Jordan Peterson

I think it's possible to be so blinded by one's own notions of a 'categorical order' that one becomes dismisive of anything that doesn't fit, or seems not to be easily referred to it. No doubt it might be convenient for thinkers like JP if transgender people either didn't exist or would simply shut up.

Is he saying here that a transgender person is a 'nonperson'? That they ought just to 'snap out of it'?

One problem I see with using the Bible as a source of ethics these days is this kind of issue. Because the Bible doesn't mention it or tell us how to deal with it, let's just pretend it doesn't exist, or even supress it. That seems to be one tendency. And a very dangerous one.

 

5. Academia, cont'd.

I'm back, rested, and ready to continue looking at Peterson's claim that Academia is controlled by a cabal of Neo-Marxist Postmodernists who are out to destroy the world. In my community, there are a couple of cranks who are frequent flyers in the "letters to the editor" section of the local newspaper. They're always complaining that practically every government action is "Socialism', which they use interchangeably with "progressivism" and "liberalism" and seem to think is only a step away from Communism. I've seen a similar pattern in the use of "fascism" by some who post on Hip Forums. They use "fascism" as an all-purpose cuss word for political positions they don't like, or use it as a synonym for authoritarianism. This sloppy use of language enables them to engage in "guilt by association" against their political opponents, and to replace rational thought with emotional bombast. Despite his degree and general coolness, Peterson seems to me to be doing much the same thing with his rhetoric about campus Neo-Marxism and Post-Modernism. He conflates Neo-Marxism with Post-Modernism, Critical Analysis. radical feminism, political correctness, and just about every other idea he doesn't like, assigns them a dominant position in Academia, and claims that they represent a concerted, deliberate conspiracy to undermine the values and institutions of western civilization. I'll argue that: these ideological systems are: (a) different from one another, often incompatible, and should be distinguished for the sake of clarity; (b) mainly confined to certain social science faculties at elite universities, and are no means typical of Academia in general; and (c) less likely than Peterson's own ideological rantings to take us down the road to totalitarianism.

a. Marxism, Neo-Marxism, Post-Moderninsm: Are They in Cahoots?

The man often credited with first using the label "post-modernism" for a philosophy, Jean-Francois Lyotard, defined post-modernism as "incredulity toward meta-narratives"--i.e., skepticsm about grand theories of history and the world. Lyotard considered Marxism to be such a theory, and openly rejected it. Marxism purports to be "scientific socialism" based on a definitive understanding of the movement of history based on dialectical materialism, in which the conflict and syntheses of class struggles lead inevitably to dictatorship of the proletariat and ultimately to pure communism. So-called Neo-Marxists of the Frankfurt school, notably Herbert Marcuse, departed from Marxist orthodoxy by adding such abuses as Freudian notions of sexual repression to the alleged sins of the ruling class. The post-modernists Peterson seems to have in mind in his attacks are Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, who he claims are Marxist because they were once Marxists in their youth, despite the fact that Fouccault rejected and criticized it later and Derrida's theory has no recognizable relationship to Marxist ideology. When Ben Shapiro asked Peterson about this, he said that post-modernism is "first of all, identity politics, or the idea "you are defined by your group"; and second the notion "that the universe of mankind is a battleground of groups all vying for power" and "you can add on oppressor-oppressed narrative on top of that." He's on firmer ground when he says :"Post-modernism is the doctrine....that there are no grand narratives left, and there's an infinite number ways to interpret the world and there's no way of ranking those ways on a value scale." This, he thinks, means that all disputes need to be settled by means of power.


Defined that broadly, the oxymoronic term "Post-modernist Marxism" becomes a handy weapon with which Peterson can attack any of his colleagues who disagree with his traditionalist-liberarian views. A student providing Peterson's definition on a philosophy exam would probably flunk it cold--and not because the professor was one of those biased post-modernist Marxist indoctrinators. Standard dictionaries do better: "of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language" Definition of POSTMODERN. A Christian website acknowledges "Postmodernism is difficult to define, because to define it would violate the postmodernist's premise that no definite terms, boundaries, or absolute truths exist. In this article, the term “postmodernism” will remain vague, since those who claim to be postmodernists have varying beliefs and opinions on issue."Postmodernism The Encyclopedia Britannica tells us Postmodernism in Western philosophy is "a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason ; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power." Marxism, on the other hand, is notoriously "moderninst" in invoking reason, science and objective material reality as the foundation of its enterprise. This alleged oxymoronic alliance between Post-modernism and Marxism is apparently based on the notion that they are both bent on destroying western civilization as we know it. /or In fact he claims that after Marxism became discredited, the Marxists decided to salvage it by re-packaging it as postmodernism. When a professor alleges such a conspiratorial relationship, he needs better evidence than that.

 

Words like 'socialism', 'liberalism' , 'fascism' get banded about and over used to the extent that the meanings get so obscured as to be almost meaningless. JP looks like he'd like to do the same for post-modernism, which actually is obscure enough already to most people.

Derrida once said that although he was a 'post-marxist' (clear enough) he had "never been opposed to the Marxian spirit of opposition". I suspect Foucault held a similar position at times, but it's a long time since I read any of his work and I haven't time to go trawling at present. There's certainly an anti-authoritarian flavour to a lot of Foucault's work.

Other post modernists though, who didn't have a French Marxist background and weren't involved in the student protests of 1968 were more avowedly right wing, Fukuyama with his much vaunted 'End of History' being a prime example. With the collapse of Communism he foresaw a 'capitalist paradise' emerging. A quater of a century later and it seems to be sliding more towards the other place.


Really this is a complex set of issues. Too complex perhaps for a quick reply. For example, Foucault is often labelled a 'post structuralist' rather than po-mo. To get this you have to go a step further back and look at structuralism as developed by Claude Levi-Strauss.

Personally I don't have any heavy investment in any of these modes of thought. I can see some validity in post modernism in general, for one thing as a useful tool to deploy against ideologies of all kinds, and in describing the strange period of history in which we find ourselves (Foucault said he was 'an historian of the present') where we struggle to find certainty and meaning amid the ever increasing complexity of the culture, and the many voices vying for our attention.
Marxism with its 'economic determinism' and 'dialectical materialism' also gets way too heavy for me in terms of ideology, but like Derrida, I embrace the Marxist spirit of opposition, and I do think it's actually a useful tool in understanding how the capitalist system functions. (like lobsters actually, with claws extended)

Anyway, I think you're right to say that mostly all this is known only in academia. And I'd add that these French guys don't get that much of a look in in UK universtity courses in either social sciences or philosophy, and I suspect that's true in regard to the USA as well.
Post modenism and post structuralism won't take us down the road to totalitarianism; they may take us down the road to obscurity, and in the end a certain frustration.

 

5b. Do Post-Modernists Control Academia?
When I was a kid, I can remember my folks and neighbors warning me about the Red peril at colleges and universities in the U.S., particularly the Ivy League ones. None of them went to college, but all of them had heard that college professors were a bunch of commies out to get me. Apparently, Jordan Peterson is continuing this tradition. Dangerous People Are Teaching Your Kids
On this video, Peterson tells us that the postmodernists are "preaching progressive activism at a college near you"--"indoctrinating young minds throughout the west with their resentment-ridden ideologies which claim that all truth is subjective, tha tall sex differences are socially constructed, and that western imperialism is the source of all Third World problems." They push an "unholy Trinity of (gasp) diversity, equity, and inclusion". "All these concepts originated with Marx." Peterson not only went to college but teaches there, and the whiny young lady on our video tells us he's an "expert" which is why progressives supposedly hate him. I think it might instead be because he's a demagogue, stirring up fear of a menace that he greatly exaggerates.

How prevalent is Post-modernist Marxism at North American colleges and universities? Unlike Peterson, some scholars have actually gathered data on the subject. the most extensive being the studies by Gross and Simmons (2006),(2007), (2014) based on their survey of !,417 full-time professors from 927 institutions. over three-fifths of the faculty were left of center, but three-quarters of them have a belief in God or a Higher Power and almost half (46.6%) are moderates. Some 19.2% are conservatives, compared to 3% Marxists. The category "post modernist' was not included, probably because they weren't considered to me significant. The investigators found that the political makeup of faculty varies considerably according to field and region. Conservatives are roughly as numerous as liberals in the fields of business administration, health sciences, computer science, and engineering. The left of center professors are concentrated in the social sciences and humanities. The ratio of leftist to conservatives is highest in New England (28:1) compared to the national average of 6:1.Heavy concentrations of left-wing faculty are also found in the Pacific Northwest and some of the great Lakes states. The Southeast has the most conservative universities and colleges. The most conservative institutions of higher learning are small Christian colleges. Other studies found no evidence that students' political attitudes were much affected by the ideologies of their professors. Yancy (2012); Rothman, Kelly Woessman, and Wossman (2010)

 

5c. Are Post-Modernist Marxists Plotting to Subvert Western Values?
I find Peterson's insinuation of a vast left-wing conspiracy afoot disturbing. My professors taught me to be cautious in making claims that are unsupported by evidence. Peterson's defenders may say he just has a way of speaking in metaphors and hyperbole to get his points across. That's a bad habit for a purported "expert". I must say I do find disturbing some of the reports coming out of institutions of higher learning about "safe spaces' for students. Spaces that provide physical safety zones free from sexual harassment , physical abuse, seem justifiable, but.shelter from unwanted ideas is incompatible with the free exchange of ideas central to the mission of a university. I also think that political correctness has been overdone.How Colleges Teach Students to See Bias Where It Doesn’t Exist Will: The college campus's cult of fragility I'm with Bill Maher on that.

That said, Peterson's view that Post modernist Marxism will lead to the gulags seems way over-the-top. “The Marxists aren’t just wrong, he says: They’re wrong, murderous, and genocidal.” “The postmodernists don’t just get to just come along an adopt Marxism as a matter of sleight of hand because their Marxist theory didn’t work out and they needed a rationalization, because it’s too dangerous — it’s too dangerous to the rest of us.” He's accused Justin Trudeau of ascribing to a "murderous equity doctrine". On the same principle, he could accuse me or any progressive of doing that and call us "postmodernist". Peterson claims that, whether you’re talking about Leninist insurrection or people claiming sexism or racism, “the end result is much the same.”

That sweeping overgeneralization has a paranoid tinge which I think is every bit as dangerous as the ideologies he's condemning. So no, I don't think progressives hate him because he's an "expert", since he's gone far beyond the limits of his expertise. I think progressives fear him as a somewhat unhinged demagogue who is indoctrinating a generation of millennial "Lost Boys" into a paranoid world view that sees the legitimate struggles of minorities and women and the injustice of socioeconomic inequities as a plot to enslave them and to destroy western civilization.

 

'Overgeneralization' is definitely the word. It looks a lot like an attempt to equate anyone with any kind of left leaning view with the totalitarian systems of the USSR and China. No need to balance this by pointing to what right wing fanatics have done in the last century, from Hitler, to Franco to Pinochet. .

Marx saw a 'murderous inequity' in the capitalist system - therein lies the basis of his social critique. To suggest that anyone who aspires for a world of greater equality is following a 'murderous doctrine' is way off the mark.

 

6. Success
According to narrator lady, the final reason progressives hate Peterson is that he's so successful. His books and YouTube lectures are hot items, and he's raking in the big bucks., because "his message resonates with so many people". Most demagogues from Mussolini to Huhgy Long to Pinochet to Caesar Chavez have messages that "resonate with the people." But Peterson is special. He has a net worth of 1>5 million. By last Spring, Peterson had over 1.2 million subscribers and 58 million viewer on YouTube., 711 thousand followers on Twitter, 286 thousand likes on Facebook, & over 9750 donors to Patreon. Jordan Peterson - RationalWiki Indeed, he seems to have become the Joel Osteen of political psychology. Osteen has made a mint preaching a prosperity gospel based on simplistic pop psychology adorned here and there with relevant biblical passages and telling folks that if they follow what he's preaching they'll get rich. Do progressive Christians envy his success? I don't think so, but they are uncomfortable with his distortion of Christ's message. Peterson has likewise put together a self-help program based on simplistic pop psychology, adorned with Jungian metaphors and telling young men that if they just throw their shoulders back, put out their lobster claws, and follow his fatherly advice about getting their lives in order, they can climb the corporate order to the upper rungs of the dominance hierarchies. I doubt that many progressives hate him for this, but I think they are concerned about the Pied Piper aspect of his schtick to the Lost Boys. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Peterson is funded by wealthy donors through Praeger University, the on-line indoctrination center for the Right Wing, as well as by his books and blogs. Narrator lady says "Seeing the way his detractors denigrate him and all the work he's done kind of makes me feel better about the hate that I get. Because if someone like Dr Peterson shares what I'm thinking, maybe it isn't utterly, totally wrong and insensitive, because if someone like Dr. Peterson kind of shares the same viewpoint as me, maybe there is something to the way that I'm thinking. Maybe I'm not the stupid, cold-hearted person that people say I am". Hate to break it to you honey, but if you share the same views as Dr.Peterson, maybe you are the cold-hearted person that people say you are.

 

Words almost fail me. Maybe she'll find a new flavour of the month and warm up a little bit......maybe not.

On a personal note, all this 'stand up straight, shoulders back etc' reminds me of the people who used to say that long haired drop out youths of the 70's like yours truly ought to be in the bloody army. Well, some joined up, not many got to the top depite erect posture and very clean kit and living quarters. In the town where I live there are a number of ex-service personel sleeping rough on the streets. Couldn't be a flaw in the hierarchy to thus use people to fight it's economic wars and then wash its hands of them?


And the washing of hands leads me neatly onto the subject of Christianity. I don't doubt that progressive Christians find JP's angle on the Bible a hard swallow. I do to, even though I'm not a committed Christian.Suffice it to say that I find very little resonance betwen JP's take on Christ's tachings and my own. Opposite ends of the spectrum. And yes, I do think he's twisting it.

Maybe one question a young person should ask themself in the light of all this stuff would be 'what is success'? Is it just to have wealth, power over others, a high position in some hierarchy? Or, as suggested by Jung and numerous others, is there another kind of success, something to do with what you are rather than what you have.

 

Peterson is a traditionalist ideologue who wants to resurrect and weaponize grand narratives, so naturally he hates postmodernism, which carries skepticism and relativism to their extreme. I do agree that his sleight of hand in equating it with Neo-Marxism needs to be called out. To me, the leading exponents of postmodernism are Trump and Kellyanne Conway, although they don't use the label.
America’s First Postmodern President
Trump is what happens when postmodernism goes too far, Michiko Kakutani argues
Richard Rorty and How Postmodernism Helped Elect Trump - The Philosophers' Magazine
Since the Sokal affair, when postmodernists were trolleded by having a bogus article filled with their jargon (‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity’).get published in one of their journals, postmodernism has come under greater critical scrutiny in academia.. Postmodernism is giving way to "post-postmodernism (Peterson, get hip!)
I think it's reasonable to believe in God, objective truth, and traditional values, as long as we don't do it uncritically, and realize our experience could be some alien's virtual reality program, and are willing to acknowledge we're just guessing.

Peterson has some of it right though. He says if we reject the possibility of objective truth and emphasize group identity, the only way to settle disputes is through power. The Republicans are putting that theory to the test right now. They seem to be about to confirm Judge Kavanaugh after a laughably token FBI investigation--because they are tribal and they have the power. I think this will be a devastating blow to the legitimacy of all three branches of U.S government. Those Postmoderninst Marxists couldn't have done a better job.

 

I think some po-mo thinking is quite interesting. I agree that it is getting to look somewhat dated. Much has changed since the basic idas were formulated decades ago.
Like you though, and antithetical to the po-mo spirit, I think there must be an objective truth, but I don't see any particular system as having a monopoly on truth. I'm wary of some traditional values, but go along with the core ones of kindness,compassion and do unto others etc.
For me, as a Brit, where we now have the chance to elect an actual socialist government again next time, I have always felt strongly that the left represents my views and values on a political level. These days, as well as issues of social justice etc, I see environmental issues as a hugely pressing problem , and we're not going to tackle any of that under this present system.

From here the Kavanaugh thing looks terrible - hard for me to comment, so I'll just comiserate.

 

Re the "Postmodernist menace", some interesting data from sociologist Nicolas Wolfinger--not a rigorous study by any means, but better than anything Peterson has provided": web pages for seven top sociology schools (Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Michigan, UC Berkeley, Wisconsin, University of Chicago) and thirteen lower-ranked sociology departments (Louisiana State University, Cal State-Long Beach, Syracuse, Cal State-Chico, University of Kansas , Northern Arizona University, Montclair State University, Ball State University, Central Florida University, Davidson College, Middlebury College, University of North Dakota, Towson State University) were inspected for expressed interests in postmodernism, critical anything (most commonly critical theory, but could also include critical race studies, critical demography, and so on), or race/class/gender. "The results reveal a discipline collectively disinterested in postmodernism. Among the top seven schools, only one faculty member listed race/class/gender as a research interest. Not surprisingly, there were a few more positive results at the lower-tier schools. Faculty web pages for these thirteen schools list 193 tenured or tenure-track professors and 27 contingent instructors (i.e., adjuncts or lecturers). .. Among the lower-tier schools, there are twelve faculty interested in race/class/gender (i.e., intersectionalists), one critical theorist, but no self-proclaimed postmodernists. One school, Cal State-Long Beach, had four intersectionalists on its faculty (it also has at least one conservative, preserving some viewpoint diversity)." Maybe a similar survey of history and English departments would turn up more, but it doesn't seem that Postmodernism has exactly taken over Academia. Assuming of course Wolfinger isn't one of them, just trying to pull the wool over our eyes.Has Sociology Been Overrun by Postmodernists? Probably Not. | Nicholas H. Wolfinger

 

Some details to add to the previous post, Neil Gross, who has done extensive research on the political opinions of college professors, found that only 9% are radical leftists. About one-third are progressives and another 14% are center-left. He also notes that it isn't the elite research universities that have the highest concentrations of radicals; it's the small liberal arts colleges, mostly in the social sciences and humanities--radical feminists democratic socialists, radical environmentalists, some Marxists. .https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/03/05/the-actual-politics-of-professors/ Michael Shermer, no fan of postmodernism, elaborates, based on the disciplines of professors signing petitions supporting left-wing protests at some recent demonstrations at liberal arts colleges: English, literature, arts, humanities, cultural studies, women's studies, media studies, and tiny interdisciplinary programs like women's studies and African-American studies. Should we try to suppress these professors, or let them express their minority viewpoints in the "marketplace of ideas"? Shermer mentions anecdotes, like the outrageous "Day of Absence" at evergreen State College in Olympia Washington in which whites were supposed to absent themselves from campus and a biology professor complaining about this was harassed in his classroom by radical students. The Unfortunate Fallout of Campus Postmodernism Evergreen State saw a catastrophic drop in their enrollment after that escapade, which is as it should be.

 

Given the climate of this year, Peterson has been vindicated in many ways regarding Neo-Marxists. It's interesting that he's mostly dropped out of the spotlight since, battling prescription drug addiction but he had quite prescient insight into alot of what we're seeing unfold.

Quite a brilliant mind.