Thoughts on Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning?

thoughts on Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning?

PoMo bullshit

"Hey Jordan, are you a christian?"
"Well, uh, I suppose, that depends on what you mean by christian... And what you mean by belief... See, I don't like this question..."
>15 minutes later
"see, I don't like the bloody postmodernists, because they think there's an infinity of ways to interpret something, and that's despicable, and that's that."

Memerson busted.

Actually, both of those statements are due to him recognising that most people don't have a perspective of Christianity and God that takes into account its evolutionary, developmental, and cultural necessity, rather than a set of ideas. Which he then goes on to discuss rigorously.

You just want him to say: Believe this. He just wants you to fucking use your brain.

>Struggling to properly articulate theological concepts such as God and Christ's resurrection is the same as pomo BS "every idea is relative"

Psychology is all malarkey. Only real things is the medicine and the meditation. And the meds strip you of all emotion anyways.

I don't like how Peterson avoids the actual question whether it is all true and simply tackles God and Christianity from an utilitarian/psychological perspective. That's also probably why he ever gets seriously denounced, because he's really tackling the issue the way a crypto-atheist would.

In some way I would say what he's doing is actually subversive. If I were a pessimist I would say he's managed to hijack the debate from theists vs atheists into crypto-atheists vs atheists. So now, the discussion is not even about faith and belief anymore. It's merely of whether God as a concept or a myth makes utilitarian sense or not. Which is incredibly depressing.

Peterson doesn't have any influence on discussions outside of Veeky Forums and youtube, and his thoughts are reductive, almost amateurish, versions of what complete philosophers have written long ago.

It's an interesting read if you're interested in religion and mythology from a psychological, philosophical and biological standpoint. In my opinion the best book of its kind, due to its richness (though at some points it does get a bit redundant, the hero archetype is kinda over-explained).

JP is much more interesting in regards to his personal work than to his entire anti-post-modernism tirade.


The whole "are you a Christian" thing is pretty cringe as it's obvious he's not a theist. He's an agnostic at best, who thinks living by Christian morals and ethics makes you a Christian.

>It's merely of whether God as a concept or a myth makes utilitarian sense or not.
This is what we should discuss.
There's no misfortune in simple belief, while there's lots to gain.

>thinking people here read books

Out of curiosity, have any of you ever actually read the book your criticising?

Pro-peterson and anti-peterson alike, have any of you read it?

>inb4 tumbleweed

would've been a footnote of a footnote in a meaningless journal article if it wasn't for him "BTFO'ing" them pesky sjw's and offering self-help nonsense to gaymers.

I don't think anyone here has read it. I think it would be pretty derivative if you are familiar with his lectures.

On a side note I wish he would intepret the Iliad or Beowulf instead of fucking Harry Potter or the Lion King

yes. i read a pdf that widely available.

its shit

I enjoy the content of the lectures, but the pace is too soon. I can read a lot faster than I can watch, so I plan to buy the textbook and give it a read

I think Peterson stated somewhere that he believes in a literal resurrection.

>referring to correct arguments as "cringe"
you know where you need to go

source? AFAIK he believes in the psychological archetype of the creative hero that Christ, Buddha, Marduk and others are meant to represent.

"Am I a Christian? It depends on what you mean by Christ. Do I believe in God? hmmm, let me think.... depends on what you mean by God"

Have you even read the book?

Of books that try to make sense of religion, it's the best of its kind. A major reason it succeed is because it doesn't naively suppose that ancient people inhabited the same sort of psychological universe as us modern, scientific people.

He doesn't consider himself qualified to answer those questions.

No, he just admitted that it's a possibility. He admits he's going into strange territory, but he thinks that weird shit might happen if you push the limits of being.

more like maps of gay sex with your dad lmao

He's not willing to categorically dismiss the possibility but says that he ultimately doesn't know whether or not Christ's body literally resurrected. Fedoralords pounce on this as cynical pomo hedging which is of course retarded.

>t. a theologian

fuck off bambi

it's good

joseph campbell meets viktor frankl meets the russians meets neurobiology with a bit of northrop frye sprinkled in

>He just wants you to fucking use your brain.
Doubt it. The more his groupies use their brain, the less money he makes.

you'd be surprised how many normies are starting to read (well.. watch youtube videos) of peterson

That's what you tell yourself so you don't have to challenge your cynical worldview. There's actually no shortage of people who need support in this world, so it's not as if psychologists actually NEED to retain clients.

Since he puts his videos up on YouTube and has a Patreon, he's not limited by the number of people he can have paying him as psychiatrists are

>people are still using Pascal's wager in 2017

That's not my point, even if everyone gets sorted there will be more. Making money and helping people are not mutually exclusive.

As time goes on, they do become mutually exclusive. Coming up with original, helpful and novel ideas gets pretty hard when you exhaust your immediate supply of them, at which point you can't make as much money, making it more sustainable to keep people on your teat with barely helpful ideas that require your own clarification and explanation (in further books) , so you get the maximum amount of money most easily

You don't need novel ideas to help young men, stoic philosophy has been turning boys into men for nearly 2000 years and the books haven't changed.

How did Aurelius and co. get it so right?

They started with the Greeks.

And nobody makes money from stoicism anymore, because all the ideas are spent. You've proven my point

I've bought a bunch of books on stoicism, somebody got that money.

Were they books added anything new to the philosophy, or just complete editions, translations, summaries, etc.

Irrelevant.

It is relevant, because I'm talking about making money as an author by authoring. If you're including money from translations and compendiums, then you could just as well include money from getting paid to go on chat shows to talk about books you wrote years ago, or showing up at the houses of people who wrote you letters enquiring about your work and saying "hey, remember me, I wrote that book. Say, do you have £5?"

>then you could just as well include money from getting paid to go on chat shows to talk about books you wrote years ago

Why is that not valid? The money is real.

Because if they're not adding anything to stoicism and just reiterating their philosophy on tv, they're not getting money directly from stoicism, they're getting money from their related fame

Though maybe I should have been more specific, when I said getting money from stoicism I meant getting money from adding and expounding on its concepts, since that's analogous to what was being talked about in the Jordan peterson section of this series of replies

Maybe he should stop calling himself a Christian then? and simply state that.

Outside the box is inside another box, but anyway he has said that before. He's been on a talk show defending Christianity and has a series explaining the bible ffs. Why is it so important? He's not speaking for a group, he's speaking for himself. Maybe if more "Christians" actually tried to understand and apply the teachings personally they wouldnt be such a laughing stock.

The implication is that in order to continue making money he needs to be dishonest. I think that's bullshit. He has a job where he can literally share his thoughts out loud and make a shitload of money for it, and it helps people. There doesn't need to be a sinister element to that.

>Free university lectures.
>Free Bible series.
>Answers to counter-arguments, publicly in Youtube.

>but because he has an optional donation and optional self-help course, he is literally Hitler.

Leftist.