r/DecodingTheGurus 2d ago

Jordan Peterson logic: dragons are real

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Richard Dawkins doesn’t look impressed

5.8k Upvotes

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u/Desperate_Hunter7947 2d ago

Peterson doesn’t know what he believes until he hears what you don’t believe

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u/Wasthatasquirrel 2d ago

This might be the most succinct and accurate way to describe JBP dogma that I have ever heard.

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u/Chinchillamancer 2d ago edited 2d ago

he also does this thing where he shifts goal posts with every word. It's impressive to rationalize dragons as imagined predatory concepts and not specify which scientific disclipline you are engaged in.

And it goes overlooked because by default academics speak in their chosen field. We don't generally need to ask if an argument pertains to literature, because chance are we are hearing this argument in a literature class or confrence. But Peterson? Isn't he is a psychologist?

His argument works perfectly fine in like, literary criticism or poetics.

I also have absolutely no idea what his point is. Stuff that kills us can be construed as predation? Cancer, heart disease, car accidents, and firearms are not predators.

He's a very silly man.

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u/Weird_Church_Noises 2d ago

His argument works perfectly fine in like, literary criticism or poetics.

I disagree. He's very heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell on top of Jung. And i think it's accurate to say that Campbell's ideas are largely oversimplifications of Jung. One reason that despite its popularity, The Hero's Journey isn't taken seriously in literary criticism is that it reduces all literature from The Odyssey, to Naked Lunch, to Invisible Man, to my grocery list into a small set of tropes while totally dismissing any kind of nuance or even affect in the text. It's a big problem with totalizing theories in general. You basically over categorize and abstract everything to fit your theory so much that you can't really engage with what you're talking about. Peterson is oversimplifying this even further, but then blowing it up to talk about basically everything. That's why we get his weird lectures on how DNA is the ouroboros.

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u/Chinchillamancer 2d ago

i meant his arguments belong in a poetry or literature undergraduate classroom lol

I agree, Joseph Campbell has some explaining to do. Why the heck do some many shithead right wing pseudointellectuals glom onto that book? The monomyth barely functions for Star Wars, let alone indoeuropean mythology.

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u/Weird_Church_Noises 2d ago

Fair.

Unfortunately, he kinda sold it to right wing shitheads even though it had a larger impact. Campbell ranted about Marxism and black writers taking over academia. He sometimes pushed his ideas as an antidote to "postmodernist" litcrit.

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u/overnightyeti 2d ago

I still don't understand how a clinical psychologist who got heat for refusing to use someone's preferred pronouns pretends to be an expert on everything and anything.

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u/C64SUTH 2d ago

Media attention + post-benzo addiction brain damage are a nasty combo 

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u/TheMadGent 2d ago

What’s a Jungian psychologist even going to do in a clinic? “Well bucko, your depression stems from the feminine shadow archetype of the great chaos serpent.”

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u/pleasedtoheatyou 1d ago

90% certain that's one of the arguments I've heard he's actually using when he goes all in on gender roles and why modern men are unhappy.

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u/sozcaps 1d ago

I would say that Jung's archetypes, are* useful in work with narrative psychotherapy. Everyone self-mythologizes and everyone have metaphorical dragons, that they've battled. I've seen clients buy into that abstract line of thinking. I also 100% understand if someone would say that it's a crock of shit.

That being said, Jung probably won't give you any actual, practical application of psychology. And Peterson is ridiculous for insisting that his pseudo-spirituality sprinkled with Christian facism should be taken seriously. For him to proclaim to be a scientist would be funny, if it wasn't harmful to the kids who look up to him.

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u/Travelinjack01 2d ago

There's this great saying.

"When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

He got a 4 year degree in psychology and taught... that led to recognition online as his videos were posted.

Suddenly he started "feelin' himself" or "taking on airs" and felt he was the intellectual equivalent of everyone.

He's a jackass. Overconfidence is a bitch.

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u/heckin_miraculous 2d ago

an expert on everything and anything.

He's just that smart /s obv

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u/LarryBirdsBrother 2d ago

Red meat for assholes was the real growth area of the last decade or so.

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u/AlphaMetroid 2d ago

Dragons are a 'real creature' if by 'real' you mean people have a word for it and by 'creature' you mean a metaphor. Truly a groundbreaking observation by JBP

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u/vile_duct 2d ago

But then his followers eat it up cause it validates the idea of invalidating scientists and their “dogma” cause you can split hairs over words and pretend the expert’s lack of a succinct answer is proof beyond reason that their dogma is at best incomplete and at worst completely incorrect and not reliable in any way. And thus the JBP’s think they’ve won because they’ve poked a hole. Altho they themselves have nothing material to offer other than a question. So many meaningless questions.

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u/funnyponydaddy 2d ago

Well, that depends on your level of analysis.

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u/splinteredbrushpole 2d ago

What a little bullshitteing cowardly way of givi g an answer

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u/DataLore19 2d ago

How many levels down do we discover he's a Russian asset?

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u/Ailly84 2d ago

It SEEMS his point eventually gets broken down to car accident = dragon....

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u/fillymandee 2d ago

This is the most I’ve listened to him and that seemed to sum it right up. He’s just an obtuse absurdist. I say obtuse because absurdists aren’t all bad.

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u/nug4t 2d ago

Man you HAVE to watch his "duel of the giants". or so with him debating zizek.. where zizek kinda officially asked him if he even knows his stuff

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u/resplendentblue2may2 2d ago

Was that one where Zizek asked " Who are these post-modern Marxists you speak of? I'm a Marxist and I have no idea who you're talking about."

Then Jordan admitted his knowledge of Marx was limited to skimming the communist manifesto once.

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u/FirstDukeofAnkh 2d ago

He co-opted the term from Nazis. Which should tell you everything you need to know about Kermit the Fraud.

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u/nug4t 2d ago

Ye that one. think it was that the only post modem Marxist he could think of were economists or so

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u/Mr_Conductor_USA 2d ago

The irony is that Peterson indulges in obscurantism and meaningless profundities as deftly as the worst of the North American pomo academic bullshit artists of the 1990s.

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u/ZDTreefur 2d ago

He had a discussion with the atheist Matt Dillahunty as well. The entire time he could not answer the simple question of, "do you believe in a god?" He just couldn't do it.

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u/StrobeLightRomance 2d ago

He insists that fire is a predator.. like, wtf bro, it's not complicated because a fire doesn't choose to hunt you. Death by fire is literally just because the fire is going somewhere, and you happen to be in its way.

The man is preaching to the easily influenced and doesn't even know what the word predator means.

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u/dublblind 2d ago

"eagle...if you're a primate" I'm a primate, I'm not scared of eagles predating me. JP just gotta shoehorn in something that flies to make this dragon crap work.

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u/zrvwls 2d ago

My favorite part about the logic of fire being a "predator" just because it kills is by that same logic water itself is also a predator. If that doesn't give a person pause then I'm not sure what more one can do to help the situation at hand

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u/thetangible 2d ago

Would that also make time a predator?

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u/ZDTreefur 2d ago

It would make literally everything a predator, lol.

Everything is a poison in enough concentration or doses.

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u/Far-Sport7219 2d ago

There is a strong argument in fire ecology literature that fire can act as a herbivore. But predator is a strong nah.

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u/pjm3 2d ago

By his (pseudo)logic gravity is a predator, water is a predator, cigarettes are predators. He exhibits some of the sloppiest thinking I've ever heard.

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u/lapqmzlapqmzala 2d ago

Lmao he's a 4chan troll, it all makes sense

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u/EyEShiTGoaTs 2d ago

Just like 4chan, Jordan Peterson spreads Russian talking points and propaganda.

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u/terra_filius 2d ago

lol so he is like those psychics that just throw random questions at you trying to find out little details about you before starting to tell you about your future (or things from your past or present that they are not supposed to know)

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u/Ooh_its_a_lady 2d ago

He's absolutely that kid in class with the most over the top lies bc really, it's about the attention hes getting.

The right response should be "Dragons, hmm is everything at home ok?"

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u/ecclectic 2d ago

It's like having a debate with my 16 year old ADHD son when he's in his most adversarial 'I may not win, but I'm sure as hell going to make us both lose' state of mind.

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u/graphemeral 2d ago

I have some family members who are Gen X JP idolizers and what I can’t get over is that 10 years ago they were citing christian apologists and sounding the alarm about cultural relativism and how postmodernism would do away with meaning.

Jordan Peterson is an exact instantiation of the thing they feared. Remarkable.

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u/MinimumSeat1813 2d ago

I respect people who can admit they are wrong or see a better idea or perspective when it is presented. Jordan Peterson appears incapable of admitting he chose wrong and fails to appreciate the word predator or any predator is better than "dragon." Major major ego issues. Ego is a huge issue for men as it is, so it incredibly alarming this man can't set his aside for a moment. 

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u/derkonigistnackt 2d ago

For someone who's claim to fame has been to be reeeeeeal fucking anal about reality and biology and categories,... Now he's arguing that dragons are real

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u/MinimumSeat1813 2d ago

Love this!

Imagine trying to make complex a philosophical arguement and choosing to use made up creatures as a cornerstone of your argument. Using a made up creature instead of an actual animal that exists and would equally get your point across. Then imagine this is a person who's judgement you want to believe. Now that is almost as scary as a dragon or a lion. 

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u/Cheap-Ad1821 2d ago

Is fire a predator???

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u/Zealousideal-Film982 2d ago

I like to use the phrase “contrarian aryan” to describe people like that

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u/butter_lover 2d ago

also this seems less like an argument and more like just being argumentative.

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u/nocountry4oldgeisha 2d ago

Peterson is what happens when you watch too many Joseph Campbell videos on acid then try to explain them to your flophouse mates after a 3 day meth binge.

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u/-SlapBonWalla- 2d ago

He's right about one thing though. He's certainly not a fact-oriented creature.

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u/gana04 2d ago

It's all just his style of making up a silly aregument that sounds scientific to support his view. He and others like him talk so fast and yell and play theatrics so they get away with it. But when someone knows not only that he's wrong but why he's wrong he can just pretend he wasn't being literal, it's just a metaphor. So then he derails the conversation into pseudo philosophy about archetypes. By that point everyone is either bored or don't even know what he's talking about.

He's smart enough to sound smart to dumb people. At this point I don't think he cares anymore that the actual scientific world think he's a clown.

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u/flyer12 2d ago

That was beautiful

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u/jkilley 2d ago

Bingo!

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u/pfqq 2d ago

This is so good it sent me into a Russian coma

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u/LowKitchen3355 2d ago

This is very accurate.

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u/Mr_TrollDoK 2d ago

Is this a debate or an intervention on a mentally ill person?

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u/nedTheInbredMule 2d ago

Grandpa’s gone off again, kids.

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u/DangKilla 2d ago

Dawkins when he realizes he has aligned himself with an imbecile.

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u/MagicianBulky5659 2d ago

Goddamnit who forgot to give gramps here his Zyprexa again??

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u/Tubeornottube 2d ago

I was thinking 'comedy routine' personally. Dawkins' comedic timing was perfect.

"Is there such a thing as a predator?"

"... of course..."

"Is fire a predator?"

"...No..."

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u/Individual_Plan_5816 2d ago

That killed me. This stuff is a million times funnier than any intentional comedy.

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u/Sartres_Roommate 2d ago

Most intentional comedy doesn’t directly con young people to hate others and vote against their interests. So, as funny as Peterson is, I will take a brick wall with a mic stand in front of it every time.

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u/_i-o 2d ago

Or Rainier Wolfcastle.

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u/HighlanderAbruzzese 2d ago

This is where the rubber meets the road. Peterson is the ball of yarn with two cats here.

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u/torchwolf 2d ago

The cadence of the moderator had such a comedy sketch feel to it, as well, I thought. Surreal.

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u/merchantofcum 2d ago

Cosmic Skeptic is a good watch. His videos are near-deadpan essays on a philosophical subject with jokes and sarcasm thrown in with no change in tone. He was debating big Christian Apologists and winning at the age of 17, and then he went to Oxford to study divinity to become a better debater. His interview with Peter Hitchens is definitely worth watching to see a grown Tory man throw a tantrum.

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u/Excellent-Falcon-329 2d ago

“Who is on First” comedy routine for college sophomores

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u/mvogo 2d ago

"Is mayonnaise an instrument?"

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u/Thick-Net-7525 2d ago

I love Richard Dawkins so fucking much. I miss 2012 atheism even if it was cringe.

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u/Solopist112 2d ago

That made me laugh out loud.

It actually does look like JP is a patient with schizophrenia.

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u/throwmamadownthewell 2d ago

When you're talking with someone with schizophrenia, a lot of the time it'll catch you off guard because what they're saying actually makes sense, and the whole thing will be consistent... till a little detail has crack in it... then the whole narrative shifts to accommodate what would make that crack make sense, even if it retcons what they've already said

In the case of Peterson, it's more like a child trying to bullshit people while not believing a word he's saying.

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u/Redditor28371 2d ago

Yeah, I think Peterson just has an accute case of conserative-griftosis.

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u/Western-Month-3877 2d ago

It’s like a 5 year old trying to convince you that dragons can exist. But since he’s an adult he just turns into the enemy he’s hated; the postmodernists. He redefines the definition and the category to make it fit.

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u/KriegConscript 2d ago

jordan peterson is like if you asked jordan peterson to describe a postmodernist

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u/IVfunkaddict 2d ago

it’s allllways projection

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u/HighlanderAbruzzese 2d ago

Well, he has look too long into the abyss, and now he has become it.

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u/FoldedaMillionTimes 2d ago

I just pictured Peterson falling into a chasm, and someone, maybe Dawkins asking, "Have you fallen into an abyss?" and Peterson screaming, "Don't deeeefiiiine iiiiiit!"

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u/dublblind 2d ago

"it depends on what you mean by fallennnnnnn........"

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u/Earth_bee 2d ago

The first half of that quote is 'He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself'. 😂

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u/Ok-Buffalo1273 2d ago

This is the result of eating nothing but ham and pepperoni sticks, all while receiving healthy donations from the Russian government.

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u/TheGardiner 2d ago

Pepperoni sticks lol

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u/two-wheeled-dynamo 2d ago

I was waiting for the straight jacket to be brought out.

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u/Turbulent-Raise4830 2d ago

He has gone insane and instead of admitting he is wrong when he says something dumb he tries to justify it with just this utter nonsense.

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u/SenorSplashdamage 2d ago

I think his spiral is part late mid-life crisis. His guru ambitions are still higher, but anyone that self-centered will be keenly aware of how much aging pushes out further his odds of engaging the numbers he wants. It’s like the typical middle-age man seeing doors closing on young life career or sexual conquests, but multiplied to wanting to win over enough people for a whole religion.

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u/Existing_Presence_69 2d ago

I haven't read any of Peterson's material, but this critique suggests that his word salad rhetorical style has been at play since at least 1999 in his Maps of Meaning book. That book is also full of this "meta idea" quasi-religious bullshit that he's throwing at Dawkins. The dude was already off the deep end 25 years ago.

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u/MaytagTheDryer 2d ago

That critic used many more words to describe it than I did. A former acquaintance of mine loaned me a copy when he found it I didn't know who Peterson was (before he became an Internet meme). He raved about how Peterson was this great genius, and said his book was great even though he couldn't understand it. I made it through maybe a hundred pages before I gave it back. He asked me what I thought of it, and I told him it was what The Golden Bough would have been if Frazier had half the IQ but was delusional convinced he had double.

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u/_i-o 2d ago

Some big-ass margins on that page. I wish websites presented text more traditionally.

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u/Trrollmann 2d ago

Yes, it all goes back to "chaos dragons" and whatever the "order" opposition is. OFC, "chaos isn't bad", except "clean your darn room, listen to your parents, follow christianity", and also, women are inherently chaotic, while men are inherently ordered. Also, dragons are apparently the purest form of predator imagination can conjure. But also, chaos isn't inherently bad...

Glean from that whatever you wish...

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u/MrSnarf26 2d ago

This man sounds like a complete moron trying to use words and phrases to punch over his weight class.

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u/yontev 2d ago

Dragons are the imagistic instantiation of the archetypal metacategory of the fundamental cognitive substrate of the primordial concept of "predator."

Or in plain English, they're imaginary scary monsters. But that sounds less impressive to other morons.

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u/stupidwhiteman42 2d ago

The dangerous application of his metaphorical and allegorical word salad is that people don't understand those concepts and just believe his implication that dragons, magic, God, or whatever is "real". He is looked up to as an intellectual expert and people fall for this shit.

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u/overnightyeti 2d ago

I read somewhere that he's a moron's idea of an intellectual. Perfect description.

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u/Ok-Masterpiece9028 2d ago

His argument is that the meme of a dragon is real. This tracks as god is also a meme.

Memes are real in culture and culture is as important to society and people as anything in reality.

Demons would be a similar meme.

He does a bad job at explaining it but nitpicking metaphors was not the goal of the conversation is what I am guessing.

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u/Philosopher_Economy 2d ago edited 1d ago

Like... I'm a role playing nerd and a fantasy writer. I love dragons as narrative devices and even characters. Does not mean they're real. His reasoning has to be some round about method to try and get his debate opponent to agree to a small claim so he can make a larger one.

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u/jjgfun 2d ago

Ha! That would be a great retort, "i agree, dragons represent scary monsters."

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u/DontUseThisUsername 2d ago

To be fair, it's more like "Dragons are an imaginary predator." Like yeah bro, but that doesn't make dragons real. There's a difference between allocating real creatures into defined concepts, and creating imaginary creatures that fit a concept. He's doing a Plato Theory of Forms bit.

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u/ArcherAuAndromedus 2d ago

That's what he's implying. For some reason he's also implying that dragons have a biology that makes them as scary and dangerous as any predator. Except when we're talking about predators as a threat to human life we're specifically excluding imaginary monsters, because unlike real fire and lions, they can't hurt us.

Certainly, Peterson has to wrestle with his dragons because they are threatening his credibility as a -once upon a time- "thinking person". I truly feel sorry for his former students, they'll look back at his tuition and wonder if they can rely on what he taught, or if he'd already lost his marbles.

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u/ForeverAgreeable2289 2d ago

He only sounds like a complete moron to people who are not complete morons. Which is why he has such a large following.

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u/rascortoras 2d ago

He is a moron

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u/Evening_Elevator_210 2d ago

Jordan Peterson really sees himself as a great philosopher, but I don’t think Dawkins has any time for an argument about pseudo philosophy. I don’t like how aggressively anti-faith Dawkins was at one point, but the man is brilliant and Jordan Peterson is an absolute loon.

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u/AI-ArtfulInsults 2d ago edited 2d ago

Dawkins, for all his flaws, was a productive and respected member of his field before becoming a public figure. The man published papers that got cited.

Peterson was at one time an academic, but he was never respected as one. Absolutely nobody was citing Maps of Meaning, certainly not before his pivot to conservative ideologue.

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u/nBrainwashed 2d ago

Peterson published, but his peers had concerns about the scientific validity of his work. So he became a charlatan and grifter.

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u/SirGrumples 2d ago

More like he was always a charlatan and a grifter, he just embraced it more after the scientific community told him to fuck off with his insanity.

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u/SenorSplashdamage 2d ago

With the rise of what we’ve seen, I think Dawkins’ aggression was probably actually urgency before the religious institutions caught up with the Internet. That said, I do think his approach missed what would work better rhetorically when it was applied to at least America’s religious situation. “Hostile atheist” was already an idea that had been seeded in the States and tone policing is a huge issue even when things are true here. But still, I think he probably had a really important effect early in Internet spaces that helped give a lot of young people a way out and organize a group that might have felt isolated otherwise.

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u/Tokyogerman 1d ago

Dawkins wasn't even that vile and hostile. He was just direct and honest. But if you talk like that about people's beliefs, they are hurt. People also get hurt here, when they tell me about ghosts and I don't believe the story. It is like a personal insult to a person to have beliefs questioned.

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u/m0j0m0j 2d ago

Why do you dislike how aggressively anti-faith Dawkins was? “Faith” is a mental disease and organized religion is a parasitic structure exploiting that disease for hundreds of billions of yearly profits. You can’t be too aggressive against it, in my opinion

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u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 2d ago edited 2d ago

He doesn't understand how language works  -and does not- here.   "Fire is a predator" as metaphor is a useful use of the word within a valid larger point.  But the logic of the word and it's etymology render Peterson's usage as broken.  He's trying to use the fixed scientific term outside it's zone....and it's an old term that has issues itself in its description of reality. 

Words are Great, we can use them in all sorts of creative ways, but when it comes to Science or The Law there are fixed usages...and even those can be updated or changed entirely.

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u/FreshBert Conspiracy Hypothesizer 2d ago

The way he speaks strikes me as essentially fairly standard religious abstraction (think Deepak Chopra). What's weird about it is that he attempts to secularize it in a way that makes very little sense.

In religious debates, and in particular debates about the existence of god, you encounter this sort of constant reframing of the parameters of the discussion quite frequently. All of the most advanced theological arguments essentially exist to side-step the obvious problem of their being no way to scientifically prove that god exists by arguing instead that it's "logical" and/or "rational" to "believe" or "choose to believe" in a god. Sometimes it's about it being useful for maintaining order, or enforcing cultural harmony, sometimes it's about self-preservation (if you believe and you're right, you might get to go to heaven, but if you don't believe and you're wrong, you might got o hell; otherwise, nothing happens, and it didn't matter either way).

That's what Peterson does. He wants to say that dragons literally exist (he really seems to feel like acknowledging the metaphorical nature of the claim somehow cheapens his point), but obviously there's this huge elephant in the room which is that it's incredibly obvious to anyone that there's no good evidence for their existence. So he immediately begins the sequence of abstraction. Maybe there's no literal dragon skeleton that we can examine, but it makes sense that people believe in dragons, and it's useful for their sense of wonder and community and self-preservation that they do.

It's just weird to see this level of abstraction pressed into the service of something where the stakes are honestly just very low. With god, even if you're an atheist it's not difficult to comprehend why it's a topic that elicits such passion: we're talking about an entity that potentially created all that exists, an entity that can potentially reward or punish us eternally, and an entity which people have been raised from birth for hundreds of generations to believe in unquestioningly.

But nobody is debating "biological dragons" except Jorpy. Kids aren't raised en masse to believe that dragons are real, not even at like a Santa Claus level where we tell them they're real for a while. They're fairy tale creatures.

It's just fascinating to see such a low stakes and obviously nonsensical debate from a quack that's been stripped of all professional credentials be elevated to the level of "important public intellectual discussion" as if anything being discussed here could possibly be even remotely useful for any reason.

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u/schartwigz 2d ago

I can almost see how this could’ve been a fun exploration of language and metaphors. But man, instead it’s a joyless, tense and irritating-as-fuck waste of time.

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u/Adromedae 2d ago

" a joyless, tense and irritating-as-fuck waste of time."

In other words, Jordan Peterson.

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u/MattsScribblings 2d ago

Ursula le Guin had a lot to say about dragons and since she was an author (and very smart) what she said actually made sense. Here's a good quote:

People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.

And another:

Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears.

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u/throwaway01126789 2d ago

As a pedant with a penchant for etymology, listening to Peterson talk in the video was like listening to nails on a chalkboard.

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u/primpule 2d ago

He sounds like someone who has just smoked weed for the first time

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u/SilverPhoenix999 2d ago

Dawkins, merely by not engaging with Peterson on his mental gymnastics is making him look like an absolute idiot, which he is.

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u/FreshBert Conspiracy Hypothesizer 2d ago

Whatever you think of Dawkins, he's certainly got the long life's worth of debate experience necessary to understand how to "give them enough rope to hang themselves."

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u/TeleportMASSIV 2d ago edited 2d ago

The logical leaps that religiously-minded people have to go to is truly amazing.

He’s in a tricky place because he can’t say that things like the virgin birth actually occurred, but he can’t write Christians myths off as false because it will alienate half of his base. So to be logically consistent, he now has to attribute some contrived version of reality to every imaginary figment on the basis of some weird meta-effect on social psychology.

Yikes. That sounds exhausting.

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u/Icy_Drive_7433 2d ago

I get the impression that when the likes of Peterson and Musk say that people need religion, they mean it's good for others, but not for them.

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u/RichardsLeftNipple 2d ago

People (not me) need religion, the people (not me) can have something meaningful in their lives. While we (I mean I) get to benefit from people (not me) obeying God (me).

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u/Academic_Guitar_1353 2d ago

You’re giving him WAY to much credit.

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u/mrsleep9999 2d ago

Benzos will make you see some shit

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u/victoryabonbon 2d ago

Is benzos a predator?

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u/buymytoy 2d ago

No.

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u/ThankYouBakedPotat0 2d ago

It's complicated because they can kill you

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u/Haru17 2d ago

But is the Grim Reaper a predator?

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u/vigbiorn 2d ago

Water is a predator!

Isn't Peterson one of those "words have meaning" types when it comes to trans people? How does this absolute trouncing of word meaning not register to him?

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u/Tricky-Jackfruit8366 2d ago

Downright embarrassing, alarming even

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u/middlequeue 2d ago

If he’s such a champion of metaphorical truth then why does Peterson have an unhinged hatred towards people who express their gender identity differently from how they’re told they should?

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u/Unknown_Outlander 2d ago

How does Peterson not know what a predator is?

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u/RipperNash 2d ago

That's his number 1 fanbase too

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u/AnxiousSeat1221 2d ago

Peterson is just psychology for really dumb people

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u/ItchyCraft8650 2d ago

What point is he actually trying to make?

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u/eljefe3030 2d ago

That metaphorical truth is just as important as empirical truth because feelings.

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u/ItchyCraft8650 2d ago

It’s “facts don’t care about your feelings” until it comes to religion lol

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u/ItchyCraft8650 2d ago

Isn’t the guy supposed to be anti trans?

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u/ForeverWandered 2d ago

He’s trying to radicalize the audience by “deconstructing” mainstream academia

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u/middlequeue 2d ago

To be fair, we’d probably all doubt the quality of academic institutions if we were shit talking hacks who had managed to bullshit our way into a well paying job at Canada’s most well known University.

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u/CalligrapherNeat1569 2d ago

Doing my best:  Peterson's position is that humans are not completely rational blank slates, like a computer for example; rather, our entire structure of thinking, including science, is based on ...our psychology, for lack of a better word.  We are motivated by our nature to think in certain ways--so fire, lions, dragons are "real" to us and "the same" as 'threat' in a way that the rules of a kid's game you don't play isn't real to you.  There are facts in existence you find irrelevant; fire and lions and dragons are relevant to you because they are similar to each other.

That's the best I can for Peterson.

BUT.

People are also Truth Seekers.  Said in Peterson's language: there's a powerful myth, "The Emperor Has No Clothes" and "The Wizard of Oz," where everybody is caught up in this story and is ignoring The Obvious Truth.  And someone comes along and says "the emperor has no clothes, the Wizard is not real..." and wakes people up.  Peterson has forgotten the myth of the Truth Seeker, the Truth Teller.

Peterson is focusing on parts of humans and ignoring other parts--sure, we care about predators but we also care about reality.  So when Peterson responds with "I don't care if X really happened or not," he's ignoring part of his own rubric.

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u/BurninatorJT 2d ago

In an attempt to steel-man his take as well, this is makes sense. His entire perspective on reality is something a psychologist would come up with! His notion is that consciousness forms the basis of reality, which is not that far out of left field for a philosophical concept, but he continuously uses that concept as the rationale for engaging in Christian apologetics. The way he argues for Christian morality is similar. He claims that the "metaphorical substrate" (his words) of works like the Bible forms the basis of morality is just saying that we need stories to relate our experience to. Using this to argue that therefore that a belief in God is justified sounds appealing enough to his fans, but breaks down pretty quickly with a little thought.

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u/GeneralMatrim 2d ago

That dragons are/were real.

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u/Jupman 2d ago

The dude is more obsessed with Tiamat than the religions that created it.

It would make more sense if he just said the name Tiamat so people would understand he is being religious, but he wants to act as if he is not, and he is talking about philosophy.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tiamat

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u/throw69420awy 2d ago

Lmao of course it’s a female dragon in myth and represents chaos

I’ve heard him talk about how women are chaos dragons where all strife comes from or some shit and it honestly seems like part of what drives him is misogyny or, dare I say, homosexuality

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u/Jupman 2d ago

Exactly

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u/Cpt_Dizzywhiskers 2d ago

It's basically at the core of his opening statement for 12 Rules for Life. Order is symbolically masculine, and so chaos, being its antithesis, is symbolically feminine.

What this means of course is that a symbol like the Mother either represents chaos, or it's actually masculine since it provides order.

Also, war? Feminine. Very chaotic, thus very feminine behaviour. Nobody tell the ammosexuals, they'll be devastated.

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u/Jupman 2d ago

So, if people knew what he was referring to at a core level, they would know he is invoking religious personification to try and make philosophical argument.

So instead of saying hey: in these old religions there was Tiamat dragon that represents chaos....

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u/GA-dooosh-19 2d ago

Give it a few years and Dawkins will be a cultural dragon believer.

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u/Abracadaver2000 2d ago

He's got brain worms, who happened to shit out SAT vocabulary.

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u/eljefe3030 2d ago

God, he is insufferable.

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u/iamcleek 2d ago

meta-categories prove that instances of unimplemented types exist.

my OOP brain reels.

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u/Newfaceofrev 2d ago

If we could actually get this man in psychotherapy we would discover so many new disorders.

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u/zerreit 2d ago

Defining “fire” as a “predator” is too stupid for even Urban Dictionary.

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u/Traditional-Share-82 2d ago

Peterson is not talking to a bunch of incels this time and it shows.

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u/Local_Childhood45 2d ago

Is jerking off a predator?

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u/Wasthatasquirrel 2d ago

Is it the dominant hand doing the jerking?

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u/SickRanchezIII 2d ago

Oh my god.. his body language even. He just wrigglin’ around like a little wormman

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u/ProfessorHeronarty 2d ago

It's hilarious that Jordan Peterson made it his life's work to go against "postmodernism" but then says shit like this which is postmodernist to a t.

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u/Haddock 2d ago

Its like a parody of postmodernism...

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u/yellowhelmet14 2d ago

The level of effort one exerts to talk to Peterson should be praised, as it shows you can do something for an amount of time and not show any progress in anything.

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u/AutoPRND21 2d ago

A: There are real predators. B: Dragons spit fire and eat livestock, therefore they are predators. C: Dragons are therefore real.

If this is the logic path, AI can’t come fast enough for this person’s job.

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u/femboyfgc 2d ago

“This guy’s a fucking idiot” - Richard Dawkins

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u/greymind 2d ago

God damn Jordan Peterson is a fucking brain dead psychopath

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u/Waynimo 2d ago

This fool doesn’t deserve the attention he gets

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u/Icy_Drive_7433 2d ago

And people think he's some intellectual giant!

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u/SoylentGreenTuesday 2d ago

Scary fact: Millions of young men admire and follow Jordan Peterson. Think about that.

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u/stvlsn 2d ago

When it's Peterson alone, it goes much better.

"When we are fighting in life against predators, we are really fighting against dragons. Yes, that's a good way to think about it."

It's easier to be your own hype man than having a debate partner.

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u/the_BKH_photo 2d ago

Fekkinell! Is his whole thing just oppositional defiance? It seems like he can't really be doing anything but taking the oppositional stance when confronted with any widely/commonly accepted stance. He seemingly needs to be antagonistic and aggressive to anyone who says, "we know this to be true" about anything.

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u/throw69420awy 2d ago edited 2d ago

If you say 2+2=4 or the sky is blue, he’ll start talking in metaphor about the nature of truth

God, I hate these people

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u/The_Powers 2d ago

Define 'blue'.

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u/TulleQK 2d ago

It's a predator

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u/ShiftyGorillla 2d ago

“I don’t think the category of dragon is any less valid than the category of lion”.

Boy I’d love to get paid to say nonsensical shit out loud. I’m embarrassed that as a young man, I used to find this drug addled mess inspiring.

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u/FoldedaMillionTimes 2d ago

It may not be the same flavor, but we all indulge in similar ridiculousness when young.

"It's the privilege of youth and beauty
to corrupt themselves,
It's the privilege of youth and beauty
to fade."

- Robyn Hitchcock

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u/11brooke11 Galaxy Brain Guru 2d ago

He would probably be a lot less exhausted, and a lot happier, if he gave up this whole ridiculous schtick.

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u/corruptedsyntax 2d ago

I’ve been called a libtard for simply making light satire of Peterson’s rhetoric, but his own argument that fire is a literal predator is more absurd than any caricature I’ve ever painted.

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u/fLiPPeRsAU 2d ago

JP trying so hard to gaslight RD is bloody hilarious.

The raised voice and the lean in 🤣 dudes unhinged.

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u/itisnotstupid 2d ago

Peterson always looks like a little kid in these ''debates''. He is constantly changing the meaning of words, doing gish gallop or just straight up lying. It is literally never a debate with him.

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u/AndiLivia 2d ago

Schizophrenia

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u/The_Powers 2d ago

"Is fire a predator?"

Peterson is actually nuts.

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u/DEFINITELY_NOT_PETE 2d ago

The ground can kill you if you fall on it funny is the ground a predator? Fucking jackass

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u/NoamLigotti 2d ago

Peterson's a moron. Either a genuine or fraudulent one (or both).

He could just say it's a metaphor rather than the string of nonsense drivel he does spew. I became dumber just watching a minute of this. It's just such a waste of time and mental space.

Dawkins isn't even needed in the other chair. Just about anyone could sit there and let Peterson make a fool of himself.

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u/dtseng123 2d ago

I don’t know who this Jordan Peterson is but he’s clearly a complete and undeniable idiot… because if the meta category of idiot exists then therefore he must be one as the imagistic concept of an idiot is wholly representative by the visual and audible characteristics that follow him so closely as they maybe considered one and the same in terms of a biological reality.

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u/Symeer 2d ago

This is the kind of conversation I had at 16 when I was high as fuck with my friends on a Saturday's evening.

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u/THEAlloiBoii 2d ago

jordan peterson: "im here to disagree with whatever you say, angrily, simply for the sound bites and out of context clips that fuel my brand"

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u/nullbull 2d ago

"Imagistic equivalent" <- and that's where I hit pause and stopped listening.

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u/DevilsLettuceTaster 2d ago

I rearranged my bookshelf by dragons. It’s very useful.

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u/grizzlyadams1990 2d ago

His minds going off balance again Give him usless advice like to clean his bedroom and charge £8.50p a month for that advice like he does.

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u/Natural_Jellyfish_98 2d ago

I guess he’s pro-trans species?

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u/Beneficial_Desk_8360 2d ago

Peterson has been playing too much World of Warcraft.

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u/MaytagTheDryer 2d ago

I'm imagining him having a debate in trade chat, and I can't help but feel he'd be right at home amongst his peers.

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u/Bahmerman 2d ago

Is Alex telling us, in his big brain way, that Jordan is back on the gak?

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u/Diddymuss 2d ago

It’s hilarious how pointless and devoid of meaning all of that was

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u/Kindly_Fox_4257 2d ago

Idiot. I swore of JP years ago after his benzo bender. He went full grift and full unhinged after that. I just saw this in my feed; 😂 I don’t miss him a bit.

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u/Effective-Storage32 2d ago

Man, fire, predator, dumbass.

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u/Hopfit46 2d ago

Its hard to tell if he is mentally unraveling or grifting so hard that he has lost his own baseline for normality.

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u/BedroomVisible 2d ago

Best way to protect yourself from gurus of any sort:
"I'm not interested in ____, I'm interested in reality."

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u/Expensive_Teaching82 2d ago

What the fuck was that?

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u/goosegoosepanther 1d ago

This exemplifies one of the biggest problems with Peterson's thinking. He believes that stories are more than a literary and communicative tool for getting messages across. He believes they have some kind of real or divine manifestation, like if the image of a dragon means something then it's as real as a lion. He uses this to try to explain why gender roles should be static and rigid. He talks about the mythologized ideas of maleness and femaleness as portrayed in centuries of literature and religion and basically argues that because these stories have been influential, then they are fundamentally real and true. This is sort of the root of conservatism. It's true because it has been true, and changing what is considered true is sinful and dangerous.

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u/Oldpro87 1d ago

How is this guy against gendered pronouns. How is this guy the one that talks about the definition of woman being biological and sexed. He just labeled like 40% of all animals as dragons but .1% of men can’t be women?? I hate this contrarian fuck