JP and JC

From metawiki
Jesus and Jordan Peterson plotting to take over your YouTube algorithm (according to AI)

JP and JC refer to Jordan Peterson and Jesus Christ, whose videos occupy an outsized portion of the YouTube search results on a variety of important subjects.

The worst topics in this regard include belief systems, meaning of life, tradition, temptation, and morality. You really have to dig to find anything on these subjects from a secular or progressive perspective.

While both do have good advice from time to time, videos from these sources will not be provided on this wiki. We won't do that to your algorithm, lest you end up in the manosphere.

Check out this excellent breakdown of Peterson's philosophy to understand why it is simultaneously nonsensical, pompous, and problematic, while people pretending to penetrate his prattle profess his profundity.

"He is popular partly because he offers adrift young men a sense of heroic purpose, and offers angry young men rationalizations for their hatreds. And he is popular partly because academia and the left have failed spectacularly at helping make the world intelligible to ordinary people, and giving them a clear and compelling political vision." -Nathan J. Robinson

Opposition to Hierarchy

Jordan Peterson and the manosphere promote a traditional view of social hierarchy that is outdated, authoritarian, justifies misogyny and racism, and is not necessarily natural. While humanity has certainly used hierarchical control and organizational structures throughout its history, modern technology and knowledge has increasingly allowed for distributed, self-organizing, complex systems to arise that are largely self-correcting and don't require top-down control. Networks like the Internet, or economic systems like capitalism, function better without hierarchical control. Many other institutions and belief systems can likewise be re-evaluated as distributed networks instead of hierarchies.

In the war of geometric metaphors, fractal beats pyramid every time.

Hierarchies are inherently unjust and anti-egalitarian. While there will always be some people who have more wealth and power than others, and we will always need both leaders and followers, we do not need to worship the pyramid like an ancient Egyptian. The fractal is a much better geometric metaphor for the complex, self-organizing systems found in nature that will serve as the models for future human societies.

More Criticisms of Jordan Peterson's Philosophy

And a bunch of other critiques of Jordan Peterson's right wing pop philosophy.

While this quote from Philomena Cunk was describing Russell Brand, it applies perfectly to Jordan Peterson.

"What he's saying might actually be stupid, but it's hard to tell because he says it with clever words, so the only people that can actually tell if he's stupid are clever themselves, and they think everyone's stupid compared to them anyway. Basically, the only way to find out if he's clever or stupid will be to do everything he says and see if society totally collapses and hundreds of thousands of people die."

Jordan Peterson Is Not Profound, and Here's Why


A Brief Look at Jordan Peterson - Some More News


Jordan Peterson Doesn't Understand Postmodernism


While the views that JP expresses in this video are not his most reprehensible, it makes it clear that he is not among the greatest thinkers of our time.

Slavoj Zizek debates Jordan Peterson

Regarding Objective Morality

Since metaculture has the application of science to questions of morality as one of its core tenets, addressing what is meant by "objective morality" and how one might determine it is a useful exercise.

The first video below has a long response to Sam Harris's Moral Landscape and rejecting the notion of "objective" morality. It is unfortunate that he and JP have been linked by their various appearances together, and that Harris's criticisms of Islam have been used to support racist politics and policies. He has otherwise been a leading voice regarding the scientific approach to spiritual subjects like morality and meditation, offering a version of atheism that is significantly more open-minded than your Hitchens or Dawkins. The idea that science can be applied to questions of morality should be strongly considered.

The utilitarian ethics of metaculture avoids these criticisms by recognizing the subjective nature of self-reporting happiness and measuring it on the aggregate instead of the individual level. We can know statistically whether one society or culture is happier than another, and whether changes to various policies or beliefs have an impact on that measure. It doesn't claim an objective morality, but rather one that can be improved over time with study and comparison. If an "objective" morality exists it can only be approached and never reached, and each moral grey area must be considered individually--no simple rules apply universally (see Gödel).

It also takes a perspective that fundamentally opposes war and the use of power to enforce ideology, and that all religions and cultures should be embraced. The argument could be made that certain passages in the Quran form a generating equation that create a pattern of violence, and significant text could be dedicated to supporting that argument. However, it is inherently divisive and against the spirit of universalism that metaculture is striving for. But even if there was strong evidence to support such a view (not saying there is), there would be absolutely no implication that discrimination or violence could ever be an acceptable response to it.

So, instead of the perspective that "Western culture is objectively better than others because we invented science and democracy" it's more like "Science allows people of all cultures to discover their shared humanity and speak about it with a common language. Let's use this to adopt a universal system of ethics so we don't kill each other, and we can solve global problems like climate change together." It's looking at the same set of facts from a different perspective.

Jordan Peterson & The Meaning of Life - Philosophy Tube


Since a good part of the above video uses Sam Harris to make Jordan Peterson's philosophy intelligible, here's the video being referenced.

Science can answer moral questions - Sam Harris


Jesus Christ Superstar

Although the evangelical apologist videos also tend to spam the results of various YouTube searches, often the same ones that JP appears in, it is not important to devote space to debating them. Instead, here's a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar so they are still represented.

Jesus Christ Superstar (Full Musical)