Viral antipathies pt 2

In part 1 as we ended our discourse with Dr Jordan B Peterson's 1999 work "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief", he had neatly "divided the world up simplistically"  into those who ascribe to ideology; who will go to any lengths to get their revenge and express their hatred; and the noble pragmatic businessmen, who are professional, confident and respectable in attaining their not hateful aims. Or as he puts it:  "into those who thought and acted properly, and those who did not."

We had noticed the theme of collectivism, particularly it's rejection manifested in his family, the local community, and then the wider community he joined at college and through socialist politics, but were aware that these latter elements had been coloured "in the most intimate manner", by the thoroughgoing education in religious belief and practice, he underwent from a young age. We had also noticed an element of conformity with the middle class values, wholly compatible with modern 'Christian virtue', which had manifested in a tension with socialist ideals, and influenced his conceptions of success, virtue, and willing adoption of the protestant work ethic.

The rejection of external "ideology" from an implicit ideological position, caused him somewhat of an existential dilemma, he writes: "Such realizations upset my beliefs (even my faith in beliefs), and the plans I had formulated, as a consequence of these beliefs. I could no longer tell who was good and who was bad, so to speak – I no longer knew who to support, or who to fight."
If we analyze this a little more closely however, we see that what he had rejected and called 'ideology': political practice and organization based on concrete class divisions, ran counter to his internalized conception of masculinity, virtue, achievement, which is to say his internalized ideological framework. This tension was unbearable for the young Jordan, not to mention the sexual tensions and frustrations we feel at this age but which seem absent from his narrative for whatever reason. "This state of affairs proved very troublesome, pragmatically as well as philosophically. I
wanted to become a corporate lawyer – had written the Law School Admissions Test, had taken two years of appropriate preliminary courses. I wanted to learn the ways of my enemies, and embark on a political career. This plan disintegrated. The world obviously did not need another lawyer, and I no longer believed that I knew enough to masquerade as a leader.
I became simultaneously disenchanted with the study of political science, my original undergraduate major."

Is this sadly not too common a theme? We start out in the world, full of youthful exuberance, a strong sense of right and wrong, a sense of power and ability to shape the future, but within a matter of years, in so far as you are able to succeed, conform, and healthily adjust to the competitive alienation and stream of humiliations, the world has changed and implanted the ideology of Capitalism within you, made you a self interested, self absorded, or repressed & docile body. At once denying, diverting, and exploiting your natural human instincts.
The 'enlightened cynicism' of his dorm mate, & George Orwell facilitated the negation of that social element of practice he had admirably thrown himself into, and renewed the architectural facade constructed from birth, of a struggle between good and evil, now represented by "the collective" vs the individual, and manifesting in individual greatness vs the pettiness of the herd. Is it any surprise he still to this day finds much to support his position in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche?

At this point we get some insight to how little work the young Peterson was putting into his theoretical socialism: "When I moved to the main campus at the University of Alberta, however, my interest (in "the structure of human beliefs", "political philosophy")disappeared.. I was taught that people were motivated by rational forces; that human beliefs and actions were determined by economic pressures. This did not seem sufficient explanation. I could not believe (and still do not) that commodities – “natural resources,” for example – had intrinsic and self-evident value. In the absence of such value, the worth of things had to be socially or culturally (or even individually) determined."
Despite the fact that we've seen from his own story, how economic influences (not necessarily pressures, though the boardroom incident alludes to a pressure to conform, fit in, be productive, achieve etc,) do have the power to shape human belief and actions, ie his own rejection of socialism in favour of more commercially acceptable positions, changing his interests and ambitions despite doing two years training to practice law etc,. Peterson retains within him, from the earliest time, a religious, mystical, universal conception of truth, as bestowed hierarchically, a logocentrism which assigns and derives values from non-existent things, and which has an inverted consciousness of man as under the control of alien forces which in actual fact he has created and continues to fashion.

Would we say clean air, hunting grounds or stream water are natural resources or commodities? They certainly have commodity forms in the modern world, a bottle of evian, carbonated, Oxygen bars, etc, but these are not their natural character. Things which have objective value: land, water, tools, property, were appropriated at various times by various groups throughout Western History, who then exchanged the use of their inherent value, for an exchange value. Is the use value of air, land and water not pretty self evident?[1]

The fundamental basis of conservatism, being displacement and disavowal of the actual social antagonisms and advantages one tries to preserve, this is a predictable move, and pretty essential if we are to travel with Jordan on the journey from Socialism as fetish, to phobia.
What's more, if society, culture or the individual values and assigns worth to Capitalism, surely this must therefore be the best of all possible worlds? And were it not, would it not be completely within the power of the individual, society or culture to change it?


"This act of determination appeared to me moral– appeared to me to be a consequence of the moral philosophy adopted by the society, culture or person in question. What people valued, economically, merely reflected what they believed to be important. This meant that real motivation had to lie in the domain of value, of morality. The political scientists I studied with did not see this, or did not think it was relevant."

This "appearance" is an understandable inversion common to the mystical, authoritarian personality structure, but if you analyze it the logic is insane: Is he really suggesting slave traders or plantation owners thought their activities of moral importance, that the British Empire was conducted with a view to the moral improvement of it's subjugated populations? I'll stick with the knowledge that egoic consciousness, acquisitiveness and the need to eat, though taken to horrendous extremes of greed & avarice were the source of these commercial enterprises, and no value higher than the individual's material gratification existed.

A good Nietzschean question to ask would be what value does one extort by the use of morality? It would not be out of keeping with modern Capitalist activity, if we learned that various plantations or shipping companies offered 'more ethical' slave accommodation than others: "transport your human resources comfortably", though it's doubtful the market for ethical consumerism had developed so far at that point. While they weren't subjected to the horrors of PR, Slaves were in no way spared the horrors of Christian discipline & master morality, the same means Nietzsche suggested the weak used to conquer the strong, attacking their life affirming instincts through anti-sensuous Christian morality.
As Freud has it:

"In what does the peculiar value of religious ideas lie?"[2]

Peterson continues: " My religious convictions, ill-formed to begin with, disappeared when I was very young." But clearly the evidence in his narrative points to the contrary.
"My confidence in socialism (that is, in political utopia) vanished when I realized that
the world was not merely a place of economics."
Clearly his initial confidence was misplaced, and unearned. His crude Christian morality merely finding expression in the most compatible secular framework; Utopian Socialism. Seemingly applying the same rigour to his analysis of Value as Socialism, whether the world is or isn't a place of economics is a question he shows no signs of being able to answer. "My faith in ideology departed, when I began to see that ideological identification itself posed a profound and mysterious problem" Because contrary to what he says, the attachment to religio-moral conceptions of order, truth, reality, his ingrained ideology, determined his rejection as ideology of those opposed to his own.
As he himself asserts this to be true of the world, should we not assume his valuing a moralo-religious/philosophical framework, above a rationalist/materialist one, to be "a consequence of the moral philosophy adopted by the society, culture or person in question."?

This current permeates his character, and the narrative in which he describes it.
He disavows the ideology he has adopted, and which determines his interactions with; socialism; religious congregations; fellow students; lecturers etc,. & those he takes issue with today.
He says, "All my beliefs – which had lent order to the chaos of my existence, at least temporarily – had proved illusory; I could no longer see the sense in things. I was cast adrift; I did not know what to do, or what to think.", then a few paragraphs later he's having another existential crisis.
Having skipped through more Weltenschmerz, anxiety about the Cold War, and his rejoining University to study psychology (where did he get the money to do all these courses?), we find him working with Prison inmates where a double cop killer rescues him from the attention of someone he describes as "exceptionally muscular, and tattooed over his bare chest. He had a vicious scar running down the middle of his body, from his collarbone to his midsection. Maybe he had survived open-heart surgery. Or maybe it was an ax wound. The injury would have killed a lesser man, anyway – someone like me."
It's clear this triggered some kind of frustrated response in him, as he describes:
"Some of the courses I was attending at this time were taught in large lecture theaters, where the students were seated in descending rows, row after row. In one of these courses – Introduction to Clinical Psychology, appropriately enough – I experienced a recurrent compulsion. I would take my seat behind some unwitting individual and listen to the professor speak. At some point during the lecture, I would unfailingly feel the urge to stab the point of my pen into the neck of the person in front of me." Trying to imagine whether or not he could be capable of acts of brutality and through some means of mystical revelation discovering he could, he says: "This discovery truly upset me. I was not who I thought I was."[3]
How many layers of ideology will he try and strip away in the introduction, without ever getting to the walls of 'his fathers house', the conformist ideology of a middle class, Christian upbringing?

"Surprisingly, however, the desire to stab someone with my pen disappeared. In retrospect, I would say that the behavioral urge had manifested itself in explicit knowledge – had been translated from emotion and image to concrete realization – and had no further “reason” to exist. The “impulse” had only occurred, because of the question I was attempting to answer: “how can men do terrible things to one another?” I meant other men, of course – bad men– but I had still asked the question."
I doubt this story, it's a nice narrative, which I don't think at all get's to the root of our primal violence/ At the end of the day he merely manages to convince himself that he could complete a hypothetical task. It's clear the walls still stood at this point, despite the winds of the world and men that came knocking.

Next he describes the manifestation of pretty severe schizoid symptoms -compared to those evident in his recollected early social interactions-. He begins hearing an internal voice criticizing everything he says, thinks, feels; "Which part, precisely, was me –the talking part, or the criticizing part?...I decided to experiment. I tried only to say things that my internal reviewer would pass unchallenged"
by conforming fundamentally to the values of this internalized voice of judgement, one might suggest, his superego, he eventually manages to feel "much less agitated and more confident when I only said things that the “voice” did not object to. This came as a definite relief. My experiment had been a success; I was the criticizing part." but at what cost this primary identification?
Is this not merely the internalization of what he'd already clearly adopted as a coping mechanism externally, adherence to the value system of his middle-class, christian upbringing internalized in the form of a savagely critical, overbearing superego? [4]
 
"Nonetheless, it took me a long time to reconcile myself to the idea that almost all my thoughts weren’t real, weren’t true – or, at least, weren’t mine. All the things I “believed” were things I thought sounded good, admirable, respectable, courageous. They weren’t my things, however – I had stolen them. Most of them I had taken from books. Having “understood” them, abstractly, I presumed I had a right to them – presumed that I could adopt them, as if they were mine: presumed that they were me. My head was stuffed full of the ideas of others; stuffed full of arguments I could not logically refute." Despite this realization of his own inauthenticity, something about which there is no shortage of writing in Socialist, Marxist, and French existentialist theory- in the very next sentence Dr Peterson does the very thing he condemns himself for, reverting to someone else's thoughts, drawn from books and adopted as his own: "I read something by Carl Jung, at about this point, that helped me understand what I was experiencing. It was Jung who formulated the concept of persona: the mask that “feigned individuality.”"

This kind of inconsistency is quite evident in some of his interviews, where he may for instance be attacking the concept of intellectualism, or the culture figure of the intellectual, by reference to an obscure passage of Nietzsche's oftentimes impenetrable Zarathustra, which is to say embodying that with which he takes issue. The bold font almost perfectly mirrors, the process of primitive accumulation in which the germ of our global capitalist economy took root. This is in no way intentional, Peterson himself would never recognize that fact, being not only an advocate of the Capitalist system as conducive to individual freedom, but also of traditional conservative conceptions of human nature as brutish, confrontational, domineering, competitive. the point is he believes it wrong when he does it, yet does it again, and further vocally supports an economic system founded upon the exact same principles of appropriation.

Furthermore is this whole practice he describes, means of identifying oneself, appropriation etc,. not yet another manifestation of the WASPish, middle class values ingrained into us in youth, which is to say an expression of more or less modern capitalist practical activity? Freedom, to chose a role; 100 different types of alienated, socially destructive labour. Freedom to choose your lifestyle; from a well stocked range of luxury electronics, entertainment systems, and package holiday experiences. Freedom to make yourself; a productive and valued consumer. Freedom, to choose your leaders, from a limited range of cut price nobheads twice a decade. It's certainly not uncommon for people to find immediate opposition to the situations they seek to reject in spirituality and religion. Particularly not those people who have been primed towards such views since birth, through tradition, social customs, and family pressures.

It's not hard to perceive the ways Peterson has retained this cultural, social and individual virus, and the more you think about it the more apparent it becomes, that it has severely hampered and thwarted his ambitions in life. We have the example of splitting[5], when he highlights his idealization of the board of governors and devaluing of his college student comrades; his inner critic taking issue with every subject he began to study only to later on lose interest in (law; political science; etc,.); stronger, more authoritative voices from outside leading him from the hopeful aspirations of youth (the world does need lawyers!) onto uncertain, unsteady pathways; and the pretty serious case of persecution by an internalized, negatively critical voice, weakening and attacking his ego leading to an almost complete psychic disintegration, only averted by his self described identification with this voice, and what it represented.

It is with a heavy heart I must leave you, for now. Hopefully in the following pages we can share in the joy of Jordan breaking his psychic armouring, dependence on dreams of nuclear holocaust and global catastrophe, and finally releasing his thus far unexpressed sexuality from the control of his persecutory superego.

"The strengthening of the ego dissolves the infantile attachment to God, which 
is a continuation of the infantile attachment to the father." 

-Wilhelm Reich, 

Mass Psychology of Fascism

_____________

[1] As Marx explains in "Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1", the commodity remains simple as long as it is tied to its use-value. When a piece of wood is turned into a table through human labor, its use-value is clear and, as product, the table remains tied to its material use. However, as soon as the table "emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness". The connection to the actual hands of the laborer is severed as soon as the table is connected to money as the universal equivalent for exchange. People in a capitalist society thus begin to treat commodities as if value inhered in the objects themselves, rather than in the amount of real labor expended to produce the object. Peterson highlights the inadequacy of this view but he also negates the process of labour: directly in the case of referring to "natural resources" as commodities. All resources, like morals, have to go through a productive process, whether petroleum, copper or gold, they are hard won through the labour of people who, owning no property besides their bodies and minds, are forced to make a marketable commodity of themselves.
"The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists therefore simply in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men's own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things". What is, in fact, a social relation between people (between capitalists and exploited laborers) instead assumes "the fantastic form of a relation between things". This effect is caused by the fact that, in a capitalist society, the real producers of commodities, the working classes remain largely invisible.
-sections 163; 164-65; 165

[2] "Future of an Illusion", Chapter 3

[3] "They held or tied him down and pulverized one of his legs with a lead pipe. I was taken aback, once again, but this time I tried something different. I tried to imagine, really imagine, what I would have to be like to do such a thing. I concentrated on this task for days and days – and experienced a frightening revelation. The truly appalling aspect of such atrocity did not lie in its impossibility or remoteness, as I had naively assumed, but in its ease. I was not much different from the violent prisoners – not qualitatively different. I could do what they could do (although I hadn’t)."
So how does he know he could? Is this not a perfect illustration of the logocentric mind? For it, reality need have no correlation in the external world for it to exist.

[4]Perhaps I've so far failed to realize another antagonism springing therefrom, I wonder whether the academic life young Jordan had thus far embarked upon, ran contrary to some aspects of his internalized ideology?  He seems to suggest earlier on, in disagreements with "political scientists" regarding the importance of morality, that he found traditional academia to be lacking in spiritual niceties, lacking a moral purpose or acknowledgement of the importance the young Peterson attributed them. Perhaps it's a combination of that and what I think is signified by his intricate awareness of the raw masculinity of other men, of their poise, dress, character, ie the boardroom, or prison facility, betrays a kind of fetishization of masculinity in my opinion. He doesn't betray much detail about his early life, so we can't be sure, but in terms of what he has come to advance as positive masculine traits, there seems to have been the influence of at least one strong male role model besides John Wayne.

[5] Notes on Splitting
the failure in a person's thinking to bring together the dichotomy of both positive and negative qualities of the self and others into a cohesive, realistic whole. It is a common defense mechanism used by many people. The individual tends to think in extremes (i.e., an individual's actions and motivations are all good or all bad with no middle ground).  {Is this not exactly how Jordan B Peterson treats of Post-Modern thought, art, and literature? Marxist theory? Left Wing Politics? Moral relativism? etc,.}
 The concept was developed by Ronald Fairbairn in his formulation of object relations theory; it begins as the inability of the infant to combine the fulfilling aspects of the parents (the good object) and their unresponsive aspects (the unsatisfying object) into the same individuals, instead seeing the good and bad as separate. In psychoanalytic theory this functions as a defense mechanism.
In psychoanalytic theory, people with borderline personality disorder are not able to integrate the good and bad images of both self and others, resulting in a bad representation which dominates the good representation. {could this not account in some part for the superego type voice which attacks him?} This school hypothesizes that they consequently experience love and sexuality as perverse and violent qualities which they cannot integrate with the tender, intimate side of relationships{could the fantasies of stabbing the person in front of him, stabbing people from behind have any sexual connotation at all? Perhaps this explains not only the absence of any talk of a single girlfriend thus far, but his apparent sympathy with sexually unsuccessful misogynists in the "incel" community}. 

Viral antipathies pt I

Dr Jordan B Peterson has been on my radar for a while now. He is an interesting example of the trend in popular culture to obsess over that which you find distasteful, or opposed to your conception of self, truth, justice, etc,. he has thus gone viral numerous times over numerous media appearances and through the sharing and amplification of his work online by modern conservatives and their opponents alike.

He is also an example of the type of person who fetishizes concepts and objects; a "truth fetishist" or emissary of mystically ordained order, opposing the forces of 'chaos and decay' represented in his worldview by "leftist academics"; "Trans-activism"; and "cultural Marxism".
This is particularly obvious in his interviews when he speaks about Feminism, Post-Modernism,  and the aforementioned subjects, drawing a vague conception of each signifier as inherently laden with negative characteristics, conducive to totalitarian mass murder. All this zealous opposition to, & treating of "leftist politics"  as 'general truths emerging out of the void' really shows, -besides his unwillingness to study these things in their concrete particularity,- is an animosity and emotional bias against them that seems quite incongruous beside his impassioned pleas for maturity, empathy and understanding.

Although demonstrating open biases Dr Peterson also makes a considerable show of impartiality, demonstrating empiricism, factual accuracy, and a usually measured demeanor as though his message is higher than petty political disagreements, the inference of course is that people who are mature, responsible, informed & "individuated" adults, share similar political views to his own, find the same things as he does to be distasteful.  He has found much success with this technique in the media and against his opponents, people's drive to attribute to him a malign or nefarious influence, ie by classifying him a Nazi or Fascist, mis-characterizing his views in order to more easily dismiss and oppose them, follows a similar methodology to his own regarding "the Left", enabling him to play a game of undermining, and resisting reductive attempts to define him according to their political biases, creating the impression of him being a rock, battered but unmoved in a sea of confusion. This was particularly evident in his appearance with Cathy Newman on Channel 4, where the underlying conception of women as emotional, impetuous in need of a stern masculine authority, which Ms Newman ostensibly tried to oppose, was confirmed in the febrile manner she approached the task. In this case & those like it, what he says, the substance, is less influential to his audience than the style, the form rather than the content conveys his meaning, the affirmation of a particular type of masculinity.

Through his empirically sound, biological and psychological attacks on various ideas attributed to modern leftist culture, and his certainty in their worth, he can attract support while avoiding scrutiny of his own position, which remains obscure and unsubstantiated while underpinning the selection of his various antipathies. This is the ambiguous space people try to fill by drawing the inference that he harbors at least sympathies with fascist & nazi ideology. Superficially, he is provoked by compassion for humanity as all truth fetishist's are, for the fundamental principle of the individual and a fear that this concept is under threat and attack, but in these convictions his concepts are also undeniably coloured by a particular ideological framework, one that robs the individual of their ability to define their own concepts, or escape those hierarchically, or traditionally bestowed upon us. He demonstrates an almost pathological fear of "the collective" and emerging forms of collectivism, while enjoying popularity in all social forms of media, socialized medicine in Canada & writing self help books, the apparent goal of which is to assist in a healthier assimilation of maladjusted young men, into a collective of self absorbed, consumerist units.

Baring this in mind I thought it wise to read a bit of his first book, in order to not do him the same disservice he has done me as a post-modern, Marxist-Feminist admirer of the works of "the most evil man of the 20th century, Jacques Derrida". It was no surprise having also read the work of Wilhelm Reich, Freud & Melanie Klein on the propagation and development of authoritarian personalities, to learn from Dr Peterson on the first pages, that: "Christian morality permeated our household, conditioning our expectations and interpersonal responses, in the most intimate of manners....When I grew up, after all, most people still attended church; furthermore, all the rules
and expectations that made up middle-class society were Judeo-Christian in nature. Even the increasing number of those who could not tolerate formal ritual and belief still implicitly accepted – still acted out – the rules that made up the Christian game."

He "abandoned" the traditions which supported him through childhood when he reached his late teens, and began to look at the world exterior to religious dogmatis, outside the security of the family home, though it's apparent in his concerns of the time, that much of his gaze was still coloured by the religious lens that had been nurtured in this matrix. This led him to some pretty heavy questions about the Cold War, and Holocaust, as he says; "how did evil – particularly group-fostered evil – come to play its role in the world?"
Perhaps Freud would here interrogate the accuracy of this memory, it just seems too perfect, too ideal, is this a screen memory and if so what is it hiding? In Hegel we find a suggestion of an answer; the realization, that evil is the gaze itself that perceives evil everywhere around it, separates itself from the social whole it aims to criticize. The principle of cognition, of knowing good and evil, of judging and excluding oneself from the matter judged, (a literal Gnostic principle) is the story of Adam, Eve and the Serpent, being "cast out of the garden".

"Has any one ever clearly understood the celebrated story at the beginning of the Bible--of God's mortal terror of science?... No one, in fact, has understood it...
It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge.--What happened? The old God was seized by mortal terror. Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to himself; science makes men godlike--it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!" [1]

So it was a young Jordan escaped the garden, with a healthy dislike of the "incomprehensible, if not clearly absurd" Christian tenets, and a dualistic framework of universal war between good and evil to accompany his rudimentary understanding of global politics, and it wasn't long before he found a means of expressing his developing sense of justice and order...
"my nascent concern with questions of moral justice found immediate resolution. I started working as a volunteer for a mildly socialist political party, and adopted the party line."
A trend is beginning to emerge early on, towards the rejection of collectivism, indicating how successful and long lasting "Christian morality, conditioning our expectations and interpersonal responses" can be, but what greater means of transcending a teleological morality based ideology, than by adopting a superficially secular version of the same thing?

"Economic injustice was the root of all evil...Doubt vanished; my role was clear... I turned, in consequence, to dreams of political utopia, and personal power. "[2] This is in no way the inevitable effect of "volunteering for a mildly socialist political party", but it was the effect for him, & appears also to have been the effect of governing a Socialist political party, on Brother Joseph Dzhugashvili of the Georgian Capuchin seminary, who shared a similarly religious upbringing. It certainly also seems to be the effect of his current popularity. Infact, we might wonder whether the dreams of "political utopia and personal power" ever really left Dr Peterson?

The middle class, Christian upbringing was apparently still firmly entrenched at this point, though expressed through socialist political organizations, and as a married father of two who describes himself as a Conservative and a Christian, i'm intrigued as i read on, to learn if it ever left him.

"I had attended several left-wing party congresses, as a student politician and active party-worker. I
hoped to emulate the socialist leaders. The left wing had a long and honorable history in Canada, and attracted some truly competent and caring people. However, I could not generate much respect for the numerous low-level party activists I encountered at these meetings. They seemed to live to complain: had no career, frequently; no family, no completed education – nothing but ideology. They were peevish, irritable, and little, in every sense of the word. I was faced, in consequence, with the mirror image of the problem I encountered on the college board: I could not admire many of the individuals who believed the same things I did."[3]

The boardroom incident and the candid way he describes his values, as being more aligned with the board of Governers, than his student comrades, highlights not only the level to which the young Peterson's socialism extended, but how it must therefore have functioned as a means for him of aligning his egoic consciousness, with the religious morality internalized from birth. It certainly still functions this way among many in the left, perhaps who had less conformist/conservative upbringings or congregations than the young Jordan, or developed alternative values to his in other ways.
In an understandable state of "existential confusion" during his first stay at college, he reads a copy of Orwell's "Road to Wigan Pier", given to him by an "insightful cynic" who had taken it upon himself to dispel young Jordan of his rudimentary attraction to socialism. After introducing the dichotomy he remembers existing in his 17-18 year old mind, and building the tension throughout the opening chapter with repeated allusions to the collective, i perceive the narrative assuming a bit of speed as he unveils the big development about to occur: "This book finally undermined me – not only my socialist ideology, but my faith in ideological stances themselves."

"Orwell described the great flaw of socialism, and the reason for its frequent failure to attract and maintain democratic power (at least in Britain). Orwell said, essentially, that socialists did not really like the poor. They merely hated the rich. His idea struck home instantly. Socialist ideology served to mask resentment and hatred, bred by failure. Many of the party activists I had encountered were using the ideals of social justice, to rationalize their pursuit of personal revenge.
Whose fault was it, that I was poor or uneducated and unadmired? Obviously – the fault of the rich, well-schooled and respected. How convenient, then, that the demands of revenge and abstract justice dovetailed! It was only right to obtain recompense from those more fortunate than me."

This seems slightly disingenuous, and perhaps again veers into the kind of space where you become suspected of constructing a facile narrative designed merely to convey this closing message. Say we accept his recollections of the thoughts of his 17-18 yr old self as accurate, he himself admitted he did not feel this sense of resentment, anger or hatred towards his social superiors, but rather one of docile respect and admiration. Having encountered socialists practicing law, medicine and assorted "respectable" professions, I think it's safe to assume that his student comrades would also conduct themselves with proper manners, or in a similarly sycophantic way as him in their encounters with faculty or social superiors.
So what then are we to infer from this process as described by Peterson, is it anything more than what a socialist would call building class consciousness, affirming a group identity in antithesis to one you experience as opposed? Is he perhaps looking back from a position of considerable understanding, to what were potentially some fairly flippant, superficial remarks and reading more into their individual motivations than what there likely was?
What is this idle chatter he finds so repugnant, besides a vulgar expression of the antagonism  described by Freud in Chapter 2 of "Future of an Illusion":

"If a culture has not got beyond the stage in which the satisfaction of one group of it's members necessarily involves the suppression of another, perhaps the majority -and this is the case in all modern cultures,-it is intelligible that these suppressed classes should develop an intense hostility to the culture; a culture, whose existence they make possible by their labour, but in whose resources they have too small a share."

This is not to even begin getting into analysis of what part, neuroses, resentment, rage, hatred, and revenge can play in the attainment of commercial or academic success, it would be foolish to suggest that there aren't any "successful" people who are motivated by a deeply felt hatred and fear, it may even be postulated, though unlike Jordan I do not have a masterly command and awareness of recent scientific research, that perhaps the kind of people who Jordan describes positively, who he identifies as "well (or at least practically) educated, pragmatic, confident, outspoken; they had all accomplished something worthwhile and difficult etc," are more motivated by jealousy, hatred, anger, resentment, than left wing people who work pretty tough jobs and long hours in the care, hospitality and catering industries, with only the occasional night out to look forward to? He clearly does not limit his assumptions to one side of his ingrained religious and class values.

Despite the described trajectory towards an individual rejection of ideologies and beliefs, we see the remnants of the Christian slave morality still inherent to his recollected mindstate, alluding above to at least 2 of the 7 deadly sins, before informing us; "It was not socialist ideology that posed the problem, then – but ideology, as such. Ideology divided the world up simplistically into those who thought and acted properly, and those who did not. Ideology enabled the believer to hide from his own unpleasant and inadmissible fantasies and wishes."
It becomes apparent at this point in the narrative, or indeed his youth that Jordan still retained his own simplistic, Manichean conception of reality to the point whereby he couldn't discern the myriad ways in which society, or this internalized ideology had shaped his world view. Hopefully more on that in the next entry.

Did he imagine when he wrote this he would nearly 20 years later be writing self help books in order to change the world and society by first "improving" the individual?

" Anyone who
was out to change the world by changing others was to
be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such
a position were too great to be resisted."



_______
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, Antichrist, Section 48

[2] pg 8 "Economic injustice was at the root of all evil, as far as I was concerned. Such injustice could be rectified, as a consequence of the re-arrangement of social organizations. I could play a part in that admirable revolution, carrying out my ideological beliefs. Doubt vanished; my role was clear. Looking back, I am amazed at how stereotypical my actions –reactions – really were. I could not rationally accept the premises of religion – not as I understood them. I turned, in consequence, to dreams of political utopia, and personal power. The same ideological trap caught millions of others, in recent centuries – caught and killed millions."

[3] "The board was composed of politically and ideologically conservative people: lawyers, doctors, and businessmen. They were all well (or at least practically) educated, pragmatic, confident, outspoken; they had all accomplished something worthwhile and difficult.I could not help but admire them, even though I did not share their political stance. I found the fact of my admiration unsettling."

People who live in a glass Matrix don't throw stones...

The cultural, social, or political environment in which something develops.

A paradox exploited in the last few years, by Katie Hopkins and assorted knaves of the right wing persuasion, is that people actually do seem to want to hear, 'what they don't want to hear'. That is to say revel in the identification & rejection of, that with which they disagree. Just look at the fixation on specifically Muslim rape gangs in Rightwing forums & social media outlets; the perpetual stream of outrage issuing from media outlets who hang on every insipid word uttered by President Trump; the poor focused upon the excessive wealth of bankers; the partisans of the modern leftist movements, getting in the way of the actual police in order to 'police' the public activities of the alt-Right; or indeed the latter's own 'righteous crusade' against "gender bending cultural marxism in the academies".

In these cases & many others, often a caricature or vague idea of, what is "fundamentally reprehensible" is taken as a starting point with which to assert & define one's own tenuous position, thus enabling the shaping of public opinion & fostering of 'resistance' against a chosen antithesis. The kind of opposition founded on such a methodology, as a product of social atomisation, alienation, narcissism -if not downright confusion- can only ever be a substitute for genuine political opposition, if we consider the example of Hitler's Germany this form of opposition actually achieved what it was ostensibly fighting; the destruction of the German nation and people.

In the absence of any insight, or awareness beyond perhaps a rudimentary understanding of politically slanted statistics; sense of some injustice; or feeling that the official narrative is not the whole story; this focus on a mythic excess, on extremes such as portray all Muslims as ISIL, Zionists as bankers, or all foreign policy in Western countries as 'Imperialism', is employed as a means to construct a strawman, or negative container used to unite & simultaneously polarize the animosity of the masses. Portraying this chosen antithesis as dangerous and dislikeable to as many as possible, & situating the most vocal critics of chosen antitheses in leadership roles, increases the likelihood people will adopt the reductive narratives they spew. Herein lies the modus operandi of populism today & secret of the success of various demagogues of all persuasions.

It should be noted that in the case of sexual abuse gangs it was only after the state's judicial processes had performed their functions; police had spent months investigating and had finally prosecuted the abusers & the media had plastered their less than caucasian faces all over the nation, that the impetus towards 'justice' was stoked in these English 'crusaders', including the belief that it should be applied extra-judicially. Likewise it was only once the alt-Right began to feature on people's social media feeds, campuses and televisions, that various tenuous forms of opposition began "combating the hate of the far right", as if their own calls for extra judicial murder, mob justice & repressive violence, were some proven and effective methodology for defeating political reactionaries.

Just as the establishment of an Islamic caliphate opposed to 'corrupt Western values' is looking less likely, thanks in large part to ISIL's attempts to achieve that very thing, in no way are the institutional forms of obstruction, opposition or repression, assisted or aided by forms of popular 'resistance' to "Fascism" or "Islamists". Based in no small part as they are on irrationality, they inevitably represent a drain on the resources, time and necessary attention of the State. It's pretty obvious that the resources of the State being spent investigating and prosecuting members of the prescribed National Action group for planning terrorist atrocities -a recurring theme of Far Right 'activism' since the decline of Empire- is not being spent investigating Islamic fundamentalist networks planning the same thing, the ostensible aim of National Action is actually impeded by their very existence, followers of the subject of Right Wing extremism, and the work of David Myatt may question whether this is infact an intended consequence.

In reality, the true oppositional force to the aforementioned abhorrence's are all institutional, these deviations usually having been pre-empted or pre-existing in legislation, therefore being inherent to the democratic & legal apparatus of more or less all developed countries, which although the majority may experience them as alienated & incomprehensible, often malevolently overbearing systems; in so far as they can be said to work, ultimately represent the general interest of society, & pursue remedy & redress, where a legal wrong can be shown to have been inflicted upon any of it's members. [1]

Is it outlandish to suggest, that in this society where ersatz food, sexual pleasures, & social interaction frequently stand in for the authentic experiences on which they are a loosely based, immediately gratifying alternative, that: perhaps the application of justice & whole spectrum of political thought and action, could also be reduced to a range of immediately available commoditized soundbites? Slogans, styles & symbols circulating in the sphere of private consumption, designed to stand in for actual participation in the political organization, opposition or practical activity they signify?

If this were the case we would see a cheapening of political ideology, it's coming to mean less, to cost less, to require less exertion, less participation, is this not evident in our times & reflected in the trend towards Centrist positions in the Western World?[2] Fewer went to fight ISIL with Kurdish forces than joined the International Brigades to fight the Fascists in Spain, even as ISIL attacked them in their places of work and recreation across Europe. That being said the Spanish Republicans posted fewer well meaning platitudes 'in solidarity with the victims,' on social media. Likewise Western Governments failed to support and defend the attempted democratic revolutions in Syria, Iraq, Libya leading to the empowerment of lawless bands of militants. Perhaps "mean less" is the incorrect term here, perhaps it really has become less, ascending completely to an ideal realm of meaning, which is to say "intended to communicate something that is not directly expressed"?

This would not set Politics apart from other applications of the general trend in Capitalism, towards mass production and consumption evident in every sphere. From the fast food industry which serves mass produced, bland items, too highly salted & full of additives designed to simulate the taste, colour or smell of the real ingredients they replace; to the music industry where botoxed, surgically enhanced entertainers fall off a production line, to mime over an auto-tuned backing track in multi-million dollar video productions, obviously intended to foster aspirational attitudes towards particularly egoic & acquisitive lifestyle choices.
It's my view that politics in general does in large part reflect this process of commodification towards advertising and image management,  marketing a range of apparently diverse political choices albeit within a more or less State Capitalist framework, following a trajectory that none of those choices has the capability of altering.

In the past, identities seem to have been far more based in tangible, material differences, in people's life, cultural tastes, their upbringing, housing situation & work. Until quite recently these factors determined whether someone could vote for a representative in Parliament, and only very recently seems to have ceased having an influence on who people vote for. Actual differences between antagonistic sectors of society, who never co-mingled outside professional spheres, resulted in actual political divisions & confrontations. Nowadays worker and landed gentry alike rub shoulders in the local boozer, at the football or in one of the many virtual matrices designed to confine their attention & energy, to a circular realm of exchange. The medieval 'Witch', ever alienated and shunned for her difference, is now welcomed with a range of shops stocking her essential supplies in every high street; supermarkets stock Halal, Kosher, organic, expensive, mid-range, cheap and meat free meat. An insurance underwriter who get's a bonus for finding reasons not to help those who need it, can get the warm glow of the most blessed St's, by embracing a lifestyle of ethical consumerism & saving the rainforest, the little African children, tea picking women of East Asia & any other situation he and his neighbours' lifestyles overwhelmingly exasperate,.

It is perhaps relevant that rather than advocate for crusaders from throughout Christendom to join the war against 'Islamic heretics', organized Christianity has almost completely adopted the attitude of inclusivity, tolerance, generosity & compassion, towards those who would see them crucified, or whom they themselves would formerly have tortured and killed. This runs in stark contrast to periods in History when the religion was the dominant ideology, before the effluent middle classes had overthrown the maintainers of static order to better expand their own influence, forcing the systems of the old World to adapt to a new one where the individual themselves determines and delineates the parameters of order, free (in principle at least) from any spiritual component of hierarchic power. But look at Christianity now, the Pope himself defers to the scientific explanation for the origin of the universe, and does a range of things considered by many of a particularly scriptural disposition, to be ungodly.

Liberal politicians & "centrists" everywhere pat themselves on the back for this castrated adherence to 'diversity', whereby anyone with the money to do so can obtain to the symbols of one o these formerly existing identities. Ruggedly individualistic adherents to the cult of Ayn Rand congregate in online forums, enacting the struggle against collectivism, together. Using the public libraries to obtain examples of heroism by Rand's protagonists, against all forms of authority; international communist insurrectionists, strictly segregate themselves into tribal personality cults, bitching and sniping each other & the proles, for their idiotic opinions about whatever is covered in the capitalist media that week.

We accept that millions are spent on advertising, on PR, stylists, and self help books each year, and it seems that more or less everyone has passively accepted colonization by these modes of representation, at every level of society and everyday life, but are we aware how prevalent and far reaching the effects of these various techniques really are in the minds of the individuals subjected to them? Are gradualism, the socialist revolution or trickle down economics not examples of a kind of modern Lutheranism: predestined to sleepwalk through a half life our dreams redeemed by faith alone? It is no longer a case of the layman’s struggle against the capitalist outside himself, but of his struggle against his own capitalist inside himself, his priestly nature.

That said, the material facts of each persons situation, though they may be completely at odds with their professed ideology, ultimately come to determine where, when and in what manner the latter finds expression; in the private existence of various competing individuals.
Reproduced in the culture industry, appropriated & assimilated into the individual & group's worldview, a decades long war that spanned the globe, driving scientific, military & social policy in irreversible directions, becomes a girl on facebook with a USSR avatar threatening to lock up a young man with a Don't Tread on Me avatar in Gulag; enacting the interplay of antagonistic ideals, through the only means of expressing those contradictions known to them, egoistic competition, each indulging the other's fantasy narratives in the way they attain meaning, as an opposition to something, yet all the time contained within a totality, a matrix of blindingly obvious similarities so fundamental, they're taken for granted, or dismissed as inconsequential.

The participant in this situation comfortably inhabits a well defined framework created directly by the activity of workers (often in other countries) under capitalists, in line with legislators, & influenced indirectly by media proprietors, ad-men, PR execs, defense & social policy. Nothing real can exist which would interpose between the participant and their world of representation. This is what you observe when Johnny Rotten would walk off during a TV interview; in the famous clips of Lou Reed being an asshole to interviewers; or when the Beejees got in a strop over Clive Anderson's gentle ribbing. Each in their own ways embodying a type of excess to the normal framework of 'acceptable behaviour' creating an untenable dissonance. Differences must be only those of opinion, existing in purely hypothetical, 280 character or meme form, for any alternative to the liberal Capitalist framework in which they're given expression, is more or less entirely hypothetical; this matrix having adapted to contain within it both impulses towards creation and destruction. But make no mistake, under such an unresponsive system of planned obsolescence, the general trend is towards the latter.

The only thing that really sets the supposedly 'irreconcilable' divisions apart, is their ideas, but in terms of how these ideas are received, tested, constructed, established and defended they differ very little. This is not to say that these two politically opposed forces are identical, but that they are underpinned by the same realities of human life that determines the similarity of ideas about it's management.

Even if we analyze the more extreme examples, like the (supposedly) civilized West vs ISIL, or 'contemporary fascist vs contemporary socialist',[3] we can see that surprisingly little sets them apart.
Western States engage in torture; arbitrarily bomb their enemies; are dominated by Patriarchal institutions; use violence to expand their influence & secure their interests; legislate from an alienated position, to encourage servility, marriage & the production of isolated family units. Their enemies in ISIL on the other hand are proficient users of social media; use film to glamorize their lifestyles; use propaganda to attract people from all over the World; print Currency; operate a standing army, health system & welfare state, even at the height of their 'success' running a Consumer protection office. Besides this elements of both frequently use the other to justify their actions, ideas, failings etc. We may also quite confidently say they also both contain a spectrum of adherence to these ideas, from completely genocidal maniacs, to well meaning, compassionate & sympathetic subversives, that whether through bad luck, or bad choices came to end up existing under such an umbrella.

At the time I started writing this the University and College Union are on strike over an ongoing pensions dispute. This is in reality a single issue demonstration typical of the UK working classes' limited trade-Union consciousness, but with higher education, the NHS, welfare system & wider society, failing to resist attack after attack from the current Government, there is an obvious desire among those on strike to believe they are fighting the glorious struggle to protect them all, as evidenced in statements such as this: "Today, the biggest ever strike in the UK's Higher Education sector begins. We're striking over an attack on staff pensions. But this is also about the marketisation of universities - student fees, insecure contracts and the commodification of education" [4]

Herein lies the futility of "centrist" critiques of 'extremism': the historical failure to choose one course or another, to attempt to contain produces the same deadlock; a state of affairs leading the proponents of Communism to take Democracy to it's logical & liberating ends, and it's opponents to try once and for all to stamp out the plebeian rising. Liberalism essentially exists in a managerial capacity, regulating and balancing the demands of the owners/share holders, with those of the workers. The  deception is that you can live a life free from the inherent antagonisms of capitalism, that despite having to produce money in order to live, your life is what you make it, out of what was made in China. The actual depth of the situation, as with the "marketisation of universities", "commodification of education" & even individual thought & identities, is never touched upon, let alone opposed. The criticism of those inhabiting this translucent matrix never reaches the level of a stone.

Consensus politics in the West has since World War II, been the interplay of moderate forms of these polarities, ever being shaped despite their best wishes, by repeated outbursts from extremists of all kinds. Simone Weil had already grasped this insufficiency in the 1930's, the appearance of a new form of oppression on the horizon, namely the oppression of management.

"It is impossible to imagine anything more contrary to this ideal than
the form which modern civilization has assumed in our day, at the end
of a development lasting several centuries. Never has the individual
been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, and never have
men been less capable, not only of subordinating their actions to their
thoughts, but even of thinking. Such terms as oppressors and oppressed,
the idea of classes—all that sort of thing is near to losing all meaning,
so obvious are the impotence and distress of all men in face of the social
machine, which has become a machine for breaking hearts and crushing
spirits, a machine for manufacturing irresponsibility, stupidity, corruption,
slackness and, above all, dizziness."

' From her collection of essays and reflections on the subject of Oppression and Liberty


____________

[1]   Despite her likely antipathy towards them, it was the Police who had the duty of arresting the murderer of Heather Heyer, who -targeting a crowd of 'Leftists' publically demonstrating against the alt-Right, Nazism & Neo-Fascism-, hit her with a car. It was a particularly sad story, because it shows the way this tenuous opposition, some might say 'spectacular' opposition, is more or less useful only as a prop, for manipulation by established forms of power, establishment & non-establishment opponents. Reverse the roles the same is true, alt-right 'free speech' advocates have been very quick to appeal to the establishment for the prohibition of anti-Fascist, "leftwing terrorist groups". Hypocrisy is more like the rule than an exception in such cases.

[2]   Was Jesus Christ not the first Centrist politician? Insisting upon neutralizing not only the education & religious culture of the Jews, but emerging on an ass in line with Hebrew prophecy to unify the Roman gentiles, with the Jews of Israel resisting their drive to implement taxation without representation. Were the resistance groups to Roman Imperialism not compromised, diluted and depleted by the arrival of Jesus, along with the antagonistic and particular elements of the Jewish religion in the founding of Christianity?


[3]   The author of a piece about "Hooking Up With Trump Supporters" does a great job of highlighting some of the things that cause her discomfort, about those who's "ideology" is ostensibly opposed to her own:
"flags everywhere: Ronald Reagan's face was emblazoned on one of them, “Don’t Tread On Me” made an appearance on another. I say it was the “worst” not because the sex was bad, but because, well, see above."; "
To my own surprise, we kept hooking up and—despite the fact that our political opinions were diametrically opposed—it didn't feel weird. When we texted, we'd naturally argue about politics, but also about other things, like if corn or flour tortillas made for the best tacos, or whether Drake or Kendrick Lamar was the better rapper (I said Kendrick, of course)."; "
I could ignore the fact that this guy's family wore MAGA hats. Harder to ignore was his conviction that if Clinton won, we would automatically go to war—with which country, he couldn’t say, but he was certain that a woman president would lead to war because…emotions, maybe? I have no idea. He was ill-informed, sexist, and loved to start arguments with me."; "
in an odd way, sleeping with Trump supporters reaffirms my own political and personal values. I don’t think I could ever have a serious relationship with a one—I can’t be with someone who won’t understand why the news sometimes causes me to burst into tears, or why I want to throw my phone across the room after reading the President’s latest tweet. For me, differing political ideologies are a deal breaker. But that only makes me more OK with accepting these flings for what they are: Opportunities for excellent hate-sex. And to be able to walk away unbothered, unburdened, and sexually satisfied makes me feel powerful at a time when many people with my liberal leanings have never felt less in control."
A real case in point about the totality of bourgeois Liberalism

[4] https://twitter.com/MayaGoodfellow/status/966582311985836032







Binary Oppositions

The binary opposition is the structuralist idea that acknowledges the human tendency to think in terms of opposition. For Saussure the binary opposition was the “means by which the units of language have value or meaning; each unit is defined against what it is not.” With this categorization, terms and concepts tend to be associated with a positive or negative. For example, Reason/Passion, Man/Woman, Inside/Outside, Presence/Absence, Speech/Writing, etc. Derrida argued that these oppositions were arbitrary and inherently unstable. The structures themselves begin to overlap and clash and ultimately these structures of the text dismantle themselves from within the text. In this sense deconstruction is regarded as a form of anti-structuralism. Deconstruction rejects most of the assumptions of structuralism and more vehemently “binary opposition” on the grounds that such oppositions always privilege one term over the other, that is, signified over the signifier.

Logocentrism is described by Derrida as a “metaphysics of presence,” which is motivated by a desire for a “transcendental signified.”
 https://newderrida.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/some-key-terms/