Zeitgeist

You said this with reference to “incels” and Moonbox said something similar with regard to “white losers”: ”They're not reproducing by definition so they're evolutionary trail mix right ?” You don’t seem to understand that the value someone like Peterson brings, apart from his cultural criticism, is in the attempt to identify and fix the crises that are reducing men’s participation in higher education and many fields below 50%. He raises important points about the fact that men value themselves by what they do and aren’t respected for taking on the caregiving role that removes many women from the workforce temporarily following pregnancy. Affirmative action doesn’t account for these differences, scoffing at biological facts and tendencies. Men are indeed falling apart and society at large pays the price. Very few commentators are calling out reckless ideas like affirming a child’s non-biological gender preference when it may be temporary. If children’s temporary preferences were affirmed on most matters, there would be no education or transference of values, healthy adaptive behaviours such as being on time, reading, being responsible, etc. Foolish experimentation is underway in a range of categories, from euthanasia to hard drug use to gender reassignment surgery and ascribing pronouns that are basically biological lies. Who is calling out these destabilizing moves? I haven’t even mentioned the resegregation underway with race-based identity politics, top-down central planning by international elites, the list goes on. What about the proxy war distraction we’re funding during a cost of living crisis? These are the issues today. One party doesn’t own these issues because it’s not really about left versus right, or rather, the “progressive” left is now the overreaching establishment compromising rights, security, and affordability. Only leaders who provide opportunity and freedom for all are worth our time. Most current political leaders are great at self-preservation but the current left are champagne socialists who use identity politics and overseas threats as distractions from the pressing issues of our time: affordability, freedom, opportunity, merit, energy security…

Yes I have read them. You’re revealing the shallowness of your knowledge. It’s not that there aren’t many other great thinkers out there like Peterson, it’s that few of them can make these ideas understandable to the general public and few will risk their status within academia or established media outlets. He’s not uniquely heroic, but there are very few intellectuals bothering to take on the political factions that are compromising democracy and academic freedom. Perhaps you think you’re admirable by repeating the mindless acceptance of so much cultural and political stupidity. That’s how I see you, Hardner, and several other apologists for poor governance. It’s not about Peterson, populism, or other figures you cast as demons, whether Trump or Poilievre. It’s the refusal to see the giant log in the eye of our current government and organizational cultures. Most Canadians sense this brokenness but few can articulate the pseudoscience and confusing dominant narratives that are making life harder generally. Bravery and honesty are the exception it seems. I don’t think they’ve been this exceptional in a long time. You clearly buy into the idea that people are better or worse based on superficial group identifiers like skin colour. You don’t see the repugnance of that outlook. Nevertheless you’re not alone and only contempt and division will result from your attitude. Hardner, your Social Darwinist attitude towards those who are struggling is disgusting. You think this outlook will heal the West and end the culture wars? You’ve lost the plot.

The reason Peterson is significant is that he makes the case for values that are ridiculed today as somehow harmful when they are actually the order of things. Joseph Campbell, Northrop Frye, and Marshall McLuhan would appreciate his references to the cultural envelope of Western Culture which gets much of its force from the types and archetypes of the Great Code and the greatest ancient texts, from Homer through Aeschylus through Ovid and the Bible through Dante and Milton and so on. They inform our very sense of meaning. He has an understanding of the nature gods and myths that inform our cultural identities. Setting all of this aflame like with the recklessness of the French Revolutionary is what we’re witnessing in real time today. We’ve been here before. It’s another Inquisition. Few are strong, sharp, or brave enough to stand up to the ignorant radicals who don’t understand how stupid they’re being because they have no understanding of the historical and philosophical underpinnings of their society. University is supposed to set us straight on the shallowness and ineptitude of mainstream culture so that we can create the excellence that Rilke’s Torso of Apollo calls forth from any discerning person insightful enough to pay attention: “You must change your life.” There aren’t many media voices reminding us of what makes life meaningful.

Michael I’m surprised at you. Peterson worked for the UN and has demonstrated quite deep knowledge of green energy. He takes Lomberg’s perspective on climate change, which doesn’t deny it exists but brings in important doses of realism regarding what can reasonably be done. Peterson doesn’t pretend to be an expert on the subject. I’m not defending his knowledge universally across subjects, but I find it sad that you’re piling on against him without specifics. This seems to be the pattern. Did the Star or Globe and Mail tell you he’s a bad guy?

Maybe you don’t like Peterson now that he’s standing up to the woke mob that’s created a chill over free speech and turned university campuses into EDI indoctrination centres. Basically he is one of a few brave as yet uncancellable voices. Liberal Arts education is gone. University debates are finished. I experience this movement first hand in the workplace. People are saying what they don’t believe out of fear. I feel sorry for the vast majority of people who don’t have Jordan’s platform and influence who have been canceled and silenced. Parts of the US left are taking up the cause of defending academic freedom and keeping ideologues from imposing political agendas on faculty and curriculum. However, Canadians have folded under the pressures of this inquisition. Our Constitution seems to be too weak and/or the courts, media, and the stakeholder capitalists running our corporations are reinforcing the groupthink identity politics. If you don’t believe the woke-green orthodoxies in Canada, as defined top-down by government Ministries, you’re a sitting duck. Even Peterson is struggling to escape the wrath.

Ilk? Listen to yourself. Who are you pandering to? You think you sound moderate? You have a lot to learn. Your political views are uncritical. Be specific. If you want to criticize a particular policy or perspective and can support your statements with facts and sound arguments I’ll take you seriously. You just want the Conservatives to be identical to the Liberals. Don’t worry, they probably will be. I don’t care whether my views align enough with a party or perspective. I’m not here to get people elected if I don’t support their positions. Wake up!

Jordan Peterson is brilliant. Your criticism of him is shallow and ill-informed. I’m glad you reveal your ignorance.

I spoke out on this forum against Donald Trump multiple times. Your phoney “centrism” is a show. Your politics are basically the same as Moonbox’s. You defend government overreach and left wing authoritarianism. Saying Steve Bannon was correct to call out the consensus in Davos was correct. You’re just not informed enough to speak with depth on these issues. Your views are tribal. I was a member of the Liberal party but left it when I saw how ideological it became and the lack of open dialogue or reasonable policy. It routinely whips its membership over matters of conscience, making it essentially totalitarian on matters of opinion. Its various bans on conversion therapy or members taking pro life stances are radical and authoritarian. Much more can and has been said by US left journalists and commentators about the authoritarian moves of Trudeau’s government. You simply lack the critical thinking and independent thought to see how propagandized you have become. You’re not alone though. Much of the Canadian population mindlessly repeats the Liberal woke talking points that are echoed by the state-funded media. Canada is in a bubble. Much of the rest of the free world sees how Canadian democracy has become compromised. Many Canadians, including you, don’t see it and simply repeat the same milquetoast defence. Conservatism in Canada? Don’t make me laugh. All Canadian political parties are de facto Liberal. Opposition views are “unacceptable.”

No, you’re just a left wing authoritarian.

Well sure. On some levels all countries are disgusting. It’s a matter of context and relative disgustingness. Canada did some officially racist stuff, from the head tax on Asian workers to turning back a ship of Jewish refugees during WW2. We can look back at various examples of evil and servitude as cautionary stories for our present, but the reality is that you can find injustice among all groups and individuals. We just have to be honest and avoid making people out to be oppressors or savages merely because they happen to have biological features over which they have little or no control. I still think colonial Canada comes out ahead of most civilizations in terms of social harmony, advancement, and well-being. However, if we continue to hamper free speech and dismantle meritocracies, Canada will decline significantly. On the freedom scale it already has.

There’s meaningful black history because Ontario was the end goal of the Underground Railroad to freedom for slaves. Ontario was called New Canaan. There are also important historical black settlements in Nova Scotia. Canada was a relative safety haven though racist attitudes by today’s standards were certainly prevalent.

Slavery was banned from the beginning of Upper Canada. There were far more slaves held by Northwest Coast Indigenous in what is today’s British Columbia. Forms of racism persist among all peoples. We’re biologically programmed to feel safer among people who look and sound like us, but there are not racist laws in Canada except the Indian Act, which Indigenous so far have chosen to keep. They can change it. Celebrating black figures because they are black is strange. Celebrating great accomplishments by people who happen to be black is good. I understand the value of highlighting the achievements of black people who have been historically marginalized. Hopefully someday we just do this regularly without having to set aside token periods. I just think our new emphasis on race risks reducing people to their skin colour. It can lead to new forms of discrimination based on the values people assume are associated with various races. It risks racism.

Your comments are off the shelf CNN-CBC knee-jerk talking points. What’s hilarious is that you think you have any critical thinking left. You just re-affirm the prevailing groupthink ad infinitum.

Manufactured solutions to manufactured problems, but don’t worry, your consent to it all is also manufactured. Just read the script and everything will be fine. I agree that the money system is fake and the geopolitical crises are distractions and stimuli for various disaster capitalist ventures, e.g. Blackrock, privatization of utilities, etc. It’s the destabilizing assaults on family and rights, as well as the raising of living costs through irresponsible energy management, that are most disturbing. Basically we’re taxing the hell out of people in an inflationary environment for their basic needs like heat, transportation, and food. We’re telling them that their country and cultural values are racist and colonialist. We’re affirming gender identity and suicidal ideation as it arises by offering surgeries, drugs, and death as solutions. Canada is at the forefront of these dangerous experiments. As for homelessness and lack of affordability? It’s all about whether or not Quebec is racist or whose views are “unacceptable”.

How long have you been out of the workforce? Most of our meetings and training are about anti-black racism. In Canada everything is about race now. Also your views as a white male are irrelevant because you don’t have lived black experience. That’s our reality today. You should be worried about your children and grandchildren’s work and education prospects. Keep whistling down the garden path.

Most Canadians are so steeped in radical left identity politics groupthink that they don’t see how narrow the “acceptable” public discourse is now in Canada. Most Canadians are scared to question or think for themselves. They think government should take care of them like helpless babies and government happily treats them as such. Canada has the government it deserves. Want more pluralism and freedom of thought? Sorry, you’ll probably need to leave the country for that. The solutions to failed healthcare are more assisted suicide and legalization of hard drugs. The solution to political criticism of government is to say the opposition has “unacceptable views”. Liberals will likely get re-elected and rights will be further watered down. Want to push back? Expect to lose your job or face a “human rights” tribunal. Trudeau’s Canada is Cuba North.

I’m the end having a Black History Month is infantilizing to black people. It’s another way of displaying a race of people like a museum piece.

I think Canada is so dominated by radical left identity politics that it can’t be considered free in the way most of the posters on here understand the meaning of that word in a modern democracy. It’s just that some of these posters aren’t impacted by what’s underway, either because they’re retired or in a winning group in the zero-sum game. The media simply reinforces the new discrimination narrative because the fearful masses are constantly trying to prove their wokeness through performative acts in the workplace to protect or enhance their careers. Sadly, it won’t matter what you do in many organizations if you don’t have the preferred superficial identity.

Peterson is calling out the discrimination we’ve seen in race-based hiring such as “racialized-only” job postings. He’s also calling out the insane active destruction of the meritocracy by institutions that are bypassing well-qualified and high marks students/job applicants to accept/hire people for superficial reasons like skin colour. It’s racist, undermines our education system and economy, and breeds contempt as people realize that they are being discriminated against on the basis of race or sexual orientation/identity.

Only Canadian leftists like you are in denial of what most Americans and freedom-loving people around the world have seen unfold in Canada in the last couple of years. It’s not too late for Canada to correct course, but I don’t see left-wing radicals like you changing your spots in this lifetime.

Tulsi sums up the anti-democratic nonsense underway in Canada quite well:

What makes you think that your worldview is more convincing? My general impression is that you rationalize poor governance. We already know the status quo and the justifications for it. They’re the prevailing mainstream groupthink. I don’t go to a political forum to read state propaganda.

Easy there, Kim Jung. I don’t think many are rushing to live in your public health paradise.

No one under 50 who’s intelligent is getting their news solely from television and print media. The Convoy was an international viral movement that dominated social media and put major pressure on governments to reconsider mandates and restrictions. Of course!

Careers and reputations are being destroyed over people exercising their supposed rights. I don’t know how rights are restored when so many citizens have come to accept this as normal. Current generations need to learn history, including ancient history, to understand why these rights are so fundamental to a free democracy. They were hard won and didn’t just fall from the sky. Of course anything institutional is shredded by the ignorant revolutionaries as “colonial” and “oppressive”, which is why the answer is reform, not revolution. We need to bolster our constitution. The US got amendments. Where are our amendments?