Society

Thoughts on Jordan Peterson (III): “Canada is great. Period.”

It’s time to continue with my series on Jordan Peterson. The next item on my long list is his sycophantic stance towards his home country. This goes so far that he even excuses his accusers. In some of his more recent videos, he justifies the backlash he received by stating that it was the correct reaction to be skeptical of him because Canada is such a well-run country. I find this a rather baffling statement.

I would say there are a lot of issues that are wrong in Canada. The forced use of made-up pronouns is hardly the most important one. Yet, it seems that a big reason the media jumped on him for that is that it is such a petty issue. However, he dared to go against the dominant narrative. Yet, all of that is comparatively trivial. I don’t want to claim that Peterson is generally unaware of how bizarre Canada is. He’s fighting against made-up gender pronouns. He also lambasted the government for handing out professorships as rewards for women and minorities, instead of the most qualified applicants.

That being said, there are some real issues Canada is facing, which certainly dwarf made up gender pronouns:

1) Real Estate
Canada is in an absolutely staggering real estate bubble. Check out this article from Bloomberg and look for the comparison of housing in real prices between the US and Canada. A large part of the reason why the housing market in Canada is on fire is that wealthy foreigners are allowed to buy up everything they can get their hands on. The situation in Vancouver is particularly bad.

Well, China is a large country. It’s also run with an iron fist, and if you tick off the ruling Communist Party, you may very well find yourself in big trouble. Consequently, many rich Chinese have been looking overseas, buying up real estate like there is no tomorrow. Canada is among their favorite destinations. If you are an insensitive leftie who gets a fat monthly allowance from mom and dad and lives in an apartment daddy paid for in cash you may not see the issue. However, the average Canadian has gotten priced out of the market. If you want to own a place, it’ll take you decades to pay it off. There is also pressure from below, because in addition to wealthy Chinese flocking into Canada, you also have large-scale migration, leading to a dramatic rise in rental cost. A figure I recently heard was that a 700 square foot apartment in Toronto easily puts you back $2k/month.

You may think that this is unavoidable in a globalized world, but that would be wrong. Globalism and open borders is just a facet of communism. This could make you realize that just like countries can secure their borders, they can also restrict capital flows. Indeed, there are plenty of countries where foreigners are downright banned from owning real estate.

2) Submission to Islam
Muslims have been busily colonizing the West, bringing medieval mores with them. Just think of female genital mutilation, burquas, or slaughtering animals in an utterly barbaric manner by letting them bleed to death. That’s cultural enrichment alright. Even if you’re not tuned in to what ‘real’ Islam looks like, you only have to open your eyes and notice that mosques have been popping up all over. In Canada, the number of mosques is growing.

Canada is in many regards like Sweden or Germany. It seems it’s an even more cucked country because in Europe we don’t shower an ISIS fighter who killed our own with $10.5 million.

3) Spineless leadership
Following up on the last point, as an outsider, I can’t help but think that Canada is to the US as Sweden is to Europe. Both are relatively small and insignificant countries. They don’t think they can compete on the world stage, Canada probably much less than Sweden. The latter certainly punches way above its league, seeing that it has several ‘unicorn’ companies, for instance. What Canada lacks, just as much as Sweden, is national pride. They elected, to use BlackPigeonSpeaks’ phrase, a “part-time ski instructor and substitute drama teacher” Justin Trudeau to run their country. There are worse leaders on this planet, just look at Germany’s Angela Merkel who flooded the country with millions of unskilled and uneducated people from the third world. Still, Trudeau is not what I would consider a strong leader. It is thus no surprise that SJWs run amok in Canada.

Peterson is arguing against symptoms, not causes. The problem is that the political leadership is rotten. Sure, get made-up pronouns thrown out — that won’t help much as long as all the cucked Canadians keep voting leftists into office.

4) Systematic subjugation of men
As much as you may think that made-up gender pronouns are a big issue, I wager that a much bigger issue is that Canada, just like the West in general, has been waging a war against men. I’m fairly certain that Peterson has acknowledged that boys do worse in schools than girls, and that there are more women than men at university (they mostly study bullshit degrees, so it doesn’t really matter that much). What he does not acknowledge, at least to my knowledge, is that the educational system is geared towards women and that there are countless support programmes for women available, while men are generally seen as the enemy. Peterson mocks SJWs for using a term like “toxic masculinity”, but does not seem to acknowledge that society itself is gynocentric.

A particularly noteworthy example is the case of Steven Galloway, an academic at Canada’s University of British Columbia, who lost his job in 2016 due to false allegations. It is easy to use this as a starting point and further discuss the problem that men are seen as second-class citizens who are readily tossed aside by society. Peterson does not seem to think so and instead tells guys to suck it up.

It may be the case that my discussion of the points above is not entirely fair. To be honest, a big problem with the output of Jordan Peterson is that it is almost exclusively in video format. This has many disadvantages. Probably you can read a lot faster than you can watch a video. With texts in an electronic format, you can also quickly search within them. In addition, you can skim them. Video offers none of those advantages. Thus, it would take an inhuman effort to go through Peterson’s hundreds of hours of videos and try to verify that my observations are all correct. What I write is based on a few dozen of hours of videos, not on several hundreds of hours. This means that there may be footage out there where he addresses some of the points I made above. If that is the case and you happen to know of them, please let me know.

In my next posts on Peterson, I will discuss concepts and ideas, not specific content, so the disadvantages of the video format will be less of an issue.


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33 thoughts on “Thoughts on Jordan Peterson (III): “Canada is great. Period.”

  1. Im just going to comment on the china part. It shows your bias so you confuse correlation with causation.

    Rich chinese ppl are buying overseas assets.
    China is authoritarian.

    Your bias (from your anticommunist upbringing?) then concludes that they do this because they are getting out of dodge because communism is bad. So that it portends bad news for Chinas future.

    On contrary, its good news for china. To be rich is glorious and communism is making china wealthier every day. The future is bright! Thus more rich ppl everyday, and rich ppl like to diversify wealth. Lots of rich western ppl got wealth stashed in tax havens. Buying houses in canada is the same. Yet when rich chinese diversify its used to blame CCP.

    You fell for fake news, Aaron…

    1. I am not making any statement about the future of China. However, you cannot deny that there are significant numbers of rich Chinese who are buying property abroad, even at highly inflated prices. For them real estate is a means for storing wealth; even inflated Western assets seem to be attractive due to Western laws, which guarantee ownership.

      1. Its proof of bias. The average rich person has 5+ different income streams and 50% of assets are not in country of domicile.

        If german rich guy buys housee in spain, can I now bash germany, well it makes sense cause theres resurgence of fascism.

        Theres simply no proof of your assertion. In fact if rich chinese are buying overpriced its proof china is getting richer faster than a bull like I thought, if they put 50% of wealth in vancouver or other.

        So I can use the exact same facts to argue for buying china stocks because china then must have a glorious future. It is the most exceptional and indispensable. It is minting so much rich ppl it is inflating bubbles outside china. So buy china. It will surpass the usa, easy. 3x population. Better system. (free market capitalism only makes the lazy rich capitalists richer.

        Funny heh?

      2. You don’t make any sense. Even if Chinese money would not be an issue, it is a fact that Canadian housing is inflated.

        Here is the first article that came up when I searched for the keywords ‘Vancouver’, ‘Chinese’, and ‘buying’:
        https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/07/vancouver-chinese-city-racism-meets-real-estate-british-columbia

        Excerpt:

        Over the past year, the price of a single family house in Vancouver increased by an incredible 30%, to an average of $1.4m. It’s just the latest, most dramatic jump in an already dramatic long-term trend that has turned the beautiful but unassuming Canadian city into one of the world’s least affordable, with a housing price-to-income ratio of 10.8. That’s third after Hong Kong and Sydney, and well ahead of London, which ranks eighth at 8.5.

        Driving the rise is an unprecedented flood of foreign capital, mainly from China. “What you have is a huge pool of very wealthy people who want to hedge against uncertainty back home,” says Thomas Davidoff, a real estate economist at the University of British Columbia (UBC). “Combine anxious money – a lot of it – with a beautiful gateway city that has limited space to build, low property taxes, lax regulation on capital flows, and wealth-friendly immigration programmes, and you get a market like this one,” – a market where an ordinary house with a waterfront view can sell for $15m while people earning local wages struggle to buy or rent a home.

      3. My bad, looks like we were talking past eachother. I believed you were talking smack about china, but you were talking about vancouver being a bubble which I dont disagree with. It shows herd mentality. If ppl invest what do they like to buy? Stuff that went up in value like bitcoin or bubbly houses. Instead of buying stuff that has gone down so that it became cheaper and a value buy. Funny. It all makes sense to me. Herd mentality can be strong for us chinese, we like to keep up with joneses. However I am an exception. Im very independent and unbiased and master of my emotions.

  2. Not trying to kiss Jordan Peterson’s ass here but. (MANWhat he does not acknowledge, at least to my knowledge, is that the educational system is geared towards women and that there are countless support programmes for women available, while men are generally seen as the enemy.) He did addressed this. And he is currently having a awakening experience. He has more encounters with men from outside his own environment lately. I even seen him breaking down. I don’t know how his world view will change by this. But he is learning that many young men haven’t been as lucky as him. And he was even crying when he realised that many young men didn’t even had one encouragement in their entire life. I’m not saying you’re entirely rong about him. He doesn’t realise many things about modern women and society. I’m just saying he’s learning. And personally i still have some hope for him. He would probably never see the complete picture. But he is trying. And he does care. That’s more than most do. Specially in his field.

  3. I’m MGTOW. Needless to say i have a different world perspective compared with Jordan Peterson. Still, i respect him for trying to make an difference for young men. Even if i don’t agree with him when it comes to women and marriage. And he clearly doesn’t like the MGTOW mindset in return. He’s making an effort to reach out to young men. That’s not that common these days. I’ll give him some points for that. He’s trained as a psychologist to focus on the personal influence people have in their own life’s. It only makes sense he tells young men to focus on what they can improve within their own life’s. And not how fucked up modern women are. And that their chances of success are slim at best. A psychologist who’s telling people that they are fucked anyway wouldn’t be a positive influence. And giving up on relationships and society isn’t even an option within his mind. From his perspective Canada isn’t that bad. And compared with shitholes like Africa, He’s right.

  4. It’s interesting that you say that because I was going to do the same in Canada a while back. I later backed down precisely because of the sky high prices. Even if you forget the feminism like I did, Canada is crappy place for many reasons chief among which is the real estate bubble it has. Unlike the other such bubbles around the world, Canada’s bubble has no other way of staying afloat than foreign buying. Foreign buying is not concrete support regardless of how you look at it.

    That being said, where would you go if you wanted to move places? I like Thailand but it seems a bit too third world. But my money can go a lot further there which is a huge draw. Besides the fringe benefits of living in Thailand.

    1. Don: Thailand is a great place if you’re a white man. And the third world argument is understandable. But it’s very depending on the location within Thailand. Thats one of the things i like about Thailand. You can have the newest high tech experience. And a few hours driving later you’re in a primitive setting away from everything. I’m mostly located 3 hours driving from Bangkok. In a small village just a few min from a medium sized city. I absolutely love it. I have peace and quite. And everything i can possibly need close by. Beautiful beach. Great warm climate. Beautiful women. And no feminist to be found anywhere.

  5. How do you watch that dude? Man, I find it painful to listen to that cripple. I haven’t come across one video where he’s happy, and I watched quite a few last summer when I had 5+ weeks of holidays from a terminated work contract.
    Everything about his delivery is dark and negative, he has this crippled body posture, the sad eyes – man, stand the fuck up!
    Some youtube-commenter mentioned that Peterson and his son were on antidepressants. I found that very interesting and tried to find more about it, here it is:
    https://youtu.be/x35Rbe81vkU
    I tell you what, he’s a freakin’ loser if he needs shit like that. There’s therapy for that. Proven therapy, documented on thousands upon thousands of hours of recorded sessions. True cause-effect. No fluffy feel-good-“so-how-are-you-today?”-shit, but hardcore digging inside the patient’s subconscious source of negativity and releasing it, so it can go away.
    Listen to Peterson, he says he takes two kinds of drugs, the second of which is, as he says, not reducing negative emotions, but increasing positives. WHAT? YOU RETARDED FOOL! How about getting the negative shit out of you, creating a neutral baseline AND THEN, decide weather you wanna change things in your life to make it more positive.
    No, seriously, a clinical psychologist, taking drugs… man… what a bunch of crap. I can’t respect him. I suspect a huge chunk of his intellectual abilities to be affected by his mental sickness, drugs ain’t helping it. You flush in chemicals to reduce psychosomatic muscular tension – yeah right, but he totally ignores that there is severe side effects over the long term. Tell me what you want but this guy hasn’t figured it out, that thing called inner peace. He’s freakin’ far away from it, I can tell you that.

    1. That’s interesting. The side effects of SSRIs are so bad that plenty of people who should take them refuse to, which I found out after some research that was prompted by me discovering that a girl I was seeing was on such anti-depressants but only took them intermittently.

      I normally don’t watch his videos. Instead, I listen to them when I’m doing chores or do bodyweight exercises at home. I also have the impression that his posture is quite poor.

      1. To clarify, I don’t have a problem with antidepressants if there is a clear case for it, and it is clear from the start, that the use will be for a limited time. I have taken Temesta, which is not SSRI, but technically a Benzo. Doc gave me a prescription for 20 pills, I took seven of them, gave him back the rest.
        But: we had a specific situation which justified it (he was away for two weeks, and we were stuck in the middle between two sessions and I was feeling that muscular tension Peterson talks about). After the next session I didn’t need them anymore, because, well… he is doing his job and we both worked through it. Temesta allowed me to sleep again, but the next day I hated it, because I can’t stand having a fuzzy head, like from weed.
        In any case, my stance is this: There is no reason to take psychoactive drugs over an extended period of time. Therapy, that’s what works. And the few cases where therapy doesn’t work, are as rare as an obese chick actually having thyroid problems, or other health issues where obesity cannot be handled by nutrition and exercise.
        I’m not a doctor, but Peterson looks like he could get his shit together if he WANTED to.
        Does he want to give up his crippled position? That’s the question.

      2. I never used SSRIs or pills. My depression went away when my environment changed.

        I think its questionable to see pills as the answer, as some research indicated forest retreats “suppressed” depression. If it was a regular sickness to be beat with pills that makes no sense. Imo maybe its a faulty self-defense mechanism of the human self gone haywire, as stuck in a negative feedback loop like a vicious cycle.

    2. A clinical psychologist believing in anti-depressants isn’t really uncommon. And i can’t say all anti-depressants are bad in all situations. But i would say that 95% of the time it’s not worth the damage it causes. Brainchemistry is a very risky thing to manipulate. And many of the chemicals are known to be highly damaging. Besides that i don’t believe it’s a long-term solution. Even if a anti-depressant would be save and effective. It’s not going to solve real life problems. JP has some good points on some subjects. On others i totally disagree. He’s clearly intelligent. That doesn’t make him right on everything. Calling him retarded isn’t justified in my opinion. I would say he has little real life experience on some issues. He may have been reading and talking about stuff. But how many modern western sluts has he dated for example? So how can he possibly understand what young men are experiencing in the field? He doesn’t. He lives in a more theoretical world.

      1. ” Calling him retarded isn’t justified in my opinion.”
        Fair enough, it’s your opinion. Let me back up mine:

        Retarded means: “a slowness or limitation in intellectual understanding and awareness, emotional development, academic progress, etc. ”

        –> “limitation in intellectual understanding and awareness”
        Hell yeah, his awareness AS WELL as his intellectual understanding of how the human psyche works is limited. He has a huge blind spot, which is his own personality disorders.
        Or, to put it in a more street-smart way: Your own fart don’t stink.

        NB: I don’t believe he is clinically retarded, of course (like someone with Down Syndrome). He is just acting retarded as a defense mechanism, putting up a wall, to not stir up his own pot of emotional shit inside him. It works well as it blinds the masses. The side effects are the muscular tensions he feels – clearly a psychosomatic issue, which he treats with pills. A real hero, eh?
        Get your shit together, Jordan.

      2. Neutralrandomthoughts: I don’t think he’s a hero. He’s just a guy trying to make a difference in his own way. And just like most people he has his own struggles. I don’t believe the same things he does. I don’t think all that self-sacrifice bullshit is worth anything. I think it’s mostly coming from a christian perspective. And looking at his deteriorating health. He would probably be better off if he takes a break from that. He should indeed take care of his own stuff. But i don’t feel the need to bash him. He’s trying to do what he believes is right. And i wish him well. Even if i don’t share all his perspectives. I don’t have hostile feelings towards him. Nor do i expect much from him.

      3. “I don’t think all that self-sacrifice bullshit is worth anything. I think it’s mostly coming from a christian perspective. ”

        Very true, I fully agree with you, Ben. That whole “turn the other cheek” is a big bunch of bullshit. The thing the bully is most afraid of is the victim fighting back. Appeasement is ineffective to say the least.

      4. Turn the other cheek is psychological warfare. It makes them think youre crazy. It can be effective, it was effective in an age where physical violence was king, the odd man out got the most traction.

    1. Peterson did great in this interview. Not that it matters. They are already spinning this around. They are putting the focus on so called internet harassment of Cathy Newman. So even if he did great in the interview. They’ll still paint this picture of his violent rightwing supporters bullying this poor defenceless strong independent woman. And every comment they’ll make will be painted like an extension of Peterson’s views. That’s why you shouldn’t give interviews with leftwing media. They’ll twist the story anyway. Even if you win the debate without falling into any traps. They’ll simply twist it into a victimised woman narrative. If you lose the debate they’ll present you like an idiot. If you win they’ll present you like the women hating bully. He lost the moment he agreed to do the interview. They’ll use the internet comments to show how dangerous his following is. They’ll use it to justify censorship in the future.

    2. Beat you to it by a couple days :-p (on the other thread).

      Anyways, just like Aaron I tend to listen to him in the background while Im doing chores. Still, while he has admitted to being depressive and being prone to alcoholism, I also remember him saying somewhere that his recent activism and fame were taking a toll on his health.

    3. I hit the “post” button a paragraph too early.

      I meant to say that if you look at him in his more recent appearances and compare to his older videos, his health certainly seems to be deteriorating over time.

  6. It’s interesting about the Chinese/foreign ownership of Canadian real estate. Anecdotally, it seems that buyers are indeed non-resident. Indeed, I hear of foreigners plopping down money (leading to price escalation)…similar to why Switzerland is so damn expensive when ex-pats are armed with housing allowances that drive up the local real estate market.

    Yet there was a recent statistics report showing foreign ownership of real estate was less than what the media (and locals) claim. This Canadian real estate doomer (on real estate) commented on that: http://www.greaterfool.ca/2017/12/19/the-obvious-5/

    As for Canada being “cucked”…is it any wonder at all why the national animal and the nickname for Canadians are both…the “Beaver”? (In fact, the Toronto coat of arms has a beaver, as shown here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Toronto)

    For those not familiar with what “beaver” can also mean…check here: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=beaver

  7. If you want evidence of Canada being a shit hole, take a look at the recent, RAPID downfall of a provincial conservative leader…and just mere months before an election:

    http://nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-browns-darkest-moment-has-let-the-sun-shine-for-ontario-liberals

    The sickest part is this quote from the story:

    “The new leader will almost certainly have to be a woman, as choosing a man is far too dangerous in today’s climate.”

    The whole “me too” movement is simply a power grab for women. Women can only take power via default and pretty much silencing their (male) competition with accusations. So brave.

    We truly do have to “enjoy the decline” as Aaron Clarey preaches!

    1. In today’s political climate it is enough to claim that there are anonymous accusations of sexual assault to ruin someone’s careers. It is completely ridiculous. But, hey, according to feminists, women never ever lie, so we can do away with due process, but of course only for womyn.

    2. Jordan Peterson compares Canada with places like Africa or Iran. So yea within that comparison he’s right. But looking at the feminist crazy stuff. And the way Western society is deteriorating. Canada is a feminist shithole. It depends on your viewpoint. I think one of the most frustrating things about the western world. Would be the deterioration. It seems so pointless to invest in a society that’s slowly self-destructing. It’s like watching a carcrash in slowmotion.

  8. I think basically what you said, that he acts as a kind of father-figure for the fatherless, sums up what I think of Jordan Peterson.

    I tried to get into him after seeing your remarks on the Self-Authoring Suite. I read up about the Big Five and even bought his version of the test — I also have access to his self-authoring suite. In the end though, I find that what he says is common sense: clean your room and set goals. Maybe there are many young men out there who really haven’t done this before coming across Peterson, but I find that, putting aside his opposition to SJWs, his message really boils down to this. His stuff probably helps men who perform poorly due to lack of external encouragement, to other men I suspect it really isn’t exceptionally useful. He likes to give the figure of helping thousands of male minority students in IIRC the Netherlands, but he never gives specifics — I suspect those were largely low performing students who might have been pulled up a bit.

    I respect him for standing up to SJWs, but he’s not some kind of new Socrates. You are not a religious person, I know, but personally I found his reading of religious symbols and myths really banal. He equates the Garden of Eden myth and Buddha leaving home to search for enlightenment to some kind of Jungian collective unconsciousness idea of realizing that one’s parents don’t know everything. His reading can be justified as much as literary analysis can be, but it seems incredibly facile and superficial to me.

    Furthermore, I dislike his boomer emphasis on the “individual”. We don’t need to go into communist hiveminds to realize that for most of human history, group identity has been part of any successful civilization. The whole Enlightenment idea of the “individual” mutated into present day SJWism, meanwhile from the beginnings of recorded history, empires have always forged themselves on a unifying group identity. The leftists who welcome 2 million savages claim that the savages are individuals with as much right as natives to their countries. Deracinated “nice” middle-class Europeans with no group identity are getting cucked by savages with no such “principles”.

  9. Aaron, love the new site here. Anyway, what you say about Canada is pretty spot on. Typically you have liberals who love to do their “muh poor brown people” routine, and you certainly get that in sickening fashion, but these people here in Vancouver are so ridiculously cucked that they don’t like to talk about the fact that the Chinese, who are NAM’s and thus usually not privileged as Victims, are buying up loads of property and then not even living in it. I haven’t checked recently, but just last year there was over 10% vacancy rate on properties in Vancouver.

    Actually, I take some of that back, it’s in many ways the same as in all White Countries, with lots of leftists, but also totally traitorous politicians that don’t advocate for the people. A poll that came out early in 2017 showed that 51% of Canadians were in favour of a Muslim Ban, but of course all of our politicians loudly denounced Trump.

    1. “year there was over 10% vacancy rate on properties in Vancouver. ”

      Eh…. total property (all segments), or just residential? Because if it’s total, it includes office space and other non residential in which case the bubble is even bigger for the residential property market.
      In any case, I’d challenge this number. Way too low.

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