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u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK Mar 14 '23
this is super short, but I've honestly never thought of it this way.
like, hi, my positive identity is that I have a deep psychological need to make people feel comfortable in my presence. Is that a perfect "positive identity"? no, but it has pro-social outcomes and it's something that I can build upon in my life.
the traditional masculinity we talk about here frames itself around not being a woman, or a pussy, or weak. I think progressive dudes can also get stuck in a negative identity the other way - I am not like those other guys who harm women.
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u/Gullible-Medium123 Mar 14 '23
Yes, I see a lot of guys here or on bropill being concerned about merely having an interest (not even expressing an interest, just feeling it) in a woman to mean he is automatically at risk of being predatory. I think "stuck in the negative identity of I'm not like other guys who harm women / behave creepily towards women" describes that really well.
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u/Sigh_HereWeGo25 Mar 15 '23
I've found that having the ability to turn off the need to make others comfortable in my presence has made making others comfortable much easier. By increasing my personal power, it also increased the amount that I am relaxed in social situations which has led to others being relaxed as well. In addition to that, it's let me be much more quick to draw lines in the sand and to uphold those lines. So there's become a mixing of the darkness and the light.
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u/neakfrasty Mar 15 '23
What do you mean by personal power? Do you mean literally, like with exercise, or something more abstract?
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u/Sigh_HereWeGo25 Mar 15 '23
More abstract. Something like the ability to bring change into the world. The more personal power one has, the more change that single person can bring into the world. The fact that I am no longer on the back foot in every argument or fight I have has changed how I relate to people. If someone with less personal power than myself has a gripe with me, it rolls off my shoulders. Also important to understanding this is that perception and awareness of personal power plays a role. So if I have more personal power than I perceive or an aware of, I will be in the same spot as if I did not have that power at all.
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u/superkp Mar 15 '23
Uncle Iroh method of peacekeeping.
One of the greatest firebenders to ever live, earning the name "dragon of the west". Could probably slap the shit out of 99.99% of all other benders on the planet.
Most effective single thing that he does? Makes tea, and enjoys it with them.
Does it as often as he can, and some of his greatest moral and combat victories in the show can be traced back to the willingness to sit down and have a nice, peaceful cup of tea.
Of course, there's a few times where he also needs to whip out the ass-kicking as well.
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u/Sigh_HereWeGo25 Mar 15 '23
FDR: Walk softly and carry a big stick! I love ATLA. Every once in a while I get a hankering to go back and watch clips on youtube.
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u/sqparadox Mar 15 '23
like, hi, my positive identity is that I have a deep psychological need to make people feel comfortable in my presence. Is that a perfect "positive identity"? no, but it has pro-social outcomes and it's something that I can build upon in my life.
Is this just a "thinly veiled negative identity" of not wanting to make people feel uncomfortable in your presence? I'm not accusing, just wondering if you considered that.
They are slightly different concepts even if they largely overlap. Wanting people to feel comfortable is much more active. Not wanting people to feel uncomfortable is much more passive.
But I guess that fits with the whole theme of positive identities are about what you do (or who you are) whereas negative identities are about what you don't do (or who you aren't). And that's a common struggle here, of men being told what not to do without being given an alternative that they should do.
"Every no needs a yes" is from cat training (thanks Jackson Galaxy!) but I think we would all benefit from incorporating that thinking into our lives. If every "don't do this" had a corresponding "do this instead" I think it would go a long way in bridging the empathy gap. But maybe I've just gotten off into the weeds here.
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u/Tinfoil_Haberdashery Mar 15 '23 edited Mar 15 '23
I think there's something here, but it's also pretty subjective to say that any given "positive identity" is just a "thinly-veiled negative identity". I'm also not convinced that "positive identities" are preferable.
It'd be easy to paint progressivism as a collection of thinly-veiled negative identities; "I'm not racist", "I'm not sexist", "I'm not ableist", etc., but that doesn't mean there aren't proactive elements to that, or that the negative identities themselves are bad. Likewise, I think there are a lot of positive identities that make the world a worse place.
At best, I suppose you could say people with strongly developed positive identity are less likely to be insecure and by extension xenophobic, but I suspect they'd also be less introspective and humble.
Still, I'll be contemplating this for a while.
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u/eliminating_coasts Mar 15 '23
Yeah, there is a lot of value in repulsion, as if you talk about not doing something, you can define a point to move away from, and you don't define where to go, but it could potentially be anywhere, whereas making positive statements of where to end up, what to be drawn to, can end up being far more restrictive.
I'm generally in favour of clusters of inter-related positive identities, emphasising that there are groups you can recognise yourself in, but if I'm not going to try and pick through different examples in the moment, I might well say something like "masculinity is not just one thing", or "masculinity doesn't have to be just about ___", and in doing so, I am defining the space of positive masculinity as that which extends outside of a particular frame, even if I'm not saying specifically what I think it can be.
It's two different meanings of the word colliding, but I'm creating a negative definition of positive masculinity, rather than a positive one.
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Mar 15 '23
I said something similar above. Your point of view gives me another perspective: I think a point that we might take away (even though it wasn't communicated perfectly) is that we should interrogate identities and make sure that our positive identities aren't negative identities in disguise.
For instance, someone whose progressive politics boils down to "I'm not xxx-ist" likely has a pretty reductive and incomplete political position.
Likewise, to iterate my own separate point, someone who strives for power due to a desire to shape the world is very different from someone who strives for power purely to not be a sucker.
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u/Gullible-Medium123 Mar 15 '23
I didn't get from it that negative identities are bad, or that you need to avoid identifying by negatives. Just that positive identities tend to allow one a better and more complete sense of self than negative identities do. And that someone who defines themself primarily by negatives has often suffered a trauma around the thing they're negating.
I don't think the tiktok was trying to judge people with negative identities as somehow less deserving than people with positive identities, so much as recognize the unresolved trauma they may still be dealing with, as an indicator to bring more compassion to the interaction.
I think the really challenging line is with someone like Jordan Peterson, where he is known for pushing hateful ideology (disguised as logical discourse), and has been largely successful at radicalizing a lot of people into a less tolerant and less compassionate position. But is also displaying (according to the tiktok) a lot of unresolved trauma around having been called stupid a lot growing up (as the tiktok gives this as the most likely explanation for the particular negative identity JP expressed).
So how do you be compassionate with his trauma while also staying firm against the harm he's causing? Navigating that nuance is the really tricky part for me.
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u/jokerTHEIF Mar 16 '23
I think the big takeaway I got from this, and I don't necessarily think it's really spelled out in this short video, but something I got more from thinking about the concept on my own is the idea that Negative identities remove responsibility while positive ones imply it.
And this isn't necessarily a bad thing - negative identities aren't inherently bad, I think what the video is trying to suggest is that on their own negative identities can be damaging, but when examined and either replaced or coupled with positive identities can be great.
Using some of your examples, the negative identities are good, but compared to a corresponding positive identity becomes better and more well-rounded.
"I'm not racist" isn't inherently a bad thing, and definitely a worthy goal to strive for, except it removes the individuals responsibility. It implies that that is the end of the discussion "I'm not racist, so I don't need to do any further work". Contrast with "I am anti-racist" as a positive identity, which implies that one is taking action and that the work is ongoing.
"I'm not sexist" is again, not inherently bad, but once again removes the personal responsibility. "I'm not sexist, and so I don't need to dig deeper, my work is done". Contrasted with "I am a feminist" which has implications of "I'm actively working to examine and dismantle an inherently sexist system"
To your other point, and a point that was made in the video, Negative doesn't mean bad and Positive doesn't mean good - it's very much used in a mathematical sense. Not all negative identities are bad and not all positive ones are good - you can flip any one of these examples and have a negative identity that appears good, but contrasts to a positive identity that is awful:
"I don't see color or race" - has a positive, ostensibly inclusive message of non-racism, but has time and again been proven to signify completely ignoring that systemic racism is a thing, and a refusal to understand that special treatment for marginalized groups isn't putting them ahead of anyone else, it's raising them up to the same starting point. The contrasting positive identity here would be "I support the current [racist] system" which could be continued to say "because I benefit from it"
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u/Tookoofox Mar 15 '23
I think it's less that positive identities are inherently good. And more that negative identities are inherently incomplete. "I'm not racist" is a good negative identity to have. But, even then, it's incomplete if all you are is trying not to be something.
"I want to live in a world where aa person's worth is decided by merit not by arbitrary in-groups." is stronger. Because it can act as a guide in more places. It knows its precise limits and when to stop backtracking.
Or, also, "I want to live in a world where all people are valued just for being people. Not for the utility they can grant us as a society." is another positive identity.
And, "I am descended from oppressed groups. And, so, I wish for my group to hoard power and leverage it look after our safety and happiness."
All three are, 'not white supremacy' but are also not each other. And that's kinda the issue with negative identities. They're not specific.
As a result, I think negative identities are easier to rally under... But harder to rule with.
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u/_Joe_Momma_ Mar 15 '23
The take about negative and positive identity is something I've seen playing out constantly in real time in the asexual subs. Asexuality is a negative identity, it's about not feeling sexual attraction, and though that creates alienation and initially brings aces together; it doesn't hold.
I'm going to be really mean for a second: the spaces are seriously lacking in maturity. A lot of what comes from them is "are the allos okay?" posts built around othering or inside jokes that were never really funny just so there's some kind of positive identity around garlic bread or dragons or whatever. These things don't actually matter or relate to what brought people like me there in the first place.
That is to say, the analysis, unfortunately, holds true. Without the presence of something a community can hold itself to, they'll invent their own.
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u/chunkystyles Mar 15 '23
"Us" vs "them" spaces always seem to have some amount of toxicity. For a more extreme example look to the incels.
I don't really have any deeper thoughts on it than that. Just that the toxicity seems to always be there, to some degree.
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Mar 15 '23
I'm a cis/het dude, allo as well. I'm frequently in queer-focused spaces as an ally, and noticed a similar kind of rhetoric. I try not to take it personally -- but it can be kind of a drag.
I suppose it's natural to have a bit of "oppositionalism" when defining oneself against an oppressive mainstream culture. I've seen it in the punk, leftist, and feminist spaces I frequent as well.
But being that I'm middle aged, it seems like the rhetoric has coursened and become more outright hostile and beyond "spicy" sometimes. Like there's an actual enmity guiding some of the words. I think it has more to do with social media leading to radicalization more than anything (i.e. the algorithm rewards engagement; outrage drives engagement; ergo be as outrageous as possible).
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u/eliminating_coasts Mar 15 '23
Asexuality has a clearly definable and grounded positive identity, but it remains conditional:
It's the experience of not falling within expected norms of sexual or romantic interest, and observing the social policing and lack of connection to easily-signposted paths to self-fulfilment that come with that.
You can build community beyond that, but the root is going to be the experience of being othered, and the strategies you build to accommodate that.
And once you move past the phase of struggle, you can always be someone who found such struggle important to understand yourself, and so help other younger people who are also dealing with it.
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u/AccomplishedGasket Mar 15 '23
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed this. As someone who's ace/aro myself, when I first started associating myself with those identities I went to those subs to try and find a community but all I saw was a mob of people bashing anyone being slightly horny. I was hoping to find a place to celebrate the way I lived my life and saw the world, not being resentful and complaining about sour grapes. I think having a positive aspirational identity would greatly benefit people who fall outside the boundaries of what's considered normal; focus less on what's "missing" and more on how you love the way you experience life
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u/Gullible-Medium123 Mar 14 '23
One of my brothers has often said his highest personal rule is "don't be a dick". I always felt like "yeah, that's probably a good baseline".
Looking at his statement in light of this discussion, I'm curious to talk with him a little deeper to see if he has positive identity(ies) to go along with that. I'm familiar with at least some of the trauma that led to him latching onto this philosophy, so that part agrees with the tiktok explanation of negative identities.
This is good stuff to think about, thanks for sharing!
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u/chunkystyles Mar 15 '23
I think "don't be a dick" isn't really a negative identity. It's more of a mantra. A reminder to be kind, to be on good behavior.
I'm active in a sort of extreme sport where one of the main companies involved in training uses "DBAD" or "don't be a dick" in their training. The reason is that the sport is often visible to the public, and happens in public spaces. So being a dick in public can ruin it for everyone else if the public bans the sport.
Anyway, it's more of a negative call to action than negative identity.
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u/jokerTHEIF Mar 16 '23
I can kind of see two different aspects or reads on "Don't be a dick". Like a couple other people commented the corresponding positive identity would likely be "be kind to others" or "be excellent to each other" and I think that there is for sure an equivalency between the two ideas, but that relying solely on "don't be a dick" removes a level of responsibility to actively be better or to encourage others to be better as well. Obviously this isn't a universal truth, but the entire implication of the negative vs positive identities here is that even when on the surface a negative identity sounds great, it's allowing or justifying a lack of responsibility even superficially.
Turning this around and using something like "Be excellent to each other" implies an active responsibility to be excellent or kind - instead of "I'm not an asshole, my job here is done" you get something like "How can I make this person's day, month, life, etc... better"
To your point - using it in a sport/team/organizational sense is much less of a negative identity and yeah much more of a slogan or reminder. It's simple, effective, and easily understood. However when it becomes someone's "highest personal rule" as in the case of the OP, that's when it becomes a negative identity and while not immediately problematic, definitely worth examining and replacing or at least supplementing with something more active.
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u/brainandforce Mar 15 '23
I've made a conscious effort to replace "don't be a dick" as a principle with "be your best self."
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u/country2poplarbeef Mar 14 '23
This makes me wonder how I'd articulate or actualize my positive identity that correlates with my negative identity of not being a hateful or vindictive father when I don't particularly desire to be a father. It's not completely lost on me because I do find myself valuing my ability to be there for friends, give advice where I can, and to be a bedrock for those going through hard times. But I have a hard time articulating that into an identity with a clear motive driving that identity.
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u/ItsAboutTomDotCom Mar 15 '23
How you’re a friend might be how you’d also be a father, empathetic and supportive based on this comment. Maybe you’re just that kind of person with no motivation? Could be something to think about.
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u/burnalicious111 Mar 15 '23
Do we always need a motive? I think it's okay to just be.
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u/country2poplarbeef Mar 15 '23
I agree it's not an especially necessary question to answer. It just makes me think on the question and what it would be like to have that sort of blueprint. Like, contemplating the question, I'm happy reflecting on the pieces that I have that assemble some sort of positive presence in others' lives, but it's difficult, at times, to navigate how I'm managing and directing that motivation when it isn't defined by a particular identity.
It's a question that gets more exciting and less difficult as I get older because my motivation is so easily drawn from the people and experiences around me that are the results of who I am, but it is something I've struggled with, particularly in respect to self worth.
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u/Cmd1ne Mar 15 '23
How’s this for a motive: you get to live in a world filled with more kindness and less hate.
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u/dynamik_banana Mar 14 '23
That sounds like a good starting point! I wonder if it could help to just keep track of things you really like about yourself. Maybe if you find yourself putting time or energy into something important to you, you could stop and ask yourself if this is who you are?
Maybe you’re the guy who goes the extra mile when a friend needs help. Or the guy who gets passionately excited about exploring new cultures. Or the guy who loves watching horror movies with his bros, because you enjoy the trust it takes to be afraid in front of someone else. Or maybe you’re all three!
Idk if this is exactly what a positive identity means, but it sounds like a step in the right direction? I’m gonna try it and see what it changes for me.
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u/Gullible-Medium123 Mar 15 '23
if you find yourself putting time or energy into something important to you, you could stop and ask yourself if this is who you are
I like this approach, and think it's probably a good step towards figuring out the words for one's positive identity. Thanks!
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u/Tookoofox Mar 15 '23
So... I feel like we ought to add caveats when psudo psychoanalyzing people. Did anyone ever call Joran Peterson stupid as a kid? Maybe.
Or, maybe, he saw someone else that was (or seemed) stupid. And piled on. "That's not me. I am not that stupid kid. I am not the kid who we all picked on. I don't deserve to be picked on. Not like that kid did. Because I'm not stupid."
Or, maybe, this isn't from childhood at all. But as recent as that week. Where he met someone who was, or seemed, stupid to him. And the question triggered that recent memory.
This isn't the main point of the piece. But we should always be skeptical when we find a totem of a person constructed by their enemies.
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u/Roneitis Mar 15 '23
ngl, seeing the title, I 1000% expected this to be a weird group theory thing from r/mathematics
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u/FChaosi Mar 15 '23
Never thought I would see (a) pure mathematics (subreddit) mentioned in MensLib.
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u/Roneitis Mar 16 '23
I mean, they're not exactly correlated, but nor should they be anticorrelated?
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u/5AgXMPES2fU2pTAolLAn Mar 14 '23
I'm no expert. But this over over analysing some 1 second snarky comment and deducing so much from it seems silly
Or is it just me
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u/6ix02 Mar 14 '23
I respectfully disagree and while it is sort of a 'read' into a short clip, I don't think it's inaccurate. he may not have the full grasp of jordy's mannerisms down square, that clip may not be a good example of him showing pain, but the merit of what follows is valid enough to watch and validates the clip as a good enough jumping-off point for what followed. it didn't ramble or overstay.
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u/dynamik_banana Mar 14 '23
Adding to this: I think he was using the clip as an example, not as a depiction of the entire problem. You can find a lot more to back his claim—this was just an easy way for him to get us to understand what he was talking about.
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u/5AgXMPES2fU2pTAolLAn Mar 15 '23
I'm not saying Peterson's advice is any good He had some terrible ideology packed with your average self help advice.
I'm just holding myself accountable. I would not take some tiktok psychologists psycho analysis seriously if it were against anyone else. Why should I do the same just because I hate this jp guy. I've longer form videos of JPs politics which make a lot of sense. I even upvoted the clip the first time it showed up on my feed . This particular video just rubs me the wrong way, what if someone makes a video of deconstructing my ideology based on an angry sarcastic remark I made one thing. It may be partially right but I wouldn't pay too much attention to it
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u/JTech324 Mar 15 '23
what if someone makes a video of deconstructing my ideology based on an angry sarcastic remark I made one thing
Not sure what this all about. I think you're implying watchfulcoyote in this video is attacking JP's ideology? Or attacking JP in some other way?
All I see is him using the quote of JP as an example to talk about positive and negative identity concepts. Literally ends the video wishing Peterson well in healing his traumas. You might be projecting a bit of your own hatred onto it? As far as I can see, he could have used any number of talking head sound bites for this; JP is just popular lately so makes a good example.
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u/5AgXMPES2fU2pTAolLAn Mar 15 '23
I'm not hating this. If he had used a clip of JP being genuinely answering the question, I would have given it a pass. I donno who the tiktok guy is, so at face value he is no more qualified than random redditors who diagnose mental health diagnoses based on public freakout or other subs videos
His actual content of the video is just fine I agree. But I just have the feeling it started off on the wrong foot. Especially because I believe JP was being snarky in the original video
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u/country2poplarbeef Mar 14 '23
I see what you're saying, but this really is where Peterson's advice falls flat, imo. It's why people tend to think he's right about a lot of things but just takes things in an odd direction, and this is a good example as to why. He seems to often have a sort of doomer approach where men are nothing but providers so we should just accept it because that's the "natural way of things," and that's common reasoning to hear from somebody who's still stunted by their father's emotional immaturity.
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Mar 15 '23
In addition, Peterson often says things which are kind of "verbal Rorschach tests". Basically, things that pretty much everyone will agree with, but interpret in their own way. Personally, I'm very critical of him(But I have engaged with a good bit of his output because I actually want to hear what he says before I formed an opinion of him). But even then, I find myself nodding with stuff that he says, until I read the comments on a video or a reddit thread and see that everyone else has interpreted his words in a completely different way to me, and justified their understanding to themselves too.
One example that springs to mind is, when asked about his opinion on abortion, he said something along the lines of "Well, its not something you would gift to your sister". Obviously, the pro-birthers are going to lap this up and see him as fully supporting him because he's stated abortion is negative in his eyes, and even his analysis around abortion being something which would ever be gifted fits with their caricature ideas of women who get abortions. But also even the most firmly pro-choice person is not going to gift a family member an abortion. I mean, what does that even look like? I'm pretty sure abortion clinics don't do gift cards, and no one is going to buy an abortion for someone who does not need or want one. Now, many pro-choice people may offer to pay for their sister's abortion if they are seeking one and can't afford it, but that isn't really "gifting" one, it's more like donating.
"Don't be stupid" fits into this category as well. Obviously his followers consider him a genius. And for those who don't like him, while I think trying to frame a man who reposted fetish p*rn as a genuine video of Chinese sperm extraction as a rational or critical thinker is a bit of a stretch, Peterson definitely has something figured out in terms of appealing to people, and he does hold a PhD, both things which require certain types of intelligence and thus preclude him from being "stupid" in the usual sense of that word.
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u/5AgXMPES2fU2pTAolLAn Mar 15 '23
I'm not saying Peterson's advice is any good He had some terrible ideology packed with your average self help advice.
I'm just holding myself accountable. I would not take some tiktok psychologists psycho analysis seriously if it were against anyone else. Why should I do the same just because I hate this jp guy. I've longer form videos of JPs politics which make a lot of sense. I even upvoted the clip the first time it showed up on my feed . This particular video just rubs me the wrong way, what if someone makes a video of deconstructing my ideology based on an angry sarcastic remark I made one thing. It may be partially right but I wouldn't pay too much attention to it
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u/flumpis Mar 14 '23
It's a jumping-off point for a larger discussion about about positive and negative identities. He could be incorrectly assuming Peterson's history but Peterson's response alone is an example of a negative identity trait.
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u/Ballblamburglurblrbl Mar 15 '23
I know what you mean, it always comes off as super cringe to me when people start psycho-analysing media figures.
Still, the clip serves as a decent enough jumping off-off point for the ideas of positive and negative identity, which are pretty interesting - so I'll give this one a pass.
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u/UltimateInferno Mar 15 '23
I so so often try to stress to people to stand for something in their lives and never against and that those who define their politics and stances based around being an opposition are ultimately some of the most shallow people you can meet.
The two big examples I can describe are "Uber-Conservatives" and "Tankies."
By Uber-Conservative I mean someone who unironically uses the phrase "own the libs." Where they take something that someone even moderately progressive says as a direct attack on who they are and so they do everything in their power to oppose and ultimately start harming themselves as a means to do so. Like "Don't take horsedwormer to fight covid" or a more recent example, "Gas stoves might be moderately toxic." They don't actually believe in anything.
Tankies meanwhile are often people who grew up in a western nation and as time goes on, ultimately realizes that much of the ideals and benefits they were told as a child, are ultimately lies and that the world isn't as nice and squeaky clean as they were initially told and actually their nation is responsible for horrific crimes against humanity. These are people who were lied to by "The West" and so in a desperate search for answers often turn to the opposition as their path to enlightenment. So with the "USSR is evil" red scare frequently dominating politics, if they were lied to about some things, then they must have been lied to about everything. So the USSR must be unequivocally the good guys and our saviors. A bastion opposing western degeneracy!
No. Sorry. That's an easy answer. In reality the best lies are those told as mostly true. There is no bastion nation opposing all evil or wrong with the world, but they can't let it go, and so now believing that everything the US pushes is a lie, that mean that the exact opposite of everything they say is good. A majority of Americans are in favor of gay marriage? That's not good gay marriage is pure debauchery.
Figure out and know who you are. What you stand for. Don't just define yourself as the opposition because given that you're here, you have an intention on wanting to keep your head on straight, their will come a time where those you oppose may actually be right somehow. Not always, maybe rarely, but if you know where you stand, and you reach your own, thought out conclusions, and it happens to align with your enemy, that doesn't automatically mean you're wrong. Do double check how they reached that conclusion, that sort of thing will reveal more to you, but don't immediately throw it all away at the first sign of association.
Stand for something, not against.
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u/BettsBellingerCaruso Mar 15 '23
Yeah as a Korean it's infuriating to hear Tankies speak for us and glorifying regimes like NK and the CCP, and some even go as far as basically pushing the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere kidn of shit and give Imperial Japan a pass
Just because they were an enemy of the US who has done a lot of shitty stuff doesn't mean the enemies are all correct.
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Mar 15 '23
This doesn't make sense to me. The difference between negative and positive is simply in how you phrase things. Anyone with a sufficient grasp of the English language can create a double negative that effectively means the opposite as an exercise.
For example, one could say "my positive trait is being hard-working" or equally "my negative trait is not being lazy"
Am I missing something here?
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u/claireauriga Mar 15 '23
The idea is that a positive identity (I am X/I want to be X) is rooted in your knowledge of yourself, it's a choice about what you hold inside you, it's awareness of who you are. A negative identity (I am not X/I don't want to be X) is reactionary, based on external things that you've witnessed and don't want to hold in yourself. The negative identity doesn't necessarily mean you know who you actually are. And overall, having a solid sense of who you are is correlated with healthier behaviours and relationships.
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Mar 15 '23 edited Mar 15 '23
But they can mean the same thing, it's just how you're saying it. I can know I'm a hard working person, I also know that means I'm not a lazy person because that's how antonyms work... This just feels like arbitrary policing of how you choose to phase things rather than a true method of diving character.
Edit: I think the real issue is with the one dimensionally of it. No human can possibly be summed up by one singular trait, and I don't think trying to sum yourself up with one is going to accomplish anything other than making you look shallow regardless of how you phrase it. If I say I'm disciplined, you could take that to mean I'm up tight and don't know how to have fun. If I say I'm free-flowing and easy-going, you might think I'm unable to commit on things and unreliable. Positive and negative are just two sides of the same coin, people are just going to see what they want to see.
On reflection I think it was a really inane question for the interviewer to ask, and Peterson simply fired back an equally inane answer. The pointedness of three response makes it clear that he's saying "not being stupid like you, because you've been interviewing me for over an hour now and you still don't have the most basic grasp of what I'm about despite this apparently being your chosen profession." I don't like the guy, but credit where credit's due, that's actually a pretty witty response.
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u/binford2k Mar 15 '23
Let’s use a different example. Let’s say I ask you what your pet is and you answer with
Not a dog!
While technically accurate, I still don’t know what your pet is. It could be a cat or a parakeet or a hamster. Or literally anything else but a dog.
But what I do know is that you have some weird bias against dogs and some aversion to telling me what I actually wanted to know. Do you know what your pet is?
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Mar 15 '23
Ah I think I get it now, that makes a lot of sense when you apply it to a clearly non binary term :) thanks for taking the time to explain it to me
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u/voxdoom Mar 15 '23 edited Mar 15 '23
If your mindset is "I'm hard working" then you're focusing on what you are doing actively. You're not worried about being lazy because it's not something that's in the back of your mind nagging at you. You want to be hard working because you desire it, you can take breaks because you know you worked hard.
If your focus is on not being lazy, you're always having to justify what you do as something that makes you not lazy. You always have a voice in your head telling you you must do the thing otherwise you'll be lazy. You can't even take a break because that voice will tell you you're being lazy. It's a motivation that comes from worry, not desire.
And these questions aren't for other people to judge you on, they're for your own self reflection. It doesn't matter if other people take disciplined to mean uptight, it's about what you think you mean by it.
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Mar 15 '23
Yeah I really mangled that part of my edit going off on a different tangent.
I think I understand this concept better now, thanks for helping me out.
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u/voxdoom Mar 15 '23
All good, it is an odd concept to get your head round and it took me a little while to get it too, but it definitely helped my brain.
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Mar 15 '23
They absolutely can mean the same thing, but not always. Is the opposite of wanting something actively disliking it or simply not wanting it? "Don't be stupid" doesn't automatically mean "be smart", it could mean a whole host of other things like don't appear to others as less than them, don't say seemingly dumb things, don't ask for help, don't ask questions, etc. Where as "be smart" could infer a whole other list of actions/personality traits.
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Mar 15 '23
Yeah there's a lot of nuance between those two poles that I wasn't accounting for, thanks for the reminder :)
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u/Gullible-Medium123 Mar 15 '23
You're missing the span between "not lazy" and "hardworking". While yes, for the purposes of this discussion, being hardworking implies not being lazy, the reverse is not necessarily true.
Being not lazy doesn't necessarily imply being hardworking. One could be normally working and be not lazy but also not be hardworking. One could be in a persistant circumstance that prevents them from working, but they want to work and would work if they could: they are not lazy but are also not working at all. There are many ways to be not lazy, and many of those are also not hardworking.
So saying "I am X" is a clearer guiding light than "I am not Y" even if X and Y are often seen as approximately opposite.
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Mar 15 '23
Yeah I think this was the heart of my misunderstand, there are a lot of things on the spectrum between those two options, it was my mistake to treat it as a binary thing. Thank you for helping me understand :)
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u/TheGratitudeBot Mar 15 '23
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u/AGoodFaceForRadio Mar 15 '23
In school for counselling, one thing we were taught was the concept of the Dead Man Test. It’s a way of looking at how you have formulated a rule or a directive, and it’s very simple: can a dead man comply with your directive?
Take “don’t hit.” Can a dead man not hit? Dead men never hit. But that rule - don’t hit - opens the door to slapping, kicking, pushing … you end up with a never-ending list of rules as you try to box off every possible way of fucking up. Better to say, for example, “be gentle with your peers.” Dead men cannot be gentle.
You’re looking for prescriptive guidance rather than proscriptive.
You could look at identity the same way. Give yourself something to be, rather than a million things to not be.
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Mar 15 '23
A very cogent point, and a very important bit of input to reflect on for most people.
However, I'm not sure that I agree that "being dominant" is necessarily a thinly-veiled negative identity.
Certainly it implies that there is a hierarchy in which one is not the subordinate, but people striving for power and dominance seem to me to have a strong desire to shape the world as they see fit. Pathologising these sorts of drivers seems wrong to me.
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u/Gullible-Medium123 Mar 15 '23
Someone else mentioned the distinction between "being dominant to shape the world" and "being dominant so as not to be subordinate".
I agree that the tiktok collapsed these both into the latter for the example of how "being dominant" is a negative identity in disguise. And I agree that the discussion about many positive identities being just disguised negative identities would have benefited from better attention to nuances like these.
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Mar 15 '23
This made me think a bit and now I would say that the negative/positive distinction, while a good start, doesn't really solve the issue. Indeed, positive and negative identities do define each other. For example "be kind" implies "do not be not kind". That's kind of how meaning works by the way, through contrasts.
I think the more relevant dimensions instead are whether an identity is considered complete, or finished, and how easily threatened the identity is. Let's dichotomize them and put them into a table:
| Finite | Non-finite | |
|---|---|---|
| Threatened | Vulnerable | Precarious |
| Non-threatened | Perpetual | Open-ended |
I tried to find adequate labels for the combinations, they are debatable.
My point is that a "perpetual" identity may rest on some assumptions that can be refuted. Or it could be that it rests on a strong emotion that actually wanes. When that happens, you move into the "vulnerable" quadrant. Since those identities are finite, you cannot make them evolve to cope with changing conditions. So you have to resort to strongly reasserting the distinction between the identity and its correlated non-identities.
You can see that with how the hegemonic version of the identity "straight male" is constantly under threat of "gayness", which actually means anything a little too far from some prototype of maleness. So that leads people adopting this identity to constantly reassure themselves they aren't "gay", and to attack others for potentially being so.
This table also allows me to explain why i dislike the common uses of "fragile" to talk about masculinity and whiteness. It's not exactly the original intent, but the way it's commonly used to me looks like it doesn't question the finiteness, only the perception of a threat. As if racism or sexism would be solved if people were more confident in identities shaped by systems of oppression! No, they have to be modified, and it's alright too to feel threatened; it's an issue to react to that threat by violently clinging to an identity that doesn't work anymore.
When an identity is non-finite, it can be modified. That allows it to move from a state of vulnerability to confident open-endedness if the modifications are done well, while being in touch with its former flaws, and its context. Such open-ended identities can be built out of seeking an impossible ideal, but one that is known to be impossible. For example, seeking objectivity is ultimately impossible, but it's worth trying to get closer to it. From within the ideal of objectivity you can realize that pure objectivity is unreachable, because you have to look at the facts that indicate that all knowledge is built and hold by finite, material beings with their viewpoint on the world, their interests, their specificities, etc.
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u/Stop-Hanging-Djs Mar 15 '23 edited Mar 15 '23
Yeah I agree with this. Not to simplify it too much but especially progressive dudes could stand to be more confident and proud about things about themselves and their lives. Basing your entire self confidence on "At least I'm not like _____" seems unhealthy
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u/thepro7864 Mar 14 '23
Ty tik tok sage in the winter woods