Not really surprising, but its nice to see fact emerging past the babble of his rabid dudish fanbase.
“In summary, even though the political function of Enuma Elish is obvious and important enough to have been mentioned by three of Peterson’s own sources — Heidel, Campbell, and Neumann — it only figures into Maps of Meaning in the form of a dismissive footnote that appears to miss the point of what it dismisses. In 12 Rules for Life, that dismissal resurfaces as a straw man argument that utterly fails to engage with the history all three of his sources were referencing. By Peterson’s own admission, his interest lies not in accurately grasping the historical context of myth, but in using myth to support preconceived notions about archetypes as “eternal ‘categories’ of imagination.” And yet his evidence for the primacy of those categories comes from the myths themselves, leaving us with a tail-biting bout of circular reasoning that calls to mind the illustration of the ouroboros that Peterson uses to illustrate the concept of chaos.
If Peterson effectively demonstrates anything with his reading of Enuma Elish, it’s that his personal philosophy regarding the entire nature of human consciousness maps neatly onto a patriarchal myth cobbled together from disparate sources in order to justify a power grab. He’s wrong about mapping the universe of human experience onto this story for the same reason fundamentalist Christians often have incorrect notions about the Bible—he completely ignores how the stories got here, and imagines instead that they are simply evidence of some cosmic, eternal truth that just so happens to line up with his politics.
[…]
It is not chaos, but our fear and visceral disgust toward the idea of chaos undermining civilization — often stemming from a lack of familiarity with what we fear — that drives us to build prisons, wage wars, and develop weapons which are the embodiment of all-consuming fire. Because we do not conceptualize the earth and its natural cycles as sacred, we disregard treaties made with the Indigenous peoples whose lands we have colonized and arrest those who designate themselves “water protectors.” Peterson’s philosophy, while it may inspire motivation at the individual level, is a deadly engine of status quo maintenance and self-justification at the cultural level. It is an ideology that denies it is ideology; hissing insults and flinging lawsuits at those who challenge its god-like powers of complacency.
All of that said, I do not believe that everyone who has found himself helped by Peterson’s fatherly counsel is totally deluded, at least not insurmountably. There is value in standing up straight with your shoulders back; it just can’t necessarily be read as a primal decree from ancient Mesopotamia. The cult of capitalism dictates that competitiveness is hard-wired into us to the exclusion of all other virtues, but there is also evidence that our ability to share and cooperate has played a formative role in our evolutionary development. One of Jordan Peterson’s strengths is that he seems to understand how confirmation bias and unconscious motivations structure our belief systems, at least in theory. When he fails, it’s because he has forgotten to turn this wisdom on himself.”
This centre is being defunded because it won’t allow males into a rape crisis centre. Fight against this bullshit and help keep this haven safe for women.
Critical analysis is never truly finished. I’m glad the Kurzgesagt channel has (re)dedicated themselves becoming a reliable source of factual, interesting, and entertaining information.
Paul Street writing for Counterpunch illustrates the problems humanity faces as a whole and how completely useless our insular elites and mainstream media actually are. They would rather madly fiddle for short term profit than tackle the larger issues, namely the continued human habitationof the earth.
*edit* Poor sleep on the weekends shoots the hell out of my writing acumen.
“The 2020 elections and their aftermath (including the distinct possibility that Trump will refuse the Electoral tally) will not be irrelevant to the fate of the nation and the Earth.
But nothing matters more now than the existential environmental crises we face, with the climate disaster in the lead. There’s no chance for social justice, democracy, equality, creativity, art, love and community – or anything else (including profits) – on a dead planet.
Yes, the “Green New Deal” advocated by a cadre of progressive Democrats has made its way into media coverage and commentary in recent months. It appears that the GND – which includes welcome calls for net zero U.S. carbon emissions by 2030 – will be part of at least the primary election story thanks to Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Cortez-Ocasio, Jay Inslee, and other progressive or progressive-sounding Democrats. But don’t expect it to receive all that much attention (much less positive attention) in the dominant corporate media-politics complex. Serious discussion of the climate issue and environmental questions more broadly doesn’t serve broadcasters’ and advertisers’ bottom line interests. There is little chance that the climate crisis will remotely approach the Trump investigations and the already emergent 2020 presidential horse-race when it comes to garnering real media attention.
The reigning political and media “elite” is happy to keep capitalogenic global warming on the public margins until long past the last ecological tipping points are passed. They can be counted on them to fiddle and diddle through the species’ final, fossil-fueled flame-out. It is an existential necessity to create a new culture, media, and politics with the elementary natural and social intelligence required to properly prioritize the most pressing problems of our time.“
The answer for many people, including myself would be: Not Soon Enough!
The usual regrets aside, my descent into critical thinking, strangely enough, started after University as it was only then that I had enough time to really start powering through the books that I had been accumulating while working on my degree. All that stuff that I was ‘responsible’ for learning was still there, but my curiosity led me down the path toward a greater understanding of the mechanics of how our society works. I owe a great deal to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Ronald Wright for fuelling my intellectual growth and move toward a more nuanced understanding of how history and society works and access to a larger context background that helped(s) make sense of world events as they unfolded.
The difference in taking courses before and after my degree was quite startling as learning because you ‘have to’ versus because you ‘want to’.
The challenge now is to continue the journey and start reading again seriously. With the rise of the siren song of social media and video games maintaining an intellectual focus is quite challenging. Getting back into the reading for comprehension and understanding groove is quite difficult. I’m thinking that hitting the University for some courses may be the tonic to this particular problem.
We’ll have to see what’s in the cards and hope to heck there is something interesting to take this upcoming spring/summer. :)
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