I am so happy to see Contrapoints getting a shout out! I love Natalie’s brand of engaging stylistic indulgence mixed with serious and accessible analysis.
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Contrapoints has a video on that very subject! https://youtu.be/QuN6GfUix7c
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Well stated.
It bears saying that the right isn’t a monolith either, and both sides endlessly demonizing each other is beyond fucking counterproductive; it’s an intentional ploy to keep common folks distracted, IMO.
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(Not sure if this was a quotation from the video, I’ll be watching it later tonight)
But if someone asks to be referred to as “they” rather than “he” or “she” wouldn’t doing so be submitting to the will of that person? That’s not rugged individualism! /s
I include the /s tag because I’m pretty sure that what I just wrote is genuinely how many people have come to think. Individualism isn’t just about being yourself, it’s (apparently) also about saying “fuck you” to anyone who is different than you. It’s about refusing to accommodate anyone or anything, refusing to go the slightest bit out of your way to make someone else’s life better (and sometimes going out of your way to make it worse).
It’s less individualism that Peterson is peddling and more anti-socialism.
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That shitty mentality is antisocial and inhumane. None of us is an island, we all have to live on this planet together, like it or not.
And since we don’t have a choice in the matter, and most sane, rational people don’t want to end up living in some Mad Max nightmare dystopia, we have to work together to figure out better ways to coexist peacefully.
Jinx.
I started replying before I’d read your entire comment.
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Not just your opinion:
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Every time JP gets mentioned – either positively or negatively – he wins. So can we please just stop?
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The Washington Post got in on the JP fun today:
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Oh my God, is this actually happening again? All of these “arguments” have been put out, time after time. Quite frankly, I couldn’t even get past 1:30 in that video where ‘ContraPoints’ erected an overwhelming strawman of Peterson;
So, whose Jordan Peterson? Well, he’s a psychology professor at the University of Toronto who got famous for sounding the alarm about how protecting transgender people under Canadian human rights law shall surely lead to Stalinism.
Right, because it had everything to do with protecting transgender people and nothing to do with compelled speech. Gotcha Contra.
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Oh come on. Demonizing the right is not only productive, it is necessary for survival. And entertaining!
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That bears typing it out by hand:
The real war, the one that’s already being fought, isn’t a war between countries, or “liberal” vs “conservative.”
No, that stuff is a way to keep us from seeing the forest and the trees, as they are burning down all around us.
The real war is between wealth and accountability, and it’s been going on since civilization began.
Leave it to a great artist to completely nail it.
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Oh, if only more followed classical liberal philosophy, then maybe, according to such classical liberals as John Locke, we might have already had the revolution which everyone is entitled to when the leadership no longer abides by the social contract to protect the interests of the citizens. Classical liberalism: sorting out fact from opinion since the 1600’s.
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For me, people naming logical fallacies is a pretty good warning sign that they look for the flaws in other people’s reasoning and not in their own. The statement you quote is not an argument, it’s a summary:
- Some people think changes should be made to the human rights code for the purpose of protecting the rights of transgender people
- Peterson thinks the proposed changes would trample on individual rights
I hope you don’t disagree with either of those statements. You may disagree with the way in which they are concatenated, the use of “lead to Stalinism” in place of “trample on individual rights”, or the lack of clarity that Peterson objected to specific changes rather than any change. None of that would make the statement a “strawman”. It makes it imprecise at worst.
But here’s the thing: if the statement is imprecise, there’s lots more video in which the issue will be clarified. You just didn’t care to watch it.
If you don’t like to watch videos that are clearly belittling people who you have respect for, that makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. I don’t love pretending that’s an intellectual position, or that you can know arguments you didn’t even bother listening to are incorrect because you disagree with their thesis statement.
God damn it, people who quote John Locke. For fucks sake, Locke said that mixing your labour with the commons made the commons your property if you left as much and as good for everyone else. The exclusion of that makes the entire thing insane and obviously stupid. The inclusion of it is an utter denouncement of contemporary capitalism.
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Is it bad that I have a crush on Contrapoints/Natalie? She’s just so cute but her humor is just too weird for me. As for her first video on PJ I was glad she decided to attack him on the matter of what is “post-modern neo-marxism” rather than blowing it off. It basically disarms the guy and his followers from using that term without qualification. It’s something I wish more people would do (IIRC either Zero Books or Cuck Philosopy did the same thing recently).
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From my perspective, it appeared like a monstrosity of a strawman. If you want to use the word ‘imprecise’, you’ll have to push it. Here’s the situation. Gender identity and gender expression was added to the prohibited grounds of discirmination in the Human Rights Code, and the human rights commissions stated that part of this discrimination would include not using preferred pronouns. Peterson, of course, while he has used such pronouns before, will not accept the government compelling anyones speech. So Peterson never had a problem with anyone protecting transgender rights, which is what the statement says. And he didn’t claim protecting transgenders leads to Stalinism, for goodness sake.
But here’s the thing: if the statement is imprecise, there’s lots more video in which the issue will be clarified. You just didn’t care to watch it.
If you don’t like to watch videos that are clearly belittling people who you have respect for, that makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. I don’t love pretending that’s an intellectual position, or that you can know arguments you didn’t even bother listening to are incorrect because you disagree with their thesis statement.
I’ve read enough media articles against Jordan Peterson that I could probably have read a book in the while. It’s just that YouTube videos against Peterson, in particular I’ve noticed, are of terrible quality and validity (cough cough, PZ Myers, Cult of Dusty). So here comes ContraPoints (a transgender person?) who rails against capitalism (which has lifted billions out of poverty) that makes a half hour video against Peterson, and starts it all off with a strawman. I mean, come on.
I don’t know if @armozel is talking about the fact, in their comment, that postmodernism contradicts marxism. Well, Peterson explained as much here – Peterson knows that the entire idea is as paradoxical as it sounds. His point is much more specific than the bare term would imply, though.
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Oh God, I remember getting into a fight with DarkMatter2525 many years ago (when I was an ancap). Oddly enough we came to respect each other. He’s willing to admit fault when you come at him with some kind of argument even if it’s flawed too.
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No PJ doesn’t know post-modern philosophy because he’s never read those who are assigned to that school of thought which is pretty vast in its subject matter. Does PJ deal with the issue of sign-value of Baudrillard? Does PJ assess the work of Foucault with respect to his views on power and institutions? Does PJ analyze anything Derrida does with language? Like I’m not trying to be mean here but I think if someone claims to understand what post-modern philosophy is and what Marxism is they should at minimum read the damn literature in that field. You can’t pontificate on what you don’t know. It’s like saying you hate French cuisine but you’ve never ate any in your life. Without that informed position you can’t make an argument.
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I’ve never actually engaged that poster; I just his enjoy his vids.
Also:
GURL, NO…
It would be nice; going through this shit all over yet again is just pointless.
BB isn’t pressed for site traffic like that, so I don’t get why some people just can’t seem to leave this particular shitshow well enough alone.
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Sorry 
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