Dubious wrote: ↑Sat May 07, 2022 10:02 amAnyway, I noticed that in later YT presentations he's become indubitably more evangelistic. If one is at all interested in Jordan Peterson, it behooves one to question the motive or motives as to why. Is this "conversion" actually happening or profit based? Though he may be classier and more insightful than most other evangelists, his presentations are not so different from theirs though, I admit, the nature scenes are outstanding and not inappropriate as symbols imbued with their own unique sense of the sacred without the usual format of displaying only religious ones.
Nevertheless, this forced emotionalism to make a point comes across from insincere to positively loathsome but it's how YouTube and TV evangelists play up to their audience, a huge number of whom are moved as they were meant to be by the false, sickly vehemence of the performance. It's a technique where facial expression and gestures convey at least as much of the message as the spoken words which are usually based on a plethora of redundant clichés. It's a method of turning off one's thinking apparatus as the enemy of such displays allowing for the insurgence of emotion which offers little resistance to accepting the message as rendered. Evangelists make their living by understanding the default psychology of their audiences and the type of facial choreography - its expression of emotion and sincerity - required to influence it. Peterson from what I glean of his more recent YT presentations, is an outstanding master of these techniques, especially so as a clinical psychologist.
In order to see and understand our present, and as well to achieve a (greater) sense of the relevance and importance of all the things being discussed in this thread, my assertion is that we need to better understand *the nature of the age we are in* and, if it can be defined and then stated, what are the core issues and problems that arise in our present and certainly in our own selves. Note that we do this -- we as solitary individuals -- while we observe and are, in a sense, subject to the information-flow that comes to us, often the bulk of it (or a significant part) through media and media-systems. The reason why I keep trying to *contextualize* the on-going conversation here and to try to link it back to the events of our day, is because all people today, and all those who enter the 'sphere of conversation' (cultural conversation) are motivated by psychic, psychological, ideological, emotional and other such 'currents' into which all of us are *subsumed* to one degree or another.
Now, with that being said, we face the task of *locating* Jordan Peterson within the *current* of on-going cultural and ideological struggles. My position is such that I find I cannot really *support* or *get behind* any particular person who comes forward on the Stage to engage, inevitably, in the inevitable sermonizing ensconced in all discourse and in any discourse. Thus: "All speech is sermonic" to quote Richard Weaver, rhetorician. It is better to hang back and to
observe the figures who come before us, or who thrust into our spheres and attentions. Value & meaning and all ideas related to them circulate furiously. It is a dangerous time . . .
Curiously, in this project of *locating* Peterson we could examine the 'project' as it were of one of the significant influences on Peterson, CG Jung. To attempt this would, necessarily, involve again the task of *locating* CG Jung! If this is done, or when it is done, it can and it will, indirectly, shine light not only on *what Jordan Peterson is
up to* (that is my way of referring to one's 'project', which one may be self-conscious of while also, to degrees, being unconscious of).
Without citing references, though I could do it, Carl Jung emerges as a major intellectual and cultural figure within the Germanic world and that of the continuation of young German nationalism, recovery of Germanic *identity*, resistance to Roman Catholicism, and the rise of a radical Germanic Protestantism, and all connected as well to a sort of 'rebirth' of what I might call
romantic paganism. I de-emphasize the political element in order to accentuate, shall I say, the *spiritual* element. The quote I submitted some posts up, from
After the Catastrophe, quite clearly indicate where Jung's sympathies (in the sense of
resonance) lie. And in order to understand CG Jung's relationship to all of this one would do well to examine the life of CG Jung's grandfather who directly participated in the early
Volkish movement (a movement within Germanic ideation beginning approximately in the early 19th century).
The fact of the matter seems to be: CG Jung's image has been carefully managed by his family and heirs and his clear relationship to the volkish movement has been obfuscated. But I do not mean to imply that I regard
volkishness as necessarily evil or bad, and certainly
identitarianism has all sorts of necessary and thus positive features.
Obviously, with the mention of the word
volk we have just introduced a terribly problematic concept. The reason being that notions of identity -- identitarianism -- and all definitions that have to do with 'blood & soil' (i.e. our somatic make up, for
blood and our region and our history, for
soil) have been entirely contaminated and infected with the guilt associated with National Socialism and the entirety of those Events in Europe of the very early 1900s and their culmination in the mid-1940s. Let's be real: Europe imploded. The
Jewel of the World blew itself up. This has unending
resonance.
To one degree or another we all of us are aware of the
implications. But I introduce this as a preamble in order to say, and I assume we are aware of this as well (to varying degrees) that to all appearances history is making strange circles, and what has
circled around, though hard to define precisely, and perhaps impossible to define, is a mass of content on one hand tangibly explicable and thus conversable, but on the other something profoundly psychic, psychological, nebulous, subterranean, and here I will jump to a definition that can serve us well:
hysterical.
Hysteria, according to CG Jung (who was, to his benefit, acutely aware of his relationship to the events of his own day, and in this he presented himself as a 'doktor' aware of
illness yet also aware of
cures),
hysteria is a specific condition that arises in an individual when the tension between unbridgeable and unreconcilable oppositions becomes too intense for the personality to deal with effectively and also consciously. Hysteria produces
dislocation and
disassociation.
Here I will jump into a specific assertion: we are now witnessing, and we now live in, a time when hysteria -- mass-hysteria due to causes related to psychic tensions that cannot be bridged -- has broken out, and to a degree as an
uncontrollable force. In such a case, in such a situation, events begin to take on their own life and things proceed, step by hysterical step, toward ugly outcomes. Civil strife, social strife, personal strife, interpersonal strife, economic conflict, and then the innuendos of 'civil war' and finally, as we recently witness, the outbreak of actual and consequential war -- well, need I say more? The only other thing I will mention is -- and can you believe this?! -- they are actually talking about the possibility of the explosions of atomic bombs and *world war three*. So here we see the rational apperception which actually covers what is insanely irrational and, factually, suicidal that enters the hysterical picture.
We need to
pay attention to hysteria, therefore. I can very simply illustrate what I mean with a picture all will understand: the tension between those who are call The Democrats and their hysterical tirades against those identified as acute and mortal enemies, The Republicans. I admit that some of my sympathies are with those of the Right (when they can clearly, and fairly, enunciate their value-set) But simply put there are
hysterical battles going on and, to one degree or another, all are caught up in them. I do not deny structural battles (in economics, geo-politics, all sorts of shifts and reorganizations, etc.) but the most obvious are those manifesting
hysterically.
I mean: these are the facts. These are the things that are going on. This is the current that we live in. And these are the currents that we are all susceptible to. If we cannot recognize our susceptibility we cannot say that we are
aware and
conscious.
My posts are always rather long but I wanted to establish these details. They seem (to me) highly necessary and extremely relevant.
So now we can return to an examination of *Jordan Peterson* who arises in a context, and speaks to that context. He is a player within this context and both molds and is molded by his participation in the Drama of the Day. His participation is both sane and productive (his desire to help those he counsels as a clinical psychologist, and which has now transferred to a mass audience brought to people through Media Systems) and as well he comes under the influence of the social mass, and responds to that social mass, yet (and if what I suggest is true) that mass must be understood as being hysterical: caught in unreconcilable conflicts and tension.
[This post is a preamble -- so much is preamble! because so much ground must be established before things can be fairly and productively catalogued into definitions that we can use to achieve *clarity*.]
