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Jordan Peterson: The fatal flaw in leftist American politics | Big Think

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Jordan Peterson: The fatal flaw in leftist American politics
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What is political extremism? Professor of psychology Jordan Peterson points out that America knows what right-wing radicalism looks like: white nationalism. “What’s interesting is that on the conservative side of the spectrum, we’ve figured out how to box-in the radicals and say, ‘No, you’re outside the domain of acceptable opinion,'” says Peterson. But where’s that line for the Left? There is no universal marker of what extreme liberalism looks like, which is devastating to the ideology itself but also to political discourse as a whole. Peterson is happy to suggest such a marker: “The doctrine of equality of outcome. It seems to me that that’s where people who are thoughtful on the Left should draw the line, and say no. Equality of opportunity? [That’s] not only fair enough, but laudable. But equality of outcome…? It’s like: ‘No, you’ve crossed the line. We’re not going there with you.'”Peterson argues that it’s the ethical responsibility of left-leaning people to identify liberal extremism and distinguish themselves from it the same way conservatives distance themselves from the doctrine of racial superiority. Failing to recognize such extremism may be liberalism’s fatal flaw.
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JORDAN PETERSON

Jordan B. Peterson, raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta, has flown a hammer-head roll in a carbon-fiber stunt-plane, explored an Arizona meteorite crater with astronauts, and built a Kwagu’l ceremonial bighouse on the upper floor of his Toronto home after being invited into and named by that Canadian First Nation. He’s taught mythology to lawyers, doctors and business people, consulted for the UN Secretary General, helped his clinical clients manage depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia, served as an adviser to senior partners of major Canadian law firms, and lectured extensively in North America and Europe. With his students and colleagues at Harvard and the University of Toronto, Dr. Peterson has published over a hundred scientific papers, transforming the modern understanding of personality, while his book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief revolutionized the psychology of religion. His latest book is 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
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TRANSCRIPT:

JORDAN PETERSON: I would like to talk briefly about depolarization on the Left and the Right, because I think there’s a technical problem that needs to be addressed. So here’s what I’ve been thinking about.

It’s been obvious to me for some time that, for some reason, the fundamental claim of post-modernism is something like an infinite number of interpretations and no canonical overarching narrative. Okay, but the problem with that is: okay, now what?

No narrative, no value structure that is canonically overarching, so what the hell are you going to do with yourself? How are you going to orient yourself in the world? Well, the post-modernists have no answer to that. So what happens is they default—without any real attempt to grapple with the cognitive dissonance—they default to this kind of loose, egalitarian Marxism. And if they were concerned with coherence that would be a problem, but since they’re not concerned with coherence it doesn’t seem to be a problem.

But the force that’s driving the activism is mostly the Marxism rather than the post-modernism. It’s more like an intellectual gloss to hide the fact that a discredited economic theory is being used to fuel an educational movement and to produce activists. But there’s no coherence to it.

It’s not like I’m making this up, you know. Derrida himself regarded—and Foucault as well—they were barely repentant Marxists. They were part of the student revolutions in France in the 1960s, and what happened to them, essentially—and what happened to Jean-Paul Sartre for that matter—was that by the end of the 1960s you couldn’t be conscious and thinking and pro-Marxist. There’s so much evidence that had come pouring in from the former Soviet Union, from the Soviet Union at that point, and from Maoist China, of the absolutely devastating consequences of the doctrine that it was impossible to be apologetic for it by that point in time.

So the French intellectuals in particular just pulled off a sleight of hand and transformed Marxism into post-modern identity politics. And we’ve seen the consequence of that. It’s not good. It’s a devolution into a kind of tribalism …

For the full transcript, check out https://bigthink.com/videos/top-10-jordan-peterson-leftist-liberal-politics

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50 thoughts on “Jordan Peterson: The fatal flaw in leftist American politics | Big Think”

  2. The Left cannot draw the line at equality at the start, because thats what the Right has been saying. You get your shot, but no one can guarantee the outcome for you.

  3. What has become of our country? The leftist media has pushed their agenda down the throats of the majority of Americans for their own liberal, socialist ideology. They are using race to achieve their goals. They are out to destroy our history ( all of our collective history), and to abolish religion, and freedom of thought and speech. Democratic candidate Joe Biden, actually said to the African American community , that if we don't vote for them, then we ain't black. That's the party that has taken us for granted, as if we are somehow beholding to them, for our own lives. This is a party with a slavery past. Check it out for yourselves and you will see the roots of this political party. They're not for us, they simply need our vote. That's where their solidarity ends. The Democratic Party has even put illegal aliens rights and concerns, before African American citizens born in this country. Their party has moved so far to the left, there's no more place to go, but socialism. To the Democratic Party, NO LIVES MATTER, more than THEIR OWN selfish ambitions. The Democratic party is ANTI-RELIGION, ANTI-FREEDOM OF SPEECH, and ANTI-AMERICAN. They will never have my vote again.

  5. Jordan Peterson: On the conservative side we've figured out how to box in the radicals, and say "No, you're outside the domain of acceptable opinion"
    Donald Trump: Hold my beer

  6. What does he mean by going to far on the right is that has nothing to do with racial superiority. That’s all on the left. Going to far on the right means little or no government, which would lead to anarchy. It kills me when so-called in the lectures assume that racism is a characteristic of a political right when that’s where all freedom and liberty lies. We’re not the ones who are guilty of what’s called the “soft bigotry of low expectations“ of minorities and realize the better they do the better we all do. Just like President Kennedy used to say about a “rising tide lifts all boats.”

  9. As a young gay man i was a left wing supporter. I got the message that almoust everybody gets "the right is bad and full of bigots and homofobes, the left is for tollerance and accepts you for who you are". Unfortunately my personal experience proved to myself that this message was false.

    The intollerance, hate, unwilingness to respect and listen to different opinions was something i experienced much more on the left than on the right. The tendency to look at people based on characteristics like skin colour, religion, sexual orientation and divide the population in different baskets is typical om the left side and in my opinion extremely dangerous. I was put in a categorie based on my sexual orientation. I had to fullfill an idea about how gay people should think and behave. The fact that each of us is different and has his or her own values and character is not respected.

    This identity madness is the source of division and hate and it comes in the biggest part from the left. Difference in views is not respected.

    Few days ago 150 intelectuals, journalists, scientists published a letter warning society about the danger of the intollerance of this cancel culture coming from the left.

    Even Noam Chomski, one of the biggest leftwing intelectuals signed this letter.

  14. y’all are FUKN delusional if you don’t take his words with a grain of salt. This man contradicts himself all the time. Criticizes postmodernism but heralds the foundational thinkers of postmodernism. 🤦🏻‍♀️ he also is a huge ass transphobe (see his famous argument against Canadian bill C-16) and is against non-binary pronouns which god knows why (it doesn’t hurt you to use they/them just FYI to the snowflakes who are offended by that). He wanted to defund women studies, sociology, anthropology, racial studies, ethnic studies because they’re “corrupt”. Consistently says that men and masculinity are under attack (even though masculinity and maleness are still as prevalent as ever, we don’t live in a feminist society even though people like to argue against that because of the existence of feminists which is a fallacy) and that feminizing men is essentially whats making the world horrible because apparently femininity is so bad.

    Anyways, would love to see a redo of someone from the left who understands leftist politics, and have them be self-critical and self-analyzing and state actual problems with the left. Because seriously how can you criticize something with as much objectivity as possible on a subject that you don’t fully understand let alone support? And to note have been fully against aka are already biased against it to begin with. I hate this pseudo intellectual shit.

  17. The markers for "going too far" on the left are the exact same as "going to far" on the right… Because it isn't about the "leftwingedness or rightwingedness" of the goals but rather the evil inherent in the means to get to the imagined Utopia. Neither has an obtainable "pure Utopia". The line isn't crossed in getting where they are trying to go. It is on the way there. These include human rights violations, constitutional rights violations, civil rights violations, torture, book burning, censorship, rioting, police crackdowns based explicitly on race, class, or the likes, death camps, work camps, labor camps, election rigging, and party (or in our case two party) domination. It doesn't matter what your "ends" are… If these are your means, then you are still in the wrong… Ends should not be used to justify means. Means ought to be self justifying as much as possible…

  18. This is a video for progressive Muslims who love the progressive left and go along with it. What the progressive left is familiar with is fighting hierarchy. Islam recognizes hierarchy, but cultural Marxism does not. And the progressive left has been heavily influenced by cultural Marxism.

    Jordan Peterson is not a Muslim, but because he relies heavily on scientific cultural research, he has found that hierarchy is inescapable. He should know how Islam regulates hierarchy in a harmonious way so that everyone can take advantage of it without one harming the other.

    Westernized left-wing progressive Muslims who today cackle left-wing cultural postmodern Marxists and feminists like a headless chicken can learn a lot from him and from other modern scientist who found out that feminism and Marxism are a danger to society.

  20. Who cares even the slightest what a squalled little bigot from a foreign country has to say about anything in America. Go fuck your own countries politics up. Or did they run your ass out of there. That must be it fuck me what a load of bullshit.

  22. Unless you identify that barrier on the left then you can’t expect leftists to do the same. Conservatives realized the evil in naziism as well as liberals and drew that line. To expect the radical left to draw any lines is equitable to John Mayer’s “Waiting on the world to change.” Conservatives must establish a line and fight the cultural battle leftists have been constructing for years or else progress will not be reached.

  26. He's a paranoid man who is scared of marxists taking over the western civilization.
    Reality is that 99% of leftists are just normal people who want to have society with 'equality of opportunity' and a fair deal for working class people.

  31. I’m a liberal leftist and find almost everything Jordan has said to be reasonable if not truthful (not just on this video and topic). But if it’s harder on the left to identify the limits of acceptable “activism” it’s because it’s almost always on the basis of affirmative action and good intent on behalf of disadvantaged groups. Sure it’s a problem, and it certainly needs to he addressed; I personally adhere to harsh truths aren’t “palatable” to liberals. But it’s far down on my list of concerns, because at the end of the day it’s a problem that pales in comparison to the things that my generation (both left-wing and right-wing) prioritize. Great dialogue from him though.

  32. Most postmodernists that actually attempt to apply this nihilistic orientation in a practical manner will use utilitarianism and internal theoretical coherence as a criteria. Ironically both are dismissed by postmodernism.

  35. Jordan is on the money here….
    I had similar thoughts but didn't know how to word them. Then found out about Jordan.
    I am all for equality for all but these movements that sprung up in the past decade have bugged me and I couldn't quite put my figure as to why they bugged me. But I knew, wholeheartedly something was amiss with them.
    Now I know why they bugged me.

  36. Because we have had more of Nazism pounded into us. And it was more open since we defeated nazis we never actually took over the former soviet union. So it wasn't studied as much

  41. If you think there is such a thing as "too egalitarian" congrats your a right wing radical. And "the west" as in modern liberal capitalism is not 2000-3000 years old, its barely 800 years old.

    This guy is an idiot and I don't appreciate his over zealous use of dead horse double speak.

  43. The line is when freedom of the people is limited. Typically on the left it is when economic freedom becomes limited, and typically on the right it is when social freedom becomes limited. It's not a difficult problem.
    Jordan is well read, and he goes out of his way to make himself look like a reputable genius, so others will follow him, because ultimately his goal is for you to buy his book, but in truth Jordan struggles at psychology on a deeper level than being able to regurgitate what he has read. To demonstrate this, one of the ultimate goals of psychology is to not only reduce psychological stress, but to outright remove it for all future life situations. This means you have fully matured. You know how to handle all that life can throw at you. On Jordan Peterson's end, he's been to rehab for anxiety medication. He's constantly stressed to the point he has lingering stomach aches. He doesn't know how to deal with his own emotions, beyond what he's read in books. I haven't seem him do his own research and come to his own conclusions, beyond flame bait topics to get views and sell books.

    If you learn something that benefits you from his lectures, great! That is what a good teacher does. However, it helps to differentiate a psychological lesson he's echoing from a book, and a political topic presented with ulterior motives. These are like hidden ads in his lectures. Learn how to skip them if you like the topics he teaches and the world will be a better place.

  44. I like many of the things Jordan Peterson has to say, all too often though his demeanor cones across somewhat pissed off, wonder why. I think he gets several things right in this analysis others not at all. I would love to see him in a discussion on this topic with somebody like Noam Chomsky who could debate him point by point.

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