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Jordan Peterson: Twelve Rules for Life

• How can we navigate our lives to true-north in the sea of chaos and suffering? What steps do we take to anchor our lives through stormy weather? In Dr. Jordan Peterson's book "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos," he explains them. Article by Mr. Alex Mau.

Mr. Alex Mau

October 8, 2020 • Last updated: October 8, 2020

in Mind and Soul • 60 Minutes Read

"How could the world be freed from the terrible dilemma of conflict, on the one hand, and psychological and social dissolution, on the other? The answer was this: through the elevation and development of the individual and everyone's willingness to shoulder the burden of Being and take the heroic path. We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society, and the world. We must tell the truth and repair what is in disrepair and break down and recreate the old and outdated. It is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. It's asking a lot." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

In this episode of "The Art of Manliness" podcast, host Mr. Brett McKay interviews Dr. Jordan Peterson. He is a clinical psychologist and a lecturer. His latest book, "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos," he shares his view on the meaning of living and describes how we could take full control of our lives and make it worth living.

Dr. Jordan Peterson explains that a successful life is an ordered life and talks about the importance of being the world's light because of the disastrous consequence if we choose to live life in the dark.

Interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson in Three Sentences

"Every game has rules. The first of these rules is that the game is important. If it were not important, you wouldn't be playing it." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

Life is hell, suffering, pain, and misery, and we must live a life with missions and goals worthy enough to justify the pain we endure in hell.

We make plans, take stock, evaluate our life, and become the light of the world because the alternative is darkness and hell.

The twelve rules are a true-north internal compass that guides us to navigate life as we adrift on the sea of life in pain and suffering.

Ideas to Takeaway from This Interview

"You're trying to create space between stimulus and response in the body so that as that tension comes up in you, you will it to relax, and that's what The Wedge is in that moment." - Mr. Scott Carney

Why the twelve rules of life? What are the twelve Rules?

“The order that is most real is the order that is most unchanging—and that is not necessarily the order that is most easily seen. The leaf, when perceived, might blind the observer to the tree. The tree can blind him to the forest. And some things that are most real (such as the ever-present dominance hierarchy) cannot be “seen” at all.”

The path of life and the purpose of life.

People are directional being. We are path taking creatures. We travel daily to destinations, either to work, to stores, to school, or to meet friends. We go places with purposes. The direction is the path.

We ask ourselves honest questions. What path are we taking in life? What is our purpose in life? And which direction we are traveling? On the light or dark path, to the good neighborhood or bad neighborhood. Life without purpose, without guidance, is a lost life. The mission is the purpose of life.

Once we realized and be honest that we are lost and wandering on the dark path, these twelve rules will help us to find our way back to the light. These twelve rules provide life guidance, road maps for life, and lists of things to do to be successful, and if followed precisely, these twelve rules provide a blueprint for a solid foundation and a positive environment to live lives a little easy to endure.

When we are walking away from the dark, we are walking on the path of light. The best gradually starts to happen to us, but it might not be easy. Easy life and the best life are not the same. We don't want a life with the absence of efforts and works. We want challenges, obstacles, struggles, worthwhile adventures that stimulate our minds and bodies. We want a hero's journey life filled with calls to adventure and accomplished great things.

When everything we do has meaning, it becomes easy because it relates to our purposes. Be the light. Become light in the world. Our world is better when it is brightly lited.

Rule one. Stand up straight with your shoulder back.

Rule two. Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping.

Rule three. Make friends with people who want the best for you.

Rule four. Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today.

Rule five. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

Rule six. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

Rule seven. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).

Rule eight. Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie.

Rule nine. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't.

Rule ten. Be precise in your speech.

Rule eleven. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.

Rule twelve. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

Rule one. Stand up straight with your shoulders back.

"To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is a meditation on confronting the world courageously with good posture. Our posture affects our emotions. Stand up straight with the shoulder back exerts dominance and confidence, and it shows we accept responsibility.

Slouching or stooping posture with our heads hanging low leave us susceptible to appearing we are not ready to take accountability for our actions. Stand up straight with the shoulders back and the feet shoulder-width apart, we exude confidence and willingness to take meaningful action.

Psychology confirms standing up straight projects self-confidence, authority, and poise while slouching or slumping makes us look unprofessional and disinterested. External posture leads to internal emotions. Our emotions often proliferate by other people. It is hard and disturbing for people's emotions to be put-down by others. It does not just upset them at the moment. It changes the way their entire emotion responds to the world. It shows they are not worthy and valuable in society. There is a tight relationship between emotion and physical posture in the hierarchy of human society. How we think of ourselves in society determines how we feel.

Rule one is a meditation on how to present ourselves in the hierarchy of human society. We want to present ourselves to the world in a manner that does not disgrace us because the consequence of disgrace is emotional dysregulation—more negative and less positive emotion. The best solution is to present ourselves by standing up straight and opening our bodies. We occupy space around us, make ourselves vulnerable by stretching out, and open ourselves to the world. Good posture is an excellent way to regulate your emotional mood and serotonin. It is a sign of self-confidence to confront the world courageously. Thereby, people most likely give us the benefit of the doubt and take us seriously. We get more chances and more opportunities in life.

The rule of thumb for rule one is success comes to our ways when we courageously confront things that frighten us forthrightly by standing straight with our shoulders back.

Source: Standing Up for Confidence

Rule two. Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping.

"You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help, and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help, and be good to someone you loved and valued." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is a meditation on treating ourselves well for the benefits of others. It means people get to demand the best from you. It means we take care of ourselves first for the benefits of others. It means improving our health, exercising our mind, motivating ourselves, and seizing the greatness within us, so we can take care of those we love most.

We regularly and often treat other people better than we treat ourselves. We look at ourselves according to our standards, and we believe we don't deserve the best. We understand themselves better than anyone. We know all our flaws and faults. It is often easy to care for other people than care for themselves because we believe other people are better than us.

We are fragile, imperfect, and damaged goods.

We are self-conscious beings who acknowledge and aware of our fragility, foolishness, errors.

We know ourselves better than anyone else knows us.

We are capable of pretty vicious acts of malevolence.

We are useless, incompetent, and clumsy.

We are mortal, vulnerable, and self-conscious.

The solution and the truth are that everyone is flawed, useless, and clumsy. We are not all we could be, and everyone could do much better. It is a human subconscious issue, and it always has and it always will.

Even though we are not all that we could be, our moral obligation is to treat ourselves better. We make the world a better place if we take care of ourselves in the name of other people. As an individual, we are in the best position to treat ourselves better. We have something valuable to bring to the world. We are lights, and we light the world with our humanity, kindness, and sympathy. When we treat ourselves better, our lights grow brighter. If we don't bring our lights to the world, the world will be a dimmer place. When the world is a dim place, it gets very dark.

Rule two's rule of thumb is to be the light for the world by treating ourselves better and it is important to remember that everyone falls short of the glory of God.

Rule three. Make friends with people who want the best for you.

"What you aim at determines what you see." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is a meditation on reminding ourselves that we are important. Rule two and three work together. Rule three is intended to make life more difficult and remind us that we are important and matter in the world.

"Birds of a feather flock together." People who spend the most time together tend to emulate each other or share similar interests or beliefs. Everyone's life is a constant struggle. We have friends who aim high, and others aim low.

We pay close attention when we aim in different directions; some friends may not be happy.

Some friends may pull our aim down to their level.

Some friends may cover our accomplishments with their hypothetical successes.

Some friends may offer something to deter us from pursuing.

Some friends may explain to us reasons it would not work.

Eventually, if we honestly love ourselves (Rule two), we have two choices; either staying with friends and aiming low or finding other friends who aim high. We have an ethical responsibility to surround ourselves with people who have the courage, wisdom, and faith to wish us well when we do well and to stop us when we do wrong. We find friends who want the best for us.

If our friends are not like that, they are not our friends, and maintaining friendships with them might not be in our best interest. When people drag us down with them, their intentions are cynical.

Some people try to see if we will put up with them because they believe life is not worth living, and things are not good in their lives.

Some people drag us down to prove there is no good in the world and don't need to be responsible and strive forward.

Some people use us as an example to confirm their beliefs.

Rule three's rule of thumb is to surround ourselves with only people who will lift us higher.

Rule four. Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today.

"When you decide to learn about your faults so that they can be rectified, you open a line of communication with the source of all revelatory thought. Maybe that's the same thing as consulting your conscience. Maybe that's the same thing, in some manner, as a discussion with God." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is a meditation to be the role model for ourselves.

Envy, like greed and lust, is characterized by an insatiable desire. When we "covet thy neighbor's wife," we are resentful that our neighbor has her, and we don't. I envy you because you have what I want.

It is sad or resentful covetousness towards the traits or possessions of someone else. Malicious envy is similar to jealousy in that they both feel discontent towards someone's traits, status, abilities, or rewards. Don't envy of someone. Everyone has problems.

We need goals that are a bit above our reach (Rule three) and are worthwhile to our lives, but we may not envy people we don't know. People we believe have attained more deserved or not. This envy leads to bitterness and resentment.

It is mentally healthy for us to compare ourselves to ourselves. We use ourselves as the target for improvement and comparison. As we feel better about ourselves (Rule two) and become more successful (Rule three), people would offer us more opportunities, and more opportunities produce more achievements. The truth is, there are always people who achieved more than us.

We attach values for comparison purposes to become the best we can be is essential and healthy. (Rule three). It is harmful to us when we compare or measure our performances against other people's achievements. As this unhealthy comparison develops, we gradually build anger, resentment, self-loathing within ourselves and diminishes our sense of self-worth.

How do we have the benefit of comparison without the crushing feeling of defeat?

We set high aim goals but not too farfetched to crush us.

We break down the goals into small parts to challenge us.

We provide an incrementable high probability of success.

We review our progress and ask quesitons.

What did we do well yesterday?

Where do we need to improve today?

Where can we be one percent better today?

When we apply this rule, the daily result starts to compound, and we become unstoppable.

Rule four's rule of thumb is confidently to measure ourselves of today with who we were yesterday.

Rule five. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

"If a child has not been taught to behave properly by the age of four, it will forever be difficult for him or her to make friends." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is a meditation on confronting the shadow within us is an inevitable barrier to enlightenment. If we dislike our children, so will other people. It is a bad idea to allow our children to act in a way that makes other children or adults dislike them.

A parents job is to help the children learn how to behave so that the social world opens up its arms to them and welcomes them at every level. If we don't like what our children do, neither will society. If the parents tolerate their children's behavior, and society does not, the opposite of tolerating at home and the intolerant in society will present the children the feeling of isolation among people and the long-term development of psychological problems.

We solve this issue by knowing the kind of monster that lives inside us. The violent beast appears when rage, anger, and frustration combined for moments when things go wrong. Everyone has a dark side, the monster. When we confront and be honest with ourselves in the mirror, accepting and reflecting on the destructive behavior present in the state of cruelness moment, we can have a good relationship with people and family.

Once we know what we capable of doing the most violent acts, it is best not to let the children make us outraged at the wrong moment. It is never a good idea for parents to allow the children to engage in dislike, irritable, and resentful activities that make the parents angry at them. Nothing good could come out from that.

Instead, if we want to have a good relationship with people and family, when people do something we would like them to do it again, tell them and show our appreciation. Say thank you to them for taking the time and effort to do what they did and how much it means to us.

There are a few things we keep in mind.

We take deep breaths when we feel frustrated.

We remind people to avoid us when we have bad days.

We stop children immediately when they misbehave.

Rule five's rule of thumb is to Stop doing the things we dislike and show appreciation and remind people of their efforts.

Rule six. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

"It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world—a handyman's dream if ever there was one—is to fix yourself." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is a meditation on resentment and bitterness. Resentment is the key human emotion. It is best to take the time to listen to our resentment and admit it exists. We are either shut up and get on with it or say something and do something about our resentment.

Blame others or blame ourselves and take action. Resentment may show us the pathway to put a stop to our resentment. It's necessary to live an upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there's hell to pay if we don't do that.

It does not mean to stop taking any action for others until we have our acts together. It means to bind our ambition with humility and work on what is right in front of us that we will suffer more for it if we get wrong before engaging in the large-scale transformation of other people. We must be willing to deeply introspect and examine our lives and choices to prevent future mistakes. We stop doing things that are bad for us.

When Things are not going well for us. We feel resentful about the nature of being and the suffering for our own life. How do we treat our resentment? What should we do when we feel resentful?

We quit lying to ourselves and start going through our lives with a fine-tooth comb.

We ask ourselves honest questions.

"Have we done everything we possibly could to set our lives straight?"

"How did our lives get here?"

"Where did our lives go wrong on our judgment?"

Now, we have the list of tasks to fix.

We start to fix the little things in front of us that we can improve. We don't stop and see what happens.

Stop doing things that we should not do and stop saying things that make us weak and angry.

We finish the list of tasks and develop a long-term vision for our lives.

We straighten our lives first, the things in front, take it seriously for a year.

We make honest evaluations and write down our progress.

There are no little things in life. We fix the little things is a way to increase self-competence; competency equals power. We start to clean our room and then to other little small things at home, increasingly we begin to feel better about life. People think these things are minor, like sorting out their household. It is not a little thing. It is tough. Everything matters.

We will face unbelievable opposition around us from the chaotic home, resentful or alcoholic family members, and people that aim low. We will have to fight through that, and it is hard to put our lives and our home in order.

Rule six's rule of thumb is to pay attention to ourselves first and fix the little things in front of us.

Rule seven. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).

"Don't underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is a meditation on sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. Life is never supposed to be happy and fair. It is supposed to be meaningful and important. There is much hard work in life, and it is never fun.

We will suffer in life, but our suffering should be worth the life we lived and the life we leave behind. We do the meaningful, not fun and easy at the moment. We essentially sacrifice all our weaknesses, our temptations, our damages, and everything wrong about ourselves for good in our future.

Sacrifice is painful; control our temptation is difficult, and withstand the urge to seek comfort and pleasure is hard to resist. Hopefully, the end consequence is justified for the sacrifice we made on the reborn journey, the new us. We become the phoenix.

The phoenix bursts into flame and burns of everything that's old and dead and is then reborn. That a symbol of the savior, the phoenix. Similarly, we do to ourselves. We let go and burn off everything old and damaged about us. We let it burn off. It's painful because it's alive, but it's just deadwood. We don't need it. That's part of the sacrifice of ourselves.

Sacrifice is a skill, just like goal-setting. It takes time to learn and practice. Most people are generally not very well-constituted, not very mature, and not very articulate in their lives. Once they realized they have to give up many wonderful things, they often refused to sacrifice.

We should not pursue happiness. It is a foolish idea. Instead, we should seek life worth living, not happiness. Happiness comes from a life worth living. A life worth living takes many sacrifices. We live our lives in a manner that justifies their suffering and sacrifice. In the end, it is a long-term worthwhile game that will turn us away from bitterness and resentment.

How do we know the pursuit of meaningful life of tomorrow worth the pain and sacrifice of today? Commonly, if we are moving forward, in some manner that's worthwhile, and things often don't work out precisely how we expected, at least, we will have generally gained something as a consequence of the experience, a new knowledge, or a unique insight.

We become wiser and make necessary adjustments and continue our journey to the pursuit of a meaningful life. We meditate on our improvement, evaluate our progress, seek advice from people we trust, reconfigure our goal, and try again.

Rule seven's rule of thumb is to start life on an easier path, leading to a rougher end.

Rule eight. Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie.

"If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don't lie." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is the meditation on telling the truth to ourselves, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

How we know what we are saying is the truth. I don't think we know when we tell the truth to ourselves because no one knows the truth. The truth is, in some sense, is an unreachable goal. The truth to us may not be true to others. But one thing we can do to ourselves right away, it is to stop saying things we know to be false. It's challenging to have our vision clear enough to see the truth, but virtually everyone knows when lying to ourselves. When we stop saying things that we know to be lies, we will start clarifying our vision, and we will get better and better at perceiving the truth.

How we test the stories that we tell ourselves. The purpose of memory is to help us stop doing the stupid things we did in the past that hurt us. And so if we have an accurate representation of the past and its failures, then we won't repeat the failures again into the future. If we keep applying the test and the same pathological things keep failing, then perhaps there's something wrong with how we formulated our story. We are the fault. If the same bad shit happens to us, again and again, it is probably us.

Our lives are not what we would like it to be; then, there's some possibility that the story we are telling ourselves is wrong. The theory is wrong. We are not fulfilling our full potential; it is the story we are telling ourselves. If we are not where we want to be in life, it is us and finds out why.

We cannot pursue what is meaningful to us without telling the truth. We corrupt our perceptions when we lie to ourselves. As a result, we cannot rely on our judgment. If we cannot rely on our judgment, then it is good luck to us because what will we rely on in the absence of our judgment? We got nothing. We lose. The truth comes from the personal truth of experiences, the keeping of promises and contracts, and the accurate description and understanding of reality. We tell our truth, that is important.

Rule eight's rule of thumb is to be honest, and truthful with ourselves will set us free from living life with resentment and bitterness.

Rule nine. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't.

"So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is the meditation on recognition of our unbearable ignorance. We have to decide what we know and what we don't know and what is more important to us in life.

First, there is a lot of we don't know. If we make friends with what we don't know and decide that it is more important, then we will be surrounded by what we don't know our entire life. If we are appreciative of the new knowledge, then that will make things go better for us.

Second, if we appreciate what we don't know, and believe that things could still be better, then obviously what we don't know is more important than what we know. We should be paying attention to find out what we don't know at every possible opportunity.

Third, suppose we are fortunate when you have a conversation with someone, and we are interested in what they say. In that case, even if someone not very good at communicating, that is always the possibility that they might tell us something we don't know.

In which case, we walk away from the conversation, less ignorant and less corrupt then we were when we started the conversation.

If our lives are not everything we would like it to be, then being slightly less ignorant and less corrupt is a good thing. The truth should withstand honest scrutiny, and emerge stronger, be modified, or cast aside as a lie and not truth. Social progress and personal development will only happen when we are willing to take an in-depth look at ourselves and realize that we might know many things and compare to the great sea of knowledge. In the end, we know nothing.

Rule nine's rule of thumb is to listen and to learn from other people is humility and modesty.

Rule ten. Be precise in your speech.

"When you have something to say, silence is a lie, and tyranny feeds on lies." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is the meditation on precisely tell people what we want from them, and directly ask what others want from us. If we can precisely describe what we want, what we do not understand, what we do not like in our lives, and why we are so unproductive, it is the first step in improving any situation. If we can't explain the issue clearly, we clearly don't understand the issue. If there is a problem, the first step is to clarify and define it. The best solution to avoid lengthen argument is finding out directly what the other wants.

We can directly ask if we can do something to give people what they want.

We are clueless. We say we don't know.

We both don't know, then let's figure it out together.

People want something from us; let's find out what they want. If they don't like what we are doing, they have to tell us exactly what we have to do correctly. On the other hand, when we are complaining and unsatisfied with them, we announce our satisfaction rule.

Rule ten's rule of thumb is to be clear of what we want and be open to what they ask.

Rule eleven. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.

"Question for parents: do you want to make your children safe or strong?" - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is the meditation on trust. It is an act of encouragement toward your children. It is fundamental importance is not to guide our children so that they act in a socially desirable manner and let the world opens itself to them.

Parents should not interfere with their children when they are skateboarding or when they are doing dangerous things in which children love to do. Parents are interfering with their children's willingness to expose themselves to the necessary risks and dangers voluntarily.

Helicopter parents live a life of perpetual fear that their children are always at risk when they are not around. They are unprepared for the harsh and challenging environment of school, community, and society. It is not loved or compassion, but the cowardice on parents' part to shelter their children from harm. It exposes the parents' lack of trust and the demand for total control of their children's well-being. As a result, the prolonged psychological damage to their children's self-esteem and self-confidence last for years. Their children could not navigate unusual social situations intelligently and ultimately unable to take appropriate and calculated risks.

Children need to expose themselves to risks to develop the sort of competence that allows them to thrive in the society that their parents cannot shelter them. Skateboarding teaches children's self-esteem. It shows the limits of their ability, how to handle fear, and when to push against the fear. They use the pain of failure as learning tools for setting their risk boundaries. The risk in skateboarding is modulable; the risk increases as the trick get difficult.

Rule eleven's rule of thumb is to let go of the children, and they will fly further than we had expected.

Rule twelve. Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street.

"Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good. Now, your trajectory is heavenward. That makes you hopeful. Even a man on a sinking ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat! And who knows where he might go in the future. To journey happily may well be better than to arrive successfully…." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

It is a meditation on fragility. It is what we do when things go seriously wrong, and we don't know what to do and how to handle it.

How do we manage lives when we face terrible tragedies in our personal life, a death in the family, an unfortunate illness, the collapse of a dream, or any unexpected thing that flip our world upside down. When things are going out of control, we often look at our lives in days, weeks, or months.

What are we going to do for next week?

What is going to happen to us next month?

Where will we be at next year?

Instead, we should look at our lives in the smallest component. It is mentally beneficial to narrow our frame of time to the smallest in minutes.

During those minutes, we focus on doing as well as we can with what is right in front of us for the extended unit of time that we can tolerate conceptualizing. While we are suffering, we must take the time to acknowledge the little thing that allows itself to be appreciated. We become present in the moment and appreciate all the beautiful things surrounding us, and we take time to enjoy the small, detailed things.

Rule twelve is a practical way to know what to do in terrible situations. Once we realized that we could handle terrible things than we thought, we can handle any challenging situations without becoming corrupted. We have to be alert on the good things in life when we are suffering. We take time and look around to the unexpected beauty in life. We look for little brighten moments, the little bit of sparkling crystal in the darkness when things are bad. We have to look and see where things are still beautiful and sustaining. Life is beautiful.

Rule twelve's rule of thumb is to pay attention to the littlest things in life, and it will help us mentally and emotionally when our world is falling apart.

Final thoughts.

"You must determine where you are going in your life because you cannot get there unless you move in that direction. Random wandering will not move you forward. It will instead disappoint and frustrate you and make you anxious and unhappy and hard to get along with (and then resentful, and then vengeful, and then worse)." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

There are many validated reasons for the twelve rules.

We should try to improve ourselves first instead of trying to set the world straight.

We should worry less about what other people are doing wrong and pay more attention to what we have done wrong.

We should stand up straight and treat ourselves like we are someone worthwhile and important.

We should make friends with people who want the best for us.

We should tell the truth, or at least not lie to ourselves. Whom can we trust if we cannot trust ourselves?

These twelve rules are ideal, but we could never attain the perfect ideal life. These rules are meditations on how to conduct ourselves in our society's hierarchy so that our life is what it could be. These rules are self-improvement only applies to me, but it is for me as much as for anyone. After we have straightened ourselves with the twelve rules, we realized there is plenty of imperfection to go. There is more to develop and more to improve.

Living a good life is a constant adjustment; something noble, remarkable, and extraordinary about keeping going and improving, which is positive, is maturity. The reason we keep constant self-improvement. A good person will try to get better; no matter how good we are, there is plenty of room for improvement. The real goodness is in the attempt. The real honor is in the process.

If we use Christ as a psychological example, Christ is the dying and resurrecting symbol. It means when we learn things painfully, a part of us has to die, that is the pain. Life is a constant process of death and rebirth and to participate fully is to allow ourselves to be redeemed by it.

The symbol of the phoenix represents the transformation of death and rebirth in its fire. It represents eternity and foreverness. It continuously goes through the cycle of change, death, resurrection by rising from the ashes through the fire.

The goodness is the process of death and rebirth voluntarily undertaken. We are not as good as we could be, so we let the bad part die and resurrected the good. It is the secret to be a man, a responsible person. We let our old self die and let our new self reborn, and that is what we should do in our lives. In the end, we all fall short of God's standards.

Source: We All Fall Short of God’s Standards

Interview Summary with Dr. Jordan Peterson

"And you must be cautious because making your life better means adopting much responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining arrogant, deceitful and resentful." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

Lesson Meditation Rule of thumb Rule one. Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Confronting the world courageously with good posture. Success comes to our ways when we courageously confront things that frighten us forthrightly by standing straight with our shoulders back. Rule two. Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping. Treating ourselves well for the benefits of others. Be the light for the world by treating ourselves better and it is important to remember that everyone falls short of the glory of God. Rule three. Make friends with people who want the best for you. Reminding ourselves that we are important. Surround ourselves with only people who will lift us higher. Rule four. Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today. Be the role model for ourselves. Confidently to measure ourselves of today with who we were yesterday. Rule five. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. Confronting the shadow within us is an inevitable barrier to enlightenment. Stop doing the things we dislike and show appreciation and remind people of their efforts. Rule six. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. Resentment and bitterness. Pay attention to ourselves first and fix the little things in front of us. Rule seven. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient). Sacrifice today for a better tomorrow Start life on an easier path, leading to a rougher end. Rule eight. Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie. Telling the truth to ourselves, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Be honest and truthful with ourselves will set us free from living life with resentment and bitterness. Rule nine. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't. Recognition of our own unbearable ignorance. Listen and learn from other people is humility and modesty. Rule ten. Be precise in your speech. Precisely tell people what we want from them, and directly ask what others want from us. Be clear of what we want and be open to what they ask. Rule eleven. Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding. Meditation on trust. Let go of the children, and they will fly further than we had expected. Rule twelve. Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street. Meditation on fragility. Pay attention to the littlest things in life, and it will help us mentally and emotionally when our world is falling apart.

Young people are sick and tired of being fed a constant diet of "We're good enough. We should feel happy with who we are." They are tired of endless diets of rights and freedoms that will give them a meaningful life, or a pat on the back even though they don't deserve it.

Life is suffering and pain; the proper antidote to that is living in truth and responsibility.

The 12 rules are guidelines, and when we feel lost in life, then the 12 rules are a roadmap to salvation and a better life. Follow it precisely.

Most people who live in the modern period of instant gratification are starving for their call to adventure and embarking on their hero's journey.

The world will be a better place when young people grow up and get their act together, adopt some responsibilities, and bear some burden.

The story of a meaningful life is religious, and many inspiring and motivational stories based on religious tales.

People have oriented themselves with stories forever, and the most extraordinary stories are about the proper way to orientate yourself in life. The deeper they are, the more accurate they are, the more they move into the territory that is religious in nature.

"You must determine where you have been in your life so that you can know where you are now. If you don't know where you are, precisely, then you could be anywhere. Anywhere is too many places to be, and some of those places are very bad. It would be best if you determined where you have been in your life because otherwise, you can't get to where you're going. You can't get from point A to point B unless you are already at point A, and if you're "anywhere," the chances you are at point A are very small indeed. You must determine where you are going in your life because you cannot get there unless you move in that direction. Random wandering will not move you forward. It will instead disappoint and frustrate you and make you anxious and unhappy and hard to get along with." - Dr. Jordan Peterson

[You can listen to this full interview at the "Art of Manliness." Link]

Further Read and Resources on the Twelve of Life

You find out more about Dr. Peterson's work on his website at JordanPeterson.com.

Dr. Jordon Peterson's Self Authoring Program at Selfauthoring.com. It is a series of online writing programs that collectively help you explore your past, present and future.

Other books are available on Amazon.

"12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos" by Jordan B. Peterson

"The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond Mountain" by Jordan B. Peterson

"Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief" by Jordan B. Peterson

If you enjoy this interview, please visit the website the Art of Manliness for more in-depth interviews with authors and thinkers. The Art of Manliness podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Android, Stitcher, Spotify, Overcast, Tunein, and most major podcast platforms.

Don't forget to visit the "Art of Manliness" store for a well-thought-out gift to a special person in life. Your purchase supports his business and mission.

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#writing #jordan peterson #12 rules for life #mind #soul

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hotelconcierge · 6 years

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HYPOCRISY IS BAD, BUT YOU’RE WORSE

“I like the Walrus best," said Alice, "because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.” “He ate more than the Carpenter, though,” said Tweedledee. “You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise.” “That was mean!” Alice said indignantly. “Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus.” “But he ate as many as he could get,” said Tweedledum. This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, “Well! They were both very unpleasant characters—” (Through the Looking-Glass)

This is a moviepost—extensive spoilers follow for Death Proof, Jackie Brown, and Inglourious Basterds—and I wrote it mostly because I wanted to talk about some movies. But first, a topical tie-in:

There is always an outside that a person considers unworthy of life...The individual progressive or racist may never say that the outside is unworthy of rights, but they feel it. This is what is meant by that line from Inglorious Bastards when the character of Lt. Aldo Raine says; the "Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a jew-hating, mass-murdering maniac and they need to be de-stroyed!"

Here we have a thirst to destroy the perceived inferior, except instead of a racist seeking the end of Jews it is the progressive liberal seeking the genocide of racists. That's irony.

And understand what is happening here. Aldo Raine is really a proxy for Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is the one speaking, not Brad Pitt. The man is very left-wing and he wrote the script. That move is essentially an exposition of the directors [sic] politics.

The above quote is taken from The Anti-Puritan. Exactly what it sounds like: dude read three Moldbug posts and now thinks he can write. The specifics of this guy’s bad opinions are not that interesting—would you believe that even the videogame industry has been corrupted by cultural Marxism?—but perhaps something can be learned from the framing:

A climate scientist drives to an important summit on global warming. On the way there, he fills up his tank with gas. The only reason oil companies are in business and climate change is occurring is because of people like him who fill up their tanks with gas. Their payments make climate change possible. The payments are the reason Exxon, Shell and BP exist.

A feminist complains about the cis het patriarchy. Her boyfriend, whom she spreads her legs for, is tall, strong, confident, manly, and "dominant" in every way. Fucking dominant men is the reason they exist, the reason they will continue to exist, and the cultural incentive to become dominant...She and billions of other women perpetuate "the patriarchy" with their sexual choices. Patriarchy exists because of them.

A college professor complains about McDonald's. She has eaten fast food from a burger restaurant recently. She, and millions [of] others, are the reason McDonald's exists. (Source)

Let’s accept that there’s a lot to unpack here and move on. Focus instead on the form of the argument: tu quoque, again and again. The feebler the discourse the more accusations of hypocrisy (Bush Lied, Barack Hussein’d) because hypocrisy doesn’t require knowledge of anything but pre-algebra logic. Even a child can identify a contradiction: “But mom! You said—!”

This is precisely the skull malformation that has constricted discussion of the protestors who identify as “Antifascist Action” and are derided as the “alt-left.” Antifa has already become a perennial non-issue where all opinions are based on anecdote and there are plenty of anecdotes to go around; no one has skin in the game, anyone can upvote, and measurable achievements are dwarfed by spikes of indignation like hypertensive hemorrhages into America’s brain. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t been watching the stock prices of PP, NRA, PETA, and BLM.

Antifa now faces the two attacks that were long ago formulated against other activist groups. One: antifa is composed of violent morons who carry upon them body and pubic lice species yet to be classified by science. Two: antifa is counterproductive to their stated goal, e.g. getting to whack-a-mole pamphleteers is actually a powerful incentive to suffer for fashion.

I suspect both criticisms are true, but whatever—does the first imply the second? Is violence bad even when it is effective? Because if it isn’t, then claiming that “antifa are thugs too!” is worse than useless. Your opponent can simply reply, “So what? Nazi ain't got no humanity.” And now that you’ve cried wolf, that guy won’t listen when you claim that, in this instance, violence might not work. So you better be damn sure about your answer: what price should be paid for the sin of hypocrisy?

There is always an outside that a person considers unworthy of life...

Quentin Tarantino has dedicated his career to answering this question.

QT has seen too many movies for it to be any other way. If you consume enough art across epoch and genre, you can’t help arrive at the Susan Sontag #redpill that content doesn’t matter all that much. All art is genre fiction no matter the pretensions and our lizard brain judges accordingly. Sure, thematic analysis is fun to play with after the fact, but if a movie has the right tropes in the right places—femme fatales, tough muchachos, pretty pictures, happy ending—well, you can convince yourself of just about anything.

Take, for example, Death Proof. Genre: exploitation/slasher. Synopsis: hot babes go for a night out, ex-stuntman stalks and runs ‘em down in a death-proof car; stuntman rinses and repeats with another girl gang except they turn the tables and Mortal Kombat his thoracic spine. Rating: extremely badass, you should check it out, anyone who tells you different is a pleb.

Namely: some people complain that the movie has too many scenes of girls talking and that their QT-isms are an unrealistic depiction of an actual group chat. The characters bicker lewdly, if that’s a thing, alternating between weirdly masculine sex-as-status teasing and pledges of undying affection, the verbal equivalent of a catfight, which is maybe how a creepy foot fetishist would imagine female dialogue, but...

Nope, still pleb. Tarantino wasn’t the first guy to invoke this trope, it’s part of the DNA of the slasher genre, as old as Jamie Lee Curtis getting razzed for her virginity in Halloween. Misogyny, maybe, but also content is a spook. Slasher movies have to fill 70 minutes before the eponymous slashing, and they also have to make you care about the outcome of said slashing without humanizing the characters so much that you get all Marley and Me when they die.

What’s the secret? Status games, the less nuance the better. Boys would watch paint dry if you said it was a grudge match. Catfighting is no different than the elaboration of powers in a shonen manga or the suspicious glares exchanged between heist movie protagonists: it creates tension. Different value systems have been described, there can only be one, now you’re rooting for process of elimination to reveal the truth. No—you identify with that process. Hail Gnon. You could make a movie with men playing status games and being killed off by women and men would still find it hot; I know this because of female horrorcore rappers but also because this movie is called Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and it’s 10/10. Incidentally:

This is referenced again in the final scene of the film, in which the viewer cheers on our group of heroines as they beat to death a pleading, injured man.

Here’s the hot take: tote bag feminists are wrong to think that drawing boobs on Powergirl is a male attempt to diminish her power. On the contrary, the more vampire slaying the better. Sexualization is an attempt to gain access to female power: if she wants The Phallus badly enough, she might just lend her power to you. Obverse: men are idiots for thinking that the existence of rape fantasies means that women secretly want to be raped. There’s an image floating around the manosphere about that terrorist with a heart of gold, Ted Kaczynski, who was gauche with ladies in the free world but deluged in love letters upon his incarceration. Before you can say medium = message, someone tragically rendered celibate by their 23andMe results will point to this as proof that women “only want serial killers.” Newsflash: Kaczynski is serving eight life sentences without possibility of parole. Do you think the fangirls didn’t know that? Rape fantasies (theoretically “hot”) are qualitatively different than being raped (“unimaginably horrific”) because you construct the former, can turn it off at any time. The fantasy victim is assaulted by a terrible power, but the person who selects and controls that power is...

Of course it is, cough, problematic, that slasher movie girls display power through HPV vaccinations while male zombie apocalypse survivors soliloquize on whether suicide is inevitable in the absence of God. But once you sexistly set up that women should be valued by their sin, the wages = death equation is not in and of itself misogynistic. No, it’s just inevitable: sex-as-status tension can only be relieved in two ways and one of them is frowned upon in theaters. Film crit cliché and Kraftwerk song, I know, but: watching a movie renders you impotent—you can’t interact with the sexy image on the screen—except through what the camera will allow.

That’s why you are complicit in the murders that occur in the first half of Death Proof. The ex-stuntman—old, a teetotaler, star of TV shows long forgotten (and played by once-famous Kurt Russell)—is as impotent as you are, capable of getting a deleted scene lap dance but zero penetration, and when he gets in his car to commit vehicular homicide x4, he looks at the camera and smiles. Because you’re right there with him, waiting for the money shot. It would be nice to fuck, but you’ll settle for a murder. Except when it actually happens, played four times for your amusement, it’s horrible—a face melted off by a tire, a wet leg flapping in the street. Throw in a Wilhelm scream. Wasn’t that what you wanted? Are you not entertained?

It’s all perspective, my man. For all the short shorts and naughty words, the girls plan and backup plan ways to prevent unwanted sexual advances; two of them have boyfriends and one is texting a crush trying to seal the deal; they discuss and decide against inviting the opposite sex to their lakeside vacation. But that’s not what you see from the outside. That’s not where your attention is drawn, wandering the club and editing your .jpg of grievances. For you, dancefloor means sex, choker necklace means slut, and being a slut means she would never sleep with you. That’s a personal insult. And that means that nothing else matters.

Which is insane. This isn’t an argument for or against promiscuity, the point is you don’t even know promiscuity looks like. You know symbols, and for that matter, why those symbols, where did you learn those? Brazzers? If you’re gonna be mad at a thing you should at least be mad at the thing itself, not at whatever fucked up fetish you’ve imposed on reality.

There’s a scene midway through the movie where QT tips his hand. The second girl gang is lounging in a car, one of them dangling her feet out the window. The ex-stuntman approaches, you assume his perspective, and maybe because it’s an old grindhouse film...

...but the color goes out, and everything is black and white.

Which, speaking of:

Jackie Brown is first and foremost a movie about being extremely cool all the time (you should watch it). The plot is an excuse: briefly, Pam Grier (airline stewardess), Robert Forster (bail bondsman), Samuel L Jackson (arms dealer), Robert De Niro (ex-convict), Bridget Fonda (stoner surfer chick) and a couple Feds each try to nab a briefcase holding $500K.

Jackie Brown is secondarily a movie about how race shapes each and every human interaction, but that description makes it sound like a Very Special Episode, and that couldn’t be more wrong. The movie is gleefully amoral, in fact lapses from pure MacGuffinism are treated as intolerable weakness, e.g. Jackson to De Niro:

ORDELL: You know what your problem is, Louis?

Louis doesn't say anything, he just puts his hands in his pockets.

ORDELL: You think you're a good guy. When you go into a deal you don't go in prepared to take that motherfucker all the way. You go in looking for a way out. And it ain't cause you're scared neither. It's cause you think you're a good guy, and you think there's certain things a good guy won't do. That's where we're different, me and you. Cause me, once I decide I want something, ain’t a goddam motherfuckin' thing gonna stop me from gittin' it. I gotta use a gun get what I want, I'm gonna use a gun. Nigga gets in my way, nigga gonna get removed. Understand what I'm saying?

Apparently not, because De Niro later makes this mistake and gets popped.

For these characters, race is just another weapon. When Jackson meets Forster for the first time, he lights a cigarette, puts his feet up on the desk, and taps out the ash in a partly full coffee cup. Then he points out a photo of Forster with a black employee. “Y’all tight?” “Yeah.” “But you his boss though, right?” “Yeah.” “Bet it was your idea to take that picture too, wasn’t it...?” In their second encounter, Jackson, trying to get bail for Grier, pulls the same trick:

ORDELL: Man, you know I'm good for it. Thousand bucks ain't shit.

MAX: If I don't see it in front of me, you're right. It ain't shit.

ORDELL: Man, you need to look at this with a little compassion. Jackie ain't no criminal. She ain't used to this kinda treatment. I mean, gangsters don't give a fuck - but for the average citizen, coupla nights in County fuck with your mind.

MAX: Ordell, this isn't a bar, an you don't have a tab.

ORDELL: Just listen for a second. We got a forty-year-old, gainfully employed black woman, falsely accused -

MAX: Falsely accused? She didn't come back from Mexico with cocaine on her?

ORDELL: Falsely accused of Intent. If she had that shit - and mind you, I said "if" - it was just her shit to get high with.

MAX: Is white guilt supposed to make me forget I'm running a business?

But Forster—male lead, the “good guy”—plays his version of the race card and flips the script.

Example 2: Bridget Fonda, surfer gal, plots to betray Jackson, who “moves his lips when he reads,” "let's say he's streetwise, I'll give him that.” But Jackson knows that she sees him that way, it makes her predictable, which is why he can keep her around: “You can’t trust Melanie, but you can always trust Melanie to be Melanie.”

That’s not the half of it. Jackson talks a soon-dead man into getting in the trunk of an Oldsmobile, houses a homeless addict in Compton and tells her it’s Hollywood; he lies effortlessly, and when drafting your fantasy friend group you should be aware that people who lie effortlessly do it because it’s fun. Threatening someone gets you an automaton who will system 2 your demands and nothing more. Deceiving someone gives you control over that person’s soul. So Fonda’s stoned delusions of manipulating him—which in fact make her easier to manipulate—are part of her appeal. Translated: “She ain't as pretty as she used to be, and she bitch a whole lot more than she used to...But she white.”

Except Fonda is manipulating him. She’s spent her adulthood as the side piece for Dubai businessmen and Japanese industrialists who—though she doesn’t even speak the language—get off on the fact that she’s a haughty blonde who thinks she’s better than them, thinks she can manipulate them. But since they’re paying for rent and weed, doesn’t that mean...?

Example 3: Pam Grier as Jackie Brown.

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From more Sam Jackson than Sam Jackson to mumblecore for Medicare, Jackie outsmarts everyone and it’s not even close. The Feds lean into their uniforms but she doesn’t miss a beat: urbane dinner guest in one scene, “panicked, defensive, unreasonable black woman” in another. Of course the movie ends the way it does, of course. Jackson steps into a dark room. Jackie screams “he’s got a gun!” And a cop pulls the trigger. You can’t always beat the system, but if you try sometimes, it just might beat who you need.

Why does Jackie win? The canon explanation is that she’s an airline stewardess: her job is to tell people of all origins what they want to hear. The meta explanation is she’s played by blaxploitation star Pam Grier. The gimmick of Grier movies like Coffy and Foxy Brown is their exaggeration of the audience’s favored tropes re: sex and race—say, hypersexuality and fashionable/wearable blackness. But the punchline of these films is that on-screen, Pam Grier with an afro is disguising herself as an high-class escort to fool the baddies: “The gentlemen you’ll be meeting this evening have a preference for…your type.” And then she kills them.

So it’s true that these films let you "exploit” a caricature, but the flip side is that anyone who can turn that caricature on and off gets to exploit you. And that seems to be Jackie Brown’s realist take: not that racism is the Original Sin for which Thou Must Atone—because everyone sees race and is selfish besides—but rather that it makes you a sucker. And the flip side: by capitalism or by meme magic, the world will always conspire to show you what you want to see. Choose wisely.

If Jackie Brown accepts that racism is inevitable, Inglourious Basterds sets out to prove that it’s also kind of fun.

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It’s telling that Inglourious Basterds posters are push-pinned on the walls of fraternity houses right next to Scarface and The Wolf of Wall Street. Three movies, three sets of protagonists who happen to be amoral, masculine, and white. Sounds like a diss, but who are creatine-chugging white boys supposed to look up to? Chris Pratt? You can just tell that guy was grown in a test tube. There’s a reason Tarantino movies are popular and there’s a reason I’m talking about them instead of Buñuel or Tarkovsky and it has something to do with “making intensive use of a major language” and the twenty-somethings desperate to identify with a character named “Bear Jew.” And the above scene is indeed, “sick af.” Goes off without a hitch except when the Nazi says that he got his medals for bravery, and then there’s a split-second of—what, annoyance? Like, stick to the script, asshole. You’re sure as hell gonna get it now.

But I’m sure you’re aware that’s the joke, that once you got Ennio Morricone in the background you can justify anything. The Basterds “ain’t in the prisoner taking business”; they scalp the dead and maim the witnesses they leave alive. There’s no panorama of concentration camp horrors, no humanizing backstory, no evidence of any softness save boyish joy in the art of cruelty. Halfway through the film a young man celebrating the birth of his son is shot dead after surrendering in a Mexican standoff; the Basterds shrug and move on. At the climax of the film, a movie theatre full of Germans is exploded, shot, and burned to death. The modern viewer can’t help but cheer.

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The opening chapter, Colonel Hans Landa vs. the outgroup under the floorboards, sways your sympathies in the opposite direction. No, it doesn’t make you hate the French or the Jews. But the tension—the silence and the ticking and the mounting requests and insinuations—is so unbearable that you can’t help but wish for someone to pull the Band-Aid. And the camera can’t do that. Only characters can. Only the character driving the action, and Landa drives the action in his every appearance. Something has to happen—and like the man onscreen, you cave.

Hans Landa alone seems to understand that he’s in a movie, which is perhaps why he’s so polite, so witty, so manically overacted. Perhaps this is how he sees through the Allies’ tricks and disguises: he assumes everyone else is an actor as well. And perhaps this is the apologia for his crimes: he’s just playing a role. The Basterds loathe the Nazis, but Landa bears no animosity towards the Jews, can empathize with them quite easily—it’s just, he likes to play detective and the Nazis were hiring. Is that really worse? Didn’t both the Walrus and the Carpenter eat as many as they could get?

And so, near the end of the film, when Landa cuts a deal to exchange his Hugo Boss for Levi Strauss, he asks of his prisoners the one question that would matter to a character in a period piece: “What shall the history books read?”

Landa’s argument, of course, is a load of shit.

In Inglourious Basterds, every disguise fails. The British film critic-turned-agent is unable to play the Nazi he’s seen on-screen. The German actress is revealed to be an Allied spy. The vengeful Shosanna is revealed as a sweet Jewish girl; the baby-faced Nazi lusting after her is shown to be a monster. The propaganda film burns. Only Lieutenant Aldo Raine and one Basterd make it out alive, and that’s because they’re American, i.e. monolingual.

Perception is a slave to narrative, but narrative has zip zero zilch nada to do with reality. The author is dead. Was Triumph of the Will a “good movie,” technically proficient and even emotionally moving? Absolutely. Could the director’s intentions have been “good,” apolitical, an attempt at beauty but nothing more? Unlikely in this case, but possible. But was Triumph of the Will “good”?

This is the obvious yet unswallowable truth: sometimes good people do bad things. “Nazi ain't got no humanity”? How many films have Nazis with wives, mistresses, children, pub games, medals for bravery? And yet Lieutenant Raine’s opening polemic is correct: the foot soldiers of the Third Reich worked for a Jew-hating, mass-murdering maniac: they needed to be destroyed. Reality isn’t Disney, where internal beauty works its way external. Reality isn’t even so kind as to match intentions with consequences. The American (Union) soldiers fighting against the Nazis (Confederacy) may have been motivated by every bit as much hatred and bloodlust, and yet they were necessary, they were the good guys. FYI—that’s irony.

“So you’re saying we should punch the alt-right?” Are you an idiot? The Nazis weren’t bad because they were Nazis, they were bad because of the things they did. If you actually think that punching a teenage Kekistani is going to bring down the New World Order, go ahead, but stop pushing the pillow of identity over the mouth of reality.

The goal of the System, the sum of vectors going both left and right, is to keep people arguing about abstractions of violence so they won’t deign to consider the ugliness of pragmatism. The radical left will asseverate that violence is justified, refusing to question whether their particular brand of protest is effective; the alt-right will keep rallying against cropped image lunatics, the finest examples of white genocide the media has to offer, never seriously considering that sometimes people lie on the internet; and “““centrists””” will deduce that since violence is never okay, since everyone is so irrational, nothing can be done. But that’s still a perspective: it’s the perspective of the camera.

Fuck that. This essay is a condemnation of anyone who thinks that the hypocrisy of the outgroup disproves their complaint, of anyone who thinks that good intentions are enough to absolve you from sin:

You don’t get to forget what you are.

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