I agree that human beings are certainly not noble savages. However I think there are a few things that requires clarification in Dr. Peterson's view here (might because this is a really short video!) 1) I don't think Hobbes sees human as cruel an vicious beings(In Leviathan he explicitly says man do not take pleasure in harming others). The violence in an anarchy predominantly rises from the need of self-defense, mistrust, desire for fulfill a multitude of passions, etc. 2)On the other hand it may be simplifying Rousseau to say that he thinks human are corrupted by institutions. More precisely Rousseau actually suggests the formation of social relations is what transforms human nature and give rises to relational concepts(e.g beauty and ugliness, evil and good), that ultimately leads to conflicts ( which of course includes the creation of institutions). This is different to the suggestion that institution is the cause of human corruption.
There are individual human beings that definitely take pleasure in harming others. It is literally the definition of a Sadomasochist. They are a notable minority of all human beings, and certain individuals, if they get political power, like Joseph Stalin and his NVKD head, Lavrenty Beria, kill hundreds of thousands/millions for their amusement and pleasure. Competition and fighting over resources existed long before the creation of institutions. We see it in nature where predators hunt and kill prey animals and each other for limited resources. That is the source of most conflicts in the world. WWII and the Japanese are prime examples of it. The Japanese live on islands which are very limited in natural resources, so they had to conquer other territories to get the resources they needed, especially for their modern military that was dependent on metal and oil for its existence.
ya, rousseau in his discourse on inequality explicitly states that man is corrupted by progress and thereby the development of the human faculties and all the things that are byproducts from that, like society and political bodies.
The thought that man is an independent individual is bound to lead to all sorts of equally false notions. Man is a social animal. It is part of his fundamental make up. You cannot take the 'social' out of man and yield profound truths that can be used to form the pillars of some Utopian society. Such Utopias, being founded in flawed thinking, are bound to fail.
I actually think that Peterson probably misread Rousseau because he would agree with him on many things. Peterson argues that individuals are primarily biologically self interested and will resort to vicious behavior under certain circumstances. Rousseau argued humans are primarily motivated by the need for preservation (survival) and the creative impulse to overcome obstacles to their survival, what he calls perfectibility. In a state of nature (where humans are sparse and nature is very harsh), humans are good for themselves (take care of themselves physically and stay mentally sharp) because this is essential to their survival. Humans in a state of nature are also good for others because they mostly benefit from cooperating with others to overcome the harshness of nature. In large scale societies, Rousseau argues that humans come to believe the primary threat to their self preservation is actually other human beings (rather than nature which has been mostly tamed). Humans therefore associate their chance of survival with their social rank. When their social rank decreases past a certain point, they resort to violence and despicable acts (exploiting natural inequalities in skills, strength, and intelligence they notice between humans). Peterson then continues and suggests that institutions are meant to integrate the biological drives that generate good and bad behavior in humans. Rousseau also thought institutional design was crucial to counter the tendency of humans to attach importance to the approval others and the temptation to channel our drive of perfectibility into a desire to dominate others. That’s why he wrote about carefully curating the education of children, and carefully deriving laws (social contracts) from the General will of the people (a subtle concept). He believed institutions had the power of channeling our biological drives in ways that are good for others and ourselves, even and especially in an increasingly interdependent world.
It's not a misreading. Peterson was talking about Rousseau's interpretation of what institutions were or are, according to Rousseau in his time. Rousseau wasn't totally anti-institutional, no, but his perspective on institutions of his time was exactly what Peterson said they were. Rousseau wanted them reformed into something that would work better for people, something egalitarian and focused on human development without competitive social pressure. Peterson isn't buying it. Peterson glances over some stuff as a matter of social philosophy, as he is a psychologist. He doesn't clearly explain the relevance of hierarchy here (which Peterson has talked about extensively elsewhere) and conflicts of interest/zero-sum games that makes them that way. He instead relates it to chimps, who experience conflict and hierarchy, even without language and institutions. It's an argument to the nature of the animal, and Peterson extends it to humans. So if you accept that primate behavior is primate behavior, what Goodall observed worked heavily against Rousseau. Bonobos are more peaceful but much more fragile; they can't survive in a difficult environment, and thus they have always had fewer numbers and are at higher risk for extinction. Chimps are radically more adaptable and expansive and human history has more in common with them. I'm always amused by people who try to defend Rousseau. He worked the most absurd elements of Western/Christian idealism and Nietzschean slave morality into an Enlightenment context, which people love because that's the ethos they've been raised with, the world's cruelty cutting down their goodness and potential with power games. It's not THEIR fault. It's the philosophical version of cheap street drugs for those who are not empowered and cannot spiritually deal with their lack of status and purpose. The reality is that, even if you're at the bottom, it's not hard to survive in most societies with a bit of mindfulness. People just want more than survival and that requires having other people's attention and respect, which is the core of hierarchy. There is no way to make this non-competitive. Peterson's thesis is, and has been, that we have a culture that is fairly well balanced between aggression and cooperation.
But Rousseau - to what did he really want to return? Rousseau, this first modern man, idealist and rabble in one person - one who needed moral "dignity" to be able to stand his own sight, sick with unbridled vanity and unbridled self-contempt. This miscarriage, couched on the threshold of modern times, also wanted a "return to nature"; to ask this once more, to what did Rousseau want to return? I still hate Rousseau in the French Revolution: it is the world-historical expression of this duality of idealist and rabble. The bloody farce which became an aspect of the Revolution, its "immorality," is of little concern to me: what I hate is its Rousseauan morality - the so-called "truths" of the Revolution through which it still works and attracts everything shallow and mediocre. The doctrine of equality! There is no more poisonous poison anywhere: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, whereas it really is the termination of justice. "Equal to the equal, unequal to the unequal" - that would be the true slogan of justice; and also its corollary: "Never make equal what is unequal." That this doctrine of equality was surrounded by such gruesome and bloody events, that has given this "modern idea" par excellence a kind of glory and fiery aura so that the Revolution as a spectacle has seduced even the noblest spirits. ~~ Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Kaufman translation
Jordan Peterson is one of the few scientists who tells scientific *truths as they are* - regardless whether they are popular or not. We need more people like him.
He tells scientific truths, but also omits scientific truths. Bonobos have quite the opposite behaviour of chimps. They are very much more peaceful and altruistic than chimps, are not known to kill each other and are sometimes even having a matriarchy, they are perhaps the closest living relative to Homo Sapiens together with the chimps. So whatever your vision on how society should be, you can pick your choice from nature to fit your narrative ;)
@@m33LLS Bonobos are an exception and I think there should be a reason why there are so much fewer Bonobos than Chimps. Also Chimps are much, much more advanced in tool use, cooperation and warfare. Chimps would make short process of Bonobos if they ever met together and then Bonobos would die out just like the Neandertals were quickly eliminated by Homo Sapiens. There's a reason why Homo Sapiens prevailed and all historic civilizations exclusively were hierarchical, war faring and patriarchal. Those were the only societies that survived. Today men are so stupid to tolerate matriarchy and it will destroy the societies that allow that brainlessly. The signs are everywhere.
Kinda takes the piss out of Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael, doesn't it? You know, I received a very thorough education. It has taken me many years to (mostly) recover from it. The only thing I learned that still makes sense to me now is math. I can speak about math with great confidence.
ThatChurchill: IMO Mathematics is ultimately self-referential and abstract, not objectively true. For instance, math can describe a universe with 20 spatial dimensions, or can describe a universe with different physical constants than our universe (e.g., different gravitational constant, speed of light, etc.) just as easily as it can describe this universe. People following the same system of mathematical rules will arrive at the same result. Math differs from the natural and social sciences and humanities in that it is not as exposed to language (and language's implied ontology) in framing (and being framed by) interpretation of everyday experiences and metaphors (e.g., phenomenology). To put it simply, the definitions underlying math are not "contingent," and "open to interpretation and deconstruction" in the same way as other fields of study - precisely because math is neither objective nor does it imply or demand a "correspondence" to reality. It is self-referentially true; it is not a theory of being.
But why should 1+1=2? Is it not inherently oppressive that the # 2 is not able to feel more fulfilled when borne into this modern world from the summation of 1+1+3=. Or any fulfilling addition of any set of number?
@ThatChurchill What do you mean by "nobody agrees on the order of operations"? The order of operations is not disputable and the people that "disagree" simply don't know about it. It's not open to interpretation.
Not really, what makes you think humans are so much different then apes? We are more intelligent, but biologically speaking we're almost the same. We haven't evolved that much from apes, especially Chimps. Our Genus isn't even that old compared to other species. We are a relatively young species. Don't discount the effects of biology, we're still just Apes on a flying ball of mud.
Yeah, that's why chemical imbalances in the brain can lead people to act and react in totally incoherent and uncontrolled ways. Free will is a nice thought, but it implies taking biology out of the equation of how people act entirely. Basically you're saying "god says I'm better then Apes" Also what I believe you're implying by "free will" could also be put down to increased intelligence.
One interesting counter argument to this is we actually have very little evidence of the sort of large scale group on group violence that could be described as war before the mesolithic period (about 12,000 bc) so it's possible war between tribes was rare or even unheard of before this time, not that this is conclusive proof of Rousseauian noble savagery, we have some evidence of humans killed by other humans in pre mesolithic finds and it can be difficult to tell what killed a given individual based on the skeleton.
Fascinating, my professor asks us if we agree or disagree with Rousseau's viewpoints on inequality, but it's more nuanced than stating the rich have the upper hand. Happy to see Peterson has spoken on Rousseau.
James Charron the people who create your social structure to oppress your aggression kill everyone they aren't oppressing with aggression. prove me wrong. rather than try to insult me
AverageHomeboy In modern science, when an old theory fails to hold up to careful scrutiny it is either changed or replaced by something else. Rousseau's work might have been influential at the time it was produced, but that does not mean the more specious and unfalsifiable assumptions he made (eg. "Humans are fundamentally good", etc) will be useful in a contemporary setting. Forcing academics to pay lip-service to disproven theories is simply subjecting them to needless intellectual baggage.
Caution, it's a slippery slope - I discovered JP 2 months ago, watched over 150 hours of his videos already, half of them psicology classes, an applied science I frankly considered bullshit (probably because I only heard social psicology before, given my first grad was in Marketing school).
Can you believe there are people actually claiming Jordan doesn't understand the Noble Savage? I think after the situation with Mishra a majority of them didn't even know about the term and googled it. They read the first few lines of the wiki page and thought of it as something positive. =-= Not believing in something is not the same as not understanding it.
, having studied philosophy myself, i can tell Jordan Peterson is very ignorant of it (knowledge if doctriens and history and also logic) . His knowledge of Rousseau or Marxism is very poor , like for any philosopher. I dont know his knowledge of ancient greek philosopher (i can guess zero) but it's where you should start (how can you understand Nietzsche if you dont study philosophy before him including ancient philosopher?) . Most 2nd year student knows much better . And psychologizing a subject is the least scientific and logical approach and lead to personal interpretation to compensate lack of knowledge in the subject (doctrine, concepts and context) I also noticed that English UA-cam is very poor for philosophy content (quantity and quality of video) . There is actually zero video in English UA-cam that explains Rousseau's philosophy well. (And I searched)I could say same for other philosopher.s some very important to understand moderne ideological issues of western countries like Michel clouscard is simply unknownnoutside France (unfortunately) . I dont mind people being open minded, but i don't advice to talk a subject you dont known anything about With confidence, like you are teacher, cause it's very simplistic and caricatural views that will be spread without the knowledge required to even start to learn the doctrines.
I like much of what he says but I see major flaws in summary he has a rank attitude on many areas and focuses too much on darft stuff. Where is the silverlining? The medium is the message his delivery is tense and seemingly rough and paternalistic. There was a comprehensive study on baboons done accessible on youtube about a monkey troup which socialized to be civilized as they can get. He kind of referenced it but it demonstrates that we have the potential to be both civilized and savage. The minute differences in our DNA between us and Chimoanze's multiplied over millenia is the difference between space travel via robots in mars, cracking atoms and exploring the microverse with hardron colliders, and throwing fece's at innocent onlookers it is pretty significant. I just think that Jordan Peterson emphasizes the savagery more because he admits to being a depressive and anxiety prone personality and his tempranent influences his ideology. The reason he is so popular on youtube in his own words, because he generates, 'gripping' content you can 'latch onto'. He is an expression of outrage culture on which social media thrives and is dependent. Read these quotes by Terence Mckenna which counter Petersons stance. “LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never been the same since, nor will we ever be, for LSD demonstrated, even to skeptics, that the mansions of heaven and gardens of paradise lie within each and all of us.” “There is an angel within the monkey struggling to get free, and this is what the historical crisis is all about.”
Cathy Newman tried to trap him on this His reply was half Rousseau half Hobbs I’m guessing she’s pure Rousseau You’d have to be,to believe in your own vanity/virtue that much 😉
I think people just try to not be uncomfortable, after that go for pleasure. what that pleasure is depends of how they were brought up. If you get in the way of someone’s journey to not be uncomfortable they will do what they can to get you out of the way the more they have to do this the more likely the thing they do for pleasure later will involve gaining power over someone because their brains have developed a reward system for it. At. Least that’s what is making sense to me right now after thinking for a minute.
This guy is TRULY a fucking genius. Jordan Peterson is the feminine complement to the full integration of my political and masculine psyche as a psychologist. You have to take his teachings in order to scale properly in politic and policies.
I am usualy 100% with Jordan but not on this one "First and probably last Time" because Rousseau and Jordan are actually really similar in Many Many ways wich is really interesting to me . They are saying the same thing with different images . As Rousseau speaks with "the New born baby " Peterson speaks about Adam and Eve . Peterson's Snake is actually rousseau's sociaty . In both situations evil does not Come before something happens ! Peterson's is to me like a Rousseau 2.0 with a 200 years more science and history "even if Jordan would probably not agree with me " and i really really like that . I wish these Two men could redifine the world of today together ! Evil is because life is hard and suffering , your are not born with IT , IT is imposed to you !
"We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism." ~~ Camille Paglia
@harrison wintergreen -see, there you go again, providing factual citations of statements by people who have actually done the hard work of study and critical thought. have you no mercy for the irrational and ignorant?
I don't know if I agree with his argument here tbh. We're not chimps, just because we evolved from a common ancestor and share similar qualities with them doesn't mean that we share all qualities. Observing their behaviour and assuming that we naturally have the same tendency to violence is a bit simplistic.
That's wasn't his argument at all. He didn't say "look at the chimps, and assume we're like them". Quite the contrary, he said "people think that violence is uniquely in human behavior, let me show you the most powerful counter-example ever discovered."
They may not be but they are our closest genetic cousin and if we're to analyze what a primitive man or a man without institution would act, theres no better example then the chimp.
@@intfamous4001 hi, so first there’s a specie of chimps called Bonobo (their matriarchal) that never go to war- they have sex to fix the dispute even with other strange members of another pack. The other chimp species are very territorial, they live in tight groups and when different groups meet they protect their resources etc. And like us they need huge amounts of space that now a days they don’t have so more encounters occur, they have more stresses and pressures that rub them in the wrong ways
How many French Philosophers do you actually know? Do you even speak French? If the answer is "less than 5 and no" then get an education, get degree in philosophy, learn about hundred of French philosophers who were much more brilliant than you will ever be
+Vincent S Or simply read some Foucault or Derrida and laugh at the empty pretensions and false posturing inherent. As has been noted, even the Existentialism trumpeted by Sartre et al was more an emotional response to the defeat and willing collaboration of France during WW2 than any rigorous attempt at a school of thought.
"French philosophers have a lot of sins on their conscience", typical anti-French bias from an american (or canadian) right-winger. Rousseau was not French, he was Swiss and he was opposed by French thinkers like Joseph de Maistre.
He is against the "French" type thinkers, who are today the postmodernists because of the falseness and naiveness of their doctrine, which once proven wrong is often kept by the cultists, some of which are agreeable, (mostly women, children, and some men), and the rest are conscious liars, chief of which is a Stalin-like figure, archetypally. He is not against the French simply because he is of a different philosophical school, but because he studied the philosophies with his intellect and honestly to a greater degree than most people would manage. And irrespective of that, truth is truth, and no matter how a human discovers it, if the axioms are taken and assertions found to be consistent with them by the intellect, then it is true with those axioms. If you disagree with his basis for reasoning which in base conceptual matters like this one will be disputed by no one, then you could analyze them yourself, but no leftist agreeable type would ever fire his ass up to question himself or his master, whose dictum his ego believes. A man like Peterson who has had depression for many years of his life is more concerned with appeasing his conscience than being biased against people that are labeled differently and whose thoughts are supposedly of a different quality than his own. All the people, men and women who become biased from reading a title because their peers are, especially when their peers are idiotic, naive adults and naive children who were corrupted by those former bastards, are in for a rude awakening. Everyone will get sick, suffer horribly, and then die, and the ones who are naive will suffer worse, for it will come unexpected and shatter the fabric of their moral structure.
With all due respect, humans are farther from chimps than chimps are from lions for example, animals whose males also patrol and protect territories and brutally kill any male found in their own territory. That behaviour in itself is only bad in our estimation because WE are NO chimps or lions, WE are human beings with morals. Now, we are all mammals of course and mammals' typical behavior is that they are territorial, which serves a valuable purpose: the safe survival of the offsprings of the dominant males. So patroling, and going to war serves a valuable purpose from the clans' perspective, whether we are talking about chimps or lions: it is basically about the protection of food resources and the offspring. Chimps, and lions have no morals, just a very basic model of survival according to which brutal acts are not only permissible but also valuable for survival (in fact, females do choose according to these criteria). So just because we cannot put ourselves in these animals' shoes (precisely because we are very different), we cannot assume that these violent acts are inherently bad. They are bad according to our complex value system, while they might mean the ultimate good from the animals' perspective. Going to war and subjecting yourself to a fight is not an enterprise without risk - in a way it is an altruistic behaviour. Even in the case of humanity saying that going to war is always evil is a mistaken proposition: for instance, Europe would be nowhere without the sacrifice of European nations during the Ottoman conquest of Europe or the tatar incursions. Making proper distinctions is key when evaluating different situations!
the black & white thought of "socialism doesn't work but capitalism does b/c human nature is X" is stupid. Human behavior varies to a large degree. More socialistic societies that engage in global trade such as Scandinavian countries seem to be doing well, often times better off than most Americans. Venezuela has struggles, Cuba has had struggles caused by many factors, ecological ones included. To think that any one form of society is without the need for improvement is short-sighted and dangerous, especially as global capitalism renders most complex life on earth extinct and climate change speeds up.
"So that's us in a nutshell" - no Jordan, it is not. Man went to the Moon while chimps can't comprehend what the Moon even is. We are light years apart.
And bonobos never wage war and make sex all the time. Argument debunked. We aren't either. But at least he is talking about the real 'noble savage' concept, not the other mislead concept about primitive societies.
I agree that human beings are certainly not noble savages.
However I think there are a few things that requires clarification in Dr. Peterson's view here (might because this is a really short video!)
1) I don't think Hobbes sees human as cruel an vicious beings(In Leviathan he explicitly says man do not take pleasure in harming others). The violence in an anarchy predominantly rises from the need of self-defense, mistrust, desire for fulfill a multitude of passions, etc.
2)On the other hand it may be simplifying Rousseau to say that he thinks human are corrupted by institutions. More precisely Rousseau actually suggests the formation of social relations is what transforms human nature and give rises to relational concepts(e.g beauty and ugliness, evil and good), that ultimately leads to conflicts ( which of course includes the creation of institutions). This is different to the suggestion that institution is the cause of human corruption.
yeah, a good video but maybe a bit simplified
There are individual human beings that definitely take pleasure in harming others. It is literally the definition of a Sadomasochist. They are a notable minority of all human beings, and certain individuals, if they get political power, like Joseph Stalin and his NVKD head, Lavrenty Beria, kill hundreds of thousands/millions for their amusement and pleasure.
Competition and fighting over resources existed long before the creation of institutions. We see it in nature where predators hunt and kill prey animals and each other for limited resources. That is the source of most conflicts in the world. WWII and the Japanese are prime examples of it. The Japanese live on islands which are very limited in natural resources, so they had to conquer other territories to get the resources they needed, especially for their modern military that was dependent on metal and oil for its existence.
ya, rousseau in his discourse on inequality explicitly states that man is corrupted by progress and thereby the development of the human faculties and all the things that are byproducts from that, like society and political bodies.
The thought that man is an independent individual is bound to lead to all sorts of equally false notions. Man is a social animal. It is part of his fundamental make up. You cannot take the 'social' out of man and yield profound truths that can be used to form the pillars of some Utopian society. Such Utopias, being founded in flawed thinking, are bound to fail.
Either way, Russo literally abandoned every single one of his kids and openly shared pro kiddie toucher sentiments. Anything he says is suspect.
I actually think that Peterson probably misread Rousseau because he would agree with him on many things.
Peterson argues that individuals are primarily biologically self interested and will resort to vicious behavior under certain circumstances.
Rousseau argued humans are primarily motivated by the need for preservation (survival) and the creative impulse to overcome obstacles to their survival, what he calls perfectibility. In a state of nature (where humans are sparse and nature is very harsh), humans are good for themselves (take care of themselves physically and stay mentally sharp) because this is essential to their survival. Humans in a state of nature are also good for others because they mostly benefit from cooperating with others to overcome the harshness of nature.
In large scale societies, Rousseau argues that humans come to believe the primary threat to their self preservation is actually other human beings (rather than nature which has been mostly tamed). Humans therefore associate their chance of survival with their social rank. When their social rank decreases past a certain point, they resort to violence and despicable acts (exploiting natural inequalities in skills, strength, and intelligence they notice between humans).
Peterson then continues and suggests that institutions are meant to integrate the biological drives that generate good and bad behavior in humans.
Rousseau also thought institutional design was crucial to counter the tendency of humans to attach importance to the approval others and the temptation to channel our drive of perfectibility into a desire to dominate others. That’s why he wrote about carefully curating the education of children, and carefully deriving laws (social contracts) from the General will of the people (a subtle concept). He believed institutions had the power of channeling our biological drives in ways that are good for others and ourselves, even and especially in an increasingly interdependent world.
Gauthier Fally thank you
Yipes!
It's not a misreading. Peterson was talking about Rousseau's interpretation of what institutions were or are, according to Rousseau in his time. Rousseau wasn't totally anti-institutional, no, but his perspective on institutions of his time was exactly what Peterson said they were. Rousseau wanted them reformed into something that would work better for people, something egalitarian and focused on human development without competitive social pressure. Peterson isn't buying it.
Peterson glances over some stuff as a matter of social philosophy, as he is a psychologist. He doesn't clearly explain the relevance of hierarchy here (which Peterson has talked about extensively elsewhere) and conflicts of interest/zero-sum games that makes them that way. He instead relates it to chimps, who experience conflict and hierarchy, even without language and institutions. It's an argument to the nature of the animal, and Peterson extends it to humans. So if you accept that primate behavior is primate behavior, what Goodall observed worked heavily against Rousseau. Bonobos are more peaceful but much more fragile; they can't survive in a difficult environment, and thus they have always had fewer numbers and are at higher risk for extinction. Chimps are radically more adaptable and expansive and human history has more in common with them.
I'm always amused by people who try to defend Rousseau. He worked the most absurd elements of Western/Christian idealism and Nietzschean slave morality into an Enlightenment context, which people love because that's the ethos they've been raised with, the world's cruelty cutting down their goodness and potential with power games. It's not THEIR fault. It's the philosophical version of cheap street drugs for those who are not empowered and cannot spiritually deal with their lack of status and purpose. The reality is that, even if you're at the bottom, it's not hard to survive in most societies with a bit of mindfulness. People just want more than survival and that requires having other people's attention and respect, which is the core of hierarchy. There is no way to make this non-competitive. Peterson's thesis is, and has been, that we have a culture that is fairly well balanced between aggression and cooperation.
@crayton caswell
well said.
But Rousseau - to what did he really want to return? Rousseau, this first modern man, idealist and rabble in one person - one who needed moral "dignity" to be able to stand his own sight, sick with unbridled vanity and unbridled self-contempt. This miscarriage, couched on the threshold of modern times, also wanted a "return to nature"; to ask this once more, to what did Rousseau want to return? I still hate Rousseau in the French Revolution: it is the world-historical expression of this duality of idealist and rabble. The bloody farce which became an aspect of the Revolution, its "immorality," is of little concern to me: what I hate is its Rousseauan morality - the so-called "truths" of the Revolution through which it still works and attracts everything shallow and mediocre. The doctrine of equality! There is no more poisonous poison anywhere: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, whereas it really is the termination of justice. "Equal to the equal, unequal to the unequal" - that would be the true slogan of justice; and also its corollary: "Never make equal what is unequal." That this doctrine of equality was surrounded by such gruesome and bloody events, that has given this "modern idea" par excellence a kind of glory and fiery aura so that the Revolution as a spectacle has seduced even the noblest spirits.
~~ Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Kaufman translation
Jordan Peterson is one of the few scientists who tells scientific *truths as they are* - regardless whether they are popular or not.
We need more people like him.
😂
Yes definately! He is great.
Oh like his talks on Hitler & Communism aren’t inaccurate & biased
He tells scientific truths, but also omits scientific truths. Bonobos have quite the opposite behaviour of chimps. They are very much more peaceful and altruistic than chimps, are not known to kill each other and are sometimes even having a matriarchy, they are perhaps the closest living relative to Homo Sapiens together with the chimps. So whatever your vision on how society should be, you can pick your choice from nature to fit your narrative ;)
@@m33LLS Bonobos are an exception and I think there should be a reason why there are so much fewer Bonobos than Chimps.
Also Chimps are much, much more advanced in tool use, cooperation and warfare. Chimps would make short process of Bonobos if they ever met together and then Bonobos would die out just like the Neandertals were quickly eliminated by Homo Sapiens.
There's a reason why Homo Sapiens prevailed and all historic civilizations exclusively were hierarchical, war faring and patriarchal. Those were the only societies that survived.
Today men are so stupid to tolerate matriarchy and it will destroy the societies that allow that brainlessly. The signs are everywhere.
Kinda takes the piss out of Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael, doesn't it?
You know, I received a very thorough education. It has taken me many years to (mostly) recover from it. The only thing I learned that still makes sense to me now is math. I can speak about math with great confidence.
For me, those possess a sense of rootedness as well, but are not as timeless as math.
ThatChurchill: IMO Mathematics is ultimately self-referential and abstract, not objectively true. For instance, math can describe a universe with 20 spatial dimensions, or can describe a universe with different physical constants than our universe (e.g., different gravitational constant, speed of light, etc.) just as easily as it can describe this universe. People following the same system of mathematical rules will arrive at the same result.
Math differs from the natural and social sciences and humanities in that it is not as exposed to language (and language's implied ontology) in framing (and being framed by) interpretation of everyday experiences and metaphors (e.g., phenomenology). To put it simply, the definitions underlying math are not "contingent," and "open to interpretation and deconstruction" in the same way as other fields of study - precisely because math is neither objective nor does it imply or demand a "correspondence" to reality. It is self-referentially true; it is not a theory of being.
+Michael Fitze And this is exactly what is wrong with the Humanities.
But why should 1+1=2? Is it not inherently oppressive that the # 2 is not able to feel more fulfilled when borne into this modern world from the summation of 1+1+3=. Or any fulfilling addition of any set of number?
@ThatChurchill What do you mean by "nobody agrees on the order of operations"? The order of operations is not disputable and the people that "disagree" simply don't know about it. It's not open to interpretation.
Yeah, we're not inherently good, far from it. That's why it's a lifelong objective for every sensible human to actually become good :)
Santo High-Tech it took me a long time to accept this
so true, it might even be the meaning of life
I know people who tried to be bad, i think is insecurity
(Sorry for my English, is my 2nd language)
We’re not good or evil.
We are human.
@@Lobsterwithinternet Locke- rational / Hobbes- bad / Rousseau- good (alternative: Galton- some ppl are less human) you have to pick one
Primatology tells an impressive amount about humans.
Only the dumb ones.
Not really, what makes you think humans are so much different then apes? We are more intelligent, but biologically speaking we're almost the same. We haven't evolved that much from apes, especially Chimps. Our Genus isn't even that old compared to other species. We are a relatively young species. Don't discount the effects of biology, we're still just Apes on a flying ball of mud.
"""what makes you think humans are so much different then apes""" - Free will.
Yeah, that's why chemical imbalances in the brain can lead people to act and react in totally incoherent and uncontrolled ways.
Free will is a nice thought, but it implies taking biology out of the equation of how people act entirely. Basically you're saying "god says I'm better then Apes"
Also what I believe you're implying by "free will" could also be put down to increased intelligence.
Humans tell a lot about humans. Fables have been around longer than Godall and Peterson. Fables are not about animals, they are about humans.
"If the institutions are reprehensible, but the people who built them aren't then where did the reprehensible element of the institutions come from?"
Reminds me of "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad and "Apocalypse Now" based on this book.
how? can you please explain
The Iliad shows just how much war is a part of human nature.
So us humans have no capacity to be a noble savage. Just a savage that learns to be civil
One interesting counter argument to this is we actually have very little evidence of the sort of large scale group on group violence that could be described as war before the mesolithic period (about 12,000 bc) so it's possible war between tribes was rare or even unheard of before this time, not that this is conclusive proof of Rousseauian noble savagery, we have some evidence of humans killed by other humans in pre mesolithic finds and it can be difficult to tell what killed a given individual based on the skeleton.
If the group is what polices chimp behavior, does it make sense to suggest that aggression of humans started to decline with the growing population?
Fascinating, my professor asks us if we agree or disagree with Rousseau's viewpoints on inequality, but it's more nuanced than stating the rich have the upper hand. Happy to see Peterson has spoken on Rousseau.
I whole heartedly believe that social structures limit aggression and malevolence in humans as a whole
_maybe_ *in you..*
James Charron the people who create your social structure to oppress your aggression kill everyone they aren't oppressing with aggression.
prove me wrong. rather than try to insult me
I admired Rousseau as a kid, now i realize he is a precursor to the current SJW cancer madness
How is that his fault? Is work is still very innovative for the time. Is what comes after suppose to retract from the original value?
AverageHomeboy In modern science, when an old theory fails to hold up to careful scrutiny it is either changed or replaced by something else. Rousseau's work might have been influential at the time it was produced, but that does not mean the more specious and unfalsifiable assumptions he made (eg. "Humans are fundamentally good", etc) will be useful in a contemporary setting. Forcing academics to pay lip-service to disproven theories is simply subjecting them to needless intellectual baggage.
I could listen to this guy all day
You easily could, check out his channel.
Caution, it's a slippery slope - I discovered JP 2 months ago, watched over 150 hours of his videos already, half of them psicology classes, an applied science I frankly considered bullshit (probably because I only heard social psicology before, given my first grad was in Marketing school).
Thanks Jordan Peterson for retelling the story in Nam King! Not many people know the history!
He makes philosophy fascinating
Can you believe there are people actually claiming Jordan doesn't understand the Noble Savage? I think after the situation with Mishra a majority of them didn't even know about the term and googled it. They read the first few lines of the wiki page and thought of it as something positive. =-= Not believing in something is not the same as not understanding it.
, having studied philosophy myself, i can tell Jordan Peterson is very ignorant of it (knowledge if doctriens and history and also logic) .
His knowledge of Rousseau or Marxism is very poor , like for any philosopher. I dont know his knowledge of ancient greek philosopher (i can guess zero) but it's where you should start (how can you understand Nietzsche if you dont study philosophy before him including ancient philosopher?) .
Most 2nd year student knows much better .
And psychologizing a subject is the least scientific and logical approach and lead to personal interpretation to compensate lack of knowledge in the subject (doctrine, concepts and context)
I also noticed that English UA-cam is very poor for philosophy content (quantity and quality of video) .
There is actually zero video in English UA-cam that explains Rousseau's philosophy well. (And I searched)I could say same for other philosopher.s some very important to understand moderne ideological issues of western countries like Michel clouscard is simply unknownnoutside France (unfortunately) .
I dont mind people being open minded, but i don't advice to talk a subject you dont known anything about With confidence, like you are teacher, cause it's very simplistic and caricatural views that will be spread without the knowledge required to even start to learn the doctrines.
I like much of what he says but I see major flaws in summary he has a rank attitude on many areas and focuses too much on darft stuff. Where is the silverlining? The medium is the message his delivery is tense and seemingly rough and paternalistic. There was a comprehensive study on baboons done accessible on youtube about a monkey troup which socialized to be civilized as they can get. He kind of referenced it but it demonstrates that we have the potential to be both civilized and savage.
The minute differences in our DNA between us and Chimoanze's multiplied over millenia is the difference between space travel via robots in mars, cracking atoms and exploring the microverse with hardron colliders, and throwing fece's at innocent onlookers it is pretty significant.
I just think that Jordan Peterson emphasizes the savagery more because he admits to being a depressive and anxiety prone personality and his tempranent influences his ideology. The reason he is so popular on youtube in his own words, because he generates, 'gripping' content you can 'latch onto'. He is an expression of outrage culture on which social media thrives and is dependent.
Read these quotes by Terence Mckenna which counter Petersons stance. “LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never been the same since, nor will we ever be, for LSD demonstrated, even to skeptics, that the mansions of heaven and gardens of paradise lie within each and all of us.”
“There is an angel within the monkey struggling to get free, and this is what the historical crisis is all about.”
Actually Rosseau is Swiss and not French
Also Iraq not Iran
Cathy Newman tried to trap him on this
His reply was half Rousseau half Hobbs
I’m guessing she’s pure Rousseau
You’d have to be,to believe in your own vanity/virtue that much 😉
Rape of Nanking is the most horrible thing I’ve ever read.
should i read it? i have the book
He needs to keep the name of Jean Jacques Roussesu out his mouth!
I think people just try to not be uncomfortable, after that go for pleasure. what that pleasure is depends of how they were brought up. If you get in the way of someone’s journey to not be uncomfortable they will do what they can to get you out of the way the more they have to do this the more likely the thing they do for pleasure later will involve gaining power over someone because their brains have developed a reward system for it. At. Least that’s what is making sense to me right now after thinking for a minute.
This guy is TRULY a fucking genius. Jordan Peterson is the feminine complement to the full integration of my political and masculine psyche as a psychologist. You have to take his teachings in order to scale properly in politic and policies.
If you want to feel like a terrible human being just struggling to be halfway decent, listen to JBP.
I am usualy 100% with Jordan but not on this one "First and probably last Time" because Rousseau and Jordan are actually really similar in Many Many ways wich is really interesting to me . They are saying the same thing with different images . As Rousseau speaks with "the New born baby " Peterson speaks about Adam and Eve . Peterson's Snake is actually rousseau's sociaty . In both situations evil does not Come before something happens ! Peterson's is to me like a Rousseau 2.0 with a 200 years more science and history "even if Jordan would probably not agree with me " and i really really like that . I wish these Two men could redifine the world of today together !
Evil is because life is hard and suffering , your are not born with IT , IT is imposed to you !
"We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism." ~~ Camille Paglia
@harrison wintergreen
-see, there you go again, providing factual citations of statements by people who have actually done the hard work of study and critical thought.
have you no mercy for the irrational and ignorant?
I don't know if I agree with his argument here tbh. We're not chimps, just because we evolved from a common ancestor and share similar qualities with them doesn't mean that we share all qualities. Observing their behaviour and assuming that we naturally have the same tendency to violence is a bit simplistic.
Not only that but the case may well be that a minority of all chimps are carrying out this warfare he's talking about.
That's wasn't his argument at all. He didn't say "look at the chimps, and assume we're like them".
Quite the contrary, he said "people think that violence is uniquely in human behavior, let me show you the most powerful counter-example ever discovered."
They may not be but they are our closest genetic cousin and if we're to analyze what a primitive man or a man without institution would act, theres no better example then the chimp.
He does the exact same thing with lobsters. Evolutionary Psychology infects everything.
I dunoo why, but the brutal truth is mildly funny, don't know why
So, that's US in a nutshell. Powerful ending.
UA-cam wont take my like for this video, food for thought.
I'll bet my head that Peterson never read any of Rousseau work, for if he did he would not talk nonsense, since Peterson is smart.
This video is not the entire lecture. Does he ever explain why chimps go to war?, because let me tell you the reason in itself is very revealing.
whats the reason then?
@@intfamous4001 hi, so first there’s a specie of chimps called Bonobo (their matriarchal) that never go to war- they have sex to fix the dispute even with other strange members of another pack. The other chimp species are very territorial, they live in tight groups and when different groups meet they protect their resources etc. And like us they need huge amounts of space that now a days they don’t have so more encounters occur, they have more stresses and pressures that rub them in the wrong ways
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that Rousseau, a deep catholic, is essentially the father of secular humanism?
Well no one expected that. I mean We like to think that we are civilized and all but after WW I we had to face it and here is the empirical evidence
Polished up to look good LIES .
seriously untrue reconstruction of Rousseau's thought
dear france please stop producing philosophy you're not good at it
Perfectly Put.
How many French Philosophers do you actually know? Do you even speak French? If the answer is "less than 5 and no" then get an education, get degree in philosophy, learn about hundred of French philosophers who were much more brilliant than you will ever be
+Vincent S Or simply read some Foucault or Derrida and laugh at the empty pretensions and false posturing inherent.
As has been noted, even the Existentialism trumpeted by Sartre et al was more an emotional response to the defeat and willing collaboration of France during WW2 than any rigorous attempt at a school of thought.
cogito ergo summa deez nnutz tho
I want to see Jordan Peterson debate Alex Jones
What would be the point in that? I'd like to see AJ in jail tbh. Fingers crossed.
Mr. Braddock entertainment. To watch the lion eat the antelope. To learn how to be the lion and to never become the antelope.
AJ is one seriously overfed antelope. They don't even speak the same language. It would just be embarrassing.
@@SEAL341 fuck off parasite
What about bonobos?
You can say about French philosopers what you want, but I completely buy into Jean Paul Sartre's maxim: L'enfer, c'est les autres.
Look up "pretentious" and see his picture ?
"French philosophers have a lot of sins on their conscience", typical anti-French bias from an american (or canadian) right-winger.
Rousseau was not French, he was Swiss and he was opposed by French thinkers like Joseph de Maistre.
tchek1980 joke
He was Swiss, but developed and processed his ideas in France
He is against the "French" type thinkers, who are today the postmodernists because of the falseness and naiveness of their doctrine, which once proven wrong is often kept by the cultists, some of which are agreeable, (mostly women, children, and some men), and the rest are conscious liars, chief of which is a Stalin-like figure, archetypally. He is not against the French simply because he is of a different philosophical school, but because he studied the philosophies with his intellect and honestly to a greater degree than most people would manage. And irrespective of that, truth is truth, and no matter how a human discovers it, if the axioms are taken and assertions found to be consistent with them by the intellect, then it is true with those axioms. If you disagree with his basis for reasoning which in base conceptual matters like this one will be disputed by no one, then you could analyze them yourself, but no leftist agreeable type would ever fire his ass up to question himself or his master, whose dictum his ego believes. A man like Peterson who has had depression for many years of his life is more concerned with appeasing his conscience than being biased against people that are labeled differently and whose thoughts are supposedly of a different quality than his own. All the people, men and women who become biased from reading a title because their peers are, especially when their peers are idiotic, naive adults and naive children who were corrupted by those former bastards, are in for a rude awakening. Everyone will get sick, suffer horribly, and then die, and the ones who are naive will suffer worse, for it will come unexpected and shatter the fabric of their moral structure.
@Prasanth Thomas no one would call a swiss a frenchman
you can go to geneva or lausane and call them frenchmen to their face to see what happens
I never get tired of listening to Jordan talk. Next-level intelligence.
CHIMPS
Chimps
This boy is suffering from ego inflation.
With all due respect, humans are farther from chimps than chimps are from lions for example, animals whose males also patrol and protect territories and brutally kill any male found in their own territory. That behaviour in itself is only bad in our estimation because WE are NO chimps or lions, WE are human beings with morals. Now, we are all mammals of course and mammals' typical behavior is that they are territorial, which serves a valuable purpose: the safe survival of the offsprings of the dominant males. So patroling, and going to war serves a valuable purpose from the clans' perspective, whether we are talking about chimps or lions: it is basically about the protection of food resources and the offspring. Chimps, and lions have no morals, just a very basic model of survival according to which brutal acts are not only permissible but also valuable for survival (in fact, females do choose according to these criteria). So just because we cannot put ourselves in these animals' shoes (precisely because we are very different), we cannot assume that these violent acts are inherently bad. They are bad according to our complex value system, while they might mean the ultimate good from the animals' perspective. Going to war and subjecting yourself to a fight is not an enterprise without risk - in a way it is an altruistic behaviour. Even in the case of humanity saying that going to war is always evil is a mistaken proposition: for instance, Europe would be nowhere without the sacrifice of European nations during the Ottoman conquest of Europe or the tatar incursions. Making proper distinctions is key when evaluating different situations!
CHIMP MAFIA
the black & white thought of "socialism doesn't work but capitalism does b/c human nature is X" is stupid. Human behavior varies to a large degree. More socialistic societies that engage in global trade such as Scandinavian countries seem to be doing well, often times better off than most Americans. Venezuela has struggles, Cuba has had struggles caused by many factors, ecological ones included. To think that any one form of society is without the need for improvement is short-sighted and dangerous, especially as global capitalism renders most complex life on earth extinct and climate change speeds up.
Boy did Peterson got it wrong on Iraq....
So many people buy into this myth lol
Government control... Would you rather there be nothing? You can't have your pie and eat it too.
But what about the bonobos Jordan?
search "faux-nobo" on google, it's an interesting read
@Tanner Clark Wrong. Humans are genetically equidistant between chimps and bonobos.
"So that's us in a nutshell" - no Jordan, it is not. Man went to the Moon while chimps can't comprehend what the Moon even is. We are light years apart.
JP looks so wasted in this vid.
No coherence in his argument. Connecting this to that or that. This book that book. Looks like he's high on benzos already.
Ah, back when JP was knocking back the booze 😎
Did he have a drink problem then? He looks a lot heavier there.
Is it me, or does he look strung out or what? Nothing against him. I enjoy his lectures.
Rousseau was wrong about human nature.
Is there any legitimacy in declaring a Kekistani Master Race? 😂
And bonobos never wage war and make sex all the time.
Argument debunked. We aren't either. But at least he is talking about the real 'noble savage' concept, not the other mislead concept about primitive societies.