On my way home from the pharmacy, on what must have been the first scorching hot day of summer in New York this year, I saw an elderly woman — lets call her Alice — walking ahead, cane in one hand, roller bag in the other.
Little did we know that social media, especially Twitter, as-yet uninvented in the late 1990s, were what "The Matrix" was prophetically warning us about. Your wise, incisive, but also peace-inculcating meditations take us by the hand and walk us straight out of the belly of the beast--and for that I'm grateful. More than once in the past couple of weeks I've started to comment on somebody's tweet, then realized that what was being pulled out of me, incentivized by the format, wasn't just not my best self but was entirely unneeded snarky or snark-adjacent crap. I'd retained just enough presence of mind to lift my head, realize what was going on, and discard my reply, unsent. Four or five times this has happened. The matrix is right there, beseeching us. Thanks for helping us see and feel that.
I’m also a huge JBP fan and was a little bewildered when I saw that kerfuffle about the tweet. (I’m not in Twitter, so saw it in the news). I appreciate you making the effort to dig in here.
I agree, Chloe. Dr. Peterson’s work has influenced my life dramatically, but lately I haven’t been able to follow his public train of thought. I feel it narrowing and becoming rigid, which is a type of thinking I’m prone to (especially on social media) and trying to overcome. His writing & lectures usually encourage the opposite. Maybe it’s just a phase.
I enjoyed reading this and hope you and JBP can discuss it sometime. Glad I found your Substack 🙏
Balanced as always I really enjoyed it. Peterson is getting lost in the woods of social media, debating, and defending, (who can blame him). Hopefully he can realign himself as he continues his journey. Maybe he can look for the love perhaps.
I hope one day you can speak to Russell Brand you seem like kindred sprits on the tight rope of Nuance!
In the tradition of generous comment, I would venture the observation that Dr. Peterson has leaned more into inflexible take of ideological framing than into the flexibility and adaptability of psychological framing. I would add that many writers succeed far more as crafters of fiction than essayists on current events.
By medical standards and BMI (body mass index) Yumi Nu is obese. Given America's tolerance for obesity and its drastic rise (even encouragement) over the last 50 years, as well as cardiovascular disease being the number one killer in America, I can see JPs cause for concern. However, I don't think it was a wise hill to die on nor was singling out Yumi. Love the article and reflections though, thanks Chloe.
I disagree, I think his comments are perfectly defensible as a critique of performative status signalling, or more pejoratively NPC soy-boy culture where people are told what to think.
While beauty standards have changed over the years and vary by culture I think it's true to say this model has niche appeal (a wee bit more than voloptuous shall we say) and was promoted mainly due to progressive goals. These goals may be laudable and welcome for some after unhealthily thin model culture, but it surely amounts to the usual kind of social engineering where people's impulse to performative status signalling overrides their expression of true experiences. Perhaps I'm wrong, I'd be genuinely interested in the proportion of guys that find her attractive.
I think anyone that ends up as a model in a national magazine should be able to handle people's stated preference for beauty (people in the fashion industry wouldn't hold back if wager). It's kind of the world they live in and they can surely take the good with the bad. I mean she has the last laugh really as she made it to the cover.
I don't follow sorry. I know NPC is somewhat alt-right coded but I was using it descriptively as I think it's a valid concept. Basically the idea that people adopt whatever the current set of views are depending on their tribal affiliation. Soy boy is more aggressively pejorative obviously but is just the idea of an emasculated male. These ideas someone like Rob Henderson would call preference falsification.
I think I'm pointing to a relevant idea, eg When JP came out with his statement there was a lot of hand-wringing on social media and professions that she was objectively beautiful by men and women alike. But as I say while she has beautiful aspects and different cultures have different beauty concepts etc I'd guess a substantial portion of males would find her too overweight to be attractive as a package but many wouldn't say it out loud. JP said it out loud and that was his point I think.
Of course I don't have the data on male preferences beyond people I know. Social media either tends to feminised socially acceptable or alt-right, 4 chan style but it's also true that men tend to be very frank and blunt about their opinions on female attractiveness.
Generalising here to the heterosexual examples though male behavior doesn't change that much for gay men in my experience in terms of objectification.
Hi Chole, I read this after watching you conversation with Brett Anderson, and I wanted to just say that I appreciated you comments about the conservative distain for the body positivity movement and the conversation around what it means to be healthy. Human existence/human health is complex and as you said in your interview with Brett, what we constitute as beautiful really is subjective, perhaps there are scientific measures that can show us on average how society may measure human attractiveness, but I've been attracted to disabled men who were shorter than me and paralyzed from the waste down, because I fell in love with the soul of the person in the body -- there is an individualism to attractiveness and what we view as beautiful as much as we can try and rationalize what beauty is or who we should be attracted to. I've also been a fat girl since puberty, so I never lived my life as someone that was called beautiful or even really approached much by men-- however I've seen people fall in love with the beauty of my personality, even if they didn't find themselves enamored with my physical "beauty" or lack thereof, I could see it reflected in their eyes and I could sense it through the chemistry that comes with vibing with another person.
With that said, I like Jordan Peterson and have much respect for the man. The issue with something like this is that I think if Jordan Peterson met me in-person and we spoke, I don't think he would even notice my weight or even dare to think I wasn't beautiful. I think of all of Jordan's followers and admirers who may be fat people, and how it must feel to be slandered for no reason other than to make a point in the culture war. There is no guarantee any of us will get to live to old age, perhaps eating healthy and taking care of ourselves will increase the odds, but life is unpredictable and death can come for us at any time. As you illustrate with Alice, despite her physical state, she had so much life in your interaction, and there is a conversation to be had about the state of "the soul" that animates the body and what it means to live a good life, even if it is not in a perfect body. Jordan and his daughter have both experienced terrible sickness and perhaps that is where the "concern" over keeping "healthy" comes from, a need to claim some control over something they themselves struggle with for no reason seemingly other than the bad luck of genetics.
Little did we know that social media, especially Twitter, as-yet uninvented in the late 1990s, were what "The Matrix" was prophetically warning us about. Your wise, incisive, but also peace-inculcating meditations take us by the hand and walk us straight out of the belly of the beast--and for that I'm grateful. More than once in the past couple of weeks I've started to comment on somebody's tweet, then realized that what was being pulled out of me, incentivized by the format, wasn't just not my best self but was entirely unneeded snarky or snark-adjacent crap. I'd retained just enough presence of mind to lift my head, realize what was going on, and discard my reply, unsent. Four or five times this has happened. The matrix is right there, beseeching us. Thanks for helping us see and feel that.
I'm a huge fan of Peterson, but I absolutely agree with you here. Thank you for your precise and thoughtful words.
I’m also a huge JBP fan and was a little bewildered when I saw that kerfuffle about the tweet. (I’m not in Twitter, so saw it in the news). I appreciate you making the effort to dig in here.
I agree, Chloe. Dr. Peterson’s work has influenced my life dramatically, but lately I haven’t been able to follow his public train of thought. I feel it narrowing and becoming rigid, which is a type of thinking I’m prone to (especially on social media) and trying to overcome. His writing & lectures usually encourage the opposite. Maybe it’s just a phase.
I enjoyed reading this and hope you and JBP can discuss it sometime. Glad I found your Substack 🙏
Balanced as always I really enjoyed it. Peterson is getting lost in the woods of social media, debating, and defending, (who can blame him). Hopefully he can realign himself as he continues his journey. Maybe he can look for the love perhaps.
I hope one day you can speak to Russell Brand you seem like kindred sprits on the tight rope of Nuance!
Keep up you fantastic work. Peter (UK)
A wonderful essay; so compassionate and useful. After reading it, I decided to take a social media break- but must post this comment, before doing so!
In the tradition of generous comment, I would venture the observation that Dr. Peterson has leaned more into inflexible take of ideological framing than into the flexibility and adaptability of psychological framing. I would add that many writers succeed far more as crafters of fiction than essayists on current events.
By medical standards and BMI (body mass index) Yumi Nu is obese. Given America's tolerance for obesity and its drastic rise (even encouragement) over the last 50 years, as well as cardiovascular disease being the number one killer in America, I can see JPs cause for concern. However, I don't think it was a wise hill to die on nor was singling out Yumi. Love the article and reflections though, thanks Chloe.
I disagree, I think his comments are perfectly defensible as a critique of performative status signalling, or more pejoratively NPC soy-boy culture where people are told what to think.
While beauty standards have changed over the years and vary by culture I think it's true to say this model has niche appeal (a wee bit more than voloptuous shall we say) and was promoted mainly due to progressive goals. These goals may be laudable and welcome for some after unhealthily thin model culture, but it surely amounts to the usual kind of social engineering where people's impulse to performative status signalling overrides their expression of true experiences. Perhaps I'm wrong, I'd be genuinely interested in the proportion of guys that find her attractive.
I think anyone that ends up as a model in a national magazine should be able to handle people's stated preference for beauty (people in the fashion industry wouldn't hold back if wager). It's kind of the world they live in and they can surely take the good with the bad. I mean she has the last laugh really as she made it to the cover.
Did you just use a video game metaphor to criticize “performative status signaling”?
Irony, is that you?
I don't follow sorry. I know NPC is somewhat alt-right coded but I was using it descriptively as I think it's a valid concept. Basically the idea that people adopt whatever the current set of views are depending on their tribal affiliation. Soy boy is more aggressively pejorative obviously but is just the idea of an emasculated male. These ideas someone like Rob Henderson would call preference falsification.
I think I'm pointing to a relevant idea, eg When JP came out with his statement there was a lot of hand-wringing on social media and professions that she was objectively beautiful by men and women alike. But as I say while she has beautiful aspects and different cultures have different beauty concepts etc I'd guess a substantial portion of males would find her too overweight to be attractive as a package but many wouldn't say it out loud. JP said it out loud and that was his point I think.
Of course I don't have the data on male preferences beyond people I know. Social media either tends to feminised socially acceptable or alt-right, 4 chan style but it's also true that men tend to be very frank and blunt about their opinions on female attractiveness.
Generalising here to the heterosexual examples though male behavior doesn't change that much for gay men in my experience in terms of objectification.
Hi Chole, I read this after watching you conversation with Brett Anderson, and I wanted to just say that I appreciated you comments about the conservative distain for the body positivity movement and the conversation around what it means to be healthy. Human existence/human health is complex and as you said in your interview with Brett, what we constitute as beautiful really is subjective, perhaps there are scientific measures that can show us on average how society may measure human attractiveness, but I've been attracted to disabled men who were shorter than me and paralyzed from the waste down, because I fell in love with the soul of the person in the body -- there is an individualism to attractiveness and what we view as beautiful as much as we can try and rationalize what beauty is or who we should be attracted to. I've also been a fat girl since puberty, so I never lived my life as someone that was called beautiful or even really approached much by men-- however I've seen people fall in love with the beauty of my personality, even if they didn't find themselves enamored with my physical "beauty" or lack thereof, I could see it reflected in their eyes and I could sense it through the chemistry that comes with vibing with another person.
With that said, I like Jordan Peterson and have much respect for the man. The issue with something like this is that I think if Jordan Peterson met me in-person and we spoke, I don't think he would even notice my weight or even dare to think I wasn't beautiful. I think of all of Jordan's followers and admirers who may be fat people, and how it must feel to be slandered for no reason other than to make a point in the culture war. There is no guarantee any of us will get to live to old age, perhaps eating healthy and taking care of ourselves will increase the odds, but life is unpredictable and death can come for us at any time. As you illustrate with Alice, despite her physical state, she had so much life in your interaction, and there is a conversation to be had about the state of "the soul" that animates the body and what it means to live a good life, even if it is not in a perfect body. Jordan and his daughter have both experienced terrible sickness and perhaps that is where the "concern" over keeping "healthy" comes from, a need to claim some control over something they themselves struggle with for no reason seemingly other than the bad luck of genetics.