Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture...

I have no belief

Great, then there's no need for discussion.

Fuck I hate this, I already have to deal with the Zizeks, freakonomics, and poorly done psychological studies in my life, and now this guy will bring Jung back in to the mind of thousands of young idiots

I've had enough

Wow, smart

No, smart would be trying to convince a cant no nuffin fag of something self evident

"Defend it, then. In your own words."
But degeneration followed.

>But degeneration followed.
Yes, it did. You admitted to having no beliefs. How can I defend anything to a person without beliefs?

So I can not be curious about other points of view?

Veeky Forums is decidedly pro-Peterson, mon frere.

>this is the most ignorant and wrong thing ever said
>no beliefs
>I'm just le innocent curious guy
lol

Jealous Psych professor detected

*retarded edgy Veeky Forums is pro-Peterson
And by this I'm not implying I am against him. I'm implying it's measly to build a cult around someone you discovered through YouTube and whose notoriety stems from a controversy about... gender pronouns. It's really not different than idolizing kpop or Grimes on /mu/.

So are you going to explain why you defend culture or not?

>And by this I'm not implying I am against him.
Your hysterical, cliche ridden response suggests otherwise.

Reading comprehension: below zero.

Not a Peterson fanboy, but I have seen a lecture or two of his and he seems reasonable enough. This thread is full of bullshit, but I'm bored and don't want to do the work I'm supposed to be doing, so:

Peterson's point is only partly that we fear what we don't understand. So, in a sense, he does agree with Strawman SJW that we fear things because we don't understand them. But Peterson's point is that somethings are worth fearing, above all the generally indifferent universe. This is what he calls "chaos" but you can imagine it being called "nature." It's whatever is outside of us that is indifferent (at best) to our survival. Sometimes it's actively hostile: it gets really cold or really hot in many parts of the world, food is scarce, and big animals can kill us. Human societies have come up with ways in order to manage the hostile, inhuman forces. The biggest of these is what gets called "culture," which is the set of practices and beliefs in which human beings engage in order to survive and, maybe (maybe!) thrive.

Culture includes beliefs. We usually think of beliefs as being primary; ie., someone chooses a religion because he has this or that belief. Peterson reverses this (and here he isn't off in lala land, note that Nietzsche has proposed something similar, and Rene Girard and Walter Burkert, more recently and empirically, think this, too). The idea here is that our beliefs and our myths are not just-so stories but are actually coping mechanisms for a hostile world and that they have arisen out of practices that have allowed survival.

[1/x]

One of Peterson's examples of this (and it's actually rather clever) is Moses in Exodus. He notes that in the chapters in Exodus BEFORE Moses goes to the mountain in order to receive the Decalogue, Moses is made judge of the Israelites. That is, Moses is adjudicating cases before he receives the law. How is this possible, Peterson asks? Well, the law that the Israelites receive is the codification of the practices that have allowed them to survive. So, we imagine that Abrahamic religions think that adultery and thievery are bad and that's why they punish adultery and thievery. No, Peterson says, it's the other way around; societies which don't inculcate beliefs against adultery and thievery tend to fall apart because of adultery and thievery. Adultery and thievery are maladaptive. It's more secure to punish them. Moses was recognized as a good judge because he was able to distinguish between the practices that allowed survival and those that did not.

So culture is a survival mechanism. We’ve forgotten the original reasons for these practices, and so they come to seem just like pointless, irrational beliefs. This is the origin of his dispute with SJW’s. SJWs view gender norms are arbitrary injustices that should be got rid of so that we can be truly free. Peterson thinks that this differentiation exists for a reason; it was a way in which to fight off chaos. He’s in agreement here, by the way, with people like (again!) Rene Girard and other figures who are far less controversial than he is. Societies are organized in particular ways in order to fight chaos.

[2/x]

But why is chaos bad? Chaos is bad because that which is not allowing us to survive is harmful. Entropy is universal. If we’re not actively pruning the garden, it will be taken over by weeds. Non-metaphorically: civilization is extremely fragile and is founded on such things as “myths.” As discussed, myths, which seem to be utterly irrational, actually have a rational kernel. But we have forgotten (or never truly knew) the point of these myths, and so they seem unjust and arbitrary. At the same time, we have forgotten how fragile civilization is. Thus, we are led onward to try to “better” civilization while, in fact, we are undermining the bases of it. Peterson likes to quote Chesterton: A guy walking across a field comes across a fence. He sees no reason why anyone would put that fence there, and so he gets rid of it. He’s promptly mauled by a bull on the other side. Someone must have put that fence there for a reason but, because the man couldn’t think of the reason, he assumed it had no reason. The point, again: what seem to be arbitrary cultural practices actually have an adaptive reason behind them, and we go mucking about in the roots of culture at our own peril.

So you can disagree with Peterson. Maybe you don’t find nature as chaotic as he thinks it is, or maybe you can think that society can survive a hyper-rationalization that attempts to get rid of all myths. And maybe he’s wrong, and it can. But it’s worth engaging with his point, because it’s 1) not stupid, and 2) it’s very easily lost in the left-vs-right culture wars, where each side is equally unthinking.

That said, I have no idea what he’s doing with his transformation into a sort of daddy-figure to /r9k/-types, except to guess that he’s trying to give all the lost souls of our society something more nutritious than the manosphere and alt-right while also validating their instinct that SJWs are wrong.

[3/3]

Addendum: Chaos is also a hostile force not only from nature, but from human beings. Instability in society causes many people to die. Generally, an unjust stable society is better than overturning everything because you want to improve it. This is an odd position that no one likes because 1) it acknowledges that society is unjust (which makes the right mad), while 2) acknowledging that trying to change it is worse (which makes the left mad).

So order is generally better than chaos, all things considered. If the ruler cannot old on to order, then bad things happen not just to him, but to everyone in society. If the top cannot hold everything below it in check, then you get civil war.

We generally think of society as a force that allows the strong to oppress the weak, because we've drunk deep of Enlightenment rationalism [1]. Peterson's point is that it is the existence of order which allows the weak to survive at all. Otherwise, it's just unfettered rule of the stronger, baby. And this benefits no one. Not even the stronger. [2]

[1] Note: Last time people thought that justice was just the rule of the stronger was in Greece just before the Peloponnesian War. The problem is not that there REALLY IS something called "justice" out there (there may or may not be, I'm agnostic) but that propagating the belief that all political rule is inherently unjust leads to chaos and the impossibility of order. Put another way, if there is justice, then it depends on order, and not the other way around.

[2] I'm a 90 pound internet weakling and the Rock can take me, no problem, in a fair fight, but, hey, what's fair? He's gotta sleep and eat sometime, too, and let's say I sneak up behind him with a dagger or put some cyanide in his food...

thank you for bothering
"give all the lost souls of our society something more nutritious than the manosphere and alt-right while also validating their instinct that SJWs are wrong" is probably correct, and noble, but i hope he also indicates that he is a mere ladder to be discarded so that we no longer receive his contingent undisguised on this board

OP here, thank you for answering my question in place of this chump I still think philosophies that try to break down myths are largely preferable to any speech in defense of civilization and culture, but that's just my opinion and sensibility. Also, at the end, it's all about rhetoric. Bye

>I still think philosophies that try to break down myths are largely preferable to any speech in defense of civilization and culture, but that's just my opinion and sensibility. Also, at the end, it's all about rhetoric. Bye

But this is what Peterson is trying to do, break down myths and show why it's not quite right that "myth" has a negative connotation. You claim that you don't want highly rhetorical speeches in favor of civilization, and yet you call Peterson "ignorant and wrong," amd caricature his point as "we have to reject and suppress something we don't understand." That is, you're being just as highly rhetorical and airy as you think your supposed opponents are.

I have my doubts as to whether you are actually posting and arguing here in good faith, but if you are, then you should consider that you're projecting onto others the same rhetorical moves which you, yourself, engage in. And, if you aren't here in good faith, then, well, I wrote all that about Peterson for someone actually curious and you can go fuck yourself.

no how about you get raped instead?

>and yet you call Peterson "ignorant and wrong," amd caricature his point as "we have to reject and suppress something we don't understand." That is, you're being just as highly rhetorical and airy as you think your supposed opponents are
It was the first and only thing I've read about Peterson (on Wikipedia) and I expressed my first impression on this board. I think I'm done with Peterson anyway, thank you all.

it's trivial but its badly worded.

Interesting posts

the OP quote from Peterson
I S
a defense of culture. Keep in mind that LANGUAGE is a component of culture, and the chaos he's describing isn't mere freedom of a breaking of old outdated habits and traditions. This chaos is "going full retard on a global scale". It's Babel. Do you know what Babel is? Did you take the story of that tower literally? Are you one of those people on this board who thinks the Bible is on the same level as Mother Goose?

Don't tear down a wall unless you first know the reason it was raised up in the first place.

I think you might have to check your reading comprehension.

>Like...