Peterson getting stressed I think.
He has a valid point but I doubt he will make a difference.
That’s from some time ago!
When your grandkids ask you “what did you do in the pronoun wars?” what will you tell them?
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The interesting bit about the video is the conversation about the death of facts in public discussions, and the replacement of what used to be objective “truth” with competing opinions (specifically with reference to the NYT, but they’re using that mainly by way of example). Of course the media has always been partisan and politics has always been about opinions, but my personal observation is that there is a concerted onslaught against the foundations of Enlightenment philosophy: that is, there seems to be a huge backlash against the very idea of objective truth, and that the only thing that matters is who shouts loudest about being right.
We’ve almost completely lost the underpinnings of science - the trial-by-fire of ideas, by which those that don’t work are discarded. My favourite example of this is the ongoing health campaign against “high cholesterol” and obesity, which is now so completely Orwellian that it seems to have evolved into a sort of black hole of stupidity, into which all rational thought disappears with no hope of escape.
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I thought Peterson’s quote “the spoken word is now as powerful as the written word” was interesting, and his thoughts about it possibly being easier to process complex spoken than written information.
I agree, but I think he’s wrong about the “for the first time in human history” part. There was only a very brief period (in the West, roughly between 1480-1980) when the written word had real power, simply because (a) most human societies have had no written language or no means of rapid dissemination (b) most of the population has always been illiterate. Oratory is, and always has been, the primary influence on popular opinion. We’re just seeing a resurgence of that via YouTube.
Good points. He did mention Gutenberg at one point, and I’m sure he’s aware of all that. Then again though, history doesn’t exist in the modern sense without writing. There’s been oral history, but it’s been very localized.
I don’t know if I buy this. The spoken word can certainly have long term effects based on short term comprehension. Say, you think Mario Cuomo was a great orator and recall, as I do, his “Ship of State” speech and the Democratic National Convention in the 1990s. I’m basing my belief on my memory of one line really that caught my interest. I really have no idea what the crux of the message was. I never read the speech in its entirety. Same with music. I saw Kendrick Lamar with my son and his friends. Great show, very talented guy. NO idea what he was on about.
I mentioned before I am reading JP’s new book. I can only get through about one chapter per sitting, which is not normal for me, as his WRITING is extremely dense and thought provoking. Same with my newest favorite guy Peter Zeihan. Now, that guy gives geopolitical presentations to high level muckity mucks and he’s very good at it. His spoken word is quite powerful. Interestingly, his books are a mirror image of his presentations, albeit with more facts provided and the lame jokes removed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o--FmUXHPKE
Now, I think I know what JP means when he says that, that people are driven to immediate action these days based ONLY on the spoken word. Sure: Hashtag Mememeblahblahblahmememe, so let’s botcott Chick fil A or what have you. But I think this is only the case in people who don’t care to dive deep into meaning or truth for that matter: hashtag TrumpmanipulatedLMTstock, for example. I was watching a business show the other day and one of the Shark Tanks guys was pontificating about the direction of the US stock market, Trump’s impending trade war style of economic diplomacy and his response to it was “I don’t care what he says. I follow what the market does.” China’s market is getting crushed and they are buying billions of real estate properties in the US and Canada (downtown Toronto for example, 20% occupancy --if memory serves-- in them big high rises, as they are foreign owned but not rented. They are moving their RMB to safer currencies.) I don’t care what Xi says. I read what the money does. Demographically, China has a hard road ahead.
In the long run, thoughtful folks who don’t get all bent out of shape by what they hear (or see tweeted) and follow up on their concerns by reading about it and then deciding upon a course of action, will be far better off in the long run than those who HEARD something and base their responses on it. Daily life is not someone yelling, GUN! followed by running and ducking.
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Also, it’s easy to get the impression these days that the interwebs are the whole world, when actually most human communication still happens offline.
I don’t think he does. I’d say his point is simply that there is a new vehicle for spreading information at play, which people do pay attention to and which is growing in importance. He talks about how people like him and Rogan are at the forefront of it.
What, the podcast? Twitter?
I’d say this is still a head fake. Power is right where its always been. I mean you can do what to, Abe, but the next time to see the Man, you’d better run…to paraphrase.
More Youtube.
Ah, here’s the thing with that. JPs videos are well watched. The other guy I’ve been mentioning Peter Zeihan are seen 10-50 thousand times. Who is more influential?
JP has become a minor celebrity who seems to think he has to keep pushing the envelope and comment or apply his logic to everything from words to autism to we should be more like lobsters. I like him in that I find his discourse interesting and somewhat compelling in certain areas. He’s spreading his butter a bit thin though with the scattergun approach.
Unless the King is granted Godship, the written word, ie, the Law is far more important. I don’t see the day when the spoken word will change diddly in the grand scheme of things.
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This articles basically just came short of calling him a Nazi sympathizer. The left continues to make a fool of themselves because this man is exposing how ridiculous they are
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What difference does it make? The point is that there is a large audience for such information, some of it quite complex, and that it is being presented in spoken form and being absorbed. A lot of these guys can attract quite large audiences when they speak in public as well.
btw, I never intended to post that response to Andrew shown above. I didn’t read the entire article. I just clicked away from the flob and it posted automatically I guess. Weird. My bad, but I’ll leave it up.
I think it makes a great deal of difference. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party emerged at the same time. Who is relevant now? The Tea Party. Why? They used the laws (written) to get seated at the table of power, and they are now within grasp of genuinely long term generational kinds of power.
OWS took to squatting, twitter and YT and Instagram (for the most part spoken word and the written representation of the weakness inherent in the spoken word…short life span, mostly opinion, forgetful relevance) got some mainstream airtime and then faded away when their own support base gave up on them. The modern version of OWS, the Hashtag Woeismetoo thing has collected some heads, and that group itself splinters when they take down one of their own. Ask Black people about Bill Cosby. Ask Dems about Al Franken. Nothing, as far as I can tell, has gotten the movement closer to long term power, so the noise they make, to those in power (on both sides mind you), is just another way to collect campaign contributions.
For me, the size of the audience isn’t important; the difference between spoken and written word is one of short or long term relevance, respectively. When it gets noisy, I look up, not down. 
Damn, is that what I’m missing? I should become a book critic! 
Seriously though, he’s got his haters, but as long as fame and fortune keep smiling on him, it’s reasonable for him to believe he has a winning formula. He reminds me of another guy who also had fame, fortune, lots of haters, and a significant effect on people’s thinking, though with much less politicization.
Charlie’s formula was less successful when he tried to make a comeback in later years, but he had a good first run and quit while he was ahead. Five years is better than 15 minutes. 
Nothing, as far as I can tell, has gotten the movement closer to long term power, so the noise they make, to those in power (on both sides mind you), is just another way to collect campaign contributions.
I think it’s more complicated than that. Lots of people would like to see one side or the other “win”, but what does winning even mean? Sometimes when you win, you lose. 
Been watching his videos. No, not the political stuff. The older, nonpolitical stuff that triggered the leftie idiots.
Those Maps of Meaning lectures and such - he’s only a so-so public speaker, and he sometime gets the citations wrong. But the content makes up for the presentation. He’s making a Jung fan out of me.
He wrote 12 Rules because MoM was too high level for a mass audience. Now he’s figured out how to communicate with ordinary minds at something close to their level and he’s making the most of it.
The social justice tards are still unreachable though. Perhaps the Dog Whisperer could help him out with that crowd.
When the critics don’t dare call you wrong, they claim your observations are trite and obvious - hoping nobody notices that the critics themselves frequently and vociferously contradicted the trite and obvious.
When you’ve become trite and obvious, you have won the debate. Your points have become the new conventional wisdom, and the old conventional wisdom is down the memory hole. “We have always been at war with East Asia.” If the opponents haven’t the grace to give you credit, that scarcely matters.
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