HWFO Newsletter 9/17/2020
Jordan Peterson is heavily debated among stoic groups, because what he pushes generally speaking is “small s” stoicism, not “Big S” Stoicism. He pushes the social value of the sorts of behaviors we might generally call stoic, without getting into the nitty gritty of the teachings of Marcus Aurelius and such, which occasionally run contrary to Peterson’s overall push. And since most of the people who are deep down the rabbit hole of academic philosophy learned it in the academy, and the academy is extremely liberal, he gets bashed. Within that framework, I present an excerpt from a conversation this week on the “Stoic Dating” Facebook Group.
Someone linked this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKM8KdnK20Q
It’s a talk about Rule 2 from Twelve Rules, which I admit I have not yet read. I’ve never been much into self help literature, which is why I like Peterson but I’m not really a part of the Peterson cult.
The ensuing responses were a whole lot of bashing Peterson about lobsters and his diet plan and his struggles with getting off of Clonazepam, which we discussed on HWFO here:
https://medium.com/handwaving-freakoutery/things-jordan-petersons-rehab-taught-me-387376b3fb84
I didn’t do much in this discussion, until the more interesting subthread jumped out. Names have been abbreviated to initials to protect the innocent.
CM
Why all the negativity towards Peterson? His first book is an amazing work.
Bj Campbell
The Blue Tribe views Peterson as an Avatar of the Red Tribe, because he provides an alternative path to traditional cultural indoctrination instead of the church, which the Blue have spent the last four decades undermining. So the Blue Tribe has received their own cultural indoctrination script to attack him, which they enjoy enacting on Facebook to virtue signal to their other Blue Tribe members.
In simpler words, it’s performative negativity to signal virtue towards an in-group. And on a FB group about “dating,” it’s largely performative negativity by men to garner virtue points from Blue women.
EP
CM the negativity is misguided at best.
RS
CM Because he thinks he knows far more than he actually does.
CM
RS thanks, how could you know ‘he thinks he knows far more than he actually does’?
CM
Bj Campbell yes just as building the Empire state building is just peacocking
RS
CM Because he talks about stuff he has no idea about. He claims that a carnivorous diet is healthy (despite his own contradictions). He talks well, and some things he says are true. But nothing he says is original, and frankly he sounds like a shitty person to have as a friend (given his examples of friendship he uses to illustrate his points)
RS
https://youtu.be/7T_--0CwtUo
Is a good place to begin.
CM
RS thanks. I agree about being a carnivore, it is not what he has been studying his adult life.
I could agree that nothing original. However he stands for what he believes.
Bj Campbell
None of those reasons are the reasons the Blue Tribe doesn’t like him. Those are relatively unimportant details brought up to avoid the elephant in the room, which is Jordan got famous pointing out obvious and provable scientific facts which undermine modern feminist indoctrination. The Blue Tribe hates Peterson because he speaks heresy. And when he speaks those heresies, he *is* speaking within his area of expertise.
If he were just a diet quack, nobody would even know his name.
RS
Bj Campbell Red tribe? What are you talking about?
Bj Campbell
Oh, you’re in the UK. Red/blue in the USA is like the tories and whigs on crack.
In the USA, politics and culture have merged into two binary tribal entities, driven by social media echo chamber mechanics, where each tribe only gets information and behavioral indoctrination from closed media echo systems without much cross-talk, which drives them steadily further apart. It could lead to some pretty nasty violence over here in December no matter who wins our election. The violence is already leaking out.
Blue tribe:
Progressive, liberal, gay, trans, urban, Democrat, white collar, intersectionality, 3rd wave feminism, marxist, anti-stoic, denies science in an effort to promote flawed blank slate ideologies in pursuit of social constructionist (social) goals. Collectivist thinking.
Red tribe:
Traditionalist, conservative, religious, rural, blue collar, agricultural, stoic (in the layman’s sense, not necessarily the philosophical sense), denies science when it produces results counter to economic goals, such as in the case of climate change. Individualist thinking.
Thirds wave feminists, who think there are literally no differences between men and women, and women cannot succeed because of hidden architectures of subconscious oppression are squarely Blue tribe. Classical feminists who admit and admire the differences between the sexes and think that women should be allowed to achieve on their own merits without prejudice, are often these days shunted to the Red tribe. So that’s an interesting dynamic, because it means that some of the most successful women aren’t following modern feminist ideologies. If they did, they probably never would have succeeded.
So the classical feminists, such as my former wife, like listening to Peterson because he reinforces their strong individualist meritocratic thinking, while 3rd wave feminists bash Peterson because he has become a famous figurehead in the culture war against the blank slate ideology on which 3rd wave feminism is based.
Both tribes virtue signal.
A Blue Triber might virtue signal to their tribe by bashing Peterson, or changing their FB avatar to have rainbows or BLMs or whatever the trend is. A Red Triber might virtue signal with a MAGA hat or a bumper sticker that says “Real Men Love Jesus.”
The behavior of virtue signaling is fundamental to tribal identity. It’s like wearing a sports jersey, but with words. And since men are very often driven by their more primal urges, they often virtue signal to get the attention of women. A lot of Facebook dialogue can be reduced on analysis to a form of peacocking. Especially in FB subgroups with the word “dating” in their title.
