Category Archives: Philosophical and speculative

John Jay Chapman quotes you should know

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Even though he had written 25 books, I had never heard of John Jay Chapman until I found him quoted the other day by Janet Fiamengo. But 25 books and not one known to me. All is most certainly vanity. Here’s the quote:

“Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose … Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don’t be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.”

And this is one I particularly like which is an important reminder to those who write for a living:

People who love soft methods and hate iniquity forget this,—that reform consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it.

There is also this which has a pointed message for today, but if one reads it right, has a pointed message for every day ending with the letter “y”.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Here are others, each as relevant today as the moment they were first written down:

All progress is experimental.

When a man talks with absolute sincerity and freedom he goes on a voyage of discovery. The whole company has shares in the enterprise.

Every generation is a secret society and has incommunicable enthusiasms, tastes and interests which are a mystery both to its predecessors and to posterity.

It is just as impossible to help reform by conciliating prejudice as it is by buying votes. Prejudice is the enemy. Whoever is not for you is against you.

Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same—hardihood. Give them raw truth.

The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy.

Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.

Too much agreement kills the chat.

And this is from The Two Philosophers: A Quaint, Sad Comedy (1892)

Act I

I’ve studied every science round,
And many a doctrine have I found;
Greek and German roots of thought
In years of labor have I sought;
And every gnarled and eyed potato
Out of Zoroaster and Plato
Do I plant in your young heads,
And watch ’em sprout as in hot-beds

Act II

And since we speak of culture,
What is culture, do you think?
FIRST SCHOLAR.
Culture is spiritual food
And intellectual drink.
REGIUS.
A petty saying, — I confess
Not quite what I expected.
Let some one make another guess,

Act III

Notice is hereby given that one
Of your professors in your college
Has made a scurvy attack upon
The American school of knowledge,
Which said attack is couched in words
Unmeasured and profane,
And seems to show, conclusively,
The writer is insane.
But sane or mad, the writer is
Grossly devoid of truth,
And wickedly incompetent
To have the charge of youth.

Maybe nothing really ever changes after all.

David Solway discusses Jordan Peterson

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My two favourite writers at one and the same time – both, as it happens Canadian, I think only by coincidence but perhaps not – in which one, David Solway, discusses the other, Jordan Peterson, with the title, The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon. My only observation is that David Solway is less astonished at the emergence of Jordan Peterson because they have been friends for a long time and therefore he is used to hearing Peterson, and no doubt others of a similar cast of mind, such as his wife, the equally brave and articulate Janice Fiamengo. He may therefore be less aware than someone such as myself, who has no such close associates, how absolutely rare a Jordan Peterson is. I have only once or twice personally met up with someone anywhere near holding the kinds of views Peterson has expressed so accurately, who is reaching a vast audience that has been hungering for this kind of sustained and intelligent articulation of our values that today can be found virtually nowhere else. Partly this is because few understand these issues even half so well, and partly because very few are willing to stand up in public and make the case to others. Career death is a common phenomenon for those who do.

But Peterson has done something else as well. What he did was transcend discussion of the politics of the day, which is what most of us do. Most of us anchor our observations on some piece of current events that we use as a basis for saying whatever it is we say. He has, instead, stepped out of time and place, into the rarefied atmosphere of the ancient and historical traditions of our own cultural past, placing them within an evolutionary progression as they have developed literally since the Stone Age. It is in part because he is a psychologist, and therefore used to ideas which are philosophically grounded, but also because he has been able to draw down on a vast array of our own literary and religious traditions to explain, at a very deep level, the basis for the ideas each of us has, which allow those of us who come across his work to see past and through the post-modernist, cultural-Marxist conceptions that are doing so much to ruin Western civilisation at the present time, and indeed, almost all of the ancient civilisations of the world. He has explained in unusually accessible terms what the West has stood for, and why preserving this tradition is so crucial. Let me take you to this passage from David Solway to help explain what I mean:

Peterson’s message is not new to anyone who has read and pondered his sources; yet it is new in the sense that he has performed an act of synthesis for a largely illiterate, politically indoctrinated and under-educated generation. As John Dale Dunn writes in American Thinker, Peterson’s “great accomplishment is teaching, counseling, and coaching people to urge them to live the good life, the virtuous life … The only way he might be ambushed is [by being targeted] by the destroyers of the left with their name calling and politics of personal destruction,” deploying tactics straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

I may well be part of that “largely illiterate, politically indoctrinated and under-educated generation” but in that case we all are. Many of us have fought over this same terrain but have made no breakthroughs on the Western Civilisation Front in the ongoing Culture Wars. Jordan Peterson has, and he may have established a new salient that we need to do everything we can to reinforce, defend and expand.

Shameful and a disgrace

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Suppose we start with this simple question: Is it appropriate for a president to use the powers of government to spy on the opposition party during an election?

No one will say yes to that. So let us move on to another question: Is it a form of intolerable corruption to find that a president has actually used the powers of government to spy on the opposition party during an election?

To that question, everyone will say yes. It is absolutely an intolerable form of corruption. So let us ask one further question: If there is evidence that a president has used the powers of government to spy on the opposition party during an election, do you think such a claim should be investigated?

To this question, the answer is unfortunately becoming quite quite clear, but it is not the same answer for everyone. For parties of the left, along with the media, this is the answer: if the president who is accused of spying on the opposition is from a party of the right, then the answer is yes, it should be looked into as deeply and relentlessly as our forensic tools allow; but if it is a president from a party of the left, then the answer is no, absolutely not. For everyone else, of course, the answer is yes, this should be investigated as thoroughly as possible because protecting our constitutional democratic order must be our highest priority.

And that, I am afraid, that division between left and right, is the largest most intractable problem in politics today.

When I heard PDT say that the actions by the FBI and Department of Justice were that “people should be ashamed” my first thought was that shame was too weak. But then while I was thinking about the release of the memo, the thought that came into my head was that those who see nothing in all this worth worrying about, even as an abstract proposition, really were a disgrace and ought to feel genuine shame at their inability to understand what has been done and for which they are more than willing to give the all clear. The Democrats in collusion with the FBI and others were actively attempting to undermine and subvert the democratic process, the only process that gives a community its political freedom. Anyone not scandalised by such actions have shown themselves willing to let others take and hold power without the consent of the governed. They are fascists, Nazis, totalitarians. And to what purpose? In support of the most corrupt person ever to have run for president, to permit Hillary Clinton to continue the ruin Barack Obama had done so much to create.

This is the post I wrote a year ago that was recalled to life by Dr Fred Lenin. It was written on January 12, 2017, that is, even before the inauguration, even then titled, The Deep State, which must therefore have been a phrase already in use. The anti-democratic political instincts and actions of such people should deeply worry if not actually terrify anyone who values freedom and prosperity, which these people clearly do not. I am unable to discover where any compensating good for those who not just ignore these actions but actually condemn efforts to bring them to light, who are unable to see the crisis they have created by endorsing the actions of a sitting president to employ the powers a president has to destroy the democratic processes he was elected to protect. Here is the post I wrote then.

MEDIA AND CIA FALL FOR ‘GOLDEN SHOWER’ HOAX…
TAPPER, BLITZER RATTLED…
YOU’RE ACTING LIKE NAZIS, TRUMP TELLS SPY CHIEFS…
Russian tech expert named in report never even contacted!
GREENWALD: ‘Deep State’ Sabotage…

The last of these comes with the actual title, “The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer”. Here is the opening text, but I have to say this is terrifying and in no sense politics as usual, unless this really is politics as usual, although we have never before seen it revealed so openly.

IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.

This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”

Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.

But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.

“Morally bankrupt” it most certainly is and then some. “Certain to backfire on those doing it” is very optimistic. If this is how things are, Nazi is not going too far in describing what is going on. If the evidence were not before our eyes of the way in which the media and the CIA have worked with the Democrats to undermine Trump’s authority you would think all of this is impossible.

Jordan Peterson on what gives life meaning

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The above is Jordan Peterson refuting utilitarian philosophy whose core principle is that happiness is life’s aim. As much as I am an admirer of John Stuart Mill, this part of his philosophy has always left me cold. Peterson explains why in just two minutes. And below is an interview by Dennis Prager, no mean philosopher himself.

And then this about finding the right woman rather than roaming the field, assuming you can roam the field.

Jordan Peterson on Twelve Rules for Life

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The videos are both of Jordan Peterson discussing his extraordinary book, 12 Rules for Life. This is the statement that comes with the first:

The clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson sets out twelve profound and practical principles for living a meaningful life. His 12 Rules for Life will offer an antidote to the chaos in our lives: with eternal truths applied to our modern problems.

As for the book, I just finished it today, and my advice to you is to buy it and read it yourself. It is like nothing you have ever come across before.

Jordan Peterson discussed in The Australian

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Jordan Peterson attacked in The Australian: Jordan Peterson regurgitates discredited male chauvinism of the 1970s. The article’s last para:

Waking up at 35, desperate to have a child, is not a good realisation, as Peterson says. That reasonable point prompted the young man hosting the video to chip in with a charmless insight — that the anxieties of mid-30s women keen to be mothers are known as “baby rabies’’ among “plenty of communities of young men … in the dating scene’’. There is no lack of work for psychologists. But young women are not the ones who most need help.

And now from the comments, working from the first of the Top Comments and then down.

Ken

This article is akin to Cathy Newman’s interview of Peterson.  It’s taking what Peterson says out of context or is straight-out inaccurate.  One of the refreshing things about Peterson is that he’s telling home truths, and bases many or most of his observations on decades of being a treating psychologist of both men and women.  What an irony that a female journalist chooses to block the concerns and experience of many women in this rant against him.

Neil

Young women entering law, he claims, will find it “very, very demanding, very, very difficult, very, very stressful and very, very competitive. And you’re not going to find the fulfilment of your desire for intimate, close interpersonal relationships’’. How patronising. Isn’t he just telling it like it is and asking of women in particular “is this what you want”?

“In exaggerating the problems that women can expect to face in demanding careers, Peterson casts doubt on their capabilities” He’s neither exaggerating nor casting doubts on capabilities, he is again asking “is this what you want”.

Jordan Petersen has kept his own practice as a clinical psychologist outside his University work and the points he makes are from experience with many women who have come to him in that private practice with problems created by the real-life trials and tribulations he now seeks to point out to those who will listen.

It’s disappointing, but not unexpected, for the article to refer, in a pejorative fashion that the advice of Dr Peterson appeals to “some conservatives” suggesting extreme right-wingers and thus to be ignored. He claims no political position and an interest only in the truth.

Sarah

@Neil I agree with Peterson – I’m a doctor working 60 hours a week – it is hard, very demanding and very stressful.  Having close interpersonal relationships is extremely difficult – luckily my husband is happy to work as a team to raise children and understood the impact my career would have on family life before he married me.

Thomas

 “By the time you’re 40, if you don’t have a family and children you are one lost soul.’’

That’s true, as a generalisation.  Obviously some women do not ever want to have kids and live happily without them, but the vast majority eventually realise children are what they want most of all.  It’s usually around 35 that it dawns on them they’ve wasted their best years sleeping around with worthless men and obsessing over meaningless work.

This doesn’t affect men as much because there is usually no shortage of younger women willing to date older men, and men remain fertile their whole life.  Women, on the other hand, struggle to find a decent partner once they hit 35 and inevitably have to significantly lower their standards.  The result is more miserable women, more broken families, more neglected children and more socialism to pay for it all..  Feminism is self-defeating and unfortunately it’s women who usually end up worse off.

You might say Peterson is patronising; I say he is realistic.

Greg

Why do people with a left jaundiced view find it so hard to actually listen to what Peterson actually said?

Gordon

He seems to get a lot of support from women in their 50s and over so you cant speak for them as a group. This is the type of emotive shallow analysis that drives people to Peterson. The contrast between Newman and Peterson was embarrassing and your contribution is almost as insipid as Newman’s was.

Denzil

One has always to be careful of an article like this…cherry picking without context is dangerous.  I have seen a lot of Petersons work and I have rarely heard him say anything that would upset a well grounded woman. That is why his interview with Cathy Newman was such a car crash (for her) She tried on the feminist rant only to be met with sensible well researched answers that she could not deal with.

Helio

I don’t find Jordan Peterson patronising. He is realistic and respectful – realistic about the differing natures of men and women and able to recognise, as most feminists do not, that difference does not mean unequal in value.

Helio’s wife

Kathleen

Sorry Tessa, but I can’t fault a single word that JP says in this video.

I know from personal experience that pursuing a career is hard work, often unsatisfying, always competitive…and it doesn’t come without many sacrifices.

Young women are fed a whole lot of aspirational and unrealistic claptrap, which is all well and good for some, but for others, it simply leads to regret and disappointment.

JP’s video dispels some of the myths that are fed to young women about what’s important in life.

More power to him.

cecily

I think the writer must have watched a different video to the one I saw? Either that or she has a problem listening and actually responding to what was said rather than responding to what she wanted him to say!

CRISP

Classic false arguments being used here.

“Straw man” : she misrepresents what he said so she can tear it down.

“Red herring”: he’s trying to tell girls not to work but to just marry and have kids.

“Argumentum ad hominen”: he is an old-fashioned chauvinist troglodyte so we should abuse him and not hear what he has to say.

He would demolish Tess in a debate.

Brian

Tess – this is not a fair analysis of what Peterson has actually said. It is a lazy and biased set of unsupported assumptions.

Etc

Bringing harm to others is socialism’s primary goal

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A comment on a thread at Powerline on Liberalism is just resentment and envy sanctified where the video showed up as well. After eight years of PDT, even if the astounding success of his first year as President continues for the following seven, you will hear exactly the same. That is what this post is about:

I recall a recent twitter conversation that I engaged in. Basically it was a discussion on the outcome of a social experiment where people were given a choice between two alternative income distribution models.

The first one, choice A, had the highest level of income capped at say 100,000, had a fairly tight distribution across the quartiles, with the lowest being something like 10.

The second one, choice B, allowed for a very small number of individuals to earn 1,000,000 followed by a much wider distribution of quartiles, with the lowest being something like 100.

People were asked to choose which distribution they preferred, and I think they chose option A over option B by more than 2 to 1. This was the case even though it was clear (and perhaps emphasized) that everyone in option B had more money, with the poorest having effectively 10 times the purchasing power over option A.

While that result is astounding in and of itself, the replies on the twitter thread were even more interesting because there were so many people who offered strained and painful rationalizations as to why choice A was better. One I recall insisted that choice B was worse because the purchasing power would be reduced back to A levels since the economy would just reset to the higher levels of wealth due to inflation or something.

My comment ultimately was that all the rationalizations were just thin cover, and that the real reason for the choice was plain old envy of the top. Now I’d have to go back and find the thread to be sure, but I seem to recall the gentleman who started the thread insisting that the authors of the experiment made it clear that the 100 to 10 ratio at the bottom levels really did imply B had 10 times the buying power of A, but that it clearly didn’t matter to the outcome.

I find this result to be a fascinating insight into the irrationality of human economic/moral intuition, and how jealousy and envy play such an outsized role in shaping it.

Socialism has never done anyone any good, other than the handful of leaders who eventually climb to the top of the pyramid. But the envy that drives it will never go away, which is why the socialist impulse will also never go away. For the rest of us, what is crucial to remember is that the motivation behind the rhetoric is in no sense benevolent, but as malevolent as the human heart can be.

“I’m for everyone”

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For someone who is supposedly inarticulate, he does have a way with words.

DONALD TRUMP: I Wouldn’t Say I’m A Feminist.

“No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far,” Trump said in the interview, according to Morgan. “I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.”

“I’m for everyone.” A better slogan than “I’m with her.”

Says exactly what needed to be said in as few words as possible.

Via Instapundit