We need to find new ways of talking about things. And not just because the open internet is so toxic and is about to be world-without-sinned into oblivion.

It’s been a topic of some of the weekly newsletter video Q&As (TARL cables) but you’re not going to catch bird flu from listening to people with whom you are not in 100% worldview alignment with.

And, frankly, it’s better for your mental health to do so. I’ve been saying for quite a few years now that -however much I love him- Bob Wilson’s milquetoast approach to ‘reality tunnels’ keeps people in the shallow end when it comes to magic because the world and its datasets have certainly moved on.

But… shit. That doesn’t mean you can all go brainwash the fuck out of yourselves. It doesn’t mean throw the whole reality tunnel thing out. What’s going on in the digital world today -if I ever needed one- is a firm and shining reminder of why I am and will remain a chaos magician: Because the majority of the world is composed of increasingly-radicalised idiots at both ends of the spectrum and -I promise you- they are all wrong. All of them. Ideologies are dangerous and reduce the diversity of the universe.

The quotation that forms the title of this post is one by Professor Jordan Peterson during his recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. If you haven’t seen it/listened to it, congratulations. Your weekend just filled up.

Professor Peterson is a good example -for me, anyway- of listening to someone with whom I’m not in 100% alignment with. For instance, I wouldn’t give a shit about pronouns were I a teacher but he is right to be pushing back on the thought criminalisation of dissent. It’s exactly the kind of totalitarian law that breaks the thing it is trying to improve: Either you have a robust educational system where educators have the space to educate and challenge or you have a brainwashing factory.

Even though Professor Peterson is -I presume- out of political alignment with the majority of readers of this blog, I made the decision to post about it when he said that university administrators have paid themselves by robbing their students of future prosperity. It’s an example of the kind of new insight you can get by eating further along the salad bar, so to speak.

So watch it if you haven’t. (I actually want to apologise more for you having to listen to Rogan rather than Peterson. His tiny, Scooby-Doo, DMT-in-the-brain, dumb-person’s-version-of-what-a-smart-person-thinks, vanilla-flavoured worldview is unfortunately on show. Seems like a nice enough guy but I can only stand to watch about two of his shows a year.)

Using law to mandate words and thoughts is literally the sin of the Demiurge. Not figuratively… literally. And what a psychologist is good at is examining and exploring the psychological underpinnings of finding a particular worldview appealing. Glossing over the tens of millions of deaths brought about by socialism because “you wouldn’t do that” is exactly the kind of dictatorial thinking that leads to mass death. It is the sin of Morgoth, of Sauron, of Yaldabaoth: I will make it better by force. It is the world without sin by any means.

It is also interesting to watch a psychologist talk about how the Left is radicalising the Right and vice versa… (which I suspect is entirely by design, of course) so no one at all wins if we continue the way we are going. Again, the underlying psychology is pretty solid.

And we shouldn’t continue the way we are going. I suppose the good news is that we are now forced to achieve progressive goals in ways that I consider to be sustainable. (i.e. not as pointless treats -like pronoun laws- to make you look the other way while the Empire destroys the whole world.)

Let me tell you what I mean about sustainable ways. If you look back over the social justice movements of the early and mid 20th century, you will see their principal targets were changes in law rather than culture. And they were hugely successful.

In less than a century -beginning at a time when slavery was still in living memory and women couldn’t vote- it is now illegal in most of the Western world to discriminate in the workplace by gender, race, age, immigrant status or anything else. It is illegal to deliver government services, healthcare, financial services, tourism and hospitality services, differently depending on someone’s race or gender or anything else.

It is against the law to offer salary based on gender or race. No one is excluded from voting based on gender or race. This isn’t exactly Saudi Arabia where -instead of being microagressed in a location of monstrous privilege such as the hall of an Ivy League university- women cannot even drive.

There is a very good and strategic reason why those early social justice movements focused on law. Change the law first and the culture will follow. Try to change the culture with law and you get totalitarianism.

This is what Prof Peterson is talking about in the above video. And it also presents us with our next opportunities, our next magical targets if you will. I know it upset baby activists when they get to university but the reality is they have shown up to the battle a few decades too late. Their ancestors have already won for them equal rights under the law – or at least we are about 90% of the way there. (Looking at social media you would think we were back in the Jim Crow era.) What we need to have now is the equivalent of equal rights under the law which is equitable participation in culture.

Demography takes care of the rest. in my podcast discussion with Lasara, I mentioned that I had only witnessed maybe one or two instances of overt sexism or homophobia in my 20 years in the workplace – and none from people who were my age or younger.

Now, I want to give you an example of -I hesitate to call it “structural” because I think that is an inaccurate description of how difference works- so let’s call it unthinking treatment:

My first “proper job” was with a national newspaper in New Zealand. This involved a large amount of corporate hospitality. The heterosexual male members of the commercial team would regularly play golf with their heterosexual male clients. I was invited once when I first joined the company but -and this is a true stereotype I suppose- I don’t play golf and I don’t find it at all interesting. So I politely declined.

I wasn’t asked again. My teammates were not homophobic in the slightest. But nevertheless -through my own actions as well, I stress- I had less of an opportunity to build rapport with those particular clients. Do you think this requires a law change or a culture change? They weren’t breaking the law. In fact, all it took was a vocally feminist, female client -who went on to be one of my closest friends in New Zealand- to bring this up. She didn’t hector or accuse. She teased them. Publicly. In a good-natured way, she pointed out that the hospitality on offer was not a very good match for the totality of their client base. My male colleagues truly had no idea. The whole unofficial policy changed in an instant. (To be clear, they still got to play golf. The problem wasn’t ever golf.)

No laws, no hashtags, no safety pins. Can you think of examples such as these from your own history? What about your own future? Who is stopping you from doing this?

The reality is -in a post 2015.75 world- Left and Right distinctions are meaningless. They’re based on an economy pivoting from agricultural to factory-based 140 years ago. It was the alleged Left that floated the TPP. And it was the alleged Right that destroyed it. We need to resign ourselves to a world where the ‘high school football team’ approach to political support is no longer appropriate. For instance, if Donald Trump continues to onshore manufacturing jobs back into the economy -jobs that were offshored by the Left- then we should take that win. Taking that win does not preclude anybody from fighting tooth and nail to resist any changes to Roe v Wade. (I maintain this will be the biggest legal/cultural risk of a Trump presidency.)

This is our point in the timeline. UK readers will tell you that it was a Tory government in the end that legalised gay marriage. Take the wins. For instance, check this out:

Obviously this isn’t exactly a Benetton ad, but it is still something. It is a useful example of the difference between culture/demography and the archonic/totalitarian attempt to change culture by force and by law. There are no laws preventing people of whatever race or gender for running for Congress. Which is good. Pivot to culture and let the inertia of demography do what it has always done. This is unequivocally better than the totalitarian response of mandating diversity because:

If you confuse culture with law, then your laws can just be undone when the wind changes. See: Obama’s entire legacy next year. Culture doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t get undone with the sweep of a billionaire’s pen. You break the thing you are trying to improve -which is a perfecting system of hearing the most voices in the most equitable way.

We need new ways of thinking about things that we value and prioritise, and we need new ways of going after them rather than yelling about them on the internet. I’m tabling this here and I may occasionally revisit it on a public platform but the majority of this exploration and discourse is going to happen in/through the newsletter. It’s far too toxic to have challenging discussions in the open right now -even if I don’t think the following is particularly challenging for proper adults:

How we talk about class and economics without accusing each other of racism. How we talk about differing racial experiences with a mature understanding of class and economics. How we talk about empowering cultures -European, non-European- in a way that doesn’t reinforce imperial worldviews and in a way that recognises that having other voices speak doesn’t mean someone is robbing you of your voice. A choir is not a zero sum experience. How we talk about gender without selectively ignoring economic, scientific and educational data. How we talk about improving cultural and economic participation across the spectrum without publicly calling for a totalitarian system that has killed over a hundred million people within living memory. How we talk to people we disagree with. Unless you think yelling at them is going really well for everybody? How we truly recognise Empire instead of assuming twenty first century politics is functionally identical to barracking for a high school sports team. Further: How we truly recognise how much blood we actually have on all our hands and what we intend to do about it.

In all of these cases, I defer to my favourite McKenna quote: If it’s real, it can take the pressure. I see no value in inventing oppression when it patently still exists. The dimensions of the playing field are shifting. There is a real opportunity here to have them re-solidify in a way that works for us.

There is still the rescue mission and the salvage mission. But we need to salvage from areas that haven’t been entirely picked over. We need to look at what is valuable and useful in front of us. We need to salvage these valuable things and use them to update and activate our individual rescue missions.

Let’s close with St Taleb’s Christmas stocking recommendation for this point in the timeline.

If this were a map, it would say “you are here”.