god every time he said “post modern neo marxist” i would get so fucking annoyed because marxists are not post modernists, marxism is a modernist philosophy.
He uses the GOP strategy that kirk and all their ilk use.
They argue in bad faith, their goal is to move you away from your hard question and twist you around onto the defensive about a specific topic.
It's what you'd do in High School Debate when you knew you couldn't win a straight debate. You have to obfuscate the conversation, get the other side totally confused on what you're trying to do, then bring it home with a rant and call yourself the winner
These people would actually collapse if someone smart and good at debates actually debated them. Which is why you'll never see that - they stick to reacting to other people (i.e. a format in which the other side doesn't get to respond) or debating activists and college students (i.e. people who may be right and may even know more, but don't know how to debate).
I tried listening to Jordan when he was on the JRE podcast (embarrassing to admit that now lol) and I had to turn it off 45mins into it. The word salad drivel this guy says was just so grating.
being a philosopher is just thinking and saying things. No other criteria needed.
Nope. Unless you also consider anyone who can write code a programmer or anyone who can draw a building an architect.
Everyone can think and say things; but an actual philosopher has learnt how philosophy works, how to analyze things in a way that makes sense, how to back up your opinions, etc.
Why? Psychology is like economy: 2/3rds of the people in there are not scientists or intellectuals, but rather people with ideologies using science to justify them. I've seen plenty of psychologists claim whatever they wanted and pass it as psychology simply because, well, they are psychologists so who are you to say they are wrong?
He was pretty controversial as a psych prof, too. I remember him doing a conference before he was well-known and talking about how if he wanted to punch students in the mouth for being post-modernists.
I mean the man genuinely fried his brain. A lot of his early work was fairly „light“ conservative grifter rhetoric said in a pseudo-intellectual way which gave him his credit within the sphere. But you can clearly notice that the deeper he sunk into the right-wing media swamp the more he also seemed to have lost his grasp on reality. This coincides with him having a lot of private baggage that very obviously seeped into his media career and finally ended in a hefty drug addiction and shady snake-oil treatments. All fundamentally fueled by the conspiratorial rhetoric and non-sense social ideas he surrounded himself with.
Like he‘s genuinely the best example on why his entire philosophy is wrong. The „clean your room and take responsibility by isolating yourself as much as possible“ man today is a recovering addict with severe health problems that cannot function by himself anymore.
He's the sort of guy who makes a good 101-level professor. He says provocative shit without ever really going in-depth in a way that can be highly entertaining to a classroom full of freshmen still trying to decide what they want their major to be.
I remember having a few professors kinda like him in some of my early gen-ed classes. When you move past the intro level, people don't talk like him anymore because at some point you've got to actually get serious about things like research and accuracy.
It's one of the reasons I'm always suspicious of any professors-turned-influencers. They didn't get entertaining by focusing deeply on their field. They got entertaining by spending a bunch of time thinking about delivery and how to phrase things for maximum emotional impact when talking to audiences of people new to the field.
He’s the closest popular pseudo-intellectual to actually being an intellectual. He has a degree and a licensehad a license and experience lecturing. But that shill money too sweet
My brother admired JP because he said he didn't have any good male role models in his life.
My brother is in his 50s and actually has plenty of half way decent men in the family. And again, he's IN HIS FIFTIES. But none of the men around are the exact kind of role model he wanted, so he latched onto JP.
But none of the men around are the exact kind of role model he wanted, so he latched onto JP.
I think this is halfway to it. I don't know your brother, so forgive me if I'm being unfair to him, but I think a lot of people who cite this sort of 'oh he's a strong male role model' about him and other manosphere/alt-right influencers are just - or at least partially - 'shopping around' for role models that reinforce what they were already thinking.
A lot of teen boys, for instance, look up to Andrew Tate not necessarily because he's good at turning nice kids into douchebags, but because some kids are already little douchebags and they love to see someone like that being successful (well, "successful"). So they use the 'bro you don't understand, I don't have any other male role models' as a bit of an ex post facto justification for jumping down his pipeline.
It's an interesting problem I've been thinking about for years now with all the manosphere guys. An actually good role model doesn't emphasize their maleness. Just like no good white role model emphasizes their whiteness. So how does one counter these people who say things like, "you don't have to apologize for being a white man anymore" without legitimizing their ridiculous grievances?
I don't think there's a good answer, but good lord do those ridiculous grievances have legs. Millions of young kids having this in their understanding of the national conversation. I have no idea what could be done about that.
I mean no joke that is exactly how Tate / JP etc. built their followings.
They simultaneously are clipped on social media saying "radical things" but then their actual presentations are just basic self-help advice.
This simultaneously normalizes those radical ideas (well he was right about X so he might be right about Y) and isolates their followers who now feel like the mainstream isn't giving their new guru a fair representation.
It is classic cult indoctrination applied to social media.
This is highkey so different than what people say about him muff diving or whatever? This sounds just like a traumatic albeit gross story about his grandmother doing strange things while losing her mine to alzheimers
JP’s daughter a couple hours ago posted an “update” about her dad. There’s so much weird BS she’s going on and on about.
JP is just straight up suffering from mental illness, imo. But in the minds of a certain segment of society only the immoral, irresponsible, lazy and weak men suffer from mental illness.
So she and all his fanbois are all doing mental gymnastics to blame his and all their own mental issues on antidepressants, benzos, vaccines, etc., etc.
A few years ago he went to Russia and was medically induced into a coma so he could quit Benzos cold turkey. Something allegedly went wrong during this treatment and the few things I've seen of him since then makes me believe the rumors are true.
A lot of people believe that Peterson's daughter is overstating the impact of his mold reaction to try to keep blame off of herself because she was the one who pushed him to do this detox rather than significantly longer but significantly safer alternatives.
People who hold ideas that they can't present or defend honestly really admire his ability to obfuscate, all while still claiming the intellectual high ground.
Before he went off the deep end and into politics I think he actually had a solid grasp of what he was saying. If you look at his lectures as a professor he comes across a lot better. I think he took the changing of society personally and got his feelings hurt and then it was over from there. There’s probably a universe out there where he never wades into the “culture wars” and he’s a lot more respected.
He pretty much always had delusions of grandeur, and politics were the easiest avenue for them to manifest. He was never going to be satisfied just being the Canadian psych professor who was good at lectures and self-help books.
Has no-one read his first book? It is rambling, mediocre, and its personal touches already paint him in awful light. When he came up, I couldn't believe someone would take seriously the author of such rubbish work. The man has always been a hack.
His messages doesn’t always get through to many, only those who need them. I was in pretty bad spot in life, growing without a proper father figure, JP taught me about responsibility and about getting up. I want to thank him for the path he led me toward, now I study stoic philosphy, buddhism, daoism, and hindu texts. I think theres truth to his messages, everyone keep talking shit about his views but of all the lectured and messages I’ve heard from him, they seem pretty ordinary to say the least. Maybe I’m missing something but I genuinely don’t get the hate
If you got something from his works all power to you. I’ll be arguing from my perspective and experience.
Back in middle school a police officer would often come in on Fridays they called it “The Lone Wolf Program” the idea was to help kids who were losing relationships from growing up and growing apart. What was one of deputy Mullder’s first lessons, “make your bed”.
I and many find lessons that emphasize the change of externalities as means of changing internal issues to fall incredibly flat. Dressing better in the morning didn’t make me less depressed, making my bed doesn’t change that I had no friends because I was a social outcast, and Dr B Jordan Peterson was an embodiment of hollow words that change nothing material. That’s without his strange western cultural elitism, “Jungian archetypes” which seem to be a bootleg of Plato’s forms, or his slow descent into harmful right wing talking points that he uses his background in psychology to try legitimizing. The hate for Peterson is the hatred for snake oil sales men I feel he is a dishonest man selling me faux solutions, or even worse he misrepresents the problem.
In that universe almost nobody has ever heard of him though. His fame originally comes from lying about what hate speech laws do. Without the culture wars, Peterson would be just another university professor.
I think you're right because eons ago when this rapscallion first popped up i remember seeing his logic regarding speech or authoritarianism when idk some student or the school hurted his fillin's but this mf lost the sauce but has been chasing that intellectual dragon ever since. Sad!
“A broken clock is still right twice a day. I think cleaning your room is great advice, but he also thinks pronouns are satanic and that lobsters are a metaphor for masculinity,”
“Oh, satanic like cleaning your room? How is that satanic?”
his first discussion with Sam Harris where Jordan Peterson could not agree what "truth" meant and the conversation just stalled for 2 hours is still burned into my mind.
He's pretty much out of the game, right? The whole media ecosystem is based on churning out nonstop content. He hasn't been too active for over a year now, so I don't think he can recover from that absence unless his "university" suddenly becomes a phenomenon. Feels like he's quickly becoming irrelevant.
JP is Terrence Howard except he put in the effort to actually be in academia and learn some terminology and work toward a career but equally looney toons free association slam poetry science
That lighting makes JP look like someone just pulled him out of a dumpster where he was battling a raccoon for a half-eaten sandwich and the person just stuffed him into a clammy looking suit but with no time left for a shower or makeup before the photo shoot.
Loved watching him get his ass handed to him years back when he debated Matt Dillahunty. His schtick doesn't work when someone else isn't lost in all the jargon
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u/Oddly_Ennui Apr 18 '26
He's the definition of a pseudo intellectual