Need a plate of generic, insipid platitudes with a giant helping of bad science and misogyny?
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
1375 points (91.9% liked)
Memes
45746 readers
1653 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I hate it when people bitch about the left "not having gurus to help lost young people" or whatever when the right's so-called gurus are worthless sacks of skin like Peterson. Also I'm here because I - in very emphatic terms - do not want a guru.
it's really annoying because personal growth is not even remotely relevant to politics. The left can't "make you a man" because that's something you do on your own. It implies a specific set of ideas about maturity, relationships, and various other things which are your own problem. The right wants to fit you into the hierarchy, so they'll make you a certain thing to fit. We don't, so it's your job to figure out if you want to be a man or a woman or something else, and what it means to reach that. We don't give leftist dating advice because it doesn't make sense, we're not writing a script for you to follow. Just respect potential partners and maybe one will become a partner you respect. Whether you start a family or find someone isn't our political project because we don't want to make you pump out kids for the factories that obey authority.
It may also be something best done with others, because isolated insulated alienated individuals tend to become reactionary too.
Although yes, it should be done as a group, and it would be better done with a group of leftists because they're more likely to have a positive view of women, minority, work, mental health and so on, it's just not something that needs to be done as a political project. Like, religious leftists should pray together, or leftists with children should share child care tips, but that doesn't make it a leftist goal, y'know?
It doesn't, and it doesn't have to be a "pure" leftist goal for it to matter at an intersectional level. How good is a community if it's made up of atomized individuals lacking in connection with each other? How much "pure" leftism is possible with a bunch of "I am the Main Character, everyone else is NPCs, fuck you got mine" contamination?
I don't see your point. Yeah, that's not great, but it's not a political project and there's not a way to provide specifically masculinity from a leftist perspective. I see a big part of leftist change in society to liberate people from the alienating idea that they're supposed to grow up into anything in particular.
What you're demanding isn't possible by the very boundaries that you demand that it must fit in. If you're stifling my case, the same limitations make yours basically impossible.
You're saying it must be a "political project" in some rigid way but at the same time you want some sort of "make boys feel better about themselves" thing which if isolated and non-intersectional is not a political project goal.
I don't want something like that, I think inherently the goals of leftist liberation make people feel less pressure to correctly present a gender role, so the utility of a guru like JBP vanishes. You don't need to learn to play your role, because you decide what it means to be you. So we don't need to teach boys how to act, we're by our actions creating an environment where that won't be a problem. The interrim between current world and that world won't be flawless, but that's something best addressed by non-explicitly leftist groups. It's not something "the party" or whatever needs to work on
I'm not disagreeing with you there as much as I'm saying you set excessively rigid parameters for what qualifies as political action in what is an intersectional society and people.
That's precisely why the left will keep losing men. And as I see it, left is going to lose men faster as time goes on unless something changes.
People can't figure out life on their own. That's reality. Especially with the current state of economy where the young men are doing very poorly in droves. And then the left just tells them: go figure it out on your own. Well fuck.
Meanwhile, the right will say shit like: go work out, improve yourself, do this and that to make more money, and you will get your life together, you will own a home, you will get a wife, etc. You're right, these advices aren't even political. But they are real advices, which people like JBP gives. And for the majority of their main points, they are actually good messages, crazy ones aside. Sure, the political right isn't actually gonna do shit for men, but they have real advices. Things people can follow and have hope. It's surely more enticing than what the left preaches.
The rebuttal from the left is often absolutely terrible messages and say things like "just don't rape women" or "just respect potential partners" which just drives people away further. These are not real advices. These only make sense if you view men already in a negative light. It's not actionable advice if they're not a horrible person already. Left demonizes men, like you just did, whether you realize it or not. If a man views themselves as a good person already and the message they get is "just respect potential partners" which they already do, and still clearly achieving nothing. You get two outcomes. At best: you helped nobody. At worst: they now think you think they're horrible because the reward isn't coming with the advised action. So one side says you're horrible and the other side says you have a future. Who will they stick with? Seems obvious to me.
Imagine the gender flip of that message. "Just don't be bitch." How would that message be perceived by women?
Even Andrew Tate has objectively better actionable messages for the men than the left. He constantly says stuff like go to the gym and work out. Does that actually help in the goal of dating? Fuck yeah. Actual cause and reward. These are real advices for men.
You can't expect people to write their own script. Vast majority clearly can't. They need guidance. And left has none to give. Until that time comes, people like JBP and Andrew Tate will continue to sweep in the young male audience, especially in an era where fatherless boys are more bountiful than ever.
The gurus normal people trust have this pesky tendency to have advanced degrees and call themselves things like "doctors" and "therapists" as if either is better than being screamed at by a car salesman in a room full of sweaty divorces.
The problem is the sell outs. The vaccines cause autism guy, scientists who publish about global warming being fake, Peterson himself has multiple degrees. Unfortunately in this day and age you even have to vet people with qualifications to make sure they arnt the jack ass who disagrees with the remaining 99.99% of the scientific community.
Chopra has a PHD and is a doctor, he'll never tell you that it's in endocrinology and not Quantum Physics however...
Whatever your opinion on it is, the fact is that young guys are lost to right wing patriarchs. And the left doesn't really want to outcompete the right for their attention, because the left knows they can't outcompete the right on this without abandoning some highly treasured principles.
Yeah, the lifestyle coach is an inherently evil breed. Unhappy young people don't need a talking head to tell them to buy the book and listen to the podcast, they need friends. Even just a discord where you can get relationship advice from people who have actually been in a healthy relationship is way more valuable.
The closest the Left has to a guru is the Spirit Science guy (He's surprisingly progressive for someone who thinks jews are from space), and I still can't recommend that in good concious unless you need a short cartoon to explain a supernatural concept. The show's decent on Spirituality, it's tying it to Science that causes the problems...
It's almost like Religion and Science are entirely different concepts exploring different ideas, and shouldn't be merged together into one unified force anymore than my keyboard and my dresser!