Ostroeuropa wrote:Cultural Posadism wrote:Some of his lessons are genuinely good on their own. The issue there is that those particular lessons aren't really original creations of his, nor do they show any particularly unique insight on his part. They're self-help platitudes, clichés and common sense (in the Gramscian sense of the term). Good platitudes and clichés and common sense, but to paraphrase the Chapo guys: if lots of young men need to read that stuff on some bizarre Canadian professor's self-help book to know it, it kinda makes it feel like kids aren't being parented anymore.
Also, yes, cat.
cat.
Always pet cats you encounter on the street. Cats are good and when they boop your hands with their widdle noses you get the good brain juices.
Aye, but that's the point isn't it. His incredibly basic platitudes helping millions of men reveals just how profoundly society has failed them and indoctrinated them into a way of thinking that is fundamentally against their own interests, neglected them and so on.
True, although I imagine we're not gonna fully agree on the specifics of this.
It's probably part of the reason he's so hated, he's causing certain types of folk to become dangerously close to the self-awareness they so ardently avoid when they have to argue he's said nothing of worth and someone replies "He told me it's okay to look after myself the same way I would someone else. He's a revolutionary.".
The thing is, if he was really encouraging critical thinking and self-awareness that much, he would not have been embraced by conservative and reactionary media. The fact that most of the criticism he receives comes from the left, and that much of that criticism is directed at his traditionalism on both social and economic issues, should probably tell you how conducive his work has been to anything even remotely revolutionary. Whatever you might think about his anti-feminism specifically, his political views outside of that also skew very reactionary and encourage his followers to accept and obey the most deeply rooted elements of the social, cultural, economic and political status quo. IIRC, his retort to post-modernist critiques of psychotherapy as a tool of social control was to treat that as a positive thing, that controlling non-conformists is good.
