Peterson's 12 Rules for Life v2.0-- actual book discussion

[EgoDeath]

-What- interpretation?  It's a direct quote.

Saying he's -for- a society that "finds a better balance between order and chaos" doesn't change what the euphemisms are standing in for.  Nor does it change the fact that he chose those euphemisms explicitly.  

Again, there can be no discussion of the man, his book..or his brand, if this has to be argued in.  It can only begin there, otherwise we're discussing how his target audience mythologizes a hero in direct contradiction to his own words.  Ironic, when you really think about it.

So far your interpretation of his words are way off base.

Order being represented as "masculine" and chaos as "feminine" is not some new idea that Peterson came up with in order to insult women or femininity. You seem to be taking this metaphor far too literally. He did NOT say, men are orderly and women are chaotic. The section of the book in which he talks about this, the preface, is actually about much more than just this minor point. But he also talks about Taoists interpretation of Yang and Yin and so on.

You are getting really hung up on this metaphor and it shows through. It really feels like you're reaching for some sort of bigoted hate speech when it simply isn't there. Once again, find me something he says in 12 Rules that you find to be atrocious and we can discuss it. I have actually read the book.

[bennyboy]

Eh.  That's far from clear.

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It seems that you are quite certain that spanking is always wrong, and that anyone recommending is therefore revealing an abusive nature.  Is that your intent?

I’ll take on that position:

https://www.sciencealert.com/science-why...k-children

Yeah, it's pretty much canonical.  So much so, that if Peterson recommends ANY spanking, I think he should immediately qualify it.

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We are talking about the religious traditionalist that partitions his backwards ass ideas between speeches and books to cloud his actual ideals, and who advocated for forced monogamy as a solution to the issue of crazed incels? Right?

I don't know. I'm talking about the book. Are you? Or are you also here just to smear Peterson without actually addressing the ideas in the book?

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Already have, would you like to take a crack at it?

--edit-

Okay, you quoted something about the Tampon King of India. What, in particular, is your problem with this passage? Also. . . I've read so far Chapter 1 and working on Chapter 2. Tampons haven't come up yet-- would you point me to which chapter/page you got the quote from?

I would probably agree with the assessment you're trying to make-- that he's using men who have done things that benefit women as evidence that there's no patriarchy. I don't think that's a particularly strong argument.

[CapnAwesome]

I'm gonna call you out here. I don't think you've read the book, and you will say, "I don't even have to. . . "

If so, consider possibly fucking off, or referencing something IN the book, please.

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That's right. And here's one of the ways they do it-- this thread is about to be 80 pages of shit, and I'll bet $150 (exactly, and to be donated to charity!) that some of the noisiest birds here haven't actually read the whole book. But they'll fill line after line with BS that they "know" is true without ever considering the actual facts of what was ever said.
Right, Khem?

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What, in the book, in particular, did you find objectionable?  What words, actually, did he write, which you cannot tolerate, in this text which we are supposedly here to discuss?

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Well, that's kind of the point of all this, and why Peterson in general is so popular, and so important. Nitwits see even a hint of something that could stand against the narrative of demographic victimization or oppression at the hands of white male cisgender capitalist pig-dogs, and start shouting bloody murder. No matter that Peterson didn't say any of the things they claim, or even imply them, they are so sure that the 10 keywords they've bothered to scan say the 80 pages of shit they're going to shovel that they don't even need to READ. . . THE. . . BOOK.

*my emphasis*

We are talking about the religious traditionalist that partitions his backwards ass ideas between speeches and books to cloud his actual ideals, and who advocated for forced monogamy as a solution to the issue of crazed incels? Right?

Forced monogamy is a term used in pychology. It doesn't mean what it sounds like. It's more about societal standards. I would actually say we have forced monogamy in America todsay, but much less than the past.

Like I said, barely familiar with Peterson, but I'd be surprised if he were talking about the state coupling random people together.

[robvalue]

Do you have any links showing how this is a standard term in psychology? I can't find one.

[bennyboy]

I'm not sure why this, of all things, is a problem. "Forced monogamy" means "not polygamy." In other words, enforced monogamy is a remedy for the problem of natural power hierarchies that he talks about-- where only the very top members of a species get almost all the resources-- including access to mating privileges.

It's pretty straightforward-- if each man can marry only one woman (and not more), then there will be more available females, and more men will have a chance to have a life mate. Otherwise, billionaires will have thousands of wives and offspring, and normal Joes on the street are going to be left with nothing but porn and a bottle of lotion.

[robvalue]

The problem is what he means by forced/enforced. If this is a standard term used in psychology or some other field, then I'll happily drop my objection and reconsider the whole situation. If however this is Peterson making up his own jargon, then it's woefully ambiguous, and I would say misleading. If you asked 100 people on the street what "enforced monogamy" meant, I would expect at least 99 to come up with something far more gruesome than "our kind of society, the one we already live in, where monogamy is encouraged".

It shows what a pointless point it is, that he thinks the solution is for things to stay the same.

(Edit: sure, some other societies are not like this, and maybe he's just talking about those)

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PS: why is this only viewed from a male position, anyway? If women could have as many husbands as they wanted to match up with the men in (whatever country), then surely that's just as fair as monogamy.

That's not what he's talking about anyway though, because he's talking about what society encourages, not enforces. So it can't be marriage. It must be relationships in general.

[bennyboy]

I had made a long post explaining about evolution, natural selection, and so on, but in googling to confirm the definition, I found this:  

https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the...-monogamy/

Note the name of the website it comes from.  I think we can now very definitively say EXACTLY what he means. He also brings links, studies and so on to support his view. He clearly explains the benefits of "normative monogamy" as he now calls it, and explains what he did NOT mean by it-- i.e. what the hysterical left are screeching about.

I'll assume since it's a very short article that anyone who cares about what Peterson actually thinks will read it.  Then I'd add this because I want to stick with the OP-- it goes back to Chapter 1 of the book-- how the perception of the status of the self (for example, if bested in a competition) affects behavior, and how on the other hand humans can use changes in behavior to change their perception of themselves and break that negative chain.

[robvalue]

Yeah, all I found for that definition is stuff about JP, not any established terms. He wrote that piece after he announced this new terminology, without any of the explanation, in a previous interview. He should have known as well as anyone what bad choices of words they were; or else it was deliberate. You don't just throw something as mental sounding as that out there without explaining it and expect people to read your mind. Why the interviewer didn't ask at the time, I don't know.

Again, if it actually is a real term, then I withdraw my objection.

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PS: it's possible of course he was just lying about what he actually meant. We'll never know.

Ok, I'm going to have to stop talking about JP from now on. Thanks all for the discussion! I'm done with this guy.

[bennyboy]

Are you done because he's not saying what you thought he was saying, and there's not really that much to rage about? Or because you're so completely confirmed of his dick-ness that you feel there's no point trying to dig it up any more?

[CapnAwesome]

Do you have any links showing how this is a standard term in psychology? I can't find one.

Actually the term is enforced monogamy, but googling is literally all articles about Jordan Peterson. Most of them clarify the definition, including one from his website.

If you use Google scholar.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en...orced+mono

You get a better idea of it. I'm not a pychology expert or anything, but I had heard the term before and also common sense tells me that someone is not talking about state sponsored rape.

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The problem is what he means by forced/enforced. If this is a standard term used in psychology or some other field, then I'll happily drop my objection and reconsider the whole situation. If however this is Peterson making up his own jargon, then it's woefully ambiguous, and I would say misleading. If you asked 100 people on the street what "enforced monogamy" meant, I would expect at least 99 to come up with something far more gruesome than "our kind of society, the one we already live in, where monogamy is encouraged".

It shows what a pointless point it is, that he thinks the solution is for things to stay the same.

(Edit: sure, some other societies are not like this, and maybe he's just talking about those)

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PS: why is this only viewed from a male position, anyway? If women could have as many husbands as they wanted to match up with the men in (whatever country), then surely that's just as fair as monogamy.

That's not what he's talking about anyway though, because he's talking about what society encourages, not enforces. So it can't be marriage. It must be relationships in general.

I'm guessing that he probably doesn't want things to stay the same, but rather go backwards. Like in the past we had more cultural pressure towards monogamy than today, although I'd definitely say we still live in a monogamous culture, altogether.

Although I'm not sure that any of that is going to solve the problem of incels. That seems like more of a personal problem to me, I'd imagine that most cultures have them.

Of course, if you get enough incels it is a very serious problem. Look at the middle east. Polygamy causes serious problems in every culture.