Quote of the Day: Jordan Peterson on Postmodernism

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Joe Rogan has produced a second epic interview with Professor Jordan Peterson. Peterson rose to fame when he refused to use third-person pronouns at the university of Toronto, raising the ire of Twitters SJW’s but, as they quickly discovered, and as Rogan bluntly puts it, “they f—ed with the wrong dude”.

One highlight of the interview is Peterson’s delving into mythology to explain Pepe and the Cult of KEK. Listening to him discuss human archetypes and mythology can be quite hypnotising. Over at pushingrubberdownhill, Adam Piggott appreciates the way Peterson steered the conversation back on track before Rogan got too carried away criticising Donald Trump.

I found the discussion of postmodernism very telling. Peterson explains how postmodernism emerged in the 1960’s and 70’s when Marxist academics had to find a way to rebrand after Marxism kept creating genocidal regimes, and thus identity politics was born. The relentless focus here at The XYZ in tearing down the arguments and assumptions of identity politics stems from our understanding of this link.

In this imperfect transcript, Jordan Peterson gets to the heart of postmodernism’s purpose:

“Postmodernism is a complete assault on two things: One, it’s an assault on the metaphysical substrate of our culture, and I would say that the metaphysical substrate looks something like a religious substrate, so it’s a direct assault on that; and the second thing it’s an assault on is everything that’s been established since the enlightenment; rationality, empiricism, science.. everything; clarity of mind, dialogue, the idea of the individual, all of that. You see, it’s not that it’s just up for grabs, that’s not the thing: It’s to be destroyed. It’s the goal, just like the communists wanted the revolution to destroy the capitalist system.”

You can follow the links in this article through to shorter snippets. The full three hours is below. I have listened to it over the course of several long drives. Enjoy.