62) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 5 - Love vs. Fear on the Protest Lines
Judging protest as useless and protesters as idiots because someone threw some rocks at windows is kinda like an alien, zooming over the earth, sampling only the murderers and rapists and serial killers, watching a war or two, and then leaving. Conclusion: Humanity is terrible. Planet should be obliterated for the hyperspace super-highway we planned to put through this area of space. No great loss.
61) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 4 - Atheist Indigenous Immigrant Women Should Rule the World
Let’s let the peace-lovers and wisdom-seekers, the poor and disenfranchised, ‘rule the world’ for, say, one generation of humanity, and see if we’re better off, or worse. I have every bit of faith that they’ll do no worse, at worst, than the men, most of whom are very wealthy men to boot, who’ve had the reins for MOST of the past….uh….forever?
60) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 3 - Jordan's Tarantulas
You show me the "class" of people who you think have their house in perfect order, and let's see who these people are and whether the rest of us think we should actually trust them with the fate of us all.
59) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 2 - In Jordan's Own Words
The luminary activist Elie Wiesel said “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.“
58) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 1 - He Who Is Without Sin
Jordan Peterson wants to save the world from the horrors of the Gulag, from the 100 million corpses he talks about. But right here, in Rule #6 of “12 Rules for Life,” he gives us close to the WORST POSSIBLE advice for preventing more chaos, more hundreds of millions of corpses.
57) The bleeding hearts and the artists: 'Requiem' for a species
Rational discussion is important. But woefully insufficient. And people’s impatience at others’ ideological closedness, when they themselves have stared into the abyss and wept over the bottomless pit of human atrocity, is perfectly, perfectly understandable.
55) The Wind of Change
Healing happens. Hearts open. Society evolves.
It’s messy. But keep at it. It pays off eventually.
53) Dissociation, Part 2
These experiences pile up. They create anxiety. Depression. Embarrassment. Guilt. Despair. For me most of all, shame. You feel like a fucking failure. Not “someone who failed”, but A FAILURE, like it is actually who you are. Failure is your Essence.
52) Motherfuckin' Dissociation
I believe that inside every one us is a bad-ass motherfucker, just waiting to bust out and live our passion, and let our freak flag fly, and be awesome, and the world is your oyster, and all that awesome shit. But, so many people today — literally millions and millions and millions — are preventing themselves from doing so.
51) The strongest man I ever knew: A memorial
You taught me to ‘be strong.’ But ‘strong’ isn’t an impervious cocoon that only opens to the grave. A ‘strong’ is someone strong enough to be open in life, to be loved, to express sorrow, to forgive, to admit weakness, to say “I’m sorry,” and to set things right.
50) Dirty Feet (TW: suicide, sexual assault)
Thinking about suicide has been my main hobby for 14 years, 7 months and 16 days.
You were right about sexual assault, especially for kids.
“It makes you see yourself as a demon. So you check-out, dissociate, a lot of the time, because who wants to be a demon?”
I realize why I kept this fantasy alive for so long.
I believed the only worthy thing to do with my life was make sure my last act will be one of love.
49) Jordan Peterson: Part 4: The problem of Collective Assholeification
Assholes tend to think simplistically. Not about all things, of course; when it comes to something they like or know a lot about, they will be happy to argue the nth nuance of the nth detail until the cows come home. But about anything else, nope, it’s black and white, right and wrong, and they’re right and you’re wrong, so shut up. They have a tendency to steer conversations into their fav-talking-points so they can amaze and astound people with their superior knowledge, but they also have a tendency to impose their opinions even into conversations where they really don’t know much about the topic at all, or perhaps they have a smidgeon or two of knowledge and so, they’re “experts”. My mom always said that you have two ears and one mouth for a reason — assholes seem to have forgotten, or rejected, that bit of wisdom.
48) citizens > politicians
This kind of open-source democracy would work. No more parties turning politics into 99% posturing and bullshit designed to malign “the opposition”. Instead, make politics like the medical community, and focus on collaboration.
The corporate world knows how to do this — a “learning organization”. The NGO world, scientific world, indigenous world, all do as well. Politics is humanity at, or close to, its stupidest. We are way, way more capable than the sheep that politics turns us into. Reject their frame. Let’s create a new one together.
47) Jordan Peterson, Part 3: The Bucko Mistake; Sub-section 2: Metaphorically Terrible Advice
This is an insidious problem with telling Bucko to sort himself out. This advice is most relevant to people who are struggling, but it is precisely those people who are likely the least equipped to apply the advice skillfully and effectively.
46) Jordan Peterson: Part 3: The Bucko Mistake; Sub-section 1: Literally Terrible Advice
“Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” This is Jordan’s first Rule of Life. It is intended both metaphorically and literally. And in both cases, it is terrible advice.
45) Jordan Peterson, Part 2: More problems...; Sub-section 3: Issues of Scale
We need to ask whether humans predominantly survived the billions of years by functioning at an individual level or at a group level. I believe we are predominantly a group-selected species, and that therefore, our “fundamental human nature” has far more to do with processes that connect us to one another and allow us to function harmoniously together, than with processes of individual power and competitive dominance-striving.
44) Jordan Peterson, Part 2: More problems...; Subsection 2: Bear Food reasoning in Darwinian/Functionalist clothing
In short, just because something WAS functional, or is functional in some ways, does not mean it’s good. Similarly, just because something is ‘natural’ certainly doesn’t mean it’s good. And just because something is “the winner” in some contest, doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the best outcome, or even a desirable one. You can’t reason backwards from what exists now, to infer that it is better than what ceased to exist. Cain was not a better man than Abel; he was just a better murderer.
43) Jordan Peterson, Part 2: More Problems with Fundamental Assumptions; Sub-section 1: The Naturalistic Fallacy
The weird thing about getting eaten by bears is that it IS totally natural, as natural as falling off a log or getting a sunburn. No plastic, metals, electricity or advanced computing required. Not a single human invention is necessary, not a single alteration from Nature in the raw.
Lots of other things we have come to see as undesirable are natural. Ebola. Rape. Eating your own babies sometimes.
Reasoning that follows the basic logic of “it’s natural, so it’s good” is understood as the Naturalistic Fallacy, an elemental error in reasoning.
42) Afterbirth in a field: The answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything...
Soften into your true animal body and feel your rawness, your wildness, your strength and your vulnerability, your life. And your death.
If you have not done this, then you should. I would call it as close to a moral imperative as anything Kant ever came up with. Even more important than masturbating, if you can believe that.
41) Jordan Peterson, Part 1, Subsection 4: Moral Foolishness
It is very easy for a “sort yourself out” message to get co-opted by the standard individualistic identity project that most of us are already struggling with, as we try to ‘self-improve’ and get motivated and “awaken the giant within” and all that. To the extent that the psychology of motivation gets applied in ways that are unwise, that are not conducive to both individual and collective human flourishing but instead could simply be in the service of a person’s ego, the “sort yourself out” approach, can easily become a force of destruction, like a once-cozy campfire that has gotten out of control….