{"id":58531,"date":"2018-03-28T17:21:31","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T17:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=58531"},"modified":"2018-04-01T06:01:13","modified_gmt":"2018-04-01T06:01:13","slug":"jordan-peterson-ouroboroi-paradise-and-so-forth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=58531","title":{"rendered":"Jordan Peterson, ouroboroi, paradise, and so forth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; oh damn, cameron&#8217;s on about the ouroboros again, when do we get to strategy? ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p>A slide from a youtubed lecture:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/peterson-ouroboros-of-chaos.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-58534\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/peterson-ouroboros-of-chaos.png 600w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/peterson-ouroboros-of-chaos-300x169.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>I have found someone who gives emphasis to many of the things I give emphasis to, and which few other peple emphasize. And FWIW, the Jungians do this better than most, but then I&#8217;ve been reading and appreciating them for ages. This is <em>new<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, <strong>Jordan Peterson<\/strong>. He&#8217;s been thinking across a wide range of fundamental concepts for many years now, and considerable fame has accrued to him. How I managed not to notice him until now, I&#8217;ll never know. Here he is, anyhow &#8212;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ourob-Maps-of-Meaning-Jordan-Peterson.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"378\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-58536\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ourob-Maps-of-Meaning-Jordan-Peterson.png 600w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ourob-Maps-of-Meaning-Jordan-Peterson-300x189.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8212; with that ouroboros slide faintly visible behind him. The limits of vision, faintness included, are among his many interests, FWIW.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve read <strong>Tanner Greer<\/strong>&#8216;s recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/jordan-peterson-saves-the-world\/article\/2012010\">critique of Peterson<\/a>, which was enough to catch my inner eye, and then today there was an invite from Zen &#8212;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hipbonegamer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@hipbonegamer<\/a> you wanted to know about Peterson\u2019s \u201cmap\u201d concept <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/YIA1jEVK9U\">https:\/\/t.co\/YIA1jEVK9U<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; mark safranski (@zenpundit) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/zenpundit\/status\/977760890366971905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 25, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hell yes. <\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;m maybe ten minutes into that lecture, have skipped around a bit, and went back to lecture #7 for a clear shot of the ouroboros behind him, which I&#8217;ve now inserted at the top of this post. <\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Peterson&#8217;s ouroboros is a conflation of a bird, a cat and a snake &#8212; wings, claws and venom &#8212; birds, cats and snakes being the three classes of being that can kill you from a tree. A &#8220;winged, legged serpent&#8221; &#8212; the &#8220;dragon of chaos&#8221;. That&#8217;s not how I get to the ouroboros, and my equivalent interest is in its recursive nature.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote the poem below, as far as memory serves, in the <strong>Anscombe-Geach<\/strong> living room, heart of Oxford&#8217;s superb logic team at the time, back in the mid nineteen-sixties, and published it, I think, in <strong>Micharel Horovitz<\/strong>&#8216; 1969 anthology of Britain&#8217;s equivalent of the USian beat poets, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Children-Albion-Poetry-Underground-Britain\/dp\/0140421165\">Childrenn of Albion<\/a> &#8212; wow, of which you could have purchased Amazon&#8217;s sole remaining copy for $729.32 as I was writing this &#8212; now it&#8217;s only $32.57 &#8212; is that a difference that makes a difference?<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the poem:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/serpen-eats-hipbone.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"337\" height=\"341\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-58552\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/serpen-eats-hipbone.png 337w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/serpen-eats-hipbone-296x300.png 296w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 337px) 100vw, 337px\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I formatted it more recently in a <strong>HipBone Games<\/strong> manner, as a single move with a recursive tail.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Another significance of the ouroboros for Peterson is that the serpent (antagonistic to us) guards a treasure (to be desired)..<\/p>\n<p>So along with <strong>recursion<\/strong>, we have <strong>predatory chaos<\/strong>, aka the <strong>unknown <\/strong>and indeed <strong>unknowable unknown<\/strong>, and the <strong>treasure trove<\/strong> or <strong>hoard<\/strong>. And as you might intuit, it&#8217;s a short leap from there to the <strong>word-hoard<\/strong> &#8212; poetry in the palm of your mind, with an early mention in <strong>Beowulf<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few gems from Peterson&#8217;s seemingly inexhaustible hoard:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li>there&#8217;s no place that&#8217;s so safe that there isn&#8217;t a snake in it..\n<li>even God himself can&#8217;t define the space so tightly and absolutely that the predator of the unknown can&#8217;t make its way in..\n<li>that&#8217;s the story of the garden<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8212; and those are from maybe a three minute stretch of a two hour lecture &#8212; the word means &#8220;reading&#8221; &#8212; one of forty, is it, in the series?<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Phew. I just received the book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson\/dp\/0415922224\">Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief<\/a>, from Amazon &#8212;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/maps-of-meaning-peterson-cover-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"381\" height=\"499\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-58607\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/maps-of-meaning-peterson-cover-1.jpg 381w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/maps-of-meaning-peterson-cover-1-229x300.jpg 229w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 381px) 100vw, 381px\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8212; the print is small &#8212; too small for me &#8212; stronger glasses coming soon..<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Look, <strong>Stormy Daniels<\/strong> was just on <strong>60 Minutes<\/strong>, offering prurient interest under cover of adversarial politics, how could I resist? I could have watched ten more minutes of Peterson video, and grabbed twice the number of notes I&#8217;ve made here &#8212; but that can wait. <\/p>\n<p>Stormy Daniels and her lawyer, <strong>Michael Avenatti<\/strong>, can show you <strong>strategy<\/strong>..<\/p>\n<p>Ah, but Jordon Peterson can show you abstraction.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Consider the recent school shootings. I go back to Columbine.. Peterson goes back to abstraction, mapping, and time-space:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>For example, we\u2019re all sitting in this room, and someone leaps in with a weapon<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s like this was known territory a second ago, and now it\u2019s not known territory at all. Even though you\u2019d say, well many things have remained the same, it\u2019s  like, yeah, but all the relevant things have suddenly changed, right? And so  part of the way of conceptualizing that is that you can manifest a geographic transformation by moving from genuine geographic explored territory into genuine unexplored geographic territory. But you can do that in time as well. Because we exist in time as well as space. And so a space that\u2019s stable and unchanging can be transformed into something  completely other than what it is, by the movement forward of time.  So why am I telling you that? It\u2019s because we\u2019ve mapped the idea of the difference in space, between the known and the unknown, to the difference in time between a place that works now and a place that no longer works, even though it\u2019s the  same place, it\u2019s just extended across time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Consider the recent election:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>That\u2019s what an election does, right? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s like, we have our leader, who\u2019s the person at the top of the dominance hierarchy, and defined the nature of this particulatr structure. There\u2019s an election, regulated chaos, noone knows what\u2019s going to happen, it\u2019s the death of the old king, bang! We go into a chaotic state, everyone argues for a while, and then out of that argument they produce a consensus, and poof, we\u2019re in a new state, like that\u2019s the meta-story, right, order > chaos > order, but it\u2019s partial order, chaos, reconstituted and revivified order &#8212; that\u2019s the thing, that this order is better than that order, so that there\u2019s progress, and that\u2019s partially why I think the idea of moral relativism is wrong \u2013 there\u2019s progress in moral order.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Note:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li>plenty of intelligence\n<li>no actionable intelligence\n<li>a high level of abstraction\n<li>following the logic of evolution\n<li>not the logic of logic\n<li>too paradoxical for that<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s more than enough.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Au revoir<\/strong><strong>, quite literally!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; oh damn, cameron&#8217;s on about the ouroboros again, when do we get to strategy? ] . A slide from a youtubed lecture: ** I have found someone who gives emphasis to many of the things I give emphasis to, and which few other peple emphasize. And FWIW, the Jungians do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[923,1221,133,526,864,47,829,418,1578,1479,840,56,806,127,1303,792,1,259],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abstraction","category-amazon","category-book","category-charles-cameron","category-gun-control","category-intelligence","category-jordan","category-logic","category-moral","category-ouroboros","category-paradox","category-peterson","category-space","category-strategy","category-t-greer","category-time","category-uncategorized","category-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58531"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58618,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58531\/revisions\/58618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}