Jordan Peterson Thread.
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Utter waste of time.
Telling women they are weirdos if they don’t want kids at 30 and that wearing heel is encouraging sexual assault I find a pretty threatening message but apparently that doesn’t count.
You decry identity politics and then find fascinating a speaker who ascribes so much of a persons identity to their birth gender.
dholliday
deconstructed rep
I find listening to him mostly compelling, yes, but I've already said I disagree with his traditionalist views on women, and I profoundly disagree with the admitted contempt & too-cold Spock logic he's shown when putting his ideas on make-up/heels out there.
We both agree on this, Legs. I believe his religion has repressed (and thus damaged) some sexual fantasies he's had/has about female colleagues. The clincher was his repeating "that is what they're doing" when talking about red lipstick intentionally imitating sexual arousal.
I believe that about him = individualist critique
or
I believe that about white men who aren't aligned with contemporary progressive liberal sociopolitics who will feel empowered by this one JP statement = identity politics
JP is sometimes wrong, sometimes right and sometimes neither here nor there. One of the times he's right is when he views identity-politics (as concocted by the modern 'progressives') as counter-productive and even potentially dangerous. I'd even go as far to say that identity-politics has spoilt any chance for the commentariat to fairly criticise JP's comments on women, as instead of being a balanced analysis it often becomes a slanging match between two drawn sides. The nuance is gone.
See below for more on this (if you like).
Well yeah, because we'll just end up repeating ourselves. Boring for those reading, I bet.
ama gonna do that twitter thing some of yous do where i post comments from another forum as they validate my views...but the twist is not that yous post your inevitable disagreement or strawman pointmissers, the challenge is for yous to consider just why these views (i.e. my views) appear to be the majority. Are we all wrong, stupid or simply racist/misogynist?
Below are the highest-rated comments from that Guardian piece, one even mentions JP the man himself. The sentiments neatly mirror what I've been trying to tell y'all not just these last 10 pages, but these last few years. I sense your views, while seemingly-dominant over mine in this thread, are generally in the minority as this article is one of tens-of-thousands out there in non-DailyMail/FOX publications whose highest-rated comments share the same impressions.
Being in the minority doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, but my snidey senses also tell me many of you are unwilling (blind spot) to identify the devil behind our troubles.
You know that line? The greatest trick the devil ever pulled etc? Exactly...it's not Trump. It's also not Jordan Peterson.
I wonder if yous think all these comments are wide-off-the-mark and were upvoted by similarly-deluded folk?
And for @ilikecheese especially, consider not the identity-politics the Right plays, instead consider that Bannon quote.
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- Identity-politics-causes-conflict-in-society shocker. News only to the regressive left, I suspect...
- One of the curious things about identity politics is in its determination to remove labels while creating loads of labels.
- Identity politics is a divide and conquer ideology. It creates division and resentment between artificially created political tribes (of different ethnic/religious/social/etc backgrounds). It boggles my mind why the left are pushing for such a divisive approach. Much better to encourage everyone to form some sort of common identity.
- the mental gymnastics where racism, sexism etc have been openly redefined as to be no longer applicable to certain groups (whites, men) not only implicitly validates being shitty to those groups, it will increasingly convince members of those groups that you aren’t serious about equality. And why would they? You have constructed a conceptual edifice where the groups you like are protected and the groups you hate are not. How is that different in essence from the system we are trying to break down and get away from?
- You can argue that a quantitative difference (racism against nonwhites / sexism against women) is a qualitative one (“sexism” against men will never be as serious so it doesn’t count as sexism) till you’re blue in the face - the argument isn’t working. You need to sell the idea of your post-enlightenment redefinition of these terms to everyone else. Right now, you aren’t. And whites and men are pushing back against it.
- A really insightful article, I certainly learned from it. The Steve Bannon quote should be be more widely known (and it’s not often I’d say that).
- Another reason to focus away from identity politics is that it detracts from class politics. I’d contend that socio-economic background is a far greater determiner of future success than any other ‘intersection’, at least here in the UK.
- Yes, you've just spelled it out to them - But the Left never get it
- The Left invented the insanity of identity politics based on inventing narrowly defined victim groups - it's only poetic justice that it should come back to bite them on the arse!
- I think a further issue is the complete lack of differentiation to any of it; absolutely everything is cast as deadly serious, no matter how banal or minorly 'offensive' it is. Increasingly, no-one is ever just a bit of an arsehole; they're TurboHitler and they deserve to be sent to a lunar prison. Social media conniption fits over absolutely [Poor language removed] everything.
- The actual problem is class. And if your solution to the shittiness of current system is creating a grander, more redistributive system then that demands a sense of community cohesion and solidarity - a sense that people are all in it together. Identity politics (especially as parroted by - and let's be honest here - hectoring, unreasonable bellends) is completely counter-productive to that, which is why the current powers-that-be (and their media organs) are so comfortable allowing it.
- A good article. It is time for the destructive nature of indentity politics to be discussed. The notion that calling people racists, on the basis of limited evidence, or even just their denials that they are racist, is counterproductive. - Yesterday an article was published in the Guardian titled ‘Bad things happen in the woods: the anxiety of hiking while black’. I read the article, because I wanted to see how it contrasted with an article written by a black hiker in the UK, published in the Ramblers magazine. The UK writer had set up a black men’s walking group to encourage more black men to walk for their own enjoyment & fitness. The group prospered and the author became a trustee of the Ramblers. While there is still further to go, in that relatively few ethnic minority people go hiking in the UK, the article had an upbeat, positive tone. All to the good. In contrast, the Guardian article had three American people describe their no doubt genuine fears, but only one of the contributors actually encountered behaviour which could be perceived as threatening, which was in the form of being stared at. In other words, a bad thing happened in the woods to one of them.The problem with the bad things articles is that they presuppose racism without evidence, reinforcing fears that ethnic minorities might have, discouraging them from doing things which they should be able to do freely, and implying that the white population carries a burden of guilt, even if they individually had nothing to do with anything racist. Unless there really is a story, with actual evidence of racism, it is a time to call a halt to such stories.
- It's amazing how useful science is for defending common sense....
- See Jordan Peterson on the Bill Maher show last month asking the rowdy panel: how are you going to heal these divisions and win back their votes if you keep enraging them month after month.... They had no answer...
- The solution is not to capitulate, but to renavigate to the common issues... NOT IDENTITY, RACE AND OPPRESSION... The common issues! Wages.... Jobs.... Community..... Opportunity.... Education.... Healthcare.... Sanitation... Infrastructure.... Environment/urban planning....
- If you can't appeal to a broke white community - if you can't understand who they are or what they want - then you don't deserve to be president (Hillary!!)
- So, yeah, find and push causes that unite us (pensions, health care, environment) and push for tolerance based on our common humanity, not on special group identity.
- A good article, which I can say, confident that the left will learn absolutely nothing from it.
- That's the whole problem. Divisive politics (it's all their fault!) is so much easier and more emotionally charged than inclusive politics (we're all in he same boat really). Kindness is bland, hate is powerful.
- The public vilification of individuals on the basis of a few utterances or a badly phrased sentence is a stark warning of where identity politics fundamentalists are prepared to take things.
- Moral posturing by prissy middle class puritans has rightly been kicked into the long grass by anybody outside the identity politics bubble.
- Wow a logically thought out piece that fairly assesses the relevant literature and offers solutions to the problems presented.
- I'd like to say I hope this continues but judging by the article next to it "Let's drop the euphemisms: Donald Trump is a racist president" I don't hold much hope.
- Identity politics makes the 'left' look like idiots.
- I am a Guardian reader of some 50+ years because it seemed to represent my liberal and progressive views in a balanced and non-divisive way. I am repeatedly now asked to pay to continue my readership on-line. I don't because most of the writers are providing only a narrow sectionalised racial, social and gender critical perspective on Britain which they repeat with a tedious predictability.
- The reason why identity politics benefits the right more than the left is that it encourages people to align themselves with groups of people based on more or less anything other than their socio-economic status.
- During the last election, Hillary Clinton referred to her gender, people of color, gays and lesbians, Muslims, and coined the term "deplorables" for the people who supposedly don't like them. Donald Trump didn't say anything about ethnic, or any other identity - except US nationality, which goes with the territory in a candidate running for office in the USA.
- The left is saturated with identity politics, the right, hardly at all. The only way in which identity politics benefits the right is that it makes the left look stupid.
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Oh look it's a wall of words.
- Identity politics is a divide and conquer ideology. It creates division and resentment between artificially created political tribes (of different ethnic/religious/social/etc backgrounds). It boggles my mind why the left are pushing for such a divisive approach. Much better to encourage everyone to form some sort of common identity.
That comment is so blind to what the right are doing. It's a perfect example of blind tribalism. Demonizing Mexican people and demonizing Muslim people is one of the primary ways Trump got elected. Divide and conquer. Division. He won on divisiveness.
I don't disagree that identity politics have been played by the left. It's the denial of the right to understand that they too are just as guilty of it that bothers me. That somehow the left are the only one who can hold the identity politics banner.
No idea why you can't wrap your head around that...or the person who typed that comment.
dholliday
deconstructed rep
Well yeah, entire books are written on understanding sociopolitics. Students study it over years and many of them are arguably none the wiser. A few long forum posts are small beer.
I agree to a point that the Right also play their version of damaging identity-politics. But the killer thing to understand is that Steve Bannon quote. What do you think about that?
dholliday
deconstructed rep
@LinekersLegs - this SNL skit says a few things about sexual harrassment in the workplace (and undesirable men's place in the sexual hierachy) that JP also says...thought it maybe interesting to link. Comedy has a way of slicing through the fat to get to the meat:
I think Bannon is right that conservative white people can easily be fired up through identity politics by stoking the flames of hate and outrage that are created by some of the left's positions on identity.
Very easy to divide and conquer.
dholliday
deconstructed rep
no further questions, m'lud
Stick your head in the sand. Bannon's comment is spot on in that he knew he could use it to fire up his audience with his own identity politics. Divide and conquer.
dholliday
deconstructed rep
I've honestly ran out of ways to spell the point out. I've tried everything. The last thing to attempt is to repeat this bit in the article, with a bolded bit highlighting the point:
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As long as politics is a fight between clearly bounded identity groups: appeals and threats to group identity will benefit Republicans more than Democrats, which is presumably why Steve Bannon infamously remarked that he couldn’t “get enough” of the left’s “race-identity politics”. “The longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em ... I want them to talk about race and identity … every day.”
There is truth to that statement. The right can use their idenfity politics to great effect by dividing people along identity lines. Very easy to demonize Muslims as an example. See the conservative rags in the lead up to the Brexit vote.
dholliday
deconstructed rep
Sorry you don't like the truth.
Much easier to divide a vastly Christian country by demonizing Muslims. Much easier to demonize Mexicans in a country that is about 17% latino.
So yes the right wing can use the lefts policies on inclusion and acceptance to divide people even further by using their own identity politics.
dholliday
deconstructed rep
Ok. I'm gonna try break down your brick wall.
The article writer, all those commenters I quoted, the other article writer on JP I posted just above that, and myself...in summary we all don't like the truth you've identified (which is that the Right's version of identity-politics is the problem). Instead we blame the Left's identity-politics. But that version is virtuous as it has policies of inclusion and acceptance.
So why are we fighting against what you clearly believe are policies of inclusion and acceptance?
That has to be your intellectual curiousity: why are we fighting this thing which in your mind is virtuous?
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