Science of the Spirit
Communism was not popularized in the West under the direct banner of communism. Instead, it came largely under the banner of postmodernism, and aimed to transform the values and beliefs of our societies through its Marxist idea that knowledge and truth are social constructs.
Under it, a new wave of skepticism and distrust was applied to philosophy, culture, history, and all beliefs and institutions at the foundations of Western society.
The postmodern philosophy "came into vogue" in the 1970s, according to Jordan Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, "after classic Marxism, especially of the economic type, had been so thoroughly discredited that no one but an absolute reprobate could support it publicly."
Peterson said it's not possible to understand our current society without considering the role postmodernism plays within it, "because postmodernism, in many ways-especially as it's played out politically-is the new skin that the old Marxism now inhabits."
"Even the French intellectuals had to admit that communism was a bad deal by the end of the 1960s," he said. From there, the communists played a "sleight of hand game, in some sense," and rebranded their ideology "under a postmodern guise."
"That's where identity politics came from," he said. And from there, it "spread like wildfire" from France, to the United States through the English department at Yale University, "and then everywhere."Marxism preached that the natural and economic landscape is a battle between the so-called proletariat and the bourgeois. It claimed that economic systems were going to enslave people and keep them down, Peterson said.
In practice, however, communism repeatedly showed it made things worse. It was put into place in many parts of the world throughout the 20th century "with absolutely murderous results," Peterson said. "It was the most destructive economic and political doctrine I think that has ever been invented by mankind," surpassing even the terror seen under Adolf Hitler, with its system of murder that would kill over 100 million people in less than a century.
Peterson said the "full breadth of that catastrophe" of communism is something students rarely learn in school. "The students I teach usually know nothing at all about what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Lenin between 1919 and 1959. They have no idea that millions, tens of millions, of people were killed and far more tortured and brutalized by that particular regime-to say nothing of Mao."
By the end of the 1960s, he said, even French intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre had to admit that the communist experiment-whether under Marxism, Stalinism, Maoism, or any other variant-was "an absolute, catastrophic failure."
Rather than do away with the ideology, however, they merely gave it a new face and a new name. "They were all Marxists. But they couldn't be Marxists anymore, because you couldn't be a Marxist and claim you were a human being by the end of the 1960s," said Peterson.
The postmodernists built on the Marxist ideology, Peterson said. "They started to play a sleight of hand, and instead of pitting the proletariat, the working class, against the bourgeois, they started to pit the oppressed against the oppressor. That opened up the avenue to identifying any number of groups as oppressed and oppressor and to continue the same narrative under a different name."
"It was no longer specifically about economics," he said. "It was about power. And everything to the postmodernists is about power. And that's actually why they're so dangerous, because if you're engaged in a discussion with someone who believes in nothing but power, all they are motivated to do is to accrue all the power to them, because what else is there?" he said. "There's no logic, there's no investigation, there's no negotiation, there's no dialogue, there's no discussion, there's no meeting of minds and consensus. There's power."
"And so since the 1970s, under the guise of postmodernism, we've seen the rapid expansion of identity politics throughout the universities," he said. "It's come to dominate all of the humanities-which are dead as far as I can tell-and a huge proportion of the social sciences."
"We've been publicly funding extremely radical, postmodern leftist thinkers who are hellbent on demolishing the fundamental substructure of Western civilization. And that's no paranoid delusion. That's their self-admitted goal," he said, noting that their philosophy is heavily based in the ideas of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, "who, I think, most trenchantly formulated the anti-Western philosophy that is being pursued so assiduously by the radical left."
"The people who hold this doctrine-this radical, postmodern, communitarian doctrine that makes racial identity or sexual identity or gender identity or some kind of group identity paramount-they've got control over most low-to-mid level bureaucratic structures, and many governments as well," he said. "But even in the United States, where you know a lot of the governmental institutions have swung back to the Republican side, the postmodernist types have infiltrated bureaucratic organizations at the mid-to-upper level."
"I don't think its dangers can be overstated," Peterson said. "And I also don't think the degree to which it's already infiltrated our culture can be overstated."
Reader Comments
Peterson's warnings about the direction the 'left' has taken are self-evidently valid IMO. Note, he is not "pro War", he does not ignore suffering or injustice, although I concede that he may well be slightly ignorant of, or deliberately ignores, the oppression and injustice meted out by the West.
That said, the radical left have co-opted the anti-war/anti-imperialism movement to the extent that, if you are anti-war these days, you are almost required to also be for "minority rights" and supportive of the "oppressed" everywhere. That's pretty black and white and rather manipulative.
Basically, the radical left have taken social justice action and run it off the rails to the extent that genuine social justice activists are increasingly backing away from participation, Meanwhile, "right wingers" who otherwise might be inclined to listen to and accept a "lefty" anti-war argument are increasingly unlikely to do so because of all of the other extremist elements that come as a package deal of today's political leftyism.
In other words. Divide and conquer. There are enough hot heads on both sides, the world needs the participation of those few who hold the middle ground, and no, that does not mean middle grounders are neutral, and therefore will not end up in that "darkest place in hell" spoken of by Dante Alighieri
Oh what, you mean like in England under the Tories, where it's more or less impossible for an SME to survive and they have to pay a years estimated tax in advance or collapse, whilst huge multinational corporations pay no tax at all? I think that's called socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, Jordan.
Me, I'm a Bo Diddley man. If that makes me a so-called Cultural Marxist in the horizontal-hold squashed cheese-sandwich dimension of whatever passes for 'academia' these days, then so be it.
In fact: Left/Right, f*ck the lot of you. LOL...[Link]
To make matters worse, whilst some of Peterson's ideas are themselves crude and over-simplified versions of the originals, they are then further bastardised by his followers, much as everyone and his dog now bandies around words like 'narcissism' without any real understanding of their meaning or conceptual history.
I wouldn't consider myself an expert on the vast number of strains of thought that could possibly be labelled Marxist, although I have undertaken some serious study - it is a lifetime's project. However I know enough to recognise that those shouting about 'cultural Marxism' haven't the faintest idea what they are talking about. Actually reading some original texts or proper academic analysis would help, rather than relying on a few superficial articles or YouTube videos.
PS Reading the 'Communist Manifesto' does not count. It was always designed to be a propaganda piece and it doesn't have any value beyond that.
PPS For the record, I am not a Marxist.
The last great legislative push for 'beauty in art' came from the Nazis' and was a total flop, mainly 'cause anyone who was talented enough to produce anything any good wasn't going to give it to The Reich, and if they had any sense probably would have scrammed it out of the country anyway....[Link]
That may seem like an extreme example, but the dynamic is correct, because of the way that creativity works. It's like someone trying to force you to get an erection, or someone telling you "You should love this woman and not that woman". it ain't going to happen, baby.
He probably believes in the 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' myth i.e the system is fair and equitable (unless these socialists take-over) and therefore if you haven't 'made it' it is because well... you are just not good enough (i.e. that equates to 90% or so of the global population).
Nothing about inequality and injustice being already inbuilt into the system... nothing about the unsustainable nature of unfettered capitalism with its bottomless pit of consumerism and endless wars to keep the supply of cheap resources flowing. Nothing about the increasing use of brainwashing techniques to keep the population misinformed and docile... (does he take anti-depressants or some other psychiatric drug?)
Plus the huuuuge contradictions - how he benefits from living in a socialist bubble - compared to what he rails against. The level of comfort he resides in is like 10/10.
Basically what I get is that he is a defender of the current system as it stands. All attempts at reform are equated with lefties trying to usher in communism under whatever guise which will result in billions of deaths (because capitalism hasn't?)...
Ridiculous is the only thing I say... I'm just not drinking the kool aid.
Good on him though for the whole gender fluidity stance though. Guess conservatives are good for some things.
[Link]
Well... the world needs more zombies I guess, not less.
Over 1,000 antidepressant users describe how their personal life has been affected
Survey examines adverse personal and interpersonal effects of antidepressants and the impact of polypharmacy New research, published in Psychiatry Research, features personal accounts of..."I hate it. It makes me emotionally flat - for example, I had to stop taking them after a recent family bereavement to make sure I was able to cry at the funeral."How can anyone advice anyone else to take this stuff knowing it's going to do the above to the person? Inhumane is all I'll say... totally un-empathetic.
"The drugs make me totally disconnected from everything and lifeless."
"I think it is causing fatigue, amongst other things so I have had to drop my hours at work from full-time to 3 days a week."
"It affected my sexual relationship with my partner as I had no desire to have sex and we are still feeling the effects of this now as he is nervous to ask after knowing that I wasn't interested for such a long time."
"It is very hard to separate the effects of the meds and the effects of the illness."
I've seen other people like this. Thunderf00t on YouTube is great at disputing fake science like elon musk's hyper loop, yet he believes co2 global warming cause. Oh and he doesn't do a scientific analysis of what happened on 911, but instead a lame political one.
It seems like guys like this have some drive for truth, up to the limit of their aim. Peterson explains how important an aim is, but it can also be deluded by programming...
S o as far as projecting inner net negatives go, Peterson and Sartre are probably six of one and half a dozen of the other.
- Not see a party as a monster. Why? It totally puts you in the wrong frame of mind. You'll be stuck in fight/flight... will be on edge and not relax. You may also appear stiff or 'not present' (as you'll be stuck in your mind or going through some motions in a quite wooden fashion which others will subconsciously pick up on in your interactions)
- Counter-intuitive but I'd say... you need to go to the party and feel the anxiety enough times to know the monster is not real, it's in your head.
- You need to know that despite the anxiety you can still function and start working towards being more sociable despite the anxiety... not necessarily in the absence of it. After all, you can't control it, can't control how you feel.
- Maybe it doesnt hurt to work on a few relationships as opposed to just large parties, large groups which as he says... groups don't exist in terms of a thing you can engage with.
- last but not least, desire and want to overcome said anxiety or rather to learn to function to your hearts content despite the anxiety.
Anyways, thinking and approaching the whole thing as a monster and all that social dominance stuff... well it works, you can choose to live life like there's a lion looking to eat you behind every corner but I'd say that's where chronic stress comes from. You're anxiety levels will go down only if you relax, take a moment and actually let the moment take you... worst comes to worst, you don't have any meaningful interactions and go home feeling like it was a wasted party (how are you worse off?) or you actually have one or two meaningful interactions.
Anyways, just my take from personal experience. When it comes to the sexual stuff... I've zero idea. If you are a socially anxious guy, chances are the girls you are after won't be going for guys not acting like alphas and all that jazz... sadly life is teaching that the woman is indeed attracted to the stereotypical male jungle like (I thought we evolved beyond this?) qualities. You know the scary thing about being a guy? It means you have to take action otherwise nothing happens! Absolute BS. And you know the worst thing about that is? You're bloody emotions are not like male/female they are the same across genders... fear and all that other stuff feels the same. A woman will scream for the man and the man is meant to step up! What about my goddamn fear? Stuff is not easy if you feel too acutely. Can be crippling asf...
When it comes to sex, why meet someone in an environment that you don't like and cannot truly be yourself? The girl who doesn't care for the typical machismo etc, wouldn't want to be at the party either. Better to meet in another environment. But the party is not evil, it's just what it is, and we can choose to not join it.
What this formatory dumb-cluck fails to understand is that Auschwitz is a very good example of an aim that was done 'with the highest good in mind'.
All that striving, striving, striving, with 'the highest good in mind', look at what it produced: The Bolshevik Revolution, The Great Leap Forward, The Vietnam War, WWII, The Spanish Civil War, the ridiculous human malady that is Scientology, and gawd knows what else.
'Essence' = 'eye of the hurricane', which is probably why Gurdjieff and his students survived Nazi occupied Paris without having a hair put out of place (not that Gurdjieff had any, of course. LOL).
"I'd say 'from experience' of social anxiety and trying to overcome it... you should - Not see a party as a monster."
Basically, all this talk of 'enemies', 'dominance hierarchies', 'monster parties', etc, means all Peterson is doing is teaching people who have so-called social anxieties 'The Way of The Psychopath' on the way to a nervous breakdown.
But lets be honest,
a) if you are anxious to begin with, you were never a lion or dragonslayer... lets not be kittens pretending to be lions. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging an objective position.
b) if you already hate the 'jungle' nature of the whole situation... don't add to it. The world of interaction is a set of agreed upon dynamics and rules. You act as if you are living in a world of social hierachies, lions and deers... winners and losers... then that's the world you'll come to occupy.
c) if you allow yourself the time and freedom to realise your worst nightmares without freaking out... you'll realise that guess what? you weren't obliterated from existence.
d) when you realise you can be impervious if you so choose, then you can take action at your own pace and desire. Imperviousness does not mean lack of feeling, it means the feeling will not destroy you and that you are still quite capable despite it.
e) You can then start moving towards occupying a space and a world that suits you (at your own pace and desire). You see... there's a world and there's how your mind interprets that world. In turn, how you interpret that world will determine how you interact with it and therefore your overall experience
Boohoo... #lifelessons #lifehacks
LOL.
Bo Diddley bought his babe a diamond ring
If that diamond ring don't shine
He gonna take it to a private eye
If that private eye can't see
He'd better not take that ring from me....[Link]
I have to do that kind of thing in my job, and I think in most cases 'social anxiety', 'chronic shyness' are passing phenomena that are easily turned into permafrost by the use of said brand-goods nomenclature.
In any job, you can pick up really unusual talents, one of mine is 'human whisperer'. I don't do it for any saintlier reason other than the fact that my role within the company is performance/quality control/productivity, and if I don't get these shrinking violets out in the suncsine to perform. then the company doesn't make any money, basically. LOL.
People from socially limited backgrounds, shy people that would never say boo to a goose, people with ridiculously entangled complexes about their general social attractiveness, most of them I can have out of their shell and out to play in a very short time.
Despite his anti-postmodernism schtick, Peterson is obviously highly influenced by Sartre, who I haven't read a lot of, but years ago I read La Nausée, and it seems to me Peterson inhabits the same sickly world of ambience terror that the guy in the book does, which really only exists if you have an essence the size of an ant.
Did you mean 'censure' or 'censor'?
Either way, it's always been common for top journalists to censor themselves due to fear of loss of gig due to 'thought-vogue of the age', 'political pressure of the age', 'this will make make me look good in front of my employers and boost my profile in the current age', etc. 'Time-magazine-Hitler-man-of-the-year-1938' was an extreme example of that.
Whilst prescription-drug-pusher Peterson is dead right about gender pronouns etc, he's dead wrong about a lot of other stuff and ultimately is on the same OS that created this kind of crap in the first place.
"To be a “troublemaker” is, in itself, nothing bad, Gurdjieff told him. Troublemakers, in fact, play an important role in life. “What you not understand,” Gurdjieff said, “is that not everyone can be troublemaker, like you. This important in life—is ingredient, like yeast for making bread. Without trouble, conflict, life become dead. People live in status quo, live only by habit, automatically, and without conscience.…” Gurdjieff confided that he, too, was a “troublemaker.” The difference between them was that he played the role consciously, molding it to circumstances; creating conditions and friction in the service of awakening people to what keeps them asleep. This stepping on toes is a “Divine principle” when consciously directed, when not born of the mechanical reaction to make others suffer; make them pay for trespasses, injustices, psychic wounds. To be able to call up a role in oneself and play it, that is one thing; to be controlled by it, quite another." - Fritz Peters. 'My Life With Gurdjieff'.
Peterson’s been working in the Big Five (psychometric testing) area for a long time. These tests have been going on in the "professional” working world for several decades now. The results are held in international databases available to those who can pay: something only large companies, governments and the extremely wealthy can afford. Besides personality traits, psychometric tests show up 'personality flags' = e.g. high degree of narcissism, entitlement, troublemaking, whether someone has a personality disorder or not. Peterson never, ever mentions this. So .. who the corporate etc psychos are is known (to those who pay for this information). Here’s a related article: an interview with Adeo Ressi, whom Peterson works with: [Link]
It’s understandable that people are enthralled with Peterson. He’s an excellent, compelling, natural speaker. And while he’s right about the gender pronoun law thing, he mostly promotes Western life as it now is which means his listeners can remain on their behinds and keep doing what they’re doing. How will that promote positive, necessary change?
I think Peterson’s so believeable and feels so original because he himself doesn’t realize what he’s doing or what's going on. I think the controlled opposition have a pretty good hold on him. Remember? .. he's a tenured [state paid] professor which automatically gives him prestige/standing, visibility and acceptability.
So Peterson's very creative and highly intelligent but, in fact, simply a useful idiot?
Petersons I.Q. statistics aren't borne out by national averages, f'rinstance, Israel's is compararively low, so perhaps he's basing them on some kind of Nobel-Peace-Prize-winner, one-percenter deal.
However, dear reader, just in case your own I.Q. isn't sufficiently high-performance to quite get the gist of what Peterson is saying, allow me to drop the penny for you... It's the old Corporal Hitler 'survival of the fittest' schtick, only difference being, Jews, as 'the fittest' assume the position right up there at the top of the muck heap unchecked.
He came from mega-wealth -- this is not where real revolutionaries come from. Communism was built to fail by the same trillionaires who oppress us, now.