Todays world

February 21, 2018

A Weak and Crumbling Foundation

By Deana Chadwell

What do humans do when they discover – albeit subconsciously – that everything they've believed in is wrong – is, in fact, evil?  Are folks likely to do a face-palm; shake their heads; and say, "Can't believe I bought into such stupidity!"?  Sometimes the truly honest among us will do that, but it doesn't happen often.  When the ground shakes under us, we are more likely to just mindlessly grab for the nearest support.

If we grew up certain:

• that God is just a convenient fairy tale;
• that the government's purpose is to take the place of indulgent parents;
• that sexual desires, all sexual desires should be fulfilled ASAP;
• that people are just the evolutionary top of the food chain;
• and are merely animals and therefore expendable;
• that drugs are enlightening;
• that truth is nonexistent;
• and that, most important of all, utopia is within our reach because we know better than God how to organize a nation,

...then what do we do when we see even our most important leaders functioning as if there is no moral code?  What do we think when the people we see as special turn out to be sexual predators?  How are we to understand our misery when our children OD on opioids, kill themselves over Facebook bullying, or kill others just because they are angry or want to be famous?  How do we handle it when we pray to the God we no longer believe in and get no response at all?

What do we do?  Most people look around desperately for someone else to blame, or even better, some inanimate object to hold accountable.  Ban guns!  It takes no moral courage to blame a thing, but it takes massive internal fortitude to look in the mirror and blame the unsustainable ideas we've held dear now for several generations.

It's hard to look at the slaughter of our children in a schoolyard, but we are still willing to kill them by the thousands in an abortion facility.  It's horrifying to see the damage wrought by social media, but we don't have the stomach to face down our spoiled children and deny them access.  It makes us sick to see the sexualization of our young children, but we're too spoiled ourselves to limit our own indulgence in nearly pornographic television.  We don't seem to have the national backbone to admit our part in the destruction of our offspring.

So we demand the banning of guns. We don't fall on our knees and confess our faithlessness to the God who made us free and prosperous.  We don't change our own behavior, vow to make a go of our marriages, and raise our children with both love and discipline.  We don't look with a more critical eye at the policies that contributed to our fractured families; our failing schools; our angry, drug-addled youths.  No.  We scream, "Ban guns!"  Maybe if we scream it loudly enough, the guilt will go away.

And the screamers don't follow up their hollering with careful thinking about what taking guns out of our society would look like.  There are over 300 million privately owned firearms in this country.  We understand – those of us who know anything about history – how important it is that we keep them.  We know that all our other rights rest on the right to defend ourselves against tyranny.  I'm not giving up mine without a fight, and I don't think I'm alone in that.  The confiscation of guns in America will be a bloodbath that makes Parkland look insignificant.

But the deep panic that the unwitting left feels at the blatant, obvious, horrifying evidence that all their most prideful beliefs are bogus is not going to allow any self-searching.  Will there be curriculum meetings sprouting up all over the country to determine if we're teaching only what's truly wholesome and productive?  I don't see that happening.  Will Congress take a fresh look at how welfare policies affect family structure?  Not likely, and if they did, where would we find the strong, stalwart men to step up and become great fathers?  We are training our young men to be women, so how is that going to work?  Are we likely, as an entire culture, to realize that law and a godless moral code can't protect us from evil?  It's easier to ban guns, or at least to vociferously demand that.  I'm not sure the reality really matters to the screamers.

I take heart in knowing that a society can be swayed by only a small percentage of us thinking clearly.  I am reassured when I remember Abraham bargaining with God over Sodom; God agreed to save it if only 10% were good, God-fearing people.  I take heart in our current administration; Trump seems to be thinking clearly and several steps ahead of his opponents.  His Cabinet appears to understand what is at stake here.

It was Jesus Christ who said, "And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free."  The truth isn't always comfortable, or flattering, and when ignored long enough, it can be excruciating when finally acknowledged.  Therefore, truth is under attack today, but it is still readily available; if we want truth, we can still get it, though it wouldn't be surprising to find that after they ban guns, the Bible will be next.

Not a day goes by anymore that we don't come face to face with the evidence that our progressive worldview stands on a weak and crumbling foundation.  Science is dealing blow after blow to godless evolutionary theories.  Our liberal educational ideas are proving counterproductive.  Our laissez-faire childrearing practices are evidently inadequate.  The way we care for our poor causes more problems than it solves.  We don't want to control our own behavior, but we resent the police who then have to do it for us.

The Parkland shooting proves that our culture is a disaster, not that our gun policies are.  We need to be able to face that fact, or there will be hell to pay.

The Gender Battle

Boys set up to fail by the system

JORDAN PETERSON

Boys like competition, and they don’t like to obey, particularly when they are adolescents; below left, a protest march against sexism, racism and bigotry in Sydney

The gender equity push has been a hollow success for educated women
Boys are suffering, in the modern world. They are more disobedient
— negatively — or more independent — positively — than girls, and they suffer for this, throughout their pre-university educational career.

They are less agreeable (agreeableness being a personality trait associated with compassion, empathy and avoidance of conflict) and less susceptible to anxiety and depression, at least after both sexes hit puberty. Boys’ interests tilt towards things; girls’ interests tilt towards people.

These differences, strongly influenced by biological factors, are most pronounced in the Scandinavian societies where gender equality has been pushed hardest: this is the opposite of what would be expected by those who insist, ever more loudly, that gender is a social construct. It isn’t. This isn’t a debate. The data is in.

Boys like competition, and they don’t like to obey, particularly when they are adolescents. During that time, they are driven to escape their families and establish their own existence. There is little difference between doing that and challenging authority. Schools, which were set up in the late 1800s to inculcate obedience, do not take kindly to provocative and daring behaviour, no matter how toughminded and competent it might show a boy (or a girl) to be.

Other factors play their role in the decline of boys. Girls will, for example, play boys’ games, but boys are much more reluctant to play girls’ games. This is in part because it is admirable for a girl to win when competing with a boy. It is also OK for her to lose to a boy.

For a boy to beat a girl, however, it is often not OK — and just as often, it is even less OK for him to lose. Imagine that a boy and a girl, aged nine, get into a fight. Just for engaging, the boy is highly suspect. If he wins, he’s pathetic. If he loses — well, his life might as well be over. Beat up by a girl.

Girls can win by winning in their own hierarchy — by being good at what girls value, as girls. They can add to this victory by winning in the boys’ hierarchy. Boys, however, can win only by winning in the male hierarchy. They will lose status, among girls and boys, by being good at what girls value.

It costs them in reputation among the boys, and in attractiveness among the girls.

Girls aren’t attracted to boys who are their friends, even though they might like them, whatever that means. They are attracted to boys who win status contests with other boys. If you’re male, however, you just can’t hammer a female as hard as you would a male. Boys can’t (won’t) play truly competitive games with girls. It isn’t clear how they can win. As the game turns into a girls’ game, therefore, the boys leave.

Are the universities — particularly the humanities — about to become a girls’ game? Is this what we want? The situation in the universities (and in educational institutions in general) is far more problematic than the basic statistics indicate. If you eliminate the science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs (excluding psychology), the femalemale ratio is even more skewed.

Almost 80 per cent of students majoring in the fields of healthcare, public administration, psychology and education, which comprise one-quarter of all degrees, are female. The disparity is still rapidly increasing. At this rate, there will be very few men in most university disciplines in 15 years.

This is not good news for men. It might even be catastrophic news for men. But it’s also not good news for women.

Career and marriage
The women at female-dominated institutes of higher education are finding it increasingly difficult to arrange a dating relationship of even moderate duration. In consequence, they must settle, if inclined, for a hook-up or sequential hook-ups.

Perhaps this is a move forward in terms of sexual liberation, but I doubt it. I think it’s terrible for the girls. A stable, loving relationship is highly desirable for men as well as women.

For women, however, it is often what is most wanted. From 1997 to 2012, according to the Pew Research Centre, the number of women aged 18 to 34 who said a successful marriage is one of the most important things in life rose from 28 to 37 per cent. The number of young men who said the same thing declined from 35 to 29 per cent. During that time, the proportion of married people over 18 continued to decline, down from three-quarters in 1960 to half now. Finally, among never-married adults aged 30 to 59, men are three times as likely as women to say they do not ever want to marry (27 v 8 per cent).

Who decided, anyway, that career is more important than love and family? Is working 80 hours a week at a high-end law firm truly worth the sacrifices required for that kind of success? And if it is worth it, why is it worth it? A minority of people (mostly men, who score low in the trait of agreeableness, again) are hyper-competitive, and want to win at any cost. A minority will find the work intrinsically fascinating. But most aren’t, and most won’t, and money doesn’t seem to improve people’s lives, once they have enough to avoid the bill collectors.

Furthermore, most high-performing and high-earning females have high-performing and highearning partners — and that matters more to women. The Pew data also indicates a spouse with a desirable job is a high priority for almost 80 per cent of never-married but marriage-seeking women (but for less than 50 per cent of men). When they hit their 30s, most of the top-rate female lawyers quit their high-pressure careers. Only 15 per cent of partners at the 200 biggest US law firms are women.

This figure hasn’t changed much in the past 15 years, even though female associates and staff attorneys are plentiful. It also isn’t because the law firms don’t want the women to stay around and succeed. There is a chronic shortage of excellent people, regardless of sex, and law firms are desperate to retain them.

The women who leave want a job — and a life — that allows them some time. After law school and articling and the few first years of work, they develop other interests. This is common knowledge in the big firms (although it is not something that people are comfortable articulating in public, men and women alike).

I recently watched a McGill University professor, female, lecture a room full of female law partners or near-partners about how lack of childcare facilities and “male definitions of success” impeded their career progress and caused women to leave. I knew most of the women in the room.

This is an edited extract from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Dr Jordan Peterson, Allen Lane, out now, $35.
We had talked at great length. I knew they knew that none of this was at all the problem. They had nannies, and they could afford them. They had already outsourced all their domestic obligations and necessities.

They understood as well that it was the market that defined success, not the men they worked with. If you are earning $C650 an hour in Toronto as a top lawyer, and your client in Japan phones you at 4am on a Sunday, you answer. Now. You answer now even if you have just gone back to sleep after feeding the baby.

You answer because some hyper-ambitious legal associate in New York would be happy to answer if you don’t — and that’s why the market defines the work.

The increasingly short supply of university-educated men poses a problem of increasing severity for women who want to marry, as well as date. First, women have a strong proclivity to marry across or up the economic dominance hierarchy. They prefer a partner of equal or greater status. This holds true cross-culturally.

The same does not hold, by the way, for men, who are perfectly willing to marry across or down (as the Pew data indicates), although they show a preference for somewhat younger mates. The recent trend towards the hollowing-out of the middle class has also been increasing as resource-rich women tend more and more to partner with resource-rich men.

Because of this, and because of the decline in high-paying manufacturing jobs for men (one of six men of employable age is currently without work in the US), marriage is now something increasingly reserved for the rich. I can’t help finding that amusing in a blackly ironic manner.

The oppressive patriarchal institution of marriage has now become a luxury. Why would the rich tyrannise themselves? Why do women want an employed partner, and preferably one of higher status? In no small part it’s because women become more vulnerable when they have children. They need someone competent to support mother and child when that becomes necessary. It’s a perfectly rational compensatory act, although it may also have a biological basis.

Why would a woman who decides to take responsibility for one or more infants want an adult to look after as well? So, the unemployed working man is an undesirable specimen and single motherhood an undesirable alternative. Children in father-absent homes are four times as likely to be poor. That means their mothers are poor, too. Fatherless children are at much greater risk for drug and alcohol abuse. Children living with married biological parents are less anxious, depressed and delinquent than children living with one or more non-biological parents. Children in single-parent families are also twice as likely to commit suicide.

The strong turn towards political correctness in universities has exacerbated the problem. The voices shouting against oppression have become louder, it seems, in precise proportion to how equal — even now increasingly skewed against men — the schools have become.

There are whole disciplines in universities forthrightly hostile towards men. These are the areas of study dominated by the postmodern/neo-Marxist claim that Western culture, in particular, is an oppressive structure created by white men to dominate and exclude women (and other select groups); successful only because of that domination and exclusion.

The disparity is still rapidly increasing. At this rate, there will be very few men in most university disciplines in 15 years