Jordan Peterson and Rod Dreher have a talk
I’m not ordinarily a big Dreher fan, but this is an excellent discussion between him and Peterson. It’s long, but if you listen to it with the speed set at 1.5 or 1.75, as I did, it doesn’t take all that much time:
Whoa. I’m with them until Peterson expesses the opinion that we don’t know how to instill the preconditions that result in moral integrity in individuals.
We DO know the preconditions that, in the aggregate, result in a society with a high percentage of members who achieve a mature, principled and contributing autonomy among its adults.
Parents who demonstrate (model) principled behavior, intellectual and emotional honesty and who then set reasonable expectations for their offspring. Loving discipline that inculcates in their children the principles the parents wish them to develop.
Along with an intellectually honest educational system that inspires, teaches and demands the development of and demonstrated ability to think critically.
Teachers cannot replace formative parental guidance and parents cannot easily combat an ‘educational system’ that has abandoned education for ideological indoctrination.
Peterson rightly points out that teenagers need to replace parental dependence with gradually increased inculcation within their peer group. While also pointing out that the mental and emotional health of the peer group is of significant influence upon its individual members. Parents, teachers* and peers are the primary drivers of individual development.
* Any individual, usually an adult, who influences the development of an individual is a ‘teacher’. Jordan Peterson through his video appearances is an example of a teacher. As was Jung, Nietzsche and Solzhenitsyn in Peterson’s development.
Addendum: Barack Obama’s teachers were his grandparents, Frank Marshall Davis, Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky.
Barack Obama’s teachers were his grandparents, Frank Marshall Davis, Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky.
1. His grandfather was a boisterous but oddly defeated man who by the time BO knew him sold insurance fitfully and let his wife’s earnings pay the bills. (He’d sold furniture for years before that). He attended a Unitarian congregation because ‘you get five religions for the price of one’.
2. His grandmother was the manager of escrow accounts at the Bank of Hawaii. By what accounts have leaked through, she was a recognizable type of her vintage in work situations, treating her subordinates with civil asperity. She was satisfied to live in a dumpy apartment on Beretania Street and used their discretionary income to send her grandson to private school (and, one suspects, pass subsidies to her daughter living abroad).
3. Frank Marshall Davis was a lapsed journalist who went out to Hawaii to work on the staff of the west coast longshoremen’s union, at that time run by an Australian red named Harry Bridges. Davis had a history in the CP himself. Over time, he appears to have gone native, selling advertising at one point and operating a business that distributed paper at another. He was a personal friend of Stanley Dunham’s, playing checkers and sharing a hookah.
4. If you can find evidence that Barack Obama had an acquaintanship with social theory – Marx’s or anyone’s – which exceeded that of the average social sciences major, where do we find it?
5. Just what did he accomplish in his three years as a salaried ‘community organizer’? How did Alinsky work for him?
His most key element was pushing the lawsuit that forced citigroup to go in big with subprime by applying alinskyite organizing principles
Frank davis had much greater influence on his youth than say his grandfather
Art Deco:
Obama’s career as community organizer:
It probably helped him get into Harvard Law, too.
His most key element was pushing the lawsuit that forced citigroup to go in big with subprime by applying alinskyite organizing principles
He went ‘of counsel’ at his law firm in 1996, and allowed his license to practice lapse in 2002. It wasn’t until 2003 that Freddie Mac slashed underwriting standards. Nearly all of the underwater mortgages in 2009 were on loans extended after 2003.
Frank davis had much greater influence on his youth than say his grandfather
Likely peer cultures were most influential. His granddad was a goof who’d largely failed in his work life.
I hear you, ma’am. I’m recalling a reminder issued by Carly Fiorina to Hillary partisans, “Activity is not accomplishment”.
I found most of the video stimulating, but I got irritated later on with Peterson’s constant interruptions and mic-hogging. I thought he was supposed to be interviewing Dreher, not himself!
Ps. I don’t waste my time with the “thoughts” of Obama, the Preener-in-Chief.
Dreher is a lot like Andrew Sullivan. His intelligence and insight is undermined by his terminal self-involvement.
Peterson is a genuine intellectual but I worry he thinks that means he can talk politics like he does the subjects about which he’s actually knowledgeable. I’m also starting to suspect his emphasis on individualism blinds him to the importance of societal change.
MBunge
Just curious: why don’t you like Dreher?
Just curious: why don’t you like Dreher?
How long you got to listen?
Joshua S:
“Not ordinarily a big fan” is a more tepid lack of enthusiasm than “don’t like.” I know that I’ve read things he’s written that strike me as wrong, but I don’t read enough of him to be able to say off the top of my head exactly what they’re been. However, for example, just looking at this recent piece of his from two months ago, several things immediately leap out at me. One is that when the MAL raid happened, Dreher’s immediate assumption was that the FBI/DOJ must have a really enormous justification for it. I think that was extraordinarily naive of Dreher. Another is in the phrase, “I think Donald Trump is capable of doing just about anything.” Really, Rod? Why? And he doesn’t mean “anything” in a good way. Or this, “There was Russiagate, which turned out to be nothing, but consumed a massive amount of time and resources, and damaged the Trump administration. ” “Nothing” is a euphemism for “a massive propaganda lie concocted to destroy Trump.” He writes as though its effects were an accident. In that same essay, he spouts the Tucker Carlsonish paleocon “the Ukraine war is just a proxy war we’re supporting for no good reason” argument that I’ve spent a lot of time arguing against on my blog.
Then a few weeks later, Dreher backtracks and decides that there were really good reasons for the raid and that Trump is at fault, based on what? Leaks, as far as I can see, and a lack of understanding of the law involved – as well as Dreher’s own dislike of Trump.
Speaking of the latter, we have this sort of thing from Dreher, which was written when Trump said mean things at a prayer breakfast:
I could say a lot about that, but I’ll just limit it right now to the fact that I don’t think Dreher should be commenting on whether another person who professes to have religious faith actually has it or not, and also did Dreher really think that Trump’s 2020 opponent would have a chance of being “personally decent”? If not, why would he hesitate to vote for Trump in 2020?
Nope, I’m not a Dreher fan.
The latter does have a problem ‘joining the side you’re on’ and this isnt a recent thing he fell for the whole zimmerman subterfuge 10 years ago
Of course dreher is moving to orbans hungary who makes trump look like q tabbby cat
Ill forgive petersens ‘modest proposal’ about kavanaugh because that was a one off
Dreher is a great example of the “elite adjacent” phenomenon. He’s never been a part of the elite. He doesn’t even live in the NY/DC/LA environs any more. He constantly complains and criticizes the establishment…
BUT THOSE ARE STILL THE PEOPLE WITH WHOM HE IDENTIFIES.
Dreher isn’t a grifter and he does actually care about and believe in things but his self-absorption and class loyalty render him incapable of ever not reflexively being anti-Trump.
Mike