THE LAST DITCH An Englishman returned after twenty years abroad blogs about liberty in Britain

Three hours that will fix your character and soul?

3 HOURS THAT WILL FIX YOUR CHARACTER & SOUL - Jordan Peterson Motivation - YouTube

Firstly, let me wish you a happy new year. I hope 2023 proves to be a good one for you all. 
 
A friend sent me this video a while ago. He didn't say why. He sends me stuff to read or watch occasionally. Sometimes it's just a joke. Sometimes it's serious. I read it or watch it (or sometimes I don't). It's always an honest attempt to do something good – if only cheer me up. 
 
Women seem to believe that friendship is all about nurturing, supporting and encouraging and that most men are just plain bad at it. Men think that women are often bad at friendship too, but for a different reason. They sometimes seem to back a friend regardless of the wisdom of their chosen path. Many divorces, for example, begin with a discontent expressed to female friends being nurtured, supported and encouraged into steely resolve. None of my male friends initiated their own divorces or encouraged a friend to do so. In the unhappiest phases of my thirty-year marriage to the late Mrs P., several female friends suggested I leave her. No male friend ever did.
 
I have spent over a year in miserable solitude since Mrs P the Second left me in November of 2021. The conditional order for divorce was granted last month. We're currently seeking a consent order on finance before applying for the final decree. This I can handle but my relationship with my daughters  – the cracks in which emerged when I told them I planned to remarry eight years after the death of their mother – remains awful. I can't get past the verdict on me represented by their rejection.
 
My female friends' nurturing, supportive and encouraging approach to my sad situation can be summed up as;
There's nothing wrong with you. Stuff happens. Your daughters will come around. Get out there and find a new woman and all will be well.
My male friends' approach has been very different. After an initial "Sorry to hear that" they all – like this friend in sending me a video about fixing my character and soul – suggest I look to myself. That may seem unsympathetic but at least seeks to put the reins of my life back into my own hands.
 
Like much of Peterson's output, the video makes a huge claim. Choosing such a title helps his enemies by making him sound like the charlatan they would have us believe he is. At first I set it aside with a sigh. 
 
A few days ago, I half-watched it. I let it run in the background while I did other things. The occasional phrase caught my attention but his complicated ideas demand more concentration. Today I listened to it all the way through. I plan to play it a few more times and – as explaining something to others is often the best way to check proper understanding – I intend to share my thoughts about it here.
 
I do not seek to criticise your character or soul by directing you to it, gentle readers. If you have three hours to spare, I'd be grateful if you'd watch it then come back here to discuss it with me over the coming weeks.

Of Collective Punishment

The key battle of ideas is (and in modern times has always been) between collectivism and individualism. Gentle reader, you know which side I favour.

We have a problem though. Humans are pack animals, hard-wired to approve of those who sacrifice for the greater good of family, friends or nation. I am as thorough an individualist as you could hope to meet, yet everything in my own life that I am proud of involved serving the interests of others.

It's all too easy to denigrate individualism as selfishness.

Collectivists play on those instincts with their constant talk of "community" but their collectivism is not about kindness and willing self-sacrifice. It may have always taken a village to raise a child, but only willing villagers of whom the parents approved were involved. When that homely expression is used by those seeking to disempower parents and force state intervention, it should be seen for the cynical propaganda it is.

Some people are brown, black or white. Some people are gay, some straight and some trans. Humans espouse a wide range of religious faiths and some have none. Within those groups there is such a range of morality, productiveness and creativity that they simply don't – except in rare cases where they face a common threat – function as communities. They don't think or act as one unit. There is no reason why they should.

To use the modern jargon, their identities as member of one or other group intersect with all the other ways they think of themselves (and others think of them). Those intersections are not only on the lines approved by woke academia. They also intersect with all their other – far more important – characteristics; such as their kindness, generosity, morality, prudence, wisdom, industry and knowledge.

It's all far more complicated than collectivists would have us believe. So complicated that the only sensible way to treat everyone we meet – whatever their visible or claimed attributes – is as someone who might turn out to be anything (or nothing) to us – i.e. as an individual. The only rational way to deal with a new human is quietly to assess what Dr King called "the content of their character" and then behave accordingly.

Collectivists simplify hatefully in order to justify their love of force. Collectivists pioneered the concept of the hate crime and constantly accuse opponents of hatred. Given their constant attempt to set group against group, it's hard not to think the whole concept is largely projection.

A gay criminal should be (and I am sure, is) no less a criminal to another gay person. If you're black you don't (and should not be able to) expect the unconditional approval of other black people. The only reason these "communities" are spoken of so constantly is that collectivists want to move them as pawns on the political chessboard.

There are undoubted political efficiencies in this. On average black and brown Britons are more socially conservative than white ones. Judging by the number of small businesses run by ethnic minorities, I'd venture to guess that more of them are economically conservative too. Yet the Labour Party has played the race card so effectively that it's caught in unguarded racist moments saying someone was only "superficially black", because he'd left their political reservation. All over the Western World, collectivist parties behave as if the votes of ethnic minorities are their property. Indeed as if the members of those minorities are themselves their property. 

In the end, the serious danger of collectivism and its "identity politics" is that it leads to demands for collective punishment. No-one uses that dreadful expression because it brings to mind totalitarians in history punishing kulaks, Jews or others deemed enemies of their cause indiscriminately. The favoured euphemism for collective punishment now is "social justice", which is always – without exception and by definition– unjust.

True justice looks at the actions and intentions of individuals and decides on their individual guilt or innocence. Social justice says "Group A hurt Group B and all members of Group A must pay" – even the descendants of the alleged wrong-doers who could not – rightly understood – be any more innocent. 

If you follow an ideology that justifies the punishment of innocents among a class, race or creed just because of their membership of that group, you have gone morally astray. Your ideology is – in your own terms– a hate crime.