- Humans are a social species.
And so are lobsters.
Or not, I don't know, I didn't check.
I'm a professor.
Indeed we are unique individuals
but we need other human beings to survive
even if we don't have a personality type
that lends itself to physical interaction.
Ah, you mean the big
five personality traits?
Openness, extroversion, conscientiousness,
there's two other ones as well.
Indeed an important list of factors
that can be used to justify
all or your internal biases.
If an entity with power,
most commonly capital,
attempts to cultivate our
identities like a factory
farm would with a crop,
as I asserted in the previous episode,
why don't we stop them?
Oh boy, I don't love that you just said
an entity and power
almost commonly capital.
I like to think that people
who point out the problems
of capitalism also don't
think that those problems
existed prior to capitalism.
It makes them look ignorant
and it's easy to argue
against and it kinda seems like that's not
what you're saying
though, so clean your room
and stand up straight
with your shoulders back.
When communities spring
up around identities
that are cultivated by
capital for the purposes
of extraction of value,
why do we tolerate this?
Do we really feel so alone that
a controlled profit driven,
co-opted community really
isn't that big of a deal?
♪ To find something I wanted all along ♪
♪ Somewhere I belong ♪
To describe the crippling estrangement
that might coerce an individual
to fit themselves into
a co-opted community we
have to bring up Karl Marx.
- Oh so neocultural Marxist
post-modern extremism is it?
I'd happily slap you.
Settle down, Professor
and everybody watching this
who is no doubt saying,
"Straw man, straw man,"
at this point at a comedic
representation of Jordan Peterson.
I mean, you guys are often asking the left
to have more of a sense of humor.
So I mean, can I get that
courtesy here for a few minutes?
Thanks.
Now back to our planned remarks
of Karl Marx's theory of alienation.
Alienation is defined as
the state or experience
of being isolated from
a group or an activity,
which one should belong in or
with one should be involved.
When Karl Marx is
talking about alienation,
he's describing the chasm between people
and aspects of their humanity.
He attributes this to
existence in a society
of stratified social classes.
There were four types of alienation
that Karl Marx spoke
about in a series of notes
written between April and August of 1844.
The first we'll talk about is alienation
of the worker from the
product of their labor.
This details the separation a
worker from any determination
they may have, including
the design of the product,
the production methods,
or any number of factors
involving the end product,
thus allowing no real agency,
other than choosing where you get up,
go somewhere, and do work.
Speaking of work, the
next form of alienation
is between the worker and
the act of production itself.
Or to simplify, labor.
To be alienated from
one's labor is essentially
what happens when labor is not voluntary
and does not provide any kind
of material satisfaction.
To quote Marx, but with
gender neutral pronouns,
the worker only feels like
themselves outside of work,
and in their work they
feel outside of themselves.
And as I stated in both my
book, Custom Reality and You,
and other times on this channel,
I believe that all action
in neoliberal capitalism is labor.
For me that means both labor
done in the material world,
as well as the abstract, or what is
traditionally considered the immaterial.
Every action we're asked to
take, every share for 200
entries to the contest, every
random sales presentation
we have to stand through
in order to get a free gift
in the form of some stainless steel knives
at the quote unquote gift
table in the super market,
because that's a thing now.
Due to the commodification
that comes along with
neoliberal capitalism,
I think this is labor.
Now it's certainly
possible to enjoy your work
and be alienated by it at the same time.
And there's certainly a
lot of room for nuance
in this form of alienation,
but it's not my focus here.
To move on, getting closer
to our actual point,
alienation of the worker
from their gattungswesen,
keeping in mind that Marx
was a German born person
and his native tongue was
German, gattungswesen translates
roughly to species essence,
but for simplification
I will say humanity, as
humanity is the essence
of the species we humans call humans.
Marx believed that under the
capitalist mode of production,
the individual loses their
identity because they are
forced to sell their labor
as a market commodity.
Capitalism, especially the
neoliberal form we have today,
commodifies the product
of all of this labor,
and demands it as part of the rising cost
of living in society that it governs.
This ultimately compromises
a person's potential,
leaving a person to feel helpless,
or in crisis existentially speaking.
I'd argue that this form of alienation
is what causes us to
need somewhere to belong.
Because in having others
that feel like us,
sharing the crisis that one
might have existentially,
the helplessness one might feel,
is at least not accompanied by loneliness.
Misery loves company.
In that misery we find
the type of alienation
that is easiest to take advantage of,
the alienation of the
worker from other workers.
Capitalism reduces the labor
of the worker into a commodity
that is traded on a market.
Capitalism does not conceptualize labor
as anything that has to do with
furthering the common good.
And because of this,
workers don't really share
a common cause and don't
relate to other workers.
In fact, the opposite
plays out, placing workers
in a market situation
where they must compete
with one another for the privilege
to sell their labor as
a commodity to capital.
As capitalist society
progressed, I believe new ways
to extract surplus value
from people have been found.
People like to point
out that on social media
you are the product, but
what many seem not to notice
is that they're also
the means of production
and the labor there as well.
And it's not just social media.
It's everything else too.
If more people recognize this,
more people would be thinking
about things like unionization.
Solidarity would be something
much more present in society
rather than the relationship
between the various class
actors being obscured.
Intentionally or not,
this all serves to mislead
lower/working/middle class
people about the exploitation
inherent in the system.
Capital benefits from
workers being alienated
from other workers.
In the situation I've just described,
this would mean the alienation of a person
from all other people.
Which brings us back to Jordan Peterson.
- We're alienating young men.
We're telling them that they're
patriarchal oppressors and
denizens of rape culture and,
you know, tyrants in waiting
and we fail to discriminate
between their competence
and their tyranny and
it's just, it's awful.
It's so destructive.
It's so unnecessary.
And it's so sad.
And so whenever I think about it,
especially because of
all that I've seen of it,
it makes me sad.
Like, deeply.
It's so sad.
Look last night, you know,
I was at this talk I gave
and about 1,000 people
came and about 500 of them
stayed afterwards and most
of them were young men,
and just one of them after
the other comes up to me
and they shake my hand and they say,
"Look I've been listening
to what you've been saying
"for six months and it's changed my life."
It's like "I was depressed,
I was addicted to drugs,
"my relationships weren't
working out, I was hopeless,
"I didn't have any goal.
"I started cleaning up my
room and telling the truth
"and working hard on myself
and it's really working
"and I just want to thank
you for helping me."
- [Peter] So yeah, young
men are being alienated.
Or so Jordan Peterson says.
And here's the thing, he's not wrong.
But what Peterson fails to
understand is that young men
are being alienated because
young men are people.
Or perhaps he does
understand it, I don't know.
It's definitely a good business
model if in fact he does.
So hypothetical props to him on that
if he does understand it.
One way or another these
young men that Jordan Peterson
is attempting to help.
- You can tell Jordan's goal
for this is to help people.
- [Peter] Are not all in
it for Jordan Peterson.
In fact more than a few of
these people disagree with
Peterson fundamentally on
several important issues.
Particularly in that he
is an avowed Christian.
- There's a lot of religious
analogies in this book.
A lot of religious analogies.
And I didn't realize until
the very last chapter
I was like, "He's religious!"
And finding out that he's religious.
It's not that big of a
deal but I feel like,
it's probably unfair for me to say,
but any type of self-help, I'm like,
"This is just some sort of
cult following bullshit."
It's not, it's not at all.
It didn't ruin anything for me.
But surprisingly like I said,
I really enjoyed this book.
- [Peter] The thing about
that is it's not what they get
out of Jordan Peterson.
Jordan Peterson gives them
simple, clear cut objectives
that allow them to progress
within the current hierarchy.
Not unlike a video game
except for the quests are
clean your room and stand up straight
with your shoulders back instead of,
collect some item from somewhere.
Or escort somebody through area.
- To sort yourself and to fix
up your room is a non-trivial
matter you know?
And you can that, you'll learn
by doing that and then maybe
you'll proceed cautiously
with your eyes open
towards the good.
- Jordan Peterson's Rules
For Life are very simple
and could be expressed in
significantly less pages Jordan.
You're just 'cause your book is shorter.
Does it really have to devolve
into who's book is longer?
Can we not bother with
the book measuring here?
Pretend Jordan Peterson?
Fine.
I guess.
Thanks.
But even though these simple
steps for getting your life
together and becoming a success
are what Jordan Peterson
is giving them directly
speaking, that's not even the
full picture.
What's a story without a good conflict?
- Most left wing academics
believe that the western culture
is a corrupt patriarchal tyranny.
I mean God, wake up!
Men are bailing out of
universities at a rate you just
would not believe.
There won't be a man left in
the humanities in 15 years
at this rate.
- It's not so much young
men's fault that they
haven't been performing
these simple steps.
It's that they've been alienated
by all of those feminists
and social justice warriors and leftists
and cultural Marxists and post-modernists
telling them that they're bad.
They have no opportunity to get anywhere.
It's persecution my friends, persecution.
And it's so sad.
It makes me sad.
Deeply, deeply sad.
I'm a professor.
These complications serve as an enemy,
as a foil for such a simple,
easy to follow plan that if
only these people weren't
trying to complicate the world,
everyone would really
be in a better place.
And that's where these
young men feel they belong.
With the group of people who
think they know why young men
doing the things that
they're supposed to do
don't get anywhere.
People who believe that
their success is their own
due to their own triumphs
and their hiking up of their bootstraps
as well as that their failures
are of their own flaws.
They hold these beliefs
while at the very same time
believing that all of
these feminist, Marxist,
post-modern SJW's are
undermining the world,
the rules, the environment.
Their platform on which
they act to ace responsible
and be rewarded for it.
- That's why I call it like,
the cult of outrage because
it does feel more like a cult.
- [Host] Of outrage.
- Of outrage because they're addicted.
- This is something that I
learned really from Carl Jung
the psychoanalyst, he said,
"People don't have ideas,
"ideas have people."
And that's worth thinking
about for about five years.
- This is how somebody who
believes in quote unquote
personal responsibility is able
to hold other people responsible.
The common thread that forms
is that things are bad for us
and all of these people
agree on why and who.
There's a natural hierarchy
and you are trying
to introduce chaos into it so stop.
I'm an antidote to chaos that's why
I titled my book that way.
Stand up straight with
your shoulders back.
That is the real thing I think that
Jordan Peterson is giving these young men.
He puts faces to the forces
that are alienating them,
not the correct faces of
course, and calls the banners
bringing together a group
who all think the same way,
who all feel they are a
part of the same conflict,
together under the supervision
of big daddy Peterson,
they are a family.
I mean, not a real family.
- This is just sort of
cult following bullshit.
But you see, to Jordan
Peterson a community is not
a group of people who are
united in some way by location,
by identity, by a common
thread or shared experience.
It means something different.
- There's a couple of things
I'd like to say about that.
The first is, there is no trans community.
Right?
Trans people are as diverse as any other
group of people and to
the idea that somehow
because of one of their attributes
they constitute a homogenous group,
well you'd think that
that would be a falsehood.
That the people who are
concerned about treating groups
of people adequately would
be loath to put forward.
- It's quite interesting
that to Jordan Peterson
being diverse is a disqualifying
factor for a community.
But it seems like a bunch
of men who completely agree
on what's wrong with the world
and exactly what they should
be doing in order to enjoy
a productive and happy life
might actually do a pretty
good job of conforming
to Jordan Peterson's
definition of a community.
But these groups aren't what
I would call a community.
They're alliances and shaky ones at that.
They aren't rooted in shared
experience or solidarity.
They're rooted in shared
grievance and a common enemy.
I think what holds them together
is actually kind of obvious.
They've banded together to
find validation that they claim
is more valid than other's
validation by virtue
of the metrics of a group.
They think to themselves,
"Many people agree with me.
"Look, look at all these
people that agree with me.
"I must be right."
I've heard this particular
thing called tribalism
more than once.
This word is often used
by both people on the left
and the right to describe people
on both the left and the right.
But I try to avoid calling it that.
Not only does it somewhat
trivialize the native tribes that
occupy, well, a relatively
small amount of land compared to
what they occupied before
we stole a lot of it.
But it's not just that it trivializes,
it's that it's inaccurate.
It's much more like a gang than a tribe.
I'm using gang here to harken
back to early 20th century
American organized crime.
But instead swapping the
purpose of running black market
syndicates with validating
every individual involved with
the group, which I will hereby refer to
as a validation gang.
Oh nice one mister post-modern Marxist.
Defining your own words with definitions.
A validation gang is basically
the individualist version of a collective.
A group of people that are
not there for each other
but are all there for themselves.
- [Narrator] This is the oasis.
A whole virtual universe.
You can do anything.
Be anyone,
without going anywhere at all.
The oasis was created by James Halliday.
And what he left behind
changed everything.
A contest.
Three impossible challenges.
The first to finish gets
complete control of the oasis.
Which means, complete
control of the future.
- In many ways James Halliday
from the film Ready Player One
is not that different
from Jordan Peterson.
Halliday and Peterson both
perceive a set of problems.
With Peterson it's alienation.
With Halliday it's a number
of actual physical problems
with the world.
That they prescribe a
purportedly open minded though
actually rather narrow
minded set of solutions to,
which in essence validate
the various biases
of the people participating.
Making them feel unique,
special and smart as they solve
the not actually that
difficult objective set forward
and culminate in the
elevation of the individual.
Taking their place in a
hierarchy they previously thought
impossible and fulfilling their
own rational self interest.
Both Peterson and Halliday
believe their version
of what culture should
be is clearly the best
and basically ignore everything else.
They cultivate followings
that are so intensely invested
in themselves, followings that
shower them with reverence
and dependence, while
telling these people,
"I, Jordan James Peterson
Halliday, am your liberator.
"I'm helping you help yourself."
Oh yeah?
Well uh, what's your point?
The more of this self-help
guru you consume,
the better you are.
The more Peterson lectures you've watched,
or the more episodes of
Halliday's favorite 80s sitcom
you've watched, the more
equipped you are to solve
the puzzle that either
personality has presented you.
And if you do solve that
puzzle you'll be set,
that's all you really needed to do.
One simple action will
set off a chain reaction
that will change everything in your life,
whether it be finding the Easter
egg, or cleaning your room.
But it's not just gunters that
are weird fans of Halliday
or lobsters that are
weird fans of Peterson,
the world is full of these
groups that hyper-focus
on a specific thing they agree about,
and end up forming incomplete
world view around it.
- Ah, no, it's actually
just leftists that do that.
Just leftists.
Recently, the Journal of Social
and Political Psychology
published a report titled
From I to We: Group Formation
and Linguistic Adaption
in an Online Xenophobic Forum.
The paper focuses primarily
on identity formation,
with an ultimate goal
of trying to figure out
how individual users are
influenced by other users.
The report traced individual users' posts
over the first six months
as members of the forum,
tracking usage of words
like I and we to see exactly
how much they believed they
were part of the group,
as well as the deviance of posts
or the content of the forum.
Here, showing that the more a user posts,
the less they tend to deviate,
implying that the thing they came for,
once they start getting more of it,
just starts to click for them.
The researchers expected and
found changes in cues related
to group identity formation
and intergroup differentiation,
that is to say, the us and
them dynamic intensifies.
It was also found that
individuals' linguistic style
became increasingly similar to
other users' linguistic style
over time, that's not to
imply that Peterson's acolytes
are exclusively online
xenophobes, but, to me,
it's interesting that
he talks about young men
coming to him, saying that
they've been following
his advice for six months,
thanking him sincerely
for self-helping them,
loudly defending him online
using the same kind of
inconcise, jargon-filled
intentionally obstructive,
borderline pointless drip feed
of conservative view
points, masked as profound
but simple advice for those
who have lost their way,
that their thought leader,
Jordan Peterson does,
and I can't help but find the parallels
between these online xenophobes
and Jordan Peterson's fans
when talking about patterns of behavior
and fitting into supposed communities.
And that perhaps, unsurprisingly,
there is quite an overlap
between these two groups.
That does sound a lot like
something an idealogue might say.
You idealogue, you.
I think this is in part because xenophobia
is somewhat of a component
of a conservative ideology,
but I also think these
are alienated young men,
trying to find the
place where they belong.
When I talk about capital or
any other entity in power,
cultivating identity, I
don't mean fake identity,
or the identity that you
create around a consumable.
(man yelling)
I mean capital or an
entity empowers extraction
of surplus value using
identity as a conduit.
I've said that neoliberal
capitalism operates on a framework
of a marketplace of ideas,
and that thought leaders
are the quote unquote,
salespeople of ideas.
And if one takes this into
account, one can understand
exactly why the competitive element
of a validation gang appears.
Somebody wants to be the thought leader.
In the marketplace of
ideas, it's not validity
that sells an idea, it's attention.
And also, you know, a little validation,
and the people who buy
aren't buying those ideas
because they are valid.
They buy these ideas
because they've been plopped
right in front of them in
a very obvious fashion,
and make them feel valid.
Jordan Peterson established
himself as the thought leader
of a validation gang.
So did James Halliday,
though his eventual feelings
on this differ in the novel and the movie,
mainly that in the movie he
actually has feelings on this.
But the dynamic certainly
isn't lost in that story.
Internet forums also have personalities
that act as thought leaders as well,
profiting socially and in
some cases, financially,
as they validate other people
selling them a world view
that works for them.
Now, hold on bucko, this isn't fair to me.
You're just straw manning me and,
virtue signaling too, that's
the other thing you're doing.
You're simply prosthelytizing
here with your slogans
on your placards in front of everybody,
to establish that you're morally superior.
Well I, I, I don't buy it, okay?
Look, I spend all of my time
helping these young men.
I'm very helpful, they need
me for their self-help.
Look, I have simple steps for now,
for how they can fit into
the current hierarchy,
to how things are now.
You just, you're gonna mess things up
for these poor young men
by changing how things are.
It's just so sad what's
happening to these young men.
These young men who are
in my authoring program
that you yourself can purchase
access to at any time.
These young men who send me messages,
lots and lots of messages.
Showering me with praise.
It's not just important to them.
This is important to me.
My dreams have come true.
What I say works.
And that's why you should
head to jordanpeterson.com,
and buy 12 Rules for Life.
- [Announcer] As the
new owner of the Oasis,
Wade is suddenly the most
powerful person in the world,
but he uses his powers for good,
putting the lessons he's
learned from Halliday into play.
And finally, he does
what Halliday couldn't,
and kisses the girl, winning Artemis as--
- [Eerie Male] The ultimate prize.
- Hoarding wealth and power can be done
in various ways.
A particularly insidious one is telling us
that we need somewhere to belong,
and then ensuring that we can't find one
that's really ours.
Instead, we're presented with an identity
and a quote unquote
community that keeps us
on the path to consumption
that we're already on.
Capitalism is the current
form of a hierarchy
that predates capitalism.
No, it didn't create a power imbalance,
but it is the problem as it stands today.
It's birthed ways to convince
people not to band together
in a meaningful way,
painting the individual
as the prime concern in authority,
ultimately preaching that
the basis for community
is validation of the self.
Now, validation isn't
bad, it's actually good.
But capital is pushing a
coercive validation on us.
It comes in the form
of lies and half-truths
meant to flatter and placate us,
telling us we're lucky to be where we are,
or just a little grinding
away from where we want to be.
It could come in the form of
a right-wing pop psychologist
peddling social Darwinism
to young men who feel
like they need some structure.
Or it could be a fictional
dead CEO giving one lucky soul
everything they've ever
wanted if only they figure out
the puzzle of 1980's
breadcrumbs left across
an archive culture in a virtual world.
Whether or not that's the intent
isn't really what matters.
What matters is that this seems so normal.
Because it is normal, despite
what a hashtag may tell you.
Everything around you
didn't just happen randomly.
This isn't new.
So are you going to clean your room,
desperately searching for
your own little Easter egg
that will solve everything for you?
Or is it time for something more.
♪ Why are there so many ♪
♪ Songs about rainbows ♪
♪ And what's on the other side ♪
♪ Rainbows are visions ♪
♪ But only illusions ♪
♪ And rainbows have nothing to hide ♪
♪ So we've been told and
some choose to believe it ♪
♪ I know they're wrong, wait and see ♪
♪ Someday we'll find it ♪
♪ The rainbow connection ♪
♪ The lovers, the dreamers, and me ♪
♪ All of us under its spell ♪
♪ We know that it's probably magic ♪
♪ Someday we'll find it ♪
♪ The rainbow connection ♪
♪ The lovers, the dreamers, and me ♪
♪ La da da dee da da dum ♪
♪ Da da da da dum de da oh ♪
(funky music)
