Jordan Peterson: Beware of the Concepts Buried within Questions

Jordan Peterson is making an excellent point here, one that will be instantly recognizable to experienced attorneys. Every time a question is asked, various concepts are embedded in the question. In this video, the question considered is "Do you believe in God?" Anyone who answers this without questioning the meaning of God is committing intellectual malpractice.

Einstein believed in "God," but that "God" was nothing like the God of the Abrahamic religions. Einstein said, Einstein said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” Now consider typical understandings of "God," the understandings of most religious believers.

Consider these two dramatically different meanings of "God.  Now consider how different these two conversations would be! To proceed with this conversation about "God" without first coming to a common understanding of the meaning of "God" would amount to two ships passing in the night, even though it might, for awhile at least, seem to be a meaningful conversation. It would be, in fact, a waste of time.

There are limits to the power of words, of course. Meaning is ultimately squishy, no matter how hard we try to pin down the meanings of words. There is no perfect etched in stone definition to most concepts, so we need to proceed in the face of somewhat (or wildly) imprecise definitions or else we can't ever have these conversations.  On the other hand, proceeding with a conversation without any effort to make sure that we all know what we are talking about, is folly.

Continue ReadingJordan Peterson: Beware of the Concepts Buried within Questions

Colin Wright Warns of the Danger Posed by Innocuous-Seeming Requests for “Pronouns”

I have no business telling any adult what to do with his or her body. That is their own business. It's a different story with children. We need to make sure that our children (and their parents) are not being given false information that leads to irreversible physical damage to their bodies (cross-sex hormones and surgeries), in many cases leading to sterility. There are real cases of gender dysphoria but, historically speaking, they have been rare (1/10,000) and they have overwhelmingly been boys. Today, almost 2% of teenagers are claiming to be transgender and they are overwhelmingly girls who tend to fall into social clusters, which would not be expected if dysphoria were truly a medical condition.

What is going on and why should be be concerned? Much of the left-leaning news media cheerleads for those who promote gender ideology and totally ignore the numerous and growing cases of those teenagers who detransitioned--who permanently altered their bodies, often through double mastectomies then, years later, declared that they were, indeed, the sex aligning with their chromosomes, their gametes and their sex organs readily apparent at birth. It's not rocket science to figure out the sex of most people (intersex cases are extremely rare). These stories by numerous detransitioners are extremely difficult to read. They are stories of deep regret, stories of how these teenagers got caught up in a fad encouraged by their peers, and enabled by well-meaning activist school teachers and counselors, as well as almost instant access to cross-sex hormones, often at Planned Parenthood. The parents are often concerned that they must allow their children to transition based on commonly touted but false statistics and unsubstantiated claims that suicide is the only other option.

Biologist Colin Wright recently wrote "How to Make a Trans Kid." It is well-written and accurate upon my own extensive readings. I recommend reading Wright's entire article. Here is an excerpt:

Most people understand the terms “man” and “boy” refer to adult and adolescent human males, respectively, and that “woman” and “girl” refer to adult and adolescent human females, respectively. These are not “identities,” but terms that describe objective facts about one’s age and biological sex.

Gender ideology, conversely, is a belief system asserting that what makes someone a woman or a girl, or a man or a boy, has nothing whatsoever to do with their sex, but is based entirely on the social roles and stereotypes with which they “identify.” Therefore, a person who identifies with feminine roles and stereotypes is a girl or woman, and a person who identifies with masculine roles and stereotypes is a boy or man—regardless of their biological sex. According to gender ideology, people who do not identify with the social roles and stereotypes typically associated with their sex are considered “transgender.”

That’s Gender Ideology 101. If it comes across as completely insane, that’s because it is.

Gender ideology has therefore proven to be a hard sell for many adults who rightfully view such ideas as regressive and sexist. After all, this worldview entails that a woman who does not fully embrace femininity is not actually a woman, and a man who does not embrace masculinity is not actually a man. If this sounds similar to the regressive and oppressive system that women’s and other human rights groups fought for decades to overcome, that’s because it is. But it’s actually much worse, since it also promotes the idea that a “mismatch” between one’s sex and “gender identity” can be medically “corrected” with hormones and surgeries.

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Blown Opportunities in Ukraine

Aaron Maté gives us context you won't hear from most legacy news outlets:

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has presented the White House with a geopolitical crisis that it played a critical role in creating. In February 2014, Victoria Nuland, a current senior State Department official and former Dick Cheney advisor, was caught on tape plotting the installation of a new Ukrainian government – a plan, she stressed, that would involve Biden and his then-top aide, and current National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. Weeks later, the democratically elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted and replaced by Washington-backed leaders – including a prime minister selected by Nuland.

The regime change in Kiev made Biden the most influential US political figure in Ukraine, as underscored by the lucrative Burisma board seat gifted to his son Hunter. While the Biden family and other well-connected players profited, Ukraine fell into civil war. In the eastern Donbas region, Kremlin-backed Ukrainian rebels took up arms against a fascist-infused coup government that cracked down on Russian culture and countenanced murderous assaults on dissidents. Rather than promote the 2015 Minsk II accords -- the agreed-upon formula for ending the Donbas conflict – the US fueled the fight with a weapons and training program that turned Ukraine into a NATO proxy. Influential US politicians left no doubt about their intentions. As the Donbas war raged, lawmakers declared that they were using Ukraine to “fight Russia over there” (Adam Schiff) and vowed to “make Russia pay a heavier price,” (John McCain). In February of this year, Russia invaded to bring the eight-year fight to an end, leaving Ukraine to pay the heaviest price of all.

The Biden administration shunned multiple opportunities to prevent the Russian assault. When Russia submitted draft peace treaties in December 2021, the White House refused to even discuss the Kremlin’s core demands: a pledge of neutrality for Ukraine, and the rollback of NATO military forces in post-1997 member states that neighbor Russia. At the final round of talks on implementing Minsk II in early February, the “key obstacle,” the Washington Post reported, “was Kyiv’s opposition to negotiating with the pro-Russian separatists.” Siding with Ukraine’s far-right, which had threatened to overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky if he signed a peace deal, the US made no effort to encourage diplomacy. Emboldened to escalate its war on the Donbas, the Ukrainian government then massively increased shelling on rebel-held areas in the days immediately preceding Russa’s February 24th invasion.

Looking back at the pre-invasion period, Jack Matlock, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union under Bush I, now concludes that “if Ukraine had been willing to abide by the Minsk agreement, recognize the Donbas as an autonomous entity within Ukraine, avoid NATO military advisors, and pledge not to enter NATO,” then Russia’s war “probably would have been prevented.”

Why would we be so stupid? Why would put all the citizens of the US and of the world at risk over the Donbas, which most Americans don't care about and had never even heard of?

This might be the answer, which makes total sense given that we blew hundreds of billions of dollars on Afghanistan with no credibly articulated metric of success (until we unilaterally pulled out). The White House is starting to admit that neither side can "win" this war in the Ukraine. That, not a problem, because the goal is endless war, as Julian Assange explained:

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