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

[paulpablo]

In general people who are owners and in the majority can pull all types of discrimination and scams, yeh I think it happens to white people but the UK is a white majority place and the owners of those houses I imagine are white.

Again, majority is not what this is about.

In my area a random Pakistani passer by knocked on the door and told my parents we should move out because the area isn't for white people anymore.  So that kind of attitude of excluding people of a differing ethnic background happens a lot.

That's not the same as landlords and agents discriminating against nonwhite tenants.

Talking about the three races you mentioned, Black, Asian, Indian.  I imagine Black people living in India or further east in Asia have been discriminated against, no white people included.  It will happen whoever is in the majority or whoever owns the property in general.

So what? This isn't a contradiction of white privilege.

The original statement by Jordan Peterson was relating to wealth and majority privilege so sticking to that topic it is about those things.

It's not the same as landlords discriminating against non white tenants, it's non white people saying they don't want white people in the area.  If a non white person has that attitude and is a landlord I think they are likely to discriminate against white people.  So it matters who are the majority of house owners and landlords.

It isn't a contradiction it just isn't an example of white privilege by itself since those examples could be void of any white involvement.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, these landlords sure do not have a problem at all with letting a person of any ethnicity into their property, eh? It's not like a landlord has never requested from their agents not to consider Indian or Asian or black people. It's all fiction, after all.

I imagine those things happen all the time.

[bennyboy]

If you can afford a computer and an internet connection, there's a starving kid out there who's missing a meal.  I'll bet your yearly snack budget could feed little Akbar for about 10 years, no?

Sure. I've donated money for kids in need. I also give coins to homeless people when I have some with me.

That's nice. Do you consider yourself morally compelled to do so, or do you just do it because you're such a swell guy?

It does bother me, but I'm not asking you to feel the same way I do. If you can't be concerned, then you can't. That's not the point, though.

Well wait a minute. If we're so deeply concerned about inequality, then there's an easy solution-- pure communism. Either that, or we simply have rules intended generally to promote equality-- applications to school based only on test scores, for example-- and let those who perform better take their positions at the top.

Which of those ways do you prefer? I mean, it's pretty simple-- if some are going to have more, some are going to have less. Looking, on average, around the world, do you think your donations are such that they've brought little Akbar into economic parity with you? If not, then why aren't you sending thousands of dollars? Why aren't you selling your luxuries (like a computer) to share money with his super-poor family?

Could it be, perhaps, that saying how important the disenfranchised are is more important than actually making the personal sacrifice that all us rich Westerners would have to make in order to bring true equality among all the people in the world?

Again, you're not required to care about anything you don't care about. All I'm saying really is that you're simply misguided when it comes to this topic, and that you're being misled by the likes of Peterson. Perhaps it's got something to do with what Khem calls "white man anxiety", I don't know. But you ain't a sociologist (or a social psychologist) and neither is Peterson, for that matter.

Have you read the book?

Yeah, these landlords sure do not have a problem at all with letting a person of any ethnicity into their property, eh? It's not like a landlord has never requested from their agents not to consider Indian or Asian or black people. It's all fiction, after all.

Well, you have my attention. Have a sufficient number of white property owners requested that, even in the face of Indian or Asian black people who have a lot of money, dress nicely, and are well-educated? Are you saying that these people would rather have some white bogan than say Barack Obama?

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, you have my attention.  Have a sufficient number of white property owners requested that, even in the face of Indian or Asian black people who have a lot of money, dress nicely, and are well-educated?  Are you saying that these people would rather have some white bogan than say Barack Obama?

Predominantly white gated communities are chock -full- of modern day savages, lol. That's part of the origin of racial discrimination in resident vetting. Additionally, and ofc, they are also chock full of people who can't afford their home loans.

When you say "have alot of money, dress nicely, and are well educated" you're already toeing the "white enough" line.

[GrandizerII]

The original statement by Jordan Peterson was relating to wealth and majority privilege so sticking to that topic it is about those things.

But I'm saying that discrimination against non-white people by landlords and agents happens not because of "majority privilege" but because of racism.

It's not the same as landlords discriminating against non white tenants, it's non white people saying they don't want white people in the area.  If a non white person has that attitude and is a landlord I think they are likely to discriminate against white people.  So it matters who are the majority of house owners and landlords.

Sure, that can happen. I'm not saying it can't ever. But in your case, that didn't happen like that, did it? And it's not like you've given me much context to go by here.

It isn't a contradiction it just isn't an example of white privilege by itself since those examples could be void of any white involvement.

Um, in a way, it is. Black people aren't privileged so are despised wherever they go. Not generally the case for white people.

[bennyboy]

When you say "have alot of money, dress nicely, and are well educated" you're already toeing the "white enough" line.

Only insofar as white people have a lot of money, dress nicely, and are well educated.

I'm going to move on to Chapter 2 soon. Look forward to your comments about it.

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Um, in a way, it is. Black people aren't privileged so are despised wherever they go. Not generally the case for white people.

If white people are identified as low-class (trailer park, bogan, whatever), then they will absolutely be barred.

I'll tell you a story. I managed to scrape up enough money to buy a little townhouse on Vancouver Island, which I rented out. A single mom applies. . . she's on welfare, looks like a slob, but she gives a sob story about how nobody will give her a chance and she promises she'll take great care of the place.

Three months later, she's late on the fucking rent, her teenage daughter trashes the place, and she just moves out. Never got even 10% of the damage she caused back.

Moral-- fuck poor people. They are poor for a reason, and keep them the fuck off my property. I want classy people only-- literate, educated, and responsible. A black guy shows up in expensive glasses wearing a sweater vest, I'll suck his dick if he'll sign a lease. Another fucking yokel shows up looking for compassion, and I'll drop-kick him off my porch and sick my dog on him, I don't care if he's an Aryan poster child.

[The Grand Nudger]

The White Ideal is what it is, though it's hilarious how few of us live up to that ideal, eh?  

Chapter two, eh?  That's the part where he loses his shit and starts mumbling about christian mythology, lol.  Outta be a riot.

[bennyboy]

I've started reading it, but I've skimmed it. I wouldn't say he "starts mumbling about christian mythology." I'd say he draws very heavily on it-- in fact, he seems to start and close with it.

[paulpablo]

The original statement by Jordan Peterson was relating to wealth and majority privilege so sticking to that topic it is about those things.

But I'm saying that discrimination against non-white people by landlords and agents happens not because of "majority privilege" but because of racism.

It's not the same as landlords discriminating against non white tenants, it's non white people saying they don't want white people in the area.  If a non white person has that attitude and is a landlord I think they are likely to discriminate against white people.  So it matters who are the majority of house owners and landlords.

Sure, that can happen. I'm not saying it can't ever. But in your case, that didn't happen like that, did it? And it's not like you've given me much context to go by here.

It isn't a contradiction it just isn't an example of white privilege by itself since those examples could be void of any white involvement.

Um, in a way, it is. Black people aren't privileged so are despised wherever they go. Not generally the case for white people.

Black people aren't despised wherever they go. A lack of privilege has never been the cause of hatred.

Yeh racism doesn't exist, that's true.

[Belacqua]

Chapter two, eh?  That's the part where he loses his shit and starts mumbling about christian mythology, lol.  Outta be a riot.

I downloaded the book and read the second chapter, just to see what the fuss is about. Here is a summary, and some comments at the end:

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1) The first real point he makes in this chapter (after some preamble) is that there is a difference between the world as it is and the world as it is lived. He doesn't use big words like noumenon and phenomenon, but the distinction, I think, is uncontroversial. He makes it clear that he's talking about the psychological world that we have in our minds. Why this is important becomes clear pretty quickly.

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2) Now he claims that the phenomenal world, as experienced, has basic components. The two he chooses to focus on here are order and chaos. Since he has specified that these are mental categories, he doesn't have to deal with these things in physics or more concrete parts of the world. 

The way he's using the terms, chaos isn't a quality of nature; it's just how we experience things. So if I go somewhere that I'm not familiar with and where I don't speak the language, it is chaos for me but order for the natives.

He makes chaos into a big baggy category. Any situation we don't like, where we're not happy about the apparent outcome or we don't know exactly what to do, goes in this category. 

Order, as a category, is even more fuzzy. It is tradition, biologically determined things, old habits, and many many etc.

He asserts that we feel happy with order and unhappy with chaos. [But is this always true? Some people like risk. Some people travel to enjoy things they aren't familiar with. Too much order gets boring, doesn't it? He doesn't address these things.]

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3) Next he wants to claim that the mental categories of chaos and order evolved with us as animals, and that they have been around for "a billion years." That's a direct quote. 

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4) Now the big trouble starts. He claims that order is and always has been personified by the man, and chaos by the woman. He uses some very dodgy etymology to connect Latin mater -- mother -- with matter. [Does anybody know if this is correct etymology?] And he slides this in with the idea of hylomorphism, that matter would be formless (chaotic) without form (order). This all seems rooted in an old idea he doesn't mention: the medieval belief that when two people make a baby, the daddy supplies the form (morph) and the mommy supplies the matter (hyle). Of course that idea went out when people discovered DNA, if not before. Maybe he will still claim that it's a psychological tenet, not reliant on biological truth. But is it? Both Lucretius and Ovid wrote that men would be chaotic all their lives if the love of women didn't cause them to get civilized. And it's a common trope in our own time that young men are wild until they find a good woman and settle down. In such cases, it's the presence of the woman which brings order. 

If he has some argument to make, or some evidence, as to why man=order and woman=chaos, always, for a billion years, he doesn't tell us here.

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5) And there's one paragraph of pure incel thinking, in which he claims that women, because they are chaos, are picky about mates, and choose good breeders. (He doesn't say Chad and Stacey, but they're implied.) But to me, this is a contradiction. If girls are careful about sexual selection, that's clearly a kind of order, not chaos. It would be chaotic if they weren't choosy. In fact the claim about choosing good breeders to me shows that they are imposing a strict Darwinian, even a eugenically teleological, order. But he skates over that.

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6) Now we get a bunch of sub-Joseph Campbell stuff in which he claims, without evidence, that the dichotomy he has named is symbolized in lots of different cultures. The Star of David, for example, is a man triangle and a woman triangle. [Really?] And a long reading of the Adam and Eve story, apparently assuming that none of his readers is familiar with it.

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7) When at long last we finish with Adam and Eve, the whole chaos/order thing is forgotten, and he asserts that because of the Fall (symbolically of course, not historically) we have a lot of shame. And since, he asserts without evidence, people are better now than they were when Genesis was written, we all ought to have less shame and be nicer to ourselves. 

Conclusion: treat yourself nicely. 

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For me, the whole chapter is a mishmash of references to old ideas that, in their real contexts, make (or at least made) a lot of sense. Like hylomorphism has its uses, but not the one he gives it here. And he asserts all kinds of eternal ("a billion years") truths that are pretty shaky. As I noted, the idea that chaos is always feminine just isn't true. Some people have seen it that way and some haven't.

Nor is it clear why chaos and order should be a more basic dichotomy than other pairs. There was Love vs. Strife (Parmenides), Abundance vs. Lack (Diotima, etc.), the Noble Savage vs. the Hypocritical Citizen (Rousseau). Freud is a little closer, with the Drives vs. Civilized Restraint, but Freud was clear that both are necessary -- it's not good vs. evil. There's a superficial resemblance to Nietzsche, but for the German, chaos is true and permanent while order is an illusion we lay over chaos. 

So to be charitable, we could say that the whole chapter is a kind of poem, not meant to be a clear or scientific argument. It rambles a bit in a way which wouldn't be obvious if it were a sermon or a YouTube video. 

It will be a nice pep talk to an incel who wants a pep talk that sounds sort of deep because it includes references to deep stuff. 

[By the way, I am new to this forum. Hi, y'all.]