...Across the spectrum of genders, colors, and socio-economic status, young people are relentlessly indoctrinated into believing that their country is a greedy, oppressive place, guilty of sins past and present, and that the world is facing an apocalyptic ending as boiling seas rise and inundate parched land.
...The cultural Marxist claim that western civilization is inherently flawed thanks to colonialism, racism, and sexism (all of which are the poisonous fruit of the Judeo-Christian tradition), has battered Western European nations into a suicidal level of intellectual submission.
...The Trump administration is making significant headway undoing the political damage the Obama administration caused, but how does one undo generations of self-loathing amongst Americans? How does one tell young people that this is a great country, with equality of opportunity for those willing to work hard? How does one help the despairing drug addicts break free? How does one get people trained in anger and hatred to stop and look at the blessings around them?
Bookworm recently attended a Jordan Peterson book-signing in San Francisco.
Peterson is a great speaker. He’s the college lecturer everyone dreamed of having: Clear, interesting, energetic, erudite, funny and, above all, honest. This is a man who speaks his truth (and, indeed, one of his rules is “Tell the truth” or, if you’re not sure what the truth is, at least don’t lie). For two hours, with passion and wit, he shared incredibly complex, important ideas with us, riffing through religion, literature, psychology, common sense, and politics. He is a polymath who used his incredibly breadth of knowledge to infuse new life into ideas about self-improvement.Read more here.
What matters greatly is that Peterson is not offering the cheap and easy self-improvement, self-realization, and self-actualization that characterized the 1970s, and that still haunts the self-help aisle in any library or bookstore. Al Franken perfectly summed up that type of self-improvement with Stuart Smalley’s catch-phrase, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and, gosh darn it!, people like me.” Vapid affirmations are part of what weakened the American psyche, paving the way for safe spaces, triggering, and the politics of perpetual offense.
For Peterson, recognizing that you are an individual worthy of respect is only the beginning. That idea isn’t the end of the self-examination, but only the beginning: Every person inherently being a worthy child of God but it’s after acknowledging this reality that the real work begins. To optimize your potential, says Peterson, you have to stand up straight, organize your surroundings, treat yourself with dignity and respect, choose friends who value and cultivate the best in you not the worst, raise likable children, and have to make yourself a better person every day. These were just some of the messages Peterson gave the crowd.
Peterson ended his talk by telling us two things that transcend the individual and that affect society as a whole: (1) people must do the hard work of making themselves right before they can impose themselves on the world and (2) they must tell the truth or, if they cannot tell the truth, the must not lie.
The first notion is aimed at evil doers — people such as the Sandy Hook or Parkland School killers — who embrace and cultivate their unhappiness and bitterness until it grows to be such a force that they are determined to impose it upon the world. Peterson says that we have an ethical obligation to fix ourselves and not become that person.
I see this concept as consistent with Dennis Prager’s insistence that happiness is a serious problem. As a religious man, Prager believes God gave humans the unique ability to think their way to happiness. In this we differ from animals, who can only react to their immediate circumstances. Because we have this special gift, it is wasteful and disrespectful to God, to ourselves, and to those in our orbit, not to cultivate it. Only when you have squared yourself away ethically, when you have optimized your abilities and your values, should you start trying to manage the affairs of others.
The second notion Peterson raised is that truth is the dividing line between order and chaos. Peterson begins with the first words in the Bible because, separate from its religious meaning, the Bible also represents the core Western myth around which we’ve built our culture (the same culture that the Left seeks to destroy). In Genesis’s first chapter, God confronts chaos, speaks truth (“light,” “sky,” “water,” “land”), and by doing so creates order and meaning in the world.
Lies are chaotic. Truth is clarifying. To the extent that we speak the truth, we align ourselves with reality and order. This is why, Peterson says, it is so important that we have free speech. Government coerced speech too often forces people to live in world of lies, lies that will inevitably collapse, bringing the system down with them. These lies also force people into moral contortions that pave the way to Auschwitz, the Gulags, and the re-education camps. Government has the power to invade the most inviolable core of every individual. That is the fundamental evil of Marxism. At least, that was my takeaway.
...Since I’m not shy, I approached a group of three people — a long-haired, swarthy man in a suit; a computer programmer type; and a gender fluid person with a buzz cut — and said to them, “Hi, I notice you’re all younger than I am and I’m wondering what attracted you to this event.” What all three had to say was that they were drawn to Peterson because he is a polymath who relies on myriad sources to help make sense of the world, because he offers genuinely useful advice for them to improve their lives, and because he speaks the truth.
...Which brings me to the hopeful view that I have after attending. He and Rubin are interested in freedom, individual rights and free intellectual inquiry. They bring humor and respect to their show, and that will always win out. The regressive left that Peterson is not shy of condemning has fear, intimidation, censorship and the denial of common sense and individual experience on their side. When you have freedom, happiness and humor on your side you will win.
...I was witness to a spiritual revival that is reaching out to people across the political, social, racial, and gender categories that currently divide Americans. In a riven society plagued by self-doubt, self-loathing, and existential despair, Peterson and other members of the “Dark Web” offer the possibility of individual salvation.
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