I Won't Mock The Owl. I Will Show You What She Wrote.

 Confession.  Time spent on the lazy thinking this retired con law prof uses, every day of her life, seemingly, is a distraction from politics.  And starting months ago.  I started cutting down.  As a related matter. Based on my years on this rock, I believe political reporting and commentary is at a low point. Lazy thinking is everywhere, seems.  We can blame the interwebnetubes.  But many people with experience and training in the right disciplines say and agree.  Humans be like that.  Anyway . . .

"Tell me about an "interpretative system" that is better than Jordan Peterson's "whim." He's one man, interpreting things. If my "job" is to "sit still" and take in his ideas, how is that different from reading any book? The author isn't here with me, the reader, to be "argued with." But I buy the Kindle version and excerpt any passage I want to pick apart, and I do my own writing here on this blog, which you are sitting still and reading. If you are "overtaken with apathy," you stop reading. If you want to argue, you go into the comments section. If it's just too much interpretation, coming at you endlessly, take a break. Nobody said you had to read this all at once. I heard that Elon Musk read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica when he was 9 years old. That's unusual, and it's not what the encyclopedia writers had in mind."

She wrote and published that.  And could not tell it was not terribly coherent?

And if only to be more coherent myself.  This is from her blogged "review"  of some real writer's review of Jordan Peterson's newest trash output.  For those of you who don't know about that guy.  He is the Canadian ex Psychology professor, who got fired over some refusal to use preferred pronouns, some idiotic "principled" in his disordered mind, stand.  And he quickly became a darling of the worldwide, right wing conservative idiot's circle.  And he had a physical and mental breakdown from "the road' and or other reasons.  

And once recovered?  I say questioningly. He went back to telling other people how they should live their lives, seemingly oblivious to his own failure to get, have, and keep his own shit together.

Anyway.  The real reviewer was making the the overall and some specific points about how incoherent the book is.

Personally, I never found the guy to be at all coherent except when plagiarizing, and not fucking up the bits he plagiarizes.  And as a fan of Jungian Analysis, and the work of the late, great Joseph Campbell.  Based on this review, I can say Peterson is at least greatly borrowing from those guys.  And likely fucking up the bits he plagiarizes.

Anyway.  There is your context.  Now for the critical observation about the Owl's lazy childish thinking.  And I think she is sort of sympathetic regarding Peterson.  And it that is true that could be a factor why, when viewed as a chunk.  Her point of view and message seems to boil down to:

How dare you review his book, while reviewing his book?

Talk is Overrated. Arguments Are Inherently Bullshit.

 

This will be a mostly, on the fly mash up of various ideas crawling around my pretty brain.  

The interwebnetubes is itself not toxic.  The people spewing their bullshit there is the actual source of harm.  For example, the dumpster itself is not a source of disease.  It came off the line from the factory pretty clean.  It is the decomposing organic matter dumped in it, that is the actual carrier of the bacteria. And it is the bacteria that will make you sick.

Talk is indeed overrated. I think of my (in my mind at least) fight with the 'more speech' crowd and think they are fucking out of their infantile minds.  Have you been paying attention to most people, and the shit they think and say?  And go back to what I just said about the real source of disease on the interwebnetubes.  It's the people, not hardware and software!

Before I go down that road, hats off again to Harry Frankfort for his "On Bullshit," booklet.  More people need to read that.  Because if the world had too much bullshit when his booklet was published, there is a great deal more, now. Seems.  I am not sure if there was ever a time when people were better at detecting and discarding bullshit.  But it seems to me, that people are too used to it.  And that means they really don't care if it's bullshit.  Bullshit wins!  

There are so few intellectuals these days.  I am sure of that.  Sadly, thanks to how people are too used to bullshit, and that they really don't care if it's bullshit?  We are now suffering a plague of pseudo intellectuals, of posers, of fake though leaders out there, monetizing their bullshit.  Not that there is anything new about the attempt and or success at monetizing bullshit.  But the interwebnetubes makes it easier to try, if not succeed at that bullshit publishing bullshit, bullshit.  (I went a little repetitive there. Works for me.)

Actually, I got to a good place to end, in fewer keystrokes as I expected.  My pretty brain has not been too damaged by the avalanche of bullshit.  Yet.