"where he compared himself to Ayn Rand"
He said: My critics... "think about my philosophy, such as it is, not that it's mine, as a sort of a variant of Ayn Rand's ideas of the centrality of the individual. Individual above all. That's not the issue. It's a conceptual issue... is that... what category is to be primary. And for me the individual is to be primary. And there's a variety of reasons for that. First of all, the individual is the locus of suffering. And also the locus of responsibility. So, those are really the two reasons... that the individual has to be made primary. "
It goes on. I don't see that he's wrong about any of what he says. He's not comparing his ideas to Rand's directly, certainly not comparing himself to Rand, rather than noting differences that his critics fail in differentiating when lumping his ideas with hers... a mind-boggling indictment of his critics ignorance... made necessary in-spite of them being very obviously different.
He agrees with Rand that the individual has to be made primary. They disagree in what that should mean, and what it should have us expect, if not require, of free individuals in terms of social responsibility. Rand would win that argument... if the point was "require". And Peterson would let her win it. All of which would be an argument conducted outside the understanding of Peterson's critics.
He's exactly right when he gets to the discussion of free speech, regarding how its modern opponents in the west don't even understand it well enough to debate it with you... essentially as they're NPC's who lack any awareness of their own agency...
Had that exact experience in discussions re free speech with mindless bots here on SI this week... I would extend Petersons discussion of it beyond an issue relevant in discussing free speech in isolation... to note it as the left are incapable of discussing freedom... because they lack any foundational basis for understanding it... so they don't even understand the language you are speaking when you speak to them about it. They can't conceptualize an environment in which they have agency... making it impossible to discuss freedom existing as an intrinsic element of the environment without there being human action preventing it. They simply accept its being prevented as a normal state of affairs... and can't be bothered trying to understand what they're missing... or what you're saying.
The unthinking stupidity of it... requires them to accept "free speech" as a good... they're for it... but not knowing what it is or what it requires... they accept their own advocacy for the opposite of free speech as being free speech... and if you try to get them to understand... they'll simply "defend free speech" by silencing you .
And, of course, rather than admit to not understanding... they revert to that tribal ignorance inherent in the origin of the word barbarian... people speaking a language they don't understand sounding to them like the foreigners are saying bar-bar-bar-bar... Their failure to understand... is because you are speaking jibberish... not that they don't have the capacity to understand... and not because they're ignorant, uneducated, morons, bots and NPCs. |
