Gad Saad With Jordan Peterson

I took notes on a podcast interview of Jordan Peterson by Professor and Psychologist Gad Saad. The video is entitled, "My Chat with Psychologist Jordan Peterson. It was filmed on October 11, 2016, on (The Saad Truth-265) --1:12:11 minutes long. Gad asked Peterson to explain the controversy surrounding Bill C16. Jordan explained that his refusal to abide by its Canadian, mandated compelled speech was his protest against compelled speech. He is anti-political correctness, and he resented the mandatory Anti-Racist and Anti-Bias training forced upon HR staff at the University of Toronto. He denounces the bill's poor scientific basis, its radical ideology and the authoritarianism driving it. Jordan made two videos about C-16. He felt that its backers had zero understanding of the biological roots of personal and gender identity. My response: I approve of his defiance of a free speech-suppression bill. Gad noted inconsistency in gay thinking: heterosexuality is not considered determined or innate, but homosexual inclination is considered biologically determined, not a social construct or choice. Humans are a sexually reproducing species so heterosexual attraction to members of the opposite is what is to be expected as natural for heterosexuals, and this drive is innate. My response: Gad is correct. There are environmentally influencing factors, but biological gender and gender identity are powerful, natural, in-built inclinations. Jordan offered that Leftists deride him for hurting the Progressive cause with his opposition to Bill C-16. Right-wingers try to suggest that he is one of them and he denies them too. Jordan informs the viewer as to what is wrong with Bill C-16. He recognizes a central monsters and peripheral monsters that, though less dangerous, are growing out of and making more authoritiarian, C16. Jordan insisted that there are actually two central monsters, come to life, by passing this bill 1. The politically correct game: this biased algorithm uses political correctness to organize the world and bolster their well-being. 2. Philosophical and legislative free speech is not absolute. The right and obligation to conduct discourse to solve and address serious problems must be operational. Society is made up of people that are different from each other, but we still have to live together and work together peacefully, and, discourse, when free, helps us solve our problems without fighting. (Ed adds that moderation and democracy are only possible where freely spoken and heard, where differing views are exchanged without violence, intolerance or crushing dissent from majority opinion.) First, we clarify the problem by making a coherent, clear problem statement and then we get negotiated solutions. We have discourse, so we do not end up with conflict. My response: The monsters of tyranny and barbarism, the Progressive assumptions behind C-16 are the ideology of political correctness used to attack all, control all and end all free thinking and exchange of ideas. The other monster, well identified by Jordan, is the barbaric power grab to crush all free speech and impose Leftist tyranny, disguised as supporting transgender justice. With the Left all self-congratulatory proclamations of seeing justice for victims is a ruse to disguise another power grab by them. Gad: Free speech is also the power used and needed by idiots, to offend. Other than the direct threat through speech to use violence on someone, a free society requires unrestricted free speech. Jordan: People need free speech to be able to grow good ideas out of bad ideas via dialogue. Hate speech laws in Canada were the beginning of suppressing free speech, and now we have C-16. Gad: Hate laws were passed to protect certain ideologies from scrutiny and criticism. Jordan: It is more dangerous to suppress hate speech than allowing it to be spoken. Repressing it allows it to be validated, and hate speech not scrutinized, cannot not be publicly debated and critiqued. My response: Both men are correct. Jordan: Bill C16 is but tyrannically compelled speech. Transgenderism and the use of pronouns are just a pretext by government to limit free speech. Under C16 the bureaucrats get to tell people what they have to say. Citizens will be legally forced to address someone with their preferred identity. The claim that a man is born in a woman's body is a biologically deterministic argument. Her self-identifying as a man, the activists insist, is not socially affected. Jordan denies that they can argue that, on one hand, that the mismatch of male identity in a woman's body is a mismatch caused biologically, but that all other gender issues are where each youngster is a blank slate, only a boy or girl, as cultural forces and free will choice so select. (Ed: this is a hopeless and muddled contradiction.) Gender identity and sexual preference are regarded as fluid, and yet Leftists insist that gays are biologically determined so that conversion therapy is outrageous. This all is a logical and scientific mess and Leftists are unworried about the logical, internal inconsistencies in the assumptions used to justify C16. My response: Jordan the scientist and logician has called out Leftist hypocrisy and contradictory thinking.' Jordan: Political correctness is growing in the universities and none watched it take over. Now between 300,000 and 3 million social justice warriors have been turned loose on society. These trained activists are social revolutionaries out to down the male patriarchy. My response: his warning about wokeness leaving the university and seeping out in society, announced in 2016, now in 2021 is mainstream in the Biden administration as all of society and its institutions are under attack from the unchecked, Marxist mass movement. Jordan: The motivations of radical Leftists are more important to them to pursue their stabilizing ideology rather than to solve the problems that they are hypothetically concerned about. Their championed victims are not really their concern. These useful idiots are but pawns, useful for now to gain power, and then they will be cast aside, when no longer useful idiots, sacrificed to advance the cause. My response: Jordan has their number: Leftists are grim, ungrateful, hating, hateful radicals and nihilists. They seek but power to destroy and end Western freedom and its individuals. These wicked ideologues serve the advancement of their mass movement very well. Jordan: He defines the first monster: Politically correct activity attacks all structures and organizations. The successful in that organization are called oppressors and those less successful are called oppressed, and the social justice warriors identify with putative victims while claiming moral superiority. Leftists refuse to quit playing games. (Ed says: They are not for justice--that is but their means to their end, accumulating all power to themselves.) There are two reasons for the political correctness game: 1. If activists have a comprehensive explanation for everything, it decreases uncertainty, and anxiety and reduces your cognitive load. (Ed says: It sounds like the psychosocially orientation of a true believer.) 2. If you can use this simplifying algorithm (Ed says: this sounds like the totalistic ideology or cause, advocated by followers of a mass movement.) to put oneself on the side if moral virtue, then you are constantly a good person with a minimum effort. (Ed says: Fanatics as activists are mean, evil people, but they attack the world and others under the guise of moral superiority. They need receive no blame, no criticism, nor need to apologize, self-reflect or do better. When one is perfect, has all the answers and is totally good, then one is perfectly justified in doing absolutely the most horrible things to one's enemies that are irredeemably wicked, stupid, recalcitrant and inferior. One is perfect, so no self-growth is required. Jordan: This politically correct game is dangerous, and it is the ideology behind C16 and it will lead to the rise of the radical right. My response: Jordan has captured the essence of the enemies of the West and its individuals. Jordan: The Left is radicalizing free speech and that will trigger the rise of the Alt-Right. If the public discourse returns to civility, where free speech is left alone, where we discuss things nonviolently and compromise. Gad: This victim ethos underlying the rise of the social justice warrior can be what Gad has theorized and labeled Collective Munchausen Syndrome. Munchhausen Syndrome occurs when a mentally ill person fakes illness to gain attention, sympathy, and control through their victim status. He accuses these Progressives as seeking empathy by feigning some illness, building status as more of an oppressed victim than someone else. This sick game of one-upmanship victimology is rampant among radical Leftists and is sickening all of society. Jordan: People get unearned empathy or display empathy for those that do not deserve it or want it. People as individuals are successful and do not claims much victim status but claims much more to have been victimized as part of their group identity belongings. My response: this whole politically correct game of winners and losers, and the oppressors and the victims, ties all into collective categories where none can claim individual responsibility for one’s success or failure or rank in society. All are determined and there is no free will. As a Mavellonialists, I urge that one self-realize to the level of a living angel, and any talk of victimizing or being victimized is revealed as empathy and irrelevant. The great souled life of the individuator is the way forward. Jordan: his graduate students did some work on political correctness and two traits were uncovered: 1. Radical egalitarianism (Ed asks: Marxism?). 2. Left-wing authoritarianism, a trait showed up with a desire for language control for all members of the public as a type of Left-wing obsession with orderliness. My response: Note that radical Marxism and Left-wing authoritarianism were outcomes desired by politically correct activists, and speech control was an ambition of theirs--real, littlie totalitarian goons, are they not? Jordan: The obsession with language control revealed a powerful link between the tendency to control language negatively associated with verbal cognitive ability. My response: I am not sure what Jordan is getting at here, but it seems like language control freaks are of limited intelligence, cognitive verbal ability or are just close-minded. My take would be that people are about of equal cognitive verbal ability from birth, but collectivist irrational thinking could make people rigid, slow thinking and unwilling to tolerate free speech and actually diversity of opinion in their community. Jordan: Political correctness is not liberalism but Leftist radicalism. Gad: Males participating in these social justice warrior cliques might be after the chicks, like the sneaky fucker syndrome. Jordan: One wonders why C16 struck such a chord with the public. It shows that there is a complex, unidentified and unresolved, under the surface, a mass of highly emotional, undigested, unarticulated experience demanding expression so it can sort its self out. It indicates that Leftists are upsetting huge chunks of the population, seeking through legislation to reshape our culture. This complex of feelings need to be transformed into a rational argument. My response: Jordan applies such striking technical language. Let me put it in plain English: Progressives in Canada struck a nerve with C16. They are revolutionaries transforming Western democracy into a Marxist tyranny. They are compelling speech over gender identity issues in the name of ending discrimination, which is rare, once again, under the guise of social justice, grabbing power. They also are moving from a binary gender scheme, archetypal in Western religion and culture, and moving towards a transgender society of 50 genders. The culture is binary and should stay binary. Let people work out their gender identity needs beyond that, but there is no need to overthrow the culture or the freedom enjoyed by the binary majority to protect transgenders that don't need protecting, special protecting, from that non-discriminatory binary, vast majority. Gad: One needs to assert the truth and take a stand. My response: Jordan has done that. Jordan agreeing: You are not to underestimate the power of your own speech. Speak truthfully--even if it is not 100% correct--you are trying earnestly to get it right and are willing to recalibrate your views to get it right. You are genuinely trying to articulate the truth. The Axiom of Western Civilization: Noting is more powerful than spoken truth. My response: For the defense of this true axiom, Jordan fought C16. Free speech is rarely to be compelled, period. Jordan: You should read Maps of Meaning to understand the role of belief systems in regulating peoples' emotions and checked religious ideas. Our most fundamental ideas we have are religious, and an idea if religious because it is fundamental. My response: If our most fundamental ideas are religious, it is easy to see how collectivized humans, seeking to escape from freedom and truth in their own wretched lives, stampede enmasse into the arms of a demagogue and his abstraction turned ideology. Hoffer, Peterson and Stirner all worried about duped egoists serving an ism. In such a mass movement there is not free speech, no individuality, not spoken truth, no liberty, no search for and reaching a sense of metaphysical meaning. Jordan: In Christianity Logos is the ultimate ideal. Christ is Logos. Christ is the ideal man in the West The ideal of the ideal man exists, so we try to live up to that ideal, the central ideal is Logos or truth speech, which is the word of God. Logos existed at and before the beginning of time and it was the word of God and extracted order out of chaos. Carefully articulated, truthful speech transforms chaos into habitable order. The highest calling in Western civilization is for every individual to utter articulated truth in a manner that keeps order and balance properly between chaos/unexplored territory and order/explored territory. These two are our fundamental domains. The balanced individual not bored or stultified from too much order, or terrified or paralyzed by too much chaos. You are to be in the middle. Then your being is imbued by an intrinsic sense meaning. Meaning is the biological instinct that tells you are on the line between order and chaos. You update knowledge and order through articulated speech. Life is suffering with malice, hate and resentment factored in, but, still be positive. Meaning counterattacks suffering. So not being over suffering. Forthright articulation of truth makes suffering worth it and seek meaning not safety. My response: I agree with everything he espouses here.