(Part 3) Top products from r/enoughpetersonspam

Jonathan Swift has the most lasting influence. Not just for the Gulliver's Travels novel but his satires and political activism in general. A dramatist named John Gay had the most theatrical notoriety of the time. Gay had wild success with a satire of Handel's Rinaldo titled The Beggar's Opera. It was a satire that equated highway robbers with the nobility and was hugely popular both in England and in pre-revolutionary America. George Washington called it his favorite play; it was performed over 50 times in America and over 80 times during Gay's lifetime in England. There is a BBC performance of it on youtube and the text is on Gutenberg.

From a literary standpoint William Blake and Alexander Pope were probably the most relevant of the age in terms of original poetical talent. Blake was certainly the more politically revolutionary of the two in his personal beliefs, but the criticism in his poetry is subtle. There's a book length criticism of him from the 1950s that is still the canonical examination of the times from his perspective, titled Blake: Prophet Against Empire.

In addition to being a novelist, Henry Fielding founded London's first police force and was a magistrate. Most of his letters were assumed lost but batches were found in the early 1900s and 1970s, A memoir based on the early letters is on Gutenberg

If there is one figure that a large number of these surviving literary figures of the day were against, it was the first prime minister, Robert Walpole. Walpole was seen as corrupt in the press of the time, mostly because of his interest in the South Sea Company (a joint venture with Spain involving slaves and colonial goods from the Americas). Walpole invested in the company early in his life and cashed out before the value of shares in the company crashed, which happened while he was in office. It was England's first big financial scandal involving laypeople as investors, afaik. Pope and Gay in particular lost money in the same investments. Gay was bankrupted by the loss, and satirized Walpole constantly thereafter.

A LOT of what we know about these people is from Swift's letters to and from them, which were largely preserved, and Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets (available on Gutenberg). Swift was in constant correspondence with the others mentioned above over a period of decades, and we still have a lot of those letters today. Johnson is the first example of what we would call a literary critic today.

There's a relatively new collection, The Practice of Satire in England, 1658–1770 from 2013 that I have not read but seems to be well reviewed. Available here if you have university subscription access.

I don't think this era is as popular as others for many reasons. Most obviously in America, because it's overshadowed by our own revolution. In Europe it's overshadowed by the French revolution. Comparatively, England was relatively peaceful at the time. But peace and a monarch friendly to the arts and literature makes for an abundance of critics, too. It's fascinating to me that England went through the same issues as America and France without a large scale revolution, particularly considering how lax Charles II was in terms of censorship compared to his predecessors and how much social/political criticism was floating around in the presses.

I suppose I'd recommend he listen to Alan Watts talking about Jung, or an audiobook or something.

But if he refuses to read anything Jung wrote, then what's the use?

Memories, Dreams, Reflections is probably the most accessible volume Jung wrote (he dictated it to one of his best students, who edited it and compiled it). It's an autobiography of sorts, but it includes a lot of thoughtful summaries of his best and most weighty ideas. It's also more colorful and entertaining than his scholarly works.

After that, I'd go with On the Nature of the Psyche and The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious for an absolute minimum baseline understanding of Jung's core ideas. Some people recommend Man and His Symbols but that's really more of a collection of 'Jungian' essays, which is interesting if you already know his work because you can see how his students developed it/ simplified it in their own practices, but isn't the best place to get Jung's ideas directly (although the first essay is his, I think).

Sadly, if your friend has the kind of disposition implied by a refusal to read primary texts and a willingness to swallow JP's snake oil, even if he managed to get through one or all of these volumes it's unlikely he would ever have the subtlety and intellectual endurance needed to actually understand what Jung meant by 'archetypes,' let alone his overall approach to psychology.

Concerning Nietzsche versus Peterson: Nietzsche is an anti-realist about value [see Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality, 2nd Ed, section on metaethics, anti-realism about value, pages 119-121], whereas Peterson is a value realist who believes that “transcendent values genuinely exist; that they are in fact the most tangible realities of being.” This is a direct quote from Peterson's Patreon. In contrast, Leiter writes that "Nietzsche’s central argument for anti-realism about value is explanatory: moral facts don’t figure in the “best explanation” of experience, and so are not real constituents of the objective world. Moral values, in short, can be “explained away” [p 120, ibid].

So, uh, here's some fun supplementary reading for everybody.

>Internalized misogyny is very much a thing, unfortunately. It's very possible for a woman to conclude that if patriarchy is the only game in town, she's going to play to win.

Right-Wing Women, by Andrea Dworkin

>This is part of why we need to remember--and to reiterate to anyone else who doesn't get it--that what feminism stands against isn't men, it's patriarchy. Men are not universally evil, and women are not universally good. But a system that creates and reinforces inequalities between them definitely deserves destroying.

"Patriarchy, the System: An It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us" by Allan G. Johnson

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684824299/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_c2DtDbW5C5ZWA

Hello dear Lobster, before I answer some of your questions, I will link a thread from this subreddit that might answer your questions in greater details.

Cultural constants is a misleading term. There is a significant amount of research that shows some “constants” aren’t constants at all and they appear sometimes exclusively in Europe (I will add links after Edit). Jung’s theory of archetypes are not something you can prove and are unfalsifiable. Jung makes the same mistakes as Freud did when trying to be “scientific”. A good philosophical book about some of the fallacies of that sort, check out Karl Popper’s book- Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Now about hierarchy. Well it’s hard to prove that a specific organization of society is innate, especially hierarchies. Even the societies of same species of monkeys vary dramatically. Check out Robert Sapolsky’s popular book “Behave”. Humans differ from animals, because they can question wether some form of organization is just. Hierarchy is inevitable, since it arises due to labor division. Those who try to minimize the hierarchy, try to minimize the artificial hierarchy, based on domination. Like slavery and etc... Or perhaps some people like me try to minimize the authoritarian nature of a workplace. Get workers more involved and etc...

Dr. Peterson tends to use research so it suits him. For instance take his views on Gödel. Any mathematician or someone who is remotely in touch with Computation will tell you how wrong he is to attribute Gödel’s theorems to his [Peterson’s] ethical theories. Peterson commits this fallacy quite a lot. And some articles illustrate them very well.

Some links [Edit 1];

https://www.reddit.com/r/enoughpetersonspam/comments/bbjwnr/i_dont_like_peterson_but_was_he_right_about_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

[Edit 2]

People on this subreddit arguing against Peterson’s various claims.

[Edit 3]

lobsters and hierarchies

I am studying Biology. For scientists, especially those studying Neurophysiology the “Lobster argument” is ridiculous.

[Edit 4]

Check out Mark R.Gundry’s critique of Jungian archetypes here

Considering he is responsible for this little gem, I am not surprised this is the kind of nooks-and-crannies on the Internet where he shows his Backpfeifengesicht.

https://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed-Turning/dp/0691168385

This is probably the best, as in most accessible and most up-to-date book on the subject out right now. One of the exciting things about this collapse period is that archeology is still finding new evidence. For example: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-luwian-hieroglyphic-inscription-bronze-age.html This is new evidence about the composition of the Sea Peoples from late 2017! And not uncontroversial, since the idea that the Sea Peoples were a west Anatolian confederation is far from universally accepted. After all, these inscriptions speak of this confederation attacking to the east, but the destruction also came for the Mycenaeans to the west. In twenty years we may have an entirely different understanding of what happened.

Though what we know for certain is very striking, and that is that nearly every city on the Mediterranean from Greece to Sinai was destroyed within a few decades, wiping out several societies and crippling those that survived. I just can't imagine a more compelling historical mystery.

The most famous book on screenwriting is called Story by Robert McKee. He teaches workshops in Hollywood to aspiring screenwriters, and his whole thing is based in Campbell's analysis of The Hero's Journey.

https://www.amazon.com/More-Work-Mother-Household-Technology/dp/0465047327

Peterson is likely referring to the thesis of this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cosmic-Serpent-DNA-Origins-Knowledge/dp/075380851X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526825848&sr=8-1&keywords=the+cosmic+serpent

So, like, there is actual scholarship on the question of Jewish participation in slavery:

https://www.amazon.com/Jews-Slaves-Slave-Trade-Perspectives/dp/0814726380

Funny how these folks prefer weird approximations based on poorly sourced internet numbers.

Paglia's magnum opus is Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, a book hated by feminists as Paglia loves Freud and attempts to explain why men create art to sublimate their libido, and why the ancient Greeks fucked boys.

WHAT THE FUCK!?? Holy shit, that was NOT a hard question. This is unreal to me. Really shows the state of crisis capitalism is in now that public figures like JBP can get away with such blatant antisemitism.

Antisemitism is part and parcel of the capitalist system. It has organically grown to new heights within capitalist socioeconomic relations. I'd recommend The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation by Abram Leon for anyone who'd like to be armed with the truth as capitalists and their goons start turning more and more towards rampant antisemitism to shore up their failing system. Here is the general description of the book:

>Traces the historical rationalizations of anti-Semitism to the fact that, in the centuries preceding the domination of industrial capitalism, Jews emerged as a "people-class" of merchants, moneylenders, and traders. Leon explains why the propertied rulers incite renewed Jew-hatred in the epoch of capitalism's decline.

Since you're coming from Peterson, I reaally really really recommend this book by Terrance Real. Peterson and other anti Feminists like to falsely accuse feminism of being a movement that runs against men. This book helps describe how feminist theory has been helping men overcome mental illnesses. Without people like Terrance Real, we wouldn't have had the all the discussions about mental health. Peterson doesn't give great advice for mental illness, and the main reason is that is he tells men to double downs on the traits that people associate with masculinity that are actually the most harmful to those suffering with mental health issues.

https://www.amazon.ca/Dont-Want-Talk-About-Overcoming/dp/0684835398

Just curious, but how did you give them the test? Keep a close eye on those new age types. They are prone to syncretism. Jim Jones banked on that mysticism. Not saying your mom is that bad. My mom is into that stuff too. She likes Deepak Chopra. There's this really funny book I read by John Updike about cults called 'S'. https://www.amazon.com/S-Novel-John-Updike/dp/0449912124 When you talk about francophones and Quebec, I can't help but think of Megan Draper on Mad Men.

The problem is not with the field of evolutionary psychology but with bad eggs misunderstanding/misinterpreting legit studies, or cherry picking bad studies to justify/rationalise a political agenda. (Just how Darwins theories were also misinterpreted in the 1900's to promote Eugenics).

This book by Christopher Badcock is really good introduction to evolutionary psychology from a academic/critical perspective.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Evolutionary-Psychology-Introduction-Christopher-Badcock/dp/0745622062