23 Comments

Helen Joyce and Jonathan Haidt are my intellectual crushes. So well spoken. I could listen all day.

Expand full comment
Jul 4, 2023Liked by Peter Boghossian

Wow. I am in Germany and stayed awake until 2:00 pm. This is amazing. I love Helen and saw nearly every lecture/discussion of her, but your conversation with her its's totally different and SOMETHING ELSE. R-e-s-p-e-c-t!!! 🔝🔝🔝

About religion I had exactly the same conversation with my husband yesterday. I'm watching the series American Gods (based in Neil Gaiman book). It's about a dispute between old gods from different religions and the new ones: technology, media, social media. I am an atheist but I was telling him that I can see in the serie a similarity with WokusDei. At least the old goods in the series are based in reality: Ostera/Spring, Thor/Thunder, Bilquis/Love, etc whether the things woke believe in are total mental and the damage for society is huge. Maybe religion has indeed a structural role in society, and that's why it needs to be integrated as Ken Wilbur says.

Again: CONGRATS Peter!!! 👏👏👏

Expand full comment
author

Thanks. We have some fantastic content coming out over the next few month. I hope you find it enjoyable and engaging!

Expand full comment

"You are on the wrong side of history."

That is a phrase straight out Marxist ideology. The end of history is when communism is achieved. Marxists say that you are on the right side of history when you become an activist devoted to the dialectical process of moving toward communism. In other words, you incorporate the "critical consciousness" of woke cult religion and you do the work required of a religious devotee. In contrast, you are on the "wrong side of history" if you don't believe in that religion, you disagree with Marxist ideology, and you are not interested in helping them destroy Western democracies and bring on communism like a good Marxist should. One good source I can think of is "Race Marxism" by James Lindsay, who has also talked about this topic in some of his podcasts on https://newdiscourses.com/

Expand full comment
author

That's the exact phrase people I *have* been friends with use to condemn me.

Expand full comment

James Lindsay's latest podcast titled "An Open Letter to Woke Youth" published 7/10/2023 discusses the woke use of "You are on the wrong side of history." You can listen to this 22 minute podcast at https://newdiscourses.com/2023/07/an-open-letter-to-woke-youth/ (Listen at 3 min, 5 min and 11 minutes.). Lindsay says specifically that the woke movement is a historical movement in the Marxist sense in which activists are historical change agents. You must be a woke activist to be on the right side of history. Everyone else is on the "wrong side of history." Lindsay is not alone is saying this. Books by Paul Kengor, PhD, and curriculum by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation say exactly the same thing.

Expand full comment

That's why I explained where it comes from. I have learned about this phrase from following James Lindsay. He can probably fill you in on the details if you would like to learn more.

Expand full comment

I expect Peter is well familiar with James' work & position ... 😉🙂

WSJ: "Social-Justice Warriors Won’t Listen, but You Should

To counter extreme views, it’s necessary for you to understand them—and that they’re sincerely held.

By Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay"

https://www.wsj.com/articles/social-justice-warriors-wont-listen-but-you-should-11570832255

Archived Link: https://archive.ph/CAEEf

And:

"Deluded Departments

Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay on the contemporary sophistry that's poisoning academic philosophy"

https://www.philosophersmag.com/opinion/207-deluded-departments

Expand full comment

The last minutes (i.e., the analogy to the Japanese soldiers, and on) were eye opening. Never thought of that. Good work!

Expand full comment
Jul 5, 2023·edited Jul 6, 2023

Yes. That bit has been haunting me, because I think it’s true. It’s worrisome, because so many of those parents are upper middle-class, and have positions of power and influence.

Expand full comment

I highly recommend Helen Joyce's book.

Expand full comment
author

Ditto.

Expand full comment

I am now asking trans widows, women who divorced crossdressing men, to contact me for the purpose of the only data collection on us in the world at this time. If James Cantor, a "sexologist" can cite a study where N= 25 on the subject of convicted child sexual molesters, then my ongoing statistics on women like me can start at 34, where we're at now. Of the 34, 14 of us lived for a time in poverty when our ex stopped paying child support. 13 of us were coerced/induced/urged to engage in "sex role play" involving use of a strap on dildo. Of these women, 5 were raped, some repeatedly, when hubby decided to switch roles. None of the rapes was reported to law enforcement. 12 of us caught him wearing our clothing, and some of that goes underreported. Link to the 20 Questions Survey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H4aDv-AmMk&t=10s

Expand full comment

I admire your tenacity and your "ubiquity" ... 😉🙂

Expand full comment

Consider the ubiquity of "Sophie" Steven Cook, advisor to The Crown Prosecution Service, advising that wives like me, trying to preserve enough money to feed the children, are "abusive" to their "trans" husbands, for refusing to fund the electrolysis, designer wardrobe, breast implants (most often the second must be bigger than the first) and the size 13 designer shoes, the Ulta make up, the false eyelashes, the wigs, &etc. Thanks, Steersman, as always.

Expand full comment
founding

Happy 4th of July! Your conversation with Helen Joyce left me with a lot to think about, thank you for sharing! You both provided great insight into what contributes to the creation of ideological impasses and the shutting down of debate. I really respect your candid conversation regarding the new atheist movement. I was thinking about Helen's comments about women's sports, and she provides what I think is a good reason to avoid emotion and a good example of how to avoid emotion on that topic. She told us the most effective logical argument https://youtu.be/ZG9_lcln7FU?t=1306 and possibly told us why other logical arguments are not effective. https://youtu.be/ZG9_lcln7FU?t=1284 What made the effective example stand out from the others to me was that it passes the emotional sniff test. She presents a logical argument regarding weightlifting competition separated by weight and sex. In the example, men are competing against men and women are competing against women. When her conversation partner considers her logical argument and then asks, “how do I feel about this?” There is no emotional response to utilize as information, only reason and evidence. The other ineffective examples include men competing in women’s sports. As Helen pointed out, that doesn’t pass the emotional sniff test.

I agree with your assessment that a frustrating amount of Social Justice advocates have trained themselves to not engage and to not know the arguments. https://youtu.be/ZG9_lcln7FU?t=3090 I think everyone has the potential to find themselves in that mindset and it is common enough to find in any group that becomes large enough. I suspect it was not a totally conscious decision for many and that they had assistance in coming to these conclusions; the thought-terminating responses are clichés after all. https://youtu.be/ZG9_lcln7FU?t=1898 The cliché is packaged into a nice pair of stimulus (the response to one’s claim) and response (how to interpret and react to that response) while ironically labeling the stimulus a dog whistle. https://youtu.be/ZG9_lcln7FU?t=3042

Expand full comment
author

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Helen provided us with a lot to think about.

Expand full comment
founding

The Cliché of White Fragility

There is a striking example of this conditioning in White Fragility. By the end of the author’s note, before even reaching the introduction, the reader knows the author’s ideas presented in the book will be rooted in something called “identity politics”. The reader may not know what to think about identity politics yet, but the reader already knows how to feel about identity politics and social justice. The reader has also been introduced to a new stimulus and is possibly already entertaining a corresponding conversation-terminating cliché as a credible response.

“You could not have had a conversation about women’s right to vote and men’s need to grant it without naming women and men. Not naming the groups that face barriers only serves those who already have access; the assumption is that the access enjoyed by the controlling group is universal.”

- Robin Diangelo. White Fragility. Pg XIV.

Since, “You could not have had a conversation about W’s X and Y’s Z without naming W and Y” is true for all possible values of W, X, Y, and Z, how can the sentence be significant while saying nothing? If the sentence is not an appeal to reason, what is the sentence intended to appeal to? Does it pass the emotional sniff test? How would the reader feel if the conversation about women’s right to vote could not have happened? The author then redirects the freshly acquired anger of the reader to the subject of the second sentence, the immoral people who already had access and withheld access as a means of control. The last part of the second sentence highlights the author’s mastery of language and manipulation; when the reader attempts to share the author’s message with friends and family, the reader will encounter all the evidence one would need for the newly discovered paradigm, the oppressor’s creed predicted by the author straight from the mouths of their family and friends, “The US isn’t systemically racist and sexist anymore, access is already universal.”

Expand full comment

I agree with her more and more...

Expand full comment

Helen Joyce is fighting the good fight for women,children and society at large.I thank you.Truth matters!

Expand full comment

So I'm clear, trans men, being biological female, should be allowed in women's spaces. Never really thought about that, but are there in fact such people who wish to be in women's spaces (since they see themselves as men)? I'm confused...guess I'll have to just go listen to the podcast. :-)

Expand full comment

Trans men (women claiming a man identity) should not be allowed in women’s sports if they’re taking regular doses of testosterone, which most of them are. This is the equivalent of doping, which gives them an unfair advantage on the individual level. It can’t make them the biological equivalent of men, which would be impossible anyway, and they would still be at a disadvantage if competing against men. However, I think Helen errs when she says women claiming a man identity should be able to compete in women’s sports, without also noting the caveat that testosterone ingestion would be a dealbreaker.

Expand full comment
deletedJul 4, 2023·edited Jul 9, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
author

Over the next few weeks, I'll be releasing conversations about exactly this: The Substitution Hypothesis.

Expand full comment