Hey Lobsters!

I just finished reading Maps of Meaning, which took me over 2 months to get through. I found itincredibly powerful, and am now trying to integrate it before moving on to the next book (Ego and the Archetype).

To that end, I would love to hear some of your thoughts, takeaways, impactful insights from the book.

-What is the TL:DR JBP was trying to convey in this book? -What was most impactful for you? -What were the key learnings? -How did your perspective change?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

All the best

I am a concerned Canadian who recently read an article in the National Post regarding the recent rollout of "anti-racist" materials directed at employees working in Global Affairs Canada.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/only-white-people-can-be-racist-inside-global-affairs-anti-racism-course-materials

I wrote a rebuttal, and I am considering sending this to my local MP. However, he is an NDP member (a staunch leftwing party, for non-Canadians) and I suspect he won't see a problem with these anti-racist materials. Is there anyone else you would recommend I send this to?

Here is the rebuttal:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you because I am deeply disturbed after reading an article in the National Post about the new anti-racism training materials being rolled out in Global Affairs Canada. Despite believing for most of my life that it was impossible to be racist towards white people, I cannot think of any other word to describe the deep hostility being directed at them in these materials.

Having gone to UBC, an institution that has been letting this poisonous far-left animus go unchecked for several years now, I know every single one of the rebuttals that would be offered to my objections in this letter. One would surely be, “we’re not saying white people are bad necessarily; we’re just saying they’re privileged, and they need to acknowledge that.” This is just semantics. To my mind, the privilege argument is equally pernicious. It is equally bad to suggest that all white people are complicit in an evil system. Remember back in Weimar Germany, when the Jews were made out to be an unfairly privileged caste in society? Remember how it was alleged that they had disproportionate access to wealth, control of the banks and media, and were generally rapacious parasites on everyone else? Remember how anything and everything related to “Jewry” was evil? Remember The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? That document bears some terrifying similarities to these “anti-racist” training materials. I needn't remind you the horrific conclusion of that racial hate-mongering. People need to realize that this sort of thing is where it starts.

I recognize that many white people have done some horrible things to non-white people in history. I also recognize that this still continues to play out in a systematic manner in some examples today. Many of my friends are non-white and from what they tell me, I know that there are occasions in which living in a white-majority society makes it hard for them to feel included. We should absolutely focus on helping people who feel excluded or left behind. What we can’t do is blame one racial group for everything that is wrong in society. Two wrongs do not make a right. It is very wrong to ascribe collective guilt to any race, including white people. We understand that it is wrong to do this with other races. We know that it would be wrong to hold all individuals in modern Japan accountable for the rape of Nanking. We wouldn’t tell a random person of Arabic background that they are responsible for their historical enslavement of Africans. We wouldn’t blame Chinese-Canadians for the heinous crimes of Mao or even the current genocide being committed against the Uighurs. We know that this would be wrong. Yet here we are telling white people they are all to blame for the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 and the banning of black immigrants in 1911. These are historical misdeeds that I agree are important for Canadians to know about; but they are being trotted out in a quasi-religious manner, the idea being that they are original sins for which white people need to atone. Why is this considered acceptable? Why is it necessary to subject white people to Orwellian psychological re-training in order to achieve racial equality? Surely a more productive use of our time would be to find the people who are truly economically disadvantaged in our society (of all colours and creeds) and direct funding and equal opportunity initiatives towards them.

Regarding foreign affairs, it is worth mentioning that the Chinese government is laughing at us. While the CCP has spent the last few years pouring more concrete than any other country in history and is now shaping up to become the next global superpower, here we are over in Canada navel-gazing and destroying the social cohesion necessary for us to stay relevant in the international realm. We already have some examples of this self-flagellating wokeness being used as a cudgel against us in foreign politics. For example, there have been several occasions where CCP officials have referred to us as a “white supremacist” nation so they can shame us into releasing Meng Wanzhou. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is actually starting to work on influencing our public opinion and our foreign interactions. If we are made to believe that we are all still responsible for the 1885 Chinese Immigration Act, then what moral ground can Justin Trudeau stand on to tell Xi Jinping to stop the brutal oppression of the Uighurs? Thanks to these sorts of deeply misguided “anti-racist” materials, many guilt-ridden Canadians are now more than willing to roll over and abandon the responsibility necessary to maintain Canada’s vitality which, at its best, has actually been a force for upholding human rights all around the world, and has provided an amazing quality of life for its inhabitants. If we continue down the path of wokeness, we can expect that it will keep getting harder for our government to call out human rights abuses being committed by tyrannical governments abroad.

I would also like to mention that, when I see this kind of animosity being directed at white people, I very much do worry about the wellbeing of people with white skin. I absolutely hate the fact that I am being made to engage in identity politics in this manner; it is toxic, and I believe we should instead focus on the common humanity that unites all races. But according to these materials, the “colourblindness” I want is actually just another way of upholding white supremacy. I am being forced to be race-conscious, because there are plenty of people on the political left these days who believe that race is indeed the most important factor by which to judge people in our society. And it’s pretty clear that they believe anything and everything to do with white people is evil. And even worse, that individual white people need to feel guilty for their complicity in the white supremacist system. If the people who are pushing this pathological insanity knew anything about history, they would know the hell that awaits a society that stokes racial division like this. This leftwing identity politics is already encouraging rightwing identity politics, and I worry deeply that we could see a race to the bottom. Can we please please please step back from that brink?

Please do what you can to strip this moral asbestos from the rafters. It has no place in Global Affairs or any other government body. I hope that you will do whatever possible to address this in parliament. Let’s return to an ethic of common humanity.

After watching Jordan's most recent conversation with Jonathan I had a lot I needed to process. I was able to track down one of the main contributors to Jonathan's blog J.P. Marceau for a conversation to try to further unpack some of those questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBvNK58WwQM&t=758s

I felt very much on the same page as Jordan in that discussion but was really moved by what Pageau's was saying. The narrative really made sense, but I couldn't square it with the insistence Christians have about the historical Christ. I'm still not sure exactly where I land on understanding that event, but what J.P. helped me to see about gradually recognizing the pattern of the divine in the same way a child learns to distinguish patterns of things, later individuals, and eventually abstract concepts really helped me to get a better grasp on what the journey towards Christianity meant.

I'm interested to hear if any of you are on the same page in processing Christianity, and if so, what key things you've latched onto that either prevented you from moving forward or helped you to move past critical pitfalls in that journey. I think if you relate at all to Jordan's struggle in that conversation with Pageau, though, that you'll find something deeply meaningful in what J.P. has to say in the conversation above. (It's a bit long, but if you want to TLDR I marked chapters so you can skip around)

One of the biggest things that's stuck with me about Peterson's work is his claim that "The Right needs the Left like a man needs a wife". That core principle of integration and synthesis of the Shadow has been driving my thinking for the past 3 or 4 years and I've been trying to figure out how to actually live it out.

I feel like almost all of our institutions and communities are "siloing" in a certain sense, and integration of important outside ideas, as well as genuine good-faith conversation, are dying a slow painful death. I noticed it on a political level, and that was fun to begin to poke fun at, but recently I started to see the same patterns take root in my own house--my family wouldn't talk to each other. They were beginning to avoid conversation and seeing each other whenever possible. I started to fall into the same avoidant patterns. Something is obviously wrong, and it appears to be seeping through reality on every level.

I decided to start working on "cleaning my own room" so to speak, and attempting to have some conversations with people I didn't agree with on a youtube channel, so people could come along, learn from my mistakes, and help me learn from them too by pointing them out.

I just posted my 3rd conversation on the channel and it's with a recent friend of mine, Professor Ken Paradis of Wilfred Laurier in Brantford Ontario. He's an open and compassionate guy, but definitely leans a lot more to the left than I do. He was kind enough to sit down more than once with me to talk about some social issues, philosophy, literary theory, and political ideas. The link below is to our most recent conversation, and we got into the thick of the weeds on it. We had a couple uncomfortable moments of talking past each other and trying to reconcile genuinely dissonant stories about reality, but in the end, I felt like it was an important and meaningful step towards working on some of these problems.

https://youtu.be/hWUhAYJ-K6k?t=304

If this project sounds interesting to you, I'd really appreciate any feedback or advice or support you can give me. Working through difficult disagreements and battling the echo chamber feels like a really deeply meaningful thing to me, and I'd appreciate anyone who feels the same way joining into the conversation. I do reference Peterson's ideas fairly often, though it's not a strictly "Jordan Peterson Themed" project.

I'm honestly looking for your advice, though. How do you think we can get better at having useful conversations across ideological borders? Is it something we're even capable of? Can you think of any strategies? I'm especially still struggling to try to figure out if there was a better way to work past the narrative dissonance we ran into at around 1:30:00.

The Addicted Life

Philosophical narrative on the etiology of addiction and the manifestation of the recovered self.

JP's interpretations of motivation and the sub-personality TRANSCENDED!

Thoughts?!

Hi everybody,

Several months ago I made a post about a new and improved Self-Authoring program that I created called "Inner-Hero". I created the program in response to several issues I found with Jordan Peterson's program while researching it for my senior thesis (such as UI/UX). However, I decided to take the website down because there were several issues I had to solve with my program and website. After several months of work, the website is back up and running and is now better than ever, but we have a new URL (It's now www.innerhero.xyz) Check it out if your curious. I want to make this program the best tool for helping people understand what they want and to get through transitional periods (such as what the world is going through right now), so if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please let me know.

I hope everyone is doing well despite all the chaos and absurdity that's happening in the world right now

Best wishes,

Yak

Does anyone have any information regarding JBP's status?

I've been following the JBP debate on pronouns for a while which sort of gave me an introduction into the more general debate about sex, gender, and identity. I think from everything I've observed, I can see how SOME of the ideas coming from the LGBT+ activists have been saying could work IF they accept certain biological presuppositions that they currently reject. I did a commentary on it here that I would love for you all to check out and give me feedback on. I'm looking to refine and sharpen some potentially controversial ideas I have. To sort of summarize the ideas, essentially I believe there are 2 genders, however, the identity that can be expressed on top of the 2 genders and their biological proclivities can vary in a spectrum-like way. I believe there are averages and that they are pretty substantial, however, I also feel that when we see males, for instance, acting out roles that are atypical of traditional gender roles, it's not an indication of sexual orientation differences (though it might in some cases). You can have men that act out a spectrum of gender roles that could be determined by personality differences, and vise-versa for women. That would explain feminine men who are straight, and masculine women who are also straight. I believe sexual orientation is separate from identity because you can have gay men who act out a spectrum of masculinity and femininity, and vise-versa with lesbians, bi, etc. There's a few more points that involve evolution and political philosophy, but these are the main ideas that I'm looking at sharing. Let me know what you think and lets start a dialogue!

Commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09zXUcHEB5c

I've re-listened to the Harris/Peterson debates many times and I always feel like there are deeper layers I'm not getting to. If anyone is keen I'd like to do a Direct Chat correspondence where each of us takes the perspective of one of these two thinkers and we try to have a debate as them. I'm happy to pick either side, Harris or Peterson. I'm also happy to have a third party on as Weinstein or Murray. I'm also happy to start this exercise with multiple different conversations partners, because compatibility will also be a factor. My one requirement would be that, once the LARP is in action, we try to keep our arguments true to the perspective of our chosen thinker, Peterson or Harris.

​

Cheers and if you are interested just comment here or DM

Hi everybody,

I hope you are all faring well amidst the chaos of our current social climate. I know its crazy out there, but we will put everything back together one step at a time :)

About six months ago, when I was finishing my undergraduate degree in psychology, I decided to write my senior thesis on how Jordan Peterson's self-authoring program could help students with ADHD. However, the more I delved into the program, the more I noticed flaws that I could not let go of. I am not saying that Peterson's program is bad, in fact, quite the contrary. I think his program is more powerful and remedying of deep psychological problems than many medications could ever cure. Which is why these flaws bothered me so much. I do not think Self Authoring is fulfilling its true potential. Let me explain:

The first most easily identifiable flaw with Self Authoring is that it has a poor UX/UI design. It does not look good, nor feel good to work on. Plus, it is annoying to go back through your work and see your answers in context to the questions. Because of this, many users may quit working on it before completing the program or forget about their responses over time.

The second, and probably greatest flaw is that the aim of the program "misses the mark" (so to speak). Now, I am not saying that Peterson's approach is "wrong". It is amazing that Self Authoring helps you to establish meaningful goals and strategies to achieve them because you will become a better person. A person that works to establish a better relationship with his/her parents will ultimately live a better life than someone who gives up and shoots heroin every day. However, the problem with establishing a set of varied goals when you first learn how to set goals (even if they are meaningful in that moment) is that many of those goals may lose their meaning as you learn more about yourself and the world. Now, that is certainly not the end of the world, especially if you are, overall, becoming a better person. However, I have found that you can center your goals around something more adaptive so that you do not end up in chaos when you realize that your goals are not quite what you expected. You can center your goals around your character. Unfortunately, Self Authoring does not guide you into understanding who you want to be, but rather what you want.

Peterson's program has helped me so much that I want to make sure it fulfills what it aims for. Because of this, I created my own goal-oriented journaling program that remedies these problems. I call this program "Inner-Hero". Although it may seem that I am trying to compete with Jordan Peterson by making this program, that is not my intent. I simply want to help as many people as possible. In fact, (although this is unlikely) if Jordan Peterson became interested in my program, I would love to collaborate with him. However, I have hit a wall with my finances. I want to continue to make even more improvements and additions to my program (including a goal-tracking app and additional programs), but I will not be able to continue avidly working on it at this rate. Therefore, I need feedback on the program ASAP so I can ensure that this program can be as helpful as possible. You can check out my program at https://www.innerhero.io/

With everyone working together we can create something that will lift us out of the meaninglessness that plagues our current society. Thank you for all the insight you guys have given me on this subreddit, you are all extremely helpful!

-Yak

Hi lobsters.

I wanted to ask you how you internalize books you read?

I ask this because I have read a lot of things but true value of that knowledge escapes me. I ask this because I understand knowledge but still fail to turn it into wisdom. It is like my consciousness knows things but my subconsciousness doesnt.

Take for example 12 rules for life. I read it 3 times. I know it almost by page. Still I fail to reproduce that knowledge in real life.

How do you do it?

Pity since the topic is interesting.