Tag: mailvox

This email exchange with a former academic fan of Jordan Peterson may prove illuminating:

Academic: About [REDACTED]. He is a good guy.  He got sucked into Jordan Peterson the same way I did—he thinks in symbolism and heard Jordan apparently talking about the kind of symbolism I study. I am worried for him and for some of my other academic colleagues who are friends with Jordan. His fall is not going to be pretty and many innocent people are going to get hurt.

VD: Yes, I rather imagine a lot of people who drank the Kool-Aid are going to be extremely disappointed. But if they were less narcissistic, they wouldn’t have fallen for Peterson in the first place. I can’t tell you how many of his fans and followers have told me “he sounds like me”. Yeah, well, that’s his game. That’s the con.

Academic: Exactly. And guilty as charged. I was originally sucked in by his Logos-Christ speak—until I realized that it was all my projection onto his smoke screen. I am so thankful that you and Milo did the book—Peterson is a real danger, much more so than those who are more clearly our enemies.

False prophets are usually worse than open and avowed enemies of the faith. And you should always be very careful to read what is actually there, rather than what you imagine might possibly be. This is a fundamental error that I see people making every single day, on this blog, in the YouTube comments, and in real life.

In my experience, if something sounds agreeable to you, then you should be MORE skeptical of it, not less so.

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.

A German reader describes why men cannot stand fake and hyperfeminized churchianity in lieu of genuine Christianity:

In one of your recent videos – I think it was one of the videos on Jordan Peterson – you mentioned that men really trying to improve on their lives tend to go the the gym and to read the new testament. This statement I can fully confirm from my personal experience. Being a gamma most of my life I slowly but steadily work myself out of the gamma’s self-absorption in recent years and going to the gym and practicing my refound Christian faith are two important pillars in that respect.

The motivation to go the gym I got already years ago and independently of your blog and videos. It’s another story with my refound Christian  faith. I was raised and educated in a Christian family and – as you also write in a blog post from May 2nd, 2018 – I think it was that very Christian education that contributed to me developing gamma habits in the first place. For example I remember my mother stressing that Jesus was a superior man for not defending himself and being a victim. Combine that with a weak father with strong gamma traits and you won’t be surprised that I developed the typical passive-aggressiveness of a gamma. Just to name another example: I remember attending a bible lecture as a child where the (male) member of the church community who served there as a teacher told us that women were somehow stronger than men. I don’t remember the context, I only remember my astonishment (“don’t have men naturally more strength than women?”) but somehow accepting his statement in the end.

When I discovered men’s movements and the manosphere some years ago I tended to regain an interest in God as the strong father I would have wished for my childhood days. At the same time I rejected the Christian faith and even resented it because I blamed it for turning me into a full-blown gamma. Especially verses like “turning the other cheek” brought about my general rejection. My relationship with God remainded being more of a superficial interest than a deep-rooted faith at this time.

The beginning of the breakthrough back to my Christian faith came roughly half a year ago with watching your video “Hate is a Christian Virtue”. This was the starting point for my growing understanding that Christianity isn’t about cowardly backing down and being submissive to evil and harmful people. I began to understand the Christian faith from a new and masculine point of view. I began to understand that it’s also about being strong and clear in one’s stand against attackers. Now I’m reading bible verses daily again and listen to sermons regularly (if you don’t now it already I highly recommend John MacArthur’s series on Social Justice and the Gospel). I even found a group of Christian men practicing the Christian faith and supporting each other in their manhood.

So first and foremost I want to thank you for your helpful work on the socio-sexual hierarchy and Christianity. Moreover I’d really appreciate it – if your time and interests allow it at this point – if you would further elaborate on the topic of Christianity and why it involves masculine strength rather than being opposed to it. In particular I’d really like to know your interpretation of verses like “turning the other cheek”.

The key to understanding the concept of turning the other cheek is to grasp that motivations matter. God knows your thoughts! You are not going to fool Him. If you are refraining from striking down the man who violently humiliates you out of cowardice, then you are not turning the other cheek. You are not seeking to be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect. You’re just being a coward and there is less than zero spiritual benefit to you from your failure to respond. Better that you hit your attacker back, and do so harder than he hit you.

Turning the other cheek is only for the man who is strong enough to demonstrate his forbearance as an example of God’s mercy and impregnability, just as carrying the legionary’s equipment for an extra mile can only apply to the individual who is able to carry it for the first mile. One cannot strive to be a perfect man when one is not even truly a man.

That’s merely my opinion, of course. I am a political philosopher, not a theologian.

I was somewhat amused to receive a request to promote someone’s IndieGoGo campaign this morning. I didn’t take any offense at the request, and I’m sure it’s a perfectly good campaign and all, but I have to imagine that he hasn’t been aware of what’s been going on around here lately. Please consider this my standard reply to anyone who would like me to promote a campaign on IndieGoGo.

Dear X,

I’m sorry, but I will not promote anything on IndieGoGo. Nor would I recommend that anyone use them. They retroactively cancelled our successful campaign there and refused to give us the money that we raised from our backers, then made false and contradictory accusations in order to try to retroactively justify that refusal. So, I hope you’ll understand that we will not promote the platform of someone who has deplatformed us.

Best regards,

Vox

And for those of you who missed AH:Q 2.0, just be patient. We’ll introduce 2.1 later this month. Everything is in order. Trust the plan.

A very successful SF writer sends his review of John Scalzi’s The Consuming Fire, the second in his The Interdependency series, in case anyone happens to be curious about it.

Review: The true tragedy of The Consuming Fire is this: if this book, and The Collapsing Empire, had been written as one volume, it would have solved many of the problems besetting the first volume and made the combined volume far more satisfactory.  As it is, although The Consuming Fire is vastly superior to its predecessor, it lacks the satisfaction one may glean from a well-written Peter Hamilton, Brandon Sanderson or Iain M. Banks.  It’s also far too expensive for what one gets out of it.

The Interdependency – a network of star systems held together by the Flow, a series of hyper-dimensional rivers running through the higher dimensions – has finally discovered, thanks to the efforts of Cardenia Wu-Patrick, Marce Claremont and Kiva Lagos, that the Flow is collapsing and the Interdependency, as they know it, is doomed.  With only one planet within the system capable of supporting life without massive support from off-world, and that in enemy hands, the stage is set for a brutal civil war …

… Except it isn’t.  The book effectively separates into two halves.  One side covers Cardenia Wu-Patrick’s desperate attempts to convince the Interdependency that the Flow is indeed collapsing (something that should have been made easier by the complete collapse of one Flow stream) and facing a conspiracy that should have been able to overthrow her with ease, but shows such striking incompetence that their entire plan falls apart far too quickly.  The other side follows Marce as he (aided by the researcher who, accidentally, started the Bad Guys plotting) discovers that the Flow’s steady collapse may be opening up new streams, including to a system that was cut off hundreds of years ago.  (No, not long-lost Earth.)  They take a starship to the system, where they find a handful of survivors – and proof, perhaps, that the shift in the Flow may not be entirely natural.  The Interdependency’s sins – or those of its founders – may have come back to haunt it.  And then, with the discovery of a handful of new streams and the plotters defeated, the stage is set for a brutal civil war …

(Didn’t I just say that?  Really?)

Unlike The Collapsing Empire, this volume does manage to get across both the scale of the disaster facing the Interdependency – with brief asides touching on the effects on the wider universe as the collapse picks up speed – and the problems facing people who attempt to convince the bureaucracy and established interests that the sky is falling, although one expects that this particular version of ‘the sky is falling’ hasn’t been heard that often within the Interdependency.  If Scalzi was hoping to draw a link between the collapsing Flow and climate change, he failed.  The cold fact is that the people who insist that the climate is changing – and that human intervention is forcing the change – have been screaming ‘the sky is falling’ for so long that everyone else has simply stopped listening.  Here, one would expect the novelty alone to ensure that the claims got a fair hearing, although Scalzi is probably right to suggest that not everyone would want to believe.

The Marce plot works better, I think, although much of it is predictable and fails badly when the two plots interact.  It allows the reader to see both the fate in store for the Interdependency and, also, to pick up a flicker of hope (although Scalzi teases us with hints, rather than direct answers).  It’s clever of Scalzi to have Marce interact with the ‘enemy’ physicist, although it says nothing about the competence of the Independency’s security forces that they didn’t pick her up long ago.  (Or the bad guys, in not having her quietly hidden away somewhere or simply eliminated.)  It’s amusing to see that the lack of peer review bit both sides hard.  The bad guys weren’t the only ones to miss a few important details.  Kudos to Scalzi for making a point many would have missed.

However, the plot following Cardenia Wu-Patrick and Kiva Lagos is considerably weaker, owing to a combination of incompetence on both sides.  The bad guys appear certain to win – they pull off a spectacular prison break – until sheer chance, not remotely foreshadowed, blows their plans out of the water.  Scalzi does this very poorly, it must be noted.  The conspiracy is doomed because of the growing crisis, sure enough, but the interests of the competing parties are so different that the conspiracy is probably doomed anyway.  It requires the plotters to either give up most of their interests or start planning to stab their fellows in the back.  Arguably, this is what happens.  The bad guys run rampant until they are challenged, at which point they fold with astonishing speed.

The sexual politics are also quite irritating.  It’s amusing to have Cardenia Wu-Patrick worrying about inviting someone to bed when she can have him (or her) exiled or executed for saying no.  Scalzi neatly encapsulates the dilemma facing those who want to exonerate Bill Clinton for his conduct in office.  Kiva Lagos, who is the person who really needs those thoughts (as she’s as guilty as Slick Willy), doesn’t have them.  Cardenia Wu-Patrick acts, at times, like a lovelorn schoolgirl mooning over Marce (and worrying if he fancies the other physicist); Kiva Lagos is as sexually aggressive as ever, taking an important call while being serviced – that is the exact word used – by an enemy lawyer.  Thankfully, we see less of her in this story than the previous one – another moment when combining the two books would have been considerably more effective.  Truthfully, I wouldn’t object to having all the major power players in the book be women if they weren’t so strikingly incompetent. 

It cannot be denied, however, that Scalzi dropped the ball in a number of places.  There are no scenes set on End, leaving that plot thread dangling for the moment.  To be fair, End is immaterial to the overall plot until the Independency finds a way to get back in touch with the lost world, but it’s still irritating.  Scalzi also has some of his characters veering backwards and forwards with terrifying speed, missing obvious opportunities to push their agendas because of the demands of the plot.  And most of his characters are basically snarky.  It’s sometimes hard to tell them apart.

Scalzi also takes a number of shots at organised religion, making it clear – right from the start of this book – that the Interdependency’s religion is based on a lie.  This is no steady corruption of a number of prophets, or a man who worked miracles, but a lie that was used to bind the Interdependency together.  There are shades of the fake religions of Foundation here too.  The main characters have no qualms about cynically manipulating the beliefs of their people to achieve their goals.  If you happen to be religious, you may find this offensive; if you are not, you may let it slip by.  Scalzi tries to add a hint of ambiguity with a character who may – or may not – have had a religious experience, but it’s hard to take it seriously.  It’s a neat piece of background, but one that ultimately fails.  Which is a shame, because there are concepts here – in the hands of a different writer – that might have been worth exploring.  What do you do if your fake religion suddenly has to deal with a very real prophet?  Or someone that cannot be branded a fake without calling your entire religion into question?

Overall, if Scalzi had combined these two books into one, I would have given them a much higher rating.  A combined volume would have avoided the problems plaguing the separate books – and probably had better editing – and settled a handful of issues before moving on to the third volume.  As it is, both books are ultimately unsatisfactory.  Scalzi appears determined to wring as much money as he can from the series, despite the limitations of the plot, but neither of his volumes have the sheer meat of Game of Thrones and its early successors.  It took me less than an hour to read it.  There are some improvements, yet the glacial plot movement and sheer incompetence of the plotters and counter-plotters is a major downer.  So too is the crudity of some of the characters.  In short, the book is too expensive for what it gives us.

Rating: Two out of five.

A Christian reader shares his experience of returning to his converged home church:

I wanted to drop a note and let you know what a comfort your postings on what is happening in the church have been to me. My wife and I recently rejoined the church I grew up in and am just now realizing how bad the necrosis actually is. This church has been a community bulwark for over 150 years but over the last decade has succumbed to the conciliatory vacuousness of SJWs in the exact sequence of events you frequently describe. I can’t imagine they will even be able to stomach proclaiming the narrow path of salvation or deity of Christ five years from now.

Your posts are like receiving an explicit diagnosis for the rare disease no one has been able to diagnose for years. I pray it is not too late to effect an intervention of some sort. I think it is safe to assume your occasional thoughts on this matter are greatly appreciated by many like me.

Remember, we will win the war. But we’re going to lose more than few battles along the way. The important thing is to never submit and never stop getting back up again. We’re the special forces operating in enemy territory, undertaking the mission in the supreme confidence that our Commander will launch the orbital artillery and send in the space marines at the precise moment He deems right.

If you want to understand that exact sequence of events he describes, read SJWs Always Double Down. It’s all in there.

A Youtube commenter wonders if I find life to be boring:

Because of your understanding of human behavior, is life boring to you? Or have you lost your faith in humanity?

People are mostly boring to me. Their behavior is highly predictable, both on the micro and macro levels. I have no interest in what Suzy said about Jennifer or in learning that yet another alpha or gamma has offered additional evidence to support what I know to be his natural behavioral patterns. An Alpha cheated on his wife? Quelle surprise! A Gamma is depressed because his One True Love failed to return his affections? Color me shocked! A Delta’s wife thinks he works too hard and was wrongly passed over for promotion? Will wonders never cease!

But I have not lost my faith in humanity because my faith is it is not based on unpredictability or entertainment. My faith in humanity is continually refreshed by the small tokens of good faith, of loyalty, of generosity, and of self-sacrifice that I witness on a daily basis.

While people are boring, life is always intriguing. I wouldn’t be bored if I had 500 lives to live. Every day, I wish there were more hours because there are so many different things I would like to do, so many questions to answer, so many objectives to accomplish.

And I haven’t even begun to write what I anticipate will be my magnum opus. AODAL is merely the warmup.

Stanley is convinced that I simply MUST be jealous of Jordan Peterson:

You say you’re not jealous of Peterson, but somehow I suspect you are, whether consciously or not. The whole ‘St. Jordan Peterson’ thing raises those suspicions. He never pitched himself as a saint. If yourself or others began to picture him like that and have now become disappointed that he’s merely human, that’s your own failing. He is, however in my opinion a great man doing his best to steer humanity in a positive direction as we all should. 

It’s really remarkable how all of Peterson’s fans are incoherent too. It’s as if the incoherence and illogic is infectious. What these lunatics never seem to grasp is that all their nonsensical accusations accomplish is to inform us of their own emotional predilections.

However, the truth about Jordanetics is penetrating some Jordantologist skulls:

I wish I would have tapped into you before I tapped out $400 for tickets to go see Peterson, upcoming on Nov. 21st. I “worshiped” this guy. Now I feel like a fool. I will not go sit in that front row seat. It will be empty.

That’s the thing about Jordanetics. Once you see through him, you can’t unsee it. But dude, just sell the ticket.. the greater fools are out there, guaranteed.

Sometimes it just takes people a little while to catch up.

Longtime reader, and the first time I had ever considered dropping off my visits to the blog were when you began going after Jordan Peterson. IIRC, you began with his denial of Jewish IQ numbers and denunciation of any discussion of it being Evil Alt-Right, and it made sense to push back against him for that. However, it began to seem like another Scalzi was emerging and I couldn’t accept him being put into that basket. I have derived plenty of value from his basic messages of taking care of oneself, and as a Canadian, his opposition to Bill C-16 was badly needed and with our insane speech regulations and Rights Commissions/Tribunals, he was brave to do it.

Then the meat and salt diet, extracts from Maps of Meaning and other stuff just couldn’t be justified. Now with the Kavanaugh tweet he has completed his self-immolation even for those like myself who are likely too generous and held his positive messages in such regard as to outweigh the insanity. Also, pairing up for his tour to “debate” with Sam Harris, one of those contemptible creatures in existence, was a massive signal and I came back to reading the blog daily when I saw it. Reflecting now, if I have the idea right about genetic fallacy, I am still happy for the bits I got out of him that I have benefited from, but he is on the whole indefensible at this point. I am writing so you know there are plenty like myself who couldn’t go along with you at first (same with other topics I suppose), and now have caught up and appreciate you going out on a limb to speak the truth.

You must get a lot of hate in the daily inbox, so I hope this one thank you serves some purpose to let you know your work is appreciated.

It’s always encouraging to see people breaking free of the hold that Jordanetics has on their minds. As for retaining the beneficial bits, well, if a cult leader didn’t have something genuine to offer people, no one would follow him. One can find aspects and elements of the truth even in the biggest, most shameless charlatans.

The fact that Jordan Peterson is a crazy intellectual con man pushing an evil globalist philosophy doesn’t mean that every thing he has ever said is wrong. I won’t pretend to understand why some people need to be told to take care of themselves, or why anyone would ever consider it to be a profound truth in the non-Darwinian sense, but if they do, so be it.

But they should keep in mind that you don’t go to your dentist for heart surgery or automotive repairs just because his advice about brushing your teeth every day worked out so well for you.

Lovekraft is whining because he refuses to accept that stubbornly standing by a false position and doubling down on it is never, ever, going to receive anything but open contempt from me.

Your ego is getting the better of you. One post you say you encourage discussion, the next you come across as a complete prick.

Make up your mind asshole.

I am one of your long-time followers and supporters. Hopefully others here will see what their so-called mentor thinks of them.

First, this has nothing to do with my ego. And trying to make the subject about me would make Lovekraft liable for a permanent ban even if he wasn’t reduced to namecalling.

Second, I encourage intelligent discussion, not butthurt babbling from people who suggest something, have their suggestions shot down, then repeatedly insist that their suggestions are too valuable without being able to offer the slightest bit of evidence in support of their position.

I was asked “is calling an SJW a social justice terrorist good rhetoric?” The answer was: no, it is terrible and ineffective rhetoric. “Social Justice Terrorist” is, just like “Social Justice Crybaby” and “Social Justice Whiner”, inept rhetoric of the sort produced by those who simply don’t understand the basics of Aristotelian rhetoric and dialectic. Lovekraft even attempted to claim that “Social Justice Terrorist” isn’t meant to serve as a rhetorical pejorative attacking the Extreme Left, but rather, as a rhetorical persuasive aimed at the Center, that “its effectiveness may lie in converting the normies.”

It does nothing of the sort. How, precisely, is that going to work? What emotion is “Social Justice Terrorist” supposed to trigger in the centrist, and of what is that emotion going to persuade the sort of people who can’t even be convinced that Antifa dressing in black masks, setting cars on fire, and physically beating people up in public are a genuine threat to the body politic?

Third, there is no conflict between a) encouraging intelligent discussion and b) coming off as a complete prick. Fourth, I don’t give a quantum of a fraction of a sliver of a damn if I come off as a complete prick. The comments are there because the readers requested them, not because I wanted to be subjected to a daily dose of foolish questions, idiotic assertions, gamma posturings, personal attacks, trolls, buffoons, attention seekers, and psychologically troubled individuals working out their issues in public. I put up with the comments, I engage with the comments, I even occasionally derive value from the comments but never, ever, make the mistake of thinking that they are an integral aspect of this blog.

Fifth, if I have to make up my mind between encouraging discussion and modifying my offensive behavior, then I will shut down the comments so I don’t have to listen to any of the nonsense anymore. I walked away from both Alpha Game and my WND column without any ceremony or hesitation, does anyone truly believe I would never do the same here? Fortunately, as I have already pointed out, it is a false dichotomy and I do not need to make that choice.

Sixth, it is only because Lovekraft is a longtime follower and supporter that he’s not being banned for violating the Second Directive: I am not the subject. At the same time, as a longtime follower and supporter, he should know better. No matter how betrayed and butthurt you might feel, a commenter should have better self-control. Bitch about me all you like on Twitter or your own site, but you are not on equal ground here where I am both the lawmaker and chief enforcer.

Seventh, I am not a mentor. I have not agreed to mentor anyone. Everyone who reads this blog or any of the books I have written is perfectly free to take or leave the information provided there. If what I’ve written is useful to you, great. If you disagree with something I wrote, fine. Disagree all you like. But if you say something stupid here, there is a reasonable chance I will tell you that it is stupid. If you insist on behaving like a moron, there is a reasonable chance I will identify you as one. And if you want to reject everything I do and say, and with which I am involved, because I don’t look at you with sad paternal eyes, tell you you’re good enough just the way you are, and metaphorically hug you the way you wish your father would, well, Jordan Peterson is probably more your style anyhow.