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Right on point as far as I'm concerned. He gets some things right within his purview, but his common excursions into philosophy and politics are where he deserves criticism.
You sure the NS were the bad guys? Have you seen western culture lately? We don’t have nations or culture in the west any more. I’d say we lost by winning WW2.
I think you've been more than fair to him. His politics focusing on the individual is a means of fostering and coddling anti-politics. The idea that community and communitarian world views are some how terrible. It also doesn't account for the will of sacrifice. What of jobs that require one to be self-less (nurses, therapists, councilors, teachers, etc.)?
Don't know how you could think 12 rules is in anyway a good book. His baleful truisms are as novel and insightful as a tin of baked beans. The order and chaos subtext is a device used to frame what he distrusts as agents of chaos: feminists , stoners, environmentalists, the needy , etc. What he doesn't distrust therefore must be orderly. The Coda section of 12 rules, cod Messianic guff. "What shall I do with my wife?. Treat her as if she is the holy mother of God who will give birth to the world redeeming hero"? Paul Thouroux said , " why?, so often does the Bible become the happy hunting ground of an unbalanced mind".
Peterson doesn't deny there is a place for collective action, but believes that change at the individual level is of primary importance. What if all people adopted the maximum amount of responsibility, for themselves, their families, and those around them? If they spoke the truth and acted in a forthright manner. Develop their moral framework and individual competence as best they can. What does society look like? I'd argue that a grass roots change that might arise from Peterson's approach would have a greater positive impact on society than the social justice activist approach. Is pride month improving anybody's life more than if they got their shit together? BLM/Antifa is led by exactly the bitter and resentful people Peterson describes and has caused a great deal of suffering to black people especially. Homicide rates have tripled in the cities where they are most active. What if they had got their own house in order before they tried to run a society? I think you've created a false dichotomy of individual vs social change. Changing individuals IS a way to change society in the most profound way. Are the guards at Auschwitz victims of social pressure or individuals who lacked courage and forthrightness, who shirked their responsibility to walk the path of the 'hero.' You mention Ghandi and MLK - heroes, they are exactly the kind of individuals Peterson's philosophy seeks to nurture. People who can think for themselves, make choices, and lead. What makes a hero and what makes a nazi? What are the limits of a society filled with competent individuals who are willing to take on maximum responsibility? I can't see any. Also, do you have an explanation for your audiences' deranged refusal to properly engage with Petersons' ideas? He is often portrayed as a right wing white supremacist. A literal nazi in one notable case. Do you agree with that characterisation?
I heard a philosopher say that we transitioned from *agent morality* (ex "how should i act in order to be virtuous"-it’s about the doer) to *patient morality* (ex "how should i act such that my actions don’t cause harm"-it’s about those who live the consequences) and we’re now starting to focus on *relation morality.* This latter paradigm rises from the understanding that everything is a network, your car exists solely as the product of a network of technologies and tools (production lines, welding machines, the internal combustion engine, the mining industry, paved roads, refineries and gas pumps, etc etc-bring a Ferrari back in time before paved roads & gas stations existed and you have a very complex piece of metal) and you yourself exist solely as a member of a network of humans. A human by itself is not even as smart as an ape, which comes almost fully "programmed" as it were, out of the box. A human cannot be human by itself, as opposed to something like a wolf, sheep, zebra. We need to be welcomed amongst society to develop to our human potential-your name, your language, critical thinking, your clothes, your dreams and desires, the music you listen, the computer and internet protocols you use, highways and streets, airplane flights, medicine and dentistry, soap and toothpaste, being a punker or a rapper, etc etc *are stuff you’re receiving/unlocking thanks to the network you’re part of.* Imagine a very dynamic sophisticated person living in San Francisco, trading crypto, developing DeFi, listening to The Weekend while driving his Ferrari to a party, all dressed up with fine clothes and an attitude to stun. Now imagine the same individual if they would’ve grown up on a deserted island (with plenty of food and water at an arm’s length) without taking part in the human network. Yep, take away the network and what remains is the ape. Each node is only as strong as the network, meaning that we’re as complex, resilient and healthy as the social network is. Given this, it means that *in order to serve the individual you have to tend to the nature of social relations.* Right now, humanity is a mix of moral attitudes that aren’t taking our relational nature into account-instead, our moral attitudes stem from the view that we’re magic individuals, independent and wholly humans by ourselves. This feeds back into the poor quality of life we have. Society today and us as individuals are very primitive compared to our potential, unfortunately we cannot see ourselves any other way but highly (or even "ultimately") evolved. Passage from an essay tackling this very insight: **
@@LopusArgenteus Sadly no. It might have been an episode on cognitive scientist John Vervaeke’s youtube channel, but i’ve watched many of his themed series and quite a few interviews. Too many to remember specifics.
@@LopusArgenteus Bruno Latours Actor Network Theory talks about it. Alot of Object Oriented Ontology stuff. There's a guy named Adam Miller that wrote something called Speculative Grace which applies A.N.T. to ethics and religion. It's not religion typically thought of at all. It comes from the conversation surrounding Paul right now in the continental tradition.
@@thotslayer9914 is this like an honest question? Or like a I'm trying to be cool, look how stupid this guy is and smart I am, please think I'm cool, kind of question? Both valid, just curious.
I'm gonna tell you what's the limit of Peterson, the fact that he has CLEARLY never read a line of Derrida or Foucault, even less Baudrillard and has the spine to critique them.
Collectivists never get any further than how other people should not and should act. At least invidualists start improving themselves and from there work outwards improving the world by adding value and productivity. Collectivists are impotent preachers that limmit others.
@@thijsjong Is it possible you are simplifying the stance of Structuralist and Neo-Marxist philosophers? I mean they (Foucault, Derrida, Marcuse and so on) have spent years and years studying, critiquing and expanding Marxist and structuralist literature. We should try to understand where others are coming from and give their work an honest shot, no?
Jordan is living in the same city as myself.....Toronto is having an awakening to racism against our natives and blacks and he doesn't let us heal....He was a fan of Prof. Rushton of London Ontario's who taught racism at Western University.....London Ontario has had serious killings of
Having read self-help when I was younger, I was decidedly underwhelmed by Peterson's self-help. He would often take the long way round to say the same things you find in every second self-help book. Combine it with his dogmatic and inflexible ideology, and you have a recipe for nonsense.
The “rule” of helping only those who want to help you is ridiculous in my opinion. If you are uncertain, whether or not you want to help someone based on you not being sure of their intent to help you or their usefulness, you clearly do not have their best interest at heart, because otherwise your desire to help them wouldn’t be dependent on their usefulness to you. So if we now apply the same mindset to the person you are deciding on whether or not to help, they wouldn’t help you either because of this very reason, which would lead to the condition of neither yours, nor theirs applying. So all in all we would be living in a society where there can be no cooperation if this rule were to be implemented by everyone.
The biggest problem with JP is he does not take his own advice. The man went a media tour for years telling everyone who we should live while having a terrible addiction to Benzos. He was not cleaning his room.
But he put out dramatic videos of his suffering and crying over that - my guess is that he felt that emotion in that circumstance balanced out his "rational authorianism", which he seems to cling to.
I just recently got to know about this Peterson and, after listening to a few his lectures and interviews, i can't really see the reasons to his huge popularity: he brings nothing new to the table, but he does that with a lot of presumptuous pomp and self righteousness. To see who are the "stars" of our times, from music to cinema, from politics to philosophy, tells a lot about the fading out of any critical thinking in the decadent west.
He used to be quite self aware & honest about how he achieved popularity - successfully monetising anti-SJW rhetoric by making bigotry sound pseudo-intellectual
I'm a fan of Jordan Peterson but I think you are nailing his weaknesses. I find his philosophy very useful but he often overstates his case and therefore needs to be read with that in mind. I think the rancor that is encouraged from public intellectuals (especially today) and his own apparent sensitivity has robbed us of a chance to see his weaker arguments fairly challenged in a rigorous way. Bravo!
@@blankname5177 Peterson is a Clinical Psychologist that emphatically states that you should stay in your lane. So logically, he has no standing to discuss philosophy. That right there is both valid and sound based on his own apparent "authority."
@@rossleeson8626 it is philosophy. Yes he ties in his experience as a clinical psychologist, especially when he talks about personality types, but much his work is VERY EXPLICITLY philosophical, he just uses evidence (lol) to justify it. Most of his philosophical arguments follow from Christian philosophy and hand picked studies
I'm not sure whether or not Peterson actually makes the best case against himself himself. After all, he doesn't exactly hide the story about his anxiety and severe drug withdrawal symptoms. So whoever actually follows this guy sees that a tidy room won't actually fly you out around the world to take care of you in dire straits.
Thanks for the critic...I personally didnt take Jordan Petersons view to be so absolute either on responsibility or in helping others or on ideology..I have other areas where I would challenge him but not specifically those ...in response to you key points Responsibility : MY thinking is that he is not blaming a person for their poverty (I don't see any line where he has specified that ) he is only pushing us to the limits to be honest about challenge ourselves to pick up the mantle of what we have power to control (I remember a conversation where he was criticising the USA for their backward social care system, when compared to Europe, for example)..and like you and he say to not get resentful. Helping others: Although I agree his statement that "the literature is clear" (if one paper was his source) would be unfounded ...I didnt think he was advocating not helping a fellow worker but it was about the impact on someone who was not "playing the same game as the group" ...I think this is a basic animal behaviour...and i have been on the wrong side of that myself it is a lesson in the social rules of the group (although very painful to me and most) on how to integrate.. learn it or be excluded. (obviously it depends upon the circumstances not being ridiculously extreme, such as racism etc) Ideology : I am probably biased here by familiary experience of feminism , which I humbly believe I fully agree with. However not when it turns into hatred of men per se and tries to make them the cause of all world ills and worth less than women then we have a problem. Don't get me wrong I believe most feminists are reasonable I am just talking the extremes. I felt your reference to Nelson Mandela, MLK, building a bridge etc misleading ....as I understand him, he is not against such movements ....he is not against ideology but against tribalism/extremism of ideology, and definition of their tribal good by comparison to the bad of the other tribe , indeed the creation of the negative "other" is the problem which leads to exclusion and hatred of that other ...something we are seeing more and more of with the current politricks. ...however I will now watch you next episode, on the same, and see :)
Jordan said he used to be for socialism and said he wasn't anymore. He went to extremes of being people against talking about the problems of prejudice against people like ethnic people and women without learning of what they had to say first and just being close-minded to them. Kavernacle has a video on Jordan being ok with women getting s3xually assaulted in the workplace and then blaming women for it. Look at comments from mgtow, red pill men, men rights, conservatives, and Andrew Tate. They also blame all problems on women and advocate to take voting away from women cause they said women ruin society. When conservative Matt Walsh heard a woman was assaulted, he said he thought she deserved it cause the people in his group think women ruined society and are all libs. I also saw them saying the same of African Americans. Also, some people exaggerate and lie and say some fems hate men when they don't. When they just say things like criticizing harassment. Or when they don't want people shaming and saying women can only be homemakers, baby machines, and subservient to men. Etc. Which people like conservatives do force those things on women and bully them if they don't do it.
grivers88 - I entirely agree with your points. There is a lot of misunderstanding of JP's philosophy in this video. In addition I'd say Peterson was a clinician, as well as an academic, and , speaking myself as a psychotherapist, I can confidently assert that helping clients take personal responsibility towards a desired outcome (irrespective of the ultimate success or lack of) is infinitely more empowering than allowing them to stagnate in a self victimising inner orientation (i.e. being the victim of circumstances).
¡Best critique of Peterson I've seen! I used to respect him a lot but after listening "talking" about posmodernism and creating a strawman such as "neo-marxism" I saw him as what he is, a pseudo intelectual and more of a showman than anything else.
his point on that is that post modernists tear down grand narratives only to adopt a Marxist viewpoint, that's it and showing their dishonesty from that as even acknowledged by Zezek in his debate. It's not that complicated it's just double speak that just describes inconsistent ideological views, like slavery in a democracy or an anarchic state.
@@charlesramirez587 with this comment I can see that you have never read any posmodern author and you only "understand" posmodernism through memes, Internet "explanations" and reductionism. If you want to critique something like posmodernism that's fine but you need to study it first, read some Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Deleuze etc. And least read an scholar expert in the field and make your own mind. The issue is, people listen to Jordan Peterson's "explanations" of what postmodernism is and they think that's all they need to know about the subject and just like any dogmatic person following their religious leader, they don't ask questions or investigate further, sheeps basically. Here is very well done video to least start understanding the subject in a more physosophical way (like it should) th-cam.com/video/cU1LhcEh8Ms/w-d-xo.html Again is even better if you read the authors for yourself. Also to compare posmodernism with marxism or identity politics is to really know anything about what the posmodern is and what authors exposed. And just to be clear I'm not "defending" posmodernism, I'm defending truth and the proper understanding of any subject.
Great video. I hope Jordan Peterson fans and even Peterson himself will see this. It’s ironic how irresponsible Peterson is as a “public intellectual.” Marxist and Postmodern thinkers like Adorno or Derrida especially have many valuable things to say about personal responsibility, which Peterson simply ignores or vilifies without understanding. It’s a shame because Peterson would likely benefit greatly from reading these other thinkers, but he’s too deeply trapped within his own ideology to do so. Adorno’s treatises on mass culture and Derrida’s analyses of one’s responsibility to Others are very important. Being truly responsible requires an adequate understanding of how your society functions and how you relate to others within it structurally. Peterson doesn’t seem to care about any of this beyond a shallow fixation on one’s “career” and “family.”
In fact, it's surprising that a wealthy and socially appreciated white male doesn't get that many in this world are not given many possibilities not just to fulfill their wishes or realize themselves, but even just to not live in violence, suffering or deprivation of freedom. Apart from that, I can't really see in Peterson's "philosophy" something more than a marketing strategy to sell bad self-help books.
@@js4_y567 Is your personal library composed only of Jordan Peterson and religious books. Go to a bookshop! Or, if you don't want to, can't spend money on books, find a public library in your area.
He is a walking contradiction. For a man that is all about staying in your own lane, he is a professor of clinical psychology yet he acts as expert of multiple disciplines. He is so eyeroll worthy that obscurity is all he deserves yet his ego means one cannot. Additionally, in a strange way, I feel sympathy for him because all his bloviating about personal responsibility has gotten him is a mental breakdown not unlike the great uberman Nietzche himself.
Oh please listen to JP. He is an expert on EVERYTHING. His recent and latest expertise is Christianity. He isn't doing so great on the political front, but never mind, he's switched to religion. I believe everything JP tells me because he uses these big words I don't understand. That tells me right off that he's smarter than I am. Last night I prayed to JP for clarity and in a dream he told me he was god. And I believed him, cuz like I said he uses all these biggly words. And just lately on twitter, he told me which women are beautiful and which are not so that I now know heavier set women are very unattractive, so I am ditching my present girlfriend and looking for one that only eats beef and salt. Also one that doesn't wear makeup because women who wear makeup are inviting sexual harassment. This is something he actually said, (look it up) By his own admission he was accused on three separate instances of sexual harassment. No doubt, those females students were wearing lipstick--the little harlots. And I know he is right about this, because he is god and uses all these big words. I Pray in Jordan Peterson's name, Amen. Bottom line JP fanboys--if you want to swallow this charlatan's advice after he didn't adhere to his own "12 steps" you are beyond help. This is a man who turned to drugs when faced with his personal struggles. He turned to drugs when his wife was diagnosed with cancer--when she probably needed his support the most. Then he went to Russia for a cure. Yeah, that's manning up to life's struggles. People, how can you be so gullible????? TThsath-cam.com/video/Vj_lNRIlctY/w-d-xo.html
@@AMomentousMori Nietzsche , humble? Are you serious? Zarathustra is overman and teaches it, it is Nietzsches own mask and mouth speak. But JP , what can you say? Not an original thinker, that one is clear and obvious. Maybe he is charlatan and imposter? Or maybe he ia just too weak to be great ( going beyond good and evil)? Or maybe he is doing all because of money and fame ( same thing).
If you haven't already, could you do an episode on determinism (soft and hard), how it effects morality and the difference between human choices/causes and a lack of free will.
Here's my thought: the reason Dr. Peterson focuses so much on the responsibility of the individual is because he recognizes the world is a bleak place, and sometimes things happen that are out of our control that leave us in a pit, whether it be financial, psychological, existential, etc,. You may have family, friends, mental and physical health experts or whoever else who can support you and help you out of that pit, but ultimately the decision is yours and yours alone to brush yourself off and start climbing out, or to sit and wallow in it. The hard truth is the only person who truly cares about your life enough to pull you out of the lowest depths of hardship and despair is you. Everyone else WILL give up eventually if they don't see you put in the effort yourself
If we lived like Peterson we’d have a society of drones , neurotically plumping their pillows and cleaning their shoes before going to work and accepting every and any demeaning instruction because one is never perfect enough to question that society. Thanks for the video. Delighted someone made these points.
I am a firm believer in individual sovereignty for without it, it would be much more difficult, if not close to impossible to be socially responsible. Taking care of oneself, I believe is sometimes confused with selfishness, which at times can be exactly that, but if we can put our houses in some kind of order ourselves as individuals, even imperfectly, we can be better able to voluntarily collectivize for greater social change which can benefit communities. I am an individual and I stand by it, but as an individual I am also a part of a larger community. No man is an island as once was said( well maybe Simon and Garfunkel did) so responsibly to those around us is in fact preserving the ideal of the individual for the individual. Nice vid. Refreshing to see an actual critique of what was said not an attack on who said it. Looking forward to the next video on ideology.
I’m so glad you touched on this. I’m not a 12-stepper, but I know many and have spoken at and attended many an NA meeting. AA 12 steps is more cliquish, but NA here in Florida is ALL abouth the community. Speaking within the context of knowing that much of 12-steps is couched/based in Jungian philosophy (Peterson’s go-to) it is a decent model for the responsibility of each individual and how that plays out in the group dynamic. There’s a reason 12-steppers spend so much free time in these group meetings. Yes, we as individuals must own and take responsibility for ourselves and be the example for the next guy. If everyone in said group is in agreeance that we are all to hold each other’s feet to the fire SECOND to holding our own, then we are being reaponsible to the group as a whole. By being a reaponsible non-using addict/alcoholic you are being yhe best example to be followed by the group. It’s no secret that not one person in an AA/NA meeting is perfect. Far from it. The point is that everyone there is trying to better themselves as humans. Every single person there is putting some effort (some a little, some a lot) to a) recognizing the end goal of becoming a person that society deems worthy, b) becoming a person they themselves can love so they can in turn effectively love others, c)not compare themselves or their situation and/or use someone else’s situation/progress by which to measure their own. The problem with this is it doesn’t work over large diverse groups of people. We must ALL hold ourselves to the exact same moral standards for this to work, which is true for any utopia. But within it’s given context it can be argued that it works because you can’t effectively love another human being without first learning to love/value yourself. Anyone successfully navigating recovery of any kind knows this; you are your own best advocate. In his utopian model where everyone is in agreement, it works great. Edit: CBT is becoming the texhnique of choice among professionals, and it’s what saved me. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is more effective…working on yourself. The failures that come in 12-steps comes when people do not embrace the dogma; when they don’t live within the greater socail strata and live up to the expectations of the other personalities within that group. AA especially here in the Deep South (where Christianity is king) gets downright cult-like. NA is WAY more laid back and more loose, inclusive, welcoming, etc.
It just seems like a very thin argument. Wer already live in a culture that highly prizes individualism. It's recognized in law, employment, and in culture. So i seriously doubt that there are many people who don't recognize that they are responsible for themselves. The whole line if thought is a red herring.
Hearing peterson quotes is like nails scraping the inside of my skull. This is a man whose conservatism has poisoned is way of thinking so much that he has to make fantastical leaps and bounds in reasoning in order to justify what he already believes. This is why conservatives always have to add extra steps when they try and explain their worldview.
Just stumbled upon your Channel very recently. Couldn't help but binge for hours! Loving your videos so much, I've been sharing them on the little social media that I have. Only thing I'm unhappy about...is how late I found you! Thanks for all the hard work, interesting topics, deep research, and articulate compendious summarizes ^-^ Wish you the best, and that your content will soon be recognized for its high quality! 💙
The piece on responsibility here focuses on "Who's at fault? Who's to blame? Is it the individual, or the events and society around the individual?" But the ethic of personal responsibility is about the opposite of blame -- it's about creating, regardless. To take personal responsibility for yourself, your community, and the world, is to simply create, and to create without blame. Blame, here, is the opposite of responsibility. A concept of responsibility that is rooted in blame, "You're blaming the victim," etc., is from the get go, not an ethic of responsibility.
This is honestly one of the most professional criticisms of Jordan Peterson I have seen. No ad hominem or other slanderous logical fallacies were present. Just examining and responding purely to his philosophical and ethical stance that he espouses. I also like the approach you took by looking at examples of responsibility at different levels and scopes and determining which level is ultimately responsible for certain causal events.
I don't disagree. But im confused by your phrase *slanderous logical fallacies" .. slander would be covered by "ad hominem". So ... Sorry, I'm just confused
@@Robespierre-lI The lobsters bit hes sexist a misogisnist and a white nationalist are all slanders. Jordan Peterson also has pubically came out against White Nationalism and Andrew Tate.
What he take out of the scheme is Environment. Is like to say that the flower is fully resposible for its full situation. Yes we are not flowers, we have agency, but even agency and choices are dependt of local conditions, for example, a traumatised child will be depleted from much of its power compared with a child who was raised in a house with secure emotionaly mature parents
“Individual responsibility” is the watchword of those who would deny social responsibility and even society, itself. Margaret Thatcher and Ayn Rand come to mind.
I believe your argument is weakened by your incorrect etymological analysis of "responsibility". Characterizing it as equivalent to "ability to respond" allows you to focus on the external moral judgment of a person's ability to respond to a situation, free will, and accountability. Nevertheless "responsibility", from the Latin "respondere", is a combination of "re" (back; again) plus "spondere" (promise, guarantee). The external judgments are secondary to the person's commitment to promise or guarantee something to another person in its two meanings of "duty" and "accountability". Peterson has a focus on the "duty" aspect and you focus on the "accountability" aspect. Peterson might say "before blaming others fix your part of the blame" as in "it's your duty to address the blame first" which is basically a "cast the first stone " kind of sentence. You might respond "it's easy to find situations where the individual has no part in the blame and can't be held accountable by others or herself" which is true and a case that matches the "house in perfect order". Also note that to be responsible, in the sense of being accountable, is not identical to being the cause, as you seem to affirm in 13:12. You can "spondere" for someone else's actions. You can both be held accountable for someone else's actions and take the duty to amend the bad someone else did.
In the few 'Then & Now' videos I've watched, I've found that he argues with semantics instead of arguing with ideas. I still find Jordan Peterson's ideas valid after watching this video, though I can still understand its weaknesses, which I think Jordan would also agree. I think you shortly summed up the main things that are wrong with his argument. People will continue to demonize Peterson by misrepresenting him. His main point still stands: control all the things you can control to the best of your ability and that will position yourself best to deal with things you can’t control. This video is porn for intellectuals who disagree with right wing ideas, not to mention those who can't think for themselves. I can't blame people for watching it though. I also enjoy watching videos that validate me. But if your going to have beef with Peterson's ideas, it should truly come down to worldview.
@@carlossardina3161 I think this channel made a honest attempt to tackle the issue of responsibility and show the order side of the coin. It may have failed by just a razor's edge. Regardless, calling it "porn for intellectuals" feels unnecessarily harsh. I viewed it precisely to be challenged, and enjoyed it. No everyone can produce Roger Scruton's On Human Nature in every TH-cam video. Recommended, by the way.
Abused people want personal responsibility...for the people who once abused them. And JP is one perfect example of a very repressed formerly abused-kid
@@aaad3552 It's messed up that you don't think abused people want their abusers to be held responsible. That's a basic thing everyone should know. So you don't think cops should intervene in assault cause you think the cops can't know what that victim wants? Also, how do you know if averayugen7802 was abused or not.
He’s a frightened old dad, crushing ideas of masculinity haunt his decisions and drive his critique of identity structures. Dad say “Nooo change is bad unless it’s what I did and covers what I have failed on”
Peterson is coming from the position of “You are fucked anyway, so might as well try.” If you cut out his word salad, that’s what it comes down to. What he doesn’t seem to understand is, everyone already knew that.
actually common sense is not so common anymore. You just bought into the mainstream Media lie because Peterson is telling a whole generation of men to stop moaning and complaining and get their life together and then change the world. The left hates self agency.
This is a very good video overall. A few things to consider. I don't think Peterson would land in the deterministic camp. I watched him give a lecture in Ohio where he specifically discussed his perceived differences between Determinism and Free Will and he definitely landed on the side of free will. I don't remember the specifics exactly but I believe the reason you gave is precisely why he didn't land in the deterministic camp. Also I've noted him speak not only about multi variant factors for causation but also on joining political parties and communities in action to affect change. What I think he argues for is which comes first. "Perfectly" was the wrong word to use, you are right imo. Another part you point out, that being the accompanying nuances and facets of potential, are the secondary innumerable factors in each circumstances., How does one write a book about those things exactly? How would anyone apply all potentials in all situations and remain broadly prescriptive (rules or even suggestions) at all? I've heard him tell a story about a man with a low IQ who came to his practice that he helped get a job stuffing envelopes and the man still failed to perform the task, after many attempts. When should Peterson have stopped, if at all? I think this story highlights the danger of crafting beliefs and narratives. I think you are on the right path to investigating the truth in so far as you can muster such a thing, and I do commend you for that. The story I mentioned could be spun in a multitude of ways, one of which is that Peterson repeatedly stated no one knows what to do with the "13%" of people below the level capable of performing routinized simple tasks. Is he wrong about that? Have you ever encountered someone who repeatedly refused to act in any way but selfishly? How much of ones life should be spent on the people who legitimately refuse to help themselves? How do you specify in a short book exactly how to do what in each of the many potential ways people act nefariously, leech off of other people, or break culturally or legally imposed boundaries? The reference to the "factors too big to overcome" is a very broad category. Could Peterson have done better to intersperse situations that are outside of our control in these 2 books. Maybe. What would be the utility? Describing the fact that a person whose legs were amputated after a car crash and how it's not their fault the post office didn't have ADA compliant access points brings what relevance to what the average person should do about shaping their expectations of the world around them? If it shouldn't be about what you can control, what should "rules" about life be about? I think what you are looking for generally is what Peterson terms as chaos in Maps of Meaning. There you'd find examples of the kinds of "malevolence that characterizes life outside of your control" you think his philosophy is devoid of. It is hard not to think that after this it was his responsibility to have crafted a "better" philosophy on responsibility. Mandela, Ghandi, MLK. That's where you took "before you criticize the world" and turned it into "even the greatest among us should have kept cleaning their room." That man isn't even made of straw.
I watched a lot of Jordan Peterson and i can't really agree with this critique. It might be to much to ask, that everyone spends as much time as I have on his videos, but at some point He always acknowledges this kind of counterpoints, that poeple are limited, depend in each other and are subjected to all kinds of obstacles. And he also talks about the social and societal networks we are embedded in. You can be given everything at birth, but If you don't feel responsible for your own actions you can still wreck your life, as well as the lifes of the poeple who want to support you and demand that everybody else owes you even more. And you can be given an unfair lot but nontheless do your part in supporting your loved ones as much as you can. He talks a lot about tragedy and suffering and that the reduction of unnecessary suffering should be a priority for everybodies actions. The question is, how the sustainable strategy for that purpose looks like. And the problem with political solutions he describes, is that it is all to easy to get swept away by a bunch of activists who demand changes that they do not understand the implications of. I recently listened to "Critical Race Theory - An Introduction" and according to this book his description at the end, that you labled as a strawman, is spot on. Unfavorable, yes, but by no means implausible or unreasonable. The suggestions that the principle of personal responsibility would have meant that black poeple and women wouldn't have got the vote is just nonsense. Equal rights means more souvereign individuals and therefore a greater collective capacity for individual responsibility.
You seem to be cherry picking which contradicting Jordan Peterson bits you agree with. That's one of the problems with his specious approach to life. He tells people to make sure their own house is perfect before they try to change the World, when he clearly has not done the same, and he continues to ignore his own rule. He makes statements based on the most superficial and often hugely inaccurate understanding of other fields of study outside his own, and does so with a level of confidence that nobody with any real understanding of the subject matter would have, and this appeals to those for whom his world view is attractive. But he is demonstrably wrong in so many ways, from his frankly absurd take on AI/machine learning in his discussion with Matt Dillahunty, to his deeply inaccurate portrayal of bill C-16 (possibly the reason he achieved such fame in such a short space of time). His air of confidence is simply not backed up by an equal level of understanding, which is so unfortunate because he is a great communicator, and a charismatic lecturer.
@@b.melakail Start here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Act_to_amend_the_Canadian_Human_Rights_Act_and_the_Criminal_Code Watch any of his alarmist videos about the bill and then look for actual expert opinion from legal experts if you think he still has a point.
Here's one… Why were the Europeans that first arrived in America unable to do the work that enriched this country themselves? Did they misplace their "bootstraps"? Why didn't they see this as an opportunity to actually create something of their own? As it is… we owe black people for this society from all the work that they did for free on one hand. On the other… we owe Native Americans & Mexicans for having a place to do it IN THE FIRST PLACE! Sure… you created a bunch of stuff! Thank you! Good to know that OUR hard work on OUR land was put to good use. We'll take it from here. I mean… all we needed was steel & animals. We would probably have created a less divided society… but, it's cool.
Great video! Thank you. I am interested in Peterson, and in watching a few videos concerned with pointing out less than ideal points he makes I find myself leaning towards the belief that his thoughts are more stepping stones and less permanent fixtures. It is so helpful to have this kind of content that is measured, and honestly points out concerns with Peterson's claims.
I’m glad you are seeing the light but you really couldn’t disprove him on your own? Since when have you seen a self made billionaire? Since when have you seen a man find a loving relationship with a decent woman who isn’t using him? Since when have influencers stopped existing? Nothing he says has any material basis and ever has. He might as well be advocating for the divine right of kings
Point to add: morality is socially constructed, but it's not *only* socially constructed. The trolley problem is an excellent tool that psychologists have used to parse out what are evolved biological moral emotions versus mere social constructs (ape shall not kill ape vs. don't eat pork, for example). Some of our moral emotions exist because they're useful for the propagation of genes. Broadly: 1) don't hurt people 2) be fair 3) listen to your elders 4) don't eat that, it's dirty 5) the more like family they are, the more you bend/break the rules for them
No, it means being of service and providing value. Society then is made and re-made in our individual efforts... Contrary to demanding the world cater to infantile egos while wanting something for nothing.
The essence of Peterson’s teaching amounts to this: If your life sucks, it’s your own fault. Don’t blame corporate capitalism and social anomie. That’s what “individual responsibility” boils down to and that’s why it’s advanced by the ruling elite that controls the mass media.
@@bt4670 how does doing things like raising the minimum wage, offering workers protections, providing medical care for people who can't afford it help anyone's situation either?
The problem with always shifting blame upwards is the theres an infinite ceiling, the regulator of the regulator of the regulator. Instead responsibility should be relative to the domain of power (position in the chain of causality regardless of 'free will'). Nothing is ever 100% responsible for anything.
As a fan of Jordan Peterson I do agree with your argument. Definitely not the first person to argue against individual responsibility, yet one of the better perspectives I’ve came across! Great content.
I'm a little late to this vid, though I couldn't resist commenting anyway. While I listened to your criticisms, I was reminded of something said by William Churchill in response to a reporter accusing him of going back on his word. With the aid of a maritime analogy, Churchill explained that his job was to keep the ship of State on a steady course toward its destination. So if the ship begins listing to the left, he shifts balast to the right. If the ship begins listing to the right, he shifts balast to the left. Thus, it is only to the outside observer that his actions appear hypocritical. It is much the same with Dr. Peterson. As he has explained many times, his emphasis on individual responsibility is due to the absence of such concepts being properly articulated in contemporary society. So why would he pay lip-service to collectivist ideas when they already make up the majority of the discussions being had within the culture. Why would he take the time to articulate points of view different from his own when those views are already over represented?
The sense I got from Jordan on being careful when helping other. I had similar things happen to me. I am empath so wanting to helping other comes naturally to me. That is my first instinct. But what I have noticed that unless someone wants to be helped no matter how much you do for them its like pouring water in bucket with hole. It just goes to waste. In those situation you are just being enabler and not helping. And often people take advantage of your help and keep wanting your help without them showing any sign of improvement. So I have to be very very careful on who I help and whether if I am making an impact or not. So in that sense I relate to his book
Peterson’s urgings towards individual responsibility, is really calling for self sufficiency, which negates the balance, understanding, and need for being able to live with interdependence.
Interdependence is a critical part of the modern economic system, a system that thrives on specialisation. Modern production is maximised by not doing everything and concentrating on things one is good at, so if that is truly his calling, it's out of step with the basis of modern capitalism he loves so much.
Jean-Paul Sartre actually said: 'We were never as free as we were under Nazi occupation.' or something along those lines. His point was that, under those circumstances, where forces outside your control dictate everything you do, you have the most obligation. He actually said that 'under those circumstances, every act is a committment.' So I'm not sure it follows to say that the more things outside your control are factors dictating your circumstances, the less free will you have. Actually, people tend to engage most with their freedom when it is most under threat.
You are an individual. In society you deal with individuals. Society is composed of individuals. It is wrong thinking saying things like, "Society should do X..." Society cannot do X. The individuals in society have to do it. It always comes back to the individual.
Yet the individuals still exist in a network of other individuals whom actions cause directly or indirectly either good or harm to the first individual. When saying "society should do x" people generally mean that people in general should adopt or start promoting certain kinds of ways of being which improve the society, even when the issue on hand is not something that touches them immediately at that moment and time of life.
@makhnothecossack4948 So you're saying society doesn't have responsibility but the people (the individuals that make up society) do. Only people can be held accountable. You are simply trying to avoid using the term 'individual responsibility'.
@@lonelyb9661 No, I'm trying to say that the individuals have to become conscious of the fact that they do infact, exist in a society, and thus they have societal obligations based on their capabilities and resources.
@makhnothecossack4948 So you're changing the subject away from individual responsibility but agree with individual responsibility without using the term. Ok. Got it. The next step is for you to have individual responsibility and not everyone else.
@@lonelyb9661 My point is, that every single problem cannot be solved through individual responsibility, people need realism and perspective to understand that things are not as easy as it might look from the outside. It's not easy to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you have no boots at all. Also the proverb originates from criticism to the absurdity of the demand of those who are doing well that you just can just magically improve your state, no matter the external conditions, which is really avoiding responsibility of driving institutional changes to make it so that people can work and truly gain what they need to survive through that work.
The ironic twist to this video's message is that philosophers and psychologists have a tendency to over-intellectualise everything. As Marshall Ganz teaches, it is EMOTION that drives action in societal change contexts. Think of Greta Thunberg's anger at leaders' collective inaction over climate change, or the emotional appeals of the Brexiters to "take back control." Ganz came from a background in trade union activism, and is now a Harvard professor. He masterminded Obama's election 'movement' that swept him to power, and has advised activist movements all over the world. The "emotion drives action" dynamic is easily understood. What blocks us from taking action on our societal values and principles is our emotion, such as isolation or fear, and so this emotional blockage needs to be overcome. So isolation for example is overcome by solidarity. Fear is overcome by hope. So Peterson is at least partially right, perhaps without knowing why. All human change starts with learning, which in turn starts with a feeling... that shifts our attention.
Why did the dam fail? Well, I'm a root cause kinda guy, so my answer would be; because it was built. Nothing built by man can be expected to last forever, failure must be factored in and accounted for. Thanks for the video! Though I appreciate your perspective and that of Peterson... I don't see the purpose, for me personally, to adopt either philosophy, in their entirety. I choose to take what I want, and leave the rest. Yes, you did a good job at pointing out what was missing but these were things that I had already understood. Though I felt you may have been a bit too focussed or went a bit to deep, for some... I believe your thoughts actually compliment his and vice versa. I like to think of responsibility this way: Do the best you can, with what you have to work with when and where you are. When help is needed, ask for it. The more we help ourselves, the more help we can offer others. When I notice a piece of trash on the street I have a choice. I can ignore it, blame it's presence on the person who dropped it (whether on purpose, or accidentally) or I could choose to blame those responsible for cleaning the streets. I believe that my most responsible choice is to pick it up myself and dispose of it properly. This is not only helps me but helps society as well. With an open mind, I have the freedom to borrow bits of wisdom from all those that came before me via the collective consciousness, books, and videos like yours and Peterson's. Philosophies, when adopted verbatim, can be limiting... just like labels. I say, explore them all and take with you, what will serve you and your collective responsibilities the most. Remain teachable, fluid, and open to the ever changing world around us. There's always more to learn and more we can do to help. Thanks again!
I didn't have responsibility as I was growing up, growing up poor, fear of bullies and no real father role model to look up to to name but a few, that being said things got progressively worse as the years went on, was I responsible? the police seemed to think so, my family and friends also and me saying I don't have free will wouldn't of got me out of any of the mess I found myself in, the truth is I was just a product of my environment growing up and that wouldn't of changed if I hadn't of changed the story I was living, after I wrote out my life story and saw for myself that my life was a tragedy I actually gained a real sense of free will, I was finally able to see cause and affect, being with these friends meant this behaviour in me, working at this place enabled me to act this way and all the while learning that it was my part in all these things that had to change, thinking, feeling, actions made up my character and the best characters in life stand the best chance of having a good life, people do have to wake up, not everyone will for many reasons but I do believe Peterson is helping some people to become more than they are right now and more than they might of been, really enjoyed the video 🙏🏼
Something to be considered on your critique. He's a psychologist. His job is to motivate the individual, educate them, and help them out of a degree of symptoms all of which focus on a person's lack of self worth, or self motivation. These people generally have this because they are crushed by their interpretation of a collective, and do not see the worth of their own decisions. As such his talks are geared specifically towards providing a counterweight to those conditions. A collective is made of individuals, if each is not motivated, they will either fall in line to those who are, or stagnate. Jordan isn't wrong for focusing on personal responsibility. Moreover, if he were wrong, why would you feel the personal responsibility to correct him, if you didn't see it as your personal responsibility, which then proves Peterson right?
Philosophers always try to complicate simple and basic stuff. Take responsibility, a 10 year old can be told "Take responsibility" and act accordingly without having to read a 200pgs book on concept or theory of responsibility. Most of us intrinsically know what it is and know where the boundary lies. All of sane people know that there are things happening outside of their control (The things other people do and that naturally happens) and there are other things that are within their control (They can alter them by actions, behaviors and choices). But there is some use of such complexities. In the legal and judicial systems, in politics and economics it may be important to dive deeper in such threads. but to normal people just providing for themselves and those they love, the simpler the better. Asking oneself "What can I do?" or "What or who to blame?" have profound difference in life from individual to community even from one lifetime to generations. Coz even major social or economic movement can be traced back to individual choices and actions they just appear to be similar and organized. And most importantly they can be traced further back to few individuals who started such movements and organized them that's absolutely individual responsibility. Movements never just happen, responsible people make them happen. Like, there was someone who first pushed idea of "women should vote" and there were those who took their time to push it harder and harder... Well, there were a million things they'd rather do but they sacrificed all those to shoulder such responsibility. Pointing out the holes in J.B Peterson's doctrine, The other areas of life it doesn't encompass is like blaming a mallet for not being effective in cutting trees instead of bringing an axe. It is a character building not political or social doctrine. If you spent even a week somewhere full of people focusing outward and not inward as a common person, you'd probably stop throwing stones at such noble doctrine within a second.
Everything has its limits, there is no one size fits all solution and I do think adopting responsibility is a solid foundation for the majority of individuals. But as this video eludes to, there are some limitations of cause there are but it doesnt mean it is wrong. It just means for some people it is not effective. We will never find a solution that works for everyone (although we can keep trying), humans are extremely complex with different contributing factors to their current condition. The best we can hope for is to find something that is a solid starting point to build upon. I think the adoption of responsibility is very beneficial and I know more than a handful of people who have read '12 rules for life: an antidote to chaos' who have turned their lives around from the most awful childhoods. So I dont think it is wrong, as the title suggests but rather it has its limitations which is true for everything.
I think you meant 'alludes to' instead of 'eludes to', am I correct? Sorry, l'm a born schoolmarm. As for the rest of your comment, you seem to be addressing just one problem, when there are many.
@@AlicedeTocqueville That was your contribution? To correct a spelling error. Do you understand the social sciences and how arguments/claims/evidence work?
Benzo withdrawal is pure hell. I hope Peterson knows that when poor and middle class people go through drug withdrawal, we still have to get up and go to work every day. Or we lose our jobs, health insurance and become homeless and then die. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps sounds great when you're rich and can take a year off of work and fly to russia to get treatment. For those of us that have to actually work, something like benzo wd can ruin your entire life.
This is addressing philosophy at a different, deeper level than Jordan Peterson does, one must remember that Jordan Peterson is a psychotherapist and not a philosopher. It's inevitable that there will be inconsistencies between the starting points.
The problem isn't even that there are inconsistencies in the things he says. The problem is that he should be smart enough to see the biases he holds but fails to do so. For a supposed intellectual he sure contradicts himself constantly, and what's more, for somebody who constantly tells people to try and tell the truth always, he lacks the character to consider the other side's viewpoints as well. One of the most outrageous things I've seen from his end is one of the latest tweets that he posted after the recent Texas school shooting. I'm somewhat paraphrasing but it went something along the lines of "In order to stop these attrocities, the media must stop revealing the perpetrator's name. What they seek is attention and as long as they get it, school shootings will ever stop. Nihilism and a lack of meaning is what's bla-bla..." - When I read the tweet I was genuinely left dumbfounded at his stupidity and sheer ignorance. For a supposed intellectual with an IQ of 170, to think that a lack of individual responsibility is what's causing these incidents to happen and that they would suddenly all disappear if we just stopped publizising the names of the shooters is just a level of stupidity that's so amazing that it almost takes your breath away. Australia has introduced harsher gun laws after they experienced a shooting and it actually worked and still continues to do so. Other countries literally experience zero mass shootings, despite their population also suffering from mental illneds. Does he have evidence to suggest that America is so unique in its mental crisis compared to other countries that would lead one to such suggestion? Of course not. Really, I shouldn't even have to argue much further. It's a take so incredibly childish and naive... I really can't with this man. For somebody who constantly "owns" lefties for virtue-signalling while telling them to get their act together first, he sure suffers more from that than the same people he critizises. Out of all the online figures I know, he may genuinely be one of the biggest hypocrites I know of. I just cannot take much of what he says seriously. Oh god, and let's not get started on his poor views of Marxism. I think his debate with Zizek and the pullout against a debate with Richard Wolff are clear indicate of his hypocrisy. He thinks telling people to "Read. More" automatically means he's won the argument, but little does he know: he himself hasn't read enough.
-Jordan doesn't like reducing people to their identities, race, gender, class, etc. -You push back saying people are products of their environments, which is influenced by those characteristics. -Maybe a better way to word Jordan's point is that we should be careful reducing people to pure _products._
I don’t think this a good faith argument. Peterson recognizes many mitigating factors that impede success, but calls out flimsy excuses, which only serve to justify mediocrity. While nobody’s total success or failure is completely up to themselves, it’s also true people are often their own worst enemy through bad habits, counterproductive routines, excuses, over inflated self esteem, and self delusion.
Thanks. It would be interesting to consider Peterson's "philosophy" in the shadow of two Russian authors whom he seems to admire very much. I am talking about Dostoyevsky and Solzhenizin. Thereby, I think not so much about them as authors of fiction but as leading voices who did provide certain ideas, especially in the area of the harsh anti-Marxism (anti-semitism is also here) etc. Additionally, both Dostoyevsky and Solzhenizyn alike loved to play a sort of "Christ" bearing his cross to Calvary and suffering for our sins in advance. In order to execute a back-charge in times to come.
I wouldn’t appeal to systems-theory as the source without breaking down each of those systems into their root causes as well; In this the causes remain the human heart. And this is why I agree with Peterson. The truth of the matter remains the same in their effects generationally macro or micro.
Thank you for sharing light to this topic. I don’t agree with everything Jordan Peterson says, he’s cool and all but there is a flaw. He’s always telling it from a masculine biblical side of a story. Making his philosophical points and perspectives seem more valid than anything else without considering the facts and contexts of the topics and situations surrounded. I like how you base the video on an objective manner. Approaching it in a more honest and upfront way debunking definitions and contexts that are relevant to the topic. I enjoy this court like approach you bring rather than majority of the population who preach personal responsibility not knowing a clue about the context or facts about the situation.
I partially agree with Peterson in that identity politics, although not intentionally, have reduced people simply to their groups (but that isn't necessarily because of postmodernism alone, but also because of racism and right-wing identity politics as well). And what's more, even before "identity politics", people were already divided into groups which were more rigidly defined. So, his idea of a Hobbsian competition between groups is basically a description of human history, not just postmodernism. However, I do believe that individuality as self-expression is among the few things that allow you to break free from the groupthink and rebell against social norms. After all, most social movements started because a group of individuals wished to rebell against the given power structures, and so they banded together to do it; inspiring others in the process, but in all cases it comes from individual free will the need to rebel.
But your rebeling alone will not produce changes. You would be just an outsider prone to all kinds of bullying and segregation, which you would have to face by yourself. However, when organizing and grouping with like mindes people you can make your stance heard. Real changes only happen on a social level.
Yet I have nether seen any republican putting people in groups. It is always the dems doing that stop lying. Right wingers put individuality above everything else thus race doesn't matter. The dems would state their race and gender before even starting a sentence. But for the rest I agree with you.
@@karlalan3806The whole point of the video is to point out that the near total emphasis of individual responsibility blames victims of endemic injustices for their own failure while allowing (for example) people sponsored by a fathers emerald mine wealth to be “a self made man who built himself from nothing”….
Just offered to help my neighbor who just became a widow on Saturday to help get her groceries. I obviously have a big ego and she’s not trying hard enough. Maybe I should tell her to get on her bike 🚴. That’s a quote from a Norman Tebbit who blamed individuals for being unemployed in the 80s in the UK despite the fact the unemployment rate was 12%.
I really like some of his message. But when blaming Foucault for Marxism (which Foucault vehemently opposed to most of his adult life) I wonder if he has done all of the necessary reading :)
I think what's wrong in your critique is, there are bad things that need to be fixed in society but people who can't even make their own room will only make it worse and not better. We need responsible people who know how to do things to fix the bigger problems. I see this in blm protests, global warming protests, etc. People who know nothing, can do nothing useful, (in Jordan's words, who can't make up their own bed) are trying to solve huge complex issues and are clearly making it much worse
0:44: 📚 The video discusses the concept of individual responsibility as emphasized by Jordan Peterson and its limitations. 5:56: 🤔 The video explores the concept of individual responsibility and free will, and how it is influenced by various factors. 10:34: 🤔 The video discusses the concept of determinism and its implications on individual responsibility. 16:17: 📚 The video discusses the concept of personal responsibility and external factors that impact individuals' lives. 20:25: 🤔 The video discusses the skepticism at helping people and the individual accountability promoted by Jordan Peterson, while leaving out the larger social, cultural, and economic factors. 26:00: 🌍 The video discusses the influence of external factors on individual behavior and the importance of collective action in addressing social issues. 31:37: 📚 The video discusses Jordan Peterson's critique of identity politics and ideology, and the impact of social, economic, and cultural contexts on individual identities. Recap by Tammy AI
Going through the video, I feel that there is a confusion with what's been said, and what you want to say. Gandhi's example is the epitome of JP's idea of responsibility. Start where you can make a difference, and you can gradually acquire the power to do more. What's important here is that by setting your house in order, you will gain a clear idea of what is required to solve a problem, and what the problem truly is. Once you do this, you might be presented with the opportunity to do more. Take that even further. Also, as the video itself says "the external and internal" aren't completely disconnected. When you try and set your house in order, you are fighting against broader social evils / struggles that are manifest in your own case. Fight against them. Resolve them. You will be wiser for having done that. And you will be presented with more opportunities. I don't think he holds an individual responsible for having a medical bill larger than their capacity to pay it. That's a misunderstanding of individual responsibility - bearing confusion with your own definition of it. Responsibility is your ability to respond - how can you pay a bill that is outside of your financial capacity? But there are two broad classifications that Peterson will make here - were you an alcoholic who now suffers from alcohol related complications and is footing a large medical bill? You had it completely within your capacity to deal with your alcoholism and did not. Secondly, the medical system is a concern for millions of citizens. Peterson's doctrine of individual responsibility would hold every single person accountable here - for not doing their fullest. It might seem bizarre, but he clearly makes the point elsewhere - communist countries were able to inflict so much damage to their citizens only because the citizens all agreed that it was OK to lie. It would be interesting to explore such a charge on millions of citizens, but you can start exploring this. Doctors, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, families of patients - everyone, what could each of them have done differently so that the system does not behave it does - and you have individual responsibility, in everyone's individual circle of influence producing social outcomes. This is similar to a woman wanting to vote in Afghanistan. Surely it is brutal and uncharitable to say that it is one individual woman's responsibility that women do not have a vote in Afghanistan, but does that mean every woman now has to sit and bemoan this state of affairs? Is it that there is nothing that she can do and is helpless? Or she can perhaps find some power, some capacity, somewhere else. How so? Perhaps, by trying to set her house in order. I might be completely ignorant, but it might begin by asking for help in household affairs. In fact, it is within such considerations that the hero's journey and other myths give the power that they do according to Peterson's perspectives. The details of individuals are different, but these myths will be relevant to them all, apply to them differently, and produce a unique outcome in each case, making the world a slightly better place. To conclude, it would be interesting to have explicit statements about how Peterson's prescription of setting the house in order, taking up responsibility and gaining power and wisdom along the way solves - or could solve larger social problems.
By sophisticatedly blaming ideologies and calling out to relinquish these, Peterson does nothing less than setting up another ideology of which he thinks of as being a solution and of supreme superiority AND not an ideology. Whenever you hear _do this, don't do that_ just run ! Preaching is moral violence, I claim !
@@gravenewworld6521 Neoconservatism in the sense of Bush isn't. But "neoliberal" economic policy - which is what TINA and Thatcher are all about - is. It is described as "economic rationalism" in my part of the world. There is a lot of rationale for it, but I'm not going to bother proving it here, because it will take too long. Like anything complex, it takes time and effort to understand in full, so I won't waste my time giving an abridged version and having to teach you myself as you inevitably ask questions about the simple version that will require me to explain even more. On the other hand, if you want me to defend the rationality of Thatcherism specifically, I may gladly do that.
Fat Potatoe I know what it is. What I want to see is a logically coherent summary in favor of it. Because basically the development and acceleration of neoliberalism seems to have destroyed the few good things about living in a capitalist state during the Breton woods period and replaced it with a shitshow. It was always controlled by entrenched elites and neocolonialism but now it’s controlled by multinational corporations, neocolonialism, tech billionaires. Not to mention that rates of addiction, suicide, anxiety disorders and mental illnesses are higher than ever before. Basically a mass death machine determined by the flow of capitol not that the Breton woods years weren’t also a mass death machine but at least people living in the machine had kind of living wages and social safety nets. Now it’s a death machine sans safety nets, a living wage, containing a huge expanding section of the populace with severe mental illnesses. It’s also destroying its own environments ability to support life which is the exact opposite of why civilization was established. Yeah man I fail to see the logic in the society the neocons are attempting to pull ever further right. And of course there’s Maggie’s aphorism “there is no society”. The epitome of logic.
My own thought about what you have "missed" is almost universal with the most educated and cultured individuals. What we "miss" is the fact that our language and culture are much deeper and more determinative than we can actually perceive. The problem is that our "perceptions" are limited by our language and culture. If you cannot put it into words the concept will NOT even occur to you. The question of "individual responsibility" is limited by what we believe an "individual" is. I call this mistake "The Myth of the Individual." Even most "scientists" make this error. Consider that our brains evolved to allow us to form cultural groups who could work together to survive and thrive better than those NOT in a cultural group. Our cerebral cortex is, essentially, a tool that allows us to remember more than 150 individuals, their history, capabilities, knowledge, and their social connections. This is how we construct our "community." Most important this structure allows us to task each "individual" with duties and expectations that serve the social order. Moreover the "individuals" have a history and social connections that can enable or limit them. We "know" them and can predict how they will respond to social pressure. The reality is that the "individual" is a construction used to exert pressure on all social members to conform. This capability was quickly captured by some individuals as a form of social control, mostly religious and economic. The "individual" is necessary for a few, who see themselves as the natural leaders in the social group, to gain money and power. But the idea of an "individual" is a social construction, nothing more. From a purely scientific standpoint we are not individuals, but a large and complex community of creatures living together. Living in and on our bodies we have over 100 species of yeast and many more species of bacteria and other "parasitic" creatures who control our "personal needs and desires." Scientists are learning that the creatures living in our digestive system can influence our brain through the vagus nerve and determine what we "want" for dinner. We are only beginning to understand how the complex relationships we have with other creatures within and around us are influencing our behavior. It appears that ALL of our evolution is a form of coevolution in which what we have become is actually serving the needs of many other organisms in ways that we will, likely, never understand with our limited brain and language skills. This "myth of the individual" is a core reason for many of our troubles and seems poised to destroy our species as well as thousands of other species. Just a thought.
@UP Thank you for your reply. Yes. But we consider it to be a "primitive brain" only because we have a very distorted and limited concept of "intelligence." It may be that intelligence is a distributed quality that is not "owned" by any single "individual" creature. Plants don't need "brains" or eyes because they are connected with the entire life matrix. There are other ways of seeing. Jordan Peterson, like most of us, judges the world from his personal perspective. This is why he would probably say that he is "more intelligent" than a fungus. He is projecting his self-centered world view on the world itself. He is wrong. The fungus is probably much more intelligent than he is, and much more interesting as well.
"Advises to take as much responsibility as possible" "Develops a dependency on anti-anxiety meds" I wonder if those things are related, hmmm? I recently went through an anxiety phase and my psychotherapist advised me to think about how much we actually control our lives.
Maybe he's just being meta by providing himself as an example of "if you don't have perfect control over your life you should not expect to change the world in any meaningful way or tell people how to live their life"
I think you are missing the point, missing the forest for the trees per say. It's not about fault, in fact, it's about the difference between those who focus on who or what is at fault vs those who focus on the fact that their own response to issues, regardless of the cause of those issues, is the responsibility of the individual. For example, imagine coming across some trash on the ground, some people will claim it's not their trash as an excuse to leave it alone, while others will recognize that regardless of how the trash got there, they've noticed it and are now presented with the choice of whether to do what is needed (picking it up and putting in a trash can) or to leave it on the ground. To take responsibility means to focus on how you are responsible for your response to issues you encounter regardless of the cause if those issues. Largely this is an issue because of two major aspects of people, first, most people don't do what is needed to make their life better and near always justify not acting to improve their lives because all they think about is how their problems are the fault of somebody or something else, and second, people who focus on what they can do about their problems or how they can better work around their problems are significantly more successful in life than people who are focused on who is at fault for issues. Activists are a good example, as instead of building their own life to resolve a problem within their own sphere of influence, they instead run out into the world to play the blame game, to yell and shout about how others are at fault for the problems of the world. This is actually counter productive. Imagine a bus is hurtling towards a kid in the road clearly unable to stop. We can all see how it would be a virtuous thing to save the child from getting run over, but once you get someone in the crowd demanding that you go save the kid and talking about how bad terrible everyone is for being cowards for not saving the kid just builds resentment towards saving the kid, instead of feeling motivated to save the kid it builds conflict within us, yea we want to save the kid but doing what that [insert pejorative here] is demanding just rankles something fierce, and this internal conflict results in us being weak to fear or even forgetting about the child entirely as our attention gets consumed by the crazy person yelling in our face instead of doing what they preach. On the other hand, someone who focuses on doing the right thing themself becomes an inspiration to others to follow suit. Just consider how Peterson became famous in the first place, he refused to give in to tyrannical pressure, he didn't set out to become famous, and that appearance of doing right for the right reasons regardless of the terrible things that could happen as a result is inspiring, it's what we wish we could do as well. The same occurs for anyone who focuses on their own choices in life. If you can't get a job the normal way, don't sit on the couch blaming the world for your sorry state of affairs, go out and seek a solution, make a sign saying "I'm available for hire, price negotiable" and wander the street corners, or build a mousetrap, from scrap on the roadside if need be, and then go find someone with a mouse problem and sell your mousetrap. Another aspect I think you fail to see is that if everyone, or really most people, deal with problems individually then the problems generally also get solved collectively as a side effect. For example, imagine a pile of litter scattered around a public space that'd take a few hours to clean up, well if you just picked up a single handful everyday on your way to work and inspired three others to do the same who in turn inspired three more each, well in a very short amount of time the whole public space becomes litter-free. Additionally, once those types of issues are on the path to resolution, we end up with more free time with which we can then work on things that actually require collective collaboration, such as infrastructure or going to the moon. But any collaborative project falls apart when everyone involved is constantly distracted by the problems they aren't resolving because they are too busy complaining about how those problems are other people's fault.
Peterson thinks we should accept the “moral-social scaffolding,” essentially, and that people who’s actions lie outside of or in contrast to societal values (not just ideologies and views but things like careers, material objects and the perception of material conditions) have a personal failing of their own. If I’m getting it right.
But is that true? Not always. It's about the denial of morality existing in the relations between individuals, and the imposition of hierarchy based on self-serving and immoral values by the powerful. It's self-serving because it legitimises the status quo, and ignores things inherent to the hierarchy that are immoral. It denies the possibility of addressing those problems either individually, or collectively. That is itself unnatural. And worst of all, it actually undermines his own argument for the existence of the Sovereign Individual. In such a framework, individuals are stuck in a deterministic loop of cleaning their room as Rome burns, just because an individual cannot put out the fire himself. But he can sweep up the ashes coming into his room, right? That's not how fires are fought in civilisation. We develop collective solutions to such problems, by creating institutions and cultural norms like fire brigades, and fines for using portable barbecues in forests. Peterson saves most of his ire for social justice and economic problems, for which there is no tenable justification either practically, or morally for doing so. And yes, morality is abstract, and a cultural artifact, but as Peterson implicitly claims that ground as a hill to die on, by overstating the limits of personal agency and individual responsibility, who am I to deny him his wish? The whole debate is not about the existence of individual responsibility, but the extent of it, and the denial of collective responsibility, upon which any civilisation stands upon. Whether or not you agree with Marx's conclusions, is really irrelevant. We are a communal species, whose survival and success is down to their ability to act collectively. So, in misinterpreting Stoic and similar philosophies, he denies us any further meaningful progress beyond the limits he's comfortable with. To argue against this is not utopian, nor any other so called "leftist" label anyone would like to slap on it. Evolution and progress is what bought us here, and the only constant is Change. And the debate cannot be swept under the carpet for meaningful change, when not addressing them is in its most extreme way, endangering not only individuals, but our species as well. Our polity and economy should evolve to better meet our needs. And that's where the real cleaning needs to be done. And the debate might never end, because new problems arise and new contingencies must be created to deal with them.
Cool video, arguments and well-spotted criticism! However, history has shown that social and collective responsibility is often than not based on structural violence models and vague to apply to an individual experience. We experience life through only our thoughts and actions and limited to control generational violence around us rooted in culture, socio-economic factors etc. Taking a broad interdisciplinary picture beyond philosophy, I agree with Peterson anyway since we can be individually responsible for our own happiness and without individual responsibility people end up shifting blame and expectations and internally peaceful social/collective responsibility is mostly a product of people taking individual responsibility in the first place.
Imagine a person with their house in actual perfect order 😂. Since perfection is impossible I guess we should just dissolve government completely since no one should be criticizing the world.
There is no political solution, there's only virtue. Institutions can only contain chaos they can never fix the world. You don't understand Peterson because you don't understand irony: that in trying to save the world, you destroy it.
I somewhat suspect this is the intent. Paralyse people, or at least give reason to critique their action whenever such is an attempt to change the systems. Such results in the most conservative and traditionalist of outcomes. Even though no sensible person would follow this rule, he can point to it and use it to criticise their attempts, call them hypocrites, and to the most binary and simple of thinkers, his point makes sense because it feels right to them.
@@nastysimon For sure, anyone who actually attempted to follow this rule would be forever incapable of attempting to effect any meaningful change in the world outside of their most immediate surroundings. JP seems like a pretty smart fellow, I used to enjoy watching a lot of his lectures, but I really don't understand how he can make such an absolute statement (by using the word perfect) and actually believe it, it's just so ridiculous. He himself is far from perfect yet is criticizing the world by writing self help books. I just don't understand....
Isn't the idea simply that preaching determinism might *cause* someone to eschew their responsability for making better personal choices because making the better choice is often harder? The flip side of that is the idea that preaching personal responsability to someone who's had a really shitty hand dealt to them might cause them to see that as a personal failing, making them think that they're deserving of it all and that their inability to help themselves due to the trauma is continued proof of their worthlessness, which ends up having the same effect as preaching determinism. Neither idea really discounts causation, but they really shouldn't be enemies either, hardlining either of them will cause some group of people to justify not making the harder but better choices that will improve their lives. So instead, it's a balance, like most other things in life
@@phosspatharios9680 I mean, I'm not a Jordan Peterson fan. I'm even pretty sure I'd fall into the "anti-Peterson"-category, because just as much as I disagree with the sentiment of this video, I equally disagree with Jordan Peterson. But it's not because I believe that personal responsibility isn't a thing, or that it can't be used as a powerful tool for self improvement. It's more that I think preaching that to people in the way that he does is pretty disgusting and sends a very detrimental message for the weakest and most abused people in our current society, as anyone who is not in a position to be able to turn that into a productive strategy for improving their life will instead end up in a deepening spiral of self blame. Now, as I said, preaching full out determinism isn't the antidote, it has potentially equally detrimental effects. So instead, the message should be one of both understanding and empowerment, empathy and sovereignty. My real problem with Peterson goes beyond the points that this video debates (which I still actually think are his most benign aspects). They instead stems from his general dishonesty and his fabricated fear mongering about "cultural marxism" and academia, which has no basis in reality and only serves to further legitimize bigotry and hatred by dressing it up in a suit and eloquent phrasing. Sorry if I burst your bubble, but even someone with a more nuanced take on the determinism vs personal responsibility issue can still see Jordan Peterson for what he is.
The author of this video essay and Jordan Peterson seem to be talking at cross purposes. Peterson is not casting blame on the child who fails a maths exam or the single mother who can’t pay her bills - his emphasis seems to be psychological. There are a great many things in the world that we cannot hope to control, but Peterson believes the one thing we can control is our inner life. His ideology of the sovereign individual is a belief in *inner* responsibility and the human spirit, not the ability to be in control of all (or even any) extrinsic circumstances. In the face of inevitable adversity, do we think pragmatically, and with dogged determination, or do we become bitter and resentful? He uses the example of ‘being the strongest person at your father’s funeral’ - he never claims that you can stop the father from dying, only that you can try to be the author of your psychological response to that fact. I think the best defence of Peterson’s Protestant-soul ideology here is that we may not be able to help being poor or stupid, but we can transcend psychologically through ‘faith’ (in God, or in ourselves). Whatever the circumstances are, it’s the only life we’ve got and it is a choice to live as if we have power and hope. Nobody said it was easy, but it might be worth a try.
Incidentally I don’t believe we always do have control over our psychological response, but this seems to be Peterson’s point, not that we have control over (and therefore must be held entirely responsible for) our tangible circumstances.
Take for example a government that is systematically restricting rights for a specific population. In the face of such external adversity, Peterson would argue that individuals should attack those policies with dogged determination? That, pragmatically, they should work collectively to better their position and remove the harmful policies? That people are entitled to assert their individualism and be called by whatever name or pronouns they prefer?
@@zadig08 well presumably attacking those policies with dogged determination wouldn’t be a bad start… I think the psychological argument is that it’s preferable, more meaningful, and more practical to remain ‘mentally strong’ (which might bring about the requisite decisive and effective action) than it is to cry and weep about one’s condition. Having said that, he is obviously addressing and selling books to people who don’t live under those kind of conditions.
@@simeonasmith He's a Canadian with a large US audience, correct? The US certainly makes a concerted effort to harm specific populations both within & outside of its borders. Peterson's goal for others is that they take control of their lives and liberate themselves from internal strife, correct? So it is a good thing when one asserts their individual sovereignty and expresses their identity in a way that suites them. After all, they're no longer left to cry & weep about their inner conflict. Their mental fortitude has directly led to taking decisive action. They have in effect 'become the strongest person at the funeral' by refusing to let their inner turmoil direct their external life. They are instead taking the reins & full responsibility for their actions & behavior.
@@zadig08 yes I think that’s the idea. And there’s some wisdom in that advice, and also some problems with it. The main issue with it that I see is that it is a fundamentally conservative position that seeks to perpetuate the status quo. Advising people to ‘grin and bear it’ is perhaps good advice with regards to a personal crisis, but it isn’t good advice when faced with tyranny or ongoing injustice on a larger scale. To act out that advice on a societal scale would be, to some extent, a sin of omission.
Script & sources at: www.thenandnow.co/2023/07/01/why-jordan-peterson-is-wrong-about-responsibility/
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Right on point as far as I'm concerned. He gets some things right within his purview, but his common excursions into philosophy and politics are where he deserves criticism.
You sure the NS were the bad guys? Have you seen western culture lately? We don’t have nations or culture in the west any more. I’d say we lost by winning WW2.
I think you've been more than fair to him. His politics focusing on the individual is a means of fostering and coddling anti-politics. The idea that community and communitarian world views are some how terrible. It also doesn't account for the will of sacrifice. What of jobs that require one to be self-less (nurses, therapists, councilors, teachers, etc.)?
Don't know how you could think 12 rules is in anyway a good book. His baleful truisms are as novel and insightful as a tin of baked beans. The order and chaos subtext is a device used to frame what he distrusts as agents of chaos: feminists , stoners, environmentalists, the needy , etc. What he doesn't distrust therefore must be orderly. The Coda section of 12 rules, cod Messianic guff.
"What shall I do with my wife?. Treat her as if she is the holy mother of God who will give birth to the world redeeming hero"? Paul Thouroux said , " why?, so often does the Bible become the happy hunting ground of an unbalanced mind".
Peterson doesn't deny there is a place for collective action, but believes that change at the individual level is of primary importance. What if all people adopted the maximum amount of responsibility, for themselves, their families, and those around them? If they spoke the truth and acted in a forthright manner. Develop their moral framework and individual competence as best they can. What does society look like?
I'd argue that a grass roots change that might arise from Peterson's approach would have a greater positive impact on society than the social justice activist approach. Is pride month improving anybody's life more than if they got their shit together? BLM/Antifa is led by exactly the bitter and resentful people Peterson describes and has caused a great deal of suffering to black people especially. Homicide rates have tripled in the cities where they are most active. What if they had got their own house in order before they tried to run a society?
I think you've created a false dichotomy of individual vs social change. Changing individuals IS a way to change society in the most profound way. Are the guards at Auschwitz victims of social pressure or individuals who lacked courage and forthrightness, who shirked their responsibility to walk the path of the 'hero.' You mention Ghandi and MLK - heroes, they are exactly the kind of individuals Peterson's philosophy seeks to nurture. People who can think for themselves, make choices, and lead.
What makes a hero and what makes a nazi? What are the limits of a society filled with competent individuals who are willing to take on maximum responsibility? I can't see any.
Also, do you have an explanation for your audiences' deranged refusal to properly engage with Petersons' ideas? He is often portrayed as a right wing white supremacist. A literal nazi in one notable case. Do you agree with that characterisation?
I heard a philosopher say that we transitioned from *agent morality* (ex "how should i act in order to be virtuous"-it’s about the doer) to *patient morality* (ex "how should i act such that my actions don’t cause harm"-it’s about those who live the consequences) and we’re now starting to focus on *relation morality.* This latter paradigm rises from the understanding that everything is a network, your car exists solely as the product of a network of technologies and tools (production lines, welding machines, the internal combustion engine, the mining industry, paved roads, refineries and gas pumps, etc etc-bring a Ferrari back in time before paved roads & gas stations existed and you have a very complex piece of metal) and you yourself exist solely as a member of a network of humans. A human by itself is not even as smart as an ape, which comes almost fully "programmed" as it were, out of the box. A human cannot be human by itself, as opposed to something like a wolf, sheep, zebra. We need to be welcomed amongst society to develop to our human potential-your name, your language, critical thinking, your clothes, your dreams and desires, the music you listen, the computer and internet protocols you use, highways and streets, airplane flights, medicine and dentistry, soap and toothpaste, being a punker or a rapper, etc etc *are stuff you’re receiving/unlocking thanks to the network you’re part of.* Imagine a very dynamic sophisticated person living in San Francisco, trading crypto, developing DeFi, listening to The Weekend while driving his Ferrari to a party, all dressed up with fine clothes and an attitude to stun. Now imagine the same individual if they would’ve grown up on a deserted island (with plenty of food and water at an arm’s length) without taking part in the human network. Yep, take away the network and what remains is the ape. Each node is only as strong as the network, meaning that we’re as complex, resilient and healthy as the social network is. Given this, it means that *in order to serve the individual you have to tend to the nature of social relations.*
Right now, humanity is a mix of moral attitudes that aren’t taking our relational nature into account-instead, our moral attitudes stem from the view that we’re magic individuals, independent and wholly humans by ourselves. This feeds back into the poor quality of life we have. Society today and us as individuals are very primitive compared to our potential, unfortunately we cannot see ourselves any other way but highly (or even "ultimately") evolved.
Passage from an essay tackling this very insight:
**
Interesting! Do you remember the name of the philosopher who talks about relation morality? Thanks
@@LopusArgenteus Sadly no. It might have been an episode on cognitive scientist John Vervaeke’s youtube channel, but i’ve watched many of his themed series and quite a few interviews. Too many to remember specifics.
@@LopusArgenteus Bruno Latours Actor Network Theory talks about it. Alot of Object Oriented Ontology stuff. There's a guy named Adam Miller that wrote something called Speculative Grace which applies A.N.T. to ethics and religion. It's not religion typically thought of at all. It comes from the conversation surrounding Paul right now in the continental tradition.
@@thotslayer9914 is this like an honest question? Or like a I'm trying to be cool, look how stupid this guy is and smart I am, please think I'm cool, kind of question? Both valid, just curious.
this is just act v consequentialist utilitarianism
I'm gonna tell you what's the limit of Peterson, the fact that he has CLEARLY never read a line of Derrida or Foucault, even less Baudrillard and has the spine to critique them.
He's read *The Communist Manifesto* twice though. :D
Collectivists never get any further than how other people should not and should act.
At least invidualists start improving themselves and from there work outwards improving the world by adding value and productivity.
Collectivists are impotent preachers that limmit others.
@@thijsjong Is it possible you are simplifying the stance of Structuralist and Neo-Marxist philosophers? I mean they (Foucault, Derrida, Marcuse and so on) have spent years and years studying, critiquing and expanding Marxist and structuralist literature. We should try to understand where others are coming from and give their work an honest shot, no?
@@thijsjong Now I'm confused. Isn't Peterson also telling people how to be and to act? It is inherent in the meaning of the word "Rule", I'd say.
AMEN AMEN AMEN
Jordan is living in the same city as myself.....Toronto is having an awakening to racism against our natives and blacks and he doesn't let us heal....He was a fan of Prof. Rushton of London Ontario's who taught racism at Western University.....London Ontario has had serious killings of
Having read self-help when I was younger, I was decidedly underwhelmed by Peterson's self-help. He would often take the long way round to say the same things you find in every second self-help book. Combine it with his dogmatic and inflexible ideology, and you have a recipe for nonsense.
The “rule” of helping only those who want to help you is ridiculous in my opinion. If you are uncertain, whether or not you want to help someone based on you not being sure of their intent to help you or their usefulness, you clearly do not have their best interest at heart, because otherwise your desire to help them wouldn’t be dependent on their usefulness to you. So if we now apply the same mindset to the person you are deciding on whether or not to help, they wouldn’t help you either because of this very reason, which would lead to the condition of neither yours, nor theirs applying. So all in all we would be living in a society where there can be no cooperation if this rule were to be implemented by everyone.
The biggest problem with JP is he does not take his own advice. The man went a media tour for years telling everyone who we should live while having a terrible addiction to Benzos. He was not cleaning his room.
But he put out dramatic videos of his suffering and crying over that - my guess is that he felt that emotion in that circumstance balanced out his "rational authorianism", which he seems to cling to.
It's called being a human being. No one is perfect.
I just recently got to know about this Peterson and, after listening to a few his lectures and interviews, i can't really see the reasons to his huge popularity: he brings nothing new to the table, but he does that with a lot of presumptuous pomp and self righteousness.
To see who are the "stars" of our times, from music to cinema, from politics to philosophy, tells a lot about the fading out of any critical thinking in the decadent west.
He used to be quite self aware & honest about how he achieved popularity - successfully monetising anti-SJW rhetoric by making bigotry sound pseudo-intellectual
Spot on there 🙌
This is sounds so much like correspondence bias or attribution effect.
I'm a fan of Jordan Peterson but I think you are nailing his weaknesses. I find his philosophy very useful but he often overstates his case and therefore needs to be read with that in mind. I think the rancor that is encouraged from public intellectuals (especially today) and his own apparent sensitivity has robbed us of a chance to see his weaker arguments fairly challenged in a rigorous way. Bravo!
It’s not philosophy mate.
@Ross Leeson That's just a assertion can you give arguement for your claim.
@@blankname5177 Peterson is a Clinical Psychologist that emphatically states that you should stay in your lane. So logically, he has no standing to discuss philosophy. That right there is both valid and sound based on his own apparent "authority."
@@rossleeson8626 it is philosophy. Yes he ties in his experience as a clinical psychologist, especially when he talks about personality types, but much his work is VERY EXPLICITLY philosophical, he just uses evidence (lol) to justify it. Most of his philosophical arguments follow from Christian philosophy and hand picked studies
@@bruhdabones could you give me a unique philosophical claim made by him? genuinely curious
I'm not sure whether or not Peterson actually makes the best case against himself himself. After all, he doesn't exactly hide the story about his anxiety and severe drug withdrawal symptoms. So whoever actually follows this guy sees that a tidy room won't actually fly you out around the world to take care of you in dire straits.
Well that...
...And comparing human society to the mating hierarchy of a sub species of lobster.
Thanks for the critic...I personally didnt take Jordan Petersons view to be so absolute either on responsibility or in helping others or on ideology..I have other areas where I would challenge him but not specifically those ...in response to you key points
Responsibility : MY thinking is that he is not blaming a person for their poverty (I don't see any line where he has specified that ) he is only pushing us to the limits to be honest about challenge ourselves to pick up the mantle of what we have power to control (I remember a conversation where he was criticising the USA for their backward social care system, when compared to Europe, for example)..and like you and he say to not get resentful.
Helping others: Although I agree his statement that "the literature is clear" (if one paper was his source) would be unfounded ...I didnt think he was advocating not helping a fellow worker but it was about the impact on someone who was not "playing the same game as the group" ...I think this is a basic animal behaviour...and i have been on the wrong side of that myself it is a lesson in the social rules of the group (although very painful to me and most) on how to integrate.. learn it or be excluded. (obviously it depends upon the circumstances not being ridiculously extreme, such as racism etc)
Ideology : I am probably biased here by familiary experience of feminism , which I humbly believe I fully agree with. However not when it turns into hatred of men per se and tries to make them the cause of all world ills and worth less than women then we have a problem. Don't get me wrong I believe most feminists are reasonable I am just talking the extremes. I felt your reference to Nelson Mandela, MLK, building a bridge etc misleading ....as I understand him, he is not against such movements ....he is not against ideology but against tribalism/extremism of ideology, and definition of their tribal good by comparison to the bad of the other tribe , indeed the creation of the negative "other" is the problem which leads to exclusion and hatred of that other ...something we are seeing more and more of with the current politricks. ...however I will now watch you next episode, on the same, and see :)
Very good post.
Well said mr man
Jordan said he used to be for socialism and said he wasn't anymore. He went to extremes of being people against talking about the problems of prejudice against people like ethnic people and women without learning of what they had to say first and just being close-minded to them.
Kavernacle has a video on Jordan being ok with women getting s3xually assaulted in the workplace and then blaming women for it.
Look at comments from mgtow, red pill men, men rights, conservatives, and Andrew Tate. They also blame all problems on women and advocate to take voting away from women cause they said women ruin society.
When conservative Matt Walsh heard a woman was assaulted, he said he thought she deserved it cause the people in his group think women ruined society and are all libs. I also saw them saying the same of African Americans.
Also, some people exaggerate and lie and say some fems hate men when they don't. When they just say things like criticizing harassment. Or when they don't want people shaming and saying women can only be homemakers, baby machines, and subservient to men. Etc. Which people like conservatives do force those things on women and bully them if they don't do it.
grivers88 - I entirely agree with your points. There is a lot of misunderstanding of JP's philosophy in this video.
In addition I'd say Peterson was a clinician, as well as an academic, and , speaking myself as a psychotherapist, I can confidently assert that helping clients take personal responsibility towards a desired outcome (irrespective of the ultimate success or lack of) is infinitely more empowering than allowing them to stagnate in a self victimising inner orientation (i.e. being the victim of circumstances).
@@Lalallalu How did he misunderstand him?
¡Best critique of Peterson I've seen! I used to respect him a lot but after listening "talking" about posmodernism and creating a strawman such as "neo-marxism" I saw him as what he is, a pseudo intelectual and more of a showman than anything else.
his point on that is that post modernists tear down grand narratives only to adopt a Marxist viewpoint, that's it and showing their dishonesty from that as even acknowledged by Zezek in his debate. It's not that complicated it's just double speak that just describes inconsistent ideological views, like slavery in a democracy or an anarchic state.
@@charlesramirez587 Tell me you don't know anything about Postmodernism without telling me you don't know anything about postodernism.
@@samij6071 why?
@@charlesramirez587 you already did. Post-modernism is against all grand narratives. Marxism is a grand narrative. There you go.
@@charlesramirez587 with this comment I can see that you have never read any posmodern author and you only "understand" posmodernism through memes, Internet "explanations" and reductionism. If you want to critique something like posmodernism that's fine but you need to study it first, read some Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard, Deleuze etc. And least read an scholar expert in the field and make your own mind. The issue is, people listen to Jordan Peterson's "explanations" of what postmodernism is and they think that's all they need to know about the subject and just like any dogmatic person following their religious leader, they don't ask questions or investigate further, sheeps basically. Here is very well done video to least start understanding the subject in a more physosophical way (like it should)
th-cam.com/video/cU1LhcEh8Ms/w-d-xo.html
Again is even better if you read the authors for yourself. Also to compare posmodernism with marxism or identity politics is to really know anything about what the posmodern is and what authors exposed. And just to be clear I'm not "defending" posmodernism, I'm defending truth and the proper understanding of any subject.
Great video. I hope Jordan Peterson fans and even Peterson himself will see this.
It’s ironic how irresponsible Peterson is as a “public intellectual.” Marxist and Postmodern thinkers like Adorno or Derrida especially have many valuable things to say about personal responsibility, which Peterson simply ignores or vilifies without understanding. It’s a shame because Peterson would likely benefit greatly from reading these other thinkers, but he’s too deeply trapped within his own ideology to do so.
Adorno’s treatises on mass culture and Derrida’s analyses of one’s responsibility to Others are very important. Being truly responsible requires an adequate understanding of how your society functions and how you relate to others within it structurally. Peterson doesn’t seem to care about any of this beyond a shallow fixation on one’s “career” and “family.”
In fact, it's surprising that a wealthy and socially appreciated white male doesn't get that many in this world are not given many possibilities not just to fulfill their wishes or realize themselves, but even just to not live in violence, suffering or deprivation of freedom.
Apart from that, I can't really see in Peterson's "philosophy" something more than a marketing strategy to sell bad self-help books.
@@Godsen5 probably still better than a straight dive into the bible/quran/.. hahah
@@js4_y567 Is your personal library composed only of Jordan Peterson and religious books. Go to a bookshop! Or, if you don't want to, can't spend money on books, find a public library in your area.
@@Godsen5 Full of resentment, what a repulsive comment
@@Godsen5 you misunderstood, i am not a "fan" of jp.. not a hater either
He is a walking contradiction. For a man that is all about staying in your own lane, he is a professor of clinical psychology yet he acts as expert of multiple disciplines. He is so eyeroll worthy that obscurity is all he deserves yet his ego means one cannot.
Additionally, in a strange way, I feel sympathy for him because all his bloviating about personal responsibility has gotten him is a mental breakdown not unlike the great uberman Nietzche himself.
Oh please listen to JP. He is an expert on EVERYTHING. His recent and latest expertise is Christianity. He isn't doing so great on the political front, but never mind, he's switched to religion. I believe everything JP tells me because he uses these big words I don't understand. That tells me right off that he's smarter than I am. Last night I prayed to JP for clarity and in a dream he told me he was god. And I believed him, cuz like I said he uses all these biggly words. And just lately on twitter, he told me which women are beautiful and which are not so that I now know heavier set women are very unattractive, so I am ditching my present girlfriend and looking for one that only eats beef and salt. Also one that doesn't wear makeup because women who wear makeup are inviting sexual harassment. This is something he actually said, (look it up) By his own admission he was accused on three separate instances of sexual harassment. No doubt, those females students were wearing lipstick--the little harlots. And I know he is right about this, because he is god and uses all these big words. I Pray in Jordan Peterson's name, Amen. Bottom line JP fanboys--if you want to swallow this charlatan's advice after he didn't adhere to his own "12 steps" you are beyond help. This is a man who turned to drugs when faced with his personal struggles. He turned to drugs when his wife was diagnosed with cancer--when she probably needed his support the most. Then he went to Russia for a cure. Yeah, that's manning up to life's struggles. People, how can you be so gullible????? TThsath-cam.com/video/Vj_lNRIlctY/w-d-xo.html
Nietzsche was far more humble - he never regarded himself as an ubermensch.
@@AMomentousMori
Nietzsche , humble? Are you serious? Zarathustra is overman and teaches it, it is Nietzsches own mask and mouth speak.
But JP , what can you say? Not an original thinker, that one is clear and obvious. Maybe he is charlatan and imposter? Or maybe he ia just too weak to be great ( going beyond good and evil)? Or maybe he is doing all because of money and fame ( same thing).
If you haven't already, could you do an episode on determinism (soft and hard), how it effects morality and the difference between human choices/causes and a lack of free will.
Yes. This. Please..!
Peterson is a product of his upbringing in small town Alberta, the most conservative, right wing province in Canada.
Not Canadian, but that's what I've been suspecting. The entire struggle with religion as well. The guy us just a mess.
Here's my thought: the reason Dr. Peterson focuses so much on the responsibility of the individual is because he recognizes the world is a bleak place, and sometimes things happen that are out of our control that leave us in a pit, whether it be financial, psychological, existential, etc,. You may have family, friends, mental and physical health experts or whoever else who can support you and help you out of that pit, but ultimately the decision is yours and yours alone to brush yourself off and start climbing out, or to sit and wallow in it. The hard truth is the only person who truly cares about your life enough to pull you out of the lowest depths of hardship and despair is you. Everyone else WILL give up eventually if they don't see you put in the effort yourself
If we lived like Peterson we’d have a society of drones , neurotically plumping their pillows and cleaning their shoes before going to work and accepting every and any demeaning instruction because one is never perfect enough to question that society.
Thanks for the video. Delighted someone made these points.
I am a firm believer in individual sovereignty for without it, it would be much more difficult, if not close to impossible to be socially responsible. Taking care of oneself, I believe is sometimes confused with selfishness, which at times can be exactly that, but if we can put our houses in some kind of order ourselves as individuals, even imperfectly, we can be better able to voluntarily collectivize for greater social change which can benefit communities. I am an individual and I stand by it, but as an individual I am also a part of a larger community. No man is an island as once was said( well maybe Simon and Garfunkel did) so responsibly to those around us is in fact preserving the ideal of the individual for the individual. Nice vid. Refreshing to see an actual critique of what was said not an attack on who said it. Looking forward to the next video on ideology.
@@thotslayer9914 That was kinda mean. 😅
Your Simon and Garfunkel reference to one of my favorite songs has pleased me. Great music taste friend
It is still a lie we tell ourselves; And it is not even a useful social tool.
I’m so glad you touched on this. I’m not a 12-stepper, but I know many and have spoken at and attended many an NA meeting. AA 12 steps is more cliquish, but NA here in Florida is ALL abouth the community. Speaking within the context of knowing that much of 12-steps is couched/based in Jungian philosophy (Peterson’s go-to) it is a decent model for the responsibility of each individual and how that plays out in the group dynamic. There’s a reason 12-steppers spend so much free time in these group meetings. Yes, we as individuals must own and take responsibility for ourselves and be the example for the next guy. If everyone in said group is in agreeance that we are all to hold each other’s feet to the fire SECOND to holding our own, then we are being reaponsible to the group as a whole. By being a reaponsible non-using addict/alcoholic you are being yhe best example to be followed by the group. It’s no secret that not one person in an AA/NA meeting is perfect. Far from it. The point is that everyone there is trying to better themselves as humans. Every single person there is putting some effort (some a little, some a lot) to a) recognizing the end goal of becoming a person that society deems worthy, b) becoming a person they themselves can love so they can in turn effectively love others, c)not compare themselves or their situation and/or use someone else’s situation/progress by which to measure their own.
The problem with this is it doesn’t work over large diverse groups of people. We must ALL hold ourselves to the exact same moral standards for this to work, which is true for any utopia. But within it’s given context it can be argued that it works because you can’t effectively love another human being without first learning to love/value yourself. Anyone successfully navigating recovery of any kind knows this; you are your own best advocate.
In his utopian model where everyone is in agreement, it works great.
Edit: CBT is becoming the texhnique of choice among professionals, and it’s what saved me. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is more effective…working on yourself.
The failures that come in 12-steps comes when people do not embrace the dogma; when they don’t live within the greater socail strata and live up to the expectations of the other personalities within that group. AA especially here in the Deep South (where Christianity is king) gets downright cult-like. NA is WAY more laid back and more loose, inclusive, welcoming, etc.
It just seems like a very thin argument. Wer already live in a culture that highly prizes individualism. It's recognized in law, employment, and in culture. So i seriously doubt that there are many people who don't recognize that they are responsible for themselves.
The whole line if thought is a red herring.
Basically Peterson is the kind of person to mock someone else's accent and then deny that he himself has an accent that could be mocked.
Hearing peterson quotes is like nails scraping the inside of my skull.
This is a man whose conservatism has poisoned is way of thinking so much that he has to make fantastical leaps and bounds in reasoning in order to justify what he already believes. This is why conservatives always have to add extra steps when they try and explain their worldview.
Just stumbled upon your Channel very recently. Couldn't help but binge for hours!
Loving your videos so much, I've been sharing them on the little social media that I have.
Only thing I'm unhappy about...is how late I found you!
Thanks for all the hard work, interesting topics, deep research, and articulate compendious summarizes ^-^
Wish you the best, and that your content will soon be recognized for its high quality! 💙
The piece on responsibility here focuses on "Who's at fault? Who's to blame? Is it the individual, or the events and society around the individual?" But the ethic of personal responsibility is about the opposite of blame -- it's about creating, regardless. To take personal responsibility for yourself, your community, and the world, is to simply create, and to create without blame. Blame, here, is the opposite of responsibility. A concept of responsibility that is rooted in blame, "You're blaming the victim," etc., is from the get go, not an ethic of responsibility.
LionKimbro - very well put 👍
this is an absolutely incredible video. normally i don’t comment but i really hope this blows up - so insightful and well put together
not really. It does require groups because that's how humans outperformed species in history. The video has a lot of flaws lol
@@satoshinakamoto7253 Such as.....
“Free will” is useful ideology for governments to hold as they may hold “individuals” accountable when individual desire counter the “rule of law.”
This is honestly one of the most professional criticisms of Jordan Peterson I have seen. No ad hominem or other slanderous logical fallacies were present. Just examining and responding purely to his philosophical and ethical stance that he espouses. I also like the approach you took by looking at examples of responsibility at different levels and scopes and determining which level is ultimately responsible for certain causal events.
I don't disagree. But im confused by your phrase *slanderous logical fallacies" .. slander would be covered by "ad hominem". So ... Sorry, I'm just confused
@@Robespierre-lI The lobsters bit hes sexist a misogisnist and a white nationalist are all slanders. Jordan Peterson also has pubically came out against White Nationalism and Andrew Tate.
Would definitely be looking for the next part. Great video mate.
21:55 where peterson reveals his true purpose, maintaining the status quo.
And to leave law making and policys to the elite class
What he take out of the scheme is Environment. Is like to say that the flower is fully resposible for its full situation. Yes we are not flowers, we have agency, but even agency and choices are dependt of local conditions, for example, a traumatised child will be depleted from much of its power compared with a child who was raised in a house with secure emotionaly mature parents
The limit in Peterson is 1960s, he is not reading anything onward the date
“Individual responsibility” is the watchword of those who would deny social responsibility and even society, itself. Margaret Thatcher and Ayn Rand come to mind.
I believe your argument is weakened by your incorrect etymological analysis of "responsibility". Characterizing it as equivalent to "ability to respond" allows you to focus on the external moral judgment of a person's ability to respond to a situation, free will, and accountability. Nevertheless "responsibility", from the Latin "respondere", is a combination of "re" (back; again) plus "spondere" (promise, guarantee). The external judgments are secondary to the person's commitment to promise or guarantee something to another person in its two meanings of "duty" and "accountability".
Peterson has a focus on the "duty" aspect and you focus on the "accountability" aspect. Peterson might say "before blaming others fix your part of the blame" as in "it's your duty to address the blame first" which is basically a "cast the first stone
" kind of sentence. You might respond "it's easy to find situations where the individual has no part in the blame and can't be held accountable by others or herself" which is true and a case that matches the "house in perfect order".
Also note that to be responsible, in the sense of being accountable, is not identical to being the cause, as you seem to affirm in 13:12. You can "spondere" for someone else's actions. You can both be held accountable for someone else's actions and take the duty to amend the bad someone else did.
In the few 'Then & Now' videos I've watched, I've found that he argues with semantics instead of arguing with ideas. I still find Jordan Peterson's ideas valid after watching this video, though I can still understand its weaknesses, which I think Jordan would also agree. I think you shortly summed up the main things that are wrong with his argument. People will continue to demonize Peterson by misrepresenting him. His main point still stands: control all the things you can control to the best of your ability and that will position yourself best to deal with things you can’t control.
This video is porn for intellectuals who disagree with right wing ideas, not to mention those who can't think for themselves. I can't blame people for watching it though. I also enjoy watching videos that validate me. But if your going to have beef with Peterson's ideas, it should truly come down to worldview.
@@carlossardina3161 I think this channel made a honest attempt to tackle the issue of responsibility and show the order side of the coin. It may have failed by just a razor's edge. Regardless, calling it "porn for intellectuals" feels unnecessarily harsh.
I viewed it precisely to be challenged, and enjoyed it. No everyone can produce Roger Scruton's On Human Nature in every TH-cam video. Recommended, by the way.
We need social responsibility too !!
Abused people want personal responsibility...for the people who once abused them. And JP is one perfect example of a very repressed formerly abused-kid
Society runs by individuals.
Society itself cant take responsibility or provide any service. But the individual in it do.
@@averayugen7802 what person understand darkness more then the one who has seen it.
And you don't know what abused people want.
Yes, behind individual responsibility a social responsibility is also important
@@aaad3552 It's messed up that you don't think abused people want their abusers to be held responsible. That's a basic thing everyone should know. So you don't think cops should intervene in assault cause you think the cops can't know what that victim wants? Also, how do you know if averayugen7802 was abused or not.
He’s a frightened old dad, crushing ideas of masculinity haunt his decisions and drive his critique of identity structures. Dad say “Nooo change is bad unless it’s what I did and covers what I have failed on”
Peterson is coming from the position of “You are fucked anyway, so might as well try.” If you cut out his word salad, that’s what it comes down to. What he doesn’t seem to understand is, everyone already knew that.
actually common sense is not so common anymore. You just bought into the mainstream Media lie because Peterson is telling a whole generation of men to stop moaning and complaining and get their life together and then change the world. The left hates self agency.
Nice and well-developed arguments. Looking forward to Part II!😊😊
This is a very good video overall. A few things to consider. I don't think Peterson would land in the deterministic camp. I watched him give a lecture in Ohio where he specifically discussed his perceived differences between Determinism and Free Will and he definitely landed on the side of free will. I don't remember the specifics exactly but I believe the reason you gave is precisely why he didn't land in the deterministic camp. Also I've noted him speak not only about multi variant factors for causation but also on joining political parties and communities in action to affect change. What I think he argues for is which comes first. "Perfectly" was the wrong word to use, you are right imo. Another part you point out, that being the accompanying nuances and facets of potential, are the secondary innumerable factors in each circumstances., How does one write a book about those things exactly? How would anyone apply all potentials in all situations and remain broadly prescriptive (rules or even suggestions) at all?
I've heard him tell a story about a man with a low IQ who came to his practice that he helped get a job stuffing envelopes and the man still failed to perform the task, after many attempts. When should Peterson have stopped, if at all? I think this story highlights the danger of crafting beliefs and narratives. I think you are on the right path to investigating the truth in so far as you can muster such a thing, and I do commend you for that. The story I mentioned could be spun in a multitude of ways, one of which is that Peterson repeatedly stated no one knows what to do with the "13%" of people below the level capable of performing routinized simple tasks. Is he wrong about that? Have you ever encountered someone who repeatedly refused to act in any way but selfishly? How much of ones life should be spent on the people who legitimately refuse to help themselves? How do you specify in a short book exactly how to do what in each of the many potential ways people act nefariously, leech off of other people, or break culturally or legally imposed boundaries?
The reference to the "factors too big to overcome" is a very broad category. Could Peterson have done better to intersperse situations that are outside of our control in these 2 books. Maybe. What would be the utility? Describing the fact that a person whose legs were amputated after a car crash and how it's not their fault the post office didn't have ADA compliant access points brings what relevance to what the average person should do about shaping their expectations of the world around them? If it shouldn't be about what you can control, what should "rules" about life be about? I think what you are looking for generally is what Peterson terms as chaos in Maps of Meaning. There you'd find examples of the kinds of "malevolence that characterizes life outside of your control" you think his philosophy is devoid of. It is hard not to think that after this it was his responsibility to have crafted a "better" philosophy on responsibility.
Mandela, Ghandi, MLK. That's where you took "before you criticize the world" and turned it into "even the greatest among us should have kept cleaning their room." That man isn't even made of straw.
I watched a lot of Jordan Peterson and i can't really agree with this critique. It might be to much to ask, that everyone spends as much time as I have on his videos, but at some point He always acknowledges this kind of counterpoints, that poeple are limited, depend in each other and are subjected to all kinds of obstacles. And he also talks about the social and societal networks we are embedded in.
You can be given everything at birth, but If you don't feel responsible for your own actions you can still wreck your life, as well as the lifes of the poeple who want to support you and demand that everybody else owes you even more.
And you can be given an unfair lot but nontheless do your part in supporting your loved ones as much as you can.
He talks a lot about tragedy and suffering and that the reduction of unnecessary suffering should be a priority for everybodies actions. The question is, how the sustainable strategy for that purpose looks like.
And the problem with political solutions he describes, is that it is all to easy to get swept away by a bunch of activists who demand changes that they do not understand the implications of.
I recently listened to "Critical Race Theory - An Introduction" and according to this book his description at the end, that you labled as a strawman, is spot on. Unfavorable, yes, but by no means implausible or unreasonable.
The suggestions that the principle of personal responsibility would have meant that black poeple and women wouldn't have got the vote is just nonsense. Equal rights means more souvereign individuals and therefore a greater collective capacity for individual responsibility.
You seem to be cherry picking which contradicting Jordan Peterson bits you agree with. That's one of the problems with his specious approach to life. He tells people to make sure their own house is perfect before they try to change the World, when he clearly has not done the same, and he continues to ignore his own rule.
He makes statements based on the most superficial and often hugely inaccurate understanding of other fields of study outside his own, and does so with a level of confidence that nobody with any real understanding of the subject matter would have, and this appeals to those for whom his world view is attractive. But he is demonstrably wrong in so many ways, from his frankly absurd take on AI/machine learning in his discussion with Matt Dillahunty, to his deeply inaccurate portrayal of bill C-16 (possibly the reason he achieved such fame in such a short space of time). His air of confidence is simply not backed up by an equal level of understanding, which is so unfortunate because he is a great communicator, and a charismatic lecturer.
@@nastysimon i don't agree with your take.
Agreed, he has addressed the main critiques posed here years before
@@nastysimon hi can you please elaborate on the bill 16 issue and where I can find further reading on the matter
@@b.melakail Start here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Act_to_amend_the_Canadian_Human_Rights_Act_and_the_Criminal_Code
Watch any of his alarmist videos about the bill and then look for actual expert opinion from legal experts if you think he still has a point.
Here's one…
Why were the Europeans that first arrived in America unable to do the work that enriched this country themselves?
Did they misplace their "bootstraps"?
Why didn't they see this as an opportunity to actually create something of their own?
As it is… we owe black people for this society from all the work that they did for free on one hand.
On the other… we owe Native Americans & Mexicans for having a place to do it IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Sure… you created a bunch of stuff!
Thank you!
Good to know that OUR hard work on OUR land was put to good use.
We'll take it from here.
I mean… all we needed was steel & animals.
We would probably have created a less divided society… but, it's cool.
Great video! Thank you. I am interested in Peterson, and in watching a few videos concerned with pointing out less than ideal points he makes I find myself leaning towards the belief that his thoughts are more stepping stones and less permanent fixtures. It is so helpful to have this kind of content that is measured, and honestly points out concerns with Peterson's claims.
If any idea if fixed it becomes like cult then. But then there are eternal truth ideas that can be fixed because they happens all the time.
I’m glad you are seeing the light but you really couldn’t disprove him on your own? Since when have you seen a self made billionaire? Since when have you seen a man find a loving relationship with a decent woman who isn’t using him? Since when have influencers stopped existing? Nothing he says has any material basis and ever has. He might as well be advocating for the divine right of kings
Point to add: morality is socially constructed, but it's not *only* socially constructed. The trolley problem is an excellent tool that psychologists have used to parse out what are evolved biological moral emotions versus mere social constructs (ape shall not kill ape vs. don't eat pork, for example). Some of our moral emotions exist because they're useful for the propagation of genes. Broadly:
1) don't hurt people
2) be fair
3) listen to your elders
4) don't eat that, it's dirty
5) the more like family they are, the more you bend/break the rules for them
Responsibility for Libertarians basically means not costing rich people any money.
No, it means being of service and providing value. Society then is made and re-made in our individual efforts... Contrary to demanding the world cater to infantile egos while wanting something for nothing.
Stupendous! Best critique, loved the Zizek bit. "Idiotic...impotent moralization".
Excellent critic of JP, fantastic channel!
Shop lifting is not immoral behavior it is amoral. Withholding means of subsistence is immoral.
The essence of Peterson’s teaching amounts to this: If your life sucks, it’s your own fault. Don’t blame corporate capitalism and social anomie. That’s what “individual responsibility” boils down to and that’s why it’s advanced by the ruling elite that controls the mass media.
Nup, working harder commie
How does blaming capitalism improve your situation?
@@bt4670 how does doing things like raising the minimum wage, offering workers protections, providing medical care for people who can't afford it help anyone's situation either?
The problem with always shifting blame upwards is the theres an infinite ceiling, the regulator of the regulator of the regulator. Instead responsibility should be relative to the domain of power (position in the chain of causality regardless of 'free will'). Nothing is ever 100% responsible for anything.
As a fan of Jordan Peterson I do agree with your argument. Definitely not the first person to argue against individual responsibility, yet one of the better perspectives I’ve came across! Great content.
Why would you be a fan of a crytofascist?
Robertson, I appreciate your thoughts. We need more respectful discourse like yours. Different views, but willingness to listen openly
I'm a little late to this vid, though I couldn't resist commenting anyway. While I listened to your criticisms, I was reminded of something said by William Churchill in response to a reporter accusing him of going back on his word. With the aid of a maritime analogy, Churchill explained that his job was to keep the ship of State on a steady course toward its destination. So if the ship begins listing to the left, he shifts balast to the right. If the ship begins listing to the right, he shifts balast to the left. Thus, it is only to the outside observer that his actions appear hypocritical.
It is much the same with Dr. Peterson. As he has explained many times, his emphasis on individual responsibility is due to the absence of such concepts being properly articulated in contemporary society. So why would he pay lip-service to collectivist ideas when they already make up the majority of the discussions being had within the culture. Why would he take the time to articulate points of view different from his own when those views are already over represented?
you should have so many more subs. your content is always pure quality. thoughtful and provocative.
The sense I got from Jordan on being careful when helping other. I had similar things happen to me. I am empath so wanting to helping other comes naturally to me. That is my first instinct. But what I have noticed that unless someone wants to be helped no matter how much you do for them its like pouring water in bucket with hole. It just goes to waste. In those situation you are just being enabler and not helping. And often people take advantage of your help and keep wanting your help without them showing any sign of improvement. So I have to be very very careful on who I help and whether if I am making an impact or not. So in that sense I relate to his book
It's possible for people to need help but have no idea what kind of help they need. This is one of the reasons psychotherapy exists.
@@Robespierre-lI its very very possible for people for needing all sorts of help and focusing on the wrong path
Peterson’s urgings towards individual responsibility, is really calling for self sufficiency, which negates the balance, understanding, and need for being able to live with interdependence.
Interdependence is a critical part of the modern economic system, a system that thrives on specialisation. Modern production is maximised by not doing everything and concentrating on things one is good at, so if that is truly his calling, it's out of step with the basis of modern capitalism he loves so much.
Jean-Paul Sartre actually said: 'We were never as free as we were under Nazi occupation.' or something along those lines. His point was that, under those circumstances, where forces outside your control dictate everything you do, you have the most obligation. He actually said that 'under those circumstances, every act is a committment.' So I'm not sure it follows to say that the more things outside your control are factors dictating your circumstances, the less free will you have. Actually, people tend to engage most with their freedom when it is most under threat.
You are an individual. In society you deal with individuals. Society is composed of individuals.
It is wrong thinking saying things like, "Society should do X..." Society cannot do X. The individuals in society have to do it. It always comes back to the individual.
Yet the individuals still exist in a network of other individuals whom actions cause directly or indirectly either good or harm to the first individual. When saying "society should do x" people generally mean that people in general should adopt or start promoting certain kinds of ways of being which improve the society, even when the issue on hand is not something that touches them immediately at that moment and time of life.
@makhnothecossack4948 So you're saying society doesn't have responsibility but the people (the individuals that make up society) do. Only people can be held accountable.
You are simply trying to avoid using the term 'individual responsibility'.
@@lonelyb9661 No, I'm trying to say that the individuals have to become conscious of the fact that they do infact, exist in a society, and thus they have societal obligations based on their capabilities and resources.
@makhnothecossack4948
So you're changing the subject away from individual responsibility but agree with individual responsibility without using the term. Ok. Got it.
The next step is for you to have individual responsibility and not everyone else.
@@lonelyb9661 My point is, that every single problem cannot be solved through individual responsibility, people need realism and perspective to understand that things are not as easy as it might look from the outside. It's not easy to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you have no boots at all. Also the proverb originates from criticism to the absurdity of the demand of those who are doing well that you just can just magically improve your state, no matter the external conditions, which is really avoiding responsibility of driving institutional changes to make it so that people can work and truly gain what they need to survive through that work.
Set your house in perfect order says the bloke who is far from perfect
The ironic twist to this video's message is that philosophers and psychologists have a tendency to over-intellectualise everything. As Marshall Ganz teaches, it is EMOTION that drives action in societal change contexts. Think of Greta Thunberg's anger at leaders' collective inaction over climate change, or the emotional appeals of the Brexiters to "take back control."
Ganz came from a background in trade union activism, and is now a Harvard professor. He masterminded Obama's election 'movement' that swept him to power, and has advised activist movements all over the world. The "emotion drives action" dynamic is easily understood. What blocks us from taking action on our societal values and principles is our emotion, such as isolation or fear, and so this emotional blockage needs to be overcome. So isolation for example is overcome by solidarity. Fear is overcome by hope.
So Peterson is at least partially right, perhaps without knowing why. All human change starts with learning, which in turn starts with a feeling... that shifts our attention.
Why did the dam fail? Well, I'm a root cause kinda guy, so my answer would be; because it was built. Nothing built by man can be expected to last forever, failure must be factored in and accounted for. Thanks for the video! Though I appreciate your perspective and that of Peterson... I don't see the purpose, for me personally, to adopt either philosophy, in their entirety. I choose to take what I want, and leave the rest. Yes, you did a good job at pointing out what was missing but these were things that I had already understood. Though I felt you may have been a bit too focussed or went a bit to deep, for some... I believe your thoughts actually compliment his and vice versa. I like to think of responsibility this way: Do the best you can, with what you have to work with when and where you are. When help is needed, ask for it. The more we help ourselves, the more help we can offer others. When I notice a piece of trash on the street I have a choice. I can ignore it, blame it's presence on the person who dropped it (whether on purpose, or accidentally) or I could choose to blame those responsible for cleaning the streets. I believe that my most responsible choice is to pick it up myself and dispose of it properly. This is not only helps me but helps society as well. With an open mind, I have the freedom to borrow bits of wisdom from all those that came before me via the collective consciousness, books, and videos like yours and Peterson's. Philosophies, when adopted verbatim, can be limiting... just like labels. I say, explore them all and take with you, what will serve you and your collective responsibilities the most. Remain teachable, fluid, and open to the ever changing world around us. There's always more to learn and more we can do to help. Thanks again!
I didn't have responsibility as I was growing up, growing up poor, fear of bullies and no real father role model to look up to to name but a few, that being said things got progressively worse as the years went on, was I responsible? the police seemed to think so, my family and friends also and me saying I don't have free will wouldn't of got me out of any of the mess I found myself in, the truth is I was just a product of my environment growing up and that wouldn't of changed if I hadn't of changed the story I was living, after I wrote out my life story and saw for myself that my life was a tragedy I actually gained a real sense of free will, I was finally able to see cause and affect, being with these friends meant this behaviour in me, working at this place enabled me to act this way and all the while learning that it was my part in all these things that had to change, thinking, feeling, actions made up my character and the best characters in life stand the best chance of having a good life, people do have to wake up, not everyone will for many reasons but I do believe Peterson is helping some people to become more than they are right now and more than they might of been, really enjoyed the video 🙏🏼
❤
Something to be considered on your critique. He's a psychologist. His job is to motivate the individual, educate them, and help them out of a degree of symptoms all of which focus on a person's lack of self worth, or self motivation.
These people generally have this because they are crushed by their interpretation of a collective, and do not see the worth of their own decisions. As such his talks are geared specifically towards providing a counterweight to those conditions.
A collective is made of individuals, if each is not motivated, they will either fall in line to those who are, or stagnate.
Jordan isn't wrong for focusing on personal responsibility. Moreover, if he were wrong, why would you feel the personal responsibility to correct him, if you didn't see it as your personal responsibility, which then proves Peterson right?
Can't wait for the part-2.
Such an eloquent critique!
Philosophers always try to complicate simple and basic stuff. Take responsibility, a 10 year old can be told "Take responsibility" and act accordingly without having to read a 200pgs book on concept or theory of responsibility. Most of us intrinsically know what it is and know where the boundary lies. All of sane people know that there are things happening outside of their control (The things other people do and that naturally happens) and there are other things that are within their control (They can alter them by actions, behaviors and choices).
But there is some use of such complexities. In the legal and judicial systems, in politics and economics it may be important to dive deeper in such threads. but to normal people just providing for themselves and those they love, the simpler the better. Asking oneself "What can I do?" or "What or who to blame?" have profound difference in life from individual to community even from one lifetime to generations. Coz even major social or economic movement can be traced back to individual choices and actions they just appear to be similar and organized. And most importantly they can be traced further back to few individuals who started such movements and organized them that's absolutely individual responsibility. Movements never just happen, responsible people make them happen. Like, there was someone who first pushed idea of "women should vote" and there were those who took their time to push it harder and harder... Well, there were a million things they'd rather do but they sacrificed all those to shoulder such responsibility.
Pointing out the holes in J.B Peterson's doctrine, The other areas of life it doesn't encompass is like blaming a mallet for not being effective in cutting trees instead of bringing an axe. It is a character building not political or social doctrine.
If you spent even a week somewhere full of people focusing outward and not inward as a common person, you'd probably stop throwing stones at such noble doctrine within a second.
Everything has its limits, there is no one size fits all solution and I do think adopting responsibility is a solid foundation for the majority of individuals. But as this video eludes to, there are some limitations of cause there are but it doesnt mean it is wrong. It just means for some people it is not effective. We will never find a solution that works for everyone (although we can keep trying), humans are extremely complex with different contributing factors to their current condition. The best we can hope for is to find something that is a solid starting point to build upon. I think the adoption of responsibility is very beneficial and I know more than a handful of people who have read '12 rules for life: an antidote to chaos' who have turned their lives around from the most awful childhoods. So I dont think it is wrong, as the title suggests but rather it has its limitations which is true for everything.
I think you meant 'alludes to' instead of 'eludes to', am I correct? Sorry, l'm a born schoolmarm. As for the rest of your comment, you seem to be addressing just one problem, when there are many.
@@AlicedeTocqueville That was your contribution? To correct a spelling error. Do you understand the social sciences and how arguments/claims/evidence work?
@@yahyaibnjohn4487 Of course.
Of course. Of course. Of course. To all 3 questions.
Benzo withdrawal is pure hell. I hope Peterson knows that when poor and middle class people go through drug withdrawal, we still have to get up and go to work every day. Or we lose our jobs, health insurance and become homeless and then die. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps sounds great when you're rich and can take a year off of work and fly to russia to get treatment. For those of us that have to actually work, something like benzo wd can ruin your entire life.
He just made a community post that starts with "Doing something for others is more rewarding than anything else you can do."
22:25 this is gold. I will be using these bits against JP in news comments. Thank you so much!!!
This is addressing philosophy at a different, deeper level than Jordan Peterson does, one must remember that Jordan Peterson is a psychotherapist and not a philosopher. It's inevitable that there will be inconsistencies between the starting points.
The problem isn't even that there are inconsistencies in the things he says. The problem is that he should be smart enough to see the biases he holds but fails to do so. For a supposed intellectual he sure contradicts himself constantly, and what's more, for somebody who constantly tells people to try and tell the truth always, he lacks the character to consider the other side's viewpoints as well. One of the most outrageous things I've seen from his end is one of the latest tweets that he posted after the recent Texas school shooting. I'm somewhat paraphrasing but it went something along the lines of "In order to stop these attrocities, the media must stop revealing the perpetrator's name. What they seek is attention and as long as they get it, school shootings will ever stop. Nihilism and a lack of meaning is what's bla-bla..." - When I read the tweet I was genuinely left dumbfounded at his stupidity and sheer ignorance. For a supposed intellectual with an IQ of 170, to think that a lack of individual responsibility is what's causing these incidents to happen and that they would suddenly all disappear if we just stopped publizising the names of the shooters is just a level of stupidity that's so amazing that it almost takes your breath away. Australia has introduced harsher gun laws after they experienced a shooting and it actually worked and still continues to do so. Other countries literally experience zero mass shootings, despite their population also suffering from mental illneds. Does he have evidence to suggest that America is so unique in its mental crisis compared to other countries that would lead one to such suggestion? Of course not. Really, I shouldn't even have to argue much further. It's a take so incredibly childish and naive... I really can't with this man. For somebody who constantly "owns" lefties for virtue-signalling while telling them to get their act together first, he sure suffers more from that than the same people he critizises. Out of all the online figures I know, he may genuinely be one of the biggest hypocrites I know of. I just cannot take much of what he says seriously. Oh god, and let's not get started on his poor views of Marxism. I think his debate with Zizek and the pullout against a debate with Richard Wolff are clear indicate of his hypocrisy. He thinks telling people to "Read. More" automatically means he's won the argument, but little does he know: he himself hasn't read enough.
@@MonkeyDIvan What's this got to do with my point?
-Jordan doesn't like reducing people to their identities, race, gender, class, etc.
-You push back saying people are products of their environments, which is influenced by those characteristics.
-Maybe a better way to word Jordan's point is that we should be careful reducing people to pure _products._
Peterson never seemed to think that it is our responsibility to change the world and make it a more tolerable place.
The freer the individual becomes, the more responsible they have to become for global issues.
You are right. The hyperindividualism thing is kinda sociopathic if you think about it...
That leads to the gulag bucko! *(Crying)*
I don’t think this a good faith argument. Peterson recognizes many mitigating factors that impede success, but calls out flimsy excuses, which only serve to justify mediocrity.
While nobody’s total success or failure is completely up to themselves, it’s also true people are often their own worst enemy through bad habits, counterproductive routines, excuses, over inflated self esteem, and self delusion.
Thanks.
It would be interesting to consider Peterson's "philosophy" in the shadow of two Russian authors whom he seems to admire very much. I am talking about Dostoyevsky and Solzhenizin.
Thereby, I think not so much about them as authors of fiction but as leading voices who did provide certain ideas, especially in the area of the harsh anti-Marxism (anti-semitism is also here) etc.
Additionally, both Dostoyevsky and Solzhenizyn alike loved to play a sort of "Christ" bearing his cross to Calvary and suffering for our sins in advance. In order to execute a back-charge in times to come.
I don’t think Solzhenitsyn was an author of fiction
Outstanding video. Thank u for sharing.
Also, I don't know if someone else points out this, but Jordan Peterson have never read Butler or Foucault, he just hate'em cause he ain't them
@@Rude1911 yeah, that doesn't mean he read them, in his books he clearly shows he hasn't
@@Rude1911 yeah, you're good, keep up the good work
I wouldn’t appeal to systems-theory as the source without breaking down each of those systems into their root causes as well; In this the causes remain the human heart. And this is why I agree with Peterson. The truth of the matter remains the same in their effects generationally macro or micro.
Thank you for sharing light to this topic. I don’t agree with everything Jordan Peterson says, he’s cool and all but there is a flaw. He’s always telling it from a masculine biblical side of a story. Making his philosophical points and perspectives seem more valid than anything else without considering the facts and contexts of the topics and situations surrounded. I like how you base the video on an objective manner. Approaching it in a more honest and upfront way debunking definitions and contexts that are relevant to the topic. I enjoy this court like approach you bring rather than majority of the population who preach personal responsibility not knowing a clue about the context or facts about the situation.
He's an abused- guy passing it along. Making other sub-perfect types feel ashamed. So boring. Saw this about him from the first second.
I partially agree with Peterson in that identity politics, although not intentionally, have reduced people simply to their groups (but that isn't necessarily because of postmodernism alone, but also because of racism and right-wing identity politics as well). And what's more, even before "identity politics", people were already divided into groups which were more rigidly defined. So, his idea of a Hobbsian competition between groups is basically a description of human history, not just postmodernism. However, I do believe that individuality as self-expression is among the few things that allow you to break free from the groupthink and rebell against social norms. After all, most social movements started because a group of individuals wished to rebell against the given power structures, and so they banded together to do it; inspiring others in the process, but in all cases it comes from individual free will the need to rebel.
But your rebeling alone will not produce changes. You would be just an outsider prone to all kinds of bullying and segregation, which you would have to face by yourself. However, when organizing and grouping with like mindes people you can make your stance heard. Real changes only happen on a social level.
Hobbesian competition amongst the lobsters.
Yet I have nether seen any republican putting people in groups. It is always the dems doing that stop lying. Right wingers put individuality above everything else thus race doesn't matter. The dems would state their race and gender before even starting a sentence. But for the rest I agree with you.
@@karlalan3806 "It is always the dems doing that...."
Don't you see what you did there?
@@karlalan3806The whole point of the video is to point out that the near total emphasis of individual responsibility blames victims of endemic injustices for their own failure while allowing (for example) people sponsored by a fathers emerald mine wealth to be “a self made man who built himself from nothing”….
My 8th grade history teacher referred to WWI as the War of the -isms as in Nationalism, Imperialism, and Militarism.
Nice, looking forward to Part 2.
Just offered to help my neighbor who just became a widow on Saturday to help get her groceries. I obviously have a big ego and she’s not trying hard enough. Maybe I should tell her to get on her bike 🚴. That’s a quote from a Norman Tebbit who blamed individuals for being unemployed in the 80s in the UK despite the fact the unemployment rate was 12%.
Great video! There isnt any shortage for JP critique on youtube, but not many go so deep on it.
I really like some of his message. But when blaming Foucault for Marxism (which Foucault vehemently opposed to most of his adult life) I wonder if he has done all of the necessary reading :)
I think what's wrong in your critique is, there are bad things that need to be fixed in society but people who can't even make their own room will only make it worse and not better. We need responsible people who know how to do things to fix the bigger problems. I see this in blm protests, global warming protests, etc. People who know nothing, can do nothing useful, (in Jordan's words, who can't make up their own bed) are trying to solve huge complex issues and are clearly making it much worse
Personal responsibility, the hero journey, are all incredibly flattering.
Love the way Jorpson blows right through the phrase 'we can't use logic because that doesn't exist'
Yeah I was like, *Hold on, what!?* 😆😅😅
0:44: 📚 The video discusses the concept of individual responsibility as emphasized by Jordan Peterson and its limitations.
5:56: 🤔 The video explores the concept of individual responsibility and free will, and how it is influenced by various factors.
10:34: 🤔 The video discusses the concept of determinism and its implications on individual responsibility.
16:17: 📚 The video discusses the concept of personal responsibility and external factors that impact individuals' lives.
20:25: 🤔 The video discusses the skepticism at helping people and the individual accountability promoted by Jordan Peterson, while leaving out the larger social, cultural, and economic factors.
26:00: 🌍 The video discusses the influence of external factors on individual behavior and the importance of collective action in addressing social issues.
31:37: 📚 The video discusses Jordan Peterson's critique of identity politics and ideology, and the impact of social, economic, and cultural contexts on individual identities.
Recap by Tammy AI
Going through the video, I feel that there is a confusion with what's been said, and what you want to say. Gandhi's example is the epitome of JP's idea of responsibility. Start where you can make a difference, and you can gradually acquire the power to do more. What's important here is that by setting your house in order, you will gain a clear idea of what is required to solve a problem, and what the problem truly is. Once you do this, you might be presented with the opportunity to do more. Take that even further.
Also, as the video itself says "the external and internal" aren't completely disconnected. When you try and set your house in order, you are fighting against broader social evils / struggles that are manifest in your own case. Fight against them. Resolve them. You will be wiser for having done that. And you will be presented with more opportunities.
I don't think he holds an individual responsible for having a medical bill larger than their capacity to pay it. That's a misunderstanding of individual responsibility - bearing confusion with your own definition of it. Responsibility is your ability to respond - how can you pay a bill that is outside of your financial capacity?
But there are two broad classifications that Peterson will make here - were you an alcoholic who now suffers from alcohol related complications and is footing a large medical bill? You had it completely within your capacity to deal with your alcoholism and did not.
Secondly, the medical system is a concern for millions of citizens. Peterson's doctrine of individual responsibility would hold every single person accountable here - for not doing their fullest. It might seem bizarre, but he clearly makes the point elsewhere - communist countries were able to inflict so much damage to their citizens only because the citizens all agreed that it was OK to lie. It would be interesting to explore such a charge on millions of citizens, but you can start exploring this. Doctors, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, families of patients - everyone, what could each of them have done differently so that the system does not behave it does - and you have individual responsibility, in everyone's individual circle of influence producing social outcomes.
This is similar to a woman wanting to vote in Afghanistan. Surely it is brutal and uncharitable to say that it is one individual woman's responsibility that women do not have a vote in Afghanistan, but does that mean every woman now has to sit and bemoan this state of affairs? Is it that there is nothing that she can do and is helpless? Or she can perhaps find some power, some capacity, somewhere else. How so? Perhaps, by trying to set her house in order. I might be completely ignorant, but it might begin by asking for help in household affairs.
In fact, it is within such considerations that the hero's journey and other myths give the power that they do according to Peterson's perspectives. The details of individuals are different, but these myths will be relevant to them all, apply to them differently, and produce a unique outcome in each case, making the world a slightly better place.
To conclude, it would be interesting to have explicit statements about how Peterson's prescription of setting the house in order, taking up responsibility and gaining power and wisdom along the way solves - or could solve larger social problems.
By sophisticatedly blaming ideologies and calling out to relinquish these, Peterson does nothing less than setting up another ideology of which he thinks of as being a solution and of supreme superiority AND not an ideology.
Whenever you hear _do this, don't do that_ just run !
Preaching is moral violence, I claim !
So Peterson basically left out the whole "we live in a society" thing
@@Barklord Ducks gotta quack and neoconservatives presumably have to talk sociopathic neocon crap!
@@somecuriosities Lol, when leftists have to equate rationality with sociopathy you know they’ve lost their sense of the former.
Fat Potatoe in what way is neoconservatism rational? Please present to me a logically coherent summary of their worldview.
@@gravenewworld6521 Neoconservatism in the sense of Bush isn't. But "neoliberal" economic policy - which is what TINA and Thatcher are all about - is. It is described as "economic rationalism" in my part of the world. There is a lot of rationale for it, but I'm not going to bother proving it here, because it will take too long. Like anything complex, it takes time and effort to understand in full, so I won't waste my time giving an abridged version and having to teach you myself as you inevitably ask questions about the simple version that will require me to explain even more.
On the other hand, if you want me to defend the rationality of Thatcherism specifically, I may gladly do that.
Fat Potatoe I know what it is. What I want to see is a logically coherent summary in favor of it. Because basically the development and acceleration of neoliberalism seems to have destroyed the few good things about living in a capitalist state during the Breton woods period and replaced it with a shitshow. It was always controlled by entrenched elites and neocolonialism but now it’s controlled by multinational corporations, neocolonialism, tech billionaires. Not to mention that rates of addiction, suicide, anxiety disorders and mental illnesses are higher than ever before. Basically a mass death machine determined by the flow of capitol not that the Breton woods years weren’t also a mass death machine but at least people living in the machine had kind of living wages and social safety nets. Now it’s a death machine sans safety nets, a living wage, containing a huge expanding section of the populace with severe mental illnesses. It’s also destroying its own environments ability to support life which is the exact opposite of why civilization was established. Yeah man I fail to see the logic in the society the neocons are attempting to pull ever further right. And of course there’s Maggie’s aphorism “there is no society”. The epitome of logic.
My own thought about what you have "missed" is almost universal with the most educated and cultured individuals. What we "miss" is the fact that our language and culture are much deeper and more determinative than we can actually perceive. The problem is that our "perceptions" are limited by our language and culture. If you cannot put it into words the concept will NOT even occur to you.
The question of "individual responsibility" is limited by what we believe an "individual" is. I call this mistake "The Myth of the Individual." Even most "scientists" make this error.
Consider that our brains evolved to allow us to form cultural groups who could work together to survive and thrive better than those NOT in a cultural group. Our cerebral cortex is, essentially, a tool that allows us to remember more than 150 individuals, their history, capabilities, knowledge, and their social connections. This is how we construct our "community." Most important this structure allows us to task each "individual" with duties and expectations that serve the social order. Moreover the "individuals" have a history and social connections that can enable or limit them. We "know" them and can predict how they will respond to social pressure.
The reality is that the "individual" is a construction used to exert pressure on all social members to conform. This capability was quickly captured by some individuals as a form of social control, mostly religious and economic. The "individual" is necessary for a few, who see themselves as the natural leaders in the social group, to gain money and power.
But the idea of an "individual" is a social construction, nothing more.
From a purely scientific standpoint we are not individuals, but a large and complex community of creatures living together. Living in and on our bodies we have over 100 species of yeast and many more species of bacteria and other "parasitic" creatures who control our "personal needs and desires." Scientists are learning that the creatures living in our digestive system can influence our brain through the vagus nerve and determine what we "want" for dinner. We are only beginning to understand how the complex relationships we have with other creatures within and around us are influencing our behavior. It appears that ALL of our evolution is a form of coevolution in which what we have become is actually serving the needs of many other organisms in ways that we will, likely, never understand with our limited brain and language skills.
This "myth of the individual" is a core reason for many of our troubles and seems poised to destroy our species as well as thousands of other species.
Just a thought.
@UP Thank you for your reply. Yes. But we consider it to be a "primitive brain" only because we have a very distorted and limited concept of "intelligence." It may be that intelligence is a distributed quality that is not "owned" by any single "individual" creature. Plants don't need "brains" or eyes because they are connected with the entire life matrix. There are other ways of seeing.
Jordan Peterson, like most of us, judges the world from his personal perspective. This is why he would probably say that he is "more intelligent" than a fungus. He is projecting his self-centered world view on the world itself. He is wrong. The fungus is probably much more intelligent than he is, and much more interesting as well.
"Advises to take as much responsibility as possible"
"Develops a dependency on anti-anxiety meds"
I wonder if those things are related, hmmm?
I recently went through an anxiety phase and my psychotherapist advised me to think about how much we actually control our lives.
Maybe he's just being meta by providing himself as an example of "if you don't have perfect control over your life you should not expect to change the world in any meaningful way or tell people how to live their life"
I think you are missing the point, missing the forest for the trees per say.
It's not about fault, in fact, it's about the difference between those who focus on who or what is at fault vs those who focus on the fact that their own response to issues, regardless of the cause of those issues, is the responsibility of the individual. For example, imagine coming across some trash on the ground, some people will claim it's not their trash as an excuse to leave it alone, while others will recognize that regardless of how the trash got there, they've noticed it and are now presented with the choice of whether to do what is needed (picking it up and putting in a trash can) or to leave it on the ground. To take responsibility means to focus on how you are responsible for your response to issues you encounter regardless of the cause if those issues.
Largely this is an issue because of two major aspects of people, first, most people don't do what is needed to make their life better and near always justify not acting to improve their lives because all they think about is how their problems are the fault of somebody or something else, and second, people who focus on what they can do about their problems or how they can better work around their problems are significantly more successful in life than people who are focused on who is at fault for issues.
Activists are a good example, as instead of building their own life to resolve a problem within their own sphere of influence, they instead run out into the world to play the blame game, to yell and shout about how others are at fault for the problems of the world. This is actually counter productive. Imagine a bus is hurtling towards a kid in the road clearly unable to stop. We can all see how it would be a virtuous thing to save the child from getting run over, but once you get someone in the crowd demanding that you go save the kid and talking about how bad terrible everyone is for being cowards for not saving the kid just builds resentment towards saving the kid, instead of feeling motivated to save the kid it builds conflict within us, yea we want to save the kid but doing what that [insert pejorative here] is demanding just rankles something fierce, and this internal conflict results in us being weak to fear or even forgetting about the child entirely as our attention gets consumed by the crazy person yelling in our face instead of doing what they preach.
On the other hand, someone who focuses on doing the right thing themself becomes an inspiration to others to follow suit. Just consider how Peterson became famous in the first place, he refused to give in to tyrannical pressure, he didn't set out to become famous, and that appearance of doing right for the right reasons regardless of the terrible things that could happen as a result is inspiring, it's what we wish we could do as well. The same occurs for anyone who focuses on their own choices in life. If you can't get a job the normal way, don't sit on the couch blaming the world for your sorry state of affairs, go out and seek a solution, make a sign saying "I'm available for hire, price negotiable" and wander the street corners, or build a mousetrap, from scrap on the roadside if need be, and then go find someone with a mouse problem and sell your mousetrap.
Another aspect I think you fail to see is that if everyone, or really most people, deal with problems individually then the problems generally also get solved collectively as a side effect. For example, imagine a pile of litter scattered around a public space that'd take a few hours to clean up, well if you just picked up a single handful everyday on your way to work and inspired three others to do the same who in turn inspired three more each, well in a very short amount of time the whole public space becomes litter-free. Additionally, once those types of issues are on the path to resolution, we end up with more free time with which we can then work on things that actually require collective collaboration, such as infrastructure or going to the moon. But any collaborative project falls apart when everyone involved is constantly distracted by the problems they aren't resolving because they are too busy complaining about how those problems are other people's fault.
This is one of the best critiques of Peterson I have seen yet. Can't wait to watch part two!
Peterson thinks we should accept the “moral-social scaffolding,” essentially, and that people who’s actions lie outside of or in contrast to societal values (not just ideologies and views but things like careers, material objects and the perception of material conditions) have a personal failing of their own. If I’m getting it right.
But is that true? Not always. It's about the denial of morality existing in the relations between individuals, and the imposition of hierarchy based on self-serving and immoral values by the powerful. It's self-serving because it legitimises the status quo, and ignores things inherent to the hierarchy that are immoral. It denies the possibility of addressing those problems either individually, or collectively. That is itself unnatural. And worst of all, it actually undermines his own argument for the existence of the Sovereign Individual. In such a framework, individuals are stuck in a deterministic loop of cleaning their room as Rome burns, just because an individual cannot put out the fire himself. But he can sweep up the ashes coming into his room, right? That's not how fires are fought in civilisation. We develop collective solutions to such problems, by creating institutions and cultural norms like fire brigades, and fines for using portable barbecues in forests. Peterson saves most of his ire for social justice and economic problems, for which there is no tenable justification either practically, or morally for doing so. And yes, morality is abstract, and a cultural artifact, but as Peterson implicitly claims that ground as a hill to die on, by overstating the limits of personal agency and individual responsibility, who am I to deny him his wish? The whole debate is not about the existence of individual responsibility, but the extent of it, and the denial of collective responsibility, upon which any civilisation stands upon. Whether or not you agree with Marx's conclusions, is really irrelevant. We are a communal species, whose survival and success is down to their ability to act collectively. So, in misinterpreting Stoic and similar philosophies, he denies us any further meaningful progress beyond the limits he's comfortable with. To argue against this is not utopian, nor any other so called "leftist" label anyone would like to slap on it. Evolution and progress is what bought us here, and the only constant is Change. And the debate cannot be swept under the carpet for meaningful change, when not addressing them is in its most extreme way, endangering not only individuals, but our species as well. Our polity and economy should evolve to better meet our needs. And that's where the real cleaning needs to be done. And the debate might never end, because new problems arise and new contingencies must be created to deal with them.
@@BigHenFor very well-articulated response that I took way too long to see, I appreciate the response and I agree
Thanks for all the hard work on the video!
Cool video, arguments and well-spotted criticism! However, history has shown that social and collective responsibility is often than not based on structural violence models and vague to apply to an individual experience. We experience life through only our thoughts and actions and limited to control generational violence around us rooted in culture, socio-economic factors etc. Taking a broad interdisciplinary picture beyond philosophy, I agree with Peterson anyway since we can be individually responsible for our own happiness and without individual responsibility people end up shifting blame and expectations and internally peaceful social/collective responsibility is mostly a product of people taking individual responsibility in the first place.
Imagine a person with their house in actual perfect order 😂. Since perfection is impossible I guess we should just dissolve government completely since no one should be criticizing the world.
There is no political solution, there's only virtue. Institutions can only contain chaos they can never fix the world. You don't understand Peterson because you don't understand irony: that in trying to save the world, you destroy it.
@@bradspitt3896 I think you're missing the point entirely, however I am not good at debates so I'll just leave it at that.
@@graemelaubach3106 Too abstract to mean anything.
I somewhat suspect this is the intent. Paralyse people, or at least give reason to critique their action whenever such is an attempt to change the systems. Such results in the most conservative and traditionalist of outcomes. Even though no sensible person would follow this rule, he can point to it and use it to criticise their attempts, call them hypocrites, and to the most binary and simple of thinkers, his point makes sense because it feels right to them.
@@nastysimon For sure, anyone who actually attempted to follow this rule would be forever incapable of attempting to effect any meaningful change in the world outside of their most immediate surroundings. JP seems like a pretty smart fellow, I used to enjoy watching a lot of his lectures, but I really don't understand how he can make such an absolute statement (by using the word perfect) and actually believe it, it's just so ridiculous. He himself is far from perfect yet is criticizing the world by writing self help books. I just don't understand....
Isn't the idea simply that preaching determinism might *cause* someone to eschew their responsability for making better personal choices because making the better choice is often harder?
The flip side of that is the idea that preaching personal responsability to someone who's had a really shitty hand dealt to them might cause them to see that as a personal failing, making them think that they're deserving of it all and that their inability to help themselves due to the trauma is continued proof of their worthlessness, which ends up having the same effect as preaching determinism.
Neither idea really discounts causation, but they really shouldn't be enemies either, hardlining either of them will cause some group of people to justify not making the harder but better choices that will improve their lives. So instead, it's a balance, like most other things in life
Whoa whoa whoa... hold on a bit. This is way too much nuance for the typical anti-Peterson audience to handle
@@phosspatharios9680 I mean, I'm not a Jordan Peterson fan. I'm even pretty sure I'd fall into the "anti-Peterson"-category, because just as much as I disagree with the sentiment of this video, I equally disagree with Jordan Peterson. But it's not because I believe that personal responsibility isn't a thing, or that it can't be used as a powerful tool for self improvement. It's more that I think preaching that to people in the way that he does is pretty disgusting and sends a very detrimental message for the weakest and most abused people in our current society, as anyone who is not in a position to be able to turn that into a productive strategy for improving their life will instead end up in a deepening spiral of self blame. Now, as I said, preaching full out determinism isn't the antidote, it has potentially equally detrimental effects. So instead, the message should be one of both understanding and empowerment, empathy and sovereignty.
My real problem with Peterson goes beyond the points that this video debates (which I still actually think are his most benign aspects). They instead stems from his general dishonesty and his fabricated fear mongering about "cultural marxism" and academia, which has no basis in reality and only serves to further legitimize bigotry and hatred by dressing it up in a suit and eloquent phrasing.
Sorry if I burst your bubble, but even someone with a more nuanced take on the determinism vs personal responsibility issue can still see Jordan Peterson for what he is.
A balance rendered so by.......causal determinism itself!
@@phosspatharios9680 . When has Peterson ever exhibited nuance!
Great critique!!!
Some of us humans have preference for the most flattering ideologies.
The author of this video essay and Jordan Peterson seem to be talking at cross purposes. Peterson is not casting blame on the child who fails a maths exam or the single mother who can’t pay her bills - his emphasis seems to be psychological. There are a great many things in the world that we cannot hope to control, but Peterson believes the one thing we can control is our inner life. His ideology of the sovereign individual is a belief in *inner* responsibility and the human spirit, not the ability to be in control of all (or even any) extrinsic circumstances. In the face of inevitable adversity, do we think pragmatically, and with dogged determination, or do we become bitter and resentful? He uses the example of ‘being the strongest person at your father’s funeral’ - he never claims that you can stop the father from dying, only that you can try to be the author of your psychological response to that fact. I think the best defence of Peterson’s Protestant-soul ideology here is that we may not be able to help being poor or stupid, but we can transcend psychologically through ‘faith’ (in God, or in ourselves). Whatever the circumstances are, it’s the only life we’ve got and it is a choice to live as if we have power and hope. Nobody said it was easy, but it might be worth a try.
Incidentally I don’t believe we always do have control over our psychological response, but this seems to be Peterson’s point, not that we have control over (and therefore must be held entirely responsible for) our tangible circumstances.
Take for example a government that is systematically restricting rights for a specific population. In the face of such external adversity, Peterson would argue that individuals should attack those policies with dogged determination? That, pragmatically, they should work collectively to better their position and remove the harmful policies? That people are entitled to assert their individualism and be called by whatever name or pronouns they prefer?
@@zadig08 well presumably attacking those policies with dogged determination wouldn’t be a bad start… I think the psychological argument is that it’s preferable, more meaningful, and more practical to remain ‘mentally strong’ (which might bring about the requisite decisive and effective action) than it is to cry and weep about one’s condition. Having said that, he is obviously addressing and selling books to people who don’t live under those kind of conditions.
@@simeonasmith He's a Canadian with a large US audience, correct? The US certainly makes a concerted effort to harm specific populations both within & outside of its borders.
Peterson's goal for others is that they take control of their lives and liberate themselves from internal strife, correct? So it is a good thing when one asserts their individual sovereignty and expresses their identity in a way that suites them. After all, they're no longer left to cry & weep about their inner conflict. Their mental fortitude has directly led to taking decisive action. They have in effect 'become the strongest person at the funeral' by refusing to let their inner turmoil direct their external life. They are instead taking the reins & full responsibility for their actions & behavior.
@@zadig08 yes I think that’s the idea. And there’s some wisdom in that advice, and also some problems with it.
The main issue with it that I see is that it is a fundamentally conservative position that seeks to perpetuate the status quo. Advising people to ‘grin and bear it’ is perhaps good advice with regards to a personal crisis, but it isn’t good advice when faced with tyranny or ongoing injustice on a larger scale. To act out that advice on a societal scale would be, to some extent, a sin of omission.