Society/Culture Jordan B Peterson

[kickazz]

As a young person in Australia, you are likely to be a net "taker" from the system and so see social institutions in a positive light.

As you get older you start doing things like working and paying tax, becoming more of a "contributor".

It's an oversimplification, but it would play a big part.


I started out conservative then became more progressive, particular as life events affecting those close to me made me realise we have less control over our fate than I thought we did.

Recent years have seen me have to really pull myself out of a pickle and thus I've swung more to the personal responsibility outlook on life. Perhaps in that time I've taken some things for granted though too. It ebbs and flows.

All in all I don't think I've become more conservative, but I have become more critical of the numpty progressives. Sure the right has the nutters too, but, I dunno, maybe I'm embarrassed more by people on my "team" getting lazy and saying stupid s**t.

 

[kickazz]

I think that's my point. I've seen that idiom all over the place, but it contradicts my actual real life experience.
Outside of the idiom, would you say your experience is that people become more conservative, or less conservative?

Why do we blindly accept that idiom as the norm?

Surely all you have to do is look at voting data (or poll data) by age.

 

[CM86]

Surely all you have to do is look at voting data (or poll data) by age.

Are you referring to me, who has pointed out that I'm basing it purely on my real life experience?
Or the person who made the initial claim?

 

[kickazz]

Are you referring to me, who has pointed out that I'm basing it purely on my real life experience?
Or the person who made the initial claim?

I should have said "one" only need look.....

Older people vote more conservatively than do younger people.

 

[CM86]

I should have said "one" only need look.....

Older people vote more conservatively than do younger people.

So is it a time of birth, or a maturity thing?

Have you become more conservative as you've aged?

 

[kickazz]

So is it a time of birth, or a maturity thing?

I posited that it is not so much maturity but more that one increasingly becomes more of a net contributor to the state once you have finished your education.

Time of birth is a very good point though. If we were to assume that society as a whole is getting more and more progressive, then yes, at any point in time, the older people will be more conservative.

I don't think I've become more conservative or progressive a great deal. I have become critical of the intellectual laziness that is starting to pervade a lot of progressive rhetoric. I don't pay much attention to the lazy or stupid RWNJs.

 

[CM86]

I posited that it is not so much maturity but more that one increasingly becomes more of a net contributor to the state once you have finished your education.

Time of birth is a very good point though. If we were to assume that society as a whole is getting more and more progressive, then yes, at any point in time, the older people will be more conservative.

I don't think I've become more conservative or progressive a great deal. I have become critical of the intellectual laziness that is starting to pervade a lot of progressive rhetoric. I don't pay much attention to the lazy or stupid RWNJs.

Surely all you have to do is look at voting data (or poll data) by age.

How does that compare to voting data?

 

[ShanDog]

How does that compare to voting data?

I could offer a reductionist but perhaps useful reason - if younger people are pushing for and creating social change in society, it's based off the standards of their time growing up and what they then think should change and become the norm. They grow older and think "Things are good now. Look what has changed" and are content with that. Then the next generation starts the same process, taking the ideas further or in a new direction, and that's not what the previous generation signed up for, hence they are more socially conservative.

Change happens over time slowly more often than not. Even flashpoints for change usually occur after a slow build-up. Then of course there's just the propensity for youth to be more exuberant about change. Maybe it's a sort of "change fatigue" as you get older? I don't know.

But I would say that my experience of 34 years has shown that it's usually the young adults who are most likely to question why things are the way they are and actually voice their want for change. Maybe it's partly because they didn't get a say in the social climate they were born into. Maybe it's because they have less to lose if big changes happen. Maybe it's just part and parcel of more study, research and understanding which is primarily the domain of young adults to absorb and act on through schooling. Don't know. Maybe none, maybe all those things.

 

[smokingjacket]

You into the all meat diet now? I see he reached you too.

I'm 100% on the good animal fats vibe but I enjoy growing things too much to cut out starchy vegetables.

 

[smokingjacket]

I had one fringe-dwelling lecturer that stood out in my Bachelor - she was the sterotypical fat middle-aged woman with alternative clothing interesting in the sadistic and morbid (constantly told us how her research was all about suicide) and would talk endlessly about herself if someone were willing to listen. Was overt about her dislike of any conservative. Big fan of feelings.

I wrote my research project on the media narrative of men as victims of domestic assault just to piss her off. To her credit, she marked it genuinely and I can't say I think the topic lowered my grade.

Just as I was starting to like her, I saw something in an email she wrote that was along the lines of apologising for abrupt language but it's not her fault because her father was a senior member of the ADF while she was growing up and it's what she is used to. All I could think was, "Dickhead - I am a senior NCO right now and I'm the nicest bloke ever. Don't blame your s**t campaigner dad on the military and don't blame your social hand-grenade status on your dad".

Was probably fair though.

Cool story.

I have to say Shan, the thing I find the most baffling about some of the criticism of "Arts" or maybe what's perceived as being a broader encroachment of "the left" into academia in terms of feelings and emotional based study has actually come from people like Jordan Peterson and his field of business psychology.

The entire idea of indivdual emotional intelligence and group emotional intelligence that places such a huge emphasis on talking about feelings and then graduating to placing feelings at the centre of work didn't come out of Marxism or the trade union movement, they were the result of Harvard HR research into how to develop more efficient workers for a liberal capitalist society.

 

[its free real estate]

The entire idea of indivdual emotional intelligence and group emotional intelligence that places such a huge emphasis on talking about feelings and then graduating to placing feelings at the centre of work didn't come out of Marxism or the trade union movement, they were the result of Harvard HR research into how to develop more efficient workers for a liberal capitalist society.

Reminds me of a Russian guy I worked with, when we had to attend some bullshit training about recognising people’s differences and respecting their feelings, and that how people felt about work mattered as much as the quality of the work they did.

He piped up “we are not here to have feelings, we are here to do work. I don’t care how you feel, I will respect you if you do your job!”

I smiled and thought, right on, man.

 

[Chief]

You must have been one of the few.
I recall much angst with an assignment where 20% of the mark was for adding an image to a word perfect doc.

FedUni?

 

[its free real estate]

Jesus, we had to write our own GSM codec, and the lecturer berated us for not coming up with what was then the industry standard, what kind of toy universities did you blokes go to?

 

[Contra Mundum]

Statutes, rulings and some Latin.

Big deal.

There's lawyers out there that are certified halfwits.

I know, I found out the hard way.

Arguably the apex parasites of the humanities.

That goes for any profession - few people do it for the intellectual challenge. BTW to underline my point about the problem with humanities courses at Unis goes beyond SJWs


https://www.chronicle.com/article/T...oukQ5zGyKAibm3pwBGElRk3OiKcHWDjBOWL0thPrPxPDE

In their parochial, self-serious literalism, they exemplify a style that increasingly pervades public writing by humanities scholars — a style that takes expertise to be authoritative and wields historical facts, however trivial or debatable, as dispositive answers to political questions. Such literalism is bad rhetoric, a way of dissolving argument into trivia. It’s also bad history: At root, it betrays the humanities’ own hard-won explanations of how we have come to know the past.

 

[Chief]

https://www.chronicle.com/article/T...oukQ5zGyKAibm3pwBGElRk3OiKcHWDjBOWL0thPrPxPDE

In their parochial, self-serious literalism, they exemplify a style that increasingly pervades public writing by humanities scholars — a style that takes expertise to be authoritative and wields historical facts, however trivial or debatable, as dispositive answers to political questions. Such literalism is bad rhetoric, a way of dissolving argument into trivia. It’s also bad history: At root, it betrays the humanities’ own hard-won explanations of how we have come to know the past.

Aren't we just back to Jordan Peterson?

 

[CheapCharlie]

 

[ShanDog]

I have to say Shan, the thing I find the most baffling about some of the criticism of "Arts" or maybe what's perceived as being a broader encroachment of "the left" into academia in terms of feelings and emotional based study has actually come from people like Jordan Peterson and his field of business psychology.

The entire idea of indivdual emotional intelligence and group emotional intelligence that places such a huge emphasis on talking about feelings and then graduating to placing feelings at the centre of work didn't come out of Marxism or the trade union movement, they were the result of Harvard HR research into how to develop more efficient workers for a liberal capitalist society.

I think the claims to truth based on feeling is what people push back against, not against the study of 'positionality' and 'intersectionalism' et al. Sure, the attack on that problem has picked them up as collateral damage because they appear to be the source of some of the BS, but if - like most postmodernist thought - it stayed in its box as a thought experiment, I don't think we'd have the same issue.

And the more I think about it, the more it reminds me of James Lindsay's definition of the problem - it's APPLIED postmodern theory that is the problem, and that's distinct from the theory.

 

[its free real estate]

I think the claims to truth based on feeling is what people push back against, not against the study of 'positionality' and 'intersectionalism' et al. Sure, the attack on that problem has picked them up as collateral damage because they appear to be the source of some of the BS, but if - like most postmodernist thought - it stayed in its box as a thought experiment, I don't think we'd have the same issue.

And the more I think about it, the more it reminds me of James Lindsay's definition of the problem - it's APPLIED postmodern theory that is the problem, and that's distinct from the theory.

The best applied post modernism is the way the IDF use it:

I asked Naveh why Deleuze and Guattari were so popular with the Israeli military. He replied that ‘several of the concepts in A Thousand Plateaux became instrumental for us […] allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have otherwise. It problematized our own paradigms. Most important was the distinction they have pointed out between the concepts of “smooth” and “striated” space [which accordingly reflect] the organizational concepts of the “war machine” and the “state apparatus”. In the IDF we now often use the term “to smooth out space” when we want to refer to operation in a space as if it had no borders. […] Palestinian areas could indeed be thought of as “striated” in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls, ditches, roads blocks and so on.’[5] When I asked him if moving through walls was part of it, he explained that, ‘In Nablus the IDF understood urban fighting as a spatial problem. [...] Travelling through walls is a simple mechanical solution that connects theory and practice.’[6]​

http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/art-war-deleuze-guattari-debord-and-israeli-defence-force

 

[ShanDog]

Well, that's certainly one way.

Also makes me think that maybe there's a bit of money to be made in taking postmodernism to military strategy here...

 

[smokingjacket]

I think the claims to truth based on feeling is what people push back against, not against the study of 'positionality' and 'intersectionalism' et al. Sure, the attack on that problem has picked them up as collateral damage because they appear to be the source of some of the BS, but if - like most postmodernist thought - it stayed in its box as a thought experiment, I don't think we'd have the same issue.

And the more I think about it, the more it reminds me of James Lindsay's definition of the problem - it's APPLIED postmodern theory that is the problem, and that's distinct from the theory.

Many of the things that people are bitching about in this thread as "post-modernism" in this thread are actually from liberal theories of business psychology.

It's the Stewart Lee bit about OHS and political correctness.

 

[smokingjacket]

Reminds me of a Russian guy I worked with, when we had to attend some bullshit training about recognising people’s differences and respecting their feelings, and that how people felt about work mattered as much as the quality of the work they did.

He piped up “we are not here to have feelings, we are here to do work. I don’t care how you feel, I will respect you if you do your job!”

I smiled and thought, right on, man.

That was me, sometimes I affect a Russian accent so I don't get in trouble at work or when harassing women on the street.

 

[ShanDog]

Many of the things that people are bitching about in this thread as "post-modernism" in this thread are actually from liberal theories of business psychology.

It's the Stewart Lee bit about OHS and political correctness.

I really have no knowledge of that area of study.

 

[smokingjacket]

I really have no knowledge of that area of study.

You're in study at the moment, correct? I think Harvard Business Review has limited free access anyway but if you have institutional access you could search for business psychology, human resources or specifics like "group emotional intelligence" and things like that and you'll find heaps of stuff about why having feels at work makes you a better worker going back to the 90's.

A lot of it's about team building so it might have some extra-curricular use for you.

 

[its free real estate]

That was me, sometimes I affect a Russian accent so I don't get in trouble at work or when harassing women on the street.

Ok alexei

 

[Contra Mundum]

Aren't we just back to Jordan Peterson?

Yeh but he’s discovered the secret essence of all meaning.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app