The Life Of the Hive Mind
News from the world of publishing:
“I feel it was deliberately hidden and dropped on us once it was too late to change course,” said the junior employee who is a member of the LGBTQ community. The employee said workers would have otherwise considered a walkout.
A walkout. One wonders what might cause such an outpouring of agitation and distress. Was it the looming publication of How to Punch Small Black Children and Get Away With It…?
“He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,” a junior employee who is a member of the LGBTQ community… told VICE World News. Another employee… talked about how publishing the book will negatively affect their non-binary friend.
Not imaginary, non-binary.
It turns out that the hooting and chest-puffing is being caused by – or rather, is given a longed-for excuse by – the forthcoming publication of a book by Dr Jordan Peterson, a sequel to his bestseller 12 Rules for Life.
people were crying
According to the weeping employees at Penguin Random House Canada, Dr Peterson is not only “an icon of hate speech and transphobia,” and “an icon of white supremacy,” but also “denies the existence” of “people in the LGBTQ+ community.” Like many others, this baffling claim is not expanded upon and no evidence is forthcoming. However, the implication seems to be that if you choose not to pretend certain things and would rather not lie in public, or be coerced to lie in public, this somehow constitutes a denial of the existence of “people in the LGBTQ+ community.”
“The company since June has been doing all these anti-racist and allyship things and them publishing Peterson’s book completely goes against this. It just makes all of their previous efforts seem completely performative,” the employee added.
Almost brushed against realism there, matey. Careful now.
Dr Peterson – or more specifically, the hyperventilation of his critics – has of course been mentioned here before. And while the doctor is by no means an uninteresting chap, the reactions to him are often more interesting, and quite revealing.
regardless of the content of his book,
Our betters.
They cried. Apparently. Why did no one video this, so we could all point and laugh?
And so other publishers could be warned not to hire them when they quit and look for other jobs. That will happen. Won’t it?
Our betters.
And likewise, if you talk repeatedly and at length about the evils of racism and racial essentialism, you’ll still be denounced as “an icon of white supremacy” by self-satisfied idiots.
It’s also worth noting in stories of this kind just how often “junior employees” think they should be making high-cost editorial decisions.
“I feel it was deliberately hidden and dropped on us once it was too late to change course,” said the junior employee
You mean to tell me that a recent graduate hire wasn’t involved in senior management decision-making about which authors to include on their publishing list?
How could that have possibly happened in a major international publishing company with an annual revenue in billions of dollars and with around 10,000 employees worldwide?
It sounds like some kind of report needs to be conducted to ensure such oversights never happen again.
“I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,”
An obvious solution to the dilemma presents itself.
Ironically, this is from a generation obsessed to the point of hysteria with other people’s alleged sense of entitlement and privilege.
Ironically, this is from a generation obsessed to the point of hysteria with other people’s alleged sense of entitlement and privilege.
Like snow falls, and kettles boil, lefties project.
“[A]nd dozens more filed anonymous complaints.”
As such, they “non-existed” themselves.
Benjamin Boyce has more here.
“We publish a lot of people in the LGBTQ+ community and what is the company going to do about making sure these authors are still feeling supported by a company that is supporting somebody who denies their existence,” the employee said.
Denies their existence?
Hold on a minute. Isn’t Prof Peterson chums with Douglas Murray, the well known homosexualist author? Does Douglas know that Jordan doesn’t really believe in him? I’m sure he’d find it terribly hurtful to find out.
I invite you also to marvel at the dishonesty in the article’s scene-setting.
This mischaracterization cannot be an honest mistake. At a certain point, when the same ‘error’ continues to be made despite being so often corrected, the benefit of the doubt must be withdrawn.
This is what a lead deficency sounds like.
Denies their existence?
I think what they’re getting at, badly, is that Peterson is reluctant to refer to, say, trans women as “women,” as if no distinction could possibly be made. In a number of interviews, including several with trans people, among whom he has admirers, he’s explained that he’s willing to grant an additional category and refer to them as trans women, but not happy to imply that they are entirely interchangeable with actual women. Because that would be a lie.
My memory of his transgression vis-a-vis pronouns was that he would of course do the polite thing and refer to people as they preferred, unless he was ORDERED to do so, in which case he refused and would simply call all of them wankers.
people were crying
Ah yes, the well-practiced “helpless victim” act, immediately proceeding the moment they lunge for your throat.
performative
This word triggers me. I loathe anyone who uses it. It’s just so…pretentious.
Denies their existence?
As has been said before, “trans women” have no difficulties in denying the existence of actual women, a late entry into this category, “birthing bodies” (viewer discretion advised).
It’s just so…pretentious.
It’s a perfectly cromulent word. It nicely describes behaviour that’s only engaged in for the sake of engaging in it rather than for any functional purpose. TSA restrictions, mask-wearing, “this event takes place on stolen land”, “allyship”, etc.
The fact that use of the word “performative” is itself often performative is simply delicious irony.
This mischaracterization cannot be an honest mistake.
As so often with these things, it’s sly and slippery all the way down. And so, rather than specifying anything that Peterson has actually said or written that might conceivably warrant outrage, the creepy, weeping howler monkeys instead refer to him as “an icon of” ALL THE BAD THINGS. Thereby implying that, regardless of what he actually says and “regardless of the content of his book,” he is nonetheless somehow responsible for the UNSPECIFIED BAD THINGS that other people may have said, at some point, possibly.
He is an icon . . . . and the fact that he’s an icon . . . .
So, according to their own descriptions, that would make him iconic, and therefore they’re supposed to be frantically claiming to everyone else that they have been his greatest supporters before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon . . . .
Mebbe someone should suggest that the book is clearly curated, to provide even more attraction—I’m sure they could also even state that Peterson and the book are even upscale . . .
Amusing how so many here think that logic and reason are somehow related to the game being played. It’s ALL ABOUT THE SHOUTING. And the one-sided criticism. Anyone, anyone can have their life and/or lifework picked apart somehow. If the media only reports on criticism of one side and ignores criticizing and instead is praising the other side, who wins? This is why we fail time and time again.
The news media MUST be discredited IN THE EYES OF THE VOTERS. No amount of “pointing and laughing” from our side will make a dent. A massive information campaign that puts things in the context of what the LIV (or even the elements of the left that have been turned on by cancel culture) understands is what is needed.
the creepy, weeping howler monkeys
Band name.
Band name.
Heh. But I do think they are – creepy, I mean. They’re acting as if they have quite serious mental health issues, and are indulging in bullying hysteria, which they seem to imagine makes them, and the “community” they claim to represent, somehow sympathetic and deserving of deference.
But it doesn’t. It’s just obnoxious and weird.
people were crying
Wait, I thought white tears was a form of white supremacy?
It’s just obnoxious and weird.
To you, me, and probably everyone here. But to the average person who just seems to stumble through life based on personality and connections and such, while they may find such howler monkeys themselves to be obnoxious and weird, if said average person has never heard of Jordan Peterson (which is very, very likely) the next time they hear about the guy, their thoughts are more likely to start out on a negative footing. Consciously or not. Think of real howler monkeys in the wild. You hear them hooting and hollering…quite the thing, even in a zoo…but in the wild with innumerate unknowns do you think to yourself, “Gee they must have found a cache of food and are happy. Good for them”? Or do you think, “Damn…wonder if there’s a predator out there somewhere?”? It’s basic, evolutionary, hard-wired, brain-stem instinct to assume the worst until you understand the threat (though you can never disprove a negative) or you get distracted by other things and forget, consciously, that the event ever happened. Yet it still lingers unconsciously for a while.
It’s always that first thought about a previously unknown that is much harder to dislodge. Which is why the left seized the education system. For the last thirty years or more, I curse those on the right who let this happen.
Rightly or wrongly, there are very few such howler monkeys on the right. And the few that exist, in addition to being (mostly) obnoxious and weird, the media plays up to being existential threats to anyone who isn’t one of them. Thus, plus one left, minus one right. Just in this one category.
They’re acting as if they have quite serious mental health issues
As if?
It’s amusing who the left chooses as lightning rods, and by extension who the right (and the 2-3 remaining honest liberals) must defend on principle. JP’s saga – though filled with teachable moments on the ever creeping authoritarianism – should have utterly destroyed his credibility as a life coach or whatever. Like buying a diet book from a bulimic. But the left’s white hot rage will keep his prominence high and cede to him the moral high ground.
I’ve heard people claim that such phenomenon is purposeful in order to properly gatekeep dissident opinions and ensure the overton window remains firmly on the left, but I am doubtful. I think these people just hate those with whom they disagree, and they simply don’t consume actual rightwing media, so often target JP and Ben Shapiro types instead.
Peterson’s daughter Mikhaila has some excellent advice for the book’s publishers:
he refused to use gender neutral pronouns
That is not true. 50/50 whether the Vice hack merely copy & pasted from a site which has lied about Peterson or is well aware of the truth and chooses to lie instead.
Was it the looming publication of How to Punch Small Black Children and Get Away With It…?
Actual LOL
Actual LOL
Well, we do seem to have veered into a kind of farcical surrealism. Peterson’s gift to the world may not so much be his actual writing, which I find less interesting than his more combative interviews, but the fact that he reveals just how deranged and dishonest, and often transparently envious, so many of his critics are.
Penguin to be renamed Pengwhine
Following the US election get ready for this to become legally enforceable.
https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/1331369123004116992
“denies the existence” of “people in the LGBTQ+ community.”
Au contraire. We’re well aware that perversion exists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uJSAqrvtX0&feature=emb_logo
As we all know, ze ‘Equitable’ is the cornerstone of the Nature, just ask those gazelles from National Geographic documentary, one where they are off to the nearby lake for a sip of water.
One that often semi-dementedly asks for a link to that free psychological assessment
[ Writes down “known troublemaker.” ]
I don’t have enough time to read all the books the Streisand effect is causing me to buy.
And I’m retired.
(WITD: full points.)
Once the
BidenHarris regime is installed and weaponized imagine all the new mental disorders we will be required to worship at the risk of our employment.If the “dozens” of complaints were anonymous, how do we know there were dozens of complainants?
…Much like US election ballots lacking a signature…
Both a lecture and a drinking game for the holiday.
Both a lecture and a drinking game for the holiday.
A fun game might be deciding what unit to use to quantify your contempt for the people sitting there allowing themselves to be harangued.
Both a lecture and a drinking game for the holiday.
OMG, that looks exactly like my sister-in-law.
Oh, and we don’t give her access to the wifi and she’s not saavy enough to be able to stream from any of her devices to the TV.
Would it make them feel any better to know that I, on the far right, am no fan of Peterson? I own 12 Rules for Life and my opinion of it can best be summed up as “What is good about it isn’t original, and what is original about it is not good.”
Would it make them feel any better to know that I, on the far right, am no fan of Peterson?
Pleasing your enemies does not turn them into friends. See here.
my opinion of it can best be summed up as “What is good about it isn’t original, and what is original about it is not good.”
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Peterson’s work is nothing more than the same old folk wisdom that used to be handed down generation after generation, father to son, mother to daughter. But in #CurrentYear, he’s the only one saying it and the only one refusing to back down from the mob when they try to suppress him for saying it.
Both a lecture and a drinking game for the holiday.
From the replies:
Gets to the nub of things, really.
But in #CurrentYear, he’s the only one saying it and the only one refusing to back down from the mob when they try to suppress him for saying it.
As others have pointed out, it isn’t about novelty or sexy innovation, or pretensions of such. Peterson has said as much on more than one occasion. Often, my own impression is of an obviousness, not least in his objections to prevailing mental fashions, and a wariness of rushing to unearned conclusions. And yet, as we saw during the now-legendary exchange with Channel 4’s Cathy Newman, this fairly obvious information is somehow alien and scandalous to Ms Newman and her peers. To the extent that she appeared unable to process even the most simple argument, the most basic caution, however carefully expressed.
Or if not unable, then determined not to.
But in #CurrentYear,
As Uri Harris wrote in Quillette, following the broadcast:
Ms Newman went on to dismiss Peterson as a controversialist and therefore disreputable, after repeatedly trying to frame his position as merely that of a provocateur. This was a little odd, given just how much of the interview consisted of Peterson explaining the basics of coherent thought and the need for precision, in the vain hope that Ms Newman might take some of it to heart. And conversely, how much of the interview was taken up by Ms Newman begging questions, leaping to perverse conclusions, and generally being erratic and bizarre. And in the process, inadvertently demonstrating how her fashionable politics, shared by so many of her peers, requires a great deal of dishonesty and contortion.
https://babylonbee.com/news/staffers-crying-over-jordan-peterson-book-cured-by-forcing-them-to-read-jordan-peterson-book/?utm_content=buffer9fd05&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
The bee nails it as usual.
And yet, as we saw during the now-legendary exchange with Channel 4’s Cathy Newman, this fairly obvious information is somehow alien and scandalous to Ms Newman and her peers. To the extent that she appeared unable to process even the most simple argument, the most basic caution, however carefully expressed.
So you’re saying … she’s a dolt?
No argument here.
No argument here.
As I said at the time, I don’t think she’s a dolt. You don’t get a first from Oxford, even in English literature, unless you’ve an IQ comfortably above average. I think it’s more that her political assumptions – and the psychology to which they appeal – have made her both dogmatic and foolish. In order to be seen as ‘progressive’ – in order to fit in and be approved of – certain lines of thought must be carefully avoided. It requires a kind of imperviousness. I think that’s what we’re seeing in the video.
You don’t get a first from Oxford, even in English literature, unless you’ve an IQ comfortably above average.
Er – David, would you mind removing the ‘even’ from that sentence?
Requesting for a friend…
That’s rather a lot of words to say “a bunch of whingeing poofs who hang out with a bunch of trannies had a hissy-fit about nothing.”
You don’t get a first from Oxford, even in English literature, unless you’ve an IQ comfortably above average.
Or you can memorize real good? I still don’t buy into the IQ thing. IQ in the sense that one can figure out how to solve problems, yes. But, and again my perception is likely a Yank cultural perception, a lot of very dumb figure-things-out-for-yourself deficient beings seem to excel at climbing the academic, government, and corporate bureaucratic ladders so long as they can regurgitate what they have been told to regurgitate. My limited exposure to this woman, admittedly limited I believe entirely to watching this interview a while back, is she fits the mold of every muddle headed clown I’ve ever had the displeasure to work for.
Sorry if I’m redundant on this point but just a couple days ago got into an argument with about the biggest idiot I ever had to work for. Still denser than a black hole and half as brilliant. The discussion went similar to her interview with JP. I was getting flashback just now thinking about it. Doesn’t help a bit that I lack JP’s patience.
“a bunch of whingeing poofs who hang out with a bunch of trannies had a hissy-fit about nothing.”
Oh, I don’t know about nothing. $20 says by the end of the year, Penguin caves to them. Any takers?
$20 says by the end of the year, Penguin caves to them. Any takers?
When employees of a famous publisher use childish emotional blackmail – in their own words crying – in order to disrupt the publication of a book that they haven’t actually read, by an author about whom they appear to know bugger all – and when such behaviour is tolerated and doesn’t result in reprimands or sudden unemployment – then the term Clown World is in order.
explaining the basics of coherent thought and the need for precision, in the vain hope that Ms Newman might take some of it to heart.
On some of the gaming forums I frequent, “so what you’re saying is, I’m a lobster” briefly became the standard response to anyone egregiously misrepresenting one’s statements in an attempt to refute them.
I still don’t buy into the IQ thing
IQ is very much correlated with positive life outcomes up to a point; borderline autists score very highly on IQ tests but their difficulty interacting with people limits their success.
My own obviously anecdotal experience has been that a sure predictor of success is the extent to which someone recognizes that what people do is a better gauge of their motivations, character, reliability, etc. than what people say.
This explains the career success of people like Newman better than the Oxford/high-IQ model; Newman et al. have figured out that what organizations like Oxford, the BBC, etc. say they want and reward is very different from what they do want and reward, and so such people are acting accordingly.
As I said at the time, I don’t think she’s a dolt.
Then she’s a liar. This seems more likely.
In any case a creature eminently worth mocking the subsequently ignoring.
This explains the career success of people like Newman better than the Oxford/high-IQ model; Newman et al. have figured out that what organizations like Oxford, the BBC, etc. say they want and reward is very different from what they do want and reward, and so such people are acting accordingly.
Nah. Still not buying it. A person of sufficient IQ would never make the stupid “lobster” comment. A person who excels at memorizing things and especially one who excels at schmoozing and being with the in-crowd, whomever and whatever that may be, I definitely can see making such a comment. A high IQ person would have come up with something having much more appeal to the intellect than such childish, simplistic mockery.
a late entry into this category, “birthing bodies” (viewer discretion advised).
Christ on a pogo stick, Muldoon! That’s not enough of a warning.
Nah. Still not buying it.
We’re not actually disagreeing.
Capisco.
Then she’s a liar. This seems more likely.
She’s a play-actor, a pretender. Thus she play-acts and pretends. In this she has adapted well to her chosen environment.
Newman et al. have figured out that what organizations like Oxford, the BBC, etc. say they want and reward is very different from what they do want and reward, and so such people are acting accordingly.
This is how leftism often works. When someone is trying to cultivate the kinds of opinions and attitudes that confer in-group status and which are recognised by their peers as markers of sophistication and belonging, they’re not overly concerned with whether or not those opinions and attitudes are coherent, or realistic, or will bear much scrutiny. The social dynamic trumps any pretence of an intellectual one. I’ve seen this happen first-hand many times. I remember doing it myself. It’s not usually a matter of testing assumptions or looking up facts. It’s more like wearing a fashionable coat.
And the less load-bearing a person’s opinions and attitudes are, especially when those attitudes determine social status, the less likely that person is to appreciate any poking and disassembly. And so, reactions often have an air of bewilderment and annoyance: “Why are doing this to me? Why aren’t you pretending?”