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As Gandalf to Saruman

I had always tended to think of Jordan Peterson as more of a Grima Wormtongue than anything, but this chilling quote from the Lord of the Rings cited by an English reviewer of Jordanetics named Janet is weirdly prophetic concerning the way most of Peterson’s followers can’t even tell you what his teachings actually are, and how many of them react so furiously to even the most soundly-sourced criticism of their spiritual guru:

I read voraciously but don’t normally leave reviews, mostly because I never know what to write. However, this book is too important to be neglected, it needs to be spread and read as widely as possible, so I wanted to leave a 5 star rating. I freely admit that I was fooled by Jordan Peterson to begin with. But after a while of following his videos, I began to feel firstly confused, then uneasy, then I was reminded of Tolkien’s description of Saruman:

“Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast, and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell lasted only while the voice spoke to them, and when it spoke to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler’s trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.” (The Two Towers, Ch. 10)

If I tried to grasp what Peterson said and make proper sense of it, it was impossible. He uses words like Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass; every meaning is fluid and a word can mean something different every day. And yet pointing out any contradiction or inconsistency, or even mild questioning, stirs up a frothing rage in his followers.

Vox Day is the Gandalf to Peterson’s Saruman, destroying the illusion and showing the man for what he truly is. No doubt he seems harsh and uncouth to those enthralled by Peterson. But in this book, with surgical precision he eviscerates Peterson’s writings, smokes out their incoherence and insanity, reveals the bones of their underlying malignancy, and displays the results like a neatly filleted kipper. Sadly, like the kipper – and Saruman’s malevolence – Peterson’s words may superficially taste good, but their oily stench is likely to linger for some time. That’s why this book needs to be spread far and wide, to counteract the spell.

Help spread the book far and wide. Pick up a copy of the paperback. And if you’re not in the USA, you can already order it from Amazon. They’ll have it in stock before the end of the week.

The virtue of nationalism

Contrary to the heretical and deceptive universalist teachings of Churchians and globalist gnostics alike, the entire Bible points to the Christian virtue of nationalism:

Was there a viable alternative to universal empire? The ancient Near East had much experience with localized political power in the form of city-states. But for the most part, these were helpless before imperial armies and the ideology of universal empire that motivated them. It is in the Bible that we find the first sustained presentation of a different possibility: a political order based on the independence of a nation living within limited borders alongside other independent nations.

By nation, I mean a number of tribes with a common cultural inheritance, especially a language or religion, and a past history of acting as a body for the common defense and other large-scale enterprises. The Bible systematically promotes the idea that the members of a nation should regard one another as “brothers,” and Mosaic law offered the Israelites a constitution that would bring them together in what would today be called a national state.

The king of such a state would be drawn “from among your brothers.” Its prophets, too, would be “from among you, from among your brothers.” And so would its priests, appointed to guard the traditional laws of the nation and teach them to the king “so that his thoughts should not be lifted above his brothers.” Moreover, Moses sets boundaries for Israel, instructing his people to keep their hands off the lands of neighboring kingdoms like Moav, Edom, and Ammon, which deserve their own independence. As he tells them in God’s name:

Take good heed of yourselves therefore. Meddle not with [the children of Esau], for I will not give you of their land. No, not so much a foot’s breadth. Because I have given Mt. Seir to Esau for a possession. . . . Do not harass Moav, nor contend with them in battle, for I will not give you of their land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the children of Lot for a possession. . . . And when you come near, opposite the children of Ammon, harass them not, nor contend with them, for I will not give you of the land of the children of Ammon any possession, for I have given it to the children of Lot for a possession.

Nor are these passages unique. Throughout the Bible, we find that the political aspiration of the prophets of Israel is not empire but a free and unified nation living in justice and peace amid other free nations.

The Bible thus puts a new political conception on the table: a state of a single nation that is united, self-governing, and uninterested in bringing its neighbors under its rule. This state is governed not by foreigners responsible to a ruler in a distant land but by kings and governors, priests and prophets drawn from the ranks of the nation itself—individuals who are, for just this reason, thought to be better able to stay in touch with the needs of their own people, their “brothers,” including the less fortunate among them.

As one Christian theologian has observed, the Bible mentions all the nations of the world coming together in unity precisely three times. And on each of those three occasions, they are coming together in united opposition to God.

On his recent appearance on Dave Rubin’s show, Jordan Peterson signaled that the globalists are going to attempt to rebrand themselves as universalists. But whether the forces of Babel see their rule over Man as being planetary, galactic, or universal in nature, the important thing is that it is instrinsically opposed to the Will of God as expressed in the Bible, and therefore inherently evil.

Remember, the Kingdom of God is not of the fallen world. Any political ideology that is universalist or imperialist cannot be compatible with that divine Kingdom.

Three more rules for life

From Appendix C of the newly released paperback edition of Jordanetics. The first five rules were previously posted here.

6. Set your face against evil. You will encounter evil within and evil without on a daily basis. Stand against all of it, without fear, without hesitation, and without remorse. And when you fail, when you give into temptation, when you are defeated, regroup, repent, and rise again.

7. Do what is right. Learn to listen to the still, small voice of conscience. Do what you know to be right, not what you can rationalize, justify, or excuse. If you have to talk yourself into something, then you probably already know in your heart of hearts that you are doing the wrong thing.

8. Tell the truth in kindness. It is too hard and too exhausting to spend all your mental energies trying to keep track of an ever-growing multitude of exaggerations, false narratives, self-serving spins, and outright lies. Just tell the truth, as you best understand it, without taking pride in it or using it to hurt others.

Appendix C is now also included in the Kindle edition.

UPDATE: I also did an early Darkstream announcing the publication of Jordanetics in paperback. The man is already running scared; he’s STILL trying to explain away his Kavanaugh tweet.

Even fake science is unreproducible

The most famous experiments in psychology are no more reproducible than flipping a coin:

Over the past few years, an international team of almost 200 psychologists has been trying to repeat a set of previously published experiments from its field, to see if it can get the same results. Despite its best efforts, the project, called Many Labs 2, has only succeeded in 14 out of 28 cases. Six years ago, that might have been shocking. Now it comes as expected (if still somewhat disturbing) news.

In recent years, it has become painfully clear that psychology is facing a “reproducibility crisis,” in which even famous, long-established phenomena—the stuff of textbooks and ted Talks—might not be real. There’s social priming, where subliminal exposures can influence our behavior. And ego depletion, the idea that we have a limited supply of willpower that can be exhausted. And the facial-feedback hypothesis, which simply says that smiling makes us feel happier.

One by one, researchers have tried to repeat the classic experiments behind these well-known effects—and failed. And whenever psychologists undertake large projects, like Many Labs 2, in which they replicate past experiments en masse, they typically succeed, on average, half of the time.

Ironically enough, it seems that one of the most reliable findings in psychology is that only half of psychological studies can be successfully repeated.

Science is not, and has never been, a relevant vehicle for determining the truth. It is a philosophical category error to believe that it is. This is one of the many reasons for the failure of the New Atheists to make any substantive impression on society, as their entire worldview was based upon a false assumption.

It’s particularly amusing to recall that Richard Dawkins actually wanted to revise the legal system and establish its foundation for evidence upon science rather than eyewitness testimony, which despite its flaws has proven to be considerable more reliable than science. It is probably due to their social autism that the New Atheists did not realize that science will never be more reliable than the scientists who make a living from it, which means that science is no more intrinsically reliable than accounting, proof-reading, or used-car sales.

Jordanetics now in paperback

JORDANETICS: A Journey Into the Mind of Humanity’s Greatest Thinker is now available in paperback.

Jordan Peterson is believed by many to be the greatest thinker that humanity has ever known. He is Father Figure, Philosopher-King, and Prophet to the millions of young men who are his most fervent fans and followers. He is the central figure of the Intellectual Dark Web, an academic celebrity, and an unparalleled media phenomenon who has shattered all conceptions of what it means to be modern celebrity in the Internet Age.

He has, by his own admission, thought thoughts that no man has ever thought before. He has dared to dream dreams that no man has ever dreamed before.

Of course, Jordan Peterson also happens to be a narcissist, a charlatan, and an intellectual con man who doesn’t even bother to learn the subjects upon which he lectures. He is a defender of free speech who silences other speakers, a fearless free-thinker who never hesitates to run away from debates, difficult questions, and controversial issues, a philosopher who rejects the conventional definition of truth, and a learned professor who has failed to read most of the great classics of the Western canon. He is, in short, a shameless and unrepentant fraud who lacks even a modicum of intellectual integrity.

But is Jordan Peterson more than a mere fraud? Is he something more sinister, more unbalanced, and even more dangerous? In Jordanetics: A Journey Into the Mind of Humanity’s Greatest Thinker, political philosopher Vox Day delves deeply into the core philosophy that Jordan Peterson advocates in both his written works and his video lectures. In doing so, Day methodically builds an astonishing case that will convince even the most skeptical Jordan Peterson supporter to reconsider both the man and his teachings.

252 pages. Available in US/Canada from Castalia Direct for $14.99. It will be available on Amazon and other booksellers within a week at a retail price of $19.99. In the UK, it is already available at Amazon UK.

UPDATE: I trust we can safely expect Jordan Peterson to step down from his scheduled address to the Seattle Seahawks and every other organization now that Jemele Hill has credibly accused him of rape, slavery, and Nazi holocausting. In the interests of societal harmony, of course. I’m just sorry Richard Sherman won’t be there to call Peterson out on his nonsensical bafflegarble, because you know Russell Wilson will completely buy into it.

Unreliable search

Google gets caught debating the manipulation of search results on ideological grounds:

Google employees debated whether to bury conservative media outlets in the company’s search function as a response to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, internal Google communications obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal.

The Daily Caller and Breitbart were specifically singled out as outlets to potentially bury, the communications reveal.

Trump’s election in 2016 shocked many Google employees, who had been counting on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to win.

Communications obtained by TheDCNF show that internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.

“This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it,” Google engineer Scott Byer wrote in a Nov. 9, 2016, post reviewed by TheDCNF.

Byer falsely labeled The Daily Caller and Breitbart as “opinion blogs” and urged his coworkers to reduce their visibility in search results.

“How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That’s something that can and should be fixed,” Byer wrote.“I think we have a responsibility to expose the quality and truthfulness of sources – because not doing so hides real information under loud noises,” he continued….

The discussion about whether to bury conservative media outlets isn’t the first evidence that some Google employees have sought to manipulate search results for political ends. After Trump announced his initial travel ban in January 2017, Google employees discussed ways to manipulate search results in order to push back against the president’s order.

A group of employees brainstormed ways to counter “islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms ‘Islam’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Iran’, etc,” as well as “prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms ‘Mexico’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘Latino’, etc.”

Well, at least they’re not threatening to physically attack any crypto-Trump supporters discovered in their midst again. Merely undermining the core purpose of the company’s existence is pretty mild in comparison. The astonishing thing is that Google continues to employ these lunatics despite knowing perfectly well that they are actively conspiring against the company’s best interests.

But that’s good news, because it means that Google is converged to the point that it is increasingly unable to perform its primary functions and will eventually be replaced. I already find Duck Duck Go entirely suitable for all my search needs and Protonmail is getting pretty close to being able to replace Gmail.

The fall of an affirmative-action giant

How will Science ever survive the downfall and disgrace of Neal DeGrasse Tyson?

Two more women, including a fellow astronomer, say Neil deGrasse Tyson is guilty of inappropriate sexual conduct.

Dr. Katelyn N. Allers, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Bucknell University, told me that she was “felt up” by Tyson at an after-party following a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in 2009. AAS didn’t have a mechanism for reporting sexual harassment at the time, but Dr. Allers says she probably would report the incident if it had happened today…. Dr. Allers didn’t feel like she was in danger during her encounter with Tyson, but she did describe it as “uncomfortable and creepy.” That interaction also made her think twice about allegations brought by Tchiya Amet, a musician who says Tyson raped her in his apartment when they were grad students together.

“I think that he is someone that could use his position of fame and power in a way to try and take advantage,” Dr. Allers told me.

As if this allegation wasn’t shocking enough, it came within days of my interview with Ashley Watson, a former assistant to Tyson who says she was forced to quit her job due to his inappropriate sexual advances.

Watson worked directly with Tyson for several months. She says that, during that time, he put her in an uncomfortable situation by attempting to persuade her into sex, and demonstrated his “predatory tendencies.”

It should be amusing to see the academic Left bending over backward to try to Believe All Women while simultaneously defend Black Lives Matter. I guess we’ll see who outranks whom these days in the SJW hierarchy.

Darkstream: The secret of avoiding self-sabotage

We covered a lot of ground in tonight’s Darkstream related to the Gamma pattern of behavior, inspired by my recent reading of a series of F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories. It’s a little hard to dismiss the heuristics of the socio-sexual hiearchy when you can observe them being played out, even in fiction, more than five decades before I was even born.

However, perhaps the most amusing moment was not related to the subject – directly, anyhow – but came when a viewer who had been watching Jordan Peterson’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s show mentioned that Jordan and Joe were agreeing how criticism is bad and unhelpful, which I feel was just a very, very hurtful thing to say now that Jordy and I – I call him Jordy now – are the very best of friends.

I mean, did Jordy not assure us that when someone’s behavior has become corrupt—particularly according to his own principles, it is the act of a friend to criticize it?

As for the secret of avoiding self-sabotage, here are four suggestions:

  1. Don’t talk so much.
  2. If you must talk, don’t talk about yourself. Talk about the other person.
  3. Don’t ever think you are fooling anyone when you are talking about yourself. If you want to boast, then boast. Don’t try to sneak in some humblebragging or pretend that you have any other purpose in mind.
  4. Remember that nobody cares. If they care, they’ll ask you. And even if they care enough to ask you, remember that they don’t care enough to want the details. 

The greatest fool on the planet

Apparently the long-term plan of the Learned Elders of Wye to abandon ship and make the jump to China before the USA implodes isn’t going so well. This is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard any public figure say, and I can still remember Rep. Hank Johnson’s concerns about the island of Guam tipping over.

Bill Kristol@BillKristol
Shouldn’t an important U.S. foreign policy goal of the next couple of decades be regime change in China?

Yes, Bill, because World War III between nuclear powers would be ever so beneficial for everyone on the planet. This makes me suspect the neoconservatives are already discovering that the Chinese are considerably less likely to allow their nation to be invaded and destroyed than Americans were. It would appear the Chinese have been paying attention to the US decline and understand what happened over the course of the 20th century much better than Americans do.

Give it up, Bill. Shut up and listen to Netanyahu. He knows the score.The invade-the-world, invite-the-world game is just about played out.

“A stake to the heart”

A very personal review of Jordanetics:

When I opened Vox Day’s Jordanetics last week, I was expecting something similar to what Vox has posted in his blog and uploaded in his YouTube livestreams: a fairly straightforward takedown of Jordan B Peterson and his views. The takedown would go a little bit too far (it’s a bit much for me to fathom going that hard at someone with an admitted mental illness, but then again I’m a girl and I don’t go hard at anyone), would probably make a few wisecracks about the all-meat diet, and would pull apart JPB’s books in a way that people couldn’t ignore.

What I did not expect was the stake to the heart….

For, as long as Satan is not integrated, the world is not healed and man is not saved. But Satan represents evil, and how can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness. This is done by means of a very complicated symbolic process which is more or less identical with the psychological process of individuation. In alchemy this is called the conjunction of two principles.
—Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (as quoted in Jordanetics)

I had a physical reaction to reading this. I am not kidding when I describe it as a punch in the face or a stake to the heart. Remember what I said about not actually having read Carl Jung’s works? This is why that’s a problem.

You see, the way to salvation is not through “integrating” evil through a “very complicated symbolic process.” The way to salvation is through Jesus Christ, and Him only. The narrow path.

To follow Christ, one must reject evil—not integrate it.

This is precisely why I reject those who try to flail their hands impotently and claim that Peterson “is doing good work” or that he “means well” or is “helping so many people”. The man is evil. His gnostic philosophy is evil. His manufactured post-Christian religion is evil. And one of the reasons why so many of his fans and followers don’t recognize this is because none of them read his works or the works of those who have influenced him.

If you are a Christian, you can no more profitably dabble in Jordanetics than in cannibalism, gang rape, or human sacrifice to Quetzalcoatl. Jordanetics requires integrating Satan in order to heal the world and save Mankind. It is just another Middle Way to Hell. It is literally antithetical to Christianity.

Now do you understand why Jordan Peterson is being elevated as the great post-Christian prophet of the post-nationalist West?