Table of Contents
The Risk of Skateboarding
When children are taking risks, such as skateboarding, should you stop them? The intuitive answer is to protect your child from any activity that is considered dangerous, including skateboarding. But denying your child from taking risks is more dangerous.
Children take risks because they want to be competent – it is safe ideal to aspire to. Without it, little progress can be made.
People who truly want to improve the world don’t try to form revolutions – they are not interested in reforming other people. That is far too complex and unpredictable. They know that if they want to see change, they must change themselves first. The more local and less complex the change, the more realistic and achievable it is.
The human being is unknown to himself, he does not understand why he behaves the way he does. The simple task of understanding oneself is unfathomable, and yet, some are arrogant enough to believe that they understand other people. These preachers are not the humane reformers they claim to be – they are anti-human.
They stop others from exploring the limits of their abilities, and they try to shape the world according to the limitations of their mental constructs.
Girls suffer in today’s world, but so do boys. On average, boys are less agreeable than women – they are less empathetic and less emotional. Such qualities make their educational life difficult.
Boys are less likely to follow the rules, and this inevitably will harm their academic performance. Eventually, these boys end up less educated, and enter the workforce with few prospects and little confidence.
On the upside for boys – they are less prone to experiencing depression or anxiety, and they tend to be more independent.
The hardest push for gender equality occurred in Scandinavian countries, and yet that is where we have seen the highest divergence between men and women in the careers they chose.
Those who are convinced that gender is a social invention should take note of this fact.
Career and Marriage
Women at higher education institutes are rarely able to find long term relationships. They resort to frequent hookups instead. This may be progressive, but not without a significant strain on the social structure of these countries.
Research shows that more women think marriage is important today than in the late 90’s, while less men today agree with this statement. Society has less married people and many men do not want to get married at all.
It is not clear that prioritizing career over family is good for you. Working over eighty hours a week to keep your high paying job requires tremendous sacrifices that are hardly balanced or reasonable.
After attaining a certain level of wealth, the accumulation of further wealth will not significantly make your life better. But hyper-competitive and highly disagreeable people want to win at all costs.
This is exacerbated by the fact that women mate across and above themselves in the dominance hierarchy – they will look for male partners that at least match them in competence or are even more competent.
And this makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, since women need to secure the future well-being of their children and themselves.
The Patriarchy
The worn out narrative is that patriarchal culture is oppressive, and of course, this is partly true. Whatever we inherit from the past is outdated – it is blind to our present reality.
Culture is unforgiving and inflexible and shapes us into socially acceptable entities. It is thus tempting to rebel, to try to subvert its influence entirely and thereby attain freedom. But before engaging in such a pursuit, it would be wise to remind ourselves of the other side of the story.
Culture is also good, it has given us freedom, technology, life, experience, and opportunity. With one hand, culture takes away some of our freedom, but gives us a different kind of freedom with another.
The amount of freedom any individual has today in terms of accessing information or communicating to the rest of the world is unparalleled in human history. Technological innovation that made this possible was the result of a culture that fostered the right kinds of incentives in people.
One reason people demonize culture is hierarchies, the existence of which has increased the level of inequality. But hierarchies are a natural by-product. Any collective pursuit of a goal will result in a hierarchy.
Some people will always be better at reaching certain goals than others.
A well-structured society doesn’t guarantee that everyone will become successful, but it gives each individual the opportunity to do so. Men and women have struggled for freedom unceasingly throughout history, and women have always had a disadvantage.
In addition to all the vulnerabilities that men have had, women have had less physical strength and more reproductive responsibilities.
Add to that the inconvenience of menstruation, the disruption of unwanted pregnancies, and the dangers of childbirth. These have all led to a different treatment of men and women before the birth control pill.
It is not simply that the patriarchy is evil, and men have tyrannized women into submission.
Marxism
Marx tried to reduce history and society to economics and thought that culture was a form of oppression of the poor by the rich. But when his ideas were implemented in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and elsewhere – economic resources were violently redistributed, and private property was abolished.
Millions of people perished from communist dictatorship and hundreds of millions of others lived under oppression.
Equality
On the surface, it seems that equality is always a virtue. For example, it seems that saying that disabled people should make as much as non-disabled people is the right thing to do, but it is hard to define what a disability is. Perhaps a low IQ , or having unattractive physical features, or even being overweight are all disabilities.
It is true that some people do not experience constant shocks, but most people do suffer from serious catastrophes beyond their control, especially when you include family. When you categorize people according to their group membership, you lose sight of their unique individual situation.
Reducing Aggression
Some people think that to reduce aggression, young males should be forced to adhere to the same standards of behavior expected of women. The problem is that aggression is not something that is learned, it is biological.
And young boys who managed to tame their aggression did not succeed in doing so by emulating little girls, they did so by learning how to integrate their aggressive urges into sophisticated patterns of behavior.
Aggression is not evil, it is responsible for imbuing people with the drive to succeed. Some boys fail to control their aggression and become unpopular. They are rejected by society and subsequently gravitate towards more antisocial behavior in their adult years.
A few decades ago, there was a famous ad in the form of a comic strip by the bodybuilder Charles Atlas. It was called “The Insult that Made a Man out of Mac” and it was found in many comic books (most of which had a male audience).
Mac, the hero, is sitting on the beach with an attractive woman. A bully runs by and kicks sand in their faces. Mac objects but the larger man grabs him, threatens him, and makes fun of his frail physique.
The ad is famous because it summarizes human sexual psychology straightforwardly. The weak young man is embarrassed and self-conscious, and rightfully so. He gets put down by other men and by desirable women. What good is he? Instead of feeling sorry for himself, and resentfully resorting to playing video games, he presents himself with a “compensatory fantasy.”
The goal of this fantasy is not exactly wish fulfillment, but is the illumination of a practical path. Mac acknowledges his weaknesses and become determined to develop his body. He goes to work.
Compassion as a Vice
Compassion can sometimes be a bad thing. Many of Peterson’s clients have personal and professional trouble because they are not aggressive enough. People who are too agreeable bend over backwards for others, but rarely defend themselves. They assume that others are like them and expect reciprocity instead of ensuring it for their productive actions.
They don’t speak up when they aren’t given credit and do not demand recognition. Because of their subjugation, agreeable people become resentful and the dark side of their character becomes apparent.
Some parents play the role of the oedipal mother (women more often than men). They make their children feel like emperors by designing a perfect environment for them to live in.
For the oedipal mother, the deal is for her son to never leave her, and in return, she will do everything for him. As he ages without becoming more mature, he will become bitter and useless, but he will never need to take on any responsibility and nothing will ever be his fault. Children will either accept or reject this offer.
Tiamat, the ancient Babylonian, primordial goddess of the salt sea, is chaos, she is the mother of all things, gods, and men. But she moves to destroy her own children when they carelessly murder their father and try to live on the corpse that remains.
Men should toughen up. Other men demand it and so do women – even if they don’t like the tough process that is required to do so. Some women are afraid of losing their baby boys, so they keep them forever. Some women don’t like men or prefer a submissive partner (even if he is useless).
The spirit that tries to stop boys from becoming men is an enemy of both sexes – it will object to little girls who want to try something brave. It is destructive and decadent, it is overprotective, and no one who wants to truly better the world should manifest this spirit.
Read 12 Rules For Life
If you are interested in reading books about unmasking human nature, consider reading The Dichotomy of the Self, a book that explores the great psychoanalytic and philosophical ideas of our time, and what they can reveal to us about the nature of the self.