly called the ‘All Families Are Equal Act’ — is moving extremely fast. We must ACT NOW to stop this bill from passing into law.”
This is not a free-speech issue so Jordan is wearing a different political hat. And what does a “transgender agenda” have to do with a bill protecting same-sex parents? What is this all about?[/quote]
There you have it: it was never about free speech; it was always about bashing Trans folk.
Other interesting tidbit:
[quote=article] Several years ago, Jordan Peterson told me he wanted to buy a church. This was long before he became known as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world,” as he was described in the pages of the New York Times a few months ago. It was before he was fancied to be a truth-telling sage who inspired legions, and the author of one of the bestselling books in the world this year. He was just my colleague and friend.
I assumed that it was for a new home — there was a trend in Toronto of converting religious spaces, vacant because of their dwindling congregations, into stylish lofts — but he corrected me. He wanted to establish a church, he said, in which he would deliver sermons every Sunday.[/quote]
The part about the wager is unproven, but there are numerous reports from credible sources of Elron in the late 1940s stating variations on “you can’t become rich writing science fiction at $0.02/word; if you want to make real money you have to start a religion.”
That was me. The Bhagwan himself is dead, but the old Rolls-driving fraud stands as a good example of one of these guru grifters.
So basically a sneakier agnostic version of a bigoted Xtianist preacher. Glad to see people who’ve known him are speaking out.
Putting aside his bigotry, these passages from the article about his behaviour within the academy jumped out at me:
Even though there was nothing contentious about his research, he objected in principle to having it reviewed by the university research ethics committee, whose purpose is to protect the safety and well-being of experiment subjects.
[…]
he had questioned the authority and expertise of the committee members, had insisted that he alone was in a position to judge whether his research was ethical and that, in any case, he was fully capable of making such decisions himself.
[…]
His [student reviews] were, for the most part, excellent and included eyebrow-raising comments such as “This course has changed my life.” One student, however, hated the course because he did not like “delivered truths.”
[…]
as reported by that one astute student, Jordan presented conjecture as statement of fact. I expressed my concern to him about this a number of times, and each time Jordan agreed. He acknowledged the danger of such practices, but then continued to do it again and again, as if he could not control himself.
[…]
He overwhelmed challenges with volumes of information that were hard to process and evaluate.
Looks like some of his defenders here have learned that last lesson, at least.
From accounts of Judith Merril and Frederik Pohl, the bet was with an editor. Campbell would be the leading candidate, but I don’t know if they ever named him.
It seemed self evident from my post that I don’t consider those toxic traits to be at all masculine.
I can’t speak to what messages society sends. But I can tell you that the man who raised me never taught me to be aggressive with anyone other than other men and then only when they get out of line and I can tell you that none of the men in my life are the toxically masculine types either.
Speak for yourself. I was never taught it was wrong to be emotional or cry. In fact, when my father lost his first son, he showed his family just how strong men cry.
You got a mouse in your pocket with bad parenting skills?
Look, I get your point. It’s just that my life has never included anyone who operates with toxic masculinity and when I see someone like that I mock them. It’s just how I was raised and how the other men in my life operate. Whiny little punks who use aggression to get their way are being childish and will be relentlessly mocked for it. Punk ass boys who use violence against women or anyone they view as weak will be beaten about the head and neck until they cease being a man-child.
In the end, I simply view painting petulant child behavior as masculine to be a mistake. I will not push that narrative. Yes, I know there are shit heels everywhere and those shitheels have children and pass on their shitheel ideas to them. But just because you call a pile of dog poop a pile of gold, don’t make it so.
It is up to men everywhere to stand up against this false masculinity and call it out for what it is, childish bullshit. It is also up to us all to defend those who need or ask for help. We must not accept this false view of masculinity in our midsts. We must aggressively react to it whenever it pops up. That, my friend, is a big part of being masculine.
This pushes the ball forward. Shit posts are funny and entertaining. Peterson’s also selling something. So what. Don’t buy it. I did and got something out of it. So what. Does that make me want to Coronate him King of all men, nope. Hardly. Does that make me curious, yep. From my perspective and opinion – There are a few universal truths across humanity. 1. Our limitless ability to learn. 2. Our ability to adapt. 3. Our natural instinct as predators to seek out the highest ground and dominate. 4. Repeat endlessly. The first two generally help us keep the third true. Of course in not a doctor. But I can play one in the internet. /s
Welp, I first found Peterson on YouTube, and quite enjoyed the videos for the very hard way he argues. It was entertaining more than anything else.
I found this article in my news feed, and really want to get an idea of how people outside of the narrow YouTube comments section view him.
In general I disagree with the article, as the core of Peterson’s rules, especially stating that you should manage your own life, are pretty obvious. There’s nothing really wrong with any of his points except the “privilege” stamp Kate puts on it just because it happens to have attracted a white male audience. Realistically, I think his views are applicable to everyone and it’s a shame they get slandered just because of the audience they’ve reached.
However, I very strongly agree that Peterson’s definition of winning isn’t quite right. Self improvement is key, winning is not. To make yourself a better person is great, as that includes loving yourself and others. Most importantly, being willing to let go and “lose” from time to time for the benefit of others.
Those are my thoughts anyway, after reading the article, the study on lobsters and a bunch of comments.
I’m neither a Peterson, lobster or privilege expert, so for those of you who’ve been in this community for a while, what are your thoughts and why?
Thats a charmed life you’ve led… must be nice in your world, wish I could visit.
I get your point, I really do, but you can’t hand-wave toxic masculinity away just because you’ve never seen it (or don’t want those behaviours associate with “masculinity”), and because you don’t raise your kids that way. Lots and lots of people do. I’ve seen many a blog post, from men my age and younger posit that it is impossible to rape their wives. That the act of marriage is all the consent they need. They’re otherwise fine, good, upstanding (often Christian) men with jobs and position in their community. But their inability to examine their beliefs… thats toxic masculinity.
So yes, please do keep calling it out, but do so under the name of what it actually is.
Citation required.
Please include the Baboon Forest Troop already mentioned in your thesis.
Alternate higher ape you may use for your thesis: Bonobos - matriarchal, sex with everyone all genders all the time, closest living relative to humans.
Replace your third point with “Our natural instinct as social beings to co-operate and work together”, and it would be far more of a universal truth. Then the last sentence of that quote would make sense.
As I noted above, I agree. They’re also trite and shopworn. And yet they’re treated as novel pearls of wisdom by his followers, whom he does not dissuade from this impression.
It’s not the basic ideas that are getting “slandered.” Peterson is getting criticised because he is deliberately seeking out this audience of entitled white cisgender males and connecting them with the alt-right if they aren’t already involved. At the same time he’s constructing a cult of personality, which would be problematic even if he weren’t promoting his own personal agenda of “traditional values” sexism and anti-trans bigotry.
And yes, he asks his rather dim-witted followers to “think for themselves”, but with far less conviction than Brian of Nazareth did:
I don’t hand wave it away and I take issue with you saying that I do. Also I see it all the time. I simply refuse to refer to such behaviour has masculine, toxic or not. While you say it “actually is” a type of masculinity, I’d have to disagree. Such behavior is in no way masculine and I’m forced to wonder why you think that it is. Just because you find many spoiled children in mens bodies does not mean such behavior is limited to men nor does it mean that such behavior is in any way intrinsic to being a man.
The reason my life has never included men who behave like spoiled children is born of active choice. I see those man boys every day but there is no way I’d allow them to associate with me at all. It’s not a matter of charm or living in a nice world. Quite the opposite in fact. It is a matter of refusing to treat these grown children as equals.
No, that’s simply living an unexamined life. That’s not unique to men, women, or spoiled children. Living an unexamined life is not a gender issue. For most, it’s simply part of the human condition.
I do, I call it being a spoiled child because that’s what it actually is.
Toxic masculinity is a thing I have to deal with as a woman daily, I cannot simply avoid it. And I am jealous that you are able to.
And to be clear, I’m NOT saying that toxic behaviours are inherently masculine, which seems to be what you think I’m saying… “toxic masculinity” is its own thing. Separate. Its a label used to separate over exaggerated stereotypically masculine traits that have negative impact on men, women and society. Its not saying that masculine traits are toxic, its very specific.
