Jim Kleiber

Overall, I agree with most of his points about the trends shaping society and the influences of the changing environment, I just wish he would also see that he's participating in a culture war, even if it doesn't seem like the type of culture war that Peterson might describe.

I assume he wrote this essay partially in an attempt to convince people, to persuade people, to behave in a specific way that is in conflict with how they're currently behaving or how other people in their lives are behaving.

For me, that *is* fighting a culture war.

Culture being a behavior that we share and pass from one generation to the next, and war being a battle or conflict between two sides.

I think the author, David French, is missing the point on the culture war. He writing this essay is participating in a culture war, a war over whether paying attention to systemic issues or megatrends is something we should do.

Opinion | Jordan Peterson and I Had a Chat We had different ideas about what’s making men’s lives hard.

...You could purge the entire educational system of every radical left activist and you’d still face the same economy and the same technological realities."

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/...

"Conversely, if your frame is primarily technological, economic and historical, then a focus on the culture war is a distraction. Fighting the culture comes at the expense of thinking systemically about how American institutions can support both men and women...

If we try to change people's beliefs and behaviors, isn't that part of a culture war?

I reflect on David French's op-ed of "Jordan Peterson and I Had a Chat" below 🧵

A snippet from today's DailyJim episode...

If you're curious to hear more, check out the full episode at www.jimkleiber.com/dailyjim-tru...

and its dastardly cousin, pizza

So I'm trying to figure out why we collectively often feel so weak in comparison to women because we wouldn't disadvantage them if we actually thought we were stronger/more superior.

Because a group of people who oppress another is not a group who feels stronger than the other. If i feel confident I'm 10x faster than you, I will give you a headstart, not tie your legs together.

Because men who dehumanize women probably dehumanize themselves.

So I believe for men to humanize women, we also need to humanize ourselves.

And do I believe it's thousands of years that we haven't learned how to resolve conflicts? Yes, I'm not Christian but Jesus said turn the other cheek and we still have a very eye-for-an-eye justice system.

And I've worked pretty damn hard to take punches and still believe that people care about me, and I wish other men learned those skills as well...instead of running away to resentment or seeking vengeance.

I'm not blaming women for men believing that women don't care about them. It is our choice and our skill as men to believe that women care about us even if they do things that sometimes hurt us.

But I also see it as a subjective perspective, as Elon Musk said the other day that he felt oppressed by the government. I rolled my eyes, as how could the richest man in the world feel oppressed by the government, from which he gets rich contracts, but many feel oppressed when others would disagree

I believe systemic oppression is a result of many people in power throughout history feeling afraid of a specific population and putting rules in place to disadvantage that population. I see it as fear based. So I want to focus on that fear and the people in power have more courage.

Do you think if men felt strong and healthy and more importantly, believed that women cared about them, that they would build systems to oppress women?

For me one of the biggest causes of me feeling suffering is to assume people are oppressing/rejecting/betraying me. I think someone is trying to hurt me and I feel miserable.

All they have to do is keep hitting with that message and wait until the people get angry or afraid about something else in their lives and then those people can latch on to immigrants as the cause.

Hard to say we want men who are stronger and more loving and then say "except if you break the law we will punish you eye-for-an-eye"

I think we often are afraid to look at how violent our system of justice is, and how it's based on retribution and not reconciliation

but this "i should be suffering, if life is too good, then it's a trick and will cause problems with my friends who are suffering"...but maybe it might lift one's friends up? inspire them? motivate them?

Well said. And that peer pressure can really trap a lot of us. I dated a girl who once said she didn't want to be with me because she felt guilty of being in a good relationship when most of her friends were in abusive relationships.

I don't know if that was peer pressure or self-pressure tho

i love that word and havent used it in a while, thank you for reminding me that it exists. misanthropic vs philanthropic.

i agree. i see it more as conflict avoidance, or emotional overwhelm and can't process the overall complexity.

And my challenge is to not judge people for that but hold them.

whereas life is dynamic. I remember having a dinner with a black American man I had just met and I was talking about how I was afraid my black girlfriend was going to leave me for a black man. He was talking about how he was afraid his white girlfriend was going to leave him for a white man.

i agree, i think it often shrinks into "i'm suffering, you're not suffering, you don't get to tell me how i'm suffering...& i dont want to hear that you're suffering, because i know you're not."

Which I notice in so many interpersonal conflicts in general: shrinking into ourselves & blocking others

yup. criticism of the behavior becomes criticism of the person becomes counter-criticism of the person...when it could have just stayed at criticism of the behavior.

exactly, some competition over who suffers the most instead of just realizing that people who appear to have a lot of privilege also may not have it in other aspects, aka people who look like they dont suffer also suffer, because they're still human

I agree, the privilege of not having been hit in a particular way or even having the awareness that other people get hit in that way, physically, emotionally, whatnot.

I think it also simplifies it into X group has privilege and Y group doesn't. Whereas it's very intersectional.