Month: May 2020

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”

Ernest Benn

Picture for a moment your ideal society. You have finally elected a leader that isn’t a total corrupt moron. They actually have your best interests in mind, they’re fair, just, and competent. The country is running smoothly, there is no more violence, and it’s prospering like never before.

Sounds great right?

Except there is one problem: that’s already what each side of the political debate wants. We just can’t agree on how to get there.

I think one of the biggest problems is that we tend to avoid conversations about politics. Or rather, we tend to avoid constructive conversations about politics.

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues…”

George Orwell

Everything we do in life has traces of our political ideologies, some more obvious than others. Still, we’re taught as a society to avoid discussing them. “No politics at the dinner table.” we’re told.

I think behaviours like that can create a negative feedback loop that has the opposite effect of their intention. The less we talk about politics, the more we become divided.

A poll from the Pew Research Center shows exactly how polarized we’ve become since 1994.

In this post i’ll be discussing some theories that might help us understand why we are experiencing this current political polarization.

I’ll talk about about how our own ignorance, the media, social cohesion, desire, and cultural postmodernism are all contributing toward a greater divide.

So grab some snacks and get comfortable.

1. Ignorance

One of the most appalling things I see in our society is how we willingly adhere to someone else’s set of moral principles without thinking for ourselves. We don’t understand the dangers of ideological group think. We are incapable of viewing the world through someone else’s eyes. We lack empathy, we’re delusional, stubborn, and entitled.

In a recent poll from the Pew Research Center, it was revealed that the majority of liberals and conservatives not only express frustration with the opposing views, but they each strongly believe the other side is close-minded, immoral, and dishonest. They even admit to feelings of fear of the other party.

“That millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane”

Erich Fromm

We’re seeing something like the Dunning-Kruger effect. It’s a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their own knowledge. Put simply, it’s the inability to recognize one’s own inability.

People who scored lowest on grammar, humour, and logic tests, dramatically over estimated how well they performed. Alternatively, the people who scored highest on the tests underestimated their ability.

Charles Darwin once said that: “Ignorance frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

It’s what Aristotle meant when he said: “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.” Even Shakespeare said something similar with: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

We’re seeing this today in politics. The most radical individuals on either side of the political spectrum tend to be the most intellectually challenged.

“The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’

Issac Asimov

They are the geniuses responsible for the ludicrous hashtag: #believeallwomen.

They are the brave souls who are writing articles with titles like: “Why are so many white men trying to save the planet without the rest of us?”

They are the heroes that deny individuals a platform to speak at universities because they might disagree, or be offended, with a different opinion than their own.

They believe that their right to not be offended trumps someone else right to freedom of speech.

The leftists aren’t the only ones guilty of playing these dangerous identity games. Jordan Peterson summarized it well when he said: “The left plays them on behalf of the oppressed, and the right tends to play them on behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride.”

The late, great comedian George Carlin, once pointed out the stupidity of misplaced pride:

“Pride should be reserved for something you achieve or obtain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being Irish isn’t a skill… it’s a fucking genetic accident. You wouldn’t say I’m proud to be 5’11”; I’m proud to have a pre-disposition for colon cancer.”

George Carlin

I understand that most of these people have good intentions and just want to create a fair and just society, and I know it’s not fair to lump them all together. I’m not arguing the merits of social justice either, but I do think we have a responsibility as individuals to think first.

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”

Martin Luther King Jr.

2. The Blue Church

I’d like to thank @will_mannon for showing me this fascinating article. It illustrates how much our society is influenced by media, how it’s all changing, and how that can help explain our current political divide.

As much as I attribute positive change and well being to personal responsibility, I admit there are some things at play that affect us beyond our control.

The author of the article, Jordan Hall, calls his theory the Blue Church. He outlines it as a narrative/ideological control structure that is the natural result of mass media.

Let me explain.

Life is complex. There is way too much information in the world and it can be overwhelming. It would be impossible for anyone to know and comprehend all of it.

So we use control structures to break down and simplify life’s complexities. Hall defines it as: “an architecture that enables a scalable division of labor for social sense-making.”

The newspaper, printing press, and the telegram made up the social control structure of the 19th century.  The transformation into the 20th century brought with it the television and the radio, which created a new type of social control structure: the Blue Church.

The Blue Church control structure is based on the asymmetrical flow of information that goes from “one to the many” or “author to audience.”

Hall says: “we would hand the smaller problems up the expertise hierarchy where they are processed and reduced to simple shared ‘good opinions’ which is then broadcast down and out to the whole population.”

The distributers of the media broadcasts were network television stations and credentialed academic institutions, both of which were thought to be honest and trustworthy.

50 years ago, almost 30 million people watched Walter Cronkite each night. Thats a lot of people who were being conditioned to share a similar belief system. In a poll in 1973, Cronkite was labeled as the most trusted man in America, with 90% of respondents having at least some respect for the man.

Networks like CBS were creating social cohesion. They were setting the standards of the social limitations and boundaries while promoting acceptable ideologies.

“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups… So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”

Philip K. Dick

Hall adds that:“the downside result of this social reinforcement, of course, is the echo chamber where opinions that violate good opinion are removed from discourse — even when they are valuable and important.”

According to Hall, the actual playing out of the Blue Church control structure is influenced by three characteristics of human beings:

• We are a pack animal constantly trying to make sure we have high status within the pack;
• We have a really hard time distinguishing between “having attention” and “deserving attention;”
• We principally learn by doing and emulation (not thinking).

(The last one is important, i’ll be returning to it. )

I know, it sounds oppressive and dystopian, but luckily Hall argues that the Blue Church is collapsing and the internet is to blame.

Giant companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google are creating a new type of social control structure.

The asymmetric flow of information of the Blue Church, is becoming multi-directional, and symmetrical. Now everyone has the ability to have an audience. We aren’t being broadcast to, instead we are the ones being broadcasted.

At first glance, the future might seem bright and less dictatorial, but when we look closer, our new social control structure still holds the same dangerous potential of power and, well …control.

It’s still influenced by the same human characteristics that the Blue Church was.

Have a look at the number of followers on twitter that Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and Donald Trump have. Clearly, we still haven’t learned to tell the difference between who has attention and who deserves it.

And we still learn by emulating and by adopting the ideologies of others instead of thinking for ourselves. Only now, our choices are specially curated to us by our social media companies.

We are being nudged toward content by the “recommended” algorithms on YouTube, “follow suggestions” on Twitter and Facebook, and Google search results. These companies can perpetuate echo chambers. They all have the dangerous potential of political bias by using their power to filter and remove content as they see fit.

It’s important to be consciously aware of these things.

The theories of René Girard take the idea of our human tendency to emulate even deeper. He sheds some light on the origin of the conflicts that we see between political parties.

3. Memetic Rivalry

Girard was a french polymath with extensive knowledge of history, literature, theology, mythology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, economics, and psychology.

I could write a whole post about René Girard, and maybe I will one day, but i’ll try to quickly sum up his ideas as best I can.

Girard believed that we don’t desire things for the sake of owning them, or how they will make us feel. Instead, we desire things because someone else has them. He calls his theory, Mimetic Desire.

He uses the capitalistic nature of the stock market as an example. Stock prices have less and less to do with a company’s financials or fundamentals, but rather prices rise and drop because of the speculative interest of the buyers and sellers. People only want the stock because other people desire it.

He says that this is an organizing principle in all societies and religions. Memetic Desire spreads conflict and violence because people all want the same things. Especially in a culture driven by consumerism and greed. Envy is a powerful, and shameful motivator.

“Moral indignation is just jealousy with a halo”

H.G. Wells

He says that when you have two people that want the same thing, eventually you’ll have a third and a fourth and so on. He calls this Mimetic Rivalry. These conflicts arise from people desiring the same limited resources. The same status, clothing, jobs, mate, and real estate.

This explains the conflicts and reciprocal violence that arises from the finite amount of power available to opposing political parties.

Girard argues that when this Mimetic Rivalry gets out of hand, societies and religions respond by singling out a scapegoat and lynching them. It is by this act of sacrifice and ritual that we achieve cohesion and reconciliation which restores order.

Girard says that good leaders and rulers are those who limit the potential of this Mimetic Rivalry. They advocate spirituality, love, or education, which are abundant resources that can be shared without limits.

Fun fact! Girard has said that Shakespeare understood the truth of his theories of Mimetic Desire, and he himself might have been an anthropologist or sociologist. The only reason he didn’t study them was that these fields of study didn’t exist in his day.

“O, Hell! To choose love by another’s eyes”

Shakespeare

Shakespeare can also help us Segway into the next contributor to political polarization.

“And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, millions of mischiefs”

Shakespeare

4. Group Identity

In an American Gallup poll in 1948, participants were asked to share their religious preferences. 68% were Protestant and 22% were Catholic. In 2019, 35% were protestant and 22% were Catholic. During that time, the “non-religious” category went from 2% to 21%.

America went from a 90% approval rating of Walter Cronkite, who was more trusted than their president at the time, to a society that can’t trust the news anymore.

This lack of social cohesion might explain people’s need to attach themselves to something greater than they are. They look to adhere to any set of moral principles, however skewed.

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The problem with identity politics is that in groups participants put the needs of their own group above the needs of other larger and more diverse groups. As we already know, the Left plays these Identity games on behalf of the oppressed.

And we know that there is comfort in being a victim. Accountability is removed, you get attention, and you are pitied. It feels like everyone owes you something. These people are governed by Mimetic Desire, victimhood is attractive to some people, because they can see it’s easier than taking responsibility.

It’s harmful because by believing that their group is marginalized and discriminated against, they think that the power to change their situation is out of their control. They think their issues have to be fixed by people outside of their marginalized group.

“Movements for civil rights should aim toward full acceptance and integration of marginalized groups into the mainstream culture, rather than perpetuating that marginalization through affirmations of difference”

Arthur Schlesinger

On an individual level, that can make someone feel hopeless, angry, and resentful. It’s here that the they look for Girard’s scapegoat. We’re seeing that today with our cancel culture. Everyday, comedians and businesses are being lynched by the mob for some micro-agression or offensive comment.

The interesting thing is that these groups imitate the thing that they are replacing. This is from Girard again: “They denounce Christian concern for victims as hypocritical and a pale imitation of the authentic crusade against oppression and persecution for which they would carry the banner themselves.”

This is from an article by author, BJ Cambell, who explains the similarities of the two groups: “Religious thinkers invent their own epistemologies, in such a manner that their religious teachings become unfalsifiable. The Social Justice approach to this is called “standpoint epistemology” and finds its roots in cultural postmodernism. If you and I disagree, then that’s because we come from different standpoints, therefore you cannot falsify my claim because you lack my standpoint. This is the Social Justice adaptation of “God put the dinosaur bones there.”“

These people are incapable of admitting any wrong doing.

This is where group identity becomes dangerous, and it’s one of the biggest causes of political polarization.

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion”

Steven Weinberg

That leads us into postmodernism.

Postmodernism, as i’ll explain, not only promotes identity politics, it’s also responsible for revealing cracks in the integrity of our academic institutions, which is a major source of contention.

5. Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a very tricky term to define. The best definition I could find is: “it is the belief of the incredulity of meta-narratives.”

I’ll admit, I don’t really understand it very well myself, but ill try my best to address some of the main features.

When we say something is objectively true, we use the scientific method and evidence to prove our hypothesis. According to the philosopher Stephen Hicks: postmodernists, on the other hand think that something is “true” just because it passed a particular cultures methods of verifying what a true statement is.

They think that as cultures, we don’t discover truth, but we create it, and each truth is specific to that culture alone.

As far as I understand it, they think truth has to do with language and power. The person with power dictates language, and the language is used convey meaning for the purpose of that person to continue to hold onto that power.

Postmodernists are known to reject grand narratives and objective truths and they aim to fragment and deconstruct rigid ideas of academic consensus.

And they could be right, who knows. I’m not a philosopher or a scientist. All I know is that the subject is an incredibly polarizing one among the intellectual community.

If nothing else, it’s good for a laugh.

James A. Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian are three scholars that wrote 20 fake academic papers to see if they would be accepted in high-profile journals. They wrote these papers to expose the intellectual invalidity of postmodern thought. The fields they wrote included gender, queer, sexuality, culture, and fat studies.

7 of the 20 “studies” were accepted into serious peer-reviewed journals, 7 were still in the process, and 6 were rejected at the time of the hoax was revealed.

One article aimed to dismiss “Western Astronomy” as sexist and imperialist.

Another paper asked: “Do dogs suffer oppression based upon perceived gender?

Another was called: “Going In Through The Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homo Hysteria and Transphobia Through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use.”

Another was a rewrite of Hitler’s Mien Kampf using feminist language.

They were trying to prove that a culture was emerging that only allowed certain conclusions to be allowed and that social grievances were put ahead of objective truth.

These academic institutions are being criticized for being politically biased in favour of the left, and it’s clear why. But something similar is happening on the far-right as well.

People like Alex Jones, an alt-right radio host, are guilty of same thing the postmodernists are doing when they reject objective truths. These people have no trust in the government or any public institution, so they reject the narratives that they’re being told by people in power.

Sound familiar? It’s Girard’s Mimetic Rivalry all over again.

“I don’t imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.”

Henrik Ibsen

I read a tweet once that said:

Conservatives need to understand that the government doesn’t always lie.

Liberals need to understand that the government doesn’t always tell the truth.

And Libertarians need to know that the state is necassary.

That might explain why we don’t discuss politics at the dinner table, no matter what, people will still believe what they want to believe.

“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.”

Voltaire

Voltaire was a very popular satire writer in the 18th century. He understood the benefit of mockery when debate was fruitless. Nothing makes someone pay attention quite like humour does.

Titania McGrath is a fake Twitter account created by the British comedian, Andrew Doyle. Like the fake academic papers, Titania posts satirical content that carefully balances the ever-changing line between fiction and reality. Her tweets are cleverly worded, and sprinkled with the right amount of believability. People frequently fall for her bait, and it’s hilarious. Occasionally, she even predicts the future with pin-point accuracy.

This is SO empowering. ✊

A friend just sent me this footage of early social justice activists decolonising the curriculum at a German university in 1933.

These brave pioneers are an inspiration to us all. pic.twitter.com/9dH3uWs8nb— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) May 3, 2020

Looks like @Forbes are stealing my ideas again… pic.twitter.com/HYHIlAZ76E— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) May 7, 2020

Future generations will thank us if we successfully eliminate heterosexuality.— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) May 8, 2020

Conclusion

I understand that these topics I’ve laid out aren’t the only contributing factors to our political divide. There are many more that I haven’t mentioned. I also know that this polarization is complex and it doesn’t have an easy solution. But there are a few things that I think we can do that might be a step in the right direction.

We need to be weary of media bias and the echo chambers that they can create, and we need to think for ourselves.

“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think…”

John Stuart Mill

We can reduce polarization by developing empathy, furthering our education, and reflecting on our biases. It might also be beneficial to take a step back once and a while to see if Titania is tweeting about us.

We also need to encourage dialogue. We need to be logical instead of emotional. Like Frederick Lewis Donaldson said, we need to pair politics with principles, knowledge with character, commerce with morality, and science with humanity. We can achieve them all, but not without education.

And most importantly, we can learn from reading What The Wise Have Said.

“What lies behind us, and what lies before us are but tiny matters compared to what lies within us”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to join twitter so you can follow me and Titania McGrath.

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychology professor and the author of the best selling book, 12 Rules For Life. He has been called “the most influential public intellectual in the western world right now.” He is an internet celebrity, and his videos on youtube have over 145,000,000 views.

After reading his book and watching his videos, I found myself becoming more and more drawn to his ideas. It’s hard to disagree with someone who has such a deep and profound respect for the truth.

He stood for something he believed in, was thrown head first into controversy, and was criticized heavily for it. It’s that type of conviction and martyrdom that speaks volumes about the faith he had in his ideas. He doesn’t ask you to blindly accept them either. His messages warn you of the danger of accepting ideologies unthinkingly. Instead, he highlights the importance of discourse and encourages continuous dialogue and debate.

Peterson’s views are complicated. They get tied into deeper philosophical discussions around perceived objective realities and identity politics.

He is commonly misunderstood to represent an agenda of extreme right wing politics and he gets accused of enforcing and justifying young, white, male privilege.

It’s almost like he’s being accused of “corrupting the youth.”

Where have we heard that before?

Read any article or critique of his work from the political left and you can see how outrageous some of their claims are. He’s blamed for tricking young men into embracing racism, transphobia, and misogyny. They say he is the leader of a cult. He’s even been called the “Nazi-Philosopher.”

The irony is, the things they say about his ideas are the exact reason we need people like him in the world. He talks about the dangers of political correctness and how people “weaponize compassion.” He says the PC-authoritarian culture is corrupting the ability for us to have intelligent conversations, as opposed to ideological ones.

He argues that our society is not a hierarchical organization emanating from a tyrannical capitalist patriarchy, but is a natural hierarchy based on competency, that has nothing to do with sociocultural construction.

It’s this idea that gives young, dispossessed, white men an alternative to the shame and guilt that they might feel from the pressures of left wing extremist politics.

I agree with most of what Peterson says, but not everything. He is a human being with the very human capability of failure and weakness. He gets criticized and villianized constantly. Right now, Peterson is recovering from a drug addiction. He was taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication and he became addicted to benzodiazepines. As you can imagine, opponents of his use this as cannon fodder to illegitimize his ideas and the messages from his book. They are ad-hominem attacks, and they aim to discredit the good he has done for people like myself and millions of others. It’s sad and It’s hard to watch.

Jordan Peterson has changed my life. He’s one of the few heroes of mine who is still alive. Other authors, philosophers, and thinkers who have shaped me into who I am are long gone. I’m sure they all had opponents and nay-sayers in their time, but we don’t hear about them. Time sifted out the truth.

I’m not sure which side of history Peterson will be on 100 years from now. I do know that he’s made my life better. He’s helped me to not blame others for my own problems. He’s inspired me to be more open minded. He’s made me conscious of my own ideologies and the dangers of having too tight a grip on them.

When I think about Peterson’s negative reception by the world, it reminds me of the resentment a child feels when their parents teach them a hard lesson. The child is too ignorant to realize that they’re being taught a lesson with his or her best interest in mind.

Whether or not you agree with his political views, It’s hard to argue with his lessons about personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility doesn’t mean acting selfishly, or thinking only about yourself. According to Peterson, It means engaging in activities that contain the seeds of growth. It means having the courage to be vulnerable. It means voluntarily shouldering the biggest burden you can bear. It means to act as if truth were the path to enlightenment. It means transforming the chaos of potential into the realities of habitual order.

Responsibility is tied to the stoic principle of realizing it’s not external things that matter, but the view you take of them. You can read my post, How Stoicism Can Help Us In Times Of Crisis, for a deeper dive into that subject.

This is a quote of Peterson’s that i’ll break down, and you can judge for yourself whether his ideas merit the remarks being said of him.

“Life is suffering

Love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering ameliorated

Truth is the handmaiden of love

Dialogue is the pathway to truth

Humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn

To learn is to die voluntarily and be born again, in great ways and small

So speech must be untrammeled 

So that dialogue can take place

So that we can all humbly learn 

So that truth can serve love

So that suffering can be ameliorated

So that we can all stumble forward to the Kingdom of God”

There is a lot going on there, I know, but read it again slowly. I’ll be returning to it periodically.

First, i’d like to highlight the last line of the quote. The Kingdom of God doesn’t have to be the traditional Christian interpretation. In the quote, the word God can be substituted with concepts like Goodness, Morality, Enlightenment, Nirvana, Nature, or the Logos. Dealers choice, but the message is still the same.

Lets look at Peterson’s quote in more detail.

Life is suffering.

“Life is suffering” is the common translation of the Buddhist concept called Duhkha. It’s the first of The Four Truths in Buddhism.

Pain, grief, anxiety, depression, starvation, murder, war, social and racial injustice, fear, greed, corruption, anger, envy, disease, and death. The list is long. Suffering isn’t biased either. Rich or poor, black or white, man or women. It’s inevitable.

“When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.”

Alaxander Dumas

Even to love is to suffer. This is from the British theologian and author of the Chronicles of Narnia series, C.S. Lewis.

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

C.s. Lewis

The only way to avoid suffering is to avoid all the things that make life meaningful. Peterson says to accept the terrible responsibility of life. He says to pick up our suffering before it gets any worse for you.

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.”

Epictetus

You have the choice of how you think about your suffering. You can be angry, resentful, and nihilistic, or you can practice acceptance and overcome your suffering and grow. You can choose to look for the positives in your situation.

You only get one shot at life, so choose to live it to its full potential. If you find something meaningful in the process, it might make it all worth while.

“It is we ourselves who must answer the questions that life asks of us, and to these questions we can respond only by being responsible for our existence”

Viktor Frankl

Love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering ameliorated.

“It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring”

Alfred Adler

You might be asking: How is someone who is focused on their own personal responsibility and individuality supposed to help others?

This is where some people get hung up on Peterson’s message. Certain political actions in our society aim at a top down approach. They regulate and pass laws that, in theory, will trickle down and prevent or mitigate some unwanted behaviour. Many of these are band-aid solutions that don’t address the root issue. Peterson’s messages, as far as I’ve understood them, are a bottom up approach. It’s what JFK meant when he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

If someone doesn’t love themselves, or take an interest in their own well being, chances are they won’t be able to help alleviate the suffering of others. It’s why we put oxygen masks on ourselves first, or why health care workers get masks before the public.

Lets hear back from C.S. lewis again.

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.”

C.S. Lewis

Peterson says that by transcending our own tragedies, we accept our own state of being. This allows us to accept other’s limitations, enabling us to love their existence despite their vulnerabilities.

When you take personal responsibility for your own suffering, it builds your character. It builds your will-power and self-control. Those might seem like selfish things, but if they are strengthened, so too is your character and therefore, your willingness and ability to help others.

“The purpose of life is to not be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Before I continue, I’m compelled to remind myself about why I’m writing these posts. They are primarily for my children and my children’s children. They are small glimpses into who I am. They are lessons I’ve learned and adapted to my life that have made my life more meaningful, fulfilled, and happy. Sometimes, when I feel the risk of sounding preachy or inconsiderate, I have to tell myself that as a parent, my job isn’t to be friends with my children, but to prepare them for the harsh realities of the world.

Truth is the handmaiden of love.

The truth can be difficult to hear, but the sting wears off quickly if it’s understood to have come from a place of love.

Hard truths are necessary sometimes, but love is a powerful motivator. The general, Napoleon Bonaparte said: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

How about a friend?

If you care about someone, sometimes they need to hear the truth. They need to be interrupted. An intervention is a good example. Guilt is a better motivator than shame.

It’s hard to be honest. We’re so used to telling small lies, either to prevent others from being offended, or to not risk losing them as a friend. Maybe it says more about them than it does about us.

“Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.”

Proverbs 9:8

It might not be like this if our egos weren’t so fragile.

Dialogue is the pathway to truth.

Dialogue is hard because it means letting go of your ego. Letting go of your ideologies and preconceived notions.

“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”

Charolette Bronte

We all have ideologies that we are too stubborn to reflect upon. We think: we are right, they are wrong, and a debate about the issue will be pointless.

Educating yourself on all sides of an issue might shift your perspective and change your mind, but it’s not easy.

“That which you most need is found where you least want to look”

Carl Jung

One of my favourite things to do in conversations is say “I never thought of that.” I work with an individual who holds a wildly different set of beliefs than me. We have some pretty heated debates in the break room. We’re able to ‘mostly’ put our egos aside and take the time to consider each others points. Neither of us is afraid to back down from a conversation because it might dismantle our world views. Rather, we both welcome it. I’ve even had to thank him a few times for opening my eyes to a perspective I had previously been blind to.

“If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one’s own self-deception and ignorance.”

Marcus aurelius

Humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn.

“If you wish to be good, first believe you are bad”

Epictetus

How many of you look to blame others when things don’t go your way. It’s like a natural instinct, to deflect. The other choice is to take responsibility and ask yourself how or what you can do to change for the better. Be humble. Look internally first.

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you, but answer, ‘He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone”

Epictetus

We can learn some humility from the original “corrupter of youth”:

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”

Socrates

In my last few posts I’ve mentioned a few times about our tendency to be governed by our emotions and how our ideas are influenced by our culture.

It creates an us vs them mentality. Tribalism becomes a game you play. You get so off track, it’s not about learning or educating yourself, but winning the game. Taking responsibility in that situation means to admit when your wrong, and to find the faults in yourself first. 

It might also mean to avoid victimhood. There is comfort in being a victim. Accountability is removed, you get attention, and you are pitied. It feels like everyone owes you something. But being a victim can become a mentality, be careful of letting victimhood trickle into your character. It can manifest itself into impulsive pleasure seeking behaviour and lead to the abandonment of responsibility.

To learn is to die voluntarily and be born again, in great ways and small

“A consciousness of wrong doing is the first step to salvation”

Epicurus

You build your world views around a foundation of beliefs. They are the pillars that hold up everything else. When you learn something new, there is the risk of those pillars collapsing. It can be painful and earth shaking. But if you get through it, and you emerge from the rubble, you are one step closer to truth and love.

In her book, The Artists Way, Julia Cameron says that when you lose your misconceptions, you start to see things more clearly. Clarity is what creates change, but change is scary. It’s easier to cling to the past because its familiar. Except it’s not always what we need.

As your “old you” is tossed out, as she suggests, we should: “Be prepared for a burst of tears and of laughter…Think of yourself as an accident victim walking away from the crash: your old life has crashed and burned; your new life isn’t apparent yet. You may feel yourself to be temporarily without a vehicle. Just keep walking.”

As you might have noticed from the excess of quotes in this post, it wasn’t hard to find harmonizing words to complement Peterson’s. You might argue that his ideas are vague and ambiguous. I would argue instead, that truth has a habit of popping up throughout history without any visible links between its advocates. It’s what Mark Twain meant when he said:

“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything”

Mark Twain

One of my favourite things about Peterson, is that he is extremely careful and meticulous with his words. Truth is paramount to him, and he understands the importance our words can have.

He encourages you to accept life despite all of its suffering. Accomplish something, and be proud of those accomplishments. Most of the practical advice in this post can be summarized in the short quote: “Easy choices, hard Life. Hard choices, easy life.” It’s something I repeat to myself when I get overwhelmed with the complexities of life. These are heavy topics, it helps to simplify things sometimes.

Everything worth while and meaningful in life comes from sacrifice and responsibility. Choose to give up instant gratification. Let go of self-compromising and harmful belief systems. Realize that the easier path is rarely the answer. Put vulnerability aside. Have an open mind. Love others. Be humble, and don’t use victimhood as an excuse.

Do any of these messages have any racist, misogynistic, and discriminatory undertones to them?

Perhaps it’s Peterson’s most vocal critics who are the ones with discriminatory presuppositions. Maybe they are projecting their own insecurities and egos onto an individual who wants to help people. It could be as simple as that. It’s a shame they can’t see it.

I encourage you to look into his videos and books for yourself. As the Reading Rainbow host, LeVar Burton used to say: “You don’t have to take my word for it.”

Thanks for reading.

“Watch your thoughts, they become your words;

watch your words, they become your actions;

watch your actions, they become your habits;

watch your habits, they become your character;

watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

Lao Tzu

I love this quote.

It’s about being held accountable for how you conduct yourself in the world. It illustrates the potential your thoughts can have. That’s why so many of these quotes mean so much to me. They aren’t just pieces of advice. They become a mindset. They spread into your consciousness like a vine. They get tangled in it, sprout fresh, and grow. They are the seeds of accomplishment. They bear the fruit of achievement.

They are the flowers that bloom into:

“that agreeable after-glow of excitement when thought lapses from examination of a specific object into a suffusive sense of its connections with all the rest of our existence.”

George Eliot

The more I read quotes like these, the more I wanted to become a writer myself. I was inspired by the way someone could arrange words in such beautiful ways. How they could articulate complex ideas and create detailed descriptions of their experiences. 

They share deep insights into what it means to be human. They share what they believe to be the truth, for themselves, and for all of us. They become the voices of their generations. Their work becomes an essence of an age.

“Confined thoughts around me, in mummy cases, embalmed in spice of words…They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will.”

James Joyce

I would daydream about writing everyday, especially when work was going bad, or my life seemed to be drifting along aimlessly. I would tell myself that if I worked hard enough, I would retire early and spend the second half of my life reading and writing full time.

In spite of how often I thought about my dreams, I wasn’t actually doing anything to make them more obtainable. I wanted to be a writer, but I wasn’t even writing.

The quote from Lao Tzu says that your thoughts become your actions. I had been thinking about writing for a long time, I clearly wanted it. What gives?

Either my determination wasn’t strong enough, or my negative feelings and doubts were stronger or more frequent than my positive and encouraging thoughts.

Maybe it was something else… Pack some snacks, because the knowledge train is leaving. Destination: truth town.

If you read my last post: How Dostoevsky Can Still Help Us Understand Ourselves, you already know that uncomfortable experiences condition us to avoid certain situations.

Harmful mindsets can also come from things that are taught to you. From a young age you are told to act and behave a certain way. You are fed a belief system that awards conformity and punishes rebellion. You are raised with the conviction that you are entitled to be happy, and if you aren’t, something is wrong with you.

Society forces you to conform to your role in the world. Groups may provide you with safety and security, but they can also stifle your creativity and individuality.

In a group, the terms of your behaviour are dictated to you by others. Your thoughts become influenced by them, and you develop their preexisting ideas.

You choose the beaten path. The path of least resistance. You give up your impulse to stand out because you don’t want to be ridiculed and criticized for being different.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

A friend of mine used to play a certain computer game online when he was in high school. He played it so much that it began to negatively affect his life. He would skip school, avoid friends, and stay up all night gaming. I can’t say how else it affected his life beyond what was visible to the public. His mom did everything society expected from her, she tried to persuade him to take school seriously, and to focus on more important things. She tried punishing him, hiding his computer, yelling and screaming, nothing worked.

A few years of this went by, and he became really good at the game. He always had a natural gift for games, so after the amount of commitment and dedication he put into this one, it wasn’t surprising. He met a few friends in the chat rooms. They discussed strategy and concepts about the game. Eventually they started playing together at higher skill levels.

The internet in our town was really slow and his computer was quickly getting outdated. The game was evolving and he couldn’t keep up, so he lost touch with his friends. It would have been pointless and even laughable for him to try to convince his mom to move to the city and get a faster computer, just so he could play video games. He was forced to relinquish his grip on gaming greatness. To his family and friends, he was wasting his time anyway, throwing his life away.

One of his gaming buddies went on to win the international championship, an event that would have over $30 million dollars in prizes. The other 3 still play the game professionally.

The interesting thing about this story is that in different cultures, society has different values. All of his friends were from South Korea, where online gaming, or Esports, are much like North America’s NFL, NBA, and NHL.

Now, I’m not condoning playing video games non-stop for small chance you’ll become the next Tiger Woods of gaming. It’s just an example of the opportunity that was lost because our culture demanded my friend conform to the standards set by our society.

Fun fact! Saskatchewan produces the most NHL players per capita in Canada. I would say that’s a good indication of what our society values.

Your dreams and your goals change with society. A society that treats extravagance and wealth as the pinnacle of success, will have its people’s dreams aimed toward materialism. A society that is obsessed with romance and love, will likely have marriage and family as top priorities.

“You become what you give your attention to, if you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will”

Epictetus

The writer, Charles Bukowski, is renowned, respected and cherished today as a literary giant. Bukowski published a few short stories throughout his long career, but nothing financially sustainable or noteworthy.

He was continuously rejected by publishers. He never wavered or changed his writing style, he didn’t pander, or let rejection discourage him. He kept at it year after year. He worked at a post office, writing everyday before his shift. It wasn’t until he was in his 50’s that he started to make a name for himself.

If he didn’t have the perseverance and gall to choose to ignore what society was telling him, we might not be talking about him right now.

“(Courage is) when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what”

Harper Lee

Think about all the innovators that were mocked and laughed at for their ideas. Can you imagine if they succumbed to society’s pressures?

Walt disney was fired from a newspaper in 1919 because he lacked “imagination and had no good ideas”.

Socrates was poisoned because he was “corrupting the youth.”

Van Gogh never got any attention for his paintings while he was alive. He only sold a few of them in his lifetime.

Out of Emily Dickinson’s 1800 poems, only 10 were published while she was alive.

These are some of the things society said about the following inventions.

Airplanes: “They are of no military value”

Lightbulbs: “A conspicuous failure.”

Movies: “Talking doesn’t belong in pictures”

Automobiles: “The prices will never be sufficiently low”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect”

Mark Twain

These are the stories you should filled your mind with. These, and the words of the individuals who understood society and it’s oppressive tendencies. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said that: “Whoso should be a man must be a nonconformist.”

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson’s ideas were powerful enough to generate a massive cultural shift in America in the 19th century. His lectures and essays about self-reliance and individuality fostered America’s “intellectual declaration of independence” from Europe in 1837.

“High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

His philosophies have buried themselves into my mind. He, and others like him, have given me the encouragement to write and to create my own identity. They have influenced my thoughts and allowed me to create good habits, to be responsible, and to choose the hard paths.

When I think now about Lao Tzu’s quote, I realize it wasn’t my thoughts that were dictating my actions, they were society’s, filtered through me. When I thought about writing for a living, my automatic response was about money, financial independence, and fame. It was my dream but it was manufactured by society.

I have a different reason to write now, this blog has become therapeutic for me. It helps me think clearly. Most of all, I’m excited to have something to leave behind when I’m gone.

They say: “The truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry.” If most of society thinks that, I’m happy to think the opposite. I like the truth and I like poetry. I like it even more when Ralphy here makes the truth so poetic.

“It is easy in the world to live after the worlds opinions; its is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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