Reddit reviews The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Penguin Press Science)

This article is a typical hit piece that uses several well known propaganda techniques to instill doubt into people. As someone who actually knew most of the things Peterson is talking about, from other sources, I can vouch for what Jordan Peterson says, the man is not a crank.

Here are some easily accessible materials that will cover many of his ideas:

Everything he says about the impact of biology on behavior:

>Robert Sapolsky's 2011 "Human Behavioral Biology" course from Stanford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D

Everything he says about the denial of human nature by ideologues:

>Steven Pinker, "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature": https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blank-Slate-Modern-Penguin-Science/dp/014027605X (Peterson actually mentions it at one point in his talks). (video of the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFey_0cbgeo)

Everything he says about the corruption of the left wing utopians:

>Paul Johnson, "Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky" https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Marx-Tolstoy-Sartre-Chomsky/dp/0061253170 (videos of the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW-Oc6HoqTE, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_6NsFvjm0o)

>Roger Scruton, "Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left": https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Frauds-Firebrands-Thinkers-Left/dp/1408187337 (video of the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLfRoO8HwN0)

Everything he says about the virtues of Western Civilization:

>Niall Ferguson, "Civilization: The West and the Rest" https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-West-Rest-Niall-Ferguson/dp/0143122061 (video of the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpnFeyMGUs8)

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (also try his other books, utterly fascinating, beautiful pieces of work)

Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Vital Lies, Simple Truths by Daniel Goleman

The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

Leadership and Self Deception by The Arbinger Institute

Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury

Influence by Robert Cialdini

I could go on but these would have to be my favourites that come to mind which relate to what you seem to be interested in. Let me know if you want more suggestions :)

I'm quite into reading politics related books so if you like I can recommend a couple that I'd buy myself :P

This book by Naomi Klein is FANTASTIC

I quite liked the look of this one as well

A really interesting book on Political Theory

If he doesn't like Chomsky, he doesn't like politics!

Can never have too much Chomsky!

Maybe a bit o' Lincoln too?

> What are we striving for if not to create utopia?

Who is this 'we' you speak of? I know noone in real-life who is striving for utopia, though some have been indoctrinated into certain aspects of it, such as radical feminism and radical environmentalism.

Utopia in practice as mentioned would be a totalitarian hellscape.

>It hinders us as a species. It leads to death, destruction and genocide.

This is a weak and narrow understanding of what prejudice is and what it achieves.

>Imagine what we could have achieved by now

Again, humanity is on an incredible ~5000 year trajectory.

>And the utopian would have to reject tribalism in all its forms.

You're correct that a certain kind of Utopian does, namely the socialisation absolutist ideologues who ignore nature. It does not and can not work.

If you're legitimately interested in this stuff can I suggest for starters having a read of Steven Pinker's very accessible The Blank Slate on nature/socialisation, and Theodore Dalrymple's slightly heavier In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas. The inherent insanity of utopianism will take wider exploration and experience for the penny to drop.

It completely is true.

His Patreon is held aloft by his YouTube, not his Twitter.

While Peterson may get recognition in the mainstream for his interactions with the SJWs, he rarely actually makes content about that. His Patreon specifically funds his lectures.

This is from his Patreon:

>I will produce two original lectures a week: one dealing with the psychological significance of Biblical stories; the other providing a more in-depth analysis of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn and Jung, with detours into the thinking of the other great philosophers and historians of the Western tradition. I will also implement a biweekly Q and A series, and set up interviews with the best scientist-lecturers and other thinkers of the current age. Finally, I want to start an online letter archive so that people can have access to the most interesting and meaningful of the thousands of letters I have received over the last months.

No mention of SJWs, at all.

But, how exactly is he dishonest when he does discuss SJWs?
Are you pretending that people aren't being physically assaulted on university campuses for holding opinions that lay outside the mainstream?
Did the Berkeley riots not happen?
Are Antifa not starting riots at every free-speech or right-wing event?

Please don't tell me you're doing the ''both sides are just as bad'' thing. If you are, I would like for you to give me some examples of right-wing Randian university professors braining people they disagree with with bike locks.

Don't get me wrong, assholes exist on both sides, but one side is clearly more vicious and authoritarian than the other.

Fact of the matter is, the right and the centre aren't starting riots at leftist speaking events, whereas the left is attempting to shut down everyone they disagree with.
And it isn't fringe elements, either.

When a mainstream news outlet like Vice runs an article where they ask an ethicist if it's ok to punch someone in the face if you disagree with them, it's clear we have a problem.
When MTV is advocating hipster racism, you can no longer claim that it's a fringe minority.
When the blank slate theory is so heavily propogated in mainstream academia that Steven Pinker needs to author an entire book deconstructing the theory and the openly socialist presidential candidate refuses to disavow his support for Fidel Castro, it is clear that marxism has poisoned public discourse.
And when people are coming out of university claiming that black people can't be racist and that birth defects prove human biological sex isn't binary, it's clear that postmodernism has corrupted university education.

It is not a fringe, it is not a minority. At this point, left wing politics as an edifice have become a diseased behemoth.

And it isn't just science, politics, and philosophy that have been infected. Modern comic-books have become this. Think that's a cherrypicked example? It isn't. Unfortunately, this is what comic-books are now. how about this space-dictator that's just a Donald Trump photoshop? Or a writer using a supervillain to conflate people who want border control with actual, literal Nazis? Even Iron Man has been killed off and replaced with a 15 year old black girl.

Comic-books are the canary in the coalmine. The worm is turning in all media.

Politics is downstream from culture. That's what makes the discussion of social justice so important.

You can claim that there are more pressing issues for the citizenry than discussing social justice, but there aren't. Art and culture are representative of a society's mental health, and leftist social policing and cultural indoctrination are a societal obsessive-compulsive disorder that cannot be left untreated.

You need to start with something less 'morally challenging'. I'd go with Steve Pinkers work, starting with 'the blank slate'.

The average wet liberal has been raised thinking that all human traits are down to environment. This book is an eye opener, but not so racially charged as to send them running.

Then start in on how brain size correlated to life outcome and IQ, and is mainly due to genes in the west. That social class and income have a large hereditary component.

The rest kind of red pills on its own by default.