Well, we've been changing nature and "natural things" for our entire existence. With rather mixed results, admittedly, but still.
Jordan Peterson
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metalhead
Angry Bartender
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It's doubtful that would work. It's kinda like all the people (like me) who thought if someone would confront Trump with this one specific thing he couldn't possibly wriggle out of, his campaign would crumble and he'd live out his days in ignominy. It's wishful thinking. He'd simply find a way to deflect, and then he'd have waiting a way to turn it back on the person confronting him should that person point out the deflection.
That's the thing though - people need to be extremely skeptical of anyone who refuses to be pinned to a particular position. It's a big flashing sign that the person is after something other than the public good, or furthering understanding of a given topic. It's usually a sure sign someone is a self-promoting charlatan, in other words.
The difference is that Peterson is a polite and reasonable person with whom a straightforward discussion is actually possible. I don't know whether he would simply evade and deflect or whether he'd try to address the main point of the argument, but I've watched him enough to believe he's the type of person who is interested in having real conversations. He's decidedly not the talking head type.
The culture wars he's inserted himself into are so coarse and low-resolution that I've never seen him in a discussion with someone who gets at the actual issues with his arguments, pointing out each of several specific strawmen and discussing them in depth. He's given a number of long interviews, but it appears they've all been with either sympathetic interviewers (e.g. Dave Rubin), hostile interviewers who set up their own army of strawmen to oppose his (infamous example), or interviewers who are trying to play neutral too much to ask hard questions.
The culture wars he's inserted himself into are so coarse and low-resolution that I've never seen him in a discussion with someone who gets at the actual issues with his arguments, pointing out each of several specific strawmen and discussing them in depth. He's given a number of long interviews, but it appears they've all been with either sympathetic interviewers (e.g. Dave Rubin), hostile interviewers who set up their own army of strawmen to oppose his (infamous example), or interviewers who are trying to play neutral too much to ask hard questions.
Farm Boy
I hope you dance
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I finally sat down and watched that. I'm not sure if we eventually answered this and I lost it or if we didn't get around to it, but he does directly head-on answer that he would use a trans woman's preferred pronoun at 23:15. Then, as per usual for this interview, the line of questioning veers off subject pretty fast because it clearly isn't what the show is interested in digging at. So I guess I don't know about neutrals like "they," I do get the impression that he's at least somewhat hostile to custom personal titles, but not sure how he would break down the details of the reasoning.
From the Toronto van attack thread:
What he says is almost entirely the opposite. His approach is a variety of the "personal responsibility" strain of conservatism, worked into a self-help book. Of course that approach has major problems too, but telling young men to blame the world for being designed against them is exactly what he does not do.
People could plausibly take his criticisms of identity politics and affirmative action way out of context, in order to justify their own belief that the world is designed against them and that they are justified in lashing out at it. But that's 180 degrees away from everything else he is saying.
My impression is that he'd use either he or she as requested by a trans person, but would not use singular they to refer to a specific person, nor use ze/zir/etc. His objection to Bill C-16 is that he thinks it compels speech (the use of arbitrary pronouns) under threat of civil and criminal sanctions.
What he says is almost entirely the opposite. His approach is a variety of the "personal responsibility" strain of conservatism, worked into a self-help book. Of course that approach has major problems too, but telling young men to blame the world for being designed against them is exactly what he does not do.
People could plausibly take his criticisms of identity politics and affirmative action way out of context, in order to justify their own belief that the world is designed against them and that they are justified in lashing out at it. But that's 180 degrees away from everything else he is saying.
My impression is that he'd use either he or she as requested by a trans person, but would not use singular they to refer to a specific person, nor use ze/zir/etc. His objection to Bill C-16 is that he thinks it compels speech (the use of arbitrary pronouns) under threat of civil and criminal sanctions.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
He hardly needs to tell alienated young men to blame the world. They're entirely capable of doing that by themselves. What he provides is a framework for explaining an already-existing sense of isolation, a rationale for an already-existing resentment. He may not tell them to blame others, but he provides a list of who to blame and for what, should one feel so inclined.
Whether or not this is Peterson's intention is sort of besides the point as to whether his rhetoric contributes to a process which channels loneliness into the alt-right and similar politics. Roads to hell and all that.
It's not just that he doesn't explicitly tell them to blame the world, it's that he explicitly tells them the exact opposite. That's a consistent theme throughout 12 Rules for Life and many of the speeches he gives. He actually goes too far, IMO - he doesn't think people should criticize the way the world works before they've straightened out their own lives, which ignores the basic fact that many of the people who have positively changed the world had terrible personal lives.
Lexicus
Deity
I think it's silly for another reason. It implies that there is some endpoint to reach in the process of "straightening out one's life." Get "straight," then go out and change the world. Honestly, I think it reveals profoundly limited thinking - no appreciation that the journey matters as well as the destination, or that straightening out one's life is a process that ideally ends when one dies, and not a moment before.
I think he does get that on some level, but the implication if true would be that nobody should advocate systemic change, period. Which kind of is what he wants, being a conservative and all.
Lexicus
Deity
I was going to say you also beg the question - does Peterson think anyone has "positively changed the world"?
Farm Boy
I hope you dance
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Ah, but that's BS when it comes down to it. Conservatives(big c little c, don't care) tolerate and embrace all sorts of change. Especially if they have kids or are involved with them. Where they get lumped into their political label is when they start getting identified or known for opposing changes they think are destructive, and there is no shortage of malicious, self-serving, or dumb change that is advocated. Sometimes it even manages to become dominant despite the opposition. So if you're going to toss him in the conservative bucket, what's he opposing?
Usually compelled speech on the face of it that I see. Which I'm inclined to take on the face of it. Or, if I'm the sort of person who has decided everybody is full of crap because I project that onto the world, what then, trans tolerance? But then you have to assume he's full of crap, and if that's the assumption, why bother at all with what he says? What else to oppose, self-centeredness?
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inthesomeday
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Stop. He doesn’t care about speech. He hates trans people, women, and Muslims, and opposes their advancement in society. That’s basically the long and short of it.
Lexicus
Deity
Friends don't let friends do Peterson.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/pretty-loud-for-being-so-silenced
According to this article, Jordan Peterson "pulls in some $80,000 in fan donations each month".
You know, for $80,000 a month I would start saying things, too.
According to this article, Jordan Peterson "pulls in some $80,000 in fan donations each month".
You know, for $80,000 a month I would start saying things, too.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/pretty-loud-for-being-so-silenced
According to this article, Jordan Peterson "pulls in some $80,000 in fan donations each month".
You know, for $80,000 a month I would start saying things, too.
Trolling is a lucrative business.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
You wish..
I'm using "conservative" as a descriptive label, not an attempt to pigeonhole or denigrate him. He's one of the relatively few that I genuinely find to be interesting thinkers, along with Ross Douthat (by far my favorite NYT editorialist) and several of the people at The American Conservative. I think he may dispute the label, but he wrote a set of policy prescriptions for conservatives, appears to support the Conservative Party, and seems to imply that he supports social hierarchy more or less as it exists today. So he's well-described as a moderate conservative.
Skepticism of radical change, or something like Burkean conservatism, is a perfectly reasonable position to take much of the time and is something I usually agree with. I share his skepticism of utopianism. And of course conservatives usually do push for some forms of change - they're just on the whole less enthusiastic about it, particularly if it undermines existing power relations.
It seems the biggest thing he opposes is modern identity politics, along with utopian ideals more generally. I think he opposes most attempts to level the playing field and increase the level of equity, although he does say that excessive levels of inequality are destabilizing, and I'm not sure where he draws the line. I'm inclined to be charitable to him and say there's no evidence of an underlying dislike of transgender people or opposition of tolerance toward them, nor is he what I would describe as a misogynist (although he is mostly anti-feminist).
Farm Boy
I hope you dance
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What parts of feminist theory again? Sorry if I'm asking you to repeat. Having blasted through that godawful interview I'm mostly zeroed in on the hostility towards Equality of Outcome(loosely). This is interesting to me as a man who's been in pink collar for the last dozen years.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
But Peterson's "sorting yourself out" amounts to an assertion of traditional, even patriarchal masculinity, under the assumption that this is something which is both necessary and which contemporary norms are failing ("failing") to instill in young men. The methods may be those of gradual, individualistic self-improvement, but they're drawn up within a framework of culture-war.
At the very least, that is how Peterson himself has chosen to locate those methods with his public and social media presence, and how they will inevitably be interpreted as a result. Perhaps if book was discovered by somebody with no further exposure to Peterson or to Peterson enthusiasts, they may take it all at face value, as an instruction to sit up straight and eat their greens- but by that token, Animal Farm is just a story about talking pigs.
Key word is "systemic". Nobody imagines that conservatives are against change, but they are pretty much by definition hostile to root-and-branch change, to any sort of system-wide reorientation, to general change as opposed to specific changes. To the extent they are not, they either aren't particularly conservative, or aren't particularly consistent thinkers. We can at least credit Peterson that neither of those seem to apply to him.
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