Nilsi

Of course, but that statement is quite superficial. Everyone is self-deceived to some extent; the real problem arises when people deny this and treat their own views as if they’re “objectively” true, turning them into a crusade. This is precisely what Žižek highlights: the issue with postmodernism isn’t that it relativizes and dismantles narratives, creating a “meaning crisis,” but that it responds to this crisis by repressing the traumatic realization and regressing into infantile fantasies of a lost paradise. This is why Peterson’s Christian revival and Trump’s MAGA movement are the ultimate symptoms of postmodernism. And tech-bros with their AI-as-a-new-God mentality are just as misguided - likely why there’s so much mutual sympathy between them. The genius of someone like Schmachtenberger is that he’s future-oriented without falling back into this infantile nostalgia. While someone like Ken Wilber is still clinging hard to a naïve modernist progress narrative in his teleological stage theory, which is just as much of an ego trip as Peterson's.

The title might be misleading, but there’s a lot of depth in this brief analysis.

Are you suggesting that Jordan is a narcissist? I don’t think reducing his character to a simple label through differential psychology will help us grasp the complexity or pathology of his persona - or Trump’s, for that matter. The clip you just posted, along with that strange X-Men propaganda piece, should be evidence enough of this. What’s needed here is a deeper understanding rooted in psychoanalysis, particularly Freudian psychoanalysis. Unfortunately, the only figure capable of this depth in our current discourse is Slavoj Žižek, but he doesn't seem keen on engaging in this conversation.

I actually think Jordan is getting way too much flak. He navigates authentic post-postmodern waters and has a profound grasp on reality; I'm sorry, but anyone who doesn't see this is just ignorant. Of course, I'm turned off by the neo-conservative posturing and bombastic theological imagery just as much as the next person, but still, the force and brilliance of his thought are glaringly obvious.

Undoubtedly one of the most brilliant electronic dance music projects ever.

I'm not even trying to critique marketing here. The fact is, in a blind taste test, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Coca-Cola and a generic product. But once that label is slapped onto the bottle, an entire universe of imagery bootstraps itself into existence - impossible to escape from - and genuinely creates a deeper experience of the commodity. So, in a bottle of Coca-Cola, the real is replaced by the hyperreal - the copy without an original; so much so that drinking a bottle of Coke becomes a metaphysical experience of hyperreality itself. It's an affirmation of the social matrix and the simulation that make this sublime experience possible.

That's ridiculous. You're more than willing to pay a premium for a bottle of Coca-Cola over some generic brand - not because it objectively tastes better, but precisely because you want a taste of all the dreams and images that Coca-Cola has planted in your mind through decades of advertising and billions of dollars spent on marketing. Of course, this was all financed by you and billions of others who were ready to pay their share of the marketing budget in every bottle of Coke you've ever bought.

An autistic person and a schizo walk into a debate...

Coffee is like women. Nietzsche said it best: "Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent." Still, I couldn’t live without my coffee...

A fascinating yet highly frustrating conversation between the one and only Jordan Peterson and Post-Integral philosopher, activist, and entrepreneur Jamie Wheal, who is closely associated with the Game B movement. Unfortunately, all the tension and momentum the discussion builds doesn't really lead anywhere substantial. Jamie desperately tries to cut through the programmatic talking points to get Jordan to articulate his own views and role in what could be termed the culture wars or, more broadly, the meta-crisis. Meanwhile, Jordan is essentially kicking the can down the road, continuously referencing one Old Testament story after another, and refusing to take any clear or definitive stance. The only semblance of a solution we gets is their discussion on the story of Job from the Old Testament. Jordan insists that in such a situation, what is right and even noble is to maintain faith in oneself and the the divine Logos of creation - implying that he doesn't align with the Game B crowd's assessment of an imminent existential catastrophe or their emphasis on the need for sensemaking and collective intelligence to develop emergent solutions to avert such an event.

Bro, every man goes through an identity crisis at your age. You’re just a very intellectual person who overanalyzes the situation, while your peers deal with it by getting into stupid relationships, drugs, or other distractions. No one has their life figured out at 17. As someone who’s a few years older and just as cerebral, I can tell you there’s no reason to worry. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ll be fine. Have fun, work hard, make mistakes, and eventually, you’ll start figuring out how life works and where you fit. In the end, none of us really have it all figured out. As you get older and „wiser,“ you’ll get more comfortable with your own flaws while also becoming better at life. It’s a momentum that just builds over time.

Forget about Blue Monday, Age of Consent, and all that other stuff - this, for me, is the defining New Order track. It’s like their entire career compressed into one song, which sounds horrible in theory, but somehow comes together perfectly here.

I totally reject this avoidance of making any kind of affirmative claim without qualifying and undermining it. This is the complete opposite of taking ownership over one's reality. Again, this is the genius of Nietzsche. Implicit here is always Fichte's absolute self - the active "I" at the core of all experience. And Nietzsche, taking what was still unconscious in Homer, pushed this inevitable activity of the self, and with it, language itself, to its absolute limit. This is precisely Nietzsche's will to power: the will affirming and realizing itself as the supreme legislator of reality.

My album of the year so far (and it's likely to stay that way). Someone in the comments of the song I highlighted here said this is Gen-Z's Starless (referring to what is pretty unanimously considered the best King Crimson track), and I can definitely see that. But I’m also getting heavy Frank Zappa vibes from the ridiculously over-the-top characters portrayed here, the vocal presence rivals greats like Freddie Mercury, and the John Zorn influences are obvious as well. And then there’s the fucking samba passages, which feel like a cocky victory lap after everything else that’s already going right here. Anyway, this is super eclectic, original, and executed to perfection. It scratches a primordial itch I have for this kind of theatrical maximalism and avant-garde sensibilities. Fair to say this album is a modern classic (even though it literally came out a little more than 24 hours ago).

What’s pragmatic about expressing things “fully with all their flaws even though it takes more work”? If you’re in a business meeting and start rambling about things that could be conveyed more efficiently through high-level concepts, that’s not pragmatic at all. The same applies in scientific contexts - when there are well-defined, abstract, and complex concepts with very precise meanings, it’s probably a good idea to use them. I’m actually picking up more of an artistic sentiment in what you’re suggesting - which seems to be a desire for vivid and lively ("feminine") expression over jargon or abstractions. Nietzsche was very much a master of this. His language is so dynamic and rich that, even before you grasp his ideas intellectually, you feel their impact on a visceral level through the sheer force of his words. This also reminds me of Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation, a classic in 20th-century literary criticism. Sontag critiques the “masculine” or “phallogocentric” tendency to reduce unique artistic expressions into rigid interpretive frameworks. She advocates for a more “erotic” way of engaging with art - one that is more sensory and descriptive than rational or interpretive. The same theme is also very much front and center in Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus. They criticize the trend in psychoanalysis (and continental philosophy in general) of interpreting every unique human expression as merely a complicated symptom of some underlying universal condition, like the Oedipus complex, or whatever. So ironically, and correct me if I’m misreading you, it seems like what you’re advocating for is actually an approach that’s strictly anti-pragmatic in nature (and what could be more anti-pragmatic than the feminine?). Maybe I’m just projecting, idk.

What drives you to dedicate yourself to exploring such a wide range of topics like politics, science, anthropology, and psychology? Is there a specific goal you’re working toward with all this knowledge, or is it more about the pursuit of understanding itself? And how do you decide which subjects are worth focusing on over others?

Congrats on picking up and reading a book (seriously). That also seems like the perfect book for you, so even better! If you were to go deep into people like Jean Piaget, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, James Mark Baldwin, etc., I might develop a crush (no homo).

I'll make a separate thread to answer this in the near future; there's so much to say on that.

The reality is that if you want to become financially successful, you'll have to set aside your ideals for a while and be ruthlessly pragmatic. There's no way around learning the fundamentals of business - like sales, marketing, basic economics, etc. - if you want to get your venture off the ground. Once you've reached a certain threshold of basic business aptitude - meaning you're earning enough to survive by providing some kind of service or product to customers - you can start developing your business in accordance with your higher values and "purpose." This will be a slow and steady process, though. If you try to get too fancy too fast, you'll just undermine your ability to profit from whatever you're doing. In my case, this involved dropping out of college to work in a call center and grinding away 60-hour weeks to develop myself into a highly skilled salesman. Now, I comfortably make five figures a month and can work from my phone anywhere in the world, which opens up a lot of possibilities for "individuation" again. I'm basically trying to express Whitehead's idea that “[one] advances by extending the number of important operations which [one] can perform without thinking of them.” In other words, you advance in business by mastering all the fundamentals at each "level," working yourself up toward something that is increasingly aligned with your highest values - or becoming more "individuated," so to speak. Really, this is just basic evolutionary dynamics, which you probably intuitively understand. But when it comes to one's own life, things are naturally very murky and obscured by all sorts of emotional and psychological turmoil.

From my experience, platforms like LinkedIn aren't frequented by executives themselves but by those tasked with a company's communications - whether that's the marketing team or various departments sharing their work with counterparts in other organizations. This engagement is primarily directed toward what Lacan refers to as the "Big Other": the imagined executive who eagerly consumes a company's LinkedIn content but who, in reality, is merely a figment of our collective imagination. What I'm suggesting is that you're unlikely to reach anyone who actually makes crucial decisions within a company through these channels; it's more a simulation of networking than genuine interaction with key decision-makers. PS: I work in high-ticket sales and find LinkedIn to be utterly useless and an enormous waste of time for doing any serious business.

From what perspective would such a sentiment even make sense? Certainly not from a human one. If you want everything you're talking about, you first need to become human - perhaps the most violent and radical move of all. You're still arguing from the standpoint of a transcendent observer, privileging rational thought over direct experience. Even Peter Ralston isn’t radical enough for me here. He doesn’t fully acknowledge or emphasize the significance of the human "Lebenswelt" ("life-world"), which makes sense given that his life has largely been spent in isolated contemplation and martial arts - both of which are, in a sense, rather "inhuman" practices to begin with.