Dawkins vs Peterson

[Nilsi]

8 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

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.

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

Edited October 26 by Nilsi

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Are you suggesting that Jordan is a narcissist?

He's not a narc, he's just self-deceived.

[Spiritual Warfare]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

He's not a narc, he's just self-deceived.

Dawkins, on the other hand, really thinks he has it all figured out, that jerk😇

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

Are you suggesting that Jordan is a narcissist?

He is a little on the spectrum I would say. It's a meme in the comment sections that when you go on JP's podcast, it's not him interviewing you, it's him having a "conversation" with you. That's an euphemism, by the way, just like "assertive and rude" is an euphemism for narcissistic tendencies.

That said, I also include people like Barack Obama in that. Trump is just a blatant narcissist, so I'm not comparing JP to him. But it's funny and peculiar that he would use the same traits to describe Trump to describe himself.

Edited October 26 by Carl-Richard

[Nilsi]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

He's not a narc, he's just self-deceived.

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.

Edited October 26 by Nilsi

[Leo Gura]

25 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

This is why Peterson’s Christian revival and Trump’s MAGA movement are the ultimate symptoms of postmodernism.

Those are not post-modernism, they are just old fashioned modernism and even pre-modern.

Trump is not post-modern, he's just a modern con-artist with a personality disorder.

And JP is a deluded moral crusader.

Edited October 26 by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

54 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Those are not post-modernism, they are just old fashioned modernism and even pre-modern.

Trump is not post-modern, he's just a modern con-artist with a personality disorder.

And you’re an old-fashioned CNN news anchor who prides yourself on being "reasonable" and "mature" by engaging with politics in the most mundane and conformist way imaginable.

I don't think we fundamentally disagree, but this kind of posturing isn’t persuasive at all, and it's precisely why someone like Trump became so popular in the first place. People don’t respond well to being spoken down to. This is why figures like Žižek and Peterson are the most influential public intellectuals, while you remain an obscurity - they understand their audience and speak to their deepest irrational desires, instead of resorting to this dry, soulless “adult talk.”

People are craving excitement and connection in their lives. They want to be seduced, and if the most “reasonable” voices refuse to offer that, they’ll inevitably turn to narcissistic populists who are all too eager to give them what they’re looking for.

Edited October 26 by Nilsi

[Sandhu]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

And you’re an old-fashioned CNN news anchor who prides yourself on being "reasonable" and "mature" by engaging with politics in the most mundane and conformist way imaginable.

I don't think we fundamentally disagree, but this kind of posturing isn’t persuasive at all, and it's precisely why someone like Trump became so popular in the first place. People don’t respond well to being spoken down to. This is why figures like Žižek and Peterson are the most influential public intellectuals, while you remain an obscurity - they understand their audience and speak to their deepest irrational desires, instead of resorting to this dry, soulless “adult talk.”

People are craving excitement and connection in their lives. They want to be seduced, and if the most “reasonable” voices refuse to offer that, they’ll inevitably turn to narcissistic populists who are all too eager to give them what they’re looking for.

So what do you suggest for Leo?

[Nilsi]

Just now, Sandhu said:

So what do you suggest for Leo?

Nothing, really. He was just being a buzzkill by refusing to engage in a conversation with me, so I had to push back.  

[Buck Edwards]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

People are craving excitement and connection in their lives. They want to be seduced, and if the most “reasonable” voices refuse to offer that, they’ll inevitably turn to narcissistic populists who are all too eager to give them what they’re looking for.

If people look for excitement, it will also lead to chaos then. It's called karma. 

[Nilsi]

1 minute ago, Buck Edwards said:

If people look for excitement, it will also lead to chaos then. It's called karma. 

A little party never killed nobody.

Seriously though, framing it that way misses the point. The problem isn’t chaos. We need chaos, and we need to release people’s pent-up desires so that we can bond and recognize our shared humanity. That way, everyone will voluntarily show up the next morning to clean up the mess.

Right now, we’re stuck in a situation where everyone’s pulling in different directions, and no coordinated effort is possible.

And to stick with the metaphor, the rest of the time, we don’t want to be bothered by either troublemakers or voices of conscience - we just want to be left alone to do whatever the hell we want with our time.

Of course, this is a pretty esoteric way of talking about it, but I’m not a fucking politician, and I don’t pretend to be.

[Lucasxp64]

Dawkins is a fucking idiot spiritually, he couldn't grasp, not even the Buddhist kind of enlightenment. Let alone grasping infinity.

[Lucasxp64]

On 26/10/2024 at 0:33 PM, Nilsi said:

And you’re an old-fashioned CNN news anchor who prides yourself on being "reasonable" and "mature" by engaging with politics in the most mundane and conformist way imaginable.

I don't think we fundamentally disagree, but this kind of posturing isn’t persuasive at all, and it's precisely why someone like Trump became so popular in the first place. People don’t respond well to being spoken down to. This is why figures like Žižek and Peterson are the most influential public intellectuals, while you remain an obscurity - they understand their audience and speak to their deepest irrational desires, instead of resorting to this dry, soulless “adult talk.”

People are craving excitement and connection in their lives. They want to be seduced, and if the most “reasonable” voices refuse to offer that, they’ll inevitably turn to narcissistic populists who are all too eager to give them what they’re looking for.

 

On 26/10/2024 at 0:16 PM, Leo Gura said:

Those are not post-modernism, they are just old fashioned modernism and even pre-modern.

Trump is not post-modern, he's just a modern con-artist with a personality disorder.

And JP is a deluded moral crusader.

I think @Nilsi has a point.

At least Jordan Peterson, I think that he genuinely believes in his ideas, but the issue is that along the way of learning about many of those moral truths and whatever other symbols that entices him, he has fallen into it like falling into an ideology, just like how Slavoj Žižek would say, he thinks he has escaped into his dreams, meanwhile, he's actually deep into it.

The issue with ideology, is that it DOES OFFER something ENTICING in some way or another, it's not completely soulless, even North Korea has their folklore, and the people can feel genuine love of the leader, their songs, the nice stories, the beautiful dancing women. But it asks to be COMPLETELY ALIGNED with it, like having a good friend, or a wife, etc.; If there is any kind of critic, it must be a shallow soft-ball critic that doesn't undermine it.

Cult psychology in some way.

The problem is that Peterson he is truly on a crusade, just like Musk is in his crusade to colonize Mars, to have an electric car company...  Etc.

But the drawback is that sometimes, you don't have much choice of whom to side with (It's just Kamala or Trump, literally). And the matter with Musk, well, he basically already chose to be an asshole and do whatever the heck he wants to get whatever he wants, but he believes that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter, like Steve Jobs being an asshole and putting people together to build great consumer tech.

But then we have figures like Trump and Andrew Tate. Those guys are just chaotic evil, Tate literally fucking says it. With Tate and Trump, it's glaringly obvious, they will just say whatever people want to hear. And then, you have someone like Jordan Peterson, that ends up playing the politics game due to his ideals, just the way he would literally support Hitler in Nazi Germany, without the benefit of hindsight.

Is building a cult worth it to fight against other cults? 😂 I guess that's how cults form.

But it must be a spectrum, being a little sophist, bending the truth here and there isn't so bad, is it? Just some crack, the OX will not care... Put blindfolds on the OX before gorging on shit (Little bit of fecal fetish should not be done in front of our pets 😋🦅🐂💩)

I guess that's the HOLY SACRIFICE we must make in the name of Jesus, just how he sacrificed himself. 🙏

But seriously, though, there must be some minimal compromise in how the message is delivered to increase reach, but that doesn't compromise in the ultimate message and doesn't create organizational corruption.

The right thing for Peterson would have been to demonize Trump, and the whole political system that out of MILLIONS of Americans, the nation will pick that motherfucker, I'm sure there are conservatives that are a better pick. Choosing to eat shit instead of rotten bread is not a great way of voting.

Unfortunately, I guess playing those power games comes with the downsides of doing things like voting for evil politicians, just because they side with your goals.

People are so predictable, holy shit. Even Peterson with his big symbolic reasoning head fell for it.

But there must be some other way, there must be a middle path, like how the Buddha found one after years of literally torturing himself through the period of his austerities and almost starving to death alongside extremist asceticism.

There must be the modern information age equivalent of extreme asceticism and on developing the "charisma" on the other hand.

Edited October 31 by Lucasxp64

[Lucasxp64]

The problem I see with Peterson, is that he's so biased, that he can't accept the fact that the good facts in the bible can also be ridden with garbage alongside it (In it, outside of it, by its community, by the people that preaches to self-identify with it, etc), he felt for the ideology. Like feeling fond of the good Soviet Union times and the comrades we made along the way...

And Dawkins says: "And so what? Were those friends even that good?"

The point is, you could make friends regardless of a devilish corrupt organization. That closes the case for me. The tidbits of truth in the Bible could have been found through other means.

The issue is that, once you have sided with it for a few things, it asks everything from you, and you are likely to go alongside it, so does people go alongside Trump, just because he frames himself as part of the in-group.

Very post-truth. Dawkins doesn't like it, he doesn't like that kind of relating, of getting in this state of trance. But he's biased towards science, so whatever, they all have massive blind spots. 

Edited October 31 by Lucasxp64