Comments by "Mark Pawelek" (@mark4asp) on "Then & Now" channel.

  1. We're looking at "modern wisdom". You tell me that story-tellers are full of real modern-wisdom! I've personally not found that. Art, novels, movies are not wisdom. Williamson seems to have a set of ideas he looks for. For example, he lists 100 essential books to read; and many of those books are very pragmatic; not theory laden like most academic books. Williamson isn't interested in speculative nonsense such as left academic studies or novels. He'd clearly a person who sees wisdom as some kind of template to live a real life by. BTW: Williamson isn't the only person to have a go at Claudine Gay for "knowing nothing". Gay is a grifter who only got her job due to the reverse racism of DEI which parachuted her into position and allowed her to persecute other black heterodox (independent) thinkers at Harvard. Here whole life is ultra privileged.
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  2. The "ideology" we find in media is simply a distillation of the biases of the journalists who write media. Every society has a culture or cultures and ideology of media is generally the unconscious expression our the journalists culture which we encounter. Some of us only notice ideologies which rub up against our own biases and view-points. It is impossible to represent any idea to another without putting an ideological spin on it. Your critique of ideology is ancient Marxism, and idealism. Only Marxists critique ideology, because only Marxists think there's such a thing as an objective viewpoint. Objectivity is a myth. Ideology is the norm; and hegemony is the form it takes. That does not mean we should rejoice in this state of affairs. It probably means we should look for more heterodox sources for news, reporting, and opinion. I leave that as an exercise for the reader. Woke is a fabrication the left created for themselves because they needed common ideas to unite behind for their own anti-hegemony. Since after the early 1990s the left basically gave up on Marxism/communism. So we had a left fragmented into Feminism, Anti-racism, anti-capitalism, gay rights, environmentalism, ... - isms/schisms. Woke puts these disparate movements into a straight-jacket to unify them in the same way Marxism, or Fabianism had once unified the left. To existing oppositional left ideas woke bolts on myths of anti-colonialism, DEI, and Sustainability, Net Zero, virus paranoia as ideals. Woke is a meme to unite modern leftists.
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  3. Q: What makes us postmodern? A: It's fundamentally whether I trust myself to think through things. I do trust myself, therefore I'm not postmodern - although I'll concede you may be - certainly if you call yourself so.
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  4. You're right about woke once having an exact meaning but the meaning was first changed by the Left who translated it into some version of 'politically correct'. It was only after woke became censorious and dogmatic, that the right picked up on it as an insult. It wasn't 'rightwingers' who printed those T-shirts found in the cupboard at Twitter. Nor is it just right-wingers laughing at them.
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  5. The problem with Chomsky is - he is a communist - he looks at the media and sees an anti-communist conspiracy - in truth, media was anti-communist, because communism simply does not work as a economic system - anti-communism is an "ideology" in the same sense that self-preservation is.
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  6. "Marxism, Stalinism, Nazism, Postmodernism, Feminism" <- 4 ideologies driven by ideology. 1 ideology driven by anti-ideology!
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  7. There are no trans-people. They're a myth. Not a creation of media and press; but a fabrication by the Leftist academy financed by billionaires such as Soros. An anti-social ideology to fit the anti-social ideal-vision of the modern academy.
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  8. These critics of JP definitely seem to be motivated by ressentiment of JP's book sales and video views!! Their video is a hopeless authoritarian, statist, collectivist, and anti-capitalist diatribe against Jordan Peterson. I'd have thought by now that the disaster of the Chinese Communist Party destroying freedom in China with COVID lockdowns would've warned you off this stale, dogmatic, anti-freedom socialism. You are ALSO wrong on 'ideology'. You apply it to ALL ideas. That's wrong. All ideas are NOT ideologies; Were they, then everything is ideology and the word becomes a mere floating signifier; or synonym for 'ideas'. After all, aren't all ideas wrong in some detail? Instead, let's look at it as Marx did. he wrote of "capitalist ideology" he implied it was a false ideology; false because it benefited the capitalist but not the worker. Not saying he was right; but Marx clearly believed he had truth on his side; and that there were false ideas (or sets of ideas = ideologies) which needed exposing. Can a bunch of pomo critical theorists entertain such a Marxian concept of ideology? I doubt you can. If you dare try you must first ditch your anti-humanism, and pomo epistemic fragility. BTW: "Climate crisis" is a good example of a one size fits all gibberish non-solution being straight-jacketed onto subjects it doesn't fit. An ideology driven by billionaires with a distinctly anti-human agenda. A far bigger evil than Jordan Peterson; who, to the best of my knowledge, has harmed NO ONE. "Climate crisis" / climate change / global warming is an ideology backed by some of the richest people on earth. Potentially very harmful to humanity. Q: Any chance our radical lefties will stick their necks out and take on a real evil? A: No. I already know you will stay in your lane like useful idiots do.
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  9. Oppenheimer's protests against nuclear weapons? Are you talking about the letter to the president promoted by Oppenheimer's younger brother which basically ruined that brother's career. I wasn't aware of any other protests - my bad - must've read the wrong biography.
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