Muppet debate, part 2
Apr. 19th, 2019 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyAPPLAUSE! The Muppets have arrived! Announcer announces that there is to be no recording or heckling.
Stephen Blackwood is the moderator, says some self-congratulatory shit, and then welcomes the Muppets.
Lobster in a suit, Oscar looking slovenly as always in a polo shirt and pants that don't reach his shoes.
Oh shut up Stephen, this is not "real thinking about hard questions" this is mud wrestling.
IDEOLOGY! *takes a shot*
Stephen just claimed that neither are primarily political thinkers. Broken clocks, etc.
"Surprising agreement on deep questions" yes they both have cryptofascist leanings.
"Let's hear it for psychoanalysis!" Audience cheers.
I am pretty sure no one has ever called Zizek "dazzling" in his life until now. Zizek facepalms, then yawns, then claps for himself.
Audience is overwhelmingly Peterson fanboys, judging by the cheers.
OH GOD PETERSON IS GOING TO TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY. He's doing a Thinker pose.
There is far too much San Pellegrino and not enough coke on this table.
EACH OF THEM GETS TO MAKE A 30 MIN OPENING STATEMENT oh god. Then each has 10 min to reply. Then there's 45 minutes of fanboys asking questions. It's going to be a loooong night.
Peterson's up. He opens by bragging that tickets for the event were being scalped at a higher price than tickets for the Leafs.
Peterson claims that Zizek wrote too much for him to read, so he read the Communist Manifesto instead and dissected it paragraph by paragraph. He claims it is full of errors and he's read student papers along the same lines.
Now he's trying to psychoanalyze Marx and Engels.
"Almost all ideas are wrong" and yet you manage 100% wrongness
You realize Jung is pretty much debunked, right?
Did you read any Marx that wasn't the Communist Manifesto, Jordan?
Did you read the Communist Manifesto?
OH GOD HE'S ABOUT TO DO A LISTICLE
He is going to question 10 truths from the Communist Manifesto.
1. History is an economic class struggle. But what about my feeeeeeelings? And hierarchy? And LOBSTERS!
He's already brought up lobsters.
Imagine thinking that your psychology degree is enough to debunk Marx and Engels.
Okay hierarchy is deeper than economics and society...it's as deep as LOBSTERS.
He seems nervous.
He fully does not understand historical materialism if he thinks that Marx was claiming hierarchy didn't happen until capitalism, also he clearly has not read the Manifesto if he's claiming that.
His voice is breaking. He claims that humans are at odds with nature. This is possibly the whitest thing I've ever heard. He seems like he's about to cry.
Humans have problems because they are lonely, not because of capitalism. What?
Just because you make hand gestures doesn't mean that you're making a point.
It's actually painful to watch someone be this stupid in front of a live audience.
He's claiming that you don't rise in a hierarchy by exploiting people because that wouldn't be stable. 2008 called, it wants its economic crisis back.
SMOOOOL BUSINESS!
Now he's just ranting about the poor kulaks.
Oh sure Jordan, binaries are bad when they're class struggle but are good for gender.
He's ascribing values of good and evil to Marx's views on class struggle and I'm trying not to shout at the screen. Then he totally lost the train and had to do the Thinker pose again.
Please do not try to talk about economics, Jordan. It's secondhand squick.
BLOODY VIOLENT REVOLUTION!
Zizek is making fun of his hand gestures.
People are corrupted by power now? I thought hierarchies were a good thing????
FOR THE LAST TIME JORDAN MARX WAS NOT CONCERNED WITH GOOD AND EVIL YOUR ENTIRE ARGUMENT ONLY WORKS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ MARX
Exploiting your workers is a bad idea because then you can't get maximum labour from them what?
If I were Zizek I would just get up and smack him with all volumes of Das Kapital.
He says "bloody" a lot for someone who isn't British, I guess because he thinks it makes him sound smart.
I worry about this guy trying to run a business. It's a good thing he has tenure and a successful Patreon.
Workers are too stupid to run an economy on their own.
He's shaking. Did he do some of Zizek's coke? He probably shouldn't have done that.
He's now talking about productivity across dimensions. I think you misunderstand "alienation," dude.
Enough resources and freedom and creativity will not create a utopia because some people find value in love and conflict. Wooooow that's really fascist.
Jordan claims that people would just fuck shit up if they were in a utopia.
Zizek facepalms again.
I don't think I have ever felt so much sympathy for Zizek in my life. He has to just sit there and listen to this.
Jordan do you know that there were no flatscreen TVs in 1848, right?
HUUUUUMAN NATURE
He claims that the Western capitalist countries do not have more inequality than other countries, and other countries are worse because they don't create wealth but still have inequality.
I have met stoned undergrads with a better grasp of economics than this guy.
Jordan has some very interesting ideas about what is happening to the extremely poor. I guess it's the flatscreen TVs.
FINALLY HE'S DONE.
Stephen Blackwood is the moderator, says some self-congratulatory shit, and then welcomes the Muppets.
Lobster in a suit, Oscar looking slovenly as always in a polo shirt and pants that don't reach his shoes.
Oh shut up Stephen, this is not "real thinking about hard questions" this is mud wrestling.
IDEOLOGY! *takes a shot*
Stephen just claimed that neither are primarily political thinkers. Broken clocks, etc.
"Surprising agreement on deep questions" yes they both have cryptofascist leanings.
"Let's hear it for psychoanalysis!" Audience cheers.
I am pretty sure no one has ever called Zizek "dazzling" in his life until now. Zizek facepalms, then yawns, then claps for himself.
Audience is overwhelmingly Peterson fanboys, judging by the cheers.
OH GOD PETERSON IS GOING TO TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY. He's doing a Thinker pose.
There is far too much San Pellegrino and not enough coke on this table.
EACH OF THEM GETS TO MAKE A 30 MIN OPENING STATEMENT oh god. Then each has 10 min to reply. Then there's 45 minutes of fanboys asking questions. It's going to be a loooong night.
Peterson's up. He opens by bragging that tickets for the event were being scalped at a higher price than tickets for the Leafs.
Peterson claims that Zizek wrote too much for him to read, so he read the Communist Manifesto instead and dissected it paragraph by paragraph. He claims it is full of errors and he's read student papers along the same lines.
Now he's trying to psychoanalyze Marx and Engels.
"Almost all ideas are wrong" and yet you manage 100% wrongness
You realize Jung is pretty much debunked, right?
Did you read any Marx that wasn't the Communist Manifesto, Jordan?
Did you read the Communist Manifesto?
OH GOD HE'S ABOUT TO DO A LISTICLE
He is going to question 10 truths from the Communist Manifesto.
1. History is an economic class struggle. But what about my feeeeeeelings? And hierarchy? And LOBSTERS!
He's already brought up lobsters.
Imagine thinking that your psychology degree is enough to debunk Marx and Engels.
Okay hierarchy is deeper than economics and society...it's as deep as LOBSTERS.
He seems nervous.
He fully does not understand historical materialism if he thinks that Marx was claiming hierarchy didn't happen until capitalism, also he clearly has not read the Manifesto if he's claiming that.
His voice is breaking. He claims that humans are at odds with nature. This is possibly the whitest thing I've ever heard. He seems like he's about to cry.
Humans have problems because they are lonely, not because of capitalism. What?
Just because you make hand gestures doesn't mean that you're making a point.
It's actually painful to watch someone be this stupid in front of a live audience.
He's claiming that you don't rise in a hierarchy by exploiting people because that wouldn't be stable. 2008 called, it wants its economic crisis back.
SMOOOOL BUSINESS!
Now he's just ranting about the poor kulaks.
Oh sure Jordan, binaries are bad when they're class struggle but are good for gender.
He's ascribing values of good and evil to Marx's views on class struggle and I'm trying not to shout at the screen. Then he totally lost the train and had to do the Thinker pose again.
Please do not try to talk about economics, Jordan. It's secondhand squick.
BLOODY VIOLENT REVOLUTION!
Zizek is making fun of his hand gestures.
People are corrupted by power now? I thought hierarchies were a good thing????
FOR THE LAST TIME JORDAN MARX WAS NOT CONCERNED WITH GOOD AND EVIL YOUR ENTIRE ARGUMENT ONLY WORKS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ MARX
Exploiting your workers is a bad idea because then you can't get maximum labour from them what?
If I were Zizek I would just get up and smack him with all volumes of Das Kapital.
He says "bloody" a lot for someone who isn't British, I guess because he thinks it makes him sound smart.
I worry about this guy trying to run a business. It's a good thing he has tenure and a successful Patreon.
Workers are too stupid to run an economy on their own.
He's shaking. Did he do some of Zizek's coke? He probably shouldn't have done that.
He's now talking about productivity across dimensions. I think you misunderstand "alienation," dude.
Enough resources and freedom and creativity will not create a utopia because some people find value in love and conflict. Wooooow that's really fascist.
Jordan claims that people would just fuck shit up if they were in a utopia.
Zizek facepalms again.
I don't think I have ever felt so much sympathy for Zizek in my life. He has to just sit there and listen to this.
Jordan do you know that there were no flatscreen TVs in 1848, right?
HUUUUUMAN NATURE
He claims that the Western capitalist countries do not have more inequality than other countries, and other countries are worse because they don't create wealth but still have inequality.
I have met stoned undergrads with a better grasp of economics than this guy.
Jordan has some very interesting ideas about what is happening to the extremely poor. I guess it's the flatscreen TVs.
FINALLY HE'S DONE.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 01:01 am (UTC)Also. I haven't read any of the Communist Manifesto since high school, and even then it wasn't like I read the entire thing or analysed it, and yet I could make more coherent arguments against it than he does. But if you want to argue against something it helps to live in reality, and that doesn't sound like a place that Peterson spends a lot of time. Like, class is a great and super useful lens to view the world and worker exploitation is in fact a thing, you need to argue about invisible hands and rational markets and go into Econ 101 and ahhh I refuse to believe he is the best defender that capitalism can find. Like, my Econ 101 prof was a mild-mannered man best known for his role in the sponsorship scandal and he could have done SO MUCH BETTER.
Not that the world needs any more Capitalism Vs Communism debates, there is literally nothing new to be said on either side and debates are the worst way to express ideas, I've learned more from open-ended questions on Dreamwidth than watching any number of debates, but if you're going to do it, don't be like this.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 02:50 am (UTC)I read the entire Communist Manifesto on the toilet when I was in high school Zizek should be proud of me. I read Das Kapital on the bus commuting to and from Scarborough, which I think is also kind of fitting.
There are a bunch of problems with this debate. One of the biggest is that Zizek's rhetorical style involves a lot of Eastern European humour and irony, and Peterson is quite humourless and simply does not get the jokes. That means he was totally unaware that he was being toyed with. The other big problem is that he doesn't know anything about economics. And while he claims to have dissected every paragraph of the Manifesto, the Manifesto is just that—a manifesto. A call to arms for regular working people. Marx's actual economic analysis is in the big books.
But it's embarrassing that Peterson could think he could read one book and presumably watch some YouTube and debunk all of Marxist theory. And it's embarrassing that Zizek—who I disagree with vehemently on a number of things, but at least has some intellectual heft—would lower himself to participating in this.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 03:23 pm (UTC)(Actually, psychological studies find it can buy happiness up to 75,000 USD/year, at which point further salary only provides increased contentment.)
no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 03:30 pm (UTC)This has actually been true in my experience, though it's offset by precarity.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 03:18 am (UTC)I guess he skipped everything about alienation.
He's skimmed The Communist Manifesto while Zizek has read motherfucking Hegel.
Thank you for doing this!!!
no subject
Date: 2019-04-20 04:33 am (UTC)