101–110 of 172 posts
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Unfortunately, in a world where everyone is purportedly a Nazi (including my grandmother), nobody is a Nazi. And state control of academia and industry for the purpose of punishing those that don't support ever-increasing state power is indeed of grave concern...
Curious as to why your grandmother was called a Nazi . . .
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You’re not helping your case when you say that a mistake in common courtesy could lead to suicide.
I thought it would be clear I was being sarcastic but apparently not. This was really the point I was trying to make — that these speech laws really aren’t doing anything to address the problem. Additionally, the idea that the incredibly high suicide rate is because of oppression doesn’t match up with other data at all. If this is true, why do whites commit suicide at 3 times the rate of blacks?
It’s worth pointing out that Peterson is actually not against using a variety of gender pronouns per se. So many people get this wrong. He is against being compelled to use a variety of gender pronouns by legislation which is internally inconsistent, scientifically inaccurate, and additionally lacks clarity by punting process and standards to the Ontario human rights commission which can change their process and defi…
He actually wrote a letter to the administration of his university to state that if he had a trans student he would not be compelled to use their gender pronoun of choice. The admin told him, in so many words, to not be an asshole for no reason. He then published to response on the internet and played the victim. So he more or less had to create a controversy out of nothing. The great majority of people consider the…
Well, this is now enshrined in Canadian law, so it doesn't matter much what the great majority of people feel. It only matters how courts will interpret the law.
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Respectfully, I'd like to put this in a different frame. "Being an asshole" isn't some universal quality. If someone is complaining that someone else is "being an asshole," what is essentially meant is that person "is doing something for which they should be socially shamed." There's nothing inherently right or wrong with having a system of shaming in a society, but it's something particular to a culture and a time.…
Most people with unusual gender identities understand this, and are understanding and patient with those who are making an effort to respect their wishes. It's those who consciously refuse, or mock their attempts to clarify their identities, that get called out, and they deserve it. Yeah, it's hard for us. Hell, I'm 52. I have a lot of adjustment to do. But I try to do it, because I respect my friends. (Patton Oswald…
But you've never heard that. You've only heard him reject being coerced to do that. He's even on the record as saying he's fine with addressing people as they'd like to be addressed, so long as it's all done civilly. What you're doing is projecting a caricatured position onto him.
For my own part, a lot of my frustration is the loud and sincerely meant (if wrongheaded) declarations of victimhood by the privileged, simply for being asked to be nice to others.
A law that empowers kangaroo courts isn't "simply asking nice." A law that empowers those courts to use an unscientific "unconscious bias" test that claims to get into your head isn't "simply asking nice." A law that can result in dismissal from your job isn't "simply asking nice."
I hear a comfortable, privileged person complaining about how he's a victim.
He doesn't claim he's a victim. What he claims is that the law is a potential abridgement of freedom. You could make a claim that Lindsey Shepherd claims to be a "victim" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpFUvfAvKs4 -- but then you'd be presenting evidence that Dr. Peterson's assertions about the law are correct.
And when he doubles down and says people shouldn't get to choose their own pronouns, their own identity, and instead society should choose for them? Then he's a hypocrite. And an asshole.
A coworker at my work announced her transition, and everyone just started using the feminine pronoun. Everyone was civil about it, and everything was fine. (And I am certain that she was happier and a more vibrant and complete person for making the change.) Again, you are misrepresenting his position. More accurately, a person exists within society (and hopefully a community) and identity is something which is effectively negotiated between the person and society. It's the parties who are being emotionally dishonest, playing games with emotional blackmail, and being crappy people who are "being assholes." From where I'm sitting, it's a lot of emotionally imbalanced trans "activists" who fit that description. Jordan Peterson gets mail from trans people, the majority of whom are supporters or sympathetic to him. Their collective position is that they just want to not be singled out and live their lives in peace.
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Curious as to why your grandmother was called a Nazi . . .
Is , not was . Nice attempt to imply that GP's grandmother was an actual WWII-era Nazi.
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> his most recent debate with Cathy Newman from three days ago God, that was a terrible interview. The interviewer refused to understand a single thing that JP was saying. I am no fan of Peterson (in particular, I am left liberal), but he makes quite a lot of good points.
I'm fairly socially liberal too and on the fence about him. He says a lot of interesting things and I've never been a fan of postmodernism which I regard as a form of "pseudo-profound bullshit," but I keep getting hung up by the fact that a whole lot of Peterson's followers are fascists and racists. Of course the same might have been said at one time about Nietzsche and Jung. Some Nazis loved Nietzche but it was not…
> Of course the same might have been said at one time about Nietzsche and Jung. Some Nazis loved Nietzche but it was not all that mutual.
Seems like he has no love for the alt-right:
> But when [Peterson has] been lumped in with what’s come to be called the alt-right, as happens fairly regularly, Peterson has pushed back, calling it "seriously wrong." The erstwhile socialist considers himself a classic British liberal, and he has castigated the far right for engaging in the "pathology of racial pride."
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He actually wrote a letter to the administration of his university to state that if he had a trans student he would not be compelled to use their gender pronoun of choice. The admin told him, in so many words, to not be an asshole for no reason. He then published to response on the internet and played the victim. So he more or less had to create a controversy out of nothing. The great majority of people consider the…
> The admin told him, in so many words, to not be an asshole for no reason. He then published to response on the internet and played the victim. This is a pretty low resolution summary of their correspondence. It’s also pretty easy to argue that his behavior is better described as refusing to play the victim. For him, the loss of his rights is more impactful than the consequences of not complying, so he refused to pl…
From my understanding, it is purely the attempt to compel behavior from him that is his issue.
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"Postmodernism" and "deconstructionism" are often used synonymously: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/02/what-happened-with-decons... and like many overarching "isms" they've come to mean such different things that they can be used to mean almost anything. That being said, many strands of postmodernism in universities have come to teach that there is nothing outside of language itself (that's a common reading of Fouca…
> That being said, many strands of postmodernism in universities have come to teach that there is nothing outside of language itself (that's a common reading of Foucault and Derrida), so everything can be seen as a language or sign system. Want to change "reality" (as if there is such a thing!)? Just change the language. > Another stand holds that there are only two really important groups: the powerful / powerless,…
And yet, activists who claim to be Marxist seem to be very well aligned with others who claim postmodernist derived ideologies.
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> his most recent debate with Cathy Newman from three days ago God, that was a terrible interview. The interviewer refused to understand a single thing that JP was saying. I am no fan of Peterson (in particular, I am left liberal), but he makes quite a lot of good points.
I'm fairly socially liberal too and on the fence about him. He says a lot of interesting things and I've never been a fan of postmodernism which I regard as a form of "pseudo-profound bullshit," but I keep getting hung up by the fact that a whole lot of Peterson's followers are fascists and racists. Of course the same might have been said at one time about Nietzsche and Jung. Some Nazis loved Nietzche but it was not…
Well, given that Peterson has repeatedly pissed them off by saying that ethnic nationalism is an idiotic ideology (I'm paraphrasing), I'm not sure how many of those followers he now has left.
He definitely has a very vocal cult-like following among a certain type of young adult. While they can be annoying, they're not typically the fascist/racist type. Far from it.
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progressives have been shunned and demonized for so much longer. What did you expect would happen?
When did progressives start believing en masse that two wrongs make a right?
"It's okay to hate your oppressors."
"X = Prejudice + Power"
"By Any Means Necessary"
It goes at least as far back as Karl Marx, but probably further.