The Metaphysics of Pepe with Jonathan Pageau

we're gonna talk about frogs that's for hate yeah so yeah are you okay so yeah when we saw I mean when I saw the video that you put up was it two days ago now yeah yeah two days ago I couldn't believe it yeah and the next morning I got an email from my brother who also studies symbolism and it's very a very smart person and he he said this Jordan oh he's incarnating Pepe right now yeah well the funny thing is you know I knew about Pepe but what it was I had nothing like that on my mind when I made the video it never even entered my mind that that was an association I mean I was just concentrating on this Kermit thing that had popped up had probably popped up about two years ago and I the first time someone said that I thought huh so I went listen to Kermit and I thought oh yeah I do have a voice that similar to that I see I can get it lower but my voice tends to rise up into my right into my it's because of tension so so this is it we need to do it like so we need to do the metaphysics of Pippin no one has done it yet I think yes exactly so you know and then then this strange occurrence of course also also emerged with regards to the mask that Charles had made me or the hat yeah which looks like poppy I know it even has red lips yes staggering it's absolutely staggering and so I just about fainted when I posted that and people start people pointed out the correspondence with Pepe really I just about fainted it was and that doesn't happen very often like I can only remember one other time in my life when I was shocked enough to almost faint I just thought that was just too much it was too much to bear and then thinking about the Frog correspondences since then it has been well it's it's it's it's it's inexplicable and absurd but so much of this is inexplicable news early I don't know I we did something yesterday I looked up maps of meaning my book on on the Amazon seller lists to see where it was located and it was number eight on on books that are associated with behaviorism yeah and we and it was bracketed by two other books Mazarin Banerjee's book and she's the person who invented the IAT that's been used to ferret out unconscious bias oh my good and the other one was a book by Richard Bandler that I think was called frogs and princesses just and then to find out about cat cut you know I I didn't know about Karen anyways it's and then today I was thinking I was watching Nina Paley who was a absolute genius and she's animated the the plagues that that Moses called down on the Pharaoh and of course one of the plagues was a plague of frogs yeah and so okay so the Frog the Frog is is is a is a perfect liminal character because the Frog I think you tweeted about this as well the Frog lives both in water and on land and so it's like a it has a monstrous characteristic that it can cross oh it's at one of those things that crosses over between between worlds and so you see that you see that in the stories like the story of the of the the frog in the princess is a perfect example and it relates to the Pinocchio story that we talked about earlier so a princess goes to a pond she's playing with her favorite thing which is this golden ball and so she drops the ball and you know that that just to mention something that golden ball is the same thing as the snitch that Harry Potter chases in in the Quidditch Games in Harry Potter and it's funny because inside the snitch is actually part of Voldemort's soul right so and so that's part of the soul of evil that's inside the golden ball and the golden ball and Harry Potter has wings which makes it around chaos technically speaking it's an alchemical symbol and the round chaos is a mercurial symbol and the spirit mercury is an emissary of the gods and so the gods are speaking to you and then when anything flickers in front of you and captures your attention mm-hmm and in the Quidditch game the person who follows what captures his attention is the seeker and also the person who wins not so much the game but the metagame what's important I think in this story is that the ball is the most important thing so her it's the idea that it is the most important thing so she drops this ball in the end the water gets it gets lost so she loses the most important thing it falls into chaos right so there's a death of God yes attention purposes or just the idea of Scour just the idea of the loss of innocence or you know whatever whatever you you think about it and in terms of the loss of the most important thing and so this frog appears and says you know I can go get your ball if you if you if if you promise something for me and so the promise is that she will bring the Frog with her into her castle let the Frog eat with her and then let the Frog sleep in her bed okay great we've got those two things food and sex we talked about before as well so she so the Frog goes down into the water and then brings up the most important thing and the princess is forced to accept this frog in her she doesn't want to be like she's very annoyed that she has to to let the Frog into her house eat from her plate and then finally into her bed but by doing that the Frog of course transforms into a prince here you have this this this idea that we talked about before where the most important thing goes out into chaos and whatever it can bring it bring it back right whatever it can bring it back to us has can be tamed and can enter into into the world can very finest places yes exactly yeah well that's not something for people to really think about about about marriages for example so you know people are always and I think this is part of the profound immaturity of our culture people are always running around waiting to find the perfect person who's perfect for them and so you know one thing you might think is that if you ever found the perfect person they would run away from you screaming immediately and so because and so that perfection is something that you have to build within a relationship and so you accept the other person so to speak warts and all and hope that they do the same to you and swear that you won't run from each other and then as a consequence of that you can engage in a mutual process of transformation that emerges as a consequence of telling the truth and and and having a truthful relationship and then as a consequence of that the transformation can take place and you might start with a frog but maybe you end up with a prince so yeah so like we talked about the idea that that this is the structure of the world and so it happens as much on a personal level as it does on a social level and it may be a bigger bigger sense so just a little hint we talked about before the story of Abraham and the three angels coming and announcing the birth of of Abraham's son well in the story of Sleeping Beauty that's exactly what happens the Queen goes to the pond and and they're low and behold as of talking frog and and the Frog is the one who announces to the Queen that she will have a child the most beautiful child in the world and so again here is this idea of something coming from chaos yeah interesting because you know in the diagrams in in my book and maps of meaning one of the diagrams is an egg shape that that that is the chaos into which things plunge but chaos is a is an absolute state in some sense it's it's the state of the unknown as such and you never see the unknown as such you always see something that's partly known and partly unknown and that's what the frog is sitting on the edge of the pond the Frog enables you so the Frog is an emissary of chaos roughly speaking and you always only meet an emissary of chaos you never meet chaos because it's it's it's like a it's like a it's a non non non it's it's non-existence it's right on being it's below being if you will right right exactly and so now this thing like what two things one is interesting is that Kermit the Frog is is the same thing because Kermit is is a host he's the host on a on a show and so what he does is he transitions he's the transition between different worlds so you hurry have an act and then you have this transitional figure which appears and then you have another act and so right that's what that's the role that Kermit the Frog plays on the Muppet Show on his project yes his primary problem is with Miss Piggy who's a really loud feminist that's hilarious okay and now now Pitts because oh here's here's here's the metaphysics of Peppe so so this is what's happening in the world right now is that there's a very strange situation where the the people like let's say the right we'll call them the right or like the forces of order or the let's say the norm the people who create the norm for a society okay so we're in a situation where things have been inverted and the people who supposedly in the narrative are the ones who create the norm are are being marginalized they're being right they're being pushed into the into the margins right and told you're the ones who create the norm and we're going to push you out into into the margin and so I think that's why they've identified with the Frog that's why they've identified with the rock because the what happens is there's a strange inversion that happens right the power of inversion and the power of mocking and the power of of humor is usually on the side of of chaos it's usually on the side of the power of the margins yeah well I noticed like you noticed this happening about 20 years ago is all that the right-wing had all the comedians I thought what the hell's going on here the right-wing doesn't have the comedians it's the rich the left it has the comedians they're a ones that are poking fun so the stories are very strange that the comedians have become that the right wing has started to express itself in comedy yeah so that it's a sign that there's that there's this strange inversion that's happening and so there's there's an interesting like just a little footnote on this like in the in the Bible there's a story that talks about this it's the story of Elijah so in the time of Elijah Israel has you know been worshipping false gods because of the Queen Jezebel right and Elijah who is supposed to be the prophet of the god of that of those people has become a marginal figure and so his name is Elijah the stranger which is very odd because you he's not that he is supposed to be a prophet of God and his tool is mockery he mocks the prophets of Baal and that's something that you actually don't see very often in the Bible where the tool to kind of bring back is through mockery and so this is what we're seeing with this Pippo figure is that Pepe is like it's like an inversion machine okay so so so the people who use Pepe what they do is they they taken something like an insult that's being thrown at them and they flip it around they flip it around on those that insulted them like that's what you did with the Kermit thing which is perfect you you you know you people are making fun of you because they say you sound like Kermit and you're saying okay I'm gonna take this and I'm going to make it into my strengths and that's what Pippi Pippi does and so a lot of the crazy stuff that's coming out of this Pepe thing is is is is part of that there's a lot of dark things and in the pit bay you know like things that like purrs that I wouldn't necessarily want to touch yeah well I mean when I first saw the Frog I mean the Pepe frog I really recoiled from it it's it's got this kind of underground comic horror associated with it that I really I really find distasteful so like sort of viscerally distasteful you know but I think it's supposed it's a it's kind of supposed to do that to you yeah that's part of the power of those that are using that that image like it's right there if you look at it it's right there in the first comic like the first tippet comic you know you have a it's very crass but but here's this this frog right who goes to the toilet to urinate but he pulls his pants down to his knees and so he's doing something that usually you if you pull your pants down to your knees you're going to sit and do something else but then he does that but he stands and so here's this and he shows us his backside right so here's this this strange power of inversion which actually brings the man to stand back up and so that's this double inversion that people who use this this this type of imagery are doing and so even it's like you know let's say you like the radical left when you're saying you're you're this whatever you're a white male controlling bla bla bla bla bla you're all these things and the people who use these Pepe comics they're they say yes and they'll and they reflect that to you and then the people who will accuse them of that completely lose their mind they completely lose their mind but the only thing they're doing is saying you're saying let's say that I'm a racist this blah blah blah and then they reflect that back them they invert it in a way because they're saying here you go I'll show you what you're telling me I am and then in ten you know the left the radical Epping lose their mind and so it's like and so it's kind of and and if you look at those people like the alt-right people they have this strange this strange magic right because look at look if you look at my lowest my lowly innopolis is a perfect example you know here is a half Greek half Jewish gay Catholic Trump supporting Englishman from Englishman in America and and so not talking to the Republicans exactly and so nothing people can throw at him will stick on him because he is the Frog like he is that marginal figure standing on the side but he's he's he's like he is that double inversion and he he's kind of I know if he's trying but what it seems like he's doing he's bringing order back through like it is this double flip that's happening it's very odd it's a very it's very strange it's very strange so anyways I would just say just just I mean just be careful it's a dangerous place to stand yeah yeah yes I'm trying to be careful believe me I've got lots of people that I'm talking to that are helping me formulate my arguments and articulate them properly and like I'm doing my best to keep my feet on the ground and my my eyes open and and and not to be angry about this but to be in the chaos really and not assume also that that's a catastrophe because I don't know what's gonna happen to me yeah I don't know if this is the worst thing that ever happened to me or the best thing that ever happened to me yeah I can't tell ya and when she went the solution will happen inside the chaos right the the the the the Jonah gets pulled down by the whale down into the depths of the of the of the ocean and it's while he's in the belly of the whale that the solution comes to him like the various face he has he has this moment of repentance where he turns he turns around repentance is a flipping around and so that the this moment that he brings him into death turns into this baptism where he comes out and he's you know and he's a he's a he goes into the city right so that's another part but but but so that that yeah the solution is going to come out of this chaos yeah wow it's very problem if it's a really complex problem you have to go very far into chaos to find a solution but if there's always the risk of losing yourself when you're in chaos all right well that's right I mean that's the thing about dragons is that they can eat you yeah that's that that's why I don't like the new-age age' fication of carl jung's thinking and in part I think Joseph Campbell was responsible for that although he did a lot of very good things I mean the thing about the thing about confronting the thing that you're afraid of is that the thing that you're afraid of is genuinely terrifying and it can actually eat you and it's eaten plenty of people before you and so it's no joke and yeah you know I mean during this whole let's call it ride so far I mean what yeah what was going to happen and especially in the first couple of weeks I mean when I was being called a bigot and a transphobic all of those things and being pilloried essentially at least within the university for my views it wasn't obvious at all that there was going to be any there was gonna be any way of swimming out of it let's say yeah sure but it's it's very it's very disturbing because now you have you basically have these two monsters fighting each other you know like like that you have let's say this Pepe type frog and you know that Pepe was with declared a hate hate symbol by the the anti-defamation league you know that I mean that's very frightening it's frightening that this is how far it's gone how much it's like on you know all of a sudden they see that they can see the monster on the other side but they don't see the monster on their side yeah you know and and the LGBTQ etc etc I mean that is itself a liminal form it's the same thing that that happened with the gender-neutral pronouns as soon as you blew the binary apart there is an endless multiplication of potential identities now is the chaos manifesting itself and the ever-expanding letters that go along with LBGT there's an exact example of exactly the same thing it's like well we're March sliced well we're marginalized - well we're marginalized - and how about us we're also marginalized and it's like and I guess that's also partly because each person has at least one element of them is that seriously margin I stand marginalized in some manner yeah yes yeah and the right and it's interesting like the rainbow is is actually a perfect symbol because a rainbow is actually is it is just a it's it's a fluid thing it is a fluid thing a rainbow is not six colours a rainbow is a spectrum of colors there's an there's it is chaos itself it's the division of order into an indefinite amount of things right so we we typify a rainbow into six colours but but it's actually just the spectrum of correct right and so it is indefinitely it can be separated indefinitely great it's no limit to how much it can be separated and it seems to me that that's actually the problem with the identity legislation it's like well like imagine that like an identity is a very important thing right an identity is something you have but it's also something that you and I play out so you have to negotiate your identity with the rest of the social world it's like a game in some sense but a identity also has to have a function like and this is also why the legislation is so pernicious because it just says well your identity is whatever you want it to be it's like well no it's not because you have to live with other people it's like it's like saying you can play whatever game you want to play it's like well you can't because you go play to get people to play with that's right we're playing together and you could say well you have to play my game well I can tell you toddlers on the on the school ground who say you have to play my game they just get shunned yeah and then a game itself has to be playable that's the other thing is that there there are playable and non playable games and one of the things that Piaget pointed out the developmental psychologist Piaget pointed out about a game is that one of the hallmarks of an acceptable game is that people want to play it voluntarily and that's another part of the legislation that's so pernicious it's like okay you have a game and it's a game that you've chosen subjectively because that's what it says in the legislation and when you come near me you have to play my game whether you want to or not yeah and then the with the problem without - is that well where does that stop and the answer is it stops with indefinite multiplication so the whole point of society is to enforce a game that's somewhat arbitrary that everyone can more or less play they sacrifice parts of themselves to play it but it beats the total chaos of of the war against of all against all for example that's the Hobbesian right nightmare right and life nasty brutish and short this is a complement to the discussion of the metaphysics of Pepe the Frog that I had with dr. Jordan Peterson there are strange transformations happening in our world and hopefully understanding them will prevent the worst from taking shape as I discussed with dr. Peterson the Frog is a type of hyper edit II as an amphibian it exists in two worlds at the same time so it becomes an image of the margin another possible aspect of the margin and the monster as we encounter it is to be a shape-shifter shape shift shifting like hybridity is the sign of the place where categories fall apart on the edge in the case of shape-shifting this current characteristic is presented mostly as a power of the margin it's the power of fluidity like a trickster taking on several forms to operate his mischief to fully understand how Pepe the Frog operates we need to understand how shape-shifting occurs and how it gives power to those who wield it you see Pepe has become a meme possibly the most used meme of all times his image is floating on the Internet and it can be produced by anyone in the world and so there are thousands and thousands of images of pepe ranging from a glorified emoji to the most horrifying scatological images you can imagine because Pepe has become this chaotic fluid shape-shifting thing he ends up acting like a mirror in the same way water acts as a mirror and the way that works is that because there's so many images of Pepe when people look into that huge chaos of images they can't encompasses all of it they have to mentally order it and in ordering it they do that using their own mental patterns but is they project their thinking into this chaos and as they force the chaos to take shape it becomes an image of their own ideas maybe their own ideological possession and so one of the things that has been happening is that some people on the right what what some groups are calling the alt writer or whatever have been using this effect to act as a mirror against the social justice warrior types it even went so far that the sjw's finally declared Pepe a hate symbol the anti-defamation league said that Pepe was a hate symbol I mean this frog this cartoon frog it was so ridiculous that the ADL finally scaled back some of the language they use I mean of course it was politically motivated but how could such a silly thing happen well certain images of Pepe a few of them in the thousands and thousands of images available had racist themes and so there was a Hitler Pepe and a KKK Pepe a scheming Jew African stereotypes using racist slurs cliche Mexicans all of these examples were floating with the other thousands and thousands of pepper images online but when the social justice warriors looked in this mirror this pond of pepe images all they could see were the ones that reflected back to them their own ideology or rather like a mirror an inversion the dark shadow of their ideology of course immediately the accusation came Pepe is a racist symbol he's a hate image and the irony is very big because first of all no one controls this image no one has any control over it Pepe is everything and anything and nothing at the same time by declaring publicly that he's a hate symbol the sjw's are pointing to their own absurdity and this to the delight of those that use this image but hiding in this is an even larger irony if you look at the images that they pulled out as being racist images there's this strange contradiction in them you see on one side there is Hitler Pepe and KKK Pepe and there's a Trump Pepe well on the other side there's the scheming Jew the african-american or the Mexican this means that Pepe is at the same time the archetypal oppressor seen from the side of the victim all the while being the archetypal scapegoat seen from the side of the oppressor that it's Pepe is both sides of racism at the same time when the sjw's look at that automatically without even thinking they organized it through the ideology and it exposes their program because they automatically decide that when Pepe is Hitler or KKK or Trump pepé is identifying with those people but when he's a scheming Jew or a Mexican PIPA is mocking and criticizing those people why is such an absurd image of Hitler as a cartoon frog not seen as mocking Hitler in fact all the st WS are seeing is a reflection of themselves of their nightmare of their shadow the rather pathological desire we've seen in the past few months to accuse everyone of being Hitler or neo-nazi or a white nationalist is an expression of their secret desire the desire to be confirmed through an encounter with their projected other and it's funny because the discourse of other nests has been an ideological tool of the left since the 1960s and now we're at a time when it has come back to haunt them so by using this strategy the people have been wielding this Pepa image have taken advantage of the power of chaos taken advantage of what happens when the Frog jumps into the pond and goes down to the bottom to find the golden ball as I explained in my interview with dr. Peterson about the story of The Princess and the Frog but the Frog can't stay in the water forever that's the most important thing at some point you have to finish the story to finish the story the Frog has to get the golden ball and one could say that the golden ball is actually the Sun which will come up for the new day the Frog has to get the golden ball and bring it back to the surface of the water it must carry the most important thing carry the seed of the new world to the princess so that it can grow if that doesn't happen there is no telling what else can come out of the water if the Frog stays there for too long it will be eaten or it will call some darker monster because there are other things down there beside the golden ball and the Frog can tempt the Leviathan to devour it and it's not as if this is impossible as the Frog swims in the darkness the social justice warrior is still peering into the mirror and calling forth its shadow we've already seen some intimations that this game people are playing might raise something more than a new day might raise the very monster the social justice warriors hope to encounter so as the Frog swims in the water how how can it do that how can it recognize the golden ball that is at the bottom of the pond because it's actually not easy to distinguish things when we're covered in darkness and the answer to this is in what happens in the story the Frog has to get out of the water and become a prince the Frog has to become something else and bringing up the golden ball is the same thing as the transformation of the frog into a prince one cannot happen without the other and so as dr. Peterson is often suggested in his lectures the way to do it is to sort ourselves out is to go into our own self to find the golden ball that is hidden in the darkness to go down and find the most important thing of Western civilization and dr. peterson has suggested the most important thing of western civilization is the logos this truth that is the word we have seen how noise has been the chaos used to drown the word what i'm gonna talk about is freedom of speech and i want to tell you a few things about this very carefully I've been thinking about this very carefully over the last two weeks and so we must find the word for it is the Sun that rises after darkness the word is the thing that comes out of death and lives again

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 580,717

Keywords: Pepe, Kermit, Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, Political Correctness, Alt-Right, Fascism, Social Justice Warriors, Bill C16, Professor, University of Toronto

Id: Ixc9i1G7eew

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2017