Jordan Peterson & Matt Dillahunty

[XenoFish]

1 minute ago, Sherapy said:

The good news is you are an optimist, when things are bad they can always get worse.

That the secret of the pessimistic, we are the true optimist. When the S hits the fan we have the umbrella. 

[XenoFish]

When you know nothing matters, the world is yours. You can do whatever you want or nothing at all, because in the end it's gone. So you're only left with what you have chosen to do. Good or ill.

[Davros of Skaro]

On 7/13/2018 at 9:12 AM, eight bits said:

Well, I am not Wisdom's star pupil, not so far, anyway. As I type this, I am looking into the eyes of a hound, and have the illusion that I am teaching her (not to get so worked up about everything, even though she is reasonable to get worked up about some things in her environment).

Not that you'll appreciate this, but this morning, when I was calming the hound to allow another dog to pass by her unchallenged, the very picture of the Wise Old Woman just appeared beside us, unannounced (from an adjacent house of course - nobody said that the realizations of the archetypes don't have bodies; no magic that she "just appeared," I was looking elsewhere, but it was a chocie not to announce herself, a judgment that I wouldn't be startled). She gave the dog a few treats, tolerated that the dog wasn't crisp about sitting. The woman was in command of the situation but not domineering. I explained what I was doing. "I know, I thought she could use a little distraction." Yes, that was a good call. The woman and I talked about the dog, and that was about it.

Wisdom visited me this morning, as much as Wisdom ever has visited me. I didn't see any wings.

That Wisdom sure gets around. 

Last week I was sitting at a bus stop that's enclosed with plexiglass. I heard a bang immediately to my left which startled me. There was Wisdom fluttering on the ground, then she took off. Yes she was winged, and reminded me to get up when I hit a wall.

Last week I was walking in the woods as it was getting dark. I heard high up in the treetops "chi chi chi". I embraced for a piece of dead branch to possibly hit me. Then to my immediate left I see what I thought was an oblong shaped slate grey rock falling. Just as it hit the ground with a "thud" I fought the urge to spin around to see who threw a rock at me, but I knew I heard it coming straight down from on high. It turned out to be a big fat squirrel which immediately took off away from me, though I knew I couldn't do the same if I fell half the height. Wisdom was bushy tailed, and humbled me to my physical limitations.

Tonight when it was dark I was coming back from a hike. Then to my left I see glowing eyes in my peripheral vision reflecting my headlamp that's in flood mode. These pair of reflecting amber eyes are staring at me. I'm thinking how they are reflecting big, and closely spaced that it's an owl, or a cat. I was fooled once when similar eyes, but low to the ground started flying towards me. I called out "mew! mew! mew!", but it just stood there at ground level staring at me. I turned on my beam, but the reflecting eyes just obscured the body. I turned back on the flood, and made my way towards it while calling out "mew! mew! mew!". With the snapping of crisp leaves, and twigs by going off the trail the creature turned to make it's escape. Being prepared I turned on my beam to reveal a cat. Wisdom was limped tailed, and walking kind of bow legged cat tonight. She taught me that I like to go "mew! mew! Mew!" at cats.

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Let's give it a try. He is answering a question, so some of the context is lost. I think this was the q&a session at his Bible series last summer, and this night he probably talked about Abraham (whose story begins by setting out into a new-to-him land, where he is a stranger).

The answer is not especially Jungian. The basic premise is that life is tragic, futile and miserable. (Colleague @XenoFish  is correct, to that extent, if only he didn't sugarcoat it so much). That presents two closely related practical problems: how do you manage to live anyway (assuming you choose to go that route, as most do)? and is there anything more to life besides the tragedy, futility and misery?

If there is anything more to life besides the obvious and therefore well-known dead end, then it must reside in the unknown. Maybe we should explore the unknown, then. That kills two birds with one stone: maybe we find "something more," and whether or not we do, exploration itself gives us something reasonable to do, and so a way to manage to live despite the basic premise being true.

The hitch with that is that the unknown is scary (also messy, uncomfortable, tiring, inconvenient, ... say what you will about sitting around waiting to die, you can do it safely and comfortably, and there are several mighty tasty angst-management beverages to while away the time). That's where courage comes in, to do what is scary, etc., not because you aren't scared (which you are and should be), but to do something discomforting anyway despite that, because doing so might improve things.

That seems to be the gist of it. There's a bit of clinician's advice (if a patient has an anxiety disorder, then build up incremental exposures to the source of the anxiety), backed up with a bit of a literature gem (yes, it does change affect whether a stress has been accepted by choice, or is imposed involuntarily - the former being better from an attitudinal perspective, although the stressor is still a pain in the butt either way).

How'd that work for you?

 

That was great. Now if JP fans can respond like that when asked, and you when pointed out when JP says something embarrassing. 

My opinion is we as a collective species makes life less than it should be because we need to balance desires from needs, and stop rationalizing unreason.

 

[Davros of Skaro]

6 hours ago, XenoFish said:

When you know nothing matters, the world is yours. You can do whatever you want or nothing at all, because in the end it's gone. So you're only left with what you have chosen to do. Good or ill.

The thrill is waiting to see what cr@pest is around the next corner. 

[eight bits]

@davros of skaro

Not everything we encounter in the woods is Wisdom (at least I don't think so). To me, you gave a little sermon on resilience, no doubt in spite of yourself .

I predicted that you wouldn't much like my anecdote. Anyway, it is simply a fact that things happen IRL which, if they were dreams instead, would make good dreams.

Thank you for the kind reaction to my summary. Like it or not, there is a market for the way Peterson said pretty much the same thing (and no market at all for my version). And not just for what he says, but the way he performs it - a central-casting introverted nerd telling young-adult guys (if the market surveys are correct) to quit being girlie men. it was funny when Arnold first said it, when the actor fit the line, and something unfunny when the line is delivered "against type," as it is when Peterson says the same thing. It works that way, too.

Not that Arnold couldn't manage against-type himself.

 

If Peterson ever writes a sequel to his best-selling 12 Rules, there's Rule #13 right there:

Try to count without moving your lips.

Edited July 15, 2018 by eight bits

[GlitterRose]

17 hours ago, XenoFish said:

That the secret of the pessimistic, we are the true optimist. When the S hits the fan we have the umbrella. 

Because we live our lives expecting it to happen. 

[XenoFish]

9 minutes ago, ChaosRose said:

Because we live our lives expecting it to happen. 

Pretty much. It's like having a chump change stash just in case. Where you put whatever cash you have left over at the end of the week in a box or jar, then months later you've got a nice stack of money, so whenever something "Hits the fan" you've got a cushion. One of the smartest things I've done recently. 

[Davros of Skaro]

21 hours ago, eight bits said:

@davros of skaro

Not everything we encounter in the woods is Wisdom (at least I don't think so). To me, you gave a little sermon on resilience, no doubt in spite of yourself .

I predicted that you wouldn't much like my anecdote. Anyway, it is simply a fact that things happen IRL which, if they were dreams instead, would make good dreams.

It was simply that one can find meaning in anything, and coincidences are just that.

Still JP believes Sophia makes her presence known. Well for him in that instance at least. 

21 hours ago, eight bits said:

Thank you for the kind reaction to my summary. Like it or not, there is a market for the way Peterson said pretty much the same thing (and no market at all for my version). And not just for what he says, but the way he performs it - a central-casting introverted nerd telling young-adult guys (if the market surveys are correct) to quit being girlie men. it was funny when Arnold first said it, when the actor fit the line, and something unfunny when the line is delivered "against type," as it is when Peterson says the same thing. It works that way, too.

To me it's fancy talk, telling people what they want to hear that have Guru expectations. 

If I have not said it already; I rather learn from Dr. Robert Sapolsky. 

21 hours ago, eight bits said:

Not that Arnold couldn't manage against-type himself.

 

If Peterson ever writes a sequel to his best-selling 12 Rules, there's Rule #13 right there:

Try to count without moving your lips.

Rule #14

Yellow is yellow, and orange is orange. 

Me, and a friend got momentarily lost while on a marked hiking trail when these two colors intersected each other.

[eight bits]

2 hours ago, davros of skaro said:

It was simply that one can find meaning in anything, and coincidences are just that.

The two parts of that sentence don't go together. Coincidences are just what? Unforeseen opportunities? What's wrong with building understanding based on experience, whether or not any particular experience was scheduled?

What part of my experience do you propose that I purposefully overlook? What's in that plan for me?

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Still JP believes Sophia makes her presence known. Well for him in that instance at least.

So do I. She showed up when I was happy to have some help with the hound (I think the hound was happy, too). I'm at a place where I know not to confuse a real woman with an archetypal role she played perfectly. That woman has her own existence, and it is according to her real person that I must treat her. (So does whoever was in the trunk have his or her own existence; that's why I'd have opened the trunk... the more I think about it, the more I think Peterson needs to think about that.)

In JP's case, he was asked to give a performance ("telling a ghost story" is a performance, everywhere and always). He respected the conventions of the genre he performed.
Hell's Bells, Brother D, somebody is asked to give one kind of performance, he does, but your critique treats it like it was a conference talk about scientific paper.

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Dr. Robert Sapolsky

 

OK. Neuro- is good, too. There are many levels of discourse.

As the outset of the grail quest is told, each knight enters the forest at a place of his own choosing. Good road and safe home, Brother.

[+Liquid Gardens]

On 7/15/2018 at 7:22 AM, eight bits said:

Not everything we encounter in the woods is Wisdom (at least I don't think so).

What experience in the woods cannot be an expression of Wisdom, given that things like talking to an elderly woman about dogs is?  To davros' point, what potential encounter can someone not find meaning in, especially in the woods?

On 7/15/2018 at 7:22 AM, eight bits said:

...a central-casting introverted nerd telling young-adult guys...

I'd argue that posting your lectures on youtube for the last 5 years is exactly the opposite of the most common definitions of 'introverted'. 

[eight bits]

In the wrong order,

6 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

I'd argue that posting your lectures on youtube for the last 5 years is exactly the opposite of the most common definitions of 'introverted'. 

Hardly anybody is 100% intro (nor extro), but Peterson is definitely heavily intro. The first set of videos were (I think) the course based on his book, Maps of Meaning. The making of the book was almost comically introverted - 3 hours a day for 14 years thinking about what he'd read. I'd argue that that's what introversion looks like. But then what? What do you do with the book?

Put it out there. Publish it. If you're a college professor, maybe develop a course around it. If you're a 21st Century college professor, put your course on YouTube. That's the perfect extroverted act for the introvert, Unless somebody watches, then it's just as if you never posted them. And if somebody does watch, then you control how much you interact with them.

I think YouTube is successful from its content providers' POV in part because it is simultaneously an extrovert's fantasy come true, and also an introvert's crutch to deal with people without actually dealing with people. Every personality type wins.

As to his more recent stuff, some of that was from his Bible series last year (admission was charged) and his Patreon talks. I'm told he pulled in something like $900K from Patreon last year or the year before - OK, Canadian $ probably, but just beacuse somebody's introverted doesn't mean he can't appreciate the music of the cash register bells. Ka-ching.

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What experience in the woods cannot be an expression of Wisdom, given that things like talking to an elderly woman about dogs is?  To davros' point, what potential encounter can someone not find meaning in, especially in the woods?

 

The issue was Peterson's use of some phrase like "Wisdom visited" his brother and him in the ghost story, which davros reworked as Sophia. OK, The woman in my story made present the archetypal Wise Old Woman. That's one theme, Wisdom.

There are other themes. There are other meanings. Any experience at all might contribute to one's wisdom, but not all experiences are equally fit to merit the phrase "Wisdom visited."

To davros' point, indeed. And to my point as well. What's wrong with finding meaning in experience? If meaning potentially resides in every experience, then why isn't that so much the better? All that, and in the woods, too. Hot damn!

[+Liquid Gardens]

45 minutes ago, eight bits said:

There are other themes. There are other meanings. Any experience at all might contribute to one's wisdom, but not all experiences are equally fit to merit the phrase "Wisdom visited."

I see no difference here, if an experience contributes to one's wisdom than we can always metaphorically phrase that as 'Wisdom visited'.

48 minutes ago, eight bits said:

To davros' point, indeed. And to my point as well. What's wrong with finding meaning in experience?

Not a thing, it's that meaning can be found in any experience thus every experience in the woods is an encounter with Wisdom (and Beauty, and Awe, etc).  The only reason that an encounter wouldn't be is because of lack of effort on the encounterer/encounteree.

[eight bits]

@Liquid Gardens

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I see no difference here, if an experience contributes to one's wisdom than we can always metaphorically phrase that as 'Wisdom visited'.

Sure, we are all, including Peterson himself, at liberty to use any phrase differently than how Peterson used it on the particular occasion when he was telling the second ghost story.  However, on that occasion, I think he meant Wisdom as specifically as I know that I meant Wise Old Woman in my anecdote. If Peterson or I had meant, say, Puer Aeternus, then I think we would have said that instead of what we did say. That in no way denies that a thoughtful viewing of Peter Pan  might well impart wisdom.

Also, I do think he meant, as did I, a literal physical presence of something or someone, a concrete "visit" in the plain language sense. The trunk was not empty in his version of the tale. That is, he was not talking about an affect upon someone that might be metaphorically called a visit from Wisdom.

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Not a thing, it's that meaning can be found in any experience thus every experience in the woods is an encounter with Wisdom (and Beauty, and Awe, etc).  The only reason that an encounter wouldn't be is because of lack of effort on the encounterer/encounteree.

My best guess about this is that you're asking me to conflate meaning with specific ways of being meaningful. There is much in the woods that is unbeautiful, or comic (which tends to deflate awe in my experience), or unwise.

Also, a fair amount of meaning emerges on its own, without effort, although not necessarily right away, and not necessarily the same for all observers. There are some things that happened years ago that I'm unsure whether I've unpacked them fully or correctly. But meaningful? Yeah, I got that much without a lot of sweat.

[Davros of Skaro]

22 hours ago, eight bits said:

The two parts of that sentence don't go together. Coincidences are just what? Unforeseen opportunities? What's wrong with building understanding based on experience, whether or not any particular experience was scheduled?

What's wrong understanding things just for what they actually are?

22 hours ago, eight bits said:

What part of my experience do you propose that I purposefully overlook? What's in that plan for me?

22 hours ago, eight bits said:

So do I. She showed up when I was happy to have some help with the hound (I think the hound was happy, too). I'm at a place where I know not to confuse a real woman with an archetypal role she played perfectly. That woman has her own existence, and it is according to her real person that I must treat her. (So does whoever was in the trunk have his or her own existence; that's why I'd have opened the trunk... the more I think about it, the more I think Peterson needs to think about that.)

Did your Wisdom woman have junk in her trunk? 

22 hours ago, eight bits said:

In JP's case, he was asked to give a performance ("telling a ghost story" is a performance, everywhere and always). He respected the conventions of the genre he performed.
Hell's Bells, Brother D, somebody is asked to give one kind of performance, he does, but your critique treats it like it was a conference talk about scientific paper.

As I was reading the responses in this thread I saw on the reflection of my tablet a squirrel was walking by above me on the power line. When it passed my head to the left it stopped, and looked down at me. I did my squirrel call, and it proceeded on it's way. 

What does it mean? What does it mean? OOOH ooooohhhh...

22 hours ago, eight bits said:

OK. Neuro- is good, too. There are many levels of discourse.

22 hours ago, eight bits said:

As the outset of the grail quest is told, each knight enters the forest at a place of his own choosing. Good road and safe home, Brother.

 

[eight bits]

Here's what I have come to think about the second ghost story.

Plenty of bird species are seen during the winter in Saskatchewan, including owls.

http://maybank.tripod.com/winter/sk.htm

Since Peterson didn't look in the trunk, and I have my doubts whether he can identify birds by the amount of noise they make while inside a car trunk, I'd be thinking a small bird, rather than just owls (an obvious kind of bird to associate with wisdom, but not in evidence),

http://www.yorktonthisweek.com/opinion/columnists/how-birds-survive-saskatchewan-winters-1.23148081

Regardless of kind, what a bird needs is protection from the wind. They already have protection from the cold (their feathers, and possibly shared body heat if more than one bird was present) as long as the air is still. The car was being worked on, but not recently disturbed. There could have been lots of ways for small birds to settle in the trunk, and still enjoy an effective windbreak under the tarp, inside a log structure.

Peterson is simply incorrect to say that anything in the trunk would be dead. And from that ground fact, the analysis more-or-less unfolds by itself.

The bird(s) were there when the two men entered the garage. The men's entrance would have caused a stir. My guess is that Peterson heard the bird stirring subliminally, recalled the Castaneda bird motif and anticipated some imminent, more pronounced manifestation of the bird(s) in the trunk whom he'd subliminally detected. He also anticipated how that might be worked into a therapeutic discussion (as a synchonicity, and he mentioned a form of the word in the video).

Now the sticking point. I can't tell from the video whether he is simply playing the role he was asked to play ("Tell us a ghost story...") or whether, just as he didn't look inside the trunk, he also didn't look too deeply into his own mental process during the situation. The best case for the role well-played hypothesis, I think, is that because he is a therapist, Peterson probably has a therapist of his own with whom he can talk things over on a regular basis. I think that that therapist would have picked up on the obvious (it must have been a bird), and however pathetic the web was 20+ years ago, how hard could it have been to find a bird watcher in Canada and just ask whether any birds winter over?

I will correct an error of my own. I said I would look in the trunk. That couldn't be good for the bird, so no, on sober reflection, I wouldn't look in the trunk, and I wouldn't go around saying it wasn't a bird, either.

Edited July 17, 2018 by eight bits

[gr3k]

I think Jordan Peterson is so inspired to others, his quotes really helped me out to never lose self-control.

[eight bits]

@gr3k

Welcome aboard. If you like Peterson, then you might enjoy the vids and discussion in this thread, too:

 

[Davros of Skaro]

9 hours ago, gr3k said:

I think Jordan Peterson is so inspired to others, his quotes really helped me out to never lose self-control.

Any positive self help advice that a person believes, and commits to will help.

I'm sure Richard Simmons inspired a lot of people to loose weight just with his can do fruity attitude.