Jordan Peterson, as the Failure to Think

[Artimas]

Existence is agony, if I put you in a room alone you will suffer on your own, by mind and eventually by body.

Purpose of life is to lessen suffering of self and of others around you by being kind(real conscious love) and investing time into art, expression of self and experiencing things of which you deem positive.

Asserting will upon any other individual is tyrannical in nature, to assert will upon one who deems it fine to assert will, is justice.

And no this is not from Peterson, I knew this all on my own, especially the Bible being a metaphor. It’s as obvious as day and night that heaven and hell are ideas we project on reality by consistency of thought.

Hi Artimas,
We seem to agree. What I found useful with Peterson is the use of language that helped me find words for things I couldn’t name before, and his clear structure of order//confusion/chaos, and tyranny/democracy/anarchy. Which are sorted something like this:

----------------Order-----------------

-----Anarchy---Democracy---Tyranny-----
--------------Confusion--------------

---------------Chaos-----------------

Too much anarchy and you’ll end up in chaos.
Too much tyranny and you’ll end up in chaos.
Order is opposite to Chaos and finds itself in the middle, as all clarity (and truth) does.
Democracy, which finds itself between anarchy and tyranny, can be prone to confusion, which can also be a shortcut to chaos.
Our task is to clear up the confusion and therefore maintain democracy. Thereby attempting to find the best solution to problems for everybody.

I have just finished reading and listening to maps of meaning, which is very challenging – if not merely from the volume of work put into it. There are many intriguing examples that he gives, which show the degree to which he has gone to clarify “Dasein” for himself – and for those interested.

That is why Meno is obviously right about psychology, and why Peterson is predestined to pursue this course of enquiry. His discovery, following Jung, of the narrative of being, which is something we are all using to make life make sense, has echoed something I have primitively always said, that human beings can be best identified as a species that tells stories to understand his experiences.

I was known here on ILP for a long time as someone who, despite acknowledging that the Bible isn’t primarily historical (there may be a few historical pinpoints), always defended the narrative as a portrayal of experience – good or bad. It is erroneous to imitate any part of it, to adopt its ruling blindly, or claim that it is accurate in a way it can’t be, but as a narrative, it is an interesting witness to spiritual development.

Being pre-science, it addresses issues using (for us) a strange vocabulary, but like other traditions, opens up the psyche of developing mankind, and is valuable for that purpose. I can't imagine anyone who has half understood what Peterson is telling us, thinking that he is an example of a failure to think.

I do agree with this as well and find myself in the same boat in regards to living it but not being able to explain it until the time comes for when you fully understand it or have the words. It’s like the big picture keeps going farther out, revealing more and more so that we may connect the dots and then we can finally describe what we have been living, this has been happening to me since I was born.

I was trying to show that same thing as Peterson shows even before he became a big hit, (he does explain it better with his having more experience in/with the terminology) with the Bible being metaphorical and other deities of which a lot of people just label you evil or crazy.

It is language, it crafts our reality, the past languages shaped us but without an individual putting the time into understanding the message correctly through self logical/reasonable thought it leads some or a lot to confusion by trying to adopt it as an external phenomena or idea and so they attempt to force reality to match those ideals not understanding it is all within, ignorance is also on the side of chaos. Ignorance is bliss but what one may not know may kill them.

They misunderstand what we try to teach about culture too and often a lot of people claim we are all the same, in basis yes, we all connect via subconscious and are made up of the same thing(stardust) but culturally/personally we are all different temporary identities as to progress evolution, quite literally the universe seems to be expanding itself using life as diverse physical manifestations of itself. Hence the duality. We need to not force ourselves to be more of the same(cultural genocide) but instead learn to appreciate diversity, for it is literally the driver of evolving.

[Artimas]

The collectivist Peterson states that we all should, in order to benefit the collective, view each other as "essentially" individual. Is this a collective demand to how each one should think itself? What could be more "low resolution" than the demand that each one take the same view in order to do what is best for all? Namely, to think themselves as essentially "individual" for the sake of the collective? 

Peterson, driving his ego into self annihilation, might now pick himself up and learn thought. Ergo, he might remember what is properly worthy in his inner teaching.

I think you are wrong. Peterson says it is wrong to identify someone immediately as being part of a group and therefore giving them the attributes that are associated with that group. The racist argument and the numerous “#Phobes” which have been applied to people, just because they have a certain skin colour or particular sexual inclination, doesn’t fit. Peterson has demonstrated this by going on tour with someone who is openly gay.

People are first and foremost who they are as an individual, and not who they are for other people because of certain attributes. Back in the sixties I (a white person) had friends in GB who came from Jamaica and I was criticised by racists. Amongst the black community there arose concern that I was a white person who visited a black area. My friends made the point that racism can work both ways, and told the others that they should be careful not to fall into the trap. Now we are forty odd years on, and they have made that mistake, but were treated in a way that seemed to warrant their opinions.

What we need to do is, as individuals, work out the best way for everybody, which is what democracy should be (and not just defeating people by majorities) and be wary of where this goes wrong.

People will adopt tendencies of groups to fit in when they join it, this overshadows the self and is also where chaos and unhappiness may find an opening in an individual, the lack of expression of true self. It is why I stay away from groups and always have. We become who we hangout with and if you be yourself you will find yourself alone most of the time. It’s a psychological and VERY common misconception for man to attach all aspects of a group to an individual in it, even if they represent different view or points.

In simpler terms, I avoided groups to avoid adopting tendencies, so I did not become them but instead became myself.

I suppose a group of very like minded individuals could function to make real progress without extremism but the difficulty lies in finding those other individuals and the appreciation of diversity aspect.

[Bob]

can't really say that you give me any indication as to why something should make a difference in my reply.

[quote_"]can't really say that you give me any indication as to why something should make a difference in my reply.

[/quote]

„Does not compute .. does not compute!“??

[Bob]

People will adopt tendencies of groups to fit in when they join it, this overshadows the self and is also where chaos and unhappiness may find an opening in an individual, the lack of expression of true self. It is why I stay away from groups and always have. We become who we hangout with and if you be yourself you will find yourself alone most of the time. It’s a psychological and VERY common misconception for man to attach all aspects of a group to an individual in it, even if they represent different view or points.

In simpler terms, I avoided groups to avoid adopting tendencies, so I did not become them but instead became myself.

I suppose a group of very like minded individuals could function to make real progress without extremism but the difficulty lies in finding those other individuals and the appreciation of diversity aspect.

I agree with you that it has become a “VERY common misconception” and it is what Peterson has been arguing. Just like you have found it necessary to stay away from groups for fear of being associated with them, just the same with anybody else. The tendency to do this seems to be particularly rampant on the left side of the spectrum, where you may find yourself stamped with some label that doesn’t fit you. The confusion requires clarity, which means people have to be prepared to discuss things out, rather than calls names.

The “group of very like-minded individuals” have the tendency to make an ideology out of their ideas, and soon they want everybody to be “like-minded” and refuse to associate with those who think otherwise. Diversity of identity was something that got a bit out of hand, but then the different groups got organised and threw out previous companions. Martina Navratilova is a good example of someone who spoke out for the LGBT community until she was ousted because she spoke out against athletes that were previously males competing in female events. To call her “Transphobe” is a completely false statement and an inability to differentiate.

However, that is exactly the aspect of any debate that is missing. The ability to differentiate arguments and accept that in some areas there is a chance that we will just have to accept that we differ. Peterson’s appeal is for the acceptance of what we don’t know, instead of pressing a point as if we do. The Unknown covers a vast area of our lives, more in fact than what we do know, and it is our investigation of the Unknown that could be a common undertaking. Unfortunately, the discussion is breaking down and name-calling has taken its place, precisely because it is often one ideology pitted against another.

[Artimas]

People will adopt tendencies of groups to fit in when they join it, this overshadows the self and is also where chaos and unhappiness may find an opening in an individual, the lack of expression of true self. It is why I stay away from groups and always have. We become who we hangout with and if you be yourself you will find yourself alone most of the time. It’s a psychological and VERY common misconception for man to attach all aspects of a group to an individual in it, even if they represent different view or points.

In simpler terms, I avoided groups to avoid adopting tendencies, so I did not become them but instead became myself.

I suppose a group of very like minded individuals could function to make real progress without extremism but the difficulty lies in finding those other individuals and the appreciation of diversity aspect.

I agree with you that it has become a “VERY common misconception” and it is what Peterson has been arguing. Just like you have found it necessary to stay away from groups for fear of being associated with them, just the same with anybody else. The tendency to do this seems to be particularly rampant on the left side of the spectrum, where you may find yourself stamped with some label that doesn’t fit you. The confusion requires clarity, which means people have to be prepared to discuss things out, rather than calls names.

The “group of very like-minded individuals” have the tendency to make an ideology out of their ideas, and soon they want everybody to be “like-minded” and refuse to associate with those who think otherwise. Diversity of identity was something that got a bit out of hand, but then the different groups got organised and threw out previous companions. Martina Navratilova is a good example of someone who spoke out for the LGBT community until she was ousted because she spoke out against athletes that were previously males competing in female events. To call her “Transphobe” is a completely false statement and an inability to differentiate.

However, that is exactly the aspect of any debate that is missing. The ability to differentiate arguments and accept that in some areas there is a chance that we will just have to accept that we differ. Peterson’s appeal is for the acceptance of what we don’t know, instead of pressing a point as if we do. The Unknown covers a vast area of our lives, more in fact than what we do know, and it is our investigation of the Unknown that could be a common undertaking. Unfortunately, the discussion is breaking down and name-calling has taken its place, precisely because it is often one ideology pitted against another.

When they resort to name calling and ad hominem that’s how you can sort of know to an extent that you have made progress and have won the discussion.

I agree with this all, you’re right it is more difficult to not be blinded by ego in a group due to the fact that you are not just balancing yourself between self and sub but also trying to balance between other individuals. It’s like each individual is a newly added weight to carry, it’s too much for one individual to represent, the original message gets misconstrued most often from this “blending”.

[Meno_]

Participation mystique, never tried to formulate the dynamic imaginative basic mirrored image transcending any meaningful symbolic progression, other then through the borderline conditioning of magical thinking, identified through absolutely binding forms of group membership.

The progression from the mirror stage to the bind, as socially repressed, so symbolic objects are boxed ias receptive in them selves, rather then being mutually transparent.

Here, the ego never becomes one that needs any mediation, it is based on purely non objective (understood) criteria.

Magic also disposes any concern with the notion of a casual correspondence between affect and effect, what really is of significance is the unitary, pre-mirror stage that absolutely pre-disposes a reversal of symbolic significance between simulation and assimilation.

Magical thinking has equivalence between totally assimilated cultural fas well as that found in people characterized as being in bordering normative artifacts in unassimilated
Individual personalities.

The use of magic, so prevelant in the middle ages of civilization, mirrors the period of social and cultural breakdown (between the onset of Christian magic) and the beginning of.the Enlightement) that is feared, in Western though as alienation

The concept of alienation does not bide well even in cases of belonging to like minded groups, for other reasons which characterize certain temporal-developmental stages.

For those reasons it can be argued, that the transcendental reduction of the ego is indifferent to the intention to degrade the determined ego as it had to do with a socially determined intentionality.

That was my point to clarify the doozy that flowed out of a sleepless night"s pen.

[Guide]

One must denounce the state religion, in order to gain space for a genuine science.

What a pleasant nature you have, especially considering you live in the clouds, way up in your ivory tower where you can look upon the Savages like me and even consider communicating with one.

I return the compliment; you live “in the clouds”. The reason is the state monopoly on compulsory education densely inculcates the state metaphysics in the popular mind. Almost everyone speaks, and lives, wholly abstractedly, in the tones of European so-called science (e.g, technological cybernetics, which is not a science in any serious sense), which means, their entire lives are spent understanding the world in terms of metaphysical abstractions such as the general category of all things, or the whole, as “facts” (a recent conceptual invention), and measure everything from this sort of airy fantasy region of mere talk, rather than what is there. Anything that violates the “obviousness” of the dogmatic principles deeply set into them in youth, and holding its grip on their skulls throughout the decades, is a priori mistaken and anathema. They only seek for anyone who says anything else to slam them down as insufficiently practical (i.e., as not following the state metaphysics as their guide to what is worth doing and what is necessary, and therefore “practical”) against the state metaphysics which is, as a rule, believed to be simply obvious daily life. Only a very few persons, through long exercise of thought, are able to work free of this clanging web. These are the strong minds; the mind and human life are the same. The body is human life, and not something added on. Historical study alone makes these matters of the current state metaphysics intellectually clear, since the current ideas then are seen to be short lived, and it is impossible to believe that in thirty thousand years time the apparatus of abstractions will live on. But, it is much harder to intuitively, directly, overcome the paralysis of thoughtless faith in the popular views.

The rest of what you write, sanctimonious drivel of an idiot scale, written in defense of a narrow group affiliation with the Brights cult/political movement, falls bellow the level of intelligent, non-partisan, discussion and investigation.

Philosophy is effectively destroyed by the state metaphysics in its degraded vague everyday form as scientism and the creature of scientism, the “normal” as authoritative guide of all behavior of all beings on the earth according to the “practical”, e.g., the tasks of European, now planetary science and it raw crude and blindly commanding dogma and crude god.

[Bob]

One must denounce the state religion, in order to gain space for a genuine science.

Well, that certainly makes your case very clear: "Everybody else is deluded, but not me." That makes you probably quite lonely, which I'm sorry to hear. I assume that here on ILP there are many lonely souls who look for conversation. However, I must confess, I did wander into this particular Forum by mistake, lured by the subject. I apologise if I offended you, which I didn't mean to, but there were from the beginning statements that were already revealing an elitist tendency, which has always challenged me.

All the same, I still wish you well ...

[Guide]

My aim, of course, was to talk with people who already have some experience or imagination with the difficulties involved, not to debate children insufficiently docile to learn. However, we must give the group every chance so far as a prolegomena can be deployed attendant to a plausibly existing presence of reason.

I'm speaking from a tradition that goes back at least to Plato, and is understood by the thoughtful part of the community to this day. It is no longer in power, and so passed off as idiosyncratic or "subjective". We live at the first time, in the existence of anything, not just "the universe", so to say, simply the first time, of large scale education. In the year 1900 less than 10 percent of the population completed high school. This is not a regular occurrence of the obviousness you are attributing to it. My chief investigations have had a close basis and sustaining energies in the works named Heidegger and Leo Strauss.

Now, I think your generic rioting is due to one thing most all. Thoughtful people recognize that experience is essentially untrustworthy. Someone bumps into you, did they do it on purpose? Experience requires understanding, and then that comes under already formed ideas. Thinking this through, considering many happenings, at length, one comes to see that experience is not in any direct way distinguishable from imagination. It easily happens that this attitude toward the imagination of others is taken for a kind of naivete, or lack of experience with simple people who put the uttermost trust in their own experiences (even though we all see, in others, the greatest mad nonsense passed off as experiential knowledge, and this is an every day experience gained from even five minute conversions with one's fellows).

I know, for example, an attorney who has great experience of chem-trails. He looks in the absolute blue sky, there he sees a blight, a trail of grey-white hanging about, left from a plane. The CIA is up to its tricks again! He is positively scandalized by the fact that others don't share his concern.

Again, a man of science, he has great experience of such and such happenings. Whenever x happens, he knows, through experience, y is behind it. It is wholly reliable knowledge. Yet, such things are often false. The "experience" consists in attributing y to x repeatedly.

Again, one has no experience of growing old or dying, but one is quite sure one knows all about it from smearing one's imaginations with empathetic and compassionate notions gleaned from being about such beings who are dying. And so on.

In any case, conversion with transparently vindictive and essentially negative persons, unable to learn, such as yourself, palls infinitely.

[Mad Man P]

The collectivist Peterson states that we all should, in order to benefit the collective, view each other as "essentially" individual. Is this a collective demand to how each one should think itself? What could be more "low resolution" than the demand that each one take the same view in order to do what is best for all? Namely, to think themselves as essentially "individual" for the sake of the collective?

I'm sorry to be so blunt, but...

You cannot advocate for individual primacy if you are a collectivist, I mean you could, but that would be a contradiction...
As such you cannot use Peterson's recommendation that as a society we would do better to value the well being of the individual over the collective, as an example of a collectivist position. To do so implies that either you are entirely uneducated on the topic and do not even know what the term "collectivist" means or you're purposefully engaging in such a gross act of sophistry that it's akin to saying a circle is a square.

Given your latest post, I can only imagine the depth of embarrassment and shame you would feel were you to recognize how grave an error you've made here.
As a consequence, It would be naive to hope that you'd muster the courage to endure that embarrassment, for the sake of intellectual honesty. I suspect you're more likely to double down and insist, using all the rhetorical devices you can muster, that this circle truly is a square... and it would be a gloriously convoluted pile of word spaghetty for me to untangle, I'm sure...

But let's skip all that and go straight to me conceding that it may well be that I am simply too stupid to understand the level of genius that I'm confronted with and that therefore I have mistakenly identified this genius as confused and/or transparently manipulative...

[Serendipper]

The individual exists in context of the collective and the collective exists in context of the individual. How could one be individualistic if there were not others to be different from?

[Bob]

My aim, of course, was to talk with people who already have some experience or imagination with the difficulties involved, not to debate children insufficiently docile to learn.

Interesting to learn this about myself, and of course to learn mostly about you. I would be extremely surprised if there is anyone that would debate you without taking your complete arrogance into consideration, as well as the ridicule you choose to distribute from the safety of your avatar.

The ability to imagine that behind the simple avatars of people a grand range of experience is lingering from which you may also profit if only you could lower yourself to engage with it, is obviously beyond you. However, to be spiteful and malevolent in your speech is right up your alley.

In that case, I can only say that I am pleased to say that I wouldn't want to learn anything from anyone who shows such contempt for those who haven't the knowledge particular to your corner of studies. That is pretty much the rest of the world, so I pity you in your self induced loneliness.

[Karpel Tunnel]

My aim, of course, was to talk with people who already have some experience or imagination with the difficulties involved, not to debate children insufficiently docile to learn. However, we must give the group every chance so far as a prolegomena can be deployed attendant to a plausibly existing presence of reason.

You guys are not docile enough.

ready to accept control or instruction; submissive.

[Artimas]

My aim, of course, was to talk with people who already have some experience or imagination with the difficulties involved, not to debate children insufficiently docile to learn. However, we must give the group every chance so far as a prolegomena can be deployed attendant to a plausibly existing presence of reason.

You guys are not docile enough.

ready to accept control or instruction; submissive.

I only choose to represent what chooses to represent me. Very careful selection of what that may be for I only pick what aligns together and discard the rest.

[Guide]

Interesting to learn this about myself, and of course to learn mostly about you. I would be extremely surprised if there is anyone that would debate you without taking your complete arrogance into consideration, as well as the ridicule you choose to distribute from the safety of your avatar.

You should have answered what was written instead of prating, again. My view is that it is a waste of time to talk with you, since you're unable to think and wholly lacking in serious knowledge. Most of all, because you absolutely don't want to learn.

[Guide]

You guys are not docile enough.

ready to accept control or instruction; submissive.

Strong minds are capable of docility, they love learning, the condition of learning is docility. To let the teaching use one's mind as its toy. They don't fear being indoctrinated or drowning in the rushing winds of thought. The struggle calls them and they, struggle's respondents, learn what genuine education is. The outstanding thinker is not like the American multitude, the planetary technological "logical" debate, and its idiot mental scale, ego blather, and constant whimperings.

[Karpel Tunnel]

You guys are not docile enough.

ready to accept control or instruction; submissive.

Strong minds are capable of docility, they love learning, the condition of learning is docility. To let the teaching use one's mind as its toy. They don't fear being indoctrinated or drowning in the rushing winds of thought. The struggle calls them and they, struggle's respondents, learn what genuine education is. The outstanding thinker is not like the American multitude, the planetary technological "logical" debate, and its idiot mental scale, ego blather, and constant whimperings.

And so, then, your approach to others here is also docile and not prickly and beyond reproach as it seemed. Great. And you did not mean docile in relation to you, which is generally how the term is used, docile in relation to authority. but rather docile in relation to, her, text and the ideas in it. Great.

It used to be that one considered perception passive, like light directly going into the mind where on a screen we see the real world.
Now we know that perceptive is active, choosing to move here and there in the shift inputs, curious, checking, building actively from. Even perception, which is just a portion of learning, is very active and not docile.
Though in general, sure..... One must allow oneself to be moved, not just react from history and habit, but to see where something takes you. To try it on. To see with it. To use it. Come back to it.
Collaborative - since one cannot suddenly make oneself a blank slate, though one can think one can - rather than submissive. Since it will be an interaction, even if one partner is silent.

[Guide]

“And so, then, your approach to others here is also docile and not prickly and beyond reproach as it seemed. Great. And you did not mean docile in relation to you, which is generally how the term is used, docile in relation to authority. but rather docile in relation to, her, text and the ideas in it. Great.”

I assume, just as some people are stupid, ergo, deserve the tag “stupid” (or, now "being" stupid at length and for some time, possibly correctable if pointed out), some are less knowledgeable. ERGO: I ASSUME: Truth is valuable. Further, that the more knowledgeable can see this. One might be mistaken, that is a possibility. Mistakes are, thereby: thought as TRUE.

[I don't say "truth" in polemical context with Nihilism, but only in an intimidate sense of discourse. Truth: ergo, what is NOW, RIGHT NOW, THOUGHT as true.]

“Even perception, which is just a portion of learning, is very active and not docile.”

I agree. I’m using the word “docile” to be the answer to the question (in order to link to the older way of speaking and the tradtion): What is the condition of learning? On the assumption that, in some sense, passivity is the condition. Because, that is really the case for all experience. “Socratic method”, and such like, are, propagandized as “active”, of course. However, adduce a real case of learning something known by another.

The word “docile” has felt hard blows on its face. But, this is, at least largely, a prejudice to be overcome. Or, one could say: Actively willing to be docile.