I am intrigued about this Jordan Peterson phenomenon and so I’m trying to at least invest a little time into finding out what he is really saying.
So above is a little clip of him on the Bill Maher show. I got to say that Bill Maher just clicked down a few notches on my intelligence scale. I definitely liked him back in the politically incorrect days, but it seems as much as these two white men are talking about thinking, they are really not thinking it through very well. It sounds like they’re just patting each other on the back for being rich and famous. Lol.
Ok here’s what I really think.
For one, I don’t really like how they throw around the word “truth”. Now, I am appreciating what they are saying about offending someone or being disrespectful; I agree, this world has become a little bit too sensitive. But also I think it is very unthinking to go from people are just too sensitive – the universities are not holding up standards of truth – they are caught in postmodernism — etc..
Let us indeed be real here:
Who is actually the one who is being offended? Is it the Queers? Who is really being too sensitive? The Gays?
I think it is Peterson himself.
First of all, at risk of being immediately stuck into a category of postmodernist — as anyone who reads my blog knows I am critical of postmodernism — I will suggest that these two white men on this show are throwing around the word “Truth” like it is something that cannot be a problem. In the other videos I’ve watched of Peterson he likes to talk about “reality” also. In fact I think he relates “honesty” with being in tune with reality.
Now, the reason why I keep saying “these two white men” is because indeed this is what we are talking about that even the intellectualizing white men are not comprehending, it seems, or could give a damn about (hence the problem).
Really, ironically, what I’m saying is that this white man, Jordan Peterson, is offended down to his core; White men who are offended meet those who are disrespecting their rightful “reasonable” righteous whiteness with indignation. So to defend himself, he uses the quite post-modern method of twisting discourse so that no one can see that he is deeply offended; that deep offense of his whiteness he returns back to the discourse to keep what is offensive at the level of postmodern discourse. He is doing what he is arguing: exactly what he is saying he is arguing against the PoMos about. And this is to say, so he can argue against “postmodernism” as if it is this resolved and specific thing.
Further, It is interesting to me that he is a PhD in psychoanalysis, and yet he is totally blind to how he is repressing those aspects of reality that offend him, and that he is projecting the object of his offense out upon the world as if there’s nothing wrong. Reaction formation, I Think it’s really called. It is basic Freudian psychoanalysis. I think he needs to go back to his psychology school, take some classes, Maybe listen to some Zizek for a little bit. I think Perterson might need some counseling. 😀
And the thing is, if anyone were to call him out on this, he would use the very post-modern method and skill of manipulating the reality of the situation back to discursive definition to show that that is not what is occurring with him, but is indeed a defense mechanism of what is occurring for me, say . In short, he would be dishonest about what he is in countering in reality.
Shall I mention his short synopsis of Kierkegaard? (In the previous post, his little rambling long talk). Can we say “agenda-filled reading” of Kierkegaard? It is so incredibly off the mark of what Kierkegaard is really talking about, I think I’m about to cough up my pancreas.
And yet here he is in the spotlight, famous calming having a bunch of people enjoying his arguments and relating to what he has to say. Even being offered a fellowship at Cambridge. I mean, this is not just about a difference of opinion or free speech, it’s a literally about different levels of intelligence and education; it’s about different capacities of understanding what the issues are and how they are being addressed.
I mean, I think I have talked about elsewhere, somewhere in my other posts, that the issue of philosophy now is to be able to distinguish between types of philosophy. And I mean this in the sense of how philosophy is being used as though is it it is a unitive category. This to say that it is not merely epistemology or ontology or teleology or whatever sort of other ologies; wit is literally about how discourses are being used under the umbrella category of philosophy. I submit that philosophy is being used in two distinctly different ways.
Ok…anyways…
This is why you cannot prove that whiteness is real to people who are stuck within it, and this is why I say such subjectivity is really a religious tenet. In this case, the religion asserts the privilege of being white, that you do not have to admit when you are offended and you definitely don’t have to admit to something being true if you don’t agree with it. All you have to do is yell louder and present as a white man and you are above reproach, as you refer to the religious theological ground (truth;reality).
Keep in mind, I’m not saying that there is not a truth or that there is not a reality; Rather I am saying what we are presently involved with a religious effectuation; what in the past we have called ideology, we are finding now is really a manner of coming up on reality that really has nothing to do with whether or not my thoughts equate with a sensible object, or what that means.
What we are involved with now is getting out of these limiting, correlational structures, and the opening of oneself to the possibility of other. It is not postmodernism; postmodernism is the description of the typical religious activity of thought. (I admit, there is a certain faction in the university that calls itself “postmodernism”, but this is not a religion in the sense that Peterson calls it, rather it is a misunderstanding of discourse in the Lacanian sense).
Just because you have a PhD does not mean you comprehend this aspect; in fact, all it really means is that you can use language in a particular way. What is at issue is the person that is using these methods.
There is a much deeper rebuttal to his whole presentation, but I am just voice dictating here while I’m walking my dog and so it’s hard to edit and write a whole dissertation on how Jordan Peterson philosophical position is skewed. He is unable to see the reality in front of him; what he sees is his own justification for what appears to him self reflexively as truth and reality.
To ask what this truth is that they keep throwing around as if it’s well known, is not a postmodern tactic. Of course Peterson might say it is a postmodern tactic, but that is because he is inherently caught in the postmodern manner of appropriating reality. In my previous post, in the video where he’s talking about stuff, he even pointed this out: namely, that there is some sort of dichotomy in history, some sort of polemic through which human beings are able to behave. His ground summary and resolution to this historical polemic is that in order for a person to be honest with themselves they have to say things that are offensive to other people. And then he uses the trope “postmodernism” as a Patsy to lump people who are “sensitive” into a group of people who are not being “honest”. Jordan Peterson might be being honest by being offensive, but he has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to truth because for him truth is based in some sort of common ground of our existence I guess. All one needs to do is listen to his analysis of history to understand his orientation upon the world; he has no problem with his thinking. In fact everyone should think like him because if you’re a white Man, then you know everything there is to know about identity, biology, sex, ideology, philosophy, truth, reality… how convenient for him.
He does not see his complicity with a particular ideology of power no matter how much he wants to talk about domination pyramids. In short, he is using the post modern method of coming upon reality and being in reality as an excuse for his own ignorance. He is being manipulative and he is not being honest simply because he is not able to confront what might be some sort of truth upon his truth operating. He is utterly an example of postmodern subjectivity in the same way that Zizek has indicated Donald Trump. The only truth he sees is that which is self-evident to him. He has no conception of what correlationalism might mean, nor would any of the discussions of the speculative realist folk are talking about over in France, or even LA, have any substance for him.
In short, we can see that he is involved with a particular post- modern religious manner of coming upon the world (there is no common thing called “postmodernism”; postmodernism defines a particular paradigm of knowing and a particular paradigm of being able to come up on world) and asserting that intuitive sense as if it obviously and should be and is supposed to be everyone else’s reality. This particular manner of approaching reality is called “colonialism”. And it seems he doesn’t even know that, Or at least, in the way that he has talked about it in other places, again, He completely exclude himself from the effort of colonialism in the progress of this universal history through which reality and truth only a come about through a persons being honest with themselves he completely exclude himself from the effort of colonialism in the progress of this universal history through which reality and truth only a come about through a persons being honest with themselves. I wonder if his definition of honesty means that everyone else needs to be fucked up in the head and only people like them are allowed to be rational (wat?) .
He is caught in a confusion created by his own presence of being offended by what reality presents to him. He uses ideas and tropes that go unanalyzed and unchallenged – Indeed he uses these troops in a manner that suggests that analyzing them or challenging them is part of the fantasy or a part of not being honest– for the purpose of reestablishing the status quo, which is basically the reality And supremacy Of the white thinking man.
It is not that truth is obvious, nor is it that there is no truth. It is not even some “spiritual” truth. It is that the truth of it is not yet viewable through those routes.
The problem is not what lay at the end of Perterson’s pointing finger, as much as he likes to point at things. The problem is that the subject of this pointing finger is not being questioned; it is as if to him some sort of “spiritual – historical mandate” is being communicated from God.
Again, there is a much deeper critique of Peterson which may come out one day but, honestly, I don’t know if it’s really worth the effort because demagogues have their place too. Hence, the discussion about what humanity is by what it does by the Philosophical Hack.
The Veritable Counsel 
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