Tag: mailvox

A reader emails to write of his reflections on the way in which the psychological approach is entirely unsuited to handle genuine evil.

On a serious note, the JBP discussion brought up something I wrote out and saved.  You saved me the same few hours of reading, to reach similar conclusions.  I’m disturbed by the dreams and unmoored personality, and disturbed similarly by the “Clean your room.  Take your meds.  Be Nice”  set of commands.

Normally, suicide prevention is one of those mandatory training things that you nod through and then forget immediately.  We had the unexpected benefit of having parents come in to “share their story” about how their son suicided at age 21, after years of drug issues.  The emotional testimonial is one that I loathe, so I was busy tuning them out.  It was crisis acting in action, complete with the special choreographed music for the slide show.  But in the middle of mom’s opening speech about her dead son, she mentioned reading Gene Wolfe stories and going to conventions hosted by the local Science Fiction Society.  Oh, now you got my focus.

The father was distant and not really involved with his family, and mom was associated with the SF scene in some way.  I had read the Castalia House blog posts and The Last Closet, so at this point I tuned out the mom and soundtrack and paid attention to the boy’s pictures.  What really got my attention were the activities the pictures came from: Scouts, swim team, boys’ choir, lead role in the school musical…. 

Oh, ye cats indeed.

The pictures were random and not in time sequence. Starting at about age 9-10 the boy’s stance, facial expressions, and attitude began changing in the pictures.  It became overacting and getting outrageous in pictures shown to the public.  The behavior changes did not look normal for the age. It was about age 15-16 where his drug use went into heavy opiate addiction, according to parents, and the pictures shown were of a ravaged young man with some serious ghosts in his eyes.

Short of adding peer counselor or gymnastics to the above list, it’s hard to consider a worse combination of potential exposure to pedophiles or homosexual groomers.  After ten minutes, I wondered if drugs were used as part of the grooming, or if he turned to hard opiates to try forgetting.  Moira Greyland’s words came back to haunt me for the next couple days.Were the parents blind to this possibility?

I thought I had this out of my system, but then came the issues concerning Jordan Peterson.  I listened to about one and a half of his videos, and tuned out.  Your analysis, including the diabolical influence, was on target.  My thoughts came out of background.  Peterson advocated therapeutic measures to mitigate the pain, and nothing to stop it, defend the youth, and counterattack.  Then there were his writing about the cannibalistic and incestuous dreams.  This does NOTHING to help young men.  &*^{0f7560f409a8026d7b9d46efb18eca7d6fc1e8f4d90e8abec425fae450ca0aef} that, there are souls at risk.

A Darkstream viewer comments on a recent video:

Spot on. One additional tendency worth noting: Gammas feel an almost irresistible urge to contribute their unsolicited opinions. Most folks do this from time-to-time, of course, and it is usually relatively harmless. But with the Gamma, it is pathological and constant. The need for attention, for adulation, means he must do this all the time.

For the Gamma seeking to rid himself of Gamma behavior patterns, as you said in the video, it is often preferable to just shut the fuck up. Fact of the matter is, smart or not, Gammas are insufferable toolbags and nobody wants to hear their opinions, even if the Gamma is right. No, especially if the Gamma is right. The only thing worse than a loser is a loser who, by some quirk of fate, chance, whatever… is actually right about something. He’ll lord it over everyone and talk himself up incessantly. He’ll milk it far past the point of good sense.

I know, I did enough of this in my time as a Gamma.

If a Gamma (or a former one, I suppose) feels the desire to contribute his opinion, it is often best to do so in private, one-on-one, and not speak of it further, not use it for social gain, posturing, etc… This increases the chance that the opinion will be appreciated, rather than dismissed as coming from a passive-aggressive ass.

Put another way: let others take the credit for a while. Serve and follow – for those worthy of those things, anyway – don’t try to command. It never works for the Gamma.

This is one of the most readily identifiable aspects of the Gamma, which is his insistence on offering unsolicited advice, opinion, and correction. Not only is it unsolicited, it is absolutely unwanted, particularly when it can do absolutely no good at all.

There are few things more infuriating than presenting something that is clearly finished, only to have the immediate response be, “do you know what you should have done instead?” No, I really don’t, and I especially do not want to know right now, even in the unlikely event that you happen to be right.

The petty delight with which Gammas appear to take in attempting to crush the joy in the accomplishments of others is possibly their most despicable trait. I don’t know if they are genuinely seeking to be helpful, if they are seeking to demoralize, if they are being passive-aggressively mean, if they are constitutionally giving a compliment without providing a complaint to balance it, if it is an expression of envy, or if it is some combination of these motivations that depends upon the circumstances.

But unless you are the other individual’s coach, mentor, or boss, do NOT offer criticism unless it is specifically requested when something is first announced or shown to you. It not only doesn’t make the other person appreciate your helpful contribution to their future success, it makes them want to punch you in the face… and determined to leave you out of the loop next time. The correct thing to do is say, “congratulations!” The polite thing to do is throw in a compliment or two, if you can honestly do so. And then leave it at that.

What positive purpose is served when telling someone that something that is obviously finished could have, or should have, been different?

I’m not saying that you should lie if someone asks you if you like something. If you don’t like it, then don’t say you do. But if you do, then say so, find something nice to say about it, and leave it at that. There is a time and place for criticism; the moment of the initial unveiling is absolutely not one of them. Relentless negativity is not attractive to anyone, and creative men and women are particularly averse to it by necessity.

That being said, I have learned over the years that most people’s opinions of incomplete art are totally useless. I call it “the drums are too loud” phenomenon. It used to drive me crazy, when playing an early rough cut of a Psykosonik song for someone, that they would almost inevitably fail to have any useful opinion on the melody, the rhythm, the structure, the lyrics, or the vocal stylings, but would reliably concentrate on something entirely trivial like the mix. I finally stopped letting anyone hear anything that wasn’t at least a prospective final mix.

UPDATE: NH attempts to answer my implied question:

You said you weren’t sure if gammas offer unsolicited advice because “they are seeking to demoralize, if they are being passive-aggressively mean, if they are constitutionally giving a compliment without providing a complaint to balance it, if it is an expression of envy, or if it is some combination of these motivations that depends upon the circumstances.”

It starts because they have no experience and little to offer, so in a sense, it’s meant to be harmless, maybe helpful in its own way. Criticizing feels smart when you’re young, and it’s easy. They honestly don’t know at first how much pain and sacrifice lead up to presenting that finished product.

Over time, however, they learn how they get a strong emotional reaction when they do it… and that’s power. If there’s one thing that a gamma is dying of thirst for, it’s power over others. So, they keep doing it until their bitterness eats them alive.

A reader sends in these optimistic observations of the postmillennial generation.

Gen-Z and Hope in the Post-Institutional Age

Recently at our church over a dozen graduating high school seniors were honored and their post-graduation plans were highlighted. Every young man is either majoring in engineering or a trade like welding, or electrical. Every young woman except one is going into nursing or the medical field. Why is this significant? This is Generation Z and they aren’t fooling around. They’ve seen their older Millennial siblings and cousins struggle with their worthless degrees and jobs, and they are already taking a different path. Gen-Z supports Trump, and most importantly, there’s no give-up in them or hopelessness, even with all of the problems we face.

If you are an older Millennial or Gen-X like myself, you have seen nothing but loss if you are politically right of center. Vox once mentioned Millennials know something is lost, but not what, but Gen-X watched it happened. This gave us perspective, but it also gave us unbridled cynicism.  Gen-Z doesn’t really live in a world of conservative losers and cucks, as they are now irrelevant. They only see a tough road ahead, but they are determined.

I’ve noticed that older Millennials and Gen-X have a problem. Whenever somebody on our side says they are going to do something, or fight back, or even express hope of winning, we have to repress our cynicism. Why? The conservatives turned out to be the biggest bunch of feckless, stupid, political losers in the last century, and we were dumb enough to believe in them for a while. It’s nearly impossible for us to believe anyone right of center can pull their heads out of their asses long enough to do anything meaningful, so we default to cynicism.

Who can remember American cars from the 70s and 80s? If you do, you will remember they produced some of the worst vehicles in history. We inherited them from our parents in high school and we went off to college with them.  Our experience with them was so bad that GM lost an entire generation of buyers. Quite purposefully, they stopped marketing to us and went for the younger generation who knew nothing of GM.  Microsoft had to do the same thing as the bad PR from the late 90’s and early 2000’s turned off millions of potential buyers. But a14-year-old Xbox owner knows nothing of that and doesn’t care.

In the same way, the failures from the 1960s until the present are history to an 18-year-old.

Gen-Z has a big advantage as they are essentially starting at the bottom.  The institutions are all gone. The corporations are all SJW-converged. Free speech is mostly gone. They don’t know a different world than this, but they do know that this is the wrong state of affairs. They didn’t get to see the massive societal destruction of the last 50 years, which is a good thing. Which is more demoralizing, seeing something you love being destroyed or walking in after the destruction to pick up the pieces?

So, if you are Gen-X, don’t mock them. Instead, help them and lead them. If they have a good idea, support them. Don’t be cynical. Don’t tell them about all of the failures you’ve seen or how it will never work. You just might be surprised.

Lead by example in technology. Do the small things around them like using Brave and not Chrome. Use DuckDuckGo and not Google. Don’t worry about being perfect, just do what you can and let them know that complete privacy in today’s world isn’t possible, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fight back.

Help them build their own platforms, and discourage them from building platforms based upon a converged corporation like Facebook or Google. If they get in bed with them, their livelihood could be gone in an instant or they might be tempted to compromise in order to keep the money coming in. 
Always support truth in all things. The little truths all support and belong to the big Truth.

Join an actual brick-and-mortar church and support it. Don’t gossip about it, the members, or disparage it without sound reason. Let Gen-Z know that being a member is Biblical, and that you support the institution, even if you have to clean it out yourself.

Finally, be positive. I realize this is nearly impossible for many of us after so many years of seeing things fall apart, but don’t buy into the secular eschatology that they are going to win. They are not! The future belongs to those who believe in the Good, True, and Beautiful, because those things belong to God.

A reader drops some recent science on us:

The following is part of a comment at a subscription-only site that caught my attention, as it tied in so well with the shrunken-amygdala discussions held so often at VP.  It’s forwarded with permission of the comment’s author, with the bold/italics in the original:

How have humans been turned into snowflakes where emotions are in control and learning has been suppressed?  This article explains it.  When reward is uncertain (even if 90{1983971bb5de6643cbeaedda99937c85acb0dd096e528b5d15681018ba042139} likely), learning in the medial prefrontal cortex is enabled by the dopaminergic reward seeking system.  But if reward is certain, the learning circuits of the medial prefrontal cortex are disabled. 

It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view; if you already know enough to get the reward with certainty, there is no point in wasting further effort to learn more. 

What pertaining to rewards has critically changed over the past couple of generations?  Everyone now receives a reward for participating!  Not just the winner of the race.  Not just the smart student who studied hard and aced the test.  Everybody gets an unconditional hence certain reward.

These unconditional rewards have turned off learning.  The younger generation is broadly liberal and progressive because their ability to learn has been systematically shut off since childhood.  No wonder they act like spoiled children.  They have never learned to grow up!

We have a very big and very serious generational problem.  Those unconditional rewards aren’t just silly; they are literally mentally crippling.

I’m not sufficiently familiar with the science, but I have to wonder if this phenomenon actually re-inforces the under-development of the amygdalae in susceptible individuals, so that the “participation trophy syndrome” has helped to make the SJWs even worse than they might have been.

I have always known that learning how to compete, how to win, and how to lose, is important, but I never had any idea that a failure to do so might lead to literal insanity. It also explains why SJWs are never able to learn from their past mistakes.

More evidence that a college degree is literally worse than useless:

I am an instructor at a [university you would immediately recognize]. The director of the program is encouraging the entire faculty to alter their own teaching methods, based on an article that discusses how a professor at [another well-known university] found that she could improve the grades of her minority students through “inclusive teaching.”  By this she meant creating mandatory worksheets for students to fill out during each lecture (to “teach students how to take notes”), guided reading assignments, required class participation, online quizzes to check their progress,etc.  Basically all the busy work that everyone with an IQ over 95 hated in high school. The article was about implementing this regime in an undergraduate program, which is pathetic enough.   My [spouse] is being encouraged to use it in graduate level courses.  This is in a program that is considered to be extremely selective.

I always find it amusing when people expect me to show deference on the basis of someone’s academic credentials. As far as I’m concerned, a PhD is a reliable indicator that you’re dealing with a midwit.

A longtime regular concurs with my post on identity and expands the indictment to include all the cuckservatives and Churchians who claim to be opposing the Left on various details while submitting to them on the whole.

You are spot on with your identity post.

What infuriates me isn’t the Left and SJWs trying to obliterate the past, but the cucks and Churchians who go along with it. The stupidist part of the whole thing is that they clearly see all of the old institutions have been destroyed, and most large Evangelical churches are now little more than personality cults surrounding popular pastors, BUT they utterly refuse to follow the logic back to institutions because of racism, identity politics, and their love of losing. I’m convinced they love to lose as it proves their piety and dedication.

The Alt-Right is inevitable because it is literally the only alternative going forward.

The worst of the Churchians are globalists who literally want to destroy nations in their vision of a multi-ethnic Christian ideal. When it’s clear from the Bible that God values nations and even mentions people from all nations in Revelations. Think about this: we will no longer be identified by being married in heaven, but WILL be by nation.

If you are treating your wife as if she is the Holy Mother of God and both your nation and your culture as if it they are things which do not merit your pride, then you are taking a very, very perverse approach to life.

Just a few of the typical responses of Jordan Peterson’s cargo cultists to my latest critiques. The interesting thing, to me, is the way the goalposts keep moving, and the way they keep getting more hysterical, the more directly I address what their Broken Prophet has written or said.

I thought Vox Day was supposed to be some deep thinker of the Alt Right (or was it something called The Dark Enlightenment?) I never bothered to follow it up. My Latin is small to none but isn’t Vox Dei the “voice of God”? Hard to take someone with that handle seriously. Now I see all these meandering videos attacking JBP and his book.  VD’s attacks are embarrasingly weak. If he doesn’t like JBP’s squeals against The Right he should just suck it up and watch the drama.

This video is reminiscent of a Cenk Uygur TYT hit piece. You sir, have not represented yourself well here.

You are a fucking moron. He’s never claimed to be of the Left, on the Right, conservative, Christian,……..nothing. Your straw-manning and emotionally driven OPINION of what he may or may not be is no criticism. You Vox, don’t define Conservatism, Christianity, philosophy, psychology, and certainly not Jordan Peterson with your armchair quarter-backing sideline “criticisms”.

I’d like to show you how much of a Gamma male you are now Vox, and not you 6th grade self either. You are pompous, self-aggrandizing coward. You sir, are a jealous loser.

Your such a scrounge little bitch Vox.

Wow. Rekt. Wait, no, it’s just more self congratulatory Vox Day overestimating himself as he’s been doing for decades.

How do you know what someone thinks without direct engagement of question and answer to clarify? That is communication 101.

New it! All this a ploy for you to get attention. Dude Peterson doesnt even know you exist. Peterson fans barely know you exist. He became an intellectual figure through his book Maps of Meaning and his peer reviewed studies that have over 10,000 citations. Your a bloger and failed writer.

Dude. You have less then 3k subscribers. Your comment section on that video is bellow 300. The only People watching you and agreeing with are your mindless fans. How bad do you have be at this game to have been around for a decade, upload regularly, appear on big shows like Stefans and only 2.4k subs. Your a hack.

This guy is projecting harder than anyone I’ve ever seen.

Obviously, you have neither read Maps of Meaning nor watched his lectures. JP is a psychologist not a philosopher like you. JP is writing for an audience of lower IQ , immature folks. You are not his audience.

It honestly just seems like you’re trying to get attention and are jealous of his success

Vox seems to be jealous of petersons succes. You have become irrelevant vox

What seems nuts to me is devoting so much time to a man you obviously disrespect. Why does it bother you so bad that a great many people resonate with Peterson and seem to be helped by him? When you write your book let’s see how well it sells. You come across as a jealous narcissist. Maybe people like Peterson because he doesn’t talk down to them. I got more out of just the contents page of his book than your entire video. Grandiose word salad is a perfect description if you look in the mirror. Would love to see a debate between a man with common sense and one with a chip on his shoulder. Good luck with your Sour Grapes series.

An interesting way to defend the man who supposedly encourages criticism, to be sure. The other thing that is interesting about the responses to my critiques is the way that the definitions of Jordan Peterson’s “truth” keep growing in number. Here are four of the various definitions presently on offer.

1. If you are going to go for a definition of truth that JBP subscribes to, one should probably go with the one that JBP mentions: pragmatism and the book that he recommends: The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand.
2. Peterson subscribes to a pragmatist version of the Coherence theory of truth…. On Peterson’s stated theory of truth, an idea can be thought to be true (or false) at a “micro” or “proximal” level – e.g., at the level of a scientific experiment, or at some other level that does not take the morality of the idea into account – yet actually be false (or true) at a “macro” or “distal” level that includes a consideration of whether the idea is pro-survival or anti-survival (i.e., good or evil). For Peterson, it is the macro/distal level – the level that includes a consideration of the morality of the effects of an idea – that determines the idea’s truth or falsity.  For Peterson, the standard of the moral truth – i.e., of the goodness – of an idea is that the effect of the using or acting upon an idea is ultimately pro-survival (of the individual, or a number of individuals, or all of humanity).
3. Peterson isn’t so much ascribing to a coherence theory of truth, its more a pragmatic form of Nietzsche’s Perspectivism. Perspectivism would hold that there are no objective metaphysical truths, or if there are they are completely unknowable so it doesn’t matter anyways. This is a bit rooted in subjective idealism and phenomology and existenitalism…something something about consciousness/mind being fundamental, that reality is only the perceptions of human consciouness and not in any way independently existening. And then you add on the Will to Power and the human Will being the central force in the universe, yada yada yada. (We are talking about a literal madman here…) So with that basis every Will is subjected to its perspectives, its own way of interpreting its perceptions. Thus no truth is absolute and objective, for any such truth would need to be capable of transcending all limits on perception. 
4. My understanding is that Peterson argues that human interaction and agency works through logos and narrative, and so can be considered a separate system from objective, scientific reality. Following from that, he says that the narrative structure is embedded in the psyche, and its archetypes can embody psychological truths that he considers more meaningful than scientific truths.

Keep in mind that Peterson fans insist that he speaks with precision and clarity, even though they subscribe to at least five different versions of his definition of truth. So let’s hear what Jordan Peterson himself has to say about truth:

• I don’t think facts are necessarily true. So I don’t think this scientific facts, even if they’re correct from within the domain that they were generated, I don’t think that that necessarily makes them true. And I know that I am gerrymandering the definition of truth, but I’m doing that on purpose.
• Your truth is something only you can tell, based as it is on the unique circumstances of your life. Apprehend your personal truth.

Now, what other school of thought do we know that insists truth depends upon adherence to a narrative? Contrast those seven definitions of truth with the two that I favor:

• Aristotle: To say that that which is, is not or that which is not is, is a falsehood; and to say that that which is, is and that which is not is not, is true.
• Jesus Christ: Let your Yes be Yes, and your No, No. For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

In any event, I believe I have finally ascertained the central purpose of Jordanetics and identified the core of Jordan Peterson’s perception of himself as a world savior, thanks to Maps of Meaning. I will go into more detail in a future post and Darkstream, but in essence, Jordanetics is the consequence of the failure of the New Atheism and the neo-liberal world order, particularly as it relates to immigration. No one can believe in the sexy secular science fiction future anymore, and the fruits of mass immigration and multiculturalism have created a growing longing for the Western societal ideal of 1950s Christian White America, which, unlike all the various alternatives proposed, has the benefit of actually having existed and known to function more or less as advertised.

Jordanetics is a desperate attempt to stave off the grand historical trends presently playing out, to prevent the pendulum from swinging back, to avert the growing pressure to rebuild Western societies that are European and Christian. But it won’t work, it can’t work, because by every historical and sociological measure, Man is long overdue for war on a societal level, if not a civilizational one. And remember, homogeneous nations have usually risen out of the ashes of heterogeneous empires.

Apparently the ways of God are very mysterious indeed.

I have been following Jordan Peterson for the last year and his teachings really appealed to me. However, I kept having this nagging feeling that something wasn’t right or some sense of danger. It bothered me that he was always cagey about if he was a Christian or not. All of the fellow Christians I know will tell you pretty quickly they are believers. So I prayed about it and asked that if he was a false prophet or a danger that he would be revealed. Within a few months of my first prayer, the Dark Lord turns his eye upon Jordan Peterson. Prayer answered!

Perhaps it is a coincidence or perhaps it is divine inspiration. But there is no need to take my opinion as given. The truth is out there. And by “truth”, I mean Aristotelian Correspondence truth, not any of the many contradictory definitions provided by Peterson fans. I actually find myself getting increasingly annoyed with the uninformed Peterson fans who quite clearly have not sufficiently familiarized themselves with the teachings of their psycho-prophet and accuse me of doing nothing more than making groundless accusations which don’t prove anything out of envy, ignorance, and malice.

The really strange thing about all of this is that I had no absolutely no interest in Jordan Peterson whatsoever. I knew he made videos and he’d written a bestseller, but I didn’t even know what it was called. I was under the vague impression that the book that sounded a little like Hillary Clinton’s book was the recent bestseller. All I knew is that he got it wrong about Ashkenazi mean IQ and then doubled down when he was called on it. Having previously done the relevant demographic math, I made my point in a matter of minutes – he was wrong and he had to know it – and would have happily left it at that were it not for the angry Jordan Peterson fans attacking me and claiming that the good doctor was a great Christian man dedicated to the truth and a saint who would never have done such a thing.

The more I looked into the man, the more falsehood I saw. Now I’ve seen that every time I quote the man, I am accused of misrepresenting, mischaracterizing, misleading, and lying by the very people who are denying that Jordan Peterson is what he himself claims to be. They will go so far as to claim that he doesn’t really mean what he says, he doesn’t really understand what he says, and he doesn’t actually know what he is saying rather than take the man at his word and accept that he is not what they believe him to be.

Challenge accepted. If they require a conclusively damning case even the man’s own wife can’t deny, then I will give it to them. Deus vult, apparently.

Jordan Peterson is a conservative.

I abandoned the traditions that supported me, at about the same time I left childhood. This meant that I had no broader socially constructed “philosophy” at hand to aid my understanding as I became aware of the existential problems that accompany maturity. The final consequences ofthat lack took years to become fully manifest. In the meantime, however, my nascent concern with questions of moral justice found immediate resolution. I started working as a volunteer for a mildly socialist political party, and adopted the party line.

Economic injustice was at the root of all evil, as far as I was concerned. Such injustice could be rectified, as a consequence of the rearrangement of social organizations. I could play a part in that admirable revolution, carrying out my ideological beliefs….

I had attended several left-wing party congresses, as a student politician and active party worker. I hoped to emulate the socialist leaders. The left had a long and honorable history in Canada, and attracted some truly competent and caring people. However, I could not generate much respect for the numerous low-level party activists I encountered at these meetings. They seemed to live to complain. They had no career, frequently, and no family, no completed education—nothing but ideology. They were peevish, irritable, and little, in every sense of the word. I was faced, in consequence, with the mirror image of the problem I encountered on the college board: I did not admire many of the individuals who believed the same things I did. This additional complication furthered my existential confusion.

My college roommate, an insightful cynic, expressed skepticism regarding my ideological beliefs. He told me that the world could not be completely encapsulated within the boundaries of socialist philosophy. I had more or less come to this conclusion on my own, but had not admitted so much in words. Soon afterward, however, I read George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. This book finally undermined me—not only my socialist ideology, but my faith in ideological stances themselves. In the famous essay concluding that book (written for—and much to the dismay of—the British Left Book Club) Orwell described the great flaw of socialism, and the reason for its frequent failure to attract and maintain democratic power (at least in Britain). Orwell said, essentially, that socialists did not really like the poor. They merely hated the rich. His idea struck home instantly. Socialist ideology served to mask resentment and hatred, bred by failure. Many of the party activists I had encountered were using the ideals of social justice to rationalize their pursuit of personal revenge.

Whose fault was it that I was poor or uneducated and unadmired? Obviously, the fault of the rich, well-schooled and respected. How convenient, then, that the demands of revenge and abstract justice dovetailed! It was only right to obtain recompense from those more fortunate than me.

Of course, my socialist colleagues and I weren’t out to hurt anyone. Quite the reverse. We were out to improve things—but we were going to start with other people. I came to see the temptation in this logic, the obvious flaw, the danger—but could also see that it did not exclusively characterize socialism. Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted.

It was not socialist ideology that posed the problem, then, but ideology as such.
– Maps of Meaning

Jordan Peterson is a Christian

Although I had grown up in a Christian environment—and had a successful and happy childhood, in at least partial consequence—I was more than willing to throw aside the structure that had fostered me. No one really opposed my rebellious efforts, either, in church or at home—in part because those who were deeply religious (or who might have wanted to be) had no intellectually acceptable counter-arguments at their disposal. After all, many of the basic tenets of Christian belief were incomprehensible, if not clearly absurd. The virgin birth was an impossibility; likewise, the notion that someone could rise from the dead.
– Maps of Meaning

Lott: Do you believe that Jesus rose again from the dead?”

Peterson: I cannot answer that question. And the reason is because… okay… let me think about that for a minute… see if I can come up with a reasonable answer for that. Well, the first answer would be: It depends on what you mean by Jesus…. I don’t understand the structure of being well enough to make my way through the complexities of the resurrection story, I would say it’s the most mysterious element of the biblical stories to me, and perhaps I’m not alone in that, it’s the central drama in the Christian corpus let’s say. But I don’t believe that it’s reasonable to boil it down to something like “do you believe that or do you not believe it”, you know, it’s not… I don’t know what the limits… I don’t know the limits of human possibility.
– Am I Christian? Interview with Tim Lott.

Jordan Peterson’s approach is that of a psychiatrist, not a philosopher or theologian

I am playing at the philosophical level, or maybe I’m playing at the theological level and what I am trying to do is say what I think as clearly as I possibly can and to listen to the feedback and modify my message when that seems to be necessary and apart from that I am willing to let the chips fall where they will.
– NBC interview

Jordan Peterson believes in God.

Q: How would you define your God? Do you believe in the supernatural? Do you pray?

A: My God is the spirit that is trying to elevate Being. My God is the spirit that makes everything come together. My God is the spirit that makes order out of chaos and then recasts order when it has become too limiting. My God is the spirit of truth incarnate. None of that is supernatural. It is instead what is most real. It depends on what you mean by pray. I don’t ask God for favors, if that’s what you mean.
– Reddit Ask Me Anything, 2017

This defense of Jordan Peterson is very typical of the other attempted defenses of the man and his philosophy that I have seen. From a comment on the Darkstream: The Core Purpose of Jordan Peterson.

That is completely taken out of contexts. Hes encouraging people to clean up there act. The first step is stop doing things you know to be wrong.  Hes encouraging you not to get mixed up in philosophy of weather or not something is actual wrong because you can end up justifying anything. He says in starting out this process you can use your own standard (although he strongly emphasizes looking at tradition) to guide you in stopping the actions you know you shouldn’t do.

The “.Perhaps you will then see that if all people did this, in their own lives, the world might stop being an evil place.” comes way later on the page and doesn’t directly follow the “use your own standard” line Vox is quoting. That quote is suggesting if people stooped lying and started taking care of what is right in front of them and fulfilled there responsibility’s to one another then the world might be better. Not “If everyone does what makes them happy everything would be great”

That is so against Peterson’s world view its not even funny. Vox is deliberately miss-characterizing and slandering Peterson.

Oh, is that so? Well then, let’s read what Peterson actually wrote, in full. The quote I selected and correctly indicated I left out a section of text with ellipses is in bold.

You can use your own standards of judgment. You can rely on yourself for guidance. You don’t have to adhere to some external, arbitrary code of behaviour (although you should not overlook the guidelines of your culture. Life is short, and you don’t have time to figure everything out on your own. The wisdom of the past was hard-earned, and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you).

Don’t blame capitalism, the radical left, or the iniquity of your enemies. Don’t reorganize the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city? Let your own soul guide you. Watch what happens over the days and weeks. When you are at work you will begin to say what you really think. You will start to tell your wife, or your husband, or your children, or your parents, what you really want and need. When you know that you have left something undone, you will act to correct the omission. Your head will start to clear up, as you stop filling it with lies. Your experience will improve, as you stop distorting it with inauthentic actions. You will then begin to discover new, more subtle things that you are doing wrong. Stop doing those, too. After some months and years of diligent effort, your life will become simpler and less complicated. Your judgment will improve. You will untangle your past. You will become stronger and less bitter. You will move more confidently into the future. You will stop making your life unnecessarily difficult. You will then be left with the inevitable bare tragedies of life, but they will no longer be compounded with bitterness and deceit.

Perhaps you will discover that your now less-corrupted soul, much stronger than it might otherwise have been, is now able to bear those remaining, necessary, minimal, inescapable tragedies. Perhaps you will even learn to encounter them so that they stay tragic—merely tragic—instead of degenerating into outright hellishness. Maybe your anxiety, and hopelessness, and resentment, and anger—however murderous, initially—will recede. Perhaps your uncorrupted soul will then see its existence as a genuine good, as something to celebrate, even in the face of your own vulnerability. Perhaps you will become an ever-more-powerful force for peace and whatever is good.

Perhaps you will then see that if all people did this, in their own lives, the world might stop being an evil place. After that, with continued effort, perhaps it could even stop being a tragic place. Who knows what existence might be like if we all decided to strive for the best? Who knows what eternal heavens might be established by our spirits, purified by truth, aiming skyward, right here on the fallen Earth?

Daniel makes an interesting observation about the similarities between Jordan Peterson’s nameless quasi-philosophy and Dianetics.

There are some interesting overlaps between Peterson’s 12 rules and Dianetics 8 Dynamics. L. Ron Hubbard was also highly intelligent, mentally unhinged, AND deeply helpful to some broken people.

In fact, most ex-Scientologists will tell you that the hook – “Dianetics works” – is, at a basic level, very true for a very lost person. It is the truth-bait for the broken that sucks them in and seals them into the cult.

8 Dynamics of Dianetics:

• Self: Peterson has rule 1, 2 and 10
• Sex: Rule 5
• Group: Rule 3, 9
• Mankind: Rule 6, 11, 4
• Animal: Rule 12
• Universe: not applicable
• Spiritual: Rule 7
• Infinity: Rule 8

This all is related to your thesis that methadone is only okay for the addict. A lot of people were helped by Dianetics in the 1950s, before there ever was a Scientology. It was an intoxicatingly useful deception.

While there is no indication that Peterson actually intends to expand his mental chaos management into a full-blown religion, the possibility that it could be a nascent Dianetics 2.0 merits further contemplation. Fortunately, at this point, he appears to be more interested in Canadian politics than in creating an actual cult.

UPDATE: I did a Darkstream discussing this and the first chapter of 12 Rules for Life: Jordan Peterson is bait for the broken.

I particularly enjoyed this comment. I look forward to quoting it again once I have convinced even the most dubious Peterson fan that my case against him and his philosophy is conclusive.

Vox, you are a fucking loon. You know absolutely nothing about the guy and hadn’t watched any of his videos or interviews or read his books or talked to him………but you just knew that he was intellectually dishonest, now you say he’s mentally ill, he’s totally fucking insane, his philosophy is insane and incomplete, he’s a gamma, he’s in a bubble, he’s deluded,……..Dude, you are telling trying to tell the world what the moon is made of after looking at it once.

It’s a good point. Imagine how smart and discerning I must be to be able to do so correctly.

Rule 33: Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
– Jordan Peterson

You know, there just might be a book in that one.