A friend recently sent me this link: The Importance of Being Ethical, with Jordan Peterson.I clicked and watched and was moved. What I saw and heard was a conversation on Uncommon Knowledge between Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution and Jordan Peterson, eminent Canadian psychologist and author now being persecuted by the Ontario College of Psychologists and threatened with being disbarred for his intellectual sayings and political commentary, unless he submits to a re-education process we associate with the Chinese Communist Party and its Soviet predecessor. The move by the Ontario College of Psychologists is, as the Yiddish saying goes, a scandal and a disgrace, but exemplary of the mindset of the West in its age of decline.
People change. They grow. They learn. Chance encounters lead to insights. Sometimes it's only a question someone asks you. Sometimes it's a name that keeps cropping up and you decide to check it out. And sometimes you get tired of running into a wall. But there is also a thread running from past to present and back. What set anarchism apart from the other socialist movements was freedom. Definitely romanticized, but still shining at its beating heart. I went to an anarchist conference in Venice once and remember a short Greek psychoanalyst quietly explaining in one of the sessions that he has spent years working with small groups and can attest that anarchism doesn't work. After I left the conference I wrote a text called L'anarchisme à Venise in which I wrote an account of the conference that confirmed this psychoanalyst's assertion. It appeared in a French literary magazine in Quebec called Liberté. It is one of my favourite pieces.
Thank you for this essay, Stephen, and for your vigorous defense of Jordan Peterson, which he rightly deserves. I just wonder what kind of repercussions you would endure if you were still in academia and publicly pledging your support for Peterson. Tenure is no longer the salve that once protected professors in their resolve to speak their minds, regardless of their (heterodox) views. Just look at what happened to Jonathan Katz at Princeton.
Back in 2003 when I was still in academia I wrote a piece in Le Devoir called Left-wing Fascism at UQAM and elsewhere (Le fascisme de gauche à l'UQAM et ailleurs) still available on the internet, I believe. For it I was raked over the coals for weeks in readers' reactions to my piece. Students whom I had taught denounced me along with colleagues. Other people, including the premier of Quebec at the time, M. Landry, phoned me to tell me they supported what I wrote and commended me for my courage. And though I explained how Israel fit into the left-wing denunciation of globalization and America, the Jewish community of Montreal did not issue any statement in my defence. Like Mr. Peterson, I eventually left the university, and left because colleagues started making life difficult for my doctoral students (who were among the brightest students in the program ) because they dared to use the theoretical framework of Niklas Luhmann in their research and penalized them for doing so. The word woke had not yet surfaced, but the tactics were already there. I am reminded of that by your comment and Mr. Peterson's evident upset at the indoctrination imposed on the present generation of students, one I fear that has now percolated down to the primary and secondary schools.
"Modern society has yet to acquire a self-observing ego, one that will adequately describe how it functions in fact rather than in the woolly-minded and obsolete ravings of nineteenth-century socialists now embraced even by the Vatican." Bingo. Fine essay.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/01/chatgpt-ai-language-human-computer-grammar-logic/672902/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
The Difference Between Speaking and Thinking
It’s amazing how prescient you were. I liken you to the Peterson of your day.
Didn’t you begin your career as an anarchist and leftist?
People change. They grow. They learn. Chance encounters lead to insights. Sometimes it's only a question someone asks you. Sometimes it's a name that keeps cropping up and you decide to check it out. And sometimes you get tired of running into a wall. But there is also a thread running from past to present and back. What set anarchism apart from the other socialist movements was freedom. Definitely romanticized, but still shining at its beating heart. I went to an anarchist conference in Venice once and remember a short Greek psychoanalyst quietly explaining in one of the sessions that he has spent years working with small groups and can attest that anarchism doesn't work. After I left the conference I wrote a text called L'anarchisme à Venise in which I wrote an account of the conference that confirmed this psychoanalyst's assertion. It appeared in a French literary magazine in Quebec called Liberté. It is one of my favourite pieces.
Thank you for this essay, Stephen, and for your vigorous defense of Jordan Peterson, which he rightly deserves. I just wonder what kind of repercussions you would endure if you were still in academia and publicly pledging your support for Peterson. Tenure is no longer the salve that once protected professors in their resolve to speak their minds, regardless of their (heterodox) views. Just look at what happened to Jonathan Katz at Princeton.
Back in 2003 when I was still in academia I wrote a piece in Le Devoir called Left-wing Fascism at UQAM and elsewhere (Le fascisme de gauche à l'UQAM et ailleurs) still available on the internet, I believe. For it I was raked over the coals for weeks in readers' reactions to my piece. Students whom I had taught denounced me along with colleagues. Other people, including the premier of Quebec at the time, M. Landry, phoned me to tell me they supported what I wrote and commended me for my courage. And though I explained how Israel fit into the left-wing denunciation of globalization and America, the Jewish community of Montreal did not issue any statement in my defence. Like Mr. Peterson, I eventually left the university, and left because colleagues started making life difficult for my doctoral students (who were among the brightest students in the program ) because they dared to use the theoretical framework of Niklas Luhmann in their research and penalized them for doing so. The word woke had not yet surfaced, but the tactics were already there. I am reminded of that by your comment and Mr. Peterson's evident upset at the indoctrination imposed on the present generation of students, one I fear that has now percolated down to the primary and secondary schools.
I remember what you went through.. You and Jordan are among my favorite thinkers.. always and inspiration for free , intelligent thinkers...
"Modern society has yet to acquire a self-observing ego, one that will adequately describe how it functions in fact rather than in the woolly-minded and obsolete ravings of nineteenth-century socialists now embraced even by the Vatican." Bingo. Fine essay.