Interesting to me is that Jordan Peterson's biggest beef with Marxism is clearly the materialism, though I'm not sure he ever articulated it that way (too lost being Drunk on Symbols, shame that Richard Dawkins has spent the last decade+ beclowning himself as well.) See his famous rant about how witches live in swamps.
I don't think he's taken seriously by anyone anymore, but I think he was a more pernicious and impactful doorway into conservatism amongst younger people than Trump was (until he won.) He certainly predated Trump's serious entryway into mass public political consciousness anyway. I think his meandering philosophical pontificating was often seen as like, a quirky sideshow from his Respectable Male Mentor stuff, but it's part and parcel of his whole project. God he sucked so bad.
Stephen Jay Gould was always trying to get people to avoid "evolutionary just-so stories" (which conservatives like JBP do all the time, and his were particularly stupid and bad, but I think everyone tries their hand at it.) I think it's fair to say that anthropological versions are also always suspect, also because people tend to view earlier human societies as somehow a product of nature in a way that current ones aren't even though of course they are equally so. And of course, nature produces myriads of systems and life cycles that manage to exist until they don't.
It's interesting here though that he actually criticizes it from the perspective of the common definition of materialism and not the philosophical materialism (but I know he also hates materialist philosophy too). Also surprisingly I agree with this video more than I disagree with it. It might be the fact that he likes Dostoevsky and I like Dostoevsky, lol. In fact, it led me to watch this one https://youtu.be/vEfyCVD7BgI?si=wLsJgwDdSrGZQSIn
which was very good and has now led me to the hypothesis that engaging with Dostoevsky can elevate even the most depraved minds at least for that bit.
But now I think we have an even more pernicious force and that is Joe Rogan--the size of his audience is actually mind-blowing to me. And it's almost because he's so blank ideology wise, he just invites people with fringe ideas and reacts in a way that makes them sound smart, and everyone who doesn't have a strong critical thinking education or wide perspective (which is a lot of younger people) just eats it up.
It's interesting, I just found out that Marxists basically claim Gould as one of their own, though I really think it is just a close allyship as his father was a Marxist and he says he didn't have the same views (like you say, I can't see him going along with Marx's anthropological story, and I don't see anywhere where he speaks positively on it). They really like his criticism of biological determinism and the anti-racism and anti-sexism. And I think they see his punctuated equilibrium concept as supporting the material dialectic, that very specific changes in material forces at specific times caused these revolutions and changes in era, which then persisted until the next one. But in my eyes, evolution has divergences, whereas Marxism is deterministic, they say it must go one way, so to me it's also undermining of their point.
I dunno if I can handle any vids of JBP where he says things I might agree with. He's like... both a figure of fascination for me and just my most personally hated dude and having either of those punctured by Boring Correctness about something will ruin the magic. Then again, I watched the screenshotted vid I sent you and it nearly killed me (didn't help that the guy who made the video can be very annoying as well) so maybe I'm over having a hate obsession.
Mostly because it makes me laugh so much to think that this meant so much to him because the idea of a super big, super angry ape made him more hyped than anything in the world. Though of course it does capture what an utter piece of shit he is too. Peter from 5-4 had a thing about how we'll never replicate a Joe Rogan "of the left" because Joe Rogan is who he is because his defining character traits are being a big dumb guy and he is drawn to conservatism and conspiracy theories because they are appealing to big dumb guys because they are big and dumb and for guys. He said it better.
Do the communists have an answer to Dwayne The Rock Johnson's magnanimous kingdom?
I genuinely think it is a comedy masterpiece. Except for crab salts and the Horn, they managed to talk about basically zero actual specific things the entire time. Then stuff like the Tintin line which savagely captures the entire essence of the pompous pseudoscientific intellectual dark web + navelgazing, handwringing conservative whining about culture wars in a sentence. To quotable silly yuks like "People want to make you think it's like a Hollywood thing, with ET on a bike and it's flying. We're saying, take the bike out of the equation, and what if it were just an alien that was flying?" And meta sort of jokes like when the first time I opened it up and saw it was 12 hours long, I laughed out loud. The timestamps that someone made for it, which are all hilarious on their own, but also have something special when you see the sections are titled "From Cavemen to People Working to Computers" and it's a minute and 3 seconds long... lmao. It's nice that as far as I can tell, Tim Heidecker is a decent guy, because I've become a big fan of his comedy. Like he's fully committed to immersing you in a surreality. This is reminding me that there is still a lot of on Cinema at the Cinema I haven't seen, so maybe I can do that instead of thinking about horrible current events.
Interesting to me is that Jordan Peterson's biggest beef with Marxism is clearly the materialism, though I'm not sure he ever articulated it that way (too lost being Drunk on Symbols, shame that Richard Dawkins has spent the last decade+ beclowning himself as well.) See his famous rant about how witches live in swamps.
I don't think he's taken seriously by anyone anymore, but I think he was a more pernicious and impactful doorway into conservatism amongst younger people than Trump was (until he won.) He certainly predated Trump's serious entryway into mass public political consciousness anyway. I think his meandering philosophical pontificating was often seen as like, a quirky sideshow from his Respectable Male Mentor stuff, but it's part and parcel of his whole project. God he sucked so bad.
Stephen Jay Gould was always trying to get people to avoid "evolutionary just-so stories" (which conservatives like JBP do all the time, and his were particularly stupid and bad, but I think everyone tries their hand at it.) I think it's fair to say that anthropological versions are also always suspect, also because people tend to view earlier human societies as somehow a product of nature in a way that current ones aren't even though of course they are equally so. And of course, nature produces myriads of systems and life cycles that manage to exist until they don't.
https://youtu.be/OReP37cxBG0?si=sv-NUnmAg4CT8nNn
It's interesting here though that he actually criticizes it from the perspective of the common definition of materialism and not the philosophical materialism (but I know he also hates materialist philosophy too). Also surprisingly I agree with this video more than I disagree with it. It might be the fact that he likes Dostoevsky and I like Dostoevsky, lol. In fact, it led me to watch this one https://youtu.be/vEfyCVD7BgI?si=wLsJgwDdSrGZQSIn
which was very good and has now led me to the hypothesis that engaging with Dostoevsky can elevate even the most depraved minds at least for that bit.
But now I think we have an even more pernicious force and that is Joe Rogan--the size of his audience is actually mind-blowing to me. And it's almost because he's so blank ideology wise, he just invites people with fringe ideas and reacts in a way that makes them sound smart, and everyone who doesn't have a strong critical thinking education or wide perspective (which is a lot of younger people) just eats it up.
It's interesting, I just found out that Marxists basically claim Gould as one of their own, though I really think it is just a close allyship as his father was a Marxist and he says he didn't have the same views (like you say, I can't see him going along with Marx's anthropological story, and I don't see anywhere where he speaks positively on it). They really like his criticism of biological determinism and the anti-racism and anti-sexism. And I think they see his punctuated equilibrium concept as supporting the material dialectic, that very specific changes in material forces at specific times caused these revolutions and changes in era, which then persisted until the next one. But in my eyes, evolution has divergences, whereas Marxism is deterministic, they say it must go one way, so to me it's also undermining of their point.
I dunno if I can handle any vids of JBP where he says things I might agree with. He's like... both a figure of fascination for me and just my most personally hated dude and having either of those punctured by Boring Correctness about something will ruin the magic. Then again, I watched the screenshotted vid I sent you and it nearly killed me (didn't help that the guy who made the video can be very annoying as well) so maybe I'm over having a hate obsession.
Have you ever seen Tim Heidecker's satire of JRE? It is an amazing work of art, so is his one about Bill Maher's podcast. https://www.youtube.com/live/P6Iyg9fznvM?si=eVa2bLhLNjDrqTJR
Though the essence of Joe Rogan will always be this to me:
https://youtu.be/naIegDE5JxU?si=x-8huzxby-aix0ih
Mostly because it makes me laugh so much to think that this meant so much to him because the idea of a super big, super angry ape made him more hyped than anything in the world. Though of course it does capture what an utter piece of shit he is too. Peter from 5-4 had a thing about how we'll never replicate a Joe Rogan "of the left" because Joe Rogan is who he is because his defining character traits are being a big dumb guy and he is drawn to conservatism and conspiracy theories because they are appealing to big dumb guys because they are big and dumb and for guys. He said it better.
Omg, I lost it at "I was reading Tintin on this. John Tintin, on course correction after the rulebook gets thrown out." Also crab salts.
Do the communists have an answer to Dwayne The Rock Johnson's magnanimous kingdom?
I genuinely think it is a comedy masterpiece. Except for crab salts and the Horn, they managed to talk about basically zero actual specific things the entire time. Then stuff like the Tintin line which savagely captures the entire essence of the pompous pseudoscientific intellectual dark web + navelgazing, handwringing conservative whining about culture wars in a sentence. To quotable silly yuks like "People want to make you think it's like a Hollywood thing, with ET on a bike and it's flying. We're saying, take the bike out of the equation, and what if it were just an alien that was flying?" And meta sort of jokes like when the first time I opened it up and saw it was 12 hours long, I laughed out loud. The timestamps that someone made for it, which are all hilarious on their own, but also have something special when you see the sections are titled "From Cavemen to People Working to Computers" and it's a minute and 3 seconds long... lmao. It's nice that as far as I can tell, Tim Heidecker is a decent guy, because I've become a big fan of his comedy. Like he's fully committed to immersing you in a surreality. This is reminding me that there is still a lot of on Cinema at the Cinema I haven't seen, so maybe I can do that instead of thinking about horrible current events.