Need a plate of generic, insipid platitudes with a giant helping of bad science and misogyny?

  • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I see a lot of people here talking about how unpersuasive his arguments are. So I think this misses the real issue at hand. Countless young men do find him persuasive. They feel abandoned by everyone else and there is this man who comes along and convinces them he knows “the way”. Talking about how “unconvincing” his arguments are won’t stop this from happening. If anything it will impower in-group type thinking. It’s much more important that we tackle these problems at their source: combat the emotional abandonment of young men

    • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      It’s a lot like how people wonder how others fall for scam calls and emails when they look and sound so obviously like bullshit, you’re not the target audience if you see through it.

    • AyyLMAO@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I largely worry about the lack of education that leads to people finding him persuasive. At least, that seems like a slightly simpler issue to resolve.

        • AyyLMAO@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          But you can certainly prevent emotional needs (and probably more relevant: pathological anxieties) that are born from misunderstandings of reality, which are quite common among Peterson’s audience.

          • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You’re trying to tackle the problem at the problem rather than prevent it all together. Peterson is a symptom not the real issue

            • AyyLMAO@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Maybe, but the way I see it, deprogramming from a toxic culture is attacking the problem at the source to prevent more symptoms from occurring.

              I do see other issues here, so education isn’t my only concern. However there is a lot of evidence that education based in critical thinking makes individuals more resilient to cult-style tactics and rhetoric. eta: Cultists’ emotions are often weaponized for the organization’s benefit so this does directly address the emotional needs issue imo.

              There are also systemic issues at play here, and many of those affect a much wider cross-section of the general population so they should be more easily addressed. And yet this population loves its identity politics while loathing inter-sectionality, meaning they are the very population standing in tribalist opposition to what their class allies are fighting for. This is another sign that education failed, and that better critical thinking would be an effective counter to influence by JBP and the rest of the IDW, as well as the right-wing hegemony that they support.

        • AyyLMAO@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Educated can mean many things, so that’s definitely true. It’s critical thinking skills that are being failed. As I mentioned in another coment, I’m pretty sure the research indicates lower completed education and other proxies are strongly related to low resistance to… this bullshit.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Countless young men do find him persuasive. They feel abandoned by everyone else and there is this man who comes along and convinces them he knows “the way”. Talking about how “unconvincing” his arguments are won’t stop this from happening.

      There really isn’t a way to stop this from happening, short of a complete shake up of American culture and government. The only reason young men gravitate towards JP is because he is telling them what they want to hear.

      For the first time in American society, young white men with degrees are no longer guaranteed the middle class life they have always been told they deserve. Instead of realizing that that has been the status quo for literally every other person in the country, and that the system is inherently corrupt…

      They are told that they should feel angry, they are told they need to fight to maintain the status quo and domination of power. Jordan Peterson isn’t combating the emotional abandoment of men, he’s stoking it. His only care is to maintain the social norms racial and sexual supremacy.

      Also… I don’t buy that young men have been emotionally abandoned, at least not moreso than any other time in history. Just compared to 30 years ago when I was a kid, men now a days have a plethora of ways to connecting to people, or seeking help.

      • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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        1 year ago

        This is a great take but to be fair there is a degree of infantilization that is occuring to the general populace of the United States that stems from the older generations not stepping away and also failing to either teach younger generations how to work outdated systems or build new ones to satisfy the changing world.

        A huge percentage has been emotionally abandoned and given over to the electronic babysitters for a while now, and with no ability to feel like an adult by progressing vertically in a career choice and or buy property or start a business and combined with social media making people scared of each other and/or unable to take differing opinions a lot of the (40 and younger by now) generations DO just feel like lonely abandoned children.