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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31393 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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I see that neither side of the culture war right now focuses on the positive, on something beautiful. Both sides see themselves as righteous oppressed victims fighting against the evil empire of the other side, but for both it is less a Star Wars vision than a Terminator vision. War machines running over skulls at night-time, death and lasers. The culture war is bleak and stark, it has no poetry, no romance. It is a grim attrition war, trenches and minor offensives but few large breakthroughs if by breakthroughs one means reaching one's opponent and convincing him of something. Where are the creative songbirds of thought and word who would transcend this opposition and maybe get both sides to become aware that both are equally stuck in the human condition? Has rhetoric truly reached the limits of its potential power? I have so rarely seen anyone change his mind about anything more than minor details.

It is all so tiresome. Maybe it is possible to move in some orthogonal direction and flank this whole conflict from a side that has the breath of fresh air behind it?

Where are the creative songbirds of thought and word who would transcend this opposition and maybe get both sides to become aware that both are equally stuck in the human condition?

Joe Rogan, maybe? Jordan Peterson, less so.

Peterson especially is seen as a culture warrior for one side. The idea that he can unite people is absurd.

What does Peterson represent in the culture war that's distinct from Rogan?

He’s much higher on religion than Rogan is.

He's not a true believer, just a theologian / philosopher, which is very blue-coded.

I never understood JP’s appeal at all. I probably share his cultural conclusions in a lot of ways, but he’s always given me the vibe of a right-wing Deepak Chopra when he talks. If you look at people like Sam Seder’s coverage of him, it’s pretty clear that he’ll likely never have any success in reaching across the aisle. And his views struck me as pseudoscientific.

My reading of JP's appeal was that he handled himself well when he was given a bunch of bad-faith attacks and interviews. He made accurate points and defanged accusations of sexism and racism, and that kind of pushback/defeat of cultural commissars in their home territory got him a lot of interest. He then kept on giving extremely basic life advice of the kind that young men just haven't been getting, and that was enough to earn him a fanbase. He then went nuts for some reason afterwards, but I wasn't watching him in enough detail to know why.

Maybe it’s changed but I’ve had a LOT of left-wing 20/30 something friends who’ve said, “I don’t agree with everything he says but he makes a lot of sense.”

I think I’d be most curious about the stuff that he is reaching people with. His psychology is good, his general life advice is good, though it’s really nothing your grandmother or grandfather wasn’t saying in the 1950s. As far as psychological stuff, if you’ve read Jung, Peterson is clearly in that school of psychology. On political issues, he tends to go a bit too conspiratorial for my money. Things aren’t always being done by cabals of dark figures, sometimes it’s really just Moloch and cost disease among other perfectly ordinary explanations.

It’s the psychology and life advice, especially for men. It’s not hugely original historically but it’s very rare in the present day most people are/were getting it from Peterson for the first time.

Sometimes that opens them up to his politics, sometimes they ignore it. I’m fine with either.

I think we’re mostly agreed. And frankly I think the fact that a lot of men simply aren’t really getting this advice (and it’s not just for men, it works for anyone) seems a big problem to me. Sort yourself out isn’t something that people should have to discover at the age of 20 on the internet.

I'm one of those people who's swung from "he's a weirdo" to "he makes a lot of sense ".

The problem is that he is also a culture warrior. Things like inveighing against Ellen Page for chopping off her breasts right before being and getting suspended for it (conveniently just in time for his joining Daily Wire) aren't obviously the act of a unifier of both sides.

His general...I dunno, hysteria and megalomania have value. They stop him from being agreeable which is the only reason he's famous instead of apologizing and slinking into obscurity like most academics. But it also leads to combative and and odd behavior.

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