Jordan Peterson

[Timsup2nothin]

Again...highly unlikely. It isn't anything close to typical for a predator to drive prey into extinction. And in any case, it's not like these species went extinct simply because we ate them all. Hunting pressure surely contributed, but habitat destruction on a wide scale isn't exactly a new thing.

If we continue on our present trajectory the largest animals left other than us will be cattle.

Right. We tip the balance in favor of ourselves and the animals that we deem desirable. That is the apex of predation. It isn't typical predation. But I never suggested the apex was typical, I just suggested that if it weren't us it would be something else.

 

[Lexicus]

Right. We tip the balance in favor of ourselves and the animals that we deem desirable. That is the apex of predation. It isn't typical predation. But I never suggested the apex was typical, I just suggested that if it weren't us it would be something else.

Well, you mean some other tool-using biped would have evolved sooner or later, or do you mean that bears would start using fire to manage the environment?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well, you mean some other tool-using biped would have evolved sooner or later, or do you mean that bears would start burning down forests and marsh on a large scale?

Too hypothetical to be of great interest. My point is that the concept "destroy competitive predators, destroy competitors of our preferred prey" is too simple to believe that no other predator would ever have come up with it if we hadn't...and the step from "destroy competitive predators" to "destroy that other band of predators that are actually the same as us" is also too obvious to have been avoided. We are what we are, and I'm okay with that.

 

[inthesomeday]

The real point is that the way humans consume is pretty unique

 

[Lexicus]

My point is that the concept "destroy competitive predators, destroy competitors of our preferred prey" is too simple to believe that no other predator would ever have come up with it if we hadn't.

But this is a rather simplistic version of the evolutionary history. We started doing these things as a byproduct of the large brains we evolved largely to socialize with one another.

 

[inthesomeday]

But this is a rather simplistic version of the evolutionary history. We started doing these things as a byproduct of the large brains we evolved largely to socialize with one another.

Be careful here, it’s hard to say WHY we evolved our large brains necessarily

 

[Lexicus]

Be careful here, it’s hard to say WHY we evolved our large brains necessarily

I mean, not really. Brain:body size ratio is correlated with the size of the social group in primates. A similar effect has actually been shown even at the level of individuals:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393210003581

It is the prevailing theory that our large brains were an adaptation to allow us to socialize better, and that increasing "intelligence" was merely a byproduct of this process. Sort of ironic considering all the neckbeards who think people skills are useless and brag about how high their IQs are.

 

[inthesomeday]

If we call intelligence an evolutionary product of socialization, we should call socialization an evolutionary product of cooperation, no?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

If lions were in a position to take down elephants they probably would have started before humans every got on the scene.

There's at least one pride that's been recorded taking down elephants, fwiw. The process involved climbing up their backsides and eating them from the top down. It's brutal af

 

[Lexicus]

If we call intelligence an evolutionary product of socialization, we should call socialization an evolutionary product of cooperation, no?

Well, it's all sorts of social interactions. At the group level, yes, it's ultimately all designed to facilitate cooperation, but it's not like there weren't adversarial situations that needed to be navigated.

 

[Mouthwash]

Of course I did. It's only "easily interpretable" that way if you ignore their public statements about what they are doing. Since we know that you would never do such a thing we must conclude you believe that the "entirety of American history" is police violence against people of color.

I'm afraid I don't see how that follows.

And you were asking, essentially, "Why is 'black culture' ruining black neighborhoods?" Which is an entirely different question, with entirely racist framing.

Agreed, which is why I didn't frame it that way.

The answer to "why are people with less experience having property and wealth (due to social and legal hierarchies well outside their control) not as skilled in managing it" is self-evident. It's a learned skill. Jay-Z is observing a phenomenon but not assigning culpability for it to the race of the people involved.

People aren't culpable for their upbringing. It's generally white progressives who are culpable for destroying the family.

As noted by other posters, and by me in this post, the reasons for this are most certainly not being attributed by Jay to "Black culture."

But what he said is pretty much how I'm defining culture (or at least one aspect of it).

Whereas you're specifically assigning the blame for this problem to the culture of Black people. I don't know how much better I can explain to you how what you're saying is racist. And turning to Black art to take hip-hop lyrics out of context to try to justify your racist post - ugh, man.

Sometimes cultures correlate with phenotype. Culture has measurable effect on family structure. Family structure has a measurable effect on socioeconomic outcomes. Is it racist to point those things out?

(I expect you'll respond by saying "so you think all blacks have a destructive culture? You just said it, I can't believe you don't realize the depths of your own racism" but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and ask you to read what I wrote in good faith.)

 

[inthesomeday]

So you’re claiming that family structure is responsible for black poverty? I haven’t really been listening to you, it’s been too racist for me.

 

[Lexicus]

So you’re claiming that family structure is responsible for black poverty? I haven’t really been listening to you, it’s been too racist for me.

It's fairly typical of this kind of discourse- killing two birds with one stone. Patriarchal families are the only possible basis of social stability, so women doing anything but keeping their heads down and pumping out babies is an existential threat to society - and the destruction of the black family, carried out gleefully by "progressives," is actually responsible for the situation of black America, not racism!

 

[aelf]

Are they really getting mileage though?

They are having some fun among themselves, for sure. Any time a recognizable person says something they can "latch on to" it will immediately roar around their echo chamber with a "look, we really are smart!" interpretation.

And it will get dragged from their echo chamber by the usual shills.

But those shills are still going to be recognized as the usual shills. No one outside the echo chambers is going to suddenly say "wow, a member of academia said something they claim justifies their ideology, I guess they aren't the hateful blithering idiots I thought they were" and congratulate the shill.

It is getting some worldwide attention.

It could be that the moderates who are impressed by Jordan Peterson and who sympathise with the anti-progressive message are only self-professed moderates. And I guess I've generally found self-professed moderates to be more conservative than progressive, so it stands to reason that the anti-progressive bits of what he says (which the alt-right helps to broadcast) would appeal to them.

 

[Mouthwash]

Well, what is the family structure of black America? What forces shape it? How is it changed over time?

Very generally speaking: marriage to the state. Black women often literally can't raise children without Medicaid

I understand that when you say "black family structure" you mean "single mothers", but whether or not that's typical, it's not actually a structure, it's a characteristic. If there's anything which distinguishes black family structures from white family structures, it's multi-generationality and extensiveness, the greater likelihood of having non-immediate family members living alongside each other and participating in child rearing.

And you think this is a replacement for having two parents?

This is also common among Hispanic, Asian and Native families. It was historically common among white families, especially white ethnics. That, you'll recall, was the point I originally made re: Peterson's Twelve Dumb Commandments, and the reason it threatens weirdos like Peterson is that it presents a genuine alternative to the isolated bourgeois nuclear family.

I'd be the first one to tear down the nuclear family, but denying the importance of parents doesn't make a great deal of sense to me. I have two Haredi aunts with families; they don't resemble the Afro-American single-mother households in the slightest.

Obviously it's a political statement. I'm not saying that it isn't, or that it is recognised as such. What I'm suggesting is, this itself is the source of the outrage. The sort of patriotic ritual represented by the flag-and-singalong are assumed to be apolitical, assumed to assert generally American virtues which are beyond dispute. Kaepernick's protest isn't distressing simply because they disagree with the politics it espouses, but because it is explicitly political, because it recasts the whole ritual as a political one- which, of course, it always was. If the same point had been in a context that was recongised as political, such as a BLM protest, the anti-Kaepernick crowd may disagreed with him, even vehemently, but he wouldn't have risked the same sort of bile, because he was not violating a sacred myth that the rituals of nationalism are somehow apolitical. It would have been a passing item on the sports blogs, "up and coming quarterback attends protest", and NFL-ignorants like you and me would still think that "Kaepernick" refers to a style of Lithuanian pickled gherkin.

The fact that his protest consisted of nothing more than an act of passive refusal- that his outrage consisted of literally keeping his head down- only serves to hammer home this point. Kaepernick didn't need to actually say anything disrespectful to "dismiss the entirety of American history and culture as immoral". All he had was fail to practice the expected affirm of American nationalism that was expected of him as a football player, and the reactionary right would fill in the blanks. Anything less than unquestioning compliance was tantamount to treason...

Sure, honoring the flag is and always was political, but it's a political thing that brings people together under a shared identity. If that identity is co-opted for partisan politics, it's tantamount to making the identity conditional on those demands being met.

Let's say a member of your local socialist party decided he wasn't going to vote in the party's interests unless they agreed to serve free beer for kids in schools (or whatever). Would you say, "meh, it's politics all the way down, so there's no betrayal in what he did?"

I've generally found self-professed moderates to be more conservative than progressive, so it stands to reason that the anti-progressive bits of what he says (which the alt-right helps to broadcast) would appeal to them.

Or maybe...

 

[miaasma]

Very generally speaking: marriage to the state. Black women often literally can't raise children without Medicaid

what a succinct, nuanced explanation

 

[metalhead]

Sometimes cultures correlate with phenotype. Culture has measurable effect on family structure. Family structure has a measurable effect on socioeconomic outcomes. Is it racist to point those things out?

When you point it out by attributing the negative aspect to being black, like this:

Certain aspects of black culture have devastated the economic and social life of many black communities.

Then yes. You're saying there is something unique about the culture black people have created that has devastated their communities. It's judging them based on their race. It's racist.

 

[Mouthwash]

The latter is a shorthand for the former, maybe a bit generalizing or crude, but not mistakable for racism (unless you were already intent on finding some).

 

[miaasma]

it sounds like you're convinced that the only form of racism that exists is conscious, vocal racism a la going around calling people of colour slurs, and anything remotely latent doesn't qualify

do you really not see how conjuring up notions of how black people "naturally" behave, and then attributing community stability to some biological predisposition, is racist in nature

 

[inthesomeday]

I would venture to say that this odd sort of social Darwinism is about one thousand times more racist than calling a black person the n word.