The BBC tried to hire Dankula to do a panel show; and this allowed the entire thing to blow up today, as the Beeb could legitimately be challenged as offering a platform to a Nazi-adjacent convicted hate criminal. BBC had to recant and fire him.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/s...alute-14081982

There were headlines saying "Nazi pug criminal", and I can't imagine what someone would make of that moniker, if they didn't know the Dankula back story.

But allowing the term to describe some different vague righty group allows you to claim that the people you are describing are Nazis. Hence it allows you to tag people you disagree with as the worst people on earth. This is extremely false, and extremely bad, but it has been allowed to happen by people who should know better.

Today New Zealand's major book retailer banned Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules For Life".

We have entered the book-burning phase of the Brown Scare.

There is absolutely nothing political about the book. It's basically a self-help book peppered with Peterson's observations. Everyone should read it, it's 100% wonderful. I have, and I feel it has done nothing short of improving my life. Peterson isn't even all that righty. He's a traditionalist if you could say anything about him.

Meanwhile, book they did not ban, still on the shelves: Mein Kampf.

Mein Kampf? It's not personal, strictly business.

That book has probably done more to bring misguided young men away from the extreme right than any of the anti-indoctrination schemes currently targeting at risk youth.

Truth!

Peterson's biggest point is: empty nihilism leads to resentment. Disappearing into resentment is literally a personal hell on earth. But getting your life sorted out, by taking responsibility, is where you find meaning in life, and that is the antidote to that nihilism and resentment.

That's exactly what a resentful shitposting possible shooter with no life needs to understand.

Bingo.

He is also telling disaffected and unhappy young men (mainly) to stop trying to fix everybody else and society at large until they've sorted themselves out - clean your room before you try to clean the world

I think you can't have a full discussion about why young people are experiencing historical levels of stress, anxiety, depression, nihilism, resentment, and the effects that cascade from there, without addressing the tangible impact of the lack of economic opportunities that are available to the group of people who grew up during the 2008 recession.

I personally suspect that the rise of young, white, male violence is coming from a group of boys who saw their fathers and grandfathers being able to support a family and maintain patriarchal dominance over society by simply being a reasonably proficient, regular (white), middle-class dude. I'm sure they're asking why that social contract has betrayed them. Of course they have nihilism and resentment.

What are we telling them-- pull yourselves up by the bootstraps?

No, it has nothing to do with that

Oh, okay. Dodged a bullet there.

Get it? Dodged a bullet?

That isn't Peterson's message though. His is more of a ...exert control over your own life in a small way - you can't control the world, but you can give yourself a clean room as a first step to taking control of your life and your ability to respond to the world and opportunities (of whatever kind) when they arise. To develop a sense of personal responsibility and competence in the face of sometimes profoundly difficult situations. To not be overwhelmed and find a way to direct your efforts to your own advantage - to do what you can to make your own little part of the world, yourself, your family your friends a better place to be,starting with yourself.

When I first started at the place I work, wee had a conversation in our little training group with our trainer about stress and coping with corporate bullshit and targets and all that - he had been for some kind of stress counselling at one point after a minor breakdown a few years earlier and the counselor employed the metaphor of the hula hoop of control.

I still find myself occasionally thinking - hang on, this is not within my hula hoop of control, i really need to stop fretting about it :P What can \I tackle that is within my control?

It's not just that "times are tough"*. It's WAY worse than that! In the end, we all die!

And all our loved ones die. Often with great pain and suffering. Before that, you will have to deal with a remarkable amount of pain and suffering yourself. The promise that "everything will made all better" disappears when we become adults and realize that the condition "all better" doesn't really exist and nobody is going to make it right.

So, life sucks and then you die is the default human condition. Peterson: So what are you going to do about that?




* Times are always tough. By almost any measure, our current time is arguably the least-tough time humanity has ever experienced. Life expectancy, the end of total war, the end of scarcity.

The richest person on earth, 200 years ago -- and every King in every Kingdom in history -- would have given it ALL up, in return for the miracle of modern dentistry.

But even in these marvelous times, we find ourselves nihilistic, jaded, desperately unhappy. It is a crisis of meaning.

Fair enough. Reminds me of 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Viktor Frankl.

"...chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then immersively imagining that outcome."

Yup, that is it.

Here's where I got all that