Forgive us our debts

A new book by Michael Hudson puts an intriguing economic spin on the Lord’s Prayer, according to a review by Jon Siman:

So let us reconsider Hudson’s fundamental insight in more vivid terms. In ancient Mesopotamian societies it was understood that freedom was preserved by protecting debtors. In what we call Western Civilization, that is, in the plethora of societies that have followed the flowering of the Greek poleis beginning in the eighth century B.C., just the opposite, with only one major exception (Hudson describes the tenth-century A.D. Byzantine Empire of Romanos Lecapenus), has been the case: For us freedom has been understood to sanction the ability of creditors to demand payment from debtors without restraint or oversight. This is the freedom to cannibalize society. This is the freedom to enslave. This is, in the end, the freedom proclaimed by the Chicago School and the mainstream of American economists. And so Hudson emphasizes that our Western notion of freedom has been, for some twenty-eight centuries now, Orwellian in the most literal sense of the word: War is Peace • Freedom is Slavery • Ignorance is Strength. He writes: “A constant dynamic of history has been the drive by financial elites to centralize control in their own hands and manage the economy in predatory, extractive ways. Their ostensible freedom is at the expense of the governing authority and the economy at large. As such, it is the opposite of liberty as conceived in Sumerian times” (p. 266).

And our Orwellian, our neoliberal notion of unrestricted freedom for the creditor dooms us at the very outset of any quest we undertake for a just economic order. Any and every revolution that we wage, no matter how righteous in its conception, is destined to fail.

And we are so doomed, Hudson says, because we have been morally blinded by twenty-eight centuries of deracinated, or as he says, decontextualized history. The true roots of Western Civilization lie not in the Greek poleis that lacked royal oversight to cancel debts, but in the Bronze Age Mesopotamian societies that understood how life, liberty and land would be cyclically restored to debtors again and again. But, in the eighth century B.C., along with the alphabet coming from the Near East to the Greeks, so came the concept of calculating interest on loans. This concept of exponentially-increasing interest was adopted by the Greeks — and subsequently by the Romans — without the balancing concept of Clean Slate amnesty….

After all these centuries, we remain ignorant of the fact that deep in the roots of our civilization is contained the corrective model of cyclical return – what Dominique Charpin calls the “restoration of order” (p. xix). We continue to inundate ourselves with a billion variations of the sales pitch to borrow and borrow, the exhortation to put more and more on credit, because, you know, the future’s so bright I gotta wear shades.

Nowhere, Hudson shows, is it more evident that we are blinded by a deracinated, by a decontextualized understanding of our history than in our ignorance of the career of Jesus. Hence the title of the book: And Forgive Them Their Debts and the cover illustration of Jesus flogging the moneylenders — the creditors who do not forgive debts — in the Temple. For centuries English-speakers have recited the Lord’s Prayer with the assumption that they were merely asking for the forgiveness of their trespasses, their theological sins: “… and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us….” is the translation presented in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. What is lost in translation is the fact that Jesus came “to preach the gospel to the poor … to preach the acceptable Year of the Lord”: He came, that is, to proclaim a Jubilee Year, a restoration of deror for debtors: He came to institute a Clean Slate Amnesty (which is what Hebrew דְּרוֹר connotes in this context).

So consider the passage from the Lord’s Prayer literally: … καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν: “… and send away (ἄφες) for us our debts (ὀφειλήματα).” The Latin translation is not only grammatically identical to the Greek, but also shows the Greek word ὀφειλήματα revealingly translated as debita: … et dimitte nobis debita nostra: “… and discharge (dimitte) for us our debts (debita).” There was consequently, on the part of the creditor class, a most pressing and practical reason to have Jesus put to death: He was demanding that they restore the property they had rapaciously taken from their debtors. And after His death there was likewise a most pressing and practical reason to have His Jubilee proclamation of a Clean Slate Amnesty made toothless, that is to say, made merely theological: So the rich could continue to oppress the poor, forever and ever. Amen.

I definitely have to read this book, especially in light of Rothbard’s economic history that essentially reduces the development of modern economics to the gradual relaxations of Christian society’s ban on usury over the centuries. As crazy as it sounds, it is entirely possible that what we think of as a necessity for economic growth is, to the contrary, an integral factor in reestablishing large-scale human slavery.

To paraphrase Philip K. Dick, Jesus Christ’s war against the moneylenders never ended.

Just because some people are inclined to binary-thinking, allow me to be very clear and state that I do not think this literal interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer negates or adulterates in any way the metaphorical debt of sin to which Jesus Christ was without question referring. But given what we know of these matters after centuries of additional evidence concerning the matter, it is the exact opposite of far-fetched to imagine that the literal context is also relevant.

JFG reviews Jordanetics

I have no idea whether he’s praising it or ripping it a new one, but for better or for worse, here is JF Gariepy’s livestream review of Jordanetics. Keep in mind that he’s a smart guy who spotted Jordan Peterson was a charlatan before I did, so at the very least he is not inclined to mindlessly defend Peterson like the 12-Rule Path cultists.

There is also a review worth reading at Caffeine and Philosophy. What is particularly interesting about it is that it was written by a blogger who previously wrote an open letter to me criticizing my criticism of Jordan Peterson.

Every rule in Peterson’s 12 new Commandments is provided with a coherent interpretation. As you can see, these interpretations are not particularly flattering, nor are they very attractive to most people:

1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
Translation: Be mediocre.
2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. (Why won’t you just take your damn pills?)
Translation: God is the balance between Good and Evil.
3. Make friends with people who want the best for you.
Translation: Leave the wounded behind to die.
4. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Translation: Your head is the only truly safe space.
5. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
Translation: Do not excel, because excellence endangers the balance.
6. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
Translation: Inaction is always preferable to action.
7. Pursue what is meaningful (Not what is expedient)
Translation: To reach Heaven above, you must descend into Hell below.
8. Tell the truth–or, at least, don’t lie.
Translation: You can speak a new world into existence through your lies.
9. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.
Translation: Dominate the conversation and control the narrative by keeping your mouth shut.
10. Be precise in your speech.
Translation: Transcend the material world and very carefully choose the words that will alter this reality.
11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.
Translation: Heal the world by assimilating its evil.
12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
Translation: To lift the world out of Hell, you must be willing to accept its pain and suffering into yourself.

If it seems uncharitable to offer “translations” of an intellectual’s stated words, recall that Peterson has fundamentally changed some pretty generally-accepted definitions, including “truth,” “God,” “being,” “order,” and “chaos,” and these new definitions permeate all of the above rules. They literally cannot be understood properly (i.e., through Peterson’s own worldview) without a translation from Jordanetic language into common parlance. Rather, these translations represent an honest upholding of the obligation to charity, not its neglect, as Vox Day is offering the most coherent and internally consistent view of Peterson’s ideas that I have seen.

The fact that this view is not very attractive to most people is no more Vox Day’s fault than is the confusing language which made more coherent interpretations necessary.

Nor is it Vox Day’s fault that Jordan Peterson regularly misrepresents data, theology, history, and sourced articles. It is not his fault that Peterson turns around on people like Milo Yiannopoulos, Faith Goldy, or Brett Kavanaugh, backing down on his support for free speech when push actually comes to shove, and condemning people as hateful or bigoted when they point out a problem with his argument.

Ultimately, it is hard to pick out one of Vox Day’s translations from the 12 Rules and argue that it falsely represents Peterson’s worldview. Just a few examples: Peterson exemplifies rule 3 — leave the wounded behind to die — in his treatment of Milo Yiannopoulos and of Faith Goldy. He exemplifies rule 10 — transcend the material world and very carefully choose the words that will alter this reality — in his various alternative definitions, as well as in his now-infamous interview with Joe Rogan, claiming to have gone 25 days without sleep (presumably as an excuse for his poor performance on the Sam Harris podcast; he claimed the incident happened the day of the interview with Harris).

Taking their best shots

It’s always interesting to see how desperate SJWs, or Peterson fans, are to convince people to move along, move along. There is nothing to see here! But you have to give Roderic at least a little credit. After all, he did go to the trouble of actually buying the book and reading the introduction and one chapter. That’s considerably more than the average fake reviewer ever manages.

A Cringeworthy Read

At the outset Day tells us why he lit into Peterson. Peterson wrote an article that rejected the idea that there is a conspiracy among Jews to promote the careers of fellow Jews over those of more deserving gentiles.. Day knows that this conspiracy exists because Ben Shapiro is doing so much better than he is. What else could explain this if there’s no conspiracy? It’s also very important to Day that everyone realize that the Jews are not smarter on average than other groups, as Peterson insists. The evidence Day provides for this is questionable — you can’t compare IQ averages obtained from different countries no doubt using different methods to measure it in the way that he does, and there are other studies to support the idea that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent on average plus an undeniable record of achievement by that group in the arts and sciences. Peterson’s other great sin was to fail to stand up for a conservative journalist who was criticized for being insufficiently tough in her interview with the Daily Stormer. Foreshadowing the rest of the book, Day lambasts Peterson for applying journalistic standards to that journalist that Peterson never meant to apply. It was clear that Peterson was just concerned about the public relations implications of what the journalist did. Regardless, that Peterson disagreed with Day on these issues was enough to convince Day that Peterson is a mountebank full of evil intent and malice who intends to mislead and lie to the public, and everything else that Peterson has ever said or done is put through that filter. Day set out to expose Peterson for the villain that he is and discredit his work through a torrent of videos, postings on social media, and now this book.

Day’s approach is to say that Peterson said something he didn’t say, to misinterpret something Peterson said, to use standards of thought that Peterson never meant to employ, and so on, and then to lambast Peterson for the resulting errors and absurdities. There is also a tendency to find small errors in what Peterson writes and then blow them all out of proportion such that everything else that Peterson wrote is supposedly thereby discredited. If Day had a legitimate criticism to make about what Peterson wrote I couldn’t find it.

For example, in Day’s takedown of Peterson’s first rule chapter, Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulder’s Back, in the 12 Rules book, Day heaps scorn on Peterson’s use of the lobster. Day claims that Peterson wrote that humans “are direct inheritors of the social hierarchy of crustaceans and share common ancestry with them” and therefore share some of their characteristics including brain chemistry and behavior, but of course humans didn’t evolve from lobsters, and Day goes on at length about this error and how it shows that Peterson is an ignorant clown. He even brings in an evolutionary biologist who he quotes to bolster this idea. The problem with this is that Peterson never said that humans evolved from lobsters in any way. The chapter isn’t about evolution. What he says is that lobsters are very primitive and ancient, and yet even at that very early point in history when they appeared they had established social hierarchies. They even use serotonin, a brain chemical, to track their status in the hierarchy, similar to the way human brains use it, our mood being good when our status and our serotonin is up and down when those things are down. (This is not surprising since all bilaterally symmetrical creatures, even worms, use serotonin in their nervous systems.) So, as Peterson says elsewhere, social hierarchies are not something that is created arbitrarily by white males to maintain their dominance, they are very old biology. Peterson uses serotonin and the lobster as metaphors for how we are hard wired to live in hierarchies,

The rest of the chapter is a bizarre misinterpretation of Peterson that ends with a quote from Peterson. The quote does not appear anywhere in the lobster chapter or in the 12 Rules book although Day implies that it does. It may be from something else that Peterson wrote. Without the proper context it’s impossible to say if that quote planted there is misleading us or not. Suffice to say it does not say what the rest of the chapter says. Peterson is not telling us to be mediocre, as Day claims. Peterson is giving us advice about how we can improve ourselves and elevate our social status and thereby our sense of well being. That we will most likely end up neither at the top nor the bottom of the hierarchy but somewhere in the middle is not something to be held up to contempt. It’s just they way things are most of the time. And it’s pretty tough at the top, anyway.

The primary problem, of course, is that I never say that Peterson said something he didn’t clearly say, assume, or imply. I do not construct strawmen. While it can be difficult to ascertain what he is saying due to his intentionally incoherent writing, the connection Peterson draws between lobster and human is clearly not just metaphorical, as you can see for yourself from this selection from 12 Rules for Life, but posits the very claim of common ancestry that Roderic denies.

Their nervous systems are comparatively simple, with large, easily observable neurons, the magic cells of the brain. Because of this, scientists have been able to map the neural circuitry of lobsters very accurately. This has helped us understand the structure and function of the brain and behaviour of more complex animals, including human beings. Lobsters have more in common with you than you might think….
All that matters, from a Darwinian perspective, is permanence—and the dominance hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a billion years. It’s permanent. It’s real. The dominance hierarchy is not capitalism. It’s not communism, either, for that matter. It’s not the military-industrial complex. It’s not the patriarchy—that disposable, malleable, arbitrary cultural artefact. It’s not even a human creation; not in the most profound sense. It is instead a near-eternal aspect of the environment, and much of what is blamed on these more ephemeral manifestations is a consequence of its unchanging existence. We (the sovereign we, the we that has been around since the beginning of life) have lived in a dominance hierarchy for a long, long time. We were struggling for position before we had skin, or hands, or lungs, or bones. There is little more natural than culture. Dominance hierarchies are older than trees.

The part of our brain that keeps track of our position in the dominance hierarchy is therefore exceptionally ancient and fundamental. It is a master control system, modulating our perceptions, values, emotions, thoughts and actions. It powerfully affects every aspect of our Being, conscious and unconscious alike. This is why, when we are defeated, we act very much like lobsters who have lost a fight. Our posture droops. We face the ground. We feel threatened, hurt, anxious and weak. If things do not improve, we become chronically depressed. Under such conditions, we can’t easily put up the kind of fight that life demands, and we become easy targets for harder-shelled bullies. And it is not only the behavioural and experiential similarities that are striking. Much of the basic neurochemistry is the same.

Consider serotonin, the chemical that governs posture and escape in the lobster. Low-ranking lobsters produce comparatively low levels of serotonin. This is also true of low-ranking human beings (and those low levels decrease more with each defeat). Low serotonin means decreased confidence. Low serotonin means more response to stress and costlier physical preparedness for emergency—as anything whatsoever may happen, at any time, at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy (and rarely something good). Low serotonin means less happiness, more pain and anxiety, more illness, and a shorter lifespan—among humans, just as among crustaceans.

And the chapter does not close with “a quote from Peterson” but with an explanation of the paradox that Peterson presents followed by a statement of the true meaning of Peterson’s chapter. As fake reviews go, Roderic tries harder than most, but the effect of his effort is spoiled by his obvious ineptitude. I give it a 3/10.

More honest Peterson defenders are finding that the case made against their hero is a substantial one and should not be dismissed lightly:

Serious Criticism that Cannot Be Dismissed

I was initially very skeptical of these arguments, even writing a post defending Jordan Peterson against these criticisms. But the more I thought about them, the harder they were to ignore.

In substance, the points are substantial, namely:
1) Jordan Peterson has, in documented cases, misrepresented statistics, sources, and history
2) Jordan Peterson has, in documented cases, broken his own rules (namely, by lying)
3) It is asserted that Jordan Peterson’s argument is motivated by fear and cowardice
4) It is asserted that Jordan Peterson’s method of delivery is (seemingly intentionally) vague and left open to multiple interpretations, resulting in confusion and followers who believe that Jordan Peterson is making mutually exclusive assertions
5) Jordan Peterson has, in documented cases, not stood up for free speech when actually pressed on the subject.

These are not the only arguments made, but they were the most substantial and impactful for me personally.

If you have grown to love Jordan Peterson, I understand the anger, suspicion, and outrage you may feel. It was my initial reaction to some of these claims. After feeling that, I could not bring myself to try to shame people for going in for Dr. Peterson. However, I would encourage skeptics and defenders of Peterson to read the book and make the decision for themselves.

I find it interesting that the aspects of the case against Jordan Peterson this reviewer found most convincing are the aspects that I considered little more than laying the foundation for the much more damning elements.

Cuck all you like

They’re going to call you a racist Nazi hate group anyhow:

The FBI now classifies the far-right Proud Boys as an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism”, according to a document produced by Washington state law enforcement.

The FBI’s 2018 designation of the self-confessed “western chauvinist group” as extremist has not been previously made public. The Proud Boys was founded by the Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes. McInnes has insisted that his group is not white nationalist or “alt-right” but the Proud Boys have a history of misogyny and glorifying violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists them as a hate group.

The document also says: “The FBI has warned local law enforcement agencies that the Proud Boys are actively recruiting in the Pacific north-west”, and: “Proud Boys members have contributed to the recent escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Charlottesville, Virginia, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.”

The report, and the FBI’s warning to south-west Washington police agencies about the Proud Boys’ role in escalating violence at these events came in August, two months before the group was involved in an infamous weekend of street violence in New York City and Portland, and not long after they participated in street violence in downtown Portland on 30 June.

Look, this isn’t rocket science at this point. The clear and present objective of the elite that controls the government agencies of the West is to destroy Western civilization, including its three pillars, Christianity, the European nations, and the Graeco-Roman intellectual legacy. So, any organization that genuinely seeks to defend ANY of those three things will be relentlessly discredited, deplatformed, and designated.

Unless and until you decide that the defense of your faith and your nation is more important than not being called nebulous and ever-mutating names, you will live your life in fear of the inevitable. The time to choose is rapidly descending upon you. The only question is whether you are going to submit to the Devil’s Narrative and deny Christ and country or stand your ground.

You cannot hide behind the false veils of civic nationalism, the Judeo-Christian heritage, melting pottism, racial equality, the freedom of religion, and free speech any longer. All of them are falsehoods. All of them are compromises with the Narrative. All of them will require your eventual submission.

Global cooling was not a myth

The failure of the long-predicted global warming to show up now has the AGW/CC scammers scrambling to claim that there never was an expectation of global cooling in the 1970s. Fortunately, climate skeptics are exploding the scammers’ latest falsehoods.

A review of the climate science literature of the 1965-1979 period is presented and it is shown that there was an overwhelming scientific consensus for climate cooling (typically, 65{72cf27ffdac1ec816f49e283bd4617ffdd8df37c3501aa744a12e9a9c4d5faff} for the whole period) but greatly outnumbering the warming papers by more than 5-to-1 during the 1968-1976 period, when there were 85{72cf27ffdac1ec816f49e283bd4617ffdd8df37c3501aa744a12e9a9c4d5faff} cooling papers compared with 15{72cf27ffdac1ec816f49e283bd4617ffdd8df37c3501aa744a12e9a9c4d5faff} warming.

It is evident that the conclusion of the PCF-08 paper, The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus, is incorrect. The current review shows the opposite conclusion to be more accurate. Namely, the 1970s global cooling consensus was not a myth – the overwhelming scientific consensus was for climate cooling.

It appears that the PCF-08 authors have committed the transgression of which they accuse others; namely, “selectively misreading the texts” of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979. The PCF-08 authors appear to have done this by neglecting the large number of peer-reviewed papers that were pro-cooling.

I find it very surprising that PCF-08 only uncovered 7 cooling papers and did not uncover the 86 cooling papers in major scientific journals, such as, Journal of American Meteorological Society, Nature, Science, Quaternary Research and similar scientific papers that they reviewed. For example, PCF-08 only found 1 paper in Quaternary Research, namely the warming paper by Mitchell (1976), however, this review found 19 additional papers in that journal, comprising 15 cooling, 3 neutral and 1 warming.

I can only suggest that the authors of PCF-08 concentrated on finding warming papers instead of conducting the impartial “rigorous literature review” that they profess.

If the current climate science debate were more neutral, the PCF-08 paper would either be withdrawn or subjected to a detailed corrigendum to correct its obvious inaccuracies.

This historical revisionism is deeply insulting to the intelligence of at least two generations. Look, I was there at the time! They were absolutely going on about global cooling in much the same way they were banging on about global warming 20 years later. I assure you, as a child growing up in Minnesota who occasionally had to wait outside for up to half an hour for a late schoolbus, in windchilled temperatures as low as -30 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, you do not forget being told that the climate is going to get even colder.

I distinctly remember thinking “how on Earth is anyone ever going to survive here?” when I first encountered news reports of scientists predicting global cooling.

JORDANETICS: the #1 bestseller in Political Philosophy


JORDANETICS: A Journey Into the Mind of Humanity’s Greatest Thinker is now available for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

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. He is the central figure of the Intellectual Dark Web, an academic superstar, 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 one has ever thought before. He has dreamed dreams that no one has ever dared to dream before.

But Jordan Peterson is also a narcissist, a charlatan, and an intellectual con man who doesn’t even bother to learn much about the subjects upon which he lectures. He is a defender of free speech who silences other speakers, a fearless free-thinker who runs away from debate, 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.

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 a shocking case that will convince even the most skeptical Jordan Peterson supporter to reconsider both the man and his teachings.

For a video preview, watch the Darkstream.

From the Introduction:

There are no shortage of intellectual con men out there and I don’t consider myself to be the Truth Police. Having confirmed for myself that Jordan Peterson was little more than a Canadian version of Deepak Chopra or L. Ron Hubbard, I was perfectly ready to return to completely ignoring him, but I was unable to do so thanks to his fans. Instead accepting my critique, or even going over the various points in detail and attempting to rebut them, they attacked my intellect, my integrity, and my motivations. They accused me of jealousy, they accused me of envy, and they accused me of dishonesty, all in defense of a man who was observably lacking in any intellectual integrity at all! It was exceedingly bizarre, especially when I had done nothing more than point out a few of the obvious mistakes the man had made.

So, I decided to begin looking more deeply into this popular professor who was being so widely hailed as a formidable thinker, a thoughtful philosopher, a courageous defender of free speech, and a champion of young men. But almost immediately, I discovered that his reputation was at variance with his actions, as in the case of his deeply ironic decision to ban investigative journalist Faith Goldy from participating in an August 2017 event at Ryerson University called “The Stifling of Free Speech on University Campuses”. The event was cancelled, and with Peterson’s approval, Goldy was barred from participating in the rescheduled event.

When he was subsequently asked about his decision in public, Peterson responded with what I eventually came to recognize was his characteristic bafflegarble, the word-smog he habitually utilizes to conceal his actual meaning.

QUESTION: I understand that Faith Goldy was removed from the original August panel because of her podcast with the controversial Daily Stormer after Charlottesville…. This strategy appears to parallel the SJWs, who wish to deny platforms to conservative speakers. I want to understand why Faithy Goldy was removed from the event simply for associating with identitarians, and if each of the panelists agree with that decision.

JORDAN PETERSON: That’s an excellent question. So, the first thing I should say is that it’s not like we’re unaware of the irony. Number one. Ryerson cancelled a panel about the cancellation of panels about free speech. That’s irony number one. And then irony number two was the panelists removed a speaker for arguably engaging in the act of free speech. Okay, we got that, believe me.

All right, so why did we come to this decision? I sat down personally—the other people can say what they have to say—I sat down with my son and we went through Faith’s interview. I know Faith, I don’t believe that she is a reprehensible person. I think that Charlottesville was very shocking to her and I think that she put herself in a very difficult position. And I think some of that was brave, that she went down there to cover it.

However, I listened very carefully to her podcast, the one that got her in trouble. And my sense was that she wasn’t, she didn’t, she was associating with people whose views she should have questioned. It was her journalistic, um, responsibility to question them. She had to ask at least one hard question. At least one. Three would have been better. You know, and I understand she had to toe a careful line. She was on the podcast, they had invited her on, it’s much more difficult than you might think when you’re facing people, even when you don’t believe them, to be rude enough to challenge them, right? That’s not so easy, especially if you’re an agreeable person and she is a rather agreeable person.

But I believe she, she failed in her journalistic responsibility. And as a consequence of that, she became too hot a property for us. And not just for us. And, well, that was, that was the reason for the decision. That was, that was my reasoning.

Now, this was manifestly not the correct behavior of a highly principled man or even a reasonably honest one. Jordan Peterson did something he clearly knew to be wrong, he did something he clearly knew to be hypocritical, but instead of simply owning up to his obvious failure when called on it in public, he attempted to concoct a ridiculous ex post facto excuse to justify it. Again.

He had to know that he was going to have to face the question sooner or later. He even appears to have prepared for it, and yet this response was the best that he could manage. If you watch the video, you can even see that Jordan Peterson has, he has, a reliable tell that warns the viewer when he’s about to say something that he knows is not true. He also betrays another tell that indicates when he is going to very carefully attempt to conceal the weakness of one of his assertions or conclusions.

Just watch for the repetitions and the adverbs. Once you learn to recognize them, you can identify when Jordan Peterson is trying to pull a fast one on his audience even when you don’t know what he’s talking about.

And the obvious question Peterson’s response raises is this: according to what theory of human rights or journalism does one’s own right to free speech rely upon one’s correct performance of nonexistent journalistic responsibilities?

There is no such theory. It’s a nonsensical assertion. It’s classic Petersonian bafflegarble. But it requires a high level of mental focus to penetrate the fog of Peterson’s word-salad and see what he is literally saying.

After twice seeing Peterson’s shameless dishonesty in action, I decided that it was time to delve deeper into the man’s actual work. Being a writer myself, I was aware that men express themselves differently in different media. Many eloquent speakers reveal themselves to be superficial thinkers in writing, and no few writers—myself included—are unable to express their genuinely profound thoughts in a facile manner in front of a microphone or a camera. Perhaps Peterson was much better in print than he was on video or on the Internet; after all, he was the bestselling author on the planet at the time.

So, I read his bestseller, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. I read his would-be magnum opus, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. I even read his contribution to the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Sustainable Development of which he was a member, Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A future worth choosing.

And this book is the result of what I learned from reading the three published works of Jordan Peterson.

A word of warning. This book is necessarily more than a little esoteric. It references a number of works with which you may be unfamiliar, and draws obscure connections you may not immediately recognize or that you may be initially reluctant to acknowledge, especially if you are a Jordan Peterson fan.

But you can be sure of one thing. Unlike Jordan Peterson, I am not attempting to deceive, confuse, dazzle, or baffle you. Unlike Jordan Peterson, I am not attempting to change your perspective or your philosophy. Unlike Jordan Peterson, the logic I present is clear and straightforward. And unlike Jordan Peterson, I do not owe my allegiance to anything but the objective truth, as that concept has been defined in the dictionary and understood by Man since the beginning of time.

You need not take my word for any of this. Everything I am writing here is based on material evidence that you can obtain, examine, and analyze for yourself. So clear your mind, set aside your assumptions and preconceptions, and prepare yourself for a journey into the mind of one of the most shameless intellectual charlatans in the history of Man.

UPDATE: Also #1 in Kindle Store  > Nonfiction > Self-Help > Spiritual

The Wrong Kind of Chameleon

An excerpt from Milo’s Foreword to Jordanetics.

I’m a smart person. Really smart, actually, and very expensively educated! But half the time, I just can’t understand a bloody word Jordan Peterson says. And I’ve been thinking recently about why that could be. Ordinarily, I can listen to someone prattling on and quickly get to the heart of what they are trying to express. That’s one of the skills you pick up as a journalist: You learn to quickly identify the core of a problem, the essence of what’s being said. You learn to filter out the noise—and to identify bullshitters. But with Jordan Peterson, once I’ve filtered out the noise, I don’t find a lot left to work with. And there’s another problem. He lies.

When he first began to speak about me, Jordan Peterson described me as “an amazing person.” This was around the time he called me on the telephone, expressing sympathy for the failed assassination attempt on me in February 2017, when I was wrongly accused of supporting child rapists. He offered to do a series of on-camera interviews with me. He described me publicly, and correctly, as “a trickster figure,” explaining that “trickster figures emerge in times of crisis. And they point out what no one wants to see. And they say things that no one will say.”

He continued: “[Milo’s] brave as can be…. And he’s unstoppable on his feet. He just amazes me. I’ve never seen anyone I don’t think—and I’ve met some pretty smart people—I’ve never seen anyone who can take on an onslaught of criticism and reverse it like he can.” Fast-forward to an on-stage interview with Bari Weiss in June 2018 at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Weiss is talking about about a professor who paired me with Hitler and gave us as examples of Very Bad Things. She alleges that I, the interracially married man, am indeed a racist. To which Peterson replies: “Well, possibly, yeah … I haven’t followed Milo that carefully.”

What happened? By his own definition, this is the way demagogues work: by listening to their audience and adjusting their responses accordingly. Why was Peterson suddenly going along with something he knew wasn’t true and rewriting history, pretending he didn’t know that much at all about someone he had on numerous occasions so intelligently explained? I realize that by asking this question, this you’re going to think I’m just wounded that someone I once admired has since soured on me. But that’s the thing. From the first time I heard Jordan Peterson speak, my nostrils picked up a whiff of sulfur in the air—and not just because he dresses in that awful, drab, monotonous Victoriana.

Read the whole thing there. The irony is that I began writing the book to make a certain case, and wound up being led by the evidence to wind up making Milo’s case in the end. Regardless of what you think of Milo, never underestimate his insight.

This Reddit thread full of Postulants of the 12-Rule Path waxing wroth will make for amusing reading afterwards, as apparently the only reason to criticize Jordan Peterson is envy, and Milo, Owen Benjamin, and myself are all just jealous of a mentally ill man with a Messiah complex. If the thread doesn’t convince you of the vital importance of this book, nothing will.

Mailvox: How not to critique

This dialogue rather nicely addresses the two most recent Darkstream topics, Jordanetics and learning how to think effectively at the same time. It is perhaps most useful to contemplate this in juxtaposition of how I have gone about criticizing Peterson and his work.

MC: You are confusing the dialectic process which dates back to Socrates himself with dialectical materialism. “Political philosopher…” yeah, right. I challenge you to a livestreamed debate about your essential premise that Jordan is utilizing Marxism to formulate his philosophy.

VD: No, I’m not confusing that. No, that’s not my essential premise. Yes, I am one of the bestselling political philosophers alive, with three #1 bestsellers in that category. And no, I’m not going to debate someone who has never read my work and misrepresents my statements. Peterson is not utilizing Marxism to formulate his philosophy, but he is utilizing the same structural approach that Marx did. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis is structurally identical to Chaos-Order-More Perfect Order aka 12-Rule Path to Balance.

MC: You said verbatim that “his intellectual approach is fundamentally Marxist.”  This requires a gross misunderstanding of what the dialectic process— I.e., thesis-antithesis-synthesis— actually involves, and its rich history. It was developed in its earliest stages by Socrates through the Socratic method, and it was adopted by the scholastic Christians as the premise for their dialectic. Far from being philosophically Marxist and anti-Christian, Peterson’s adoption of the dialectic method is both a rejection of Marxism, and an acceptance of a method that has been used by Christians for hundreds of years. As for your credentials, I’m not arguing about how many best sellers you have. Any professional, career political philosopher would laugh at your claim that Dr. Peterson’s intellectual method is Marxist. And I’ve read more of your work than you think. The challenge to debate is still open.

VD: Yes, and obviously I misspoke as I intended to say that his structural approach to his philosophy is fundamentally similar to the Marxist approach. You are trying to build an entire narrative on a false foundation. And you are completely wrong about that being my “essential premise” even given that misstatement. I will never debate you, because you are not honest, you are primarily interested in demonstrating that you are a Smart Boy. You’re not a mind reader, you are wrong, and you haven’t bothered to even do your homework on this subject. So, drop it before I remove you from the channel.

MC: Now you’re making a different claim— and I appreciate that you’re no longer saying that Peterson’s intellectual approach is fundamentally Marxist. That may not have been considered an essential part of your argument to you, but as someone who watches your videos fairly regularly (and hasn’t criticized your work once until today), it matters to me how you paint the people you criticize. If you had claimed Jordan was fundamentally Marxist and stuck to it, that would have been an extraordinary claim. And in my defense, I am not at all concerned about being viewed as a “Smart Boy.” I am concerned about discovering the truth, wherever it comes from. And by the way, I’m still buying the book because I think there may be worthwhile criticisms in it. But I could not in good conscience let such a drastic accusation slide so easily. Kick me from your channel, if you will, but I think banning and refusal to debate are beneath you. Isn’t that what we criticize the Left about?

VD: Yes, it would have been an extraordinary claim, moreover, it would have been completely in contradiction to every single reference to Peterson and Marxism in the book I just wrote. Not that there are many, since Peterson is not only not a Marxist, he doesn’t even know very much about it despite his constant blathering about it.  The point is that your criticism was almost completely off-base. At no point did you ever stop to confirm that the meaning you quite reasonably assigned to it was intended, nor did you possess enough information to know that it was obviously an unintentional statement. Why would I ever debate anyone who suggests a totally irrelevant debate topic? There is literally nothing to debate.

So, what is the problem with this critical approach? Some of you will already have a pretty good idea of not only the problem, but the underlying reason for the problem, but we will ignore the latter as being obvious to those familiar with the topic.

First, never begin with a superior posture. Second, never make a definitive value statement at the start. Third, be very cautious about building a mountain out of a molehill, especially from a single piece of evidence. Fourth, always place more confidence in the written word than the spoken one. Fifth, refrain making any personal judgments in the early stages. And that’s just in the first paragraph.

Sixth, accept the responsible party’s expression of his intentions unless there is reason to believe he is lying or being evasive. Seventh, do your homework. Eighth, always be slow to leap to judgment. Express your suspicions, do not make concrete assertions.

All news is fake news

It’s the metahumor here that is the funniest aspect of this story:

He had launched his new website on Facebook during the 2016 presidential campaign as a practical joke among friends — a political satire site started by Blair and a few other liberal bloggers who wanted to make fun of what they considered to be extremist ideas spreading throughout the far right. In the last two years on his page, America’s Last Line of Defense, Blair had made up stories about California instituting sharia, former president Bill Clinton becoming a serial killer, undocumented immigrants defacing Mount Rushmore, and former president Barack Obama dodging the Vietnam draft when he was 9. “Share if you’re outraged!” his posts often read, and thousands of people on Facebook had clicked “like” and then “share,” most of whom did not recognize his posts as satire. Instead, Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among Trump-supporting conservatives over 55.

“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual. What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,” Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. “Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”

The amusing thing is the way that the guy doesn’t realize that he’s merely replicated the situation that has existed on the Left for decades. They believe literally everything the mainstream media reports, despite the fact that what is generally known as “the news” is a false narrative that has little more than an incidental relationship with the objective truth of what actually happened.

One should also keep in mind that as Owen Benjamin notes, humor is often predictive. The very humor produced by the overstatement tends to come from the discomfort created by the extrapolation of the current trend, which is why his Gay Town is now at least partly real.

Translation: don’t bet on undocumented immigrants not defacing Mount Rushmore in the next ten years or California not recognizing sharia.

Striking distance

A few more preorders and we can switch the order of the two top bestsellers in Political Philosophy. A bonus for those of you who have tickets to attend a Jordan Peterson lecture: an appendix containing a list of 12 Questions for Jordan Peterson.

Sample: You have said that you consider group identity to be dangerous and pathological. Do you consider yourself to be a Canadian?

Be sure to review it once you read it, as you know there are going to be beaucoup fake reviews on this one, once it comes to the attention of the Jordaneticians Postulants of the 12-Rule Path.

UPDATE: Now THERE is the image we were waiting for. Thanks to all the Dread Ilk who made it happen in preparation for tomorrow’s launch. If you’re on Twitter or Facebook, be sure to share it around.

UPDATE: For a chapter-by-chapter video preview of Jordanetics, watch the Darkstream.