Jordan Peterson on Truth
So I wrote this whole last post; and soon later I found that Jordan Peterson was saying pretty much the exact same thing but in more accessible language. So if you didn't quite get my last post, you can listen to him say it.
https://youtu.be/bjnvtRgpg6g?t=1h23m7s
Start at 1h23m.
Some people, religious people usually, get angry when I make this pragmatic argument. Like I'm a toxic personality which is arguing for nihilism. Look, I'm no nihilist. But you don't need to be a nihilist to be depressed. Look outside. Read the news. See how Western Civilization is dying in front of our own eyes while the best and brightest are not only failing to stop it but actively aiding the demise. That's what depresses people. And for centuries, neither traditional religion nor "conservatives" have had a decent explanation for why the hell this is happening. Moldbug was the perhaps the first to make some sense. I think I've come up with a very good explanation.
Now I agree that relativism of this sort isn't exactly constructive. I know very well. Hell, I'm the guy who's been arguing for a new religion for 5 years already. I know very damn well, so stop telling me that. I know you can't run a cohesive army by telling your soldiers that their consciousness is a social front. I get it. But I'm not running an army here. I'm trying to make sense of reality. And I'm making a damn lot of sense.
But look again at Peterson. This guy is no nihilist. He's almost the least nihilistic guy ever. He's the boss of self-help preachers. He's a "deeply religious" guy who makes his living by telling people that life has meaning, convincing people to live socially conservative lives. And yet he understands and recognize the basic reality of human knowledge. He's making my exact same argument; and I swear I got there by myself before watching him. So it's pretty obvious that accepting pragmatic philosophy doesn't necessarily lead into nihilism. I'm not sure I buy this guy's framework, but at least he shows it can be done.
But at any rate; I'm not trying to make anyone feel inadequate. If you want to run a Christian army; by all means preach them the old Thomist trope. If you want to run a Jewish army you can preach them whatever the hell it is you guys preach. If you want to run a White-nationalist army you can preach them about Thor and Odin and Sumerians being Aryans and whatever. Do your thing, and I'll praise your courage and valor and donate money and hold a party for every victory of yours against the forces of progressivism. I'm your friend.
But if you're not running an army, and you just want to know what the hell is going on, well you better read my blog, because what those armies are telling you makes no sense. And now I'm going to make a point about the lack of a need for ideological coherence and will give an offering to Kek. Merry Christmas to everyone.
29 comments
[…] Jordan Peterson on Truth […]
This guy is like a one man army at war with sophistry.
People who stop believe in God destroy their future. Is this a bug or a feature? The Holocaust should be added to the Old Testament.
Was it not disproportionately observant Jews killed in the Holocaust? I've read (but seen no decent reference) that the Rabbinate in Europe told everyone to stay in Europe.
It was not disproportionately observant Jews killed in the Holocaust. Relatively few European secular Jews went to Israel before the war. There were many, many secular Jews in Poland, Hungary, etc., and of course the vast majority of the Soviet Jews who were killed were not religious. Your odds of getting killed had little to do with your level of observance.
The Holocaust was a group event, not an individual event.
Christianity is the force of progressivism. How Pope Francis Became the Leader of the Global Left Wall Street Journal | December 22, 2016 wsj.com/articles/how-pope-francis-became-the-leader-of-the-global-left-1482431940 The Vicar gets it honest. The Jesus character was a degenerate skype who taught to hate your family, castrate yourself, poke out your eyes if you had sexual thoughts, abandon productive pursuits, despise the successful, and to literally hate life on this earth. Jesus even white-knighted for a female adulterer. He openly displayed his boy lover snuggled into his bosom. And banned normal male-female relationships in his future utopia. That's progressive.
My Rabbi teaches a weekly class on a book called "Duties of the Heart" that basically is just this point made over and over, cut with why we should place our faith in our Creator. It's a pretty compelling argument, and helps a lot of people with humility. The pragmatic argument, by itself, is going to be really nastily nihilistic for most people (because most people won't understand it completely). A big, friendly deity brings those people back. That's basically how religion starts, if we're inclined to start our own. Realize the pragmatic argument, observe its implications in a humble man, then build a suite of memes to scaffold the same outcome for people who need more than just that. That's basically (and I may get ripped by B for this) how Judaism grew/has grown. Start with a declaration of the unitary nature of divinity, find that by the fourth generation it's already not getting the desired results, go into exile/slavery, escape and codify a set of laws to get people to behave as though they understand the declaration and its implications, even when they don't. Find great success, lose the context of the laws, get taken back into exile/slavery, escape and codify another layer of laws to try to get people to behave as though they understand the first declaration and then the law. One more cycle of that, except we've codified a second layer of law and have been unable to create a new interpretation/set of laws that gets the right outcome. Going back to our weekly class, it seems that theology exists to counterbalance the pragmatic argument in contexts that would otherwise lead to extreme nihilism, and that the farther we get from those contexts, the more we lean on the pragmatic argument itself to curtail signalling spirals. This week, I tried to channel my inner Xunzi to help make this point: If a swarm of locusts descends upon a man's field, the pragmatic argument is obvious, and faith in a kind creator allows the man to move forward. If a business deal goes sideways, and a man loses all of his money there is a lot of obfuscation before reaching the pragmatic argument, and signalling is an easier response. The healthiest response in both cases is obviously the pragmatic argument cut with faith in one's creator, but I can easily conjure circumstances in which morality signalling leads to a superior outcome (I actually had something happen to me lately that proves this point: pants came back from the cleaner ruined, and I called and demanded that they buy me a new pair, after some back and forth, they agreed, only for me to find out a week later that moths had been responsible).
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2 hours of video? Man, that's asking for a lot. I'll try to watch it next week. The pragmatic argument for religion is quite simple. G-d built this world and us in such a way that polytheists lose to monotheists in the long run, and atheists off themselves after going down a spiral of degeneracy. If you want to have children and want your children to have children and so on, and you want them to be decent and moral humans, and have some immunity to the mental AIDS with which the popular narrative will try to infect them, better get religion, the right kind. Thanks for your generous offer to donate. Our settlement could use some money to pave the roads, and the government claims that the roads go over private land and won't pay. You're not going to pull a Jim here and walk back your offer, are you? :)
I'll follow Shang Yang and pay for each enemy head on a pike.
Heads on pikes are not the way forward. The Americans and their French, British etc. allies have put two orders of magnitude more Muslim heads on pikes in the last 15 years than we have, all the while being colonized by Muslims (who outbreed them) and being demoralized by their own moral incoherence. We are colonizing the Muslims, without excessive bloodshed, and in the face of global pressure and condemnation. And with a higher birthrate to boot. When the day comes, we will politely tell them that it's time to leave, perhaps give each one who meets a certain deadline a modest check, and then escort the rest to the border crossing point, waving them goodbye. There is no need for heads on pikes and all of that. I hope. And if it comes to that, the foundation for pulling it off is not heads on pikes, but the balls to live here and have kids, and (more importantly,) Judaism.
Well I'm not paying for no heads.
What would you do with heads if you got them? You can't eat them and you can't display them around the house.
Are you sure they can't be eaten?
I don't want the physical heads. Usually pay was done in exchange of ears IIRC. I could feed my dogs with them I guess. Or sell them to some fast food chain.
If polytheists lose to monotheists, what wins over the christian Pantheon crowded with Jehovah, Uranus, Satan, Mary, Jesus, Holy Ghost, Gabriel and various other angels, Apollyon and various other demons, and saints? (Never mind all those apparently divine beings (Matthew 27:52) who arose a whole chapter before Jesus did.(Matthew 28:6)) Kek? I'm still wondering if Kek and GNON are equivalent. Let's hope so, for our nation's sake, since the monistic GNON is the officially acknowledged Providential Creator of our nation. "[T]he genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving..." --Th. Jefferson, 1819 KEK REVIVAL TENT MEETING THIS SunSunSUNDAY!
Oops, that's 1822.
Christian Pantheon is on its way out, if you haven't noticed. The only guys who take it seriously are Amish and Mormons (the latter follow a 19th century LARPer and show signs of a merger with the pozzed Feds,) and those parts of the Catholic church which are a bit too into #pizza.
B asks: "2 hours of video?" Well, it's pretty entertaining, for what that's worth. It's better than a 2-hour movie. I dozed off late last evening while Jordan was playing, because it was late; but my wife (who doesn't read things like this blog) watched the whole video, and then mentioned a line from it this morning.
This guy keeps showing up in all the right fights hes great but he musnt be tainted by us he needs to do his thing with deniable plausibility
Nah, screw that. I like the guy and I'm not going to stop linking at good things he say. Why would I taint him anyway.
The good Professor has already openly warned these fruitcakes that they're summoning a Nazi response, exactly one minute into this video: Professor Jordan Peterson Swarmed by Narcissistic SJW Ideologues after UofT Rally youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE Typical of SJWs, the degenerate creature misconstrued his observation as a threat of violence instead of learning a valuable point. P.S. Merry Christmas, folks.
Most Merry Christmas.
"Typical of SJWs, the degenerate creature misconstrued his observation as a threat of violence instead of learning a valuable point." Yes: SJWs never jump at their chance for self-improvement and learning when you tell them they are wrong. Completely different from the entire non-SJW mankind, aren't they.
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