Awakening With Russell Brand

[Wind]

Russell is a great guy and sometimes he has really great people as guests on his podcast.

Here's the latest gem with Eckhart Tolle. I shall post more older videos later.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EwzvKF-o_Y

[Aianawa]

Gosh oh dear, empire files or one of the other fifty awaiting vids OR holy mollykins Rus n Eck, we win.

[Wind]

http://youtu.be/3CNd-FssxHk

[Wind]

Systems Of The Damned | Russell Brand & Charles Eisenstein - Under The Skin


Author, environmentalist & Yale graduate Charles Eisenstein chats to me about alternative forms of economics, his skepticism of the mainstream climate change narrative and how we can create new systems outside of the norm that could work for everyone.
He is author of "Sacred Economics" & "Climate - A New Story"

http://youtu.be/-dP2VoY5Olk

[Wind]

Russell Brand & Gabor Mate | Damaged Leaders Rule The World


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-mJnYmdVmQ

[Emil El Zapato]

It is obvious that egos are running the world. A reflection of nothing, huh. Oy vey!

Russell Brand looks downright distressed ... :)

[Wind]

Russell Brand looks downright distressed ... :)

How so? To me it looks like he has found inner peace, he used to be a really crazy and wild guy like Jim Carrey.

It's funny that usually comedians are the most profound truth-tellers and they also realize what the whole "ride" is about.

[Dreamtimer]

Russell is serious now. Not that he can't be funny or relax, but he's on a more serious path. In comparison it could appear to be distress.

[Wind]

Russell is serious now. Not that he can't be funny or relax, but he's on a more serious path. In comparison it could appear to be distress.

He said that he sacrificed the glamorous Hollywood life and acting, because mostly it was boring and unfulfilling. Spiritual path was calling him. That's the thing with the high material life, it only fulfills the ego, but not the soul. Also the ego is never satisfied with what it has, it always wants more. The soul needs it's own kind of food if there's a yearning and calling for it. The normal crap won't just cut it anymore.

[Dreamtimer]

You're so right, Wind. I've watched folks chase ego satisfaction and "They can't get no...No No No!" "Hey hey hey."

I have the very weird experience of getting absolutely no ego satisfaction when I look for it or seek it out. But when I'm not looking at all for an ego boost, that's when I get kudos or recognition or some kind of reward for my actions.

It's like the world has actively decided to not reward any ego fulfillment when it's being sought out.

[Wind]

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/89/98/e98998f62ea59ff45d6c2454c3aef343.jpg

Still could use the money and Lamborghini though... :D

[Emil El Zapato]

"If one is going to be miserable it is better to have money in doing so."

[Wind]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mP4As8FJAc

[Wind]

http://youtu.be/6VRGf4CPqfM

[Wind]

http://youtu.be/kL61yQgdWeM

[Emil El Zapato]

Peterson has a full stream of b.s. to pass on. I like this guy less each time i hear him speak. He may believe what he believes but his problem is that any 'thought' that changes the status quo for the 'other' is automatically driven by a power grab by the left. Peterson is permanently stuck in his psychological and emotional dysfunction. My diagnosis ... :) His mother didn't love him enough. And likely his father was 'stern' about status, proper behavior and success. If somebody checks it out ... let me know? Of course, i'm probably correct.

[Wind]

I knew you would express your sour feelings about Peterson, NAP. Perhaps you should look at his birth chart. ;)

[Emil El Zapato]

yeah, I didn't want to offend you, but I'll say this about the video. Russel impressed me with his questions and understanding. In fact, I stopped watching it because Brand's questions were too good and I didn't want to hear Peterson wheedle out of them ... :)

[Wind]

It's not offending me, you're entitled to your feelings and opinions. You should give it a chance since their discussions are quite fruitful. I appreciate Peterson even though I don't agree about everything with him. I could say that I'm a leftie or progressive, but I don't like social justice warriors either especially when they go overboard with their mania. I think Jordan has taken his fear of communism and the marxists a bit too far, but otherwise he is a very intelligent man. He has definitely some emotional problems, because he's been suffering with depression for a long time and I can understand it. He's not a bad man, he's struggling with his unintegrated shadow aspects. I think we all are to a degree, some are just totally consumed by their shadow. He has a lot of empathy, I've seen it.

[Emil El Zapato]

ok, that's fair ... the struggle between the self and the shadow should not take place on a public forum though. Way too much damage can be wrought on the unsuspecting. He is a bad man and couches it in terms of 'Woe is me... so unfairly chastised' I just can't buy it. I'll wait to see if he ever gets past his obsession with himself.

[Wind]

It probably won't be of any use for me to say that you're wrong, but we may agree to disagree. :rolleyes:

[Emil El Zapato]

So then it is my wrong impression that makes me feel that he presents himself 'as having the answers' A struggling human may have some answers but certainly not all of them.

J.P.

Thoughts On My Mother’s 80th Birthday

This week my mother, Beverley Anne Peterson, turns 80. She was born on February 6, 1939, in Naicam, Saskatchewan, a small, attractive, thriving prairie town, back when prairie towns were communities with a future. She was the third of four children, each separated by five years, preceded by her older brother, Earl, handsome, charming and reliable…

Joan, perfectionistic, nervous and talented…
and followed by Margaret, an attractive combination of conscientiousness, caring, fun-loving and full of tricks (a picture of her later).

Her father, Frank Ponath, operated a successful car dealership and garage. This made the Ponaths one of the more well-off families by Naicam standards, with all the advantages and jealousies attendant upon that. She grew up on the right side of the tracks, and my grandmother a bit of a social climber was none too pleased when her third daughter was pursued by my father, Walter, smart, tough and good-looking, but not exactly of the right class. None of that mattered to Beverley, who pursued her own heart.

If my mother was a child in any manner similar to her adult self, then she was friendly, hospitable, caring for other people, honest, hard working and prone to instant fits of guilt if forced even temporarily into leisurely inaction. She had a very good sense of humor, and loved to laugh and tease. She was empathic, perhaps to a fault, although it was and is also the case that she can stand up for herself when necessary. In old pictures, when she was a child and a teenager, she looks very straightforward and pretty and without pretension and I think that those who knew her then would agree. There is no hint of the cynicism and premature world-weariness and false maturity that seems too often to characterize young women today. She worried my grandmother a bit, being more independent and less immediately obedient than that easily worried lady would have liked, but I think that was a testament to her character, and no fault, even though she feels somewhat guilty about it to this day. I never saw her be anything but good to her mother, regardless (and she loved her father, who was a very good man—playful and funny like her— who died too early. She didn’t really know him, in the adult sense, and certainly regretted that, as well, after he was taken away from her).

I remember my mother and her sisters mostly in the styles in the Kennedy era, at least in my childhood memories. I think those memories forged my essential sense of what defined attractive femininity, of at least the Doris Day version. They dressed in dresses, and sometimes in veils, and often with hats, and sometimes with gloves. The opportunity to do so came at least once a week for Sunday church attendance, and my mother enjoyed that—if enjoyed is the right word. She liked to sing, and enjoyed the community interaction (she’s very extraverted and sociable), and felt what I think was both a moral and spiritual responsibility to consider the divine and the role of proper action in the world. My father was not an attender of church, and this was a source of some chronic sorrow on my mother’s part. I came along with her until I was about 13 when the trouble of convincing me to accompany her began to outweigh any possible joy she might have derived from it. Really, it wouldn’t have been such a sacrifice for me to continue to make her happy for the few years between early teenage life and when I left home, but that’s not the way that people of that age think, when each year seems to stretch out endlessly and without limit.

She stayed home with her kids until my younger brother went to school (I have two siblings, Bonnie, 18 months younger, and Joel, five years younger) while my father pursued a career as a teacher and vice-principal—an occupation which at that time and in Hines Creek, the small and isolated northern Albertan town 1500 miles away from their hometown my parents bravely moved to when they were first married, provided an income of sufficient magnitude to allow for such a luxury. They lived in a small apartment complex with a number of other young teachers with families, all of whom became life-long friends. It was de riguer at that point for young women to stay home with their children, which is not surprising, because it is a full-time job for someone. Furthermore, that period of life doesn’t last very long, not in the grander scheme of things, and I have seen that most people who miss it severely regret it. That doesn’t mean there are no exceptions. Regardless, she might have been more inclined than many to be happy about her home life with kids because she suffered through two miscarriages, before I was born, and had some difficulty with her subsequent pregnancies.

In any case, I remember my early childhood, insofar as I can remember it, as a happy time of life, not least because my mother loved me and was funny and easy to get along with and playful and grateful and hospitable. And she stayed my firm friend through adolescence, which I can’t imagine was particularly easy.

We moved away from Hines Creek in the mid-sixties, and went back to Saskatchewan, and then back to Alberta, where we settled in Fairview, another northerly community, only about 15 miles away from where we were originally. Mom stayed at home until my brother Joel enrolled in school. Then she went to work. She had trained as a nurse, but only practiced briefly. She worked, instead, at the library at our local college and, over a twenty-year period (a decently long career) ended up as the head librarian. She found the transition into the relatively competitive and masculine hierarchy of the college often difficult. She was not taken as seriously as might have been, given her competence, by her more disagreeable male colleagues, some of whom had a lot to learn about being civilized human beings. I know. I happened to have worked for one of them. She had to toughen up. This gave her panic attacks, upon occasion, and plenty of doubt, more frequently. But she bloody well stuck it out, and she stood her ground, and she gained the respect of the people she worked with, and she did a good job. She had to insist on her ambition, too, in the face of some opposition from my father, who felt that having a wife who had to (wanted to) work indicated that he wasn’t fully capable of taking care of his family. Old-fashioned as that might be, and however likely to be casually pilloried as sexist now, it did reflect his firm and admirable belief that it was his responsibility to ensure the economic viability of his family. There are worse flaws.

But he accustomed himself to it, and it was, overall, a good thing. Mom was too dutiful and inclined to work to manage staying at home after her kids had entered the world outside and wasn’t interested in a continual round of coffee and, potentially worse (although arguably more fun), alcohol. So she pursued a successful career while we finished elementary school and junior high and graduated and then for many years after that. She put up with my quasi-delinquent friends, without imposing her choices on me, and she and my father both let me experiment and make my own mistakes. I can’t imagine that was easy.

Her children did not stay where they grew up. My sister Bonnie traveled all over Africa and Europe and ran safaris and babysat orphaned gorillas (one of whom attacked her, when almost full size). Then she moved to California. But Mom and Dad see her a lot—perhaps more often than parents see their adult children if they do stay in the same community. They traveled to Norway with her, and to Africa, and had adventures there they would have otherwise foregone. I moved east, to Montreal, and Boston, and Toronto—thousands of miles away—but come back to Saskatchewan every summer, where my parents and my siblings have a cabin at a remote northern lake. Mom and Dad both got to know my kids very well, because of that, and I firmly believe that such intergenerational connection is vital. How else do you learn to travel through life, when you’re young? And I think my kids have some extra people to love, and that’s worth something. We’ve been very successful with that, too, on my wife’s family’s side.

We still spend a couple of weeks at the cabin, by the northern lake, in the summer, where it’s really a bit too cold to swim, but is peaceful and beautiful, and where you can water-ski, because you don’ have to get into the water slowly, and the lake is deep and clear and with a good sandy bottom.

I see my parents at least one other time or more a year, and talk to them at least weekly by phone or FaceTime (when I remember that it exists). My brother, Joel, lives in Regina, and he travels up to the lake cottage frequently and maintains it and takes care of my parents, who are getting a bit older, shall we say, and need a bit more help (although not very much). So she encouraged her children to leave, to get out into the world, to have their lives and their separate families, to pursue their adventures, and she benefited from it, surprisingly enough, by staying more involved with their lives, in a manner everyone appreciated, than would have otherwise been the case.

Last year, I took Mom and her sister Margaret to Iceland for two of the lectures I have been delivering on my last book, 12 Rules for Life. It was a good adventure for them. They made friends with the young and good-looking security service types who were ensuring my safety (unnecessary, but unobtrusive, good-spirited and professional). They shared in the excitement of the large lectures and the odd celebrity that accompanied the tour. It was a very good trip. They were happy to be invited, and good company, and no trouble. She’s always up for an adventure. A few years back, my son sang at Carnegie Hall with a choir from Toronto. Mom and Margaret attended that, too. My wife, Tammy, and sister, Bonnie, got up to some mischief and invited them both to a drag club at a Chinese restaurant (a combination only likely in New York). It was pretty risqué, by 1950’s women’s standards. The drag queen, a very large black guy, zeroed in on my mom. He told her that she was the whitest woman that he had ever seen (probably true, as she has snow-white hair and the pale skin of someone English who lives in northern Alberta). He accused her of making apple pies. He had her stand up in the middle of the show, and raked her over the coals a bit, in a good-natured manner. In truth, it was difficult to envision two more difficult people trying to communicate. But she laughed, and joked, and took it in good form, and admitted rather shame-facedly that she did make a mean apple pie, and it went over fine. My poor aunt, a bit more prudish than my mother, spent the entire evening with her jaw dropped literally fully open. That’s God’s honest truth. But she enjoyed it, too, and certainly hasn’t forgotten it.

That’s my mom. No trouble. Lots of fun. She is very emotionally stable and happy. That’s a wonderful temperament. She doesn’t complain, except sometimes, and then she has her reasons (and always feels guilty about it). She seriously loves her children, and doesn’t play favorites, although she has a soft spot for my younger brother, which is a bit comical and fine with the rest of us. She likes to have a glass of wine, and to play practical jokes, and is hospitable to a fault. There are always three meals prepared for guests at my mother’s house, or her cabin, or even when she’s visiting. She likes to be taken out for dinner, but doesn’t expect it. It’s easy to feel welcome when visiting her. This is a remarkable and underappreciated attribute. It’s what makes a house feel like a home. You’re welcome in her house. She takes care of you. It’s warm, and I think it’s much, much less common than it once was, now that so much resentment appears to have built up in the kitchen and the domestic sphere, where the increasingly common warfare between men and women and their respective duties means that the basic tasks of hospitality have been abandoned, where mealtimes are no longer collective acts of celebration but individual acts of self-interested grazing, and where people are chronically preoccupied with their individual electronic addictive social hells. Maybe that’s my own age speaking, but I can’t help but think that something crucial has been lost in the hunger for career and social accomplishment, and it’s home and the intense feeling of belonging somewhere that has gone by the wayside. I don’t think people can stand the isolation that loss has produced. But maybe that’s just sentimentality, as I consider this birthday and its particular significance.

And now my mother, Beverley Anne Peterson, is eighty. That’s just not young, no matter how you slice it. Her older sister, Joan, just passed away a couple of weeks ago, after a dreadful bout with Alzheimer’s (the same disease that took her mother, with equal horror). Her older brother, Earl, is showing some signs of cognitive decline and even Margaret, five years younger, has had some heart trouble. Many of her friends have died, and a larger number of them are in nursing homes, where they are starting to be truly old. Some no longer recognize her. It’s no picnic to get old. The world defies your hard-earned expectations. Your culture disappears. Your friends vanish. You lose your hearing (she’s a bit deaf now), and sometimes your sight (she’s fortunate there) and your mobility (no problems there, either, perhaps because of her habit of daily walking) and maybe a lot more than that. But she manages it with amazing grace, volunteering at the old folk’s home in her home town, maintaining an active social life with the friends she has left, as well as new ones she has cultivated, and traveling, a lot, to see my family and Bonnie and her husband and kids in California and spending summers in the cabin at the lake, where she is joined very frequently by her sister Margaret. She’s no damn victim, my mother, and does what she can, with conscious intent, to make the best of what is sometimes a difficult lot.

She’s nonplussed by her age; surprised that it arrived so soon; still feels like she did when she was, say, thirty or forty, and can’t believe that the time has been so evanescent and vanished so rapidly. Don’t be thinking that life is long. This is a warning to everyone young. The decades fly by with increasing speed as you march through the days and weeks of your life, and you are a fool to take anything for granted.

My Mom is a very good person. She’s honest, and lovable, and funny, and grateful. She tries hard to do her best. She has a soft heart, but didn’t take advantage of that to overprotect her kids. She has been married to my father, successfully, for more than fifty years, and that’s taken a lot of commitment and care and work, because it’s no simple matter to manage a negotiation for that many decades.

I love her a lot. I’m glad she’s still in good shape. It’s quite the miracle, as far as such things go. When she turned 75, my siblings and I took her and some other family members on an Alaskan cruise. That’s a very good thing to do with a family and with older people. You can spend as much time together as you want. You can dine together. There are things to do and, when you don’t want to do anything, you can watch the eternal ocean flow by. I hope we can think of something equally enjoyable and practical this time around, but not for a while, because I’m in Australia for the next month (among other complications).

I don’t just love her, either. I like her, too. She’s been a very good friend to me. I’m happy to know her, and always happy to see her. The last three years of my life have been filled with exceptional turmoil and a fair bit of health trouble, and she’s been around for more of that than you might think, along with my father. I think it’s made our relationship even better, and it was pretty damn good to begin with. She’s on my side, firmly, just like she has been with her other kids, and her friends, and the rest of her family. There’s something to be said for loyalty, hospitality and gratitude.

So, here’s to you, Mom. Happy Birthday. More power to you. I think you lived honorably and well and admirably and that the people who knew you well all loved and, just as importantly, respected you. I hope that God shines His grace on you for the next years of your life. I hope that I get to see you for some more good summers. May your spirit stay young and untrammeled. I hope that you and Dad keep contending successfully with one another, and stay together, and support one another, and keep the cords of your life tightly bound together. I hope the burdens of age don’t fall on you in too terrible a manner. May you have as many more birthdays as you want; that they are mercifully delivered; and that you are accompanied in your celebrations by the people whom you love and who love you. Thanks for all your support and your love and your belief in me (even when you had some reason to question that belief). It has made a tremendous difference in my life, and I am very grateful for who you are and who you have been for me and the rest of our family.

[Elen]

http://youtu.be/kL61yQgdWeM

Very interesting dialog between the two. Russel has made wonderful jump in the right direction and I'm pleased to see Jordan Peterson on the mend. :fire:

[Emil El Zapato]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXoFpC6GdRA

[Emil El Zapato]

I watched it a lot more closely ... it's funny. Very entertaining watching Peterson's facial expressions.

[Dreamtimer]

I have found Jordan to be interesting, at times compelling, and sometimes foolish. When he laughed with Joe Rogan about monetizing triggering liberal snowflakes I found it to be quite immature. It may be true, but for a psychologist who just wrote a book about rules for life it was really petty.

He's a hit or miss for me but I can glean the good stuff and move on.

[Emil El Zapato]

The thing is Peterson has a dark side that he tries to hide, for me very unsuccessfully.

[Emil El Zapato]

JAKE DESYLLAS

About Jake

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/548061eee4b0e96f9a15b968/1417702584999-7T36NS64I5NZJS9DWFWE/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kLX6UassdUD58CKRaHROvot7gQa3H7 8H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLf rh8O1z4YTzHvnKhyp6Da-NYroOW3ZGjoBKy3azqku80C789l0iyqMbMesKd95J-X4EagrgUlmdw7pTZ07H-4SEUFING9eaA0gvzbF_MFLbXj3sjS1w/27ef868543abf9c4e16439c1aeb8f0bd.jpg?format=500w

Dr Jake Desyllas is an author, investor, and podcaster. He writes about entrepreneurship, financial independence, and freedom. He is the host of The Voluntary Life podcast.

In 2000, he founded Intelligent Space, an award-winning consultancy that led innovation in the field of pedestrian movement simulation and analysis. In 2010, he sold his business, quit the rat race, and retired early at the age of 38.

He has a bachelors degree, a masters degree, and a doctorate. He is a perpetual traveler, a minimalist, a productivity geek, a peaceful parent, an avid reader of philosophy and psychology, and a marathon inline skater.

A Critique of Jordan Peterson's Parenting Principles
January 30, 2020

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/548061eee4b0e96f9a15b968/1580384055174-IQSNR35N5MPOZQ437511/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kNvT88LknE-K9M4pGNO0Iqd7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUq MSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z5QPOohDIaIeljMHgDF5CVlOqp eNLcJ80NK65_fV7S1USOFn4xF8vTWDNAUBm5ducQhX-V3oVjSmr829Rco4W2Uo49ZdOtO_QXox0_W7i2zEA/JD1b.jpg?format=500w

One of the chapters in Jordan Peterson’s popular book “12 Rules For Life” relates to parenting. The chapter is called, “Don't Let Your Children Do Anything That Would Make You Dislike Them”. His main argument is that you mustn't be afraid to discipline your kids, even though they won't like it. As he puts it:

Parents who refuse to adopt the responsibility for disciplining their children think they can just opt out of the conflict necessary for proper child-rearing. They avoid being the bad guy (in the short term). But they do not at all rescue or protect their children from fear and pain. Quite the contrary: the judgmental and uncaring broader social world will mete out conflict and punishment far greater than that which would have been delivered by an awake parent. You can discipline your children, or you can turn that responsibility over to the harsh, uncaring judgmental world—and the motivation for the latter decision should never be confused with love.

Thus according to Peterson, if you fail to discipline your children, they will have a bad life because other people will punish them. How does his idea of discipline translate into parenting practice?

Peterson recommends a series of principles for parents which sound reasonable and measured. However, there is a big difference between the title of each principle and how Peterson interprets them in terms of actions as a parent. As I will demonstrate, the way that Peterson interprets his principles does not at all follow from the principles themselves.

Use of Force
Peterson advocates using the least force necessary to enforce parental rules. This sounds reasonable. For example, if you've got a rule which is “don't hit or bites other kids”, then you should use the least force necessary to enforce that rule. That would clearly imply that as an adult, you should never hit your children because, if your child is hitting another child, the least force necessary to stop that from happening is certainly not hitting your child, or smacking, or anything like that. You can simply restrain your child. That is the least force necessary.

But that's not what Peterson thinks the least force necessary means. Peterson is a fan of physical punishment; he thinks it is important and that parents shouldn't shy away from doing it. He says that you should use the least amount of physical punishment which he thinks is necessary. However, he explicitly sanctions using violence on children. Of course, he prefers the term spanking, but he sanctions physical violence against children. His arguments for this are frankly pathetic, especially coming from somebody who is a research psychologist who ought to know the literature on this subject, but who seems to have completely ignored it. Just to give you an example, Peterson says,

we should note that some misbegotten actions must be brought to a halt both effectively and immediately, not least so that something worse doesn’t happen. What’s the proper punishment for someone who will not stop poking a fork into an electrical socket? Or who runs away laughing in a crowded supermarket parking lot? The answer is simple: whatever will stop it fastest, within reason

Rather than be explicit in this statement, Peterson leaves the reader to draw his conclusion for him, which is that parents must use corporal punishment on children.

Yet his conclusion does not follow from his premises. His idea is to use the least force necessary, which is never spanking. In this example of stopping a child from running away in a parking lot, the least force necessary would be to restrain the child by the arm and stop them from running away. The least force necessary would not be to hit the child. In the example of stopping a child from sticking a fork in an electrical socket, the least force necessary would be to remove the fork from the child. Of course, you could also put childproof coverings on your electrical sockets.

One wonders what the parents are doing in his examples that allow such dangers to develop. What is going on beforehand that leads to a situation in which a child is repeatedly sticking a fork in an electrical socket? Where are the parents? Why does the child still have the fork? Why is it happening repeatedly? In order to bolster his case for parental violence, Peterson chooses dramatic situations of children acting out with no reference to parental responsibility in the lead-up to the problem. He does this because it is impossible to justify parental violence, so he must act as if parents have no role in creating the problem. Poor examples aside, the point is that Peterson is inconsistent with his own principle because at least force necessary is not corporal punishment.

The False Dichotomy
Peterson argues that the choice parents face is between either using physical punishment, or overlooking misbehaviour and leaving your child to their own devices. That's what he thinks the two options are for parents. On this view, either you neglectfully leave your child to run wild and stick forks in electrical sockets, or you discipline your child by physical punishment. This is a false dichotomy. (This question posed a dilemma to me when I was a new parent, I shortly realized that it is a total fake dichotomy that most lacking awareness will fall into. Seems Peterson is one of them, i.e. a classic product of bad parenting)

Anyone can find non-violent alternative approaches to discipline within a few minutes of searching on the internet. I recommend Parent Effectiveness Training (PET) by Thomas Gordon and RIE, which is best expressed in the podcasts and books by Janet Lansbury. Peterson doesn’t provide a critique of these approaches, he simply ignores them.

Peterson doesn’t address any of the arguments of academics or parenting specialists who advocate non-violent parenting, just as he doesn’t address any of the evidence on the harm of spanking. His book is written as if none of those arguments exist. Instead, he repeatedly resorts to rhetorical tricks to bolster his argument. He says “it is wilfully naive to think that you don't need to use physical violence on kids” and he calls it “wrong. Too simple.” These rhetorical techniques are ways of trying to dominate the reader into agreement through fear. When Peterson confidently asserts that his opponents are the naive ones, many will believe him. Who wants to think of themselves as wilfully naive?

The reality is that Peterson himself is the wilfully naive to advocate physical violence in light of the massive amount of evidence on the harm of spanking. As Dr Noam Spencer explained, summarising 9 peer-reviewed meta-studies on the effects of spanking:

The empirical case against spanking is strong, and made stronger by the absence of any empirical case in support of spanking. There is not one well designed study I have seen that links spanking to long term positive outcome.

Spencer summarised the current state of research in the title of his summary article: “The Spanking Debate Is Over”. The empirical studies demonstrate clearly that spanking leads to negative outcomes including lack of impulse control, aggression, depression poor performance in school and worse health outcomes.

Jordan Peterson is a psychology professor, he must be aware of these studies. He doesn't bother to refute them in this chapter or say anything about them. He just completely ignores them. This is either wilful ignorance or plain deceit by a psychology professor. Both are inexcusable.

Parenting As a Pair
Although there is much to criticise about Peterson’s advocacy of aggression against children, I agree with him about his principle that “parents should come in pairs”. Peterson emphasizes the fact that parenting is very stressful and that if you do it alone then you're more likely to lose your temper on your kids. He advocates empathy towards single parents, especially those who are single parents owing to circumstances out their own control. However, his point is that parenting is better when you do it in pairs.

Peterson doesn’t go into detail about the evidence that supports this principle, but there is a wealth of empirical studies that show that children simply do much better in families that stay together. Long term statistical studies comparing the wellbeing of children raised in families that stay together versus children whose parents split up, show a clear benefit for children of having two parents.

Therefore, if you want to have kids you should stay together because it is important for your kids' wellbeing. I don't have any argument with that part of this chapter except to say that it's interesting that Peterson didn't focus on this more. It is a well-established finding that parents who break up have a detrimental effect on their child’s development, so if Peterson’s aim is to improve the wellbeing of children, why does he deal with this topic so superficially and yet focus so much on sanctioning the hitting of children? As we’ve already seen, all the empirical studies show that corporal punishment is detrimental to kids, so Peterson’s focus is doubly strange.

He merely mentions that parents should come in pairs, but I think this should have been his main argument. It is the only argument that he makes about parenting that is clearly backed by the evidence.

Understanding Your Psychology As A Parent
Peterson argues that parents should “understand their capacity to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry and deceitful”.

When I first read this principle, I thought it was an injunction to self knowledge. I thought that Peterson was going to argue that if you want to have kids, you've got to be aware of your own dark side and you have to be conscious of it. As a parent, you will be in a position of enormous responsibility. You must be aware of your capacity for aggression and you must control it. You must be aware of your potential to act out, and you must not do so. You can control it. We all have the capability of acting with extreme violence. We all have the capability of assaulting others every day and yet we don’t. We can control it. That's what I thought he was going to say. But his argument is very different.

Peterson’s argument is that as a parent, you have to be aware of the fact that your kids might annoy you. Therefore, don't let your kids do anything that might annoy you because you're such an angry, vengeful person deep down that they will trigger you. In other words, Peterson thinks it is not the responsibility of the parents to stop themselves from acting out. His argument is the children must behave themselves because otherwise they're going to trigger the parents to act out. In Peterson’s mind, it is the children’s responsibility to be extremely well behaved in order not to annoy the parents because otherwise the parents will take it out on them. (This is important because it spotlights Peterson's propensity of seeing things from only self, from his perspective even his own children are 'others' ... This is sad)

This is a bizarre inversion of responsibility by Peterson. Why is the onus on the children to be the more responsible ones? Given that the adults are supposed to have more capability of managing their emotions, Peterson has responsibility backwards. He thinks kids should be more adult than the adults! Peterson talks a lot about personal responsibility in his book, but he believes children should take responsibility for managing their parents feelings, not the other way around.

I agree with Peterson that we all have the capability of being vengeful and deceitful. Peterson’s conclusion from this that children should take responsibility for their parents feelings makes no sense. Rather, the obvious conclusion is that parents have a responsibility to control their aggression and be vigilantly aware of their capability to act out.

Peterson often advocates taking personal responsibility, and I agree with that aspect of his work. But taking responsibility also means taking responsibility for your feelings. Peterson is right when he states that we are all capable of being vengeful and that we all have a dark side. But that is not an excuse for putting the responsibility on your children to be more adult than you. His idea that children must behave because parents can't control their own dark side gets responsibility the wrong way around.

Behaviourism
Throughout his comments on parenting, Peterson advocates a psychological approach called behaviourism. He praises B.F. Skinner (the most important psychologist in the behaviourist movement) for having worked out how to get the behaviour you want using techniques based around punishment and reward. Peterson’s essential argument is that parents should use punishment and rewards on children in order to train them into positive behaviours.

Within psychology as a whole, behaviourism has a controversial reputation. There are many criticisms of the approach, ranging from ethical issues to critiques of Skinner’s original overblown claims for how effective behaviourism can be. Particularly with regard to children, there are well known negative effects of behaviourism because the approach pushes children to be extrinsically motivated. Behaviourism trains kids to merely try to please reward givers, rather than internalizing values for themselves. Alfie Kohn’s book “Punished By Rewards” provides a summary of these criticisms. It is therefore questionable that Peterson uncritically advocates Skinner as an authority for parenting ideas, as if this were uncontroversial. He doesn’t bother to offer any defence of behaviourism or acknowledgement of the criticisms.

Behaviourism’s main application has been in training pets. Nobody has to have kids. If you're going to have them, then it's immoral to treat them as if they are pets. That is what Jordan Peterson is advocating.

Peterson has a problem: his core message to parents is to advocate the use of physical punishments and yet none of the main theories of child development lend any support to the use of violence on children. I think this explains why he has chosen to rely on behaviourism, despite the fact that Skinner didn’t really focus on child development and behaviourism has a distinctly controversial reputation, especially with regard to children. But behaviourism can be used to justify punishments and rewards.

Peterson’s Psychology
Peterson’s descriptions of his interactions with children are quite revealing about his attitude towards them. Peterson is a psychologist who often speculates on the motivations of others, so it's reasonable to point the camera back to him and explore his attitudes and beliefs about children. Here is a telling anecdote from his book:

I remember taking my daughter to the playground once when she was about two. She was playing on the monkey bars, hanging in mid-air. A particularly provocative little monster of about the same age was standing above her on the same bar she was gripping. I watched him move towards her. Our eyes locked. He slowly and deliberately stepped on her hands, with increasing force, over and over, as he stared me down. He knew exactly what he was doing. Up yours, Daddy-O—that was his philosophy. He had already concluded that adults were contemptible, and that he could safely defy them. (Too bad, then, that he was destined to become one.) That was the hopeless future his parents had saddled him with. To his great and salutary shock, I picked him bodily off the playground structure, and threw him thirty feet down the field. No, I didn’t. I just took my daughter somewhere else. But it would have been better for him if I had.

I presume Peterson was trying to be funny in making that comment about throwing a toddler thirty feet, but there is a definite seriousness underneath his dark joke about assaulting a child. He fantasises about doing an extraordinarily vengeful act to a small boy. I don’t find that amusing.

I'm aware that Peterson didn't assault the toddler and that this was merely a fantasy. I'm also aware that it was probably supposed to be a joke, but Peterson argues that it would have been better for the boy if he had been thrown. What are we to make of that? Peterson supposedly advocates the principle of “mimimim use of force on kids”. Is his fantasy of throwing a toddler 30 feet down a field supposed to demonstrate his minimum-use-of-force thinking?

Why did Peterson let this child repeatedly step on his daughter's hands in the first place? Surely the minimum use of force would have been to remove the child’s foot as soon as Peterson saw the boy moving towards his daughter's hands on the climbing frame. If necessary, Peterson could have lifted the boy off the climbing frame altogether (the boy was only 2 years old). Perhaps there would have been as a discussion to be had with the boy’s parents, which Peterson could have had.

Peterson was the responsible adult in the situation and he failed to act in a timely way to diffuse the conflict. He cites the situation to show how aggressive the boy was (which he was), but this situation was also an example of failure on Peterson’s part to protect his daughter and stop the boy “repeatedly” stepping on her hands.

Peterson often writes about the importance of establishing dominance. He writes openly about how he sees parenting as a battle of dominance and how important it is to immediately respond to any challenge. For example, he writes that “anger crying is often an act of dominance and should be dealt with as such”.

He argues that since we evolved over millennia in dominance hierarchies, it is necessary to recognise the reality of such hierarchies within families. This means that when children challenge parents for dominance, parents must win the challenge. He uses phrases like “I prepared for war” when describing his approach to winning dominance over children. When describing how he made his son eat some food, he writes:

I poked him in the chest, with my free hand, in a manner calculated to annoy. He didn’t budge. I did it again. And again. And again. Not hard—but not in a manner to be ignored, either. Ten or so pokes letter, he opened his mouth, planning to emit a sound of outrage. Hah! His mistake. I deftly inserted the spoon.

It sounds to me as if Peterson enjoys asserting dominance over little kids.

Evolutionary Psychology
Peterson’s justification for his emphasis on establishing dominance is that he thinks it is important to recognise the findings of evolutionary psychology. We are products of evolution and ignoring our nature is unrealistic. The fact that we evolved in dominance hierarchies means that we can’t avoid them and should therefore assert them as parents.

Even if we accept the idea that humans necessarily live in dominance hierarchies, this only implies that parents have a leadership role to play. Children require leadership and look to their parents to provide it. But being a leader does not necessitate the use of violence or aggression to assert that role. The fact that we evolved in a dominance hierarchy isn't excuse for abusing your leadership role. It’s not an excuse for hitting your kids, and using euphemisms like spanking doesn’t excuse it either. Good leaders do not rely on violence. You do not need to hit children; to do so is an unjustifiable act of aggression.

Peterson’s emphasis on evolutionary psychology is also highly selective. He cites it in support of his ideas about dominating children but ignores the findings of evolutionary psychology that would inform other parenting decisions. For example, there are very good arguments for co-sleeping from evolutionary psychology. In our pre-history, babies never slept alone. It would have been incredibly dangerous to leave babies to sleep alone when we were in the hunter gatherer stage of our evolution (which was for the majority of our evolutionary development as humans). All children would have slept in the same place as their parents. But Jordan Peterson is certainly not an advocate of co-sleeping. He thinks children should be left to cry it out, and trained not to disturb their parents at night.

Peterson’s advocacy of aggressive parenting is not a result of following evolutionary psychology, rather he uses evolutionary psychology to support only those arguments he wants to make, and ignores implications that don’t support his arguments.

Rationalising Violence Against Children
Of all the parenting issues that Peterson could have chosen to highlight as his main concern, he chose to advocate more physical discipline. His main argument on how to be a better parent is don’t hold back on corporal punishment.

There are many problems facing children that Peterson could have chosen to focus on to improve the quality of parenting. Parents who break up their family have a lasting detrimental effect on their kids. Peterson mentions this, but only as minor topic. He totally ignores many other pressing concerns for the quality of parenting today. What about neglect? What about the huge number of kids who grow up without dads? What about the fact that school is often little more than a prison for children where they must stay for over a decade? What about the still widespread problem of child sexual abuse? What about barbaric practices such as circumcision? What about the epidemic of giving children drugs like Ritalin because they are so bored out of their minds in school that the only way to get them to conform is by giving them drugs? What about the huge amount of time that kids are stuck in daycare and the lack of time that parents spend with their kids?

Peterson didn’t tackle tackle any of these issues. He chooses to focus on making an argument for why you should immediately counter any testing of your or authority by your children with old fashioned discipline, including corporal punishment. He's chosen to focus on that because he argues a false dichotomy that as a parent you either spank your child and as a disciplinarian parent, or you leave your child to their own devices and they become dangerously antisocial.

Peterson doesn't say so explicitly, but we can infer from his arguments that he spanked his own children. He defends spanking extensively and doesn’t state anywhere that he has changed his mind or learned anything new since he was a parent himself. He is a psychology professor who discusses the topic of spanking without a single mention of the many studies that have demonstrated the harm that it does. The most charitable interpretation of this omission is that he is wilfully ignoring all of the evidence on the detrimental effects of spanking.

Peterson’s advocacy of disciplinarian parenting are probably a post-rationalisation of his own parenting practices, and perhaps an excuse for what his own parents did to him. He probably thinks that he turned out fine, and that he has great kids, therefore everything he did was great, and therefore spanking is probably good too. In writing a long excuse for his own behaviour as a parent instead of focussing on the real problems that children face, he has done children and parents a disservice.

Conclusion
Peterson is the most intelligent and well-argued advocate of aggressive parenting that I’m aware of. Yet he makes no valid arguments for the use of aggression in parenting. He can’t, because there are no good arguments for using aggression on children.

To make his defence of corporal punishment he had to ignore all the research literature on the bad effects of spanking. He had to rely on a controversial and outdated school of thought in psychology (behaviourism) as the only authority he could appeal to in trying to justify his aggressive style of dominance assertion against children. He had to ignore the entire field of child psychology, none of which supports spanking or aggressive parenting. He had to cherry-pick ideas from evolutionary psychology that seem to support aggression, whilst ignoring evolutionary psychology when it leads to promotion of practices such as co-sleeping. His arguments are so weak that he resorts to rhetorical techniques like asserting that anyone who disagrees with him is wrong and holds views that are “too simple”.

Peterson’s chapter on parenting is called “Don't Let Your Kids Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them”. But that that is a mealy-mouthed way of stating his views. He should heed his own advice and take responsibility for his views, which means not using the passive tense. His chapter should be titled “Don't Let Your Kids Do Anything That You Dislike Them Doing”, because that's what he is really saying. When you put it like that, it amounts to merely saying “Don't Let Your Kids Do Anything That You Don't Want Them To”, which is neither deep nor enlightened. It is merely a sophisticated excuse for indefensible aggression against children.

[Wind]

You can't say that a man who has given inspiration to thousands if not millions of young men to improve their lives to be bad. He has literally saved countless of lives from the brink of suicide and perhaps even mass murders. That's not a small feat by any means and for that I'm willing to forgive a lot of errors in his character. He's not perfect, but at least he's trying to be a force of good.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

[Emil El Zapato]

well, he might have saved one, if it was you ... thousands to millions ... maybe ... The darkness will always out, Wind. We need to watch our guides closely. The loss of one soul is one too many. I think there are two dead right now in Kenosha Wisconsin at the hands of one of his devotees. It's a package Wind, you can't have Jordan Peterson without Anders Behring Breivik, the Heritage Foundation, anti-semites, Pat Buchanan.

[Wind]

Come on man, that's just ridiculous. You need to look into your own anger too.

[Emil El Zapato]

:)

yeah, he makes me mad, because he doesn't know what the hell he is talking about and obviously I don't mean from a technical or intellectual focus. He is emotionally twisted and likely will never see his way out of it.

[Wind]

Okay, we can change the subject. In the weekend I will post something far more "calming" here. :)

[Emil El Zapato]

you don't have to avoid him on my account, Wind ... I don't have much more to say, really... and it's ok if you like him. I just have personal prejudices against his kind. I admit it. I see them as heavy contributors to a false narrative. An unreal narrative.

[Wind]

Here's the calming stuff that I promised. :)

1NjPdqd7mQM


Mooji is a renowned spiritual teacher, who, for over 20 years, has been guiding countless seekers worldwide in search of true happiness, peace and freedom.

Mooji’s way of teaching is direct and compassionate, encouraging that Self-discovery need not be difficult. He teaches that the true nature of human beings is not a personal self or ego but pure, formless awareness.

Mooji claims that when this is fully grasped, delusion and suffering come to an end and is replaced by a lasting peace and pure love. His talks, called Satsang, bring seekers into the experiential recognition of their true Self—and all with his characteristic humour, wisdom and love.

[Octopus Garden]

I appreciate so much of what Peterson has to say. Also, I come from the same country, am ethnically almost identical, near the same age and our mothers were even born in the same small town, Niacum, Saskatchewan, so I have a fairly good take on him.

Peterson's homage to his mother, although heart felt and lovely is a bit offputting. "She's no victim, my mother," he exclaims. Why would she be? She is well loved, has led a cushy life, didn't have to work, is white, plus was born temperamentally strong in a pleasant country without political conflicts.

If he is equating his mother's overcoming very minor middle class white woman challenges as a librarian, with real existential problems that scar and damage, he needs to do what he suggests everybody else does, and get some perspective. Change his mom's race, and have her try to grow up and raise a family in Ferguson, Missouri using all the character strength at her disposal and I wonder how she would do.

[Wind]

That's true, perspective matters.

This is a bit off-topic, but I have to say that I've always found Canada interesting. It feels like a cousin country of ours.

[Octopus Garden]

JAKE DESYLLAS

About Jake

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/548061eee4b0e96f9a15b968/1417702584999-7T36NS64I5NZJS9DWFWE/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kLX6UassdUD58CKRaHROvot7gQa3H7 8H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLf rh8O1z4YTzHvnKhyp6Da-NYroOW3ZGjoBKy3azqku80C789l0iyqMbMesKd95J-X4EagrgUlmdw7pTZ07H-4SEUFING9eaA0gvzbF_MFLbXj3sjS1w/27ef868543abf9c4e16439c1aeb8f0bd.jpg?format=500w

Dr Jake Desyllas is an author, investor, and podcaster. He writes about entrepreneurship, financial independence, and freedom. He is the host of The Voluntary Life podcast.

In 2000, he founded Intelligent Space, an award-winning consultancy that led innovation in the field of pedestrian movement simulation and analysis. In 2010, he sold his business, quit the rat race, and retired early at the age of 38.

He has a bachelors degree, a masters degree, and a doctorate. He is a perpetual traveler, a minimalist, a productivity geek, a peaceful parent, an avid reader of philosophy and psychology, and a marathon inline skater.

A Critique of Jordan Peterson's Parenting Principles
January 30, 2020

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One of the chapters in Jordan Peterson’s popular book “12 Rules For Life” relates to parenting. The chapter is called, “Don't Let Your Children Do Anything That Would Make You Dislike Them”. His main argument is that you mustn't be afraid to discipline your kids, even though they won't like it. As he puts it:

Parents who refuse to adopt the responsibility for disciplining their children think they can just opt out of the conflict necessary for proper child-rearing. They avoid being the bad guy (in the short term). But they do not at all rescue or protect their children from fear and pain. Quite the contrary: the judgmental and uncaring broader social world will mete out conflict and punishment far greater than that which would have been delivered by an awake parent. You can discipline your children, or you can turn that responsibility over to the harsh, uncaring judgmental world—and the motivation for the latter decision should never be confused with love.

Thus according to Peterson, if you fail to discipline your children, they will have a bad life because other people will punish them. How does his idea of discipline translate into parenting practice?

Peterson recommends a series of principles for parents which sound reasonable and measured. However, there is a big difference between the title of each principle and how Peterson interprets them in terms of actions as a parent. As I will demonstrate, the way that Peterson interprets his principles does not at all follow from the principles themselves.

Use of Force
Peterson advocates using the least force necessary to enforce parental rules. This sounds reasonable. For example, if you've got a rule which is “don't hit or bites other kids”, then you should use the least force necessary to enforce that rule. That would clearly imply that as an adult, you should never hit your children because, if your child is hitting another child, the least force necessary to stop that from happening is certainly not hitting your child, or smacking, or anything like that. You can simply restrain your child. That is the least force necessary.

But that's not what Peterson thinks the least force necessary means. Peterson is a fan of physical punishment; he thinks it is important and that parents shouldn't shy away from doing it. He says that you should use the least amount of physical punishment which he thinks is necessary. However, he explicitly sanctions using violence on children. Of course, he prefers the term spanking, but he sanctions physical violence against children. His arguments for this are frankly pathetic, especially coming from somebody who is a research psychologist who ought to know the literature on this subject, but who seems to have completely ignored it. Just to give you an example, Peterson says,

we should note that some misbegotten actions must be brought to a halt both effectively and immediately, not least so that something worse doesn’t happen. What’s the proper punishment for someone who will not stop poking a fork into an electrical socket? Or who runs away laughing in a crowded supermarket parking lot? The answer is simple: whatever will stop it fastest, within reason

Rather than be explicit in this statement, Peterson leaves the reader to draw his conclusion for him, which is that parents must use corporal punishment on children.

Yet his conclusion does not follow from his premises. His idea is to use the least force necessary, which is never spanking. In this example of stopping a child from running away in a parking lot, the least force necessary would be to restrain the child by the arm and stop them from running away. The least force necessary would not be to hit the child. In the example of stopping a child from sticking a fork in an electrical socket, the least force necessary would be to remove the fork from the child. Of course, you could also put childproof coverings on your electrical sockets.

One wonders what the parents are doing in his examples that allow such dangers to develop. What is going on beforehand that leads to a situation in which a child is repeatedly sticking a fork in an electrical socket? Where are the parents? Why does the child still have the fork? Why is it happening repeatedly? In order to bolster his case for parental violence, Peterson chooses dramatic situations of children acting out with no reference to parental responsibility in the lead-up to the problem. He does this because it is impossible to justify parental violence, so he must act as if parents have no role in creating the problem. Poor examples aside, the point is that Peterson is inconsistent with his own principle because at least force necessary is not corporal punishment.

The False Dichotomy
Peterson argues that the choice parents face is between either using physical punishment, or overlooking misbehaviour and leaving your child to their own devices. That's what he thinks the two options are for parents. On this view, either you neglectfully leave your child to run wild and stick forks in electrical sockets, or you discipline your child by physical punishment. This is a false dichotomy. (This question posed a dilemma to me when I was a new parent, I shortly realized that it is a total fake dichotomy that most lacking awareness will fall into. Seems Peterson is one of them, i.e. a classic product of bad parenting)

Anyone can find non-violent alternative approaches to discipline within a few minutes of searching on the internet. I recommend Parent Effectiveness Training (PET) by Thomas Gordon and RIE, which is best expressed in the podcasts and books by Janet Lansbury. Peterson doesn’t provide a critique of these approaches, he simply ignores them.

Peterson doesn’t address any of the arguments of academics or parenting specialists who advocate non-violent parenting, just as he doesn’t address any of the evidence on the harm of spanking. His book is written as if none of those arguments exist. Instead, he repeatedly resorts to rhetorical tricks to bolster his argument. He says “it is wilfully naive to think that you don't need to use physical violence on kids” and he calls it “wrong. Too simple.” These rhetorical techniques are ways of trying to dominate the reader into agreement through fear. When Peterson confidently asserts that his opponents are the naive ones, many will believe him. Who wants to think of themselves as wilfully naive?

The reality is that Peterson himself is the wilfully naive to advocate physical violence in light of the massive amount of evidence on the harm of spanking. As Dr Noam Spencer explained, summarising 9 peer-reviewed meta-studies on the effects of spanking:

The empirical case against spanking is strong, and made stronger by the absence of any empirical case in support of spanking. There is not one well designed study I have seen that links spanking to long term positive outcome.

Spencer summarised the current state of research in the title of his summary article: “The Spanking Debate Is Over”. The empirical studies demonstrate clearly that spanking leads to negative outcomes including lack of impulse control, aggression, depression poor performance in school and worse health outcomes.

Jordan Peterson is a psychology professor, he must be aware of these studies. He doesn't bother to refute them in this chapter or say anything about them. He just completely ignores them. This is either wilful ignorance or plain deceit by a psychology professor. Both are inexcusable.

Parenting As a Pair
Although there is much to criticise about Peterson’s advocacy of aggression against children, I agree with him about his principle that “parents should come in pairs”. Peterson emphasizes the fact that parenting is very stressful and that if you do it alone then you're more likely to lose your temper on your kids. He advocates empathy towards single parents, especially those who are single parents owing to circumstances out their own control. However, his point is that parenting is better when you do it in pairs.

Peterson doesn’t go into detail about the evidence that supports this principle, but there is a wealth of empirical studies that show that children simply do much better in families that stay together. Long term statistical studies comparing the wellbeing of children raised in families that stay together versus children whose parents split up, show a clear benefit for children of having two parents.

Therefore, if you want to have kids you should stay together because it is important for your kids' wellbeing. I don't have any argument with that part of this chapter except to say that it's interesting that Peterson didn't focus on this more. It is a well-established finding that parents who break up have a detrimental effect on their child’s development, so if Peterson’s aim is to improve the wellbeing of children, why does he deal with this topic so superficially and yet focus so much on sanctioning the hitting of children? As we’ve already seen, all the empirical studies show that corporal punishment is detrimental to kids, so Peterson’s focus is doubly strange.

He merely mentions that parents should come in pairs, but I think this should have been his main argument. It is the only argument that he makes about parenting that is clearly backed by the evidence.

Understanding Your Psychology As A Parent
Peterson argues that parents should “understand their capacity to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry and deceitful”.

When I first read this principle, I thought it was an injunction to self knowledge. I thought that Peterson was going to argue that if you want to have kids, you've got to be aware of your own dark side and you have to be conscious of it. As a parent, you will be in a position of enormous responsibility. You must be aware of your capacity for aggression and you must control it. You must be aware of your potential to act out, and you must not do so. You can control it. We all have the capability of acting with extreme violence. We all have the capability of assaulting others every day and yet we don’t. We can control it. That's what I thought he was going to say. But his argument is very different.

Peterson’s argument is that as a parent, you have to be aware of the fact that your kids might annoy you. Therefore, don't let your kids do anything that might annoy you because you're such an angry, vengeful person deep down that they will trigger you. In other words, Peterson thinks it is not the responsibility of the parents to stop themselves from acting out. His argument is the children must behave themselves because otherwise they're going to trigger the parents to act out. In Peterson’s mind, it is the children’s responsibility to be extremely well behaved in order not to annoy the parents because otherwise the parents will take it out on them. (This is important because it spotlights Peterson's propensity of seeing things from only self, from his perspective even his own children are 'others' ... This is sad)

This is a bizarre inversion of responsibility by Peterson. Why is the onus on the children to be the more responsible ones? Given that the adults are supposed to have more capability of managing their emotions, Peterson has responsibility backwards. He thinks kids should be more adult than the adults! Peterson talks a lot about personal responsibility in his book, but he believes children should take responsibility for managing their parents feelings, not the other way around.

I agree with Peterson that we all have the capability of being vengeful and deceitful. Peterson’s conclusion from this that children should take responsibility for their parents feelings makes no sense. Rather, the obvious conclusion is that parents have a responsibility to control their aggression and be vigilantly aware of their capability to act out.

Peterson often advocates taking personal responsibility, and I agree with that aspect of his work. But taking responsibility also means taking responsibility for your feelings. Peterson is right when he states that we are all capable of being vengeful and that we all have a dark side. But that is not an excuse for putting the responsibility on your children to be more adult than you. His idea that children must behave because parents can't control their own dark side gets responsibility the wrong way around.

Behaviourism
Throughout his comments on parenting, Peterson advocates a psychological approach called behaviourism. He praises B.F. Skinner (the most important psychologist in the behaviourist movement) for having worked out how to get the behaviour you want using techniques based around punishment and reward. Peterson’s essential argument is that parents should use punishment and rewards on children in order to train them into positive behaviours.

Within psychology as a whole, behaviourism has a controversial reputation. There are many criticisms of the approach, ranging from ethical issues to critiques of Skinner’s original overblown claims for how effective behaviourism can be. Particularly with regard to children, there are well known negative effects of behaviourism because the approach pushes children to be extrinsically motivated. Behaviourism trains kids to merely try to please reward givers, rather than internalizing values for themselves. Alfie Kohn’s book “Punished By Rewards” provides a summary of these criticisms. It is therefore questionable that Peterson uncritically advocates Skinner as an authority for parenting ideas, as if this were uncontroversial. He doesn’t bother to offer any defence of behaviourism or acknowledgement of the criticisms.

Behaviourism’s main application has been in training pets. Nobody has to have kids. If you're going to have them, then it's immoral to treat them as if they are pets. That is what Jordan Peterson is advocating.

Peterson has a problem: his core message to parents is to advocate the use of physical punishments and yet none of the main theories of child development lend any support to the use of violence on children. I think this explains why he has chosen to rely on behaviourism, despite the fact that Skinner didn’t really focus on child development and behaviourism has a distinctly controversial reputation, especially with regard to children. But behaviourism can be used to justify punishments and rewards.

Peterson’s Psychology
Peterson’s descriptions of his interactions with children are quite revealing about his attitude towards them. Peterson is a psychologist who often speculates on the motivations of others, so it's reasonable to point the camera back to him and explore his attitudes and beliefs about children. Here is a telling anecdote from his book:

I remember taking my daughter to the playground once when she was about two. She was playing on the monkey bars, hanging in mid-air. A particularly provocative little monster of about the same age was standing above her on the same bar she was gripping. I watched him move towards her. Our eyes locked. He slowly and deliberately stepped on her hands, with increasing force, over and over, as he stared me down. He knew exactly what he was doing. Up yours, Daddy-O—that was his philosophy. He had already concluded that adults were contemptible, and that he could safely defy them. (Too bad, then, that he was destined to become one.) That was the hopeless future his parents had saddled him with. To his great and salutary shock, I picked him bodily off the playground structure, and threw him thirty feet down the field. No, I didn’t. I just took my daughter somewhere else. But it would have been better for him if I had.

I presume Peterson was trying to be funny in making that comment about throwing a toddler thirty feet, but there is a definite seriousness underneath his dark joke about assaulting a child. He fantasises about doing an extraordinarily vengeful act to a small boy. I don’t find that amusing.

I'm aware that Peterson didn't assault the toddler and that this was merely a fantasy. I'm also aware that it was probably supposed to be a joke, but Peterson argues that it would have been better for the boy if he had been thrown. What are we to make of that? Peterson supposedly advocates the principle of “mimimim use of force on kids”. Is his fantasy of throwing a toddler 30 feet down a field supposed to demonstrate his minimum-use-of-force thinking?

Why did Peterson let this child repeatedly step on his daughter's hands in the first place? Surely the minimum use of force would have been to remove the child’s foot as soon as Peterson saw the boy moving towards his daughter's hands on the climbing frame. If necessary, Peterson could have lifted the boy off the climbing frame altogether (the boy was only 2 years old). Perhaps there would have been as a discussion to be had with the boy’s parents, which Peterson could have had.

Peterson was the responsible adult in the situation and he failed to act in a timely way to diffuse the conflict. He cites the situation to show how aggressive the boy was (which he was), but this situation was also an example of failure on Peterson’s part to protect his daughter and stop the boy “repeatedly” stepping on her hands.

Peterson often writes about the importance of establishing dominance. He writes openly about how he sees parenting as a battle of dominance and how important it is to immediately respond to any challenge. For example, he writes that “anger crying is often an act of dominance and should be dealt with as such”.

He argues that since we evolved over millennia in dominance hierarchies, it is necessary to recognise the reality of such hierarchies within families. This means that when children challenge parents for dominance, parents must win the challenge. He uses phrases like “I prepared for war” when describing his approach to winning dominance over children. When describing how he made his son eat some food, he writes:

I poked him in the chest, with my free hand, in a manner calculated to annoy. He didn’t budge. I did it again. And again. And again. Not hard—but not in a manner to be ignored, either. Ten or so pokes letter, he opened his mouth, planning to emit a sound of outrage. Hah! His mistake. I deftly inserted the spoon.

It sounds to me as if Peterson enjoys asserting dominance over little kids.

Evolutionary Psychology
Peterson’s justification for his emphasis on establishing dominance is that he thinks it is important to recognise the findings of evolutionary psychology. We are products of evolution and ignoring our nature is unrealistic. The fact that we evolved in dominance hierarchies means that we can’t avoid them and should therefore assert them as parents.

Even if we accept the idea that humans necessarily live in dominance hierarchies, this only implies that parents have a leadership role to play. Children require leadership and look to their parents to provide it. But being a leader does not necessitate the use of violence or aggression to assert that role. The fact that we evolved in a dominance hierarchy isn't excuse for abusing your leadership role. It’s not an excuse for hitting your kids, and using euphemisms like spanking doesn’t excuse it either. Good leaders do not rely on violence. You do not need to hit children; to do so is an unjustifiable act of aggression.

Peterson’s emphasis on evolutionary psychology is also highly selective. He cites it in support of his ideas about dominating children but ignores the findings of evolutionary psychology that would inform other parenting decisions. For example, there are very good arguments for co-sleeping from evolutionary psychology. In our pre-history, babies never slept alone. It would have been incredibly dangerous to leave babies to sleep alone when we were in the hunter gatherer stage of our evolution (which was for the majority of our evolutionary development as humans). All children would have slept in the same place as their parents. But Jordan Peterson is certainly not an advocate of co-sleeping. He thinks children should be left to cry it out, and trained not to disturb their parents at night.

Peterson’s advocacy of aggressive parenting is not a result of following evolutionary psychology, rather he uses evolutionary psychology to support only those arguments he wants to make, and ignores implications that don’t support his arguments.

Rationalising Violence Against Children
Of all the parenting issues that Peterson could have chosen to highlight as his main concern, he chose to advocate more physical discipline. His main argument on how to be a better parent is don’t hold back on corporal punishment.

There are many problems facing children that Peterson could have chosen to focus on to improve the quality of parenting. Parents who break up their family have a lasting detrimental effect on their kids. Peterson mentions this, but only as minor topic. He totally ignores many other pressing concerns for the quality of parenting today. What about neglect? What about the huge number of kids who grow up without dads? What about the fact that school is often little more than a prison for children where they must stay for over a decade? What about the still widespread problem of child sexual abuse? What about barbaric practices such as circumcision? What about the epidemic of giving children drugs like Ritalin because they are so bored out of their minds in school that the only way to get them to conform is by giving them drugs? What about the huge amount of time that kids are stuck in daycare and the lack of time that parents spend with their kids?

Peterson didn’t tackle tackle any of these issues. He chooses to focus on making an argument for why you should immediately counter any testing of your or authority by your children with old fashioned discipline, including corporal punishment. He's chosen to focus on that because he argues a false dichotomy that as a parent you either spank your child and as a disciplinarian parent, or you leave your child to their own devices and they become dangerously antisocial.

Peterson doesn't say so explicitly, but we can infer from his arguments that he spanked his own children. He defends spanking extensively and doesn’t state anywhere that he has changed his mind or learned anything new since he was a parent himself. He is a psychology professor who discusses the topic of spanking without a single mention of the many studies that have demonstrated the harm that it does. The most charitable interpretation of this omission is that he is wilfully ignoring all of the evidence on the detrimental effects of spanking.

Peterson’s advocacy of disciplinarian parenting are probably a post-rationalisation of his own parenting practices, and perhaps an excuse for what his own parents did to him. He probably thinks that he turned out fine, and that he has great kids, therefore everything he did was great, and therefore spanking is probably good too. In writing a long excuse for his own behaviour as a parent instead of focussing on the real problems that children face, he has done children and parents a disservice.

Conclusion
Peterson is the most intelligent and well-argued advocate of aggressive parenting that I’m aware of. Yet he makes no valid arguments for the use of aggression in parenting. He can’t, because there are no good arguments for using aggression on children.

To make his defence of corporal punishment he had to ignore all the research literature on the bad effects of spanking. He had to rely on a controversial and outdated school of thought in psychology (behaviourism) as the only authority he could appeal to in trying to justify his aggressive style of dominance assertion against children. He had to ignore the entire field of child psychology, none of which supports spanking or aggressive parenting. He had to cherry-pick ideas from evolutionary psychology that seem to support aggression, whilst ignoring evolutionary psychology when it leads to promotion of practices such as co-sleeping. His arguments are so weak that he resorts to rhetorical techniques like asserting that anyone who disagrees with him is wrong and holds views that are “too simple”.

Peterson’s chapter on parenting is called “Don't Let Your Kids Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them”. But that that is a mealy-mouthed way of stating his views. He should heed his own advice and take responsibility for his views, which means not using the passive tense. His chapter should be titled “Don't Let Your Kids Do Anything That You Dislike Them Doing”, because that's what he is really saying. When you put it like that, it amounts to merely saying “Don't Let Your Kids Do Anything That You Don't Want Them To”, which is neither deep nor enlightened. It is merely a sophisticated excuse for indefensible aggression against children.

If you had seen what I have seen, working in the child care industry, you would understand that there is no "one size fits all" approach to parenting. Also, children are extremely sensitive to power, for the most part, particularly little boys....that's a generalization, but it plays out often enough to make it reliable.

There aren't that many people fit to be the best parents because they are not natural teachers, leaders and are somewhat boring. In our current social environment they are also super tired and stressed. If a child has a great parent, the child is exquisitely attuned to them and vice versa.

If the child does something wrong and the parent registers the slightest disapproval, the child feels an immediate dimming of the life force and will work double hard to reestablish the strong connection that has been temporarily altered. Prepubescant children are like dogs. They worship their parents like Gods. It's a default position. But....it's very important to establish a dominance hierarchy, through different means and many parents who equate a mild spanking, (not bare ass) with real violence, are the least likely to get that and have probably never had a highly (and naturally) aggressive child who is sure to become a raging bully if the parents are unable to establish boundaries through other means.

I think Peterson goes a bit far, but Jake Desylass is so soft and squishy, an aggressive little hard headed child would end up in the dominant position, right off the bat. People who say they would NEVER under any circumstance, spank a child, do the child as much of a disservice as those who regularly beat the difficult ones. Or, they have never experienced a truly impossible kid--one that will end up in jail without the right approach.


That's true, perspective matters.

This is a bit off-topic, but I have to say that I've always found Canada interesting. It feels like a cousin country of ours.

Well Wind, It's cold, politically similar, the people are solemn in the winter. That's for starters!:)

[Emil El Zapato]

well, that's interesting ... I think it is a bit more complex than even that. I agree with you for the most part and I was blessed with a sensitive girl child, so I never had to deal with that 'dominance' thing. Her mother is still fighting that battle as she is totally immersed in the 'dominance' thing. My approach was always that my daughter might have not been a fully formed human but she certainly was a human and I always respected her 'dignity' in that regard. I only had to discipline her once (i thought her behavior was egregious enough) ... I carried her out of Walmart when she insisted that she wanted something. It was the only time she ever misbehaved beyond what is the norm for most children.

A troubled child will present troubling challenges, I am not well-suited for those kinds of interactions. I realized that dealing with my daughter's mother. Those are exceptions when 'dominance' is a pre-requisite to a successful parenting experience. As someone familiar with childcare I would suggest that many of the problems you might have encountered were already in full bloom by the time you entered the picture. Created by mis-parenting, not of necessity, bad parenting just parenting sourced in a philosophy that a child has to be molded to conformity, in lockstep with social norms. I don't believe that is a good foundation, I think a better foundation is to allow a child to explore their own nature while guided to treat others in a respectful and thoughtful manner.

[Octopus Garden]

well, that's interesting ... I think it is a bit more complex than even that. I agree with you for the most part and I was blessed with a sensitive girl child, so I never had to deal with that 'dominance' thing. Her mother is still fighting that battle as she is totally immersed in the 'dominance' thing. My approach was always that my daughter might have not been a fully formed human but she certainly was a human and I always respected her 'dignity' in that regard. I only had to discipline her once (i thought her behavior was egregious enough) ... I carried her out of Walmart when she insisted that she wanted something. It was the only time she ever misbehaved beyond what is the norm for most children.

A troubled child will present troubling challenges, I am not well-suited for those kinds of interactions. I realized that dealing with my daughter's mother. Those are exceptions when 'dominance' is a pre-requisite to a successful parenting experience. As someone familiar with childcare I would suggest that many of the problems you might have encountered were already in full bloom by the time you entered the picture. Created by mis-parenting, not of necessity, bad parenting just parenting sourced in a philosophy that a child has to be molded to conformity, in lockstep with social norms. I don't believe that is a good foundation, I think a better foundation is to allow a child to explore their own nature while guided to treat others in a respectful and thoughtful manner.

Most children don't require spanking, like...ever. If they are obstinate and horrible, they are troubled. Something is wrong. You're right. There are a lot of sad little souls out there who are looking for a mother or father they can form a strong and healthy bond with. They don't get it from either parent. Children of extreme wealth and poverty have this in common and both are primed for narcissism as a consequence. It's a coping mechanism.

I'm not sure what you mean by social norms. Do you mean parents whose focus is making sure their children are 'successful' ? Some of that is understandable -- but when is a parental exercise in Narcissistic status seeking, it's destructive. Narcissism tends to run in families. The golden child becomes the narcissist, the black sheep is usually the most emotionally healthy within an unhealthy family dynamic.

But, some kids are born with a few psychopathic traits. Doesn't mean they are psychopaths, it just means they need a very strong, well informed parent who realizes what they are dealing with. If the parent is soft and compliant and the child is emotionally insensitive and callous, the child WILL rule and may terrorize their school mates and siblings. Different paradigms for different children.

I have only been in charge of one budding pure psychopath, with all the signature traits. out of hundreds of children. He was a 9 year old sadist who tried to terrorize younger children. His parents were warm and kind people who I felt very sorry for. I knew that neither I nor his parents would ever be able to make headway with him, so I turfed him out of the latch key.

[Emil El Zapato]

interesting dynamic ... seems like an intractable problem ... but I believe that psychopathy is learned AND parents are a likely source ... the psychopathic predisposition (I would say) is one of physiology more than personality ... fewer behavioral 'stops' in their makeup.

I overemphasized the notion of 'social norms', it would be an extreme example, but still I believe that 'guidance' is the only requirement, not a hierarchy. It seems that a natural hierarchy exists between parent and child as long as it is not perturbed by parental actions.

[Octopus Garden]

Callous unemotional traits

When Your Child is a Psychopath==The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/when-your-child-is-a-psychopath/524502/

Although the article claims the state found no evidence of emotional trauma, that's absurd. She was put up for adoption at 20 months and adopted out at 2 years of age. The severity of her condition hints at an underlying brain problem together with early disruption of a primary bond with attendant after effects. This is a really intriguing article. I couldn't put it down.

[Dreamtimer]

Seems is wasn't Russell who got under the skin here...

[Aragorn]

... but I believe that psychopathy is learned AND parents are a likely source ...

No, that's sociopathy. Psychopathy is a genetic/neurological predisposition. Sociopathy is an acquired one.

Psychopaths are born that way. Sociopaths are made that way.

[Emil El Zapato]

really those are interchangeable terms. once upon time 'sociopathy' more recently 'pyschopathy'. of course, there are different schools of thought. And it is possible that there are 'natural born' psychos, I tend to not agree with that. We are all born 'little angels'. :) Dennis Rader (BTK serial dude) is an example of one who didn't seem to have any parental 'markers'. But he had a long history of sibling abuse and in my opinion subtle parental influences will foment such behavior. Perhaps, it is a tipping point to the susceptible personality. It is by far a not straightforward process.

[Emil El Zapato]

Hi OG,

Having read the article the source problem is obvious. A disturbance of the 'attachment' principle. My adoptive older brother fits this mold pretty well. He was adopted (me too) when he was three. He had been determined an abused child and was put up for adoption.


Brain anomalies are a different category in my estimation. Someone with an abnormal brain might be described as psycho but what they really are is brain-damaged individuals exhibiting anti-social behaviors.

[Aragorn]

Brain anomalies are a different category in my estimation. Someone with an abnormal brain might be described as psycho but what they really are is brain-damaged individuals exhibiting anti-social behaviors.

I'm not so sure that it would qualify as brain damage. It's only brain damage when there are obvious defects.

A psychopath's brain works flawlessly. It just isn't capable of higher emotions. A psychopath can feel lust, yearning, rage, anxiety and lots of other low-level things, but they cannot feel love, compassion, remorse or sympathy. They can however quite often empathize, i.e. they can put themselves in somebody else's shoes, but without feeling any remorse or compassion. It's call very clinical and logical to them.

[Wind]

The scary thing about psychopaths is that they always try to manipulate people and they succeed in it quite well too.

If such people get into therapy, they still try to somehow convince others that they are "cured". Yet there is no cure for it.

There might be of course high functioning psychopaths who don't cause harm to others, but in general they view others as objects.

[Aragorn]

The scary thing about psychopaths is that they always try to manipulate people and they succeed in it quite well too.

If such people get into therapy, they still try to somehow convince others that they are "cured". Yet there is no cure for it.

There might be of course high functioning psychopaths who don't cause harm to others, but in general they view others as objects.

I think a lot of this misunderstanding comes from people assuming that the word "psychopath" would be synonymous with "serial killer" or "mass murderer". It is not. Those are different things, even though serial killers usually are psychopaths, and mass murderers usually are sociopaths.

As the matter of fact, most psychopaths lead a seemingly very normal life ─ albeit that they may abuse their family members in one way or the other ─ and the more intelligent ones are generally drawn to positions of power. Corporate executives, military leaders and politicians are good candidates. And sociopaths often fall into crime ─ anything from petty crimes to organized crime.

[Wind]

As the matter of fact, most psychopaths lead a seemingly very normal life ─ albeit that they may abuse their family members in one way or the other ─ and the more intelligent ones are generally drawn to positions of power. Corporate executives, military leaders and politicians are good candidates.

Yes, I think that's where nurture comes in. Such people have probably had a good upbringing and they didn't end up committing crimes if their childhoods weren't bad and abusive. They can be good in their jobs, but they also can be nasty bosses, leaders and overall ruthless people. Corporate world especially would favor such people as CEO's. They're superficially charming often.

[Elen]

And everybody missed Mooji's great message? All these negatives are "just in our heads", i.e. the mind is playing tricks on us. Just saying...

[Emil El Zapato]

Not yet, Elen ... I plan to get back to it. I'm sure it is a good one... :)

[Emil El Zapato]

and you are correct, It is all in my head, I'm really struggling with all the negativity right now.

[Wind]

Russell had good talks with Gabor.

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7FEoQOurpGo

[Emil El Zapato]

Well yes, on the critique, but I would go even further. Responsibility has more than one context and it is not just the one that Peterson espouses. The impetus of responsibility is survival, survival of self and genetic offspring and others that are part of the perceptual 'family'. If an individual is stymied at legitimate courses of action (legitimate as evaluated by social norms and mores) then the individual is by default forced into seeming illegitimate courses to meet survival goals. Well, there you have it all wrapped up in a nice neat package. And that goes utterly unrecognized by the 'good' half of society.

I'm liking that French dude ... :) oops Hungarian dude. Seems an individual well suited for his profession, unlike Peterson ... back to being nicey nice for me.

[Wind]

I'm liking that French dude ... :) oops Hungarian dude.

Who? Gabor Mate is Canadian.

[Emil El Zapato]

it's all the same, he be white, one of the good ones ... :) I hope you realize I am being completely sarcastic ... Normally, I would say I was just joking but I'm not in a joking mood.

[Emil El Zapato]

Here's the calming stuff that I promised. :)

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classic road to awareness, when one stops resisting, then the natural existent manifests. It's true. But if you need to scratch ... resist the urge... or you'll be a total failure as an enlightened one ... :)

[Wind]

it's all the same, he be white, one of the good ones ... :) I hope you realize I am being completely sarcastic ... Normally, I would say I was just joking but I'm not in a joking mood.

I read Gabor's profile and got what you meant there. I've felt for a while that this guy is something exceptional. Radical compassion!


Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944, Maté is a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. His maternal grandparents were killed in Auschwitz when he was five months old. His aunt disappeared during the war, and his father endured forced labour at the hands of the Nazis. He emigrated to Canada with his family in 1956. He was a student radical during the Vietnam War era in the late 1960s and graduated with a B.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

He has a background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development and trauma, and in their potential lifelong impacts on physical and mental health, including on autoimmune disease, cancer, ADHD, addictions, and a wide range of other conditions.

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[Emil El Zapato]

Hi Wind, yeah, I agree completely, but he has critics, of course.

What is obvious is that he cares. The attention he gets is natural as he is a rational competent psychologist. He isn't trying to dominate, he is trying to help ... :)

I've actually changed my opinion of Brand, there is a lot more to him that I actually suspected. :)

[Wind]

Hi Wind, yeah, I agree completely, but he has critics, of course.

He must be one of those dangerous Marxists! I'm only half-joking, but at least he sees the insanity of holy capitalism.


What is obvious is that he cares. The attention he gets is natural as he is a rational competent psychologist. He isn't trying to dominate, he is trying to help ... :)

Indeed and to me that is a sign of a compassionate, integrated soul.


I've actually changed my opinion of Brand, there is a lot more to him that I actually suspected. :)

I'm glad to hear that! He too is a man of compassion for sure. :)

[Wind]

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Documentary filmmaker Deeyah Khan is determined to confront hate and prejudice by meeting some of the most extremist groups in the world. She has sat down with White Supremicists in the US and interviewed former Jihadists to further understand what drives people to join these groups. Her film "White Right: Meeting The Enemy" won an Emmy and is available on Netflix. We discuss the role politics, class, feminism and everything in between plays in relation to this issue.

[Elen]

What a conversation that was! And it made a lot of sense. LOVE can change everything. :love:

Quote:


You're ruining the Nazis, taking them down one by one :)

[Wind]

Because of her Scandinavian sounding accent I thought she's Swedish, but I found out that she's actually Norwegian. :)

[Emil El Zapato]

I learned a new term last night, "flipping the tortilla" ... She flipped the tortilla.

[Emil El Zapato]

There is some chemistry going on there ... :)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCGc60YbE9M

[Wind]

I learned a new term last night, "flipping the tortilla" ... She flipped the tortilla.

Care to elaborate?

[Emil El Zapato]

sure, rather than putting the focus on the 'bad guys' ... she is putting the focus on 'us' ... Very admirable approach. She is correct, for sure. I don't have that kind of energy going. :)

[Emil El Zapato]

Incidentally the chemistry i referred to was between Brand and the interviewee ... I think they like each other ... physically.

ahh, they did it ... starting talking about sex ... did you notice how they both giggled. I nailed it again ... damn I'm good! :)

[Wind]

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"What’s happened now is that spiritual experiences since the 1970’s have been re-branded as things that are good for your health; this started with meditation. Meditation is now practiced by many millions of people, about 18 million Americans now meditate. And most meditation was traditionally carried out in order to connect with the realm of the spirit, whether it was Brahman or Nirvana or God… I mean, contemplative prayer in all traditions was a way of connecting with the Ultimate source of consciousness. But that’s not how it’s being portrayed in the secular world. It’s being portrayed as a way of reducing blood pressure, overcoming stress, leading a more fulfilling life, sleeping better… and I think much the same thing has happened with yoga. I mean yoga is part of a Hindu spiritual tradition, but in its Western export it’s all about keeping the body supple and attractive; good health, fitness and so forth.

These traditional spiritual practices have been secularized and it’s precisely because they’ve been secularized that it’s been possible for scientists to investigate them… I think it’s significant that there are several thousand papers on the effects of meditation — brain scans, physiological measurements, heart beat, stress-hormone levels like cortisol in the blood — but very, very few studies on prayer, because prayer is inherently religious, you can’t pray unless you believe there is a form of consciousness beyond yourself to which you pray, whereas you can meditate if you think it’s all going on inside your head. It’s much harder to treat prayer in a secular spirit than it is to treat meditation [in a secular spirit]…”

"We need to respond to our present ecological crisis practically, by making appropriate social, political, economic, and technological changes. We need to look at the attitudes that have led to such devastation of the earth and to find a more harmonious way of living. And those of us who believe in the power of prayer need to pray for forgiveness and guidance. If a wiser and juster human order comes about, if a new harmony develops between humanity and the living world, this would indeed seem like an answer to prayer."

~ Rupert Sheldrake

[Wind]

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[Emil El Zapato]

zZ7i2Y__O8Q


that's exactly correct ... Everything is connected. We all call it different things but it is the same thing. It is a thread between higher mind and the ineffable (it is why we give it different names, because we don't really know what it is or where it is but we know it exists. We have too much anecdotal evidence to think otherwise.)

[Wind]

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[Emil El Zapato]

A reflection of slavery as an improvement over blood sacrifice... hmm, not much of an improvement really.

[Dreamtimer]

I was just thinking about the corrupting patterns I've seen happen with people who have come into a lot of money.

[Emil El Zapato]

well, i'll take that bet ... :)

[Wind]

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[Wind]

I first saw this video a long time ago, that's when I really started to like Russell.

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Octopus Garden]

pkGVsxbUSdE

Excellent video. That clip of Tucker Carlson describing Christmas and repeating over and over what a nice country the U.S. is, so 'volkish'...right out of third reich propaganda. I swear these dudes are using the same playbook. And that is unique to republicans. Dems don't do that.

[Dreamtimer]

I watched the election meltdown video. Laughed with Russell at 1:23 when he's examining Tucker's words about our nation being so 'nice'.

My brother occasionally talks about things with the language of a playground child. I think some folks really do look at most other people as if they are children. And talk down to them.

Tucker says, "That's why we've fought off the metric system for years and thank Heaven we have." Lolol :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: What a crank.

Regarding Christmas: "It's not like an orgy made out of Mistletoe and sweet smelling pines..." Russell is still very funny.

[Emil El Zapato]

Actually, I think there are many sources of information (even on the net) to feed one's soul. They are categorically rejected by most, we can excuse the present company of Russell on this point. A quantum leap in consciousness could occur if the masses would just watch CNN. lolololololol....hahahahahahaha, :smiley-dance013::smiley-dance013::smiley-dance013::smiley-dance013::sarcastic::sarcastic::ok::ha::hilarious: :winner::rock::headspin::headspin::headspin::heads pin::headspin::headspin::headspin::headspin::heads pin::headspin::headspin::headspin::headspin:

[Wind]

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[Dreamtimer]

I love how Russell and Matthew both have the thoughtful finger on the face.

[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Emil El Zapato]

mask or demask a stark reality.

[Aianawa]

Finally starting to get some time to watch vids and do catch ups, oh life is so full atm, looking to watch this latest from Russell now, ta Wind

[Aianawa]

Always liked and enjoyed his play and sharing, sorta can get woo woo and logic it, a greatly needed guru in our times ( Guru = disspeller of dark n enhancer of light for another ).

[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Dreamtimer]

First instinct is no. It's not in our blood. People are tribal but culture wars are manufactured.

Ours has been manufactured over years by radio, television and now social media. It's exacerbated because that's where the money/clicks are. It's a lowest common denominator thing.

Move away from the angry radio/angry social media, the war will subside like a popped balloon.

[Wind]

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[Dreamtimer]

d4AduA8mgro

"Come for the global conspiracy, stay for the Toblerone." :lol::lol::lol:

Russell is a funny dude.

[Dreamtimer]

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At 6:55, Russell begins a guided meditation with eyes closed for three and a half minutes.

It's about reaching and maintaining connection with the awareness deep in the body.

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0c2x74mgU

[Aianawa]

ic2C30ElCSY

Well said Mr Brand, you may lead many to realness in your country one day.

[Emil El Zapato]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0c2x74mgU

"Could be an ulterior motive" ... Dirty Word -> "Global Capitalism" ...

in common ... nothing

the poor farmers are screaming for socialism ... what goddamn socialists ... no, the rich right does that, not the rich left.

but it could be ... the nature of capitalism is not a pretty one. Bill Gates sounds like mother Earth at work according to these people...But people are starving, but I don't think India is that healthy in terms of feeding its people... GMO's get better like anything else?

[Wind]

zbmAetjnV44

[Dreamtimer]

Funny thing. My husband mentioned Russel Brand the other day because someone looked like him. I mentioned that Russell had moved away from the tabloid lifestyle and into more contemplative or spiritual stuff.

The next day I was listening to one of these videos in the kitchen. He came in, saw, and said, "Hey, it's that guy." He listened for a bit and liked what he heard.

It's funny because we had watched the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall, funny film, and Brand played a New Age Guru. Kind of the opposite, or a caricature, of what he's actually doing.

[Wind]

OTbctiVgMHo
aN7UCUDzXGA

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdv06jXloD4

[Wind]

So what's your opinion about Bill, Vern? I know that Aragorn doesn't like him because he created Windows. :)

[Emil El Zapato]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdv06jXloD4

Really good one ... I'll start by saying most rightists around the globe are staunchly against giving power to the people. In America, we call them Unions.

Man vs Nature ... so far nature is winning. Governments won't help US ... too many rightists in the mix. Brand hits it on the nail head. Bill Gates is situated to use his power AGAINST governments. Transitions are painful, I wonder how many common folks were displaced and literally destroyed by the first Industrial Revolution? Many, I suspect.

Gates is the power broker but there are too many greedy hands in the supply chain route to the people that need help the most. Will that ever stop? One thing we know pretty certainly. The population keeps growing and the devastation of natural resources forges full steam ahead.


So what's your opinion about Bill, Vern? I know that Aragorn doesn't like him because he created Windows. :)

Check PA and you will know. It is just blindness to the realities we are faced with.

[Dreamtimer]

I stopped listening to this first one before it ended (https://jandeane81.com/showthread.php/13477-Russell-Brand-Under-the-Skin?p=842036207&viewfull=1#post842036207). Russell's guest makes a lot of observations that I don't think stand up. Like the idea that concern over Russia has suddenly disappeared. It hasn't. It's just maybe not the first headline right now. Headlines aren't all there is.

There are ongoing investigations to the varied hacks and long-term attacks. It's damaging and an ongoing threat.

But maybe not to Russell's guest.


He talks about hysteria during Trump's term, and then acts like nothing really happened. Not true at all. I'm not sure what specifics he has in mind, but Trump caused all kinds of major changes.

I just couldn't listen anymore.

Perhaps Russell's follow-up video is better. But I'm gonna listen to that a bit later.

The political landscape has changed quite a bit. It's barely business as usual right now. We have one of our two parties cleaving, we have a personality cult going much stronger than Reagan, we have agencies deliberately eroded and undermined which leads directly to stress, economic loss, and worsening problems which are already exacerbated by an utterly failed response to a pandemic.

We have never had the kind of politics before where our President flat out denied a clear and present danger to the well being of the American people. Night and day to the response to either 9/11 or Ebola.

The idea that it's just politics as usual holds no water as far as I can see.

[Wind]

Oe4MrUhuE60

[Dreamtimer]

The Bill Gates one was good.

[Wind]

zw0nYNMUIfA

[Wind]

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[Wind]

1GwpFQmXois

[Dreamtimer]

As the NSA and GCHQ hail the 75th anniversary of their alliance, successive presidents refuse to pardon #EdwardSwowden​ and a growing number of convicted whistleblowers. Were they traitors to their country, or is there another reason?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOceOnghdjg

[Emil El Zapato]

10 months imprisonment is the average sentence for a whitstleblower/revealer of info. Snowden made some very bad decisions AFTER he did the right thing. I'd bet dollars to donuts Obama was sincere in his statement that Snowden had the right of 'rule of law'. Snowden eschewed that option and headed for the hills .... a very bad move.

Is Trump talking about Assange?

[Wind]

I think yesterday here in Finland there was a rather big Covid protest, inspired by Germany... :facepalm:

0l5_wMFvY8M

[Emil El Zapato]

I think yesterday here in Finland there was a rather big Covid protest, inspired by Germany... :facepalm:

0l5_wMFvY8M

If I had known that it WASN'T against the law to taunt, hurl insults, or challenge the police, I would have had a hell of a lot more fun in the last 40 years. If I had survived it.

[Aianawa]

Will stand by what i have previously said, he is carrying on his fathers n co's work, research. Or Amazing Polly may help you as her research was xlent regards the family, another question back to you, look at old photo's of them as a couple and recent ones, remember tisa movie.

[Wind]

War sure is a good business.

3Z5yuHVDcl0

[Dreamtimer]

It's good business for some, anyway.

[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Emil El Zapato]

Actually, the benefits of the pandemic on social consciousness have been significant. People without power have never been part of the formula for civil functioning, they are the part of the mechanism that has the monkey wrench in it. Those with power are fortunate in that they can contribute to removing social glitches or if so inclined exacerbate them. We have difficulty determining who does what and why they do it. That's a big reason why we remain a glitch. Reset, hell yes if it clears the system.

M. King Hubbert was a huge advocate of a technocracy. He felt that 'engineers' were the only intellects capable of successful 'social engineering'. He was brilliant, at heart a true humanitarian. :) Kind of like Karl Marx.

Systems as large as global or even national economies will fail their people at some level, which is why graceful degradation of the system is truly what is of paramount importance. We are human after all.

whoops! I always confuse Hubbert and Hubbard ... :o

Hubbert was born in San Saba, Texas. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received his B.S. in 1926, his M.S. in 1928, and his Ph.D. in 1937, studying geology, mathematics, and physics. He worked as an assistant geologist for the Amerada Petroleum Company for two years while pursuing his Ph.D., additionally teaching geophysics at Columbia University. He also served as a senior analyst at the Board of Economic Warfare. He joined the Shell Oil Company in 1943, retiring from that firm in 1964. After he retired from Shell, he became a senior research geophysicist for the United States Geological Survey until his retirement in 1976. He also held positions as a professor of geology and geophysics at Stanford University from 1963 to 1968 and as a professor at UC Berkeley from 1973 to 1976.

Hubbert was an avid technocrat. He co-founded Technocracy Incorporated with Howard Scott. Hubbert wrote a study course that was published without attribution called the Technocracy Study Course, which advocates a non-market economics form of energy accounting, in contrast to the current price system method. Hubbert was a member of the board of governors and served as secretary of education in that organization.

- wiki -

[Aianawa]

Actually, the benefits of the pandemic on social consciousness have been significant. People without power have never been part of the formula for civil functioning, they are the part of the mechanism that has the monkey wrench in it. Those with power are fortunate in that they can contribute to removing social glitches or if so inclined exacerbate them. We have difficulty determining who does what and why they do it. That's a big reason why we remain a glitch. Reset, hell yes if it clears the system.

M. King Hubbert was a huge advocate of a technocracy. He felt that 'engineers' were the only intellects capable of successful 'social engineering'. He was brilliant, at heart a true humanitarian. :) Kind of like Karl Marx.

Systems as large as global or even national economies will fail their people at some level, which is why graceful degradation of the system is truly what is of paramount importance. We are human after all.

whoops! I always confuse Hubbert and Hubbard ... :o

Hubbert was born in San Saba, Texas. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received his B.S. in 1926, his M.S. in 1928, and his Ph.D. in 1937, studying geology, mathematics, and physics. He worked as an assistant geologist for the Amerada Petroleum Company for two years while pursuing his Ph.D., additionally teaching geophysics at Columbia University. He also served as a senior analyst at the Board of Economic Warfare. He joined the Shell Oil Company in 1943, retiring from that firm in 1964. After he retired from Shell, he became a senior research geophysicist for the United States Geological Survey until his retirement in 1976. He also held positions as a professor of geology and geophysics at Stanford University from 1963 to 1968 and as a professor at UC Berkeley from 1973 to 1976.

Hubbert was an avid technocrat. He co-founded Technocracy Incorporated with Howard Scott. Hubbert wrote a study course that was published without attribution called the Technocracy Study Course, which advocates a non-market economics form of energy accounting, in contrast to the current price system method. Hubbert was a member of the board of governors and served as secretary of education in that organization.

- wiki -

Concerning BOBXNAP, that you believe this, maybe feel n think from children and mothers perspectives, the fear and stress plus hopelessness etc created by the usual suspects time n time again, nope will leave it there.

Brand is intelligent and becoming as imo we watch, very wise and on to it also, data, facts and things that the likes of Amazing Polly were presenting are only now coming to light, Brand n co are hugely important even more so now.

[Emil El Zapato]

If you insist Aianawa. I feel you miss the irony in my every post. You have no trouble perceiving the fatalism, however. The issues we face are always deeper than what even one so glib as Mr. Brand can articulate. He is no doubt a sharp guy, but he retains his need to entertain. And you seem very entertained indeed... Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But it will take much more sober and erudite individuals than he to help us escape our mental binds. There is no real need to speculate on what might or might not be, we've got a pretty shithole thing going very well right now.

[Aianawa]

I know your not kidding, why it is so concerning, massively positive timeline we are on, truth fastelly being revealed daily, we are in the best movie ever, more people world over moving into their own power and atm slowly and powerfulllly plus silently, many many get it, we won, great movie and youi are the star.

[Wind]

apuygXKOnpI

[Wind]

v713lXQDTg0

[Wind]

SMoq9GoQmlE

[Wind]

y6Ea-Di9DsI

[Emil El Zapato]

y6Ea-Di9DsI

I believe it, after my 1st experience with LSD ... over the ensuing 12 hours (white microdot) I went through every aspect of my life that I wasn't happy with ... it was the beginning of a lifelong effort of self-improvement. It likely was already part of my personality and character but it really woke it up. I should have been doing shrooms in my 20's. In my mid-30's, now that I'm thinking about it, a psilocybin experience sent me on the road that I'm on now. Believe me, it's not never never land but it is better than the road to nowhere that I was on.


Brand is referring to 'situational depression' which is very different than the other types but in truth it might be even more effective under those conditions. A good party never hurt anyone. :)

[Wind]

I'm certainly interested in trying LSD and mushrooms, never done that before. I'd like to see how far the rabbit hole (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0) goes in Wonderland.

[Emil El Zapato]

Canceled


I'm certainly interested in trying LSD and mushrooms, never done that before. I'd like to see how far the rabbit hole (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0) goes in Wonderland.

Damn, canceled again ... :)

lol, it will take you lady gaga, depending on the dosage, typical for 'good' street goods back in the day one would hit a 'peak' in 3-4 hours, after that it was ease on down the road for as long as 8 hours. Shrooms aren't as intense but they last pretty long as well. Music and the opposite sex are mesmerizing in that state. The opposite sex thing might just be me, it wasn't the only substance that set me going that way.

[Wind]

Music and the opposite sex are mesmerizing in that state. The opposite sex thing might just be me, it wasn't the only substance that set me going that way.

LSD, good music and a woman together might be something special. If only I wasn't single, sigh...

_Ee3C2m3OXE

[Emil El Zapato]

LSD, good music and a woman together might be something special. If only I wasn't single, sigh...

_Ee3C2m3OXE

Trust in the greater power, Wind ... and mentally visualize what you want ... it could happen...

[Dreamtimer]

It's been so long for me. I think a micro-dose approach could be the best choice. I have taken no steps in that regard.

[Wind]

FEVtuXtgrqM

[Emil El Zapato]

Because the ones that did are as deluded as their rightward counterparts? Not possibly stupider though.

[Wind]

AnJDWnB-Ugc
2jxdwIkFdj8

[Dreamtimer]

I'm thinking my long held practice of not subscribing online and not downloading apps was a good one. I turn off my location services and I don't give sites permission. Not to say that my info isn't being taken anyway, but I'm not making it easy. And I'm not willingly leaving a trail.

I have only myself and my family to protect.

And I'm not interested in being a tool. I'm not an 'asset'.

I'm a person.

[Emil El Zapato]

The Intercept is essentially the only source reporting this 'extension' ... Naturally without context which could include an explanation of the agreed-upon extension being contingent upon 'pushers' not 'users'. How can anyone trust a report that is essentially only a 'headline'. A big problem in any media surely no less in 'alternative' media.

Greenwald has bailed from the Intercept due to his thinking that they are information censors and cheats (2020).

I want to hear the truth from any source that provides plenty of explanation, not from any source that is shoveling 'questionable bullshit'. Facts is Facts, opinions are like you-know-what.

[Wind]

TCYz8B33UHA

[Wind]

2LgGPygFHh4

[Emil El Zapato]

Your post about covid origin, Wind

If mainstream science has told the truth we will never believe it and if they lied it won't be declassified for a century.

[Dreamtimer]

That inflated lab suit looks like something out of a B movie.

But I'd also want all the possible protection when working with such organisms.

:peep::hiding:

[Wind]

KOqsg8jfecY

[Dreamtimer]

...
2jxdwIkFdj8

Snowden points out a problem with wild and unfounded conspiracy theories which is to jade people to actual ones. He also points out that they're done 'in plain sight'. The people doing it aren't really hiding it.

I found that quite interesting. One common observation about Trump, from many sides, was how he announced so much of what he intended, but it seemed so outrageous that people didn't take it seriously. And then he'd do it.

[Aianawa]

Indeed, laughed at the space force then it happened

[Wind]

cs8Qae0QgGw
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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Dreamtimer]

Sex bribes? I'm cool with beer bribes.;)

(I took no bribes. Made my decision. No accolades. No huzzahs. Just my own decision).

I also don't feel like a superhero as some have described. These viruses mutate and have breakthrough characteristics. There will likely be need for boosters or new vaccines as pathogens continue to spread around the globe.

[Aianawa]

Oh you missed this one, Russell catching up ?.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwAuSDQX_OY

[Dreamtimer]

This video was already posted in the Coronavirus thread, as it was on topic to that thread.

Obviously it's fine here as well since this is Russell's thread.

[Emil El Zapato]

I swear Brand must have been born in a cow pasture ... his grooming and etiquette are atrocious... just a personal thought ... maybe that's the image he wants to project but it is disgusting. :)

[Dreamtimer]

Interesting.

I don't mind the long hair. As long as it's washed.

I suppose he trims his beard. It doesn't seem to have food or snot in it.

He's got the spiritual vibe going so he wears the beads and such. As a comedian he was always shaven. But the long hair has been his thing as long as I've seen him.

[Emil El Zapato]

Interesting.

I don't mind the long hair. As long as it's washed.

I suppose he trims his beard. It doesn't seem to have food or snot in it.

He's got the spiritual vibe going so he wears the beads and such. As a comedian he was always shaven. But the long hair has been his thing as long as I've seen him.

you need to watch more of his videos ... :)

[Dreamtimer]

Lol.

Just what is his 'brand'?

[Wind]

Fh23DY5Zqwg

[Wind]

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[Emil El Zapato]

Time

Perception or reality ... McKenna is saying real. Interesting, surely a philosophical musing.

[Wind]

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[Wind]

ktJUQn6R4K4

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79xQW-jrcKA

[Wind]

If only I could have the possibility to speak to Alan Watts and Terence McKenna.

k5nOHZ6ARZI

[Wind]

y7krcU3A840

[Wind]

He should permanently move to Mars, let's hope his rocket won't explode.

uhMY23kgcKQ

[Wind]

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[Wind]

MavrN-4Kt8A

I can't stand the voice and thoughts of this weasel Ben Shapiro, anyone want to listen through all of it?

xMiug2sZ4Io

[Aianawa]

Keep beLIEving the news >


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GBcOCutzhc

[Wind]

AbcNzHg7v90
oyvuOR1HEIw

[Dreamtimer]

He should permanently move to Mars, let's hope his rocket won't explode.

uhMY23kgcKQ

What? Rich folks who got the biggest bailouts and the biggest tax cuts known to man are taking advantage of us? Really?

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLa5zAsj6V0

[Wind]

Now that's a head!

6icYoDgVWD4

[Emil El Zapato]

That's some fucked up shit and fake ...

[Emil El Zapato]

That's some fucked up shit and fake ...

Australopithecus africanus

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Australopithecus_africanus_face2_%28University_of_ Zurich%29.JPG/440px-Australopithecus_africanus_face2_%28University_of_ Zurich%29.JPG

Just so Russel knows: Homo Sapiens has the biggest 'member' of all the primates ... no need to be as crude as the guy who may actually have seen the cover of the 'Ascent of Man' ... sorry, it's the Beast in me... :)

[Dreamtimer]

In Game of thrones, Hodor comes running into a scene naked. He's quite well-endowed. The wildlling comments on how he's surely part giant.

[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Wind]

It's all a joke.

cJu3K730VOk
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[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGsZMYiF20g

[Wind]

I like how Russell has been exposing all of these shams and the sad part is that most of it seems to be true.

It tends to be a bit depressing to see how messed up it all is. Individual lives don't have to be a mess though.

bqysILJ83yc
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[Aianawa]

Thousands if not millions have been prior, saying what Brand is now saying, listening and actualllly hearing may depend upon who your willing to allow ?.

[Wind]

Russell is actually sane and makes some sense.

7ILYgJHo9iY

[Wind]

ZvhkqhqhmC4

[Dreamtimer]

Saying not to vote is a really bad idea. Right now, if we don't want warlords and even more death we need to vote en masse. As many of us as possible.

IMO, Russel is being very irresponsible on this topic.

[Wind]

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[Wind]

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[Aianawa]

Saying not to vote is a really bad idea. Right now, if we don't want warlords and even more death we need to vote en masse. As many of us as possible.

IMO, Russel is being very irresponsible on this topic.

Your trust in computers and government is amazing, so many audits in your country at present saying different though, admire your faith DT.

Always hoped and realiteeeed that Russell would begin this journey, imo he was n is going deep within, creating reality without, he be just beginning and very excited for him and those able to mind wise, be alongside and assist, help, n learn.



Y6QEobsPoiI
jwo_JGLfTsk

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvyCUqRBuyw

[Wind]

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[Aianawa]

Sign of the times that he can talk about this, as he would be gone one way or another not too long ago, for this data of late he is sharing, imo.

[Wind]

ijQkJAsXGvg

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB7dQh_TpUc

[Wind]

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[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAwrFmC8rIk

[Wind]

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[Wind]

s0c_qY22BAs

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASAe4FHyhn4

[Dreamtimer]

I'm just laughing at that title. What is Russell thinking?

We never for a moment were in Afghanistan for women's rights or freedoms. If we cared about that we would've altered our relationship with Saudi Arabia decades ago.

Liberals may have helped women's rights while we were there. That's what they do. But the war had nothing to do with women's rights. Nothing at all.

The liberals spearheaded exactly NOTHING when it comes to Afghanistan. The Dems, who aren't liberal, went along with the war. But Afghanistan and Iraq were spearheaded by the warmongers, most of whom are conservative.

Liberals mostly aren't into war, which is why the Dems lost so many votes.

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhaArRyf9ZU

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzoRaltZ7co

[Aianawa]

Mmmm will dear Russell also get put in the hoax section ?.

[Emil El Zapato]

Mmmm will dear Russell also get put in the hoax section ?.

He's not a hoax Aianawa ... post the one about his discussion with Candace what's her name. When I saw this the 1st time I thought he got squashed by her but then I saw a discussion of the discussion with Kuklinski and Ballbuster that claimed it was the other way around. My 1st thought was, wha'! but I watched it through. It did indeed look like Brand got the best of Aunt Tommy. I'm still a little 'confused' about the perceptual difference. I haven't compared the two videos to look for editing of either.

Talk about time dimensional slips and the mandala effect. The cat across the street I've been calling 'Max' for years. I was certain that his owner before he passed always called him Max. I found out earlier this week that his name is 'Tex'. Actually, I call him the 'big black monster', 14 lbs of kick my cat's ass. I really think my cat is the instigator of their battles because I swear I've seen TexMax try to negotiate and be friends with "Kitty got toes" but my cat will have nothing to do with it. Anyway, after several trips through the years to the vet to repair injuries I think they have finally reached an impasse, age has evened things out I believe.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzoRaltZ7co

Why would anybody not take the blue pill?

As described by Morpheus: "You take the blue pill...the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill...you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." Neo chooses the red pill and joins the rebellion.

[Aianawa]

Tisa the Awakening thread BOBNAP

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR5jtBtySsM

[Emil El Zapato]

Tisa the Awakening thread BOBNAP

I woked up after I took my blue pill last night, Aianawa ... melatonin.

[Aianawa]

Now that Mr Brand is up with the play, imo, and doing great research and feeling in to, producing Xlent vids still >


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fQ6JklHjBc

Talking about things i am not allowed to talk about, will tptb here put him in the hoax section ?, Wind is a Mod and endorses hoaxs yes ?.

[Emil El Zapato]

Now that Mr Brand is up with the play, imo, and doing great research and feeling in to, producing Xlent vids still >


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fQ6JklHjBc

Talking about things i am not allowed to talk about, will tptb here put him in the hoax section ?, Wind is a Mod and endorses hoaxs yes ?.

Brand is not ALL about hoaxes, but he is disgusting ... :) You know the non-system has complained for decades that the control of new pharmaceuticals has been much too tight and hurting people that were in desperate need of them. So how do you make Hegelian Dialectics and Double-Binds happy at the same time. Talk about 4-dimensional chess ... Homo Saps are hopeless.

[Wind]

Russell is very much on the money... I have not recently watched him much because I already know all of that and it's just depressing.

[Dreamtimer]

Aianawa, have you not yet learned the metrics of threads being banned?

I see you still just want to redefine reality to your convenience.

Good luck with that.

Reality will come knocking hard when it does.

[Wind]

0k6X03XvxWw

[Aianawa]

Still not in hoax section, surprising indeed.

[Aianawa]

Nearly missed this one


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfxnKgCN3OY

[Emil El Zapato]

I've mentioned this before: Coincidence doesn't comprise causality or collusion. Which is what the Department of Justice concluded. Look a little deeper.

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZQZot3GHAU

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44B-OJcOXxc

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4OgTtNy53Y

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHTKloG7rSk

[Dreamtimer]

My comment in the Rock n' Hard Place thread stands. Russell us using all kinds of fear and anxiety language in his videos. I don't like it. He's looking more and more like he's fishing in rabbit-holes.

But he's an entertainer. That's what he's doing.

There may be wisdom to be gleaned. But I won't be wading through what looks and sounds like fear porn.

[Wind]

I like Russell a lot and I think he is correct about many of the things he talks about and is trying to expose all that shit, however...

Lately I have not bothered to watch his videos anymore on his main channel. I think he is getting more sensationalist and also is aiming for the clicks with the titles, juicy headlines get more views. He should stick to spirituality. Thankfully he has that other channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/AwakeningWithRussell/videos).

[Aianawa]

See members are becoming worried and scared of Russell, so funny, these 3 vids of late have a noospheric equivaliant as such, wow you know that soon you will have to put him in the non truth section, he will have good company though.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69hcU0aspDs


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbzyirwnoQ


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsJTRUaMZ0

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWy0-_w_Seg

[Emil El Zapato]

Aragorn, has called Bill Gates a psychopath and I've often disagreed. I judged not on his persona but his actions both pre and post Microsoft. A recent estimate that I saw claimed that 1 in 5 CEOs are likely psychopaths. The odds are not in Gates' favor. :)

[Aianawa]

Aragorn, has called Bill Gates a psychopath and I've often disagreed. I judged not on his persona but his actions both pre and post Microsoft. A recent estimate that I saw claimed that 1 in 5 CEOs are likely psychopaths. The odds are not in Gates' favor. :)

That your catching on is good news BOBNAP.

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiJQmahbGP8&t=72s

Nice and Real


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZz1Y_djlKQ

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubsoMhunu-U

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_0u-N5lIck

[Dreamtimer]

Most (I believe) very rich people think every one else is an idiot. Too much money/power messes with a person's brain and they begin to think they're superior.

[Aianawa]

Added aspect of protecting wealth once gotten, not helpfullll.

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-A027BFV7k

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTtzGhYd0Po

[Aianawa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj0M0dqTRUQ

[Emil El Zapato]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj0M0dqTRUQ

I thought the movie was weird, particular the Natalie Portman character and the dynamic between her and that masked one (that in and of itself is a betrayal of 'true freedom' some confused humans would say today). But obviously it is a playback of Anglo world history. Albeit, dark that it is.

[Wind]

You should read the comic, one of the best ones out there besides Watchmen.

Hugo Weaving was amazing in that movie, so much emotion conveyed through a mask.

V was also showing Evey the way to freedom from her own prison, her mind.

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