Jordan Peterson

[Turdacious]

I have the impression he calls Marxist anybody who criticises any aspect of Capitalism.

I've never gotten the impression that's what he's doing. His most interesting stuff IMHO is criticism of the strains of cultural Marxism infecting North American universities.

Yeah that's dumb. You'd be incredibly hard-pressed to find significant numbers of people endorsing Marxism on college campuses, and none of any influence. Peterson had a TBI in the 80's and thinks there are still Marxists running around college campuses.

The far left on campuses are incredibly annoying in many ways, but virtually none are endorsing the transfer of the means of production to the state.

He gives his definition in the first five minutes or so.

I agree it isn't true Marxism (the goal of which is a permanent change in human nature), but he's not defining it as such. He's using something closer to the trade-unionist definition which is far more common (and which true Marxists hate).

[Fat Cat]

Define cultural Marxism.

Good question. I define cultural Marxism as an ideology, first and foremost, meaning it is intolerant of other points of view.

Second, it is Marxism because it adopts all of the tropes of Marxism, most importantly because it: (i) is materialist; (ii) it divides people into social classes; and (iii) it is dialectical in that it sees those classes as being in constant struggle and conflict with each other.

Third, it is "cultural" because it takes culture itself as the target of their project, rather than economics alone. It has expanded its focus to all aspects of our culture; from a struggle between economic classes (i.e., proletariat vs. bourgeoisie) to all other spheres: black vs. white, women vs. men, gay vs. straight, etc.

It's highest value is the ugliest of all so-called virtues: equality, where no hierarchy of any kind is tolerable. It's worldview is Manichaean and deformed of any nuance, one where strength, wisdom, and beauty are things to be reviled.

[Fat Cat]

I have the impression he calls Marxist anybody who criticises any aspect of Capitalism.

I've never gotten the impression that's what he's doing. His most interesting stuff IMHO is criticism of the strains of cultural Marxism infecting North American universities.

Yeah that's dumb. You'd be incredibly hard-pressed to find significant numbers of people endorsing Marxism on college campuses, and none of any influence. Peterson had a TBI in the 80's and thinks there are still Marxists running around college campuses.

The far left on campuses are incredibly annoying in many ways, but virtually none are endorsing the transfer of the means of production to the state.

Uh...not my experience at all. On the contrary, Marxism has metastasized on campus.

[Kazuya Mishima]

Define cultural Marxism.

Good question. I define cultural Marxism as an ideology, first and foremost, meaning it is intolerant of other points of view.

Second, it is Marxism because it adopts all of the tropes of Marxism, most importantly because it: (i) is materialist; (ii) it divides people into social classes; and (iii) it is dialectical in that it sees those classes as being in constant struggle and conflict with each other.

Third, it is "cultural" because it takes culture itself as the target of their project, rather than economics alone. It has expanded its focus to all aspects of our culture; from a struggle between economic classes (i.e., proletariat vs. bourgeoisie) to all other spheres: black vs. white, women vs. men, gay vs. straight, etc.

It's highest value is the ugliest of all so-called virtues: equality, where no hierarchy of any kind is tolerable. It's worldview is Manichaean and deformed of any nuance, one where strength, wisdom, and beauty are things to be reviled.

Absolutely nailed it.

[Grandpa's Spells]

I gave him 4, he's exhausting.

He's still wrong, and his wrongness is particularly odd given the distinct differences between the US and Canadian policy. Americans aren't being separated into classes by Cultural Marxism, they are being separated into classes by modern American economic policy.

You can't look 40 years of stagnant middle class wages in the US and increasing chasm of wealth inequality, alongside a simultaneous lack of a healthcare social safety net that exists in every other modern market economy, and say, "Yep, nothing wrong here." You can't look at LGBT suicide rates and say, "Yeah, that's about right." There are a lot of issues progressives take up that the actual conservative politicians in actual power in this country have absolutely no credible answers for.

Peterson will go on and on about Stalin even after acknowledging that nobody is advocating Marxist states any more. Then what the fuck is the purpose of this tangent? A gender studies professor at Berkeley is not going to start a death camp, she's going to boycott In N Out Burger. Maybe discussing the individual issues at hand, and what he thinks should be done, would be more productive than droning on about Stalin.

He is correct that in many cases, the far left is annoying. However, he overreacts insanely by going on inevitable "random" tangents to death camps when you implement communism, which he just acknowledged in your video nobody actually wants to do. Or he goes off on fringe-y pronoun use when dealing on a subject of LGBT basic human dignity, where the far right is clearly far, far more in the wrong. It's like looking at a Sunni mass grave and saying, "Well actually, the Sunni faith's position on the prophet's successor is really problematic."

Since he tangents so will I. This shit pisses me off worse the more we learn about the good old days. Mickey posted an article today about nuns and priests torturing and killing American orphans in the 40's and 50's. I wouldn't read it at work. And as sick and fucked up as the treatment those orphans got, the unstated tragedy is that if you were four-year old in the 40's whose parents couldn't care for you, a Catholic orphanage where you'd get your dick cut on or burned with a fireplace poker or maybe raped and *literally praying for death* was pretty much the best option you had going for you. Teenage nuns were certainly in no position to be caring for dozens of kids. No training, no education on the subject, kids are traumatized by being removed from their families, I'm sure they were acting out sometimes. No command discipline in the military can lead to atrocities, I don't think a habit inoculates against that.

The far left, particularly at universities, is wrong about many things and are quite annoying. However, if you were looking at most of the issues they take up, particularly the economic ones he can't seem to stop himself from going back to, the right in this country is far more wrong while also wielding power today.

[Turdacious]

Americans aren't being separated into classes by Cultural Marxism, they are being separated into classes by modern American economic policy.

You can't look 40 years of stagnant middle class wages in the US and increasing chasm of wealth inequality, alongside a simultaneous lack of a healthcare social safety net that exists in every other modern market economy, and say, "Yep, nothing wrong here."

Your @length rant has so many strawmen that I'll just deal with a couple, but your attempt to characterize him as a member of Westboro Baptist is interesting. Cultural Marxists (as he defines them) separate people into classes-- period.

And the idea we don't have a 'healthcare social safety net' is laughable-- we have Federally Qualified Health Clinics, Medicaid, and EMTALA.

https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state ... 2asc%22%7D
Even pre-Obamacare it was massive.

And nobody who semi-seriously studies health care would say 'nothing wrong here' with our healthcare social safety net-- there's near unanimous agreement that the system is a mess. The disagreements are on how to reform it. I have never seen a serious proposal to truly dismantle the healthcare social safety net.

[Grandpa's Spells]

Americans aren't being separated into classes by Cultural Marxism, they are being separated into classes by modern American economic policy.

You can't look 40 years of stagnant middle class wages in the US and increasing chasm of wealth inequality, alongside a simultaneous lack of a healthcare social safety net that exists in every other modern market economy, and say, "Yep, nothing wrong here."

Your @length rant has so many strawmen that I'll just deal with a couple, but your attempt to characterize him as a member of Westboro Baptist is interesting.

Jesus, dude.

[Fat Cat]

Blasphemy is a sin, Spells. Think of your eternal soul.

[Turdacious]

EVERY FAMILY MUST HELP SPELLS EXTENSIVELY FIND SALVASHUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I GIVE THE GIFT OF MUSIK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[nafod]

This seems as good a thread as any to point out that I grew up near Ms Eathel, spiritual advisor to Vonda and minor league player in the doomsday prophet game. Turns out 2017 was a bad year for predictions made in 2016, but there’s always 2018.
https://youtu.be/2vA6_n269ZY

Wonder what her son thinks of mom.

Edit: Turd, show me on this doll where the cultural Marxist touched you.

[Turdacious]

Uncle Les and Randy don't approve of your post nafod.

[Sangoma]

Peterson's argument has many flaws. For starters he keeps referring to the Communism as failed system forgetting that t never existed and therefore couldn't ever fail. Communism is the utopian ideal, something the society would evolve into according to Marxist theory. USSR was a dictatorship hiding behind the banner of the ideas of Marx and equality. This equality never existed and was never the the true goal of the system. It was, again, a proxy for maintaining unlimited power. The system was shit, but it had very little to do with Marx and his ideas. Proletariat was not in power of USSR, and it was badly run Socialist system. I am not defending it, but Peterson has a vague idea of the subject when he uses USSR as the example. It would be just as wrong to use, say, Nigeria, Mexico or Yemen to criticise capitalism.

He also catastrophizes the post-modernist. Sure it's all about power, but what is not about it? In the meantime all disastrous decisions and actions have been perpetrated by the very traditional capitalist powers. Did post-modernists start the Vietnam War? Did they support Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran and then later destroyed his rule and that country? Are they running the war against drugs that in the last decades that resulted in the proliferation of prison population while drug use is on continuous increase? I don't mind his gender pronoun war, but I would say this is a rather minor issue on the list of problems we are facing.

The pronoun legislation is a good example of the minority rule discussed in Taleb's latest book, Skin In The Game. The point is that often it is the active minority and not the majority that gets the upper hand. Even among gays the issue of gender is a minor one: you call gay men "he" and gay women "she", and the vast majority doesn't mind. But the tiny fraction who do managed to get the law in place. But how did it happen? I suspect this subject became the political horse for some politician, just like anabolic steroids got Joe Biden into big politics in the late 1980s. But then again, should we entirely blame post-modernists for that?

[Thud]

But then again, should we entirely blame post-modernists for that?

Only if your agenda is the perpetuation of a white, religious, authoritarian, paternalistic order.

[Turdacious]

Peterson's argument has many flaws. For starters he keeps referring to the Communism as failed system forgetting that t never existed and therefore couldn't ever fail. Communism is the utopian ideal, something the society would evolve into according to Marxist theory. USSR was a dictatorship hiding behind the banner of the ideas of Marx and equality. This equality never existed and was never the the true goal of the system. It was, again, a proxy for maintaining unlimited power. The system was shit, but it had very little to do with Marx and his ideas. Proletariat was not in power of USSR, and it was badly run Socialist system. I am not defending it, but Peterson has a vague idea of the subject when he uses USSR as the example. It would be just as wrong to use, say, Nigeria, Mexico or Yemen to criticise capitalism.

Still pissed off about Trotsky getting the boot eh?

[Sangoma]

Trotsky's story was way more complicated, devious and fascinating than "getting the boot", but 20 page history books you read don't go into that much detail. In any case, I am flattered, but this thread is not about me and my feelings, so try to focus and stay on the topic.

[Turdacious]

Trotsky's story was way more complicated, devious and fascinating than "getting the boot", but 20 page history books you read don't go into that much detail. In any case, I am flattered, but this thread is not about me and my feelings, so try to focus and stay on the topic.

Good point. God forbid someone criticize a system of beliefs based upon its application and advocates.

[Sangoma]

Turd, I am not sure what you think I believe, but try to address actual points of my posts.

[Turdacious]

Turd, I am not sure what you think I believe, but try to address actual points of my posts.

You're criticizing Peterson for talking about applied communism (both as applied in communist countries and as applied by cultural Marxists) because you want to focus on theoretical communism.

[Sangoma]

Do you actually understand what you wrote? Because it makes absolutely no sense to me.

[Fat Cat]

I can't speak for Turd, but the whole "that wasn't real communism" shtick is a very tired stratagem in the apologetics of Marxism. If the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, South Yemen, China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam all represent failed attempts at Marxism in action, and none of them represent the real article, it's probably fair to say that it is because the idea itself is a failure.

[JimZipCode]

Back to Peterson himself for just a mo:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/0 ... holes.html

[Sangoma]

I can't speak for Turd, but the whole "that wasn't real communism" shtick is a very tired stratagem in the apologetics of Marxism. If the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, South Yemen, China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam all represent failed attempts at Marxism in action, and none of them represent the real article, it's probably fair to say that it is because the idea itself is a failure.

To be honest, I don't want to argue about Marxism, Communism, Socialism and Leninism. I had more than my - obligatory - share of studying all of this in my growing up years in USSR. Communism is a strictly theoretical system imagined by Marx. Some tenets of which are: abolition of the state and private property in favour of common ownership of the means of production. Obviously, this was not the case in USSR and other countries on your list. What Peterson fails to mention is Leninism, the practical application of the ideas of Marx in order to make work in real life. In the process he broke basic principles on which Marx based his theory of social evolution to Communist society, effectively establishing the dictatorship of the Communist Party. The mix up of USSR and Marxism reminds me in a way of the Nazis highjacking the philosophy of Nietzsche. Curiously, some coined Peterson's critique of the left as Nietzschean.

[Herv100]

Nice to see all the same commies espousing big government commie shit in all the political threads.
Yawn

[buckethead]

The Burger King and 3 little pigs satires are excellent

[johno]

Communism is a strictly theoretical system imagined by Marx.

Oh. Sort of like this song:

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains you're going on a holiday
Your birthday comes around once a week and it’s Christmas every day
You never have to clean your room or put your toys away
There's a little white horse you can ride of course
You can jump so high you can touch the sky
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.