Camille Paglia & Jordan B Peterson
Camille Paglia & Jordan B Peterson
Tl;dr
Originally Posted by rcarlberg
It's very good. Try to get to the 14 minute point.
Interesting, but very long. Going to have to take it in chunks.
Jordan B Peterson has to be one of the most vacuous pathetic excuses for a public intellectual in the history of civilization. How anyone can give this ridiculous, pig-ignorant, emotionally-damaged, crying man-baby charlatan credence is beyond me.
Can we get this lady another double espresso and a fresh grindstone for her axe?
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
I've made it about nineteen minutes so far, and it's not easy listening.
Also, I'm not sure that I agree with the take on post-modernism being put forward. So far, they are critiquing ambitious academic elites and their impact on the academy, but aren't really going after the ideas themselves.
As far as I can tell, and the Lord knows I am at best back-bench bush-league intellectual, post-modernism manifests in many ways beyond this. It is, at its root, a critique of power and points out the way power manifests in various human endeavors. I suppose there is a resonance with Marxism, because Marx critiqued the capitalism of the day so thoroughly. If you are going after power, capital, art, grand narratives, all of these are edifices or artifacts of power.
My question is what do the post-modernists have to teach us? Are their critiques valid? What biases do they hold, and what do they see clearly?
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Oh. He's that guy. I've heard mention of him then, but not enough to really catch his name.
There is a tip-off when he described a "classic liberal" as not being far-right, but a centrist conservative. Shifting the various goal posts of what makes one center or extreme is standard political sophistry. Also, presenting academics as Marxists (or neo-Marxists, or whatever), but then knocking them down as hypocritical Marxists, is common straw-man argumentation, particularly when one is not engaging said academics directly.
I was trying to listen through this to get to the ideas about post-modernism, but they were very thin on the ground.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Wasn't Camille Paglia the lady who was on an anti-porn campaign back in the 1970s-80s?
Yep! He's that guy: darling of the alt right/alt light, a shamelessly dishonest obfuscater and opportunist, he is bereft of original thought and despised by actual academics and intellectuals but beloved by Fox and Friends!
I'm sorry too piss on anyone's cornflakes but it's disgusting too see this mentally masterbating scum bag given so much oxygen and then seeing his simpering visage, which has been spread across the media like so much fecal matter, posted even here...
I don't think it's quite that simple to write him off as some sort of pseudo-intellectual. There are a bunch of his classroom lectures on YouTube that demonstrate his knowledge a bit better and are not really in the same realm as his more recent controversies, appearances, etc. I certainly don't agree with everything he says, but he has repeatedly disavowed the alt-right and often points out that the world needs a balance of left and right, that either way can become too extreme and result in disaster.
Personally, I believe in being exposed to many different ideas and if those ideas are bad they should be exposed for the bad ideas they are. I know it does seem to be the thing to do these days...just silence those we disagree with...
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This article was written by someone not at all familiar with the things he actually says and relies on the worst possible interpretation of cherry-picked statements. There have been a number of similar articles.
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if you read the latest NYT profile of him I think it makes more sense; he appeals pretty hard to the woman-hating incel crowd who think equality is persecution and that life must've been better in the 1950's. I also think he is quite good at *sounding* smart, even if his ideas are either retreads or logically bankrupt.Jordan B Peterson has to be one of the most vacuous pathetic excuses for a public intellectual in the history of civilization. How anyone can give this ridiculous, pig-ignorant, emotionally-damaged, crying man-baby charlatan credence is beyond me.
Critter Jams "album of the week" blog: http://critterjams.wordpress.com
maybe so but as someone who's actually spent an hour of his life listening to one of his lectures I don't really think the article "misinterprets" him so much. his reasoning is usually sound but the premises he bases such reasoning on are so far off that he might as well be living on another planet ("they'll throw you in jail if you don't use the right pronoun!!") what put me off him is how he claims that people don't have a right to have their feelings protected and need to learn "hard truths", but at the same time can't stop chastising the left for being too mean to the right. so in the end he's just another guy parroting the MSM line of "lefties are too condescending!"...yawn
Critter Jams "album of the week" blog: http://critterjams.wordpress.com
He's referring to actual laws put in place in Canada about the use of pronouns. I believe he actually consulted an attorney to make sure his statement was accurate. It is conceivable one could be jailed for failing to use the correct one of 70+ possible pronouns. He has said he would likely use a person's preferred pronoun once he's made aware of their preference, but he's primarily railing against what he sees as the first example of "compelled speech" being written into Canadian law. I don't think he's worried about condescension, but more that legislating specific speech is rather draconian and oppressive. I really can't think of any examples of him trying to say the left is being mean to the right...I've never seen him defend the right. It's interesting to see him interviewed by that idiot Steve Doocy when Doocy is trying to pigeon-hole Peterson into going along with Doocy's Faux News sensationalism and Peterson calmly sticks to his ideals (whatever you might think of them) and refuses to lend support to Doocy's nonsense. I get the sense that neither the extreme right or left know what to think of Peterson. Such are the bubbles we live in today.
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It is not conceivable in the slightest. The bill simply amended the human rights act to protect against discrimination based on gender identity. Peterson winds up taking it three steps too far and convinces his base that they're going to jail if they don't know what pronoun to use.
Critter Jams "album of the week" blog: http://critterjams.wordpress.com
Perhaps they won't face jail time. However if in the workplace or on campuses they use the wrong pronoun could they not be punished?
Like, on accident? Absolutely not. If they purposely did it with the intention of belittling the person? Perhaps.
Critter Jams "album of the week" blog: http://critterjams.wordpress.com
Why is it inherent wisdom that the "world needs a balance of left and right" and who defines what that is and what is extreme? I see everyday in the news extremism in action and in power on the right, but NOT on the left at least in my country.
He has has repeatedly disavowed the alt-right because is is fundamentally dishonest intellectually as well has having virtually no self-awareness.
I agree 100% that being exposed to many different ideas is a good thing, however bad ideas exposed are not always recognized for what they are at the time or even with the retrospection of history. Otherwise we wouldn't have Neo-Nazis, Supply-Side Economists etc. etc. As far as the odious Mr. Peterson, his "ideas" are so vacuous and bromide, his particular brand of pseudo-intellectual pablum will rot on the vine and soon be forgotten like Deepak Chopra: champion of taking the real thought of others, chewing it up, squeezing it through his filthy filter and producing a disgusting amalgam of confused excrement which he presents as his own work.
"We live in an age in which ideas, important ideas, are worn like articles of fashion — and for precisely the same reason articles of fashion are worn, which is to make the wearer look better and to feel à la mode." - Tom Wolfe https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/0...-commencement/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-a6757731.html
I think that's a fair characterization.
Here's an in-depth article: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Wh...s-About/242256
"Peterson did recently back down after proposing a website that would use an algorithm to determine which university course descriptions contained postmodern and Marxist language. His plan, which he announced on a television news show, was to create a list of those courses so that students could avoid them."
Obviously this human intellectual dumpster-fire masquerading as a thought-leader does not believe in being exposed to many different ideas...
Great article. To me, it points to the susceptibility of so many to be taken in by language they don't understand and/or to project meaning onto ambiguous phrases that support their preconceived biases. And that could happen with truly ambiguous phrases or phrases that are ambiguous simply due to the reader's lack of reading comprehension.
The biggest thing that fascinates me these days are the ideological "bubbles" that seem to exist and which seem to make anything outside of one's own bubble to be nearly impossible to grasp.
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It's becoming dangerous for the nation and democracy. It used to be that we divided into camps, then screamed, shouted and talked past each other. That was bad enough. Now, there is a tendency to choose facts, change definitions, and attempt to create a separate reality. That "reality" will be supported by millions who will nod in assent, as well as a media empire that will reinforce this belief based and unscientific world view masquerading as reality, and separate schools to codify that world view and build it into the armor of following generations. This is the modus operandi of a cult, writ large. It can't possibly end well. You and I won't see it, but what we see as divisions and seams in the national fabric are going to come apart again.
Yes, a cult. Or perhaps even "cults". At least, I have to say that in the last couple years I discovered what I thought was reality was not the whole picture. And now I've started to question what defines reality and whether or not we can really all share precisely the same one or what percentage we truly share.
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Correction: ideological “bubble”, singular. Not plural.
There’s a reason the MSM (mainstream media) agree on almost all the facts and interpretations and meanings and the seriousness of it all. There is only a small coterie of media outlets —Fox News, Breitbart, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones and some other smaller websites also funded by Koch Industries and their American Heritage Foundation — who put forward “alternate facts” to support their agenda and try to discredit what is obvious to everyone else.
You can look it up. They don’t even hide what they’re trying to do.
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