2017/02/25: Jordan Peterson: Postmodernism: How and why it must be fought

So I Want to recommend a book first? To everyone here. It's called explaining post-Modernism, [and] it's by a gentleman named Steven Hicks and You need to understand post-Modernism Because that's what you're up against and you're up against it far more than you know or think and it's a much more [well-developed] and Pervasive Pernicious nihilistic intellectually attractive doctrine than has yet come to public realization it absolutely dominates the Humanities and increasingly the social sciences [and] universities, and what's happening? You see someone once said who? unfortunately, I can't remember it might have been friedrich Nietzsche said that everybody is the unconscious exponent of a dead philosopher and Fortunately the post modern Philosophers most of them are dead, so that's a good thing but That doesn't mean that their words aren't continually being spoken by people who who are following in their wake like saying it's not like any Given person is absolutely possessed and saved by the spirit of post-Modernism Because often they're not educated enough to know all the [details] about what it is that has them in their grip but if you get 20 of them together And they're all 5% influenced by the post Modernist Ethos you basically have the spirit of the mob that's a mouthpiece for [that] particular philosophical doctrine and if you understand the doctrine Then you understand why things are progressing the way that they're progressing and so I'm going to tell you a little bit about the doctrine Because it's not optional to understand this it's absolutely crucial to understand this huh you can't underestimate The power of ideas and also the power of words of course because ideas are expressed in words But you see the post modernists completely reject the structure of western Civilization And I mean completely so I can give you an example in one term jacques, Derrida whose head trickster for the Post Modernist movement Regarded western culture, let's call it the Patriarchy as a logo centric, okay? So fallow comes from Phallus Pha, lL [oh], and so that's the insistence that what you see in Western Culture is the constant of a male-dominated Oppressive Self-Serving society and we might say well you know societies do tend to be self-serving and people in power do tend to Act in their best interests, but a Tendency is not an absolute, and that's one of the things that needs to be considered continually There are no shortage of flaws in the manner in which we've structured our society and compared to any hypothetical utopia It's and that's absolutely Dismal wreck but compared to the rest of the world and the plight of other Societies throughout the history of Mankind we're doing pretty damn well And we should be happy to be living in the society that we're living in So the first thing that you might want to note about post-Modernism. Is that it doesn't [have] [a] shred of gratitude, and there's something Tautologically wrong with the person who does that it doesn't have any gratitude? Especially when they live in what so far is the best of all possible worlds, and so if you're not grateful You're driven by resentment and resentment is the both the worst emotion that you can possibly experience apart from Arrogance resentment Arrogance and deceit there is an evil Triad for you And if you're bitter about everything that's happening around you despite the fact that you're bathed in wealth And there's something absolutely wrong with you. You know the black community in the united states is the 18th wealthiest community 18th wealthiest nation on the Planet now that doesn't mean there isn't such a thing as relative poverty and relative poverty matters It's an important It's an important political economic issue And it's very very difficult to deal with but absolute wealth matters too and the western Societies have been Absolutely remarkable in their ability to generate And distribute wealth as you can tell by just looking around and taking a you know a brief bit of consideration for the absolute miracle That even a building like this represents So you have to [educate] yourself about post-Modernism [ok] so here's what the post modernists believe they don't believe in the individual That's the logos [Park] Western Culture is Fel logo Centric Logo is logos That's partly the Christian word, but it's also partly the root word of logic [ok] they don't believe in logic they believe that logic is part of the process by which the patriarchal institutions of the west continue to dominate and to justify their dominance they don't believe in dialogue the Word of dialogue is logos again They don't believe that people of goodwill can come to consensus through the x through the exchange of ideas [they] believe that that notion is part of the philosophical substructure and practices [of] the dominant culture So the reason they don't let people who they don't agree with speak on [campuses] because they don't agree with letting people Speak you See it's not part of the ethos [ok] so, what else do they believe and not believe? They believe that you since you [don't] have an individual identity your fundamental identity is [group] fostered and that means that you're basically an Exemplar of your race hence white privilege or you're an exemplar of your gender or [your] sex or your ethnicity or you're an exemplar of? however You can be classified so that use you are placed in the position of victim against the oppressor Because that's the game and it's it's [a] it's a post marxist [sleight-of-hand] right the old Marxist notion was that the world was a battleground between the burgeois [z] and the [proletariat] [and] that failed to have any philosophical or ethical standing that Argument after the working class actually saw its standard of living massively elevated as a consequence of western corporate democracy [Western] free Enterprise Democracy And also the end and also as a consequence of the revelations of everything terrible that had happened in every bloody country that ever dared to make equity and and the Marxist Communist [dogma] part of their fundamental structure right and nothing but murderous [Nozanne] depression and so by the 1970s it was evident that that game was up the postmark the post Modernist Marxist just barely basically pulled a sleight of hand and said ok if it's not the poor against the rich it's the Oppressed against the oppressor will just read of I'd the subpopulations in ways that make our our bloody Philosophy continuing it's in its in its movement forward and that's where we're at now and so for the post modernists The world is a Hobbesian battleground of identity groups They do not communicate with one another because they can't All there is is a struggle for power and if you're in the predator group which means you're an oppressor Then you better look out because you're not exactly well come Not exactly welcome and neither are your ideas, so [that's] what you're up against. [I] would say it's time for conservatives to stop apologizing for being conservatives no and You don't apologize to these people that's a big mistake apology there. They read apology as An admission of guilt [you] don't apologize And you don't back down you young people that are out [there] who are [University] students you need to take over the student unions you need to take them back because they're absolute snake pits And they have been since the 1990s with regards with regards to the universities I thought at one point that the best thing [to] do would be to cut their funding by [25] percent let them fight amongst themselves For the remnants because it would force the universities to decide exactly what's important and what isn't so I would say the humanities and much of the social sciences has turned into a Postmodern neo-Marxist playground for radicals the scholarship is terrible 80% of humanities papers aren't cited once Once and so what that means is that they write papers for each other and they sell them to libraries [and] that's how the publishers make their money. No one reads them but the publishers can print them because the libraries have to buy them and they're buying them with your tax money and so all of You who are sitting here are? funding a Postmodern Radical neo-Marxist Agenda that has its roots in the university and your tax money is going towards that and if you want proof of that you just go online and Look at the websites especially of disciplines like women's studies. Which is pathological right to the core, but it's not just women's studies It's all the ethnic studies groups it's anthropology its sociology its social work and most of all it's Education and oszi for example in Ontario is perhaps apart from the Ontario human rights commission the most dangerous institution in Canada [it] should It should be defunded It's as simple as that [they] don't do the research they purport to do they're not interested in it at all in education They're interested in the indoctrination of people as young as they can [fun] as young as they can get their hands on so to speak [now] we need to figure out our society needs to figure out how [to] stop shunting public tax money to radical Left-wing activists if we were doing that for radical Right-wing Activists there would be an absolute storm, but it's happened incrementally since the 1960s and it needs to stop so that's that's partly what [the] Conservatives, not only conservatives, but also liberals true liberals in the English sense are up against I mean what's happened that as also as a consequence of this postmodern? Neo-Marxist intellectual invasion is that the center keeps moving. It's moved way to the right now So if you're a classic liberal you've become a conservative and so for all of you who are interested in Purdue pursuing the conservative agenda There's a lot of classic liberals that you could be talking to and then finally with regards to talking to young people You finally have something to sell to them You know it's not easy to sell conservatism to young people because they want to change things And that's not what conservatives want to do they want to maintain things Well now you've got something to sell the young people you can sell them freedom of speech, and you can tell sell them Responsibility the left is selling them rights You can sell the responsibility And I can tell you because I received many letters of the sort that that God was talking about young people are absolutely starving For someone to provide them with the sense of responsibility [and] say look here's something worth living for man You know you can find meaning in life with freedom But freedom freedom is a chaotic sort of meaning right and freedom isn't the sort of thing that makes people happy it's the sort of thing [that] makes people trouble some trouble because freedom expands your your series of choices and that makes you nervous and uncertain so but Responsibility is another and not to say that that's a bad [thing]. It's a good thing But it requires that you that you shoulder the responsibility of the freedom But responsibility per se is what gives your life meaning? genuine meaning in the face of suffering and you and Young people is really [there] starving for that. I've been teaching young people for thirty years and mostly what I've been teaching them about is Responsibility, [it's] like your heirs to a great tradition It's not perfect [obviously] but comparatively. There's nothing else like it. That's ever been produced and it's it represents a tiny minority of human qualities most of which are run by Murderous antisocial psychopathic thugs and not that Seriously, and so what kind of alternative is that we've got this beacon of freedom and wealth in the west That works although. It doesn't work perfectly and one of the one [of] the responsibilities of young people is to find out what's at the [core] of that the great great core of that the Paramount the Paramount importance of the Individual and the divinity [of] speech man, not some to sell its what our whole culture is predicated on All right, well I should stop there. So thank you very much for the invitation

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 674,388

Keywords: existentialism, free speech, jordan peterson, jordanbpeterson, lecture, openness, personality, psy230, psychoanalysis, psychology, social justice warrior, university of toronto, conservatism, alt right, right wing, left wing, progressives, regressive left, politics, university campus, censorship, freedom of speech, postmodernism, peterson, professor, jordan, marxism, jordan b peterson

Id: Cf2nqmQIfxc

Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 05 2017