68) Purpose -- Part 2 -- Why the Environmental Movement has Failed (so far) -- Act I: Me & You
I love you.
You might be thinking….”Really? That’s creepy.”
Or you might be thinking….”Really? We’ve never even met!”
Or you might be thinking…..”Why, what’d you have in mind?”
Or you might be thinking…..”Huh? I thought this was about why the environmental movement has failed.”
67) Purpose: A Four-part series -- Part 1 -- "Tearing Down the Wall"
The antidote to suffering and alienation, is love. It’s trusting. Reaching out for connection. It’s admitting weakness, accepting yourself, and accepting the Other. It’s embracing the unknown, together. It’s courage, in the Brene Brown sense of speaking your truth, with your whole heart.
65) Protesting: What’s the point? It’s just a bunch of activists getting arrested and stopping traffic or some shit, amiright?
I didn’t talk to a single person who wasn’t uncomfortable with, or unaware of the fact that we were inconveniencing people who were “just trying to get to work”. But, The System IS killing us. We’ve spent literally DECADES trying to – do good science — raise awareness — establish dialogue — pass laws — change lifestyles — inspire people — work with governments — etc. etc. etc. etc. And it has not worked. Things are worse in the ecology of our Collective Life Support System than ever before in the history of Homo Sapiens. Everything “normal” has been tried. A thousand times over.
It’s time to misbehave. So these are some of the people I met today who, reluctantly, joyfully, were misbehaving.
64) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 7 -- The Rebel Alliance
The Rebel Alliance depended on a dead dude, a quixotic Elf who talked like Grover, a wannabe hero with an inferiority complex, an arrogant smuggler, an incomprehensible BigFoot, an annoying and basically useless robot, a super-cool robot who looked like a futuristic garbage can, and a bitchy, bad-ass princess.
63) Jordan Peterson, Part 5: The Perfect House Problem; Subsection 6 -- Lived Experience
Perhaps then, you will start to understand ‘that look’ — that gleam that is so unsettling to the intellectual skeptic or theorist, that unwavering solidity that you see in eyes that are past fear, eyes that have seen so much pain they won’t close to ugliness ever again. When you see the stability in people’s eyes who have witnessed sufficient suffering, you have met a person who can drink in the entire ocean, who can absorb an entire sun, because their hearts are broken into so many pieces they have atomized and become the Universe.
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.