Many of my readers will be turned off by Jordan Peterson due to his cosmopolitan anti-tribal worldview, Rogan by his abject materialism and the lesser guest due to his academic bent. However, in current circumstances, Peterson could not maintain his academic status if he did not accept the parameters of Civilization, not to suggest he does not, as he seems stridently vested in the current conventions. This, podcast, however, is a powerful demonstration of articulate big-brainidness and brings out the best in Rogan. Viewers on the Right might also be disturbed that these men accept certain liberal dogma, which has been manufactured as an artifice of the Lie we live under. Such readers and viewers would be wrong to turn away. This podcast is an opportunity to think rather than believe, to consider rather than to disbelieve. Most people I know have an aversion to media delivering a message contrary to their world view rooted in the notion that all information is propaganda and that the reader-viewer is helpless when partaking.
In this excellent example of discourse, despite the three players having bought the entire liberal lie that government is an exercise for the common good and does evil only by accident or due to faulty operating programs, exposes the true nature of the protagonists while they honestly provide evidence which undermines their own worldview. This is an honest discussion containing many sub-ideological truths as well as the best description of collective operating principles I have heard articulated.
Some broad points:
-1. The panel all espouse the belief—largely on the subconscious level—that man is an ascendant collective and that mankind’s highest purpose is to propel itself along a transformative evolutionary arc into an ultimate omniscient state. Rogan articulates it the best as physical humanity being “the meat wagon.”
-2. That the collective shall not ascend but sink back into barbarism unless its biology is overcome.
-3. That the ascendant collective must be guided by those who study the biological basis for inequity, iniquity, tribalism and other EVILs attendant to humanity and which reemerge under cyclic pressure so that these individual and collective emergences of distinction and identity may be engineered out of the human behavioral cycle.
-4. That the current censorship purge and the Marxist takeover of academia are dangerous for two reasons:
-A. Because such actions have effectively outlawed [in Canada, this has been done] the practice of biological science and hence doom humanity to remain shackled to its behavioral cycles
-B. That since Leftist tyranny is unsustainable it will bring about a Right wing counterrevolutionary tyranny which is, horrifically [to the panel] sustainable.
-5. That the binding universal human value is accumulation of goods and the leverage to attain goods. For all the higher principles being touted, all three speakers are committed materialists, a stance oddly incongruent with their stated goal of “evolving” “ahead of the meat wagon.”
-6. That the ultimate monster outcome of human macro-behavioral cycles is a return to distinct group identity or tribalism ushering in the unthinkably evil natural human state of barbarism.
There are some irritating oversights, such as Peterson not knowing that the Table Talk records from National Socialist Germany are as falsified as the Protocols of Zion and that National Socialism is somehow a Right wing political stance, when it self-defines as collectivism for the collective. Also, the other guest insists that it has been a constant facet of war throughout the ages to dehumanize the opposition, when roughly half of premodern literature points in the other direction. Only in modern civilized conditions has dehumanization and negation of the foe become the norm, whereas, in the premodern world invalidation of the enemy stemmed primarily from the Abrahamic religions. My off hand theory is that since the modern nation state was consciously erected on a biblical foundation [Hobbes, Locke, White and others], that when such states teeter in their extremity there will be a reversion to their foundational principles, including second-person tabooing and viewing enemies, ideological and otherwise, as not worthy of life and certainly not of remembrance, which is clearly evidenced by the current postmodern iconoclasm.
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James, could you do a piece on the importance of tribalism/the virtues of tribalism? All I've been hearing from my peers for the past several weeks is the evils of tribalism, and how 'there always has to be an enemy' whenever tribalism is involved. It's been very disconcerting to know that everyone around me seems so wrapped up in the idea that tribalism is something that is evil, and should be abolished along with everything else that came from the ancient world. A co-worker even said to me, "If your tribe does not include every member of the human race, you're doing it wrong."
Also, what do you consider more important: truth or loyalty? As it pertains to the tribe, versus those outside of the tribe. It is more important to be truthful to everyone, whether or not they are part of my group? Or do those who exist outside of the group not qualify to receive the truth?
Adam,
What a great question.
I will attempt to address this as an article within the week.
Adam, you didn't ask me, of course, but I would say that truth and (group) loyalty are never an XOR (logical exclusive OR) where you have to pick one or the other. Rather, it should be a matter of the following precepts:
1. Do not say that which is untrue.
2. You are never obligated to say ALL that you know, or that all you believe.
The first point is not because "outsiders" (especially those inimical to you and yours) somehow "deserve" the truth, but because it is unhealthy to YOUR psyche to repeatedly say that which you know to be false. Taken to the extreme, it unmoors you from objective reality. Or to put it more directly and crudely, habitual lying (even in what you might think is a good cause) turns anyone into a shithead. The second point is because people have different ideas about things, many of which don't really matter. I have to work with and get along with many types of people. While I will NEVER allow someone else to put words in my mouth (think the Human Resources "team building leader" who says idiocy such as "So we are all agreed this is the best way..." No, I didn't agree, and still don't agree, but because I was outvoted I will try to do my best to make it work, but I never agreed with the basic flawed premise), I don't see the point of going out of my way to rub ALL my beliefs in other people's faces either. I am neither a missionary nor a proselytizer.
As to what your co-worker said, with all (minimal) respect due, your co-worker is an ass. I worked with a guy like that as well. High IQ, doctoral degree, good verbal dexterity and even a decent Classical education. But either a massive hypocrite, or completely lacking in common sense. I could never figure it out, and ultimately stopped caring.
Either road, I vehemently disagree with those who claim that tribalism necessarily involves having an external enemy. Just because there are those who I consider kin, and I will place their interests first, does not mean that I wish ill upon others who are not as close. But then again, I am also taken with the idea of "heimat" for which we don't seem to have a compact cognate expression in English. The best I've seen is "homeland of the heart".
Mike, this is really good stuff. Thank you.