Read All The Time

 Read all the time--visit the library when you can. Know one knows enough let alone everything. So read, read, read, and then learn to think about what you have read, and contrast that with your life experiences, the values that you grew up with, and then dialogue with your friends about your differing interests and interpretations of things. You can never know too much.

Ass Backwards

 You have it ass backwards when you are one of the tens of millions of true-believing Americans that make up the ranks of the broken masses that worship Leftism, and its God, the State. You believe whatever they tell you in their fake, manipulative narrative. You obey without question their rationales, and it is gospel, no matter how cruel, distorted from basic reality, or internally contradictory its conflict messages may be.

You go hat in hand to the commissars and bureaucrats to entreaty them for a few crumbs, and then, whether having been given them or not, you praise them to the sky with heartfelt gratitude. Your are as sick, twisted and lost as is the Marxist hell-on-earth that you have introduced to America.

Weak Loser

 Jordan Peterson has a remarkable, brilliant, inspirational 2019, 7 minute  excerpt video (It's Not Okay For You To Be A Weak Loser). This short clip is an anthem, a synopsis for how an individual can get his act together.

Jordan Peterson does not baby individual young people. He challenges them in a brisk, even bracing way. It is a type of egoism that I approve of, though Jordan may not refer to himself as an egoist.

Let me approximately paraphrase Jordan: "It is not okay for you to be a weak loser. You can be way more than that. It is a crime You can be way more than that. It is an ethical crime for you to allow all that necessary potential to go to waste. It hurts you, your family and the world. Turn around and face the suffering voluntarily. You are tougher than you think though life is hard, you are tough enough to handle it.

The spirit in you to pursue something of meaning--you are able to contend with life without getting bitter.

Life is suffering tainted by malevolence. but you can deal with  it, even improve it. This is not naive optimism but is realistic.

You can view yourself as an eternal victim, suffering without cause as nature tries to take you out, society supports and undermines you, and malevolence from self and others hurts you--this triad of evil and tragic forces are more than you can bear, you think as you feel sorry for yourself.

My failure is their fault not my fault. Just take responsibility for your life, not blame any longer cosmic injustice and sociological injustice. If you make excuses, you are missing the great adventure of your life.

Assume responsibility: adopt the adventurous mode of being, for real meaning to be found, meaning transcending you into the community and maybe even humanity itself.

Seek not rights, happiness nor self-esteem. Rather, seek what is meaningful, not what makes you happy.

Seek not what is easy or secure nor happiness. If your problems were all  solved for you, you would have nothing left to do but complain. Difficulty is the destiny and you are up to the task.

Seek what is meaningful not what makes you happy. The meaningful makes you better able to support your family and the community.

Pursue not rights, happiness but responsibility for seeking responsibility is where meaning is found."

Let me comment on this paraphrase, paragraph by paragraph:

1) To be a strong winner is your calling from God and it is an ethical crime to refuse to answer that call and live in God's world. Face the world head on, embrace suffering, maximize your talents and you can do it.

2) Seek after meaning; be an adult and live a purposeful life; waste not your time and psychic energy on negative and bitter obsessions.

3) Life is suffering tainted by malevolence. It is but there is enjoyment and kindness too. Jordan's pessimism is realistic if a bit too dark.

4) You are up against it: life is not easy as nature, society and malevolence from yourself and others all work to undermine your sanity, your sense of hope and your ability to love, think or act. You have suffered but should not see  yourself as the victim.

5) Look not for objects to blame--others, society, the comos. Just accept responsibility for your mistakes, and take control of your life, and assume responsibility for how you live going forward, and you have opened yourself to the greatest adventure of your life.

6) Assume responsbility, for that is where transcendent meaning will appear for you as you influence your family, the community, perhaps humanity itself.

7) Seek not rights, happiness or self-esteem. Seek responsibility and that is where meaning and fulfillment are discovered. Amen, I concur.

8) Face the suffering, and approach what is difficult. Seek to solve your own problems not having all solved for you, for that you bored, directionless and with nothing but complaints to offer. Pursue your destiny.

9) Seek what is meaningful, and your contribution will improve your community and perhaps humanity itself in transcendent ways.

10) Seek responsibility for that is where meaning is discovered and unfolds itself.

This short video by Jordan goes a long ways towards offering a young person a road map for building a strong, responsible life. It could serve as a guide map for maverizing too. Well, said, Jordan, well conceived.

Corrections

 It is no secret that I have great admiration and affection for Jordan Peterson. I believe he is 85 or 90% accurate in his existentialist/biology-based appraisal of people. I love his love of the truth, individualism as a doctrine, and his urging people to find meaning through taking responsibility.

His conception of hierarchies may need some tweaking: for example, a hierarchy of recognition of straight excellence in performance--say of painters of landscapes--is sound, but the average person as a great souled, individuated and individuating, can paint very fine landscapes with a spiritually-driven IQ of a 150, while Peterson with his natural IQ of 150, will as a landscape painted and maverizer, paint with a developed IQ of 190. Of course there is a hierarchy revealed here, but with the average person performing at such a high, wondrous level, they will lift the entire society.

Those average people will construct a society, a mass society of individuated anarchism and supercitizens running the economy and the government by negotiated consent, with small, powerful, but limited government, a constitutional republic with free markets with a plethora of liberty and individual opportunity.

Natural geniuses like Jordan will be at the top of the hierarchy in performance in their chosen occupation, but that elitism will not transfer over into an oligarchy running economic or political or other civic society institutionals. Those institutions will be run by the supercitizens, proud, informed, wise, willful and jealous of their personal liberties, allowing no greedy intellectuals or others oligarchs to emerge centralizing power to themselves and their ilk, controlling the common people, corrupting and enslaving all.

I heard on an interview with Jordan yesterday that he felt that talent was rare, so society needs to naturally superior few to go to the top, for their sake and for the benefit of society. Let me repeat: let them be powerful in their fields, but not run the political or economic hierarchies. Those need to be flattened as much as possible so a huge upper middle class of stubborn but reasonable supercitizens run these institutions and the society itself from the bottom up.

Talent is not rare at all. All have it: some more than others, but let us encourage, as a divine command, that each individual, even an autistic or mentally handicapped adult, to become all that she can become, and the miracles concomitant to this unleashing of human potential will dazzle all, including wise, decent Jordan.

These are my criticisms of his philosophy, and my proposed corrections. In all honesty, I am only offering an updated version of what Hoffer hinted at in the late 1960s.

I Disagree

 I hate to disagree with Jordan Peterson, but I heard him in an old interview say that talent is rare. That makes it official. He is an elitist and a bit of a snob. He believes that only the very smart are the talented ones, and that they deserve to run things and rise to the top.

Eric Hoffer and I could not deny that more so. We insist that talent is common, bountiful, and all people are brimming with wasted talent. 

Hierarchies there will always be, but all can be smarter, more talented, more thoughtful and originators. They will tolerate nor need any elite to govern them or think for them.

The Sage

 My remarks below contains my written description of and interpretation on comments made by Pager. The remarks were made by Dennis Prager, likely from his Fireside Chat, recorded for online distribution on 11/6/20 at 11:29am. The clip is titled: "The American Ideal: Individual Responsibility Not Socialism"

Prager explains that socialism "sounds good" to Americans who favor equality over liberty. They don't care that rejecting liberty in order to be taken care of is not only unsustainable, it's intensely anti-American.

I suggest that anyone promoting equality and being taken care of over self-determination under the legal umbrella of liberty is a person that craves totalitarianism and slavery.

Dennis continues: "Why people do prefer equality to liberty? Dennis does not care if others are richer than he is. He did not care; he just wanted to be free to make his own life."

I suggest that socialist and social engineers do care that the rich have more. They want that wealth confiscated and redistributed. They insist, in the name of justice, fairness and compassion, that everyone is the same and the outcomes be the same, even if federally forced in a procrustean manner. None are to be free; none are to be free to make lives for themselves. All belong to the state, work for the state and be be directed, down to the last detail, by state functionaries.

Dennis continues: "Most desire to be taken care of and that yearning is much greater than the desire to be free.

I suggest that Dennis is characterizing people as born corrupt and fallen. The yearning to be cared for and told how to live is more appealing to most people than the more difficult, bracing choice to be free, support oneself, be responsible for one's own fate, and to stand on one's two feet.

Dennis contines: "Liberty is a value; the human instinct is not to be free but to be taken care of, but the cared for ones are not free. That is how it works. Or you can decide to take care of yourself. I am responsible for me. To be cared for is to be a burden on society, not a success, a lost soul, a loser."

I suggest that Dennis regards liberty as a value that we train our children to adopt, revere and live for in in. The youngsters will insist upon caring for themselves, and that makes them real winners.

Dennis continues: "In most cares you are responsible for your failure. Here is the gist of the American Ideal: I take care of me, my family, my community so the state is not needed to come in and care for people.

Americans are the most generous people anywhere. Europeans are not generous, but the Europeans are socialists and the state provide care and the people give up much of their liberty.

You are to be free and responsible.

I suggest: you are responsible for your failure and your success. You care for yourself, your family and your community so the state can stay out of it.

With the Envirostatists running the bloated federal government with the nanny state caring for all people in way too many ways, we lose our country, our liberty, our independence. That is how Venezuela becomes America.

The Malevolent Tradition

 Every dictator in the world enjoys his state media that brainwashes the masses, deprives them of truth and access to alternative, unofficial points of view. The official narrative is false, mendacious and meant to train the masses on how to think, how to move as a group, how to be uniform, and accept the official version of what is going on out there in objective reality. Fake News is now official news.

Let me quote from an Online article from MRC that I read tonite (12/1/20):

"I think we have to give up on the national news media as being a national news media,” said MRC President Brent Bozell.

"They have been turned [into] complete mouthpieces of the Democratic Party and of the radical left in America.”

More from MRC:

"17% of Biden voters would not have voted for him had they been aware of the major news stories the mmedia censored."

cnsnews.com

Poll Shows Media Censorship Cheated Voters of Vital Info, Robbed Trump of Second Term

A new survey conducted by The Polling Company for the Media Research Center found that major media censorship of certain vital stories left voters in the dark, particularly Biden voters, and prevented President Donald Trump from winning a second term."

 

Mark Levin names these Fake News Media as Big Lie peddlers. Amen, I say.