Another day, another round of opinions
on Jordan Peterson. I also read a killer piece by Matt Taibbi about
the “Russia scandal.” I think maybe the easiest way to start is
just to talk about labels.
Briefly, if you don't already know my reticence for the connotation and presumption that goes along with “trigger” words, nothing I write, nor will ever write, is going to register with you. The amount of times I put “truth” in quotes, attempting to discover the process of churning through my thoughts more than proclaiming the surety of my views, is instructive. I pick words that feel hot, and build a narrative around them. This is how we attempt to grasp the world around us. Is a tree a tree? Or is it bark, roots, leaves, etc. How you understand “tree” is going to determine many more things about how you use it or the place it occupies in your life.
How many words do you think we use that are much broader and more confusing than “tree” routinely? I've gone after “feminism” and “privilege.” I don't like when words that used to be pretty deliberate, like rape, become generalized indictments for miscommunication or unwanted and inappropriate attention i.e. “rape culture.” How many things in the news start with “the war on,” as if war is an easily accessible and sustained violent attack you can invoke with impunity about any imperiled topic? “Anti-Leftist,” “alt-right hero/darling,” “pseudo-intellectual,” the “ists” and “isms” of political shades, and general besmirching of character via scorn for alleged followers and “enabling” or “giving a platform.”
You can write, endlessly, using a combination of the same techniques to “critique” literally anyone or anything. Absolutely none of it does you any favors merely because you are able to deliver your “evisceration” with the pompous indignity that could only rise today to parody. There are many things that have contributed to what I'll posit as the “cultural decline in our capacity to speak and think clearly,” but a daily helping of unsubstantiated nonsense from our most popular news and info-tainment options doesn't help.
Even recognizing that we're playing into an ignorant hand becomes impossible, as “fact-checking” becomes a lurid task of retractions and nose-thumping a barrage of insinuations and accusations while the work to suss out truth goes ignored. “Whistle-blowers” and “alt-media” attempt to hijack the ceded space to tout their perspectives (more true because they're tinted with oh-so-justified doses of emotion and “outrage”), virtue signaling and dog-whistling Dixie.
There's such a stark contrast between the “hit piece,” and the methodical breakdown and cited explanation of a topic. There is no opinion piece you will find that casually refers to Jordan Peterson as “alt-right” that will have the examples demonstrating the label. They'll skim a phrase out of context. They'll poo-poo away hours of video expanding on where his grievances lie. They'll latch on to something misspoken or perhaps genuinely worth apology, and then proceed to ignore the apology.
This is the criticism popular thinkers are making of the Left. You can't continue to play judge, jury, and executioner who presides over the entirety of someone's life, and put them into a box of perpetual scorn and dismissal. This generalized habit reflexively dismisses not just what the other person you despise is thinking, but how they got there. If you refuse to attempt to understand how someone thinks, it suggests to me you're unwilling or unable to think for yourself. That's the impetus for free speech. That's surviving the cringe of listening to Ann Coulter or Alex Jones speak.
There are consequences to inciting anger and violence from positions of power. That is different from hearing the attempt to incite, and having a plan or disposition to put it aside. Censorship doesn't protect you from the obligation to learn why you're thinking is incomplete. The broader culture will always figure out a way to spite you, dig up the taboo, or act like it's the protector and purveyor of “unseemly truths,” while the snowflakes melt. This is the heart of my contrarian personality, and a psychological place I think we occupy at large (Trump is fucking president) when we've been fucked with and ignored for too long. The “right” is trending around the world. The self-righteous of every ilk zero in on “guns” or “transgender bathrooms/pronouns” as if those are the real topic.
It's your fundamental insecurity and lack of personal responsibility. That's the story of humanity. Justify for yourself, and pillory what you don't like or understand. We've psychologically distanced ourselves from accountability writ-large. Anonymous facebook hatred. “Self-taught entrepreneurs” and “influencers” serve to legitimize attention for its own sake. The only thing to learn anymore is how to exploit and brand. You label something “bad” with words that “trend,” or you capitalize on fantasy courting Pyrrhic victory. Who cares if the leaps and inferences you made didn't pan out? Who cares if you say it's “cute” an over-worked waitress needs 3 days on the job to afford your jeans? What's really lost if it gave me more followers, likes, clicks, and traffic?
I grow less tempted to be obnoxious every day because I don't believe there aren't consequences. No matter how you started something, if it was “just for fun,” that fire can get out of control. Just because every one else was doing it, doesn't mean they deserved the reach they got. I'm thinking of tech companies. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should or should be allowed to, the tacit approval of waves of ignorant masses notwithstanding. Here I think of Gavin Newsom suspending the death penalty. I don't care what the majority thinks either if it was my innocent ass on the line about to be executed. I care about wasting money and the grander cultural narrative regarding vengeance and State power, but in the immediacy, fuck all that noise.
I don't see it getting better. I actually see violence and other life-threatening or dramatically altering consequences before we find a “collective” chance at survival. You can't attack the basis for grasping existence and think “everyone” is going to get “wise” about their failed “wokeness” and start to zero in on the words that never bother to give them pause in the first place. When a narrative style becomes embodied, that's colloquial reality. Trump repeats. That's the “magic” of his madness. That's the secret of people slowly growing more and more insane losing the ability to reflect. We retweet, and carry the sentiments onto our “news” and otherwise sources of information. We're suffering a mass psychosis of our own doing by not taking a thousand beats to breath, parse, and prove.
Even with the best information still available, I don't think we'll be saved. Noam Chomsky is still speaking. Matt Taibbi is still writing. Spatterings of comedic and reporter voices are “doing their best” to summarize and explain without stoking insanity flames. So what? Me and the old people with time enough to go to book store reads and lectures will know? Hippies and Bohemians will get to scoff until their safe-spaces are in the crosshairs? We're all breathing the same air. The whole system's immune system is implicated. I'll be doing my best from a field in the middle of nowhere.
Briefly, if you don't already know my reticence for the connotation and presumption that goes along with “trigger” words, nothing I write, nor will ever write, is going to register with you. The amount of times I put “truth” in quotes, attempting to discover the process of churning through my thoughts more than proclaiming the surety of my views, is instructive. I pick words that feel hot, and build a narrative around them. This is how we attempt to grasp the world around us. Is a tree a tree? Or is it bark, roots, leaves, etc. How you understand “tree” is going to determine many more things about how you use it or the place it occupies in your life.
How many words do you think we use that are much broader and more confusing than “tree” routinely? I've gone after “feminism” and “privilege.” I don't like when words that used to be pretty deliberate, like rape, become generalized indictments for miscommunication or unwanted and inappropriate attention i.e. “rape culture.” How many things in the news start with “the war on,” as if war is an easily accessible and sustained violent attack you can invoke with impunity about any imperiled topic? “Anti-Leftist,” “alt-right hero/darling,” “pseudo-intellectual,” the “ists” and “isms” of political shades, and general besmirching of character via scorn for alleged followers and “enabling” or “giving a platform.”
You can write, endlessly, using a combination of the same techniques to “critique” literally anyone or anything. Absolutely none of it does you any favors merely because you are able to deliver your “evisceration” with the pompous indignity that could only rise today to parody. There are many things that have contributed to what I'll posit as the “cultural decline in our capacity to speak and think clearly,” but a daily helping of unsubstantiated nonsense from our most popular news and info-tainment options doesn't help.
Even recognizing that we're playing into an ignorant hand becomes impossible, as “fact-checking” becomes a lurid task of retractions and nose-thumping a barrage of insinuations and accusations while the work to suss out truth goes ignored. “Whistle-blowers” and “alt-media” attempt to hijack the ceded space to tout their perspectives (more true because they're tinted with oh-so-justified doses of emotion and “outrage”), virtue signaling and dog-whistling Dixie.
There's such a stark contrast between the “hit piece,” and the methodical breakdown and cited explanation of a topic. There is no opinion piece you will find that casually refers to Jordan Peterson as “alt-right” that will have the examples demonstrating the label. They'll skim a phrase out of context. They'll poo-poo away hours of video expanding on where his grievances lie. They'll latch on to something misspoken or perhaps genuinely worth apology, and then proceed to ignore the apology.
This is the criticism popular thinkers are making of the Left. You can't continue to play judge, jury, and executioner who presides over the entirety of someone's life, and put them into a box of perpetual scorn and dismissal. This generalized habit reflexively dismisses not just what the other person you despise is thinking, but how they got there. If you refuse to attempt to understand how someone thinks, it suggests to me you're unwilling or unable to think for yourself. That's the impetus for free speech. That's surviving the cringe of listening to Ann Coulter or Alex Jones speak.
There are consequences to inciting anger and violence from positions of power. That is different from hearing the attempt to incite, and having a plan or disposition to put it aside. Censorship doesn't protect you from the obligation to learn why you're thinking is incomplete. The broader culture will always figure out a way to spite you, dig up the taboo, or act like it's the protector and purveyor of “unseemly truths,” while the snowflakes melt. This is the heart of my contrarian personality, and a psychological place I think we occupy at large (Trump is fucking president) when we've been fucked with and ignored for too long. The “right” is trending around the world. The self-righteous of every ilk zero in on “guns” or “transgender bathrooms/pronouns” as if those are the real topic.
It's your fundamental insecurity and lack of personal responsibility. That's the story of humanity. Justify for yourself, and pillory what you don't like or understand. We've psychologically distanced ourselves from accountability writ-large. Anonymous facebook hatred. “Self-taught entrepreneurs” and “influencers” serve to legitimize attention for its own sake. The only thing to learn anymore is how to exploit and brand. You label something “bad” with words that “trend,” or you capitalize on fantasy courting Pyrrhic victory. Who cares if the leaps and inferences you made didn't pan out? Who cares if you say it's “cute” an over-worked waitress needs 3 days on the job to afford your jeans? What's really lost if it gave me more followers, likes, clicks, and traffic?
I grow less tempted to be obnoxious every day because I don't believe there aren't consequences. No matter how you started something, if it was “just for fun,” that fire can get out of control. Just because every one else was doing it, doesn't mean they deserved the reach they got. I'm thinking of tech companies. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should or should be allowed to, the tacit approval of waves of ignorant masses notwithstanding. Here I think of Gavin Newsom suspending the death penalty. I don't care what the majority thinks either if it was my innocent ass on the line about to be executed. I care about wasting money and the grander cultural narrative regarding vengeance and State power, but in the immediacy, fuck all that noise.
I don't see it getting better. I actually see violence and other life-threatening or dramatically altering consequences before we find a “collective” chance at survival. You can't attack the basis for grasping existence and think “everyone” is going to get “wise” about their failed “wokeness” and start to zero in on the words that never bother to give them pause in the first place. When a narrative style becomes embodied, that's colloquial reality. Trump repeats. That's the “magic” of his madness. That's the secret of people slowly growing more and more insane losing the ability to reflect. We retweet, and carry the sentiments onto our “news” and otherwise sources of information. We're suffering a mass psychosis of our own doing by not taking a thousand beats to breath, parse, and prove.
Even with the best information still available, I don't think we'll be saved. Noam Chomsky is still speaking. Matt Taibbi is still writing. Spatterings of comedic and reporter voices are “doing their best” to summarize and explain without stoking insanity flames. So what? Me and the old people with time enough to go to book store reads and lectures will know? Hippies and Bohemians will get to scoff until their safe-spaces are in the crosshairs? We're all breathing the same air. The whole system's immune system is implicated. I'll be doing my best from a field in the middle of nowhere.
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