Back with a vengeance

You may recall that a few weeks ago I mentioned that I'd gotten a bit banged up and played a disappointingly bad game. Since then, I've been amping up my effort in practice on the theory "you play like you practice", and it's been having positive results. Two weeks ago, my side practiced a man down for the entire two hours - our captain's basic theory of practice is to scrimmage until someone literally collapses, then play another 15 minutes or so - and still managed to come out on top. My shot was off, as I hit four posts or crossbars and failed to put anything in, but I made up for it on the defensive side.

In the league game, we crushed our former archrivals 10-3; we were up 7-0 before some of the defenders started getting careless and lazy. I had two assists, including one 30-meter pass that put the attacker beyond the defense just inside the box, one-on-one with the goalie. He ran on to it, hit it, and scored. I also had one decent chance from the left corner of the box, but hooked it wide.

The funny thing about the goal is that the guy who scored it hadn't played with us this year, but had been serving as the ref at our home games. Ergo my complete thought process, as follows:

• open man long clear lane through THERE
• wait, is that M?
• isn't he the ref?
• can't be, we're not at home
• KICK don't fade don't fade YES!

But practice this week was the best I've played in years. I scored six of our 13 goals, including one header, which practically never happens. I earned my third start in a row, which would have been more meaningful if we'd had more than 12 players on hand. We've lost four in the last three weeks to injury, which poses a problem because I simply cannot effectively cover a wing for 90 minutes at my age.

Fortunately, we got off to a fast start, which let me concentrate on controlling the defensive two-thirds of the left wing and leaving the front one-third to the attackers. I played for 20 minutes, took a 5-minute breather, then was switched to the right side, and started the attack that led to our second goal. I also made the dumbest possible clearance pass into the center instead of simply kicking the ball out of bounds when my first two passing options were blocked, but fortunately, our goalie bailed me out with a good save. It was the sort of mistake I would have benched my kiddy players for making, but our captain settled for a brief and well-deserved "WTF-FWT?" monologue in my direction at halftime and promptly put me back in on the right wing.

Note to players - don't ever let in-game comments from other players who are not the captain influence your subsequent actions. My decision was stupid, but it only came up because I had just previously been warned by another midfielder about the danger of bringing the ball up myself out of the box instead of passing it. The thing is, I KNEW I could safely beat the opposing wing, no problem, which I had just done, and which I could have easily done again. But with that admonition freshly in my mind, I looked to pass it instead of simply blowing past the guy, and this time, both pass options were completely blocked. So, with the thought "must pass the ball" on my mind rather than "in deep, play safe", I looked inside, saw the right color, and made the stupid and dangerous pass into the middle, where my teammate received the ball, and was promptly knocked off it by an opposing player. I should have simply done what I did the previous time, take the ball outside, beat the opposing wing, then look up before looking in.

We didn't score again, but we kept control of the ball and the game despite being unable to substitute after one of our attackers was taken down hard early in the second half and banged up too much to run. We won 2-0 and moved up to second place, with a game against the first-place team next week. Despite the injuries, we're 3-1 in our last four games and we should be getting our best defender back in a week or two.

Bafflegab and bullshit

Keep in mind that this purports to be a DEFENSE of Jordan Peterson's self-unmasking in his interview on the subject of truth with Sam Harris. Which is amusing, as it reads a lot more like an indictment.

For Harris, ideas are propositions about what really exists, independently of one’s mind, and science is an attempt to identify facts (i.e., ideas) about reality.  However, to a pragmatist such as Peterson, reality – i.e. the world around oneself – is not the thing under consideration because one cannot  obtain any knowledge at all of what causes one’s sensations: what exists outside of one’s own mind is not knowable.  For Peterson, there are no “facts” about reality.  For Peterson an “idea” is not a proposition about reality.  Instead, for Peterson, every “idea” is a plan of action.  The meaning of an idea is the effect of acting upon the idea. Thus, for a pragmatist, the meaning of “grizzly bear” is not “man-eating beast” but something like “run away!” or “throw a stone at it!”.

On this view, the truth of an idea is determined by its efficacy in achieving some goal (different pragmatists have differing ideas about what sorts of goals should be achieved). For example, if the goal is to remain unbitten, “run away” is a plan of action that is sufficiently true to act upon if running away is an effective way to remain unbitten, but “run away” is not a sufficiently true plan of action to act upon if running away is not an effective way to remain bitten. Likewise, “throw a stone at it!” is sufficiently true to act upon if throwing a stone at the grizzly bear is effective in preventing one from being bitten, but “throw a stone at it!” is not sufficiently true to act upon if throwing a stone at the grizzly bear is ineffective in preventing one from being bitten.

It follows that, for Peterson, science is not an attempt to discover ideas about, or “facts” about, reality.  Rather, science is an attempt to discover plans of action that, given the other ideas we hold, appear to be sufficiently true to act upon in order to attain one’s ethical purpose.  Hence Peterson’s statement that:

“I think of science as a tool, rather than as a description of reality.  And, well, that’s where we differ.”

Peterson’s Pragmatist Ethics/Purpose

For pragmatism, it is not enough for an idea (i.e., a plan of action) to “work” or to be “effective”.  Pragmatism requires the idea to be effective in achieving an ethically good end.  Thus, one might invent a weapon that is extremely effective in doing one thing: turning the Earth and every living thing on it to lifeless ash in milliseconds.  However, such a weapon does not “work” – is not “efficacious” – by the pragmatic standard, because it does not achieve an ethically good purpose.  Hence Peterson’s assertion that the sufficiency of an idea’s truth depends upon the idea being ethically good.

Different pragmatists hold differing versions of what constitutes a proper ethical purpose.  Peterson’s clearly was: survival; survival of the individual or of humanity as a whole.  Thus, for Peterson, an idea (i.e., a plan of action) is good if it is efficacious in achieving survival of the individual or of humanity as a whole.  Staying with the grizzly bear example, if a given idea – e.g., “run away!” – is an effective plan of action for surviving, then the idea “grizzly bear” (meaning “run away”) is a sufficiently true idea because it is a good idea.

Contrast this with Harris’ perspective on truth.   For Harris, “grizzly bear” is not a plan of action.  It is instead a concept of a large, hairy, man-eating mammal.  For Harris, it is true that a grizzly bear is a large, hairy, man-eating mammal because a grizzly bear can be observed to be exactly that, in reality.  In other words, on the Correspondence theory of truth to which Harris subscribes, the concept of a grizzly bear being a large, hairy, man-eating mammal is true if the concept corresponds to the facts of reality.  If grizzly bears – independently of what anyone thinks of them – really are large, hairy, man-eating mammals, then the concept in one’s head (i.e., large, hairy, man-eating mammal) is true because it Corresponds to the facts of reality.  And, on the Correspondence theory of truth, the concept is true whether or not running from a grizzly bear would be effective in avoiding a grizzly bite.

What Harris Seemed to be Missing

At this point, it should be clear to the reader that Harris seemed unaware of the foundations of pragmatism, his talk about arguing with Richard Rorty in undergraduate courses notwithstanding.

Harris wrongly thought Peterson to believe that there are facts of reality that exist independently of ones senses.  Peterson rejects the very idea that one can even consider any reality other than the experiences in one’s own head.

Harris wrongly thought that Peterson views ideas and propositions as ideas and propositions about reality; about the world around one.  Peterson views ideas not as claims about what exists in reality, but as plans of action.

Harris wrongly thought that Peterson views the role of science as the endeavour to discover the facts of reality.  Peterson views the role of science as the discovery of plans of action that are effective in achieving the ethical purpose of surviving.

Harris could not understand Peterson’s refusal to admit the truth of propositions independently of moral considerations because pragmatism is founded upon a whole lot of premises that Harris apparently is unaware of, and that were not discussed explicitly during the Harris-Peterson conversation.

Translation: Sam Harris, for all his various shortcomings, generally uses words as they are commonly understood. These Corresponding Truthy Pragmatists or whatever they happen to call themselves, are utilizing the old charlatan's trick of calling a spoon a fork in order to prove that one can eat soup with a fork.

Of course, we have no idea if Jordan Peterson's specific non-truth "truth" is actually pragmatic correspondence truth or not, because this is only one of the FOUR different definitions presently on offer from members of Peterson's crazy cargo cult.

By the way, I finished 12 Rules of Life today. I'll do a Darkstream later to discuss my initial impressions, then will start writing my review of the book for Monday, but I really do have to retract my earlier statement that Jordan Peterson is the bastard spawn of Bill Kristol and Deeprak Chopra. He's actually more akin to the tragic love child of Bill Kristol and Stuart Smalley. And he is most definitely a Gamma male as well as a physical coward who quite literally ran from a fight as a sixth-grader.

He's also had a tremendous amount of tragedy in and around his life, which I expect accounts for his bizarre equation of both life and evil with suffering.

Anyhow, I'll read Maps of Meaning next, at which point I will have read more of Jordan Peterson's work than 99.9 percent of his fans currently complaining that I know nothing about him. Apparently they are also unfamiliar with the concept of "hypothesis" and "calling your shot". A sample of the cargo cult's responses.

• Wow...never realized how incredibly insecure Vox was untill now
• don't waste your time... this is the lunatic.  JP is awesome!!!
• You’re arrogant, puffed up and bitterly jealous. You’re also extremely boring, rambling, and no matter how many books you stand in front of, and no matter how long you ramble on for, you’re never going to convince me that you’re intelligent enough to pass comment on other people’s intelligence. I presume that you got your IQ score from one of those ads at the bottom of a web page for a gutter tabloid. Neither are you fit to tie Jordan Peterson’s shoelaces. He’s clear, you’re muddled. He’s gripping, you’re boring. Incredibly monotonous. He’s funny and witty. You’re painfully and excruciatingly robotic and clearly have no emotional intelligence. Your droning barely conceals your desperate whimper, “Please buy my books too!” My answer to that is NO! get off the screen of my iPad, you sad, pathetic little gnome!

Jordan Peterson is "clear", while I am "muddled"? That must be more of that incoherent truth in action.

A restructuring seems in order

This is an informative article on the unique structure of the IDF, which explains both the apparent indiscipline of the IDF with regards to the Gaza protests as well as the underperformance of the IDF in the 2006 war with Hezbollah.

There are no career ground force sergeants except as technicians. Unless the system has changed very recently, the IDF ground forces typically do not have career NCOs in the LINE of the combat arms. This is a structural tradition that derives originally from the Russian tsar’s army and which came to Palestine through Russian and Polish Zionist immigrants. This tradition of organization passed through the Hagenah into the IDF. The IDF “line” conscripts what amount to yearly classes of recruits and selects from them more promising soldiers who are given NCO level command responsibilities as; infantry leaders, tank commanders, artillery gun captains, etc. The IDF does have career NCOs but they are typically found in jobs of a more technical nature rather than junior combat command at the squad or platoon (section) level.

As a result, junior officers (company grade) are required to perform duties that in more traditionally organized armies would be performed by sergeants. Leading a small combat or reconnaissance patrol would be an example. As a result, a non-reserve infantry or tank company in the field consists of people who are all about the same age (19-22) and commanded by a captain in his mid-20s. What is missing in this scene is the voice of grown up counsel provided by sergeants in their 30s and 40s telling these young people what it is that would be wise to do based on real experience and mature judgment. In contrast a 22 year old American platoon leader would have a mature platoon sergeant as his assistant and counselor.

As a result of this system of manning, the IDF’s ground force is more unpredictable and volatile at the tactical (company) level than might be the case otherwise. The national government has a hard time knowing whether or not specific policies will be followed in the field.

To put this problem into perspective, if you've seen Band of Brothers, then you have some idea of the importance of the role that sergeants play in an infantry company. It was the sergeants' revolt that led to Easy Company being led into battle by Dick Winters instead of Herbert Sobel, and it was Sgt. Carwood Lipton (played by Donnie Wahlberg) who was credited by Winters's eventual replacement, Ronald Speirs, for holding Easy Company together.

If I were an IDF strategist, I would look very long and hard at figuring out how to get some seasoned veterans salting the smaller tactical units. The principle of having experienced veterans advising young officers has been a fundamental one of successful military organizations since Rome's battle-hardened centurions were advising young patrician tribunes embarking upon the cursum honorum.

Better late than never?

Hollywood finally excommunicates Roman Polanski:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has expelled Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski from its membership, the organization said Thursday. The Academy's board of governors, following its new procedure for enforcing Standards of Conduct that it adopted in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, voted to expel the comedian and the director at its most recent meeting on Tuesday.

"The Board continues to encourage ethical standards that require members to uphold the Academy's values of respect for human dignity," the Academy said in a statement announcing their expulsion.

A five-time Oscar nominee, Polanski will keep the Oscar he was awarded in 2003 for directing The Pianist, an honor he couldn't accept in person because he fled the U.S. in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. Cosby was found guilty of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand in 2004 by a Pennsylvania jury last Thursday after 14 hours of deliberation.

Of course, they did nominate him three times for an Oscar during those four decades, and even gave him one 15 years ago. As Spacebunny commented, they're only kicking out Polanski because they are under pressure to expel Cosby, and they can't do so without being called racist if they don't give Polanski the boot as well.

Ah, Hollywood values. The fact that they see fit to posture about their "ethical standards" and lecture the rest of the world would be funny if it wasn't so infuriating.

A Red Swan

With apologies to NN Taleb. A Red Swan is a neologism describing an event that literally everyone, except the idiot left-wingers responsible for its occurrence, saw coming:

Regional police statistics show that 56.9 per cent of crime in the German town Sigmaringen was committed by asylum seekers last year. The figures reflect ‘real crimes’ as offences of breaking migration laws were excluded, newspaper Schwäbische reports.

Crime, especially drug-related crimes (+69.6%) and shoplifting (+44.8%), has risen sharply due to migrant criminality. But other more serious crimes increased significantly, as well, such as street crimes (+33.5%), assault (+39.5%) and sexual offences (+14.7%).

Therefore the region’s Ministry of the Interior has now developed a security plan for Sigmaringen, a special group of investigators. The group recently arrested 21 multiple offenders among the asylum seekers.

Gratulieren, Sigmaringenen! Your reward for your do-goodery is the more-than-doubling of your crime rate. Please to enjoy the additional shopliftings and rapes.

Mailvox: that's EXACTLY how good I am

Jordan Peterson's fans are starting to get upset because apparently they think I am too mean. Perhaps Warning: Award-Winning Cruelty Artist At Work Ahead should be attached to my Peterson-related videos.

By the way, how do you know Jordan Peterson is depressed?  You diagnosed him by reading some of his interviews and 2 chapters of that dumb book?  That's pretty amazing.  You could put a lot of psycholgists out of business and revolutionize the field with your kind of ability. Peterson has a practice doing psychiatry for decades.  Is it not possible that Peterson picked up a lot of this information and developed these methods, from working with his patients?   How do you know Peterson must be talking about himself all the time?

I didn't need that much. I could have diagnosed him from nothing more than reading Chapter 2 of 12 Rules of Life. Think about it: if you are giving the whole world advice, and you decide that the second-most important thing you have to tell them is "remember to take your pills, because you are not too ugly, ashamed, worthless, and cowardly to deserve to take care of yourself", then there is absolutely zero chance that you are mentally healthy and the odds are very high that you are suffering from depression, among other mental illnesses.

I suspect many people don't realize how much an author's writing unintentionally reveals about the author, particularly to an editor who has been able to see how many authors approach similar subjects in different ways. Frankly, I know more than I want to about the interior lives of the novelists I edit from nothing more than the choices they instinctively, and habitually, make.

But, as it happens, I did not have to do so, because I already knew that Peterson was depressed and taking some sort of drugs for it by his own admission. Chapter 2 is merely iron-clad confirmation that Peterson is telling at least part of the truth about his mental health issues and an enlightening illustration of how deep they run.

Another viewer questions my objectives.

Vox, I question where you are going with this and what you are hoping to achieve. I think there’s great value in critiquing Peterson’s work but again you’ve made a series of unverifiable ad hominem claims regarding Peterson’s mindset and motivations. This is completely unnecessary for the purposes of critiquing the subject content. I’m not questioning your analysis of Peterson - you may be correct - I’m questioning your decision to deploy that analysis in your critique. 

It's not merely my purpose to critique the content of the 12 Rules of Life. It is my purpose to expose Jordan Peterson for the intellectual charlatan and professional con man that he is. The man is preying upon the intellectually and emotionally vulnerable and is selling them an evil, destructive philosophy while trying to divert them from the objective truths of logic, science, Christianity, and history. My statements about Peterson's mindset and motivations are far from unverifiable; to the contrary, they are frequently based on Peterson's own direct statements, verbal and written.

Yet another commits the genetic fallacy while confusing me with the Fake Right.

I'm no huge fan of Peterson, but for someone who repeatedly emphasizes his "high IQ" and how literate and well-read you are, it's rather astonishing to see you accuse Peterson of being self-obsessed.   Every time I've watched your videos, you seem a bit neurotic and thin-skinned, as you routinely call your viewers "morons" and kick them out when they say something that bothers you.  What are you trying to accomplish with these ongoing rants about Peterson, anyways?  The Alt-Right, which you are a self-proclaimed proponent of, is imploding.  They just shut down your buddy Richard Spencer's website.  Don't you have other, more important, issues to address?

First, Peterson is self-obsessed. By observation and by his own admission, his talks are more inward-focused self-dialogue than proper lectures. Second, whether I am Hitler or Mother Theresa makes no difference concerning what Peterson is. Third, MPAI. Fourth, I kick people out because they repeatedly attempt to disrupt the Periscope. What I am attempting to accomplish with these "ongoing rants about Peterson" is to expose the truth about Jordan Peterson, which is that he is an intellectual charlatan and professional con man preying upon the intellectually and emotionally vulnerable. And fifth, the Alt-Right is not imploding, but to the contrary, is inevitable. Sixth, Richard Spencer is not my buddy. And seventh, no, I don't have any more important issue to address.

Vox, are you going to formulate a well reasoned argument at some point or  just keep insulting someone because they may have mental health problems? When did you get your PHD in psychiatry?

It's not an either/or proposition; I intend to do both. That being said, it's not an insult to observe that Jordan Peterson is mentally ill or that his mental illness has significantly influenced his worldview, his philosophy, and his most recent book. To the contrary, it is a highly pertinent fact. One does not need a PhD in psychiatry or anything else to observe that someone is crazy or to observe the effects of that craziness. Jordan Peterson isn't wandering through the night with a knife in his hand muttering "don't be evil" to himself, he's doing an intellectual version of that by weeping on stage with a mic in his hand as he begs people to not be too ashamed to take their prescribed medication.

"remember to take your pills" is more of an analogy of you need to do what you need to do to progress you life even if you don't want to. 

It's really not. Re-read the chapter, and as you do so, keep in mind that the author has himself been prescribed medication for his mental illness.

And this emailer obviously didn't think through the consequences of his question.

Criticize Peterson's ideas and attribute his success to media manufacturing as much as you feel you need to, but do ask yourself why hundreds of people are not lining up to ask you questions like, "My brother committed suicide, and I’m taking care of my sister’s kids (ages 7, 3) until she’s stable. How can I help them cope with the loss of their uncle?"

I don't need to ask myself that. I haven't been anointed by the media as the prophet uniquely in touch with the wisdom of the ages and the answers to the meaning of life. I suggest the reader should ask himself whether he thinks it is a good thing that these hurting and vulnerable people are being directed to seek answers from an intellectual charlatan and professional con man who teaches that the Bible is myth and metaphor.

What is Peterson going to tell them anyhow? Affect dominant postures? Clean their room? Make sure they take their vitamins daily? Don't holocaust anyone? Or is he just going to get weepy on stage again? Perhaps he can draw upon the deep wellspring of his philosophy and tell the children that their suicidal father was pure evil for unnecessarily causing their suffering. That should do wonders for their psyches.

Not everyone disagrees with me, of course. Future Israeli has already seen enough to reach a verdict:

I was a fan of Vox Day and Jordan Peterson... now I'm just a fan of Vox Day.

And this viewer has figured out the true purpose of Jordan Peterson, which is to preach Holocaustianity to a generation that knows nothing and cares less about WWII-era history. (And that sound you just heard was Avalanche's tender heart shattering.)

I felt something was off as soon as Jordan Peterson showed up he already teaming up with: Ben Shapiro, Denis Prager, Gaad Saad, Ezra Levant, Dave Rubin, Christina Hoff Sommers, Mark Levin (CRTV), Bret Weinestine, Steven Pinker etc etc

His peculiar obsession with Nazis and the Holocaust is the primary reason for Peterson's unexpected and otherwise inexplicable rise to prominence in the media. Peterson was discovered by TV producer Wodek Szemberg, the producer of Big Ideas, who is, we are told in the Foreword to the 12 Rules of Life, "always on the lookout for potential public intellectuals, who knows how to spot people who can really talk in front of a TV camera and who look authentic...." Then he was picked up and pushed heavily by Ezra Levant of Rebel Media until he was embraced by the neocons and Never Trumpers.

A bureaucratic approach to literature

One of the central challenges George R. R. Martin always faced as a writer is that he approaches some significant philosophical questions with the mind of a bureaucrat. This Rolling Stone interview with Martin from 2014 is rather enlightening in that regard:

It's a shockingly brutal story that you tell. The first major jolt comes when the knight Jaime Lannister pushes a child, Bran Stark, through a window because the child witnessed Jaime and Jaime's sister, Cersei – the wife of Westeros' King Robert – having sex. That moment grabs you by the throat. 

I've had a million people tell me that was the moment that hooked them, where they said, "Well, this is just not the same story I read a million times before." Bran is the first viewpoint character. In the back of their heads, people are thinking Bran is the hero of the story. He's young King Arthur. We're going to follow this young boy – and then, boom: You don't expect something like that to happen to him. So that was successful [laughs].

Both Jaime and Cersei are clearly despicable in those moments. Later, though, we see a more humane side of Jaime when he rescues a woman, who had been an enemy, from rape. All of a sudden we don't know what to feel about Jaime. 

One of the things I wanted to explore with Jaime, and with so many of the characters, is the whole issue of redemption. When can we be redeemed? Is redemption even possible? I don't have an answer. But when do we forgive people? You see it all around in our society, in constant debates. Should we forgive Michael Vick? I have friends who are dog-lovers who will never forgive Michael Vick. Michael Vick has served years in prison; he's apologized. Has he apologized sufficiently? Woody Allen: Is Woody Allen someone that we should laud, or someone that we should despise? Or Roman Polanski, Paula Deen. Our society is full of people who have fallen in one way or another, and what do we do with these people? How many good acts make up for a bad act? If you're a Nazi war criminal and then spend the next 40 years doing good deeds and feeding the hungry, does that make up for being a concentration-camp guard? I don't know the answer, but these are questions worth thinking about. I want there to be a possibility of redemption for us, because we all do terrible things. We should be able to be forgiven. Because if there is no possibility of redemption, what's the answer then? [Martin pauses for a moment.] You've read the books?

Yes. 

Who kills Joffrey? In the books – and I make no promises, because I have two more books to write, and I may have more surprises to reveal – the conclusion that the careful reader draws is that Joffrey was killed by the Queen of Thorns, using poison from Sansa's hairnet, so that if anyone did think it was poison, then Sansa would be blamed for it. Sansa had certainly good reason for it.

The reason I bring this up is because that's an interesting question of redemption. That's more like killing Hitler. Does the Queen of Thorns need redemption? Did the Queen of Thorns kill Hitler, or did she murder a 13-year-old boy? Or both? She had good reasons to remove Joffrey. Is it a case where the end justifies the means? I don't know.

The problem, of course, is how do you seek forgiveness without repentance? And how can you repent without an objective moral standard that clearly states: with this act you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?

Man cannot find redemption without God, which is why some crazy and godless men make maps of meaning filled with bizarre and imaginary creatures and warnings of nonexistent dragons, while others, less crazy, but still godless, write meandering rapefests addressing the hard questions of tax policy and population demographics.

A major concern in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones is power. Almost everybody – except maybe Daenerys, across the waters with her dragons – wields power badly.

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn't ask the question: What was Aragorn's tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren't gone – they're in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

In real life, real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. Just being a good guy was not the answer. You had to make hard, hard decisions. Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences. I've tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don't have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise king.

Some readers have been kind enough to say that my own AODAL falls in between ASOIAF and LOTR in terms of literary quality. But one could, not unreasonably, say that is true of our literary approaches as well.

And yes, I am working on the final edition of A Sea of Skulls. And yes, I expect it will be out, in around 900 pages of print, in time for Christmas. The 40-hour audiobook version of A Throne of Bones should also be available by then. I just finished re-reading it to refresh my memory preparatory to the final push on ASOS.

No safe havens

(((David Brooks))) is alarmed by the fact that the Left is becoming as unlikely to provide safe haven for his particular form of globalism as the Right

Tribalism is in the air, on the left as well as on the right. It is based on a scarcity mentality, the idea that life is a zero-sum war between us and them. It emphasizes division and conflict, not solidarity and cohesion. It draws out the authoritarian tendencies in any movement. On the right, tribalism brings us the ethnic authoritarianism of Donald Trump. On the left, it seems likely to bring us the economic authoritarianism of a North American version of Hugo Chávez.

You can see authoritarianism entering the left through two avenues. The first is nationalism. Not long ago, most of the American left tended to think transnationally — partly because problems like climate change are global, partly because it’s hard to regulate a global economy nation by nation, partly because progressives used to be psychologically averse to nationalism.

But national sovereignty is not withering away. Left-wing hostility toward European Union-type multilateral organizations is at record highs. Now a lot of progressive economic thinking is nakedly nationalistic. Bernie Sanders in 2015 derided a more open immigration policy as a “Koch brothers proposal.” It’s the old xenophobia — us or them, screw or be screwed. On trade, the left-wing populists sound like Trump.

The second stream fueling economic authoritarianism is identity politics. It used to be that big political divides were defined by economic interests; now, the cultural dog wags the economic tail. Identity politics defines the core political divides. When many progressives talk about economics these days, they take the habits of mind they developed when talking about identity groups and apply them to economic groups.

Translation: David Brooks's (((identity group))) is fast running out of political wiggle room. When one very small identity group becomes massively overrepresented among the economically dominant, then obviously the economic redistributionism of the Left is going to merge with identity politics. How can it not?

The Left sees the One Percent as the primary problem. The Right sees the demographic change and economic decline of the nation as the primary problem. And if the One Percent are responsible for the the demographic change and economic decline of the nation, well, then both sides have more than a scapegoat, they have successfully identified the responsible parties.

This, of course, is why Bill Kristol, Ben Shapiro, and Jennifer Rubin are all calling for a third party. But it's going to be a very, very small one of virtually no appeal to anyone who is of the nationalist Right or the economic Left. There is not much of a market for a party of warmongering globalists whose primary domestic priority is the economic strip-mining of the lower, middle, and upper-middle classes.

The same situation is developing in the UK, as the media-generated "anti-semitism" of the Labour Party is causing the traditional Labour-supporting Jews there to rapidly migrate to the Conservative Party, where their globalist priorities are unlikely to remain popular or influential for long.

A defeated Labour councillor, Adam Langleben, said it was a source of 'shame' for the party that Jewish people had felt obliged to vote based on 'their safety'.

'Thanks to all those who voted for myself, Humayune and Agnes today. It was the greatest honour of my life to serve West Hendon,' he tweeted.  'We must NEVER have another election like this. No community group should have their vote dictated by their safety. That should shame us @UKLabour.'

Mr Langelben told the Guardian: ‘Every Jewish Labour household we visited, people said, “not this time.” Activists were being told, “this is a racist party, an anti-Semitic party”, doors were slammed in their faces.

It's not exactly hard to figure out how that's going to play out over the next decade. And it occurs to me that the so-called White British population now already had their vote dictated by their safety. That's why they voted for Brexit.

The Last Closet and the reality of evil

If you haven't watched the latest Voxiversity video yet, you really should. While reading 12 Rules for Life, I noted that Jordan Peterson claims "evil is the desire to cause suffering, where suffering is not necessary." This demonstrates that he doesn't know a single goddamn thing about real, material, conscious evil, which has absolutely nothing to do with the desire to cause suffering, but rather, the desire to do as one pleases.

And Jesus Christ is not a myth or a metaphor. He the only way, and the only truth, to systematically combat that very real, material, and conscious evil.

This should be amusing

The Crazy Christ's followers continue their ever-so-convincing campaign of character assassination in lieu of actually trying to defend their hero:

You are trying to provoke him into having a debate with you just so you can get more attention. Pathetic.

Actually, no. As it happens, I'll be going on the Alex Jones Show on Monday to discuss the two leading charlatans of the Approved Opposition, Jordan Peterson and Benny Shapiro. So, I'm assuming that should more than satisfy any craving for attention that I might have for the foreseeable future.

I'm not trying to provoke Peterson into a debate. Why would I bother to do that when I am confident that he will run away from me every bit as speedily as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, PZ Myers, Matt Walsh, and Ben Shapiro all have? He's an imposter, he knows it, and if he knows who I am, then he knows that I know it too.

And if he knows anything about me, then he probably knows that all of his usual little dodges, qualifications, and evasions are not going to work.

But in the meantime, I address Chapter Two of the 12 Rules, which explains why Jordan Peterson sometimes doesn't take his happy pills.

Where is the problem?

Population experts are belatedly beginning to worry about the effects of abortion on various countries:

Scientists have sparked controversy after creating a pin-prick test that can determine the gender of a baby after just eight weeks.

Concerns have been raised the test could trigger a rise in sex-selective abortions, especially in countries such as India and China where families desire boys over girls for cultural reasons.

A recently published government report in India found that the country has 63 million fewer woman then it should because families are choosing to abort their female babies.

The situation is much the same in China, where men outnumber women by 34 million - significantly more than the entire population of Australia.

Experts claim the controversial one-child policy, which lasted from the 1970s until 2015, helped to create the imbalance as families sought to have a son.

It is feared the new pin-prick test could fuel a 'genocide' of female babies in India and China as parents are given more time than previously to make a decision on whether to abort their babies.

India's Government revealed in January that there will be 105 boys for every 100 girls without any human intervention. But previous estimates from 2011 suggest the problem is already worse than that, with 914 girls under the age of six to every 1,000 boys the same age. In China, the UN states there are nearly 116 boys for every 100 girls, however reports claim the ratio is much higher in poor rural areas.

I fail to see how this is a problem. Isn't worrying about the male-female ratio transphobic, considering that an individual can now be whatever sex it identifies as being? And it's very identity politicist, to say nothing of culturally appropriative, to interfere with the individual choices of women in other countries to make choices about their own bodies.

The Alt-Right is inevitable because we do not advocate suicide, on either an individual or a group basis.

Why I am crucifying the Crazy Christ

Because that is what one should do with false prophets who attempt to pass off madness and lies as truth. Real, objective, Aristotelian correspondent truth.

I find it mildly amusing that Jordan Peterson's dismayed fans don't seem to realize that their responses to my recent Darkstreams on the subject such as the one below don't dissuade me in the slightest, but to the contrary, confirm for me that they are very, very nervous about their hero's ability to successfully defend himself from my critical analysis.

What is basically going on here: "SJWs Always Double Down" isn't selling nearly as well as its predecessor and so you are trying to attract attention, and more potential sales, by attacking one of currently hottest public figures. What happened to you man? You used to be one of good guys but now you are bitter, shallow, barely eloquent and on your way to joining other online right has-beens like Nick Land & co.

What happened to me is that I caught the unmistakable scent of bullshit and sulfur. Contrast the response of the Peterson fan with the response of the Dread Ilk to people like Greg Johnson and Andrew Anglin calling me out. The Dread Ilk knew they had no need to defend me, and they also knew that I would not hesitate to face my critics directly in order to defend my case against the Fake Right. Peterson's fans, to the contrary, appear to be well-aware that he fears to even address the fact of my existence, let alone attempt to answer for his intellectual crimes.

Jordan Peterson set off my BS radar like no one since Paul Krugman and his repeated post-2008 attempts to claim that he never called for a housing bubble, and I quickly noticed the bizarre way in which Peterson's fans were repeatedly offering multiple different and contradictory alibis for his intellectual crimes, but I had no idea that the Crazy Christ was building up an quasi-cult around him to make the now-defunct New Atheist fan club of Richard Dawkins look downright moderate and sane.

Consider, for example, the following comments, all culled from a single video of an appearance on Stefan Molyneux's show.

• Genius is not a strong enough word to describe the level of insight Jordan Peterson has into the world. Wow, he's impressive on the worst of days but this one just absolutely blew me away.
• the word you are looking for to describe JBP is a prophet, or someone who can see into the future and correct and sort things out now while there’s still time.
• One of the two most important voices in the world today.
• Dr. Peterson is such an impressive man. In ~1 year of watching and listening to his lectures and speeches/debates I learned more about myself, society, mythology and religion than I did in 4 years of college.
• my hero emerging in a time of darkness.
• We in the West, are fortunate to have this great mind during this time of great social turmoil, to guide us and to help us understand and survive the coming deluge of this media manufactured communist typhoon.
• This great man embodies the emergence of the hero in a positively inspiring way.
• The world's center of gravity is always located with Dr. Peterson.
• Anyone at any age can improve themselves and find missing meaning. Dr. Peterson has been essentially my advisor through his YouTube videos, online tools and books. What a gift he is to humanity.
• Another fascinating discussion with one of our age's great minds.
• If one does not comprehend Jordan Peterson, one does not comprehend the warrior.
• Jordan Peterson - what a mind!  Impressive - also, I noticed that the question that they were rhetorically asking earlier in the show got answered later in the show.  It was about why Christianity - desert religion - would have found such fertile ground in Europe.  And the answer was all about sacrifice - the whole idea about Jesus being sacrificed for people's sins, meshing with the sacrifice of present consumption for future planning and storage for a tough winter in Europe. 
• Jordan Peterson is a genius person's smart person.
• Jordan Peterson is the most interesting person I have ever heard speak.
• Jordan Peterson, the new almighty.
• Thank you Mr Peterson for saving my generation.
• My first time really watching Peterson. He is quite wise and sharp as most consider him, and he seems pretty genuine and well meaning as well. 
• Jordan Peterson at his brilliant best. This man is a gift to humanity. Unfortunately most of humanity cannot even settle long enough to hear him and understand.

There aren't enough hands on the planet for all the facepalms required. And the fact that the Crazy Christ has now publicly aligned himself with the Littlest Chickenhawk merely serves to further confirm my sense of the man, to the extent one can even call him that.

After all, if we are to utilize what we are informed is the Coherence Theory of Truth to which Peterson supposedly adheres, the truth is that within my specified set of propositions and beliefs is the firmly held belief that a man does not cry in public, much less on camera, over anything less than the death of a) a close friend, b) a family member, or c) his dog. It is both consistent and coherent with that belief to state that since Jordan Peterson cries on camera like a girl on a reality television show who failed to get into either of her two preferred sororities, that property is sufficient to prove the coherent truth of the matter. Which is to say that it is coherently true to observe that the Crazy Christ is neither god nor man.

But to return to a perspective based on the Aristotelian Correspondence Theory of Truth, and therefore, to the real objective world we all actually inhabit, Jordan Peterson is a smart, sensitive man with a broken mind who is little more than a purveyor of psychological snake oil and pernicious philosophy. He is a parody of a prophet, an enemy of Christianity and Western civilization, and there is very little "correspondent truth" in him or in his endless, meandering self-dialogue.

Peterson’s intellectual project is exceedingly immodest, and can be stated in a sentence: He aims at nothing short of a refounding of Western civilization, to provide a rational justification for why the materialists of the digital age should root themselves in the soil of Christian ethics despite having long ago lost the capacity for faith.

That being said, you need not accept my conclusions now. I am merely, as is my custom, calling my shot. I have not even begun to present my case, let alone prove it conclusively. But if you want an idea of what is coming down the pike, you might want to give a listen to a few of my previous vivisections.

The nomad moves on

This is why it was a massive mistake for US states to allow new residents to vote. This rootless nomad is moving on after all of 14 years because he doesn't like the way the politicians for whom he voted are governing Seattle.

I KNEW Seattle was no longer a place for me when I met with Debora Juarez — the District 5 City Council member I had voted for.

Last September, at what I thought was going to be a friendly one-on-one meeting between an elected official and her constituent, I expressed some concerns that were on my mind. I fretted over the deterioration of a city with which I had fallen in love — a city that, despite my 21 trips to Europe, I still believe to be the most beautiful in the world.

I told my council member that Northgate, my home, had seen a noticeable increase in litter and graffiti. To my dismay, she seemed to suggest these issues were someone else’s job, not hers. So, I moved on to a bigger issue: homelessness.

When I first moved to Seattle 14 years ago, to attend the University of Washington, homelessness essentially didn’t exist at Northgate. Though I have never been a victim of or witness to a crime, some of my neighbors have been, and they believe homeless camps are the reason. Additionally, the conditions in such camps are often atrocious — not only are the homeless more likely to be victims of violent crime, they are susceptible to infectious disease, such as the hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego that sickened nearly 500 people and has killed 20.

I believe strongly that it is not compassionate to leave people who are unable or unwilling to care for themselves to suffer and die on the street. Because many (but certainly not all) homeless people struggle with mental illness or drug addiction, I suggested that Seattle find a way to make it easier to provide treatment to these troubled souls — involuntarily, if need be. It could literally save their lives.

Juarez exclaimed, “What is this? Nazi Germany?” Appalled — in part because my grandparents survived Nazi Germany — I got up and walked out....So, my wife and I are heading to the Eastside. We really would prefer to stay in Seattle. But if safe streets, clean sidewalks, an affordable place to live and polite discourse is asking too much, we’ll gladly seek refuge in a city where quality of life and civility still matter.

Guess what sort of politician this guy is going to vote for in the next election in his new city. Almost certainly the exact same sort of politician he helped elect whose policies he is fleeing now.

This is why skin in the game matters. This is why it is a mistake for farmers to permit nomads to dwell among them, much less be permitted any voice in how they order their societies. When things fall apart, the nomad will move on and the farmers will be left to pick up the pieces as best they can. And this is why no immigrants, foreign or domestic, should be permitted any vote in a democracy or a republic for at least five generations.

The fact that one dislikes the consequences of one's own vote enough to flee them should be sufficient cause to deny one's future right to vote. Man's ideologies and political philosophies have not yet caught up with his transportation technology and his ability to travel around the world to escape the consequences of his actions.

Mailvox: truth-bait for the broken

Daniel makes an interesting observation about the similarities between Jordan Peterson's nameless quasi-philosophy and Dianetics.

There are some interesting overlaps between Peterson's 12 rules and Dianetics 8 Dynamics. L. Ron Hubbard was also highly intelligent, mentally unhinged, AND deeply helpful to some broken people.

In fact, most ex-Scientologists will tell you that the hook - "Dianetics works" - is, at a basic level, very true for a very lost person. It is the truth-bait for the broken that sucks them in and seals them into the cult.

8 Dynamics of Dianetics:

• Self: Peterson has rule 1, 2 and 10
• Sex: Rule 5
• Group: Rule 3, 9
• Mankind: Rule 6, 11, 4
• Animal: Rule 12
• Universe: not applicable
• Spiritual: Rule 7
• Infinity: Rule 8

This all is related to your thesis that methadone is only okay for the addict. A lot of people were helped by Dianetics in the 1950s, before there ever was a Scientology. It was an intoxicatingly useful deception.

While there is no indication that Peterson actually intends to expand his mental chaos management into a full-blown religion, the possibility that it could be a nascent Dianetics 2.0 merits further contemplation. Fortunately, at this point, he appears to be more interested in Canadian politics than in creating an actual cult.

UPDATE: I did a Darkstream discussing this and the first chapter of 12 Rules for Life: Jordan Peterson is bait for the broken.

I particularly enjoyed this comment. I look forward to quoting it again once I have convinced even the most dubious Peterson fan that my case against him and his philosophy is conclusive.

Vox, you are a fucking loon. You know absolutely nothing about the guy and hadn't watched any of his videos or interviews or read his books or talked to him.........but you just knew that he was intellectually dishonest, now you say he's mentally ill, he's totally fucking insane, his philosophy is insane and incomplete, he's a gamma, he's in a bubble, he's deluded,........Dude, you are telling trying to tell the world what the moon is made of after looking at it once.

It's a good point. Imagine how smart and discerning I must be to be able to do so correctly.

Rule 33: Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
- Jordan Peterson

You know, there just might be a book in that one.

Who was on it?

I expect Q will be addressing this soon.

DEVELOPING: Military C-130 plane crashes at @fly_SAV  in Savannah, GA

A lot of military aircraft going down recently. I wonder what the odds are of them all being random events.

Mailvox: speaking of gammas

Some of Jordan Peterson's fans have been leaving comments on yesterday's Darkstream. They are informative, to put it mildly.

• You are clearly not efficient to understand the depth of Jordan. You look more like an autistic 13 year old.. old man that tries to get publicity points. That's why you are interested on Peterson. Isn't it? You just heard about Peterson few days ago and you were able to listen to his lectures? Probably not. You are too busy thinking how to get subscribers. Learn to be humble and recognize where you can move with your limited intellectual skill. What a pity. 
• Jordan Peterson is very intelligent and has a very impressive resume. You are unimpressive and lie about having a high IQ. Let's see those SAT scores. 
• [Vox] obviously took a standardized test and did not end up at a high quality university. He is the type of person who would definitely brag about membership in the Triple Nine Society or even Mensa, which accept college entrance scores for admission because those tests correlate to IQ. He is also a bully who is attacking the integrity of an extremely high quality person. So I am simply pointing out to his naive followers that it is extremely easy to prove an IQ score and that being called on this is Vox Day's worst fear. He will never provide proof and will block anybody who suggests it.
• I don't care about JP's position on Jewish intelligence other than Vox Day's inability to articulate that position prior to attacking him. I'm not going to repeat the flaws in his reasoning that I've already posted on his last few videos. If there is a turd in the punchbowl, I'm not going to even discuss what is least impressive about the other ingredients. 
• He should either show the data or stop using his IQ as though it were an argument. His lie about being in Mensa was disturbing in multiple ways, since they claim he's never been a member and also he apparently didn't know that they're only top 2%. He attended a lower tier liberal arts school, and he has lived a liberal arts life. I have dealt with high IQ people for decades, and other than perhaps the verbal section I see no signs that Vox Day is even in the ballpark.
• Being a lunatic in his particular environment may be a good thing. If you are Bruce Wayne living among the lunatics of Gotham, putting on the mask may be the best way to deal with them. 
• Big words for someone who has a habit of spamming anyone who expresses disagreement with his views on his blog. Methinks that Peterson would chew ya up in a real time debate though, unfortunately, we shall never witness such a debate for you are way bellow his level to warrant any attention from him.

To be clear, I was not only a member of Mensa, but was also a National Merit Semifinalist. I simply don't brag about either. (It's amusing how no one knows about Mensa since I ended my column; remember when mentioning that membership in my bio was inevitably equated with bragging about it?) I suppose it should come as no surprise that a supporter of the integrity-challenged Jordan Peterson would so readily resort to blatant and easily disproven lies. But not everyone was so angrily defensive, and it is apparent that at least some of Peterson's fans are beginning to see past the bilious haze of verbose bullshit that the man spews like a squid attempting to hide its retreat.

• Doesn't this speak to the apparent truth that millions of people are mentally unhealthy then? Can we at least say then that Peterson's work is very important in helping unhealthy people step out of their illness and into a more functional existence? I'm not saying you're wrong about Peterson, in fact sadly I think you're right. But I'm more saying that if his philosophy is the "methadone" for heroin addicts, then is it alright to see it as such? I'll be the first to say if I was a "heroin addict" and that I'll take the "methadone" route in order to gain enough strength to take the next step. 
• I was a fan before, but watching you take down that self righteous blowhard is worth the price of admission. "The baleful eye of the dark lord is fixed firmly upon Mr Peterson"
• I've listened to a lot of JP and it got boring fast. If you've watched a semester of his lectures you've pretty much listened to everything he's said. Even his analysis of the bible mostly says all the same stuff but with slightly different context. Mostly he seems to reference Jung, Nietzsche, Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky. Read them and you've pretty much read JP. Aside from quickly becoming repetitive he also always avoided the tough questions. Seemed like he was too busy going on a speaking tour than to flesh out his thoughts or do research so he could eventually answer those tough questions. I started to see him as being more intellectually lazy as time went on. Honestly he seems to be acting more and more like an SJW as people press him on these tough questions.
• As an European and someone looking from the outside in... The fact that Sam Harris is considered a "public intellectual" in the US really makes me worry about what bar you guys set for "public intellectuals" and how low that bar is situated.
• The biggest mistake that right-wingers make is elevate anyone who is not a complete sjw

I've read the first chapter of the 12 Rules for Life: The Crazy Man's Guide for Functioning in Society. I never do partial reviews, so I will not say more than to observe that if the man had written Who Moved My Cheese, it would have been longer than a George R.R. Martin novel.

Mailvox: this is not Alpha Game

But I suppose the subject is relevant to the Jordan Peterson investigation, so I'll tolerate it for the time being:

Is it possible for Gamma's to stop being Gammas? Is the only choice for a Gamma to do what Peterson has done and form heuristics to protect themselves? If they become committed Christians can they exceed their Gamma boundaries or will they simply be Gamma Christians? If they adopt existential relativism per Peterson, will that ever graduate them to Betas, or is always going to be social masking?

Also in trying to generalise from your list of qualities, is it a combination of intelligence plus poor social skills plus generalised low self-esteem? So by that I mean, can socially adroit, physically attractive, plain-speaking men who are good with women still be gamma if they have low self-esteem deriving from some source like a traumatic life event or bad brain biology? If Pyjama boy was able to derive a sense of humility and self-esteem that wasn't at the expense of others could he stop being a Gamma?

I know a lot of men who are very impressive men, resilient, accomplished, educated, self-confident, but in marriages to women who utterly dominate them in the household with abuse and passive aggression. Are they Gammas because of their inability to exercise dominion over their wives despite all their external accomplishments?

I apologise if these are all stupid questions. I know you hate people asking if they're Gammas. I'll freely admit I'm trying to apply the model to myself a bit, but I'm also trying to understand it's general operation.

First and foremost, "Gamma" is a male behavioral pattern. You are a Gamma to the extent that you behave in accordance with that pattern. One's socio-sexual rank can be reliably ascertained by one's behavior, and one's rank is conferred by the behavior of others, but the core element is always the behavior.

So, in answer to the questions:

1. Yes, it is obviously possible for Gammas to stop being Gammas. They merely have to permanently change their behavioral patterns. But this is considerably harder than it sounds, as anyone who has ever tried to lose weight, stop smoking, or start working out knows.
2. No, the choice that Peterson has made is a very conventional Gamma action that is totally consistent with Gamma self-protection.
3. A Gamma becoming a Christian merely produces a Christian Gamma. Christianity can help a Gamma alter his behavior patterns, but it must be admitted that Churchianity tends to encourage some Gamma behaviors, particularly where women and conflict are concerned.
4. Existential relativism is only going to cement the Gamma's behavioral pattern. Any Gamma following Peterson's philosophy is merely going to become a Gamma with a clean room, better posture, and an iron-clad delusion bubble.
5. No, to say Gamma is a combination of qualities is mistaking the qualities for the behavioral patterns. My current understanding is that Gamma is primarily caused by the need to avoid experiencing emotional pain. Obviously, the lower on the socio-sexual totem pole you are, the more emotional pain you are likely to experience from rejection, bullying, and failure.
6. No Gammas are good with women. Women are literally repulsed by the behavior pattern. But Gammas are not the only men with low self-esteem. Except for Alpha and Sigma, any behavioral pattern can possess low self-esteem. One might even argue that a Beta is an Alpha with lower self-esteem.
7. Pajama Boy will never stop being a Gamma. His behavioral pattern is too embedded in his self-identity.
8. Married men who are dominated by women are usually Deltas. But any man, of any rank, can marry the wrong woman, and find his behavioral patterns modified to some extent as a result.

There are two easy Gamma signals. The first is dishonesty, particularly in the face of conflict. That dishonesty can take many forms, from false bravado to bizarre lies about their accomplishments to inaccurate explanations of their actions. When Jordan Peterson mentioned that 90 percent of his self-talk in his youth was dishonest, that was a dead giveaway, because Gammas are engaged in a constant monologue with themselves. Whether they talk themselves up or they talk themselves down is irrelevant, the point is that they are always talking to themselves instead of anyone else.

The second is heightened sensitivity. The Gamma is constantly on the alert for what others are thinking and saying about him. He is excessively pleased by praise and will often cite it, and is inordinately upset by criticism. He has a very limited capacity for shrugging off either.

Women are very, very good at identifying Gammas. But they tend to think of it as negative sex appeal. So, if you ask a woman if she would ever have sex with someone and her instinctive response is to shiver in horror at the mere suggestion, you can be confident that he reliably exhibits the Gamma behavioral pattern.

If you want to stop being a Gamma, there is a guide to doing so called Graduating Gamma, written by a Delta who succeeded in breaking his former behavioral pattern.

• Graduating Gamma 1
• Graduating Gamma 2
• Graduating Gamma 3
• Graduating Gamma 4

Big Brother's retarded little brother

If I was not married, Mark Zuckerberg is literally the last person on Earth I would want knowing about my dating habits:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave the keynote address at the F8 developer conference in San Jose on Tuesday, introducing, among other innovations, the company's new dating features.

"We are announcing a new set of features coming soon around dating," Zuckerberg told conference attendees, lamenting that his company has been late to the dating game.

"This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships, not just hookups," he declared.

Zuckerberg didn't explain how he plans to prevent "hookups," but he did say that the dating service will be "opt-in" and "if you want you can make a dating profile. We have designed this with privacy and safety in mind from the beginning," he assured conference attendees. "We're excited to start rolling this out soon." He assured users that no one will see their information without express permission. Instead, he said, Facebook will suggest possible dating prospects.

I'm too old and too-long married to have any experience with online dating of any kind, but I do know that the more sensitive the data is, the less I am interested in making it available to Facebook. It wouldn't surprise me if he was already selling the information on status updates to divorce lawyers and the IRS.

Meanwhile, Facebook is also implementing a system to better suppress the public's access to the news it does not want them to see.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that the company has already begun to implement a system that ranks news organizations based on trustworthiness, and promotes or suppresses its content based on that metric.

Zuckerberg said the company has gathered data on how consumers perceive news brands by asking them to identify whether they have heard of various publications and if they trust them.

“We put [that data] into the system, and it is acting as a boost or a suppression, and we’re going to dial up the intensity of that over time," he said. "We feel like we have a responsibility to further [break] down polarization and find common ground.”

EXCERPT: SJWS Always Double Down

This excerpt from SJWS ALWAYS DOUBLE DOWN seems appropos, considering the recent topics:

What, precisely, is a Gamma male, how do they behave, and what is the connection to the social justice cause? First, let’s consider the attributes of the average Gamma male.

• Less physically attractive than the norm.
• More intelligent than the norm.
• Unathletic, often overweight.
• Socially awkward and resentful of social hierarchies.
• Generally unsuccessful with women.
• Passive-aggressive and conflict-avoidant.
• Verbally-oriented and prone to snark.
• Disloyal and socially calculating.
• Deceitful and disrespectful.

Of all these attributes, it is the latter that is the most important. One can go so far as to say that the chief attribute of the Gamma male is the relentless ability to lie to himself and others.

If you want an ideal example of a Gamma male, it would be hard to do better than Pajama Boy, the literal poster boy for the young liberal Democrats, who was featured in one of the famous Obamacare ads drinking hot chocolate and wearing a red plaid pajamas with a smug look on his extraordinarily punchable face. Pajama Boy’s real name is Ethan Krupp, and he prides himself on being what he calls a “Liberal F—”, which he explains is not a Democrat per se, but rather, “someone who combines political data and theory, extreme leftist views and sarcasm to win any argument while making the opponents feel terrible about themselves.”

In other words, a Krupp is a textbook social justice warrior. The two concepts are not synonymous, and yet there is a tremendous overlap between the SJW and the Gamma male.

Later in the same interview, Krupp went on to say that he has never lost an argument, except once, and then only because he was drunk. Even if we didn’t know what Krupp looked like or what views he espouses, this ludicrous claim would be sufficient to identify him as a Gamma.

Krupp’s statement about himself is tremendously valuable insight into the Gamma mentality, and even demonstrates why women tend to find them off-putting. Krupp claims he combines ideas, opinions, and a tone to both win an argument and cause feelbad. But the truth is that to the Gamma, the two are one and the same. The Gamma’s victory metric is simple: whoever can cause the other individual to feel worse about himself wins. This explains why the Gamma is constantly pretending to be above it all and unconcerned with the outcome even when everyone can see that he is horribly upset and wounded.

The Gamma believes that if he admits to the truth of his own feelings, he will lose. This is why he is always creating the impression that something is off about him, because it is. Even more than with the social hierarchy, the Gamma is at war with himself and with his feelings. This is why they often appear to be living in a delusion bubble of their own creation, and why they so often idolize Spock and human reason. They like to think they are beyond all human emotions, because they find their own emotions to be painful for the reasons that were described above....

If a Gamma is wrong, then he sees himself as being wrong. His very life is wrong. It’s all personal to him. He holds everything against everyone forever, except for that girl on the pedestal, and conversely, expects everyone to hold everything against him forever. It’s a sad and horrible way to live, but if you watch and learn, Gammas are very predictable and keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

Gammas don’t believe in failure, repentance, or forgiveness. That is why they never learn from their mistakes, or anyone else’s.

A Gamma is prone to psychological projection and naturally puts himself in other people’s shoes when it comes to conflict and imagines how he would feel in their place. This is true for both reconciliation and conflict. It is why what he thinks is required for reconciliation is usually out of touch with reality, and why he thinks attacks on other’s feelings are much more effective than they really are.

A Gamma constantly relives adolescent shame, bullying and emotional issues. He likes nothing better than to publicly shame and mock those who he is angry with (except the girl on the pedestal) to the point of losing sight of any other goal he had in mind. If you can imagine the awkward boy on the playground being danced around and called names by the others, then how that boy would treat people when he is a man, and you will begin to understand how they treat others with whom they are angry.

He is a coward and will readily abandon almost everything to save his skin, and the fact of his cowardice gnaws on him internally. Being narcissistically inclined, he is unable to imagine other people not being secret cowards, so he will often talk of being brave while simultaneously accusing others of being cowardly. This, again, is pure projection.

All of this negative, self-destructive behavior ends up sabotaging relationships for the Gamma, including his friends, his family, his coworkers, and even his own children. The recognition of the poor quality of these relationships are not lost on the Gamma, and he will often feel a deep sense of personal disgrace about his behavior. However, since he cannot admit to being wrong, he is trapped in a self-made hell.

Darkstream: the lunacy of Jordan Peterson

I'm doing a Periscope addressing my earlier post about Peterson today. This is the place for your comments on it, live or otherwise.

UPDATE: Even Peterson's fans have no faith in his intellectual integrity.

JBP will never debate Vox. It is a “No Win” for him. First he would take heavy criticism for even associating with Vox. Second even if he takes Vox apart no one will care, because outside of hardcore politics/culture war guys... no one knows Vox.

Of course he won't debate me. I never thought for a moment that he would, because it is far more likely that he would break down and cry than take me apart. Look, the reason the guy is always obsessing about making a mistake that will ruin him forever is because he's an imposter and he knows it.

Once you know he's a gamma, you know everything you need to predict his behavior. Success will make him more hubristic and self-righteous, then he'll self-sabotage.

UPDATE: This email was amusing, but I appreciated the sentiment.

Until today, I never really thought about how much flat-out lunacy and inanity you get hit with every freaking day.

Where do you think MPAI came from. Unlike Jordan Peterson's philosophy, Marcus Aurelius's is still useful. Peterson tells you to lie to yourself. Aurelius's advice is rather more useful.

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. 

That's a bit more gracious than my version - the father of Commodus was obviously too optimistic - but it's good advice.

It was right there all along

I'm deeply - DEEPLY - disappointed in you Jordan Peterson fans. His lunacy was openly on display from the very start. Did you never even read Maps of Meaning? It was all right there right before your eyes, a psychological purloined letter. How did none of you ever spot this nonsense?

From the 1999 Maps of Meaning Precis

1. We think we live in the “objective” world, but we do not. The objective world is something that has been conjured up for us recently – absurdly recently, from the perspective of evolutionary biology.

Pure existential relativist gobbledygook. And don't even think of opting for the obvious evasion that it's just that he defines "objective" differently than the bloody dictionary. If you haven't learned that bait-and-switch is the first sign of the charlatan, you're not tall enough for this ride.

Let's substitute, then paraphrase, the relevant definition just to show how crazy this is:

We think live in the world "existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality", but we do not. The world existing independently as part of reality has been conjured up for us recently.

Jordan Peterson's mind may not live in a world existing independently from him as a part of reality, but those of us who are sane do, and this is particularly true if we are elements of a vast computer simulation. Now do you better trust my sense of discernment? I caught the scent of intellectual wrongness from this lunatic just from that one inexcusable error about intelligence.

The literal bankruptcy of Never Trump

Mytheos Holt performs a post-mortem on the quixotic Evan McMullin campaign:

For the forces that backed him, McMullin was not the first, the second, or even the third choice for his appointed task—namely, to prevent Donald Trump from winning the presidency in the name of donor-driven True Conservatism™. Rather, the forces that supported McMullin leaped from one anti-Trump hero to another, starting with the plaintive-sloganed Jeb!, continuing with the vapid dreamboat Marco Rubio, and finally ending up desperately lining up behind Ted Cruz because at least he went on their cruises.

What separates McMullin’s backers from other Jeb!, Rubio, or Cruz supporters, however, was their total unwillingness to accept that sometimes a primary just wouldn’t go their way. In many cases, this was because they belonged to a class of people for whom losing wasn’t supposed to happen because of who they were. This was particularly true of Bill Kristol, arguably the man who built what little meager infrastructure there was for McMullin, hoping to put up someone, anyone, who would stop the GOP from rejecting its self-appointed neoconservative establishment rulers, and their domesticated coterie of social conservatives, who, goshdarnit, were just too Christian and principled to limit immigration, or to attack the interests of major metropolitan donor industries.

And so it was that people who had never had to fight to win a primary decided they were going to try and fight back against someone whose only experience was winning a primary he was never supposed to win by sheer force of will. First, they did it by attempting to force a brokered convention, which presumably would have produced someone like Marco Rubio or Paul Ryan as the nominee. All they accomplished was screaming helplessly from the floor of the RNC like a certain highly distressed member of the #Resistance.

Not to be deterred, they then decided to follow in the august footsteps of George Wallace and John Anderson, and run a third party protest candidate to ensure that no True Conservative™ would have to sully his or herself with a vote for Donald Trump. And for a while, their push looked like it might be something to worry about. Names like Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, or even future Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis were bandied about with excitement. That is, until Romney, Sasse, and Mattis got wind of it and quickly made it plain that on no account were they involved in this, and would you please stop calling, Bill Kristol?!

But even after this, McMullin still wasn’t the first choice. That honor went to the august National Review columnist David French, who entertained the idea for just long enough to get a segment on Fox News complaining about how rude Trump supporters were. Then he promptly fled.

Only then, and finally, after casting about in the “darkness” of the dawning Age of Trump, the disappointed neoconservative Captain Ahabs realized they had to run someone if they wanted to look serious. Enter Evan McMullin, former House Republican Conference Chief Policy Director, former CIA agent, former investment banker, and man with nothing better to do because he was possibly the only unmarried Mormon over the age of 19 in Washington. And so, NeverTrump looked at McMullin, squinted, thought he looked enough like David French, and said: “OK, fine, you’ll do.”

Of course, quite rapidly it became clear that the chances of McMullin actually becoming president were someplace between zero and hahahahahahahaha . . . wait, what? But becoming president was no longer the point. It was all about sinking Trump, to prove to those awful populists who had dared to think for themselves, and not the way Bill Kristol and Bill Kristol’s donors wanted them to think, that they were servants, and could never live in the Big House as equals.

And so, a simple strategy for denying Trump the presidency was devised: McMullin would try to carve away enough of his voters in states with high Mormon populations so that even if Trump won a couple of swing states, the losses among Mormons would cancel out Trump’s victory. Whether McMullin won those states, or Clinton won them, was beside the point—which was, and only ever was, to hurt Trump. And, for a few moments, the strategy looked like it might work in Utah, right up until the Mormons thought it through, realized how much trouble they’d gone through making themselves part of the Republican coalition in the first place, and decided they’d rather not self-excommunicate for the sake of panicked Beltway grifters. Ultimately, McMullin came in third in Utah, behind even Hillary Clinton.

As has so often been the case, the light of the God-Emperor has revealed the true character of many a cuck and an America Secondist. I find myself wondering if McMullin even has the self-awareness to be ashamed of how he permitted himself to be used by Bill Kristol to screw over so many sanctimonious conservatives.

Then I recall who those sanctimonious conservatives were and how obnoxious they are, and I remember that I don't care.

Jordan Peterson's existential relativism

I'm sorry, Peterson fans, but now that I have begun to look more closely at him, it increasingly appears your intellectual hero is a complete joke at best. At worst, he is a insane monster of inhuman ethics. Assuming that others have understood him correctly, his definition of "truth" is absolutely and utterly false - which explains his lack of intellectual integrity - and his Darwinian ethics are not only incoherent, they don't even rise to the functional level of Sam Harris's hapless utilitarianism.

Harris, who is far from my idea of a formidable intellect or coherent debater, has absolutely no trouble resoundingly dismissing Peterson's shoddy logic:

I recently interviewed the psychologist Jordan B. Peterson on the Waking Up podcast. As I said at the beginning of our conversation, I’d received more listener requests for him than for Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Edward Snowden—or, indeed, any other person on earth.

The resulting exchange, however, was not what our mutual fans were hoping for. Rather than discuss religion and atheism, or the relationship between science and ethics, we spent two hours debating what it means to say that a proposition is (or seems to be) “true.” This is a not trivial problem in philosophy. But the place at which Peterson and I got stuck was a strange one. He seemed to be claiming that any belief system compatible with our survival must be true, and any that gets us killed must be false. As I tried to show, this view makes no sense, and I couldn’t quite convince myself that Peterson actually held it.

I found this extremely hard to believe too, and I won't utilize it until I confirm it from Peterson's own writings, but the basic idea keeps cropping up again and again when I read what others have written about the man's ideas, as well as in the man's own words. Right now, I'm still at the "you have GOT to be fucking kidding me" stage; I am starting to suspect that this guy's genius lies in piling up so much highly compressed bullshit that the bedazzled reader only sees a mirror of what he wants to believe.

• Events as they occurred are only factual but not necessarily true. True is a judgment call and is therefore open to interpretation. The claim of ‘something's’ validity can only be made when one can see ‘the bigger picture’ — the wellbeing of humanity or ‘life’ itself. Only then can we know if something is true rather than just factual or ‘materialistically true’. - Peterson
• If it doesn’t serve life, it’s not true. - Peterson
• He seems to claim that any belief system compatible with our survival must be true, and any that gets us killed must be false.
• Why is Peterson dishonest in some ways? I think he explained this in the debate with Sam Harris, where he said things like " something which not benefits /potential harms humanity cant be true".

This is worse than moral relativism, this is existential relativism. Harris correctly demolishes this absurd, childish, and narcissistic conception of truth in his post-interview response.

In the year 2017, the question “How should we act in the world?” simply isn’t reducible to Darwinism. In fact, most answers to this question arise in utter defiance of the evolutionary imperatives that produced us. Caring for disabled children would most likely have been maladaptive for our ancestors during any conditions of scarcity—while cannibalism recommended itself from time to time in every corner of the globe. How much inspiration should we draw from the fact that killing and eating children is also an ancient “archetype”? Overcoming tribalism, xenophobia, honor violence, and other forms of apish barbarity has been unthinkable for hundreds of millennia—that is, until now. And our moral progress on these fronts is the basis of our most enlightened answers to Peterson’s question.

We didn’t evolve to do science, or to build institutions that last for generations, but we must do these things to thrive. Thriving requires the survival of the species, of course, but it’s not reducible to that. Getting our genes into the next generation simply isn’t our only (or even our primary) goal—and it surely isn’t the foundation of our ethics. If we were true Darwinians, every man’s deepest desire would be to continually donate sperm to sperm banks so that he could sire thousands of children for whom he’d have no further responsibility. If we really viewed the world from the perspective of our genes, no other answer to the question “How should we act in the world?” would seem more fitting. I’ll let readers judge how closely this maps onto the human minds with which they’re acquainted.

Peterson believes that there is an inverse symmetry to our views on the relationship between facts and values. According to him, I see “ethics as nested inside scientific realism,” whereas he sees “scientific realism as nested inside Darwinian competition” (which he views in ethical terms).  A clearer way of stating this is that he thinks I locate all values within a system of truth claims, whereas he locates all truth claims in a system that selects for a single value: survival. Hence our stalemate.

Peterson’s peculiar form of pragmatism, anchored to the lone value of survival, can’t capture what we mean by “truth” (or even what most pragmatists mean by it).

But I have always said that the scientific worldview presupposes the validity of certain values—logical consistency (up to a point), explanatory elegance, respect for evidence, and so forth. This is why I think Hume’s famous gap between “is” (facts) and “ought” (values) is misleading on the topic of morality. We can easily reverse direction and discover that we won’t get to “is” without first obeying certain “oughts.” For instance, to understand what the cause of an illness is, one ought to pay attention to regularities in the body and in the environment that coincide with it. (Additionally, we now know that one ought to emphasize material causes, rather than sympathetic magic or the evil eye.) Facts and values are connected.

However, the fact that some values lie at the foundation of our scientific worldview does not suggest that all scientific truth claims can be judged on the basis of the single (Darwinian) criterion of whether the claimants survive long enough to breed.  On the contrary, this assertion is quite obviously false (as I believe I demonstrated throughout our podcast). We can easily imagine our species being outcompeted by one that has no understanding whatsoever of the cosmos. Would a lethal swarm of disease-bearing insects possess a worldview superior to our own by virtue of eradicating us? The question answers itself—because no insect could even pose it. Mere survival doesn’t suggest anything about the intellectual or ethical achievement of the survivors.

Some who listened to my conversation with Peterson thought that in objecting to his conception of truth, I was endorsing materialism or denying that the mind could play any role in determining the character of reality. But that isn’t the case. I was merely arguing that Peterson’s peculiar form of pragmatism, anchored to the lone value of survival, can’t capture what we mean by “truth” (or even what most pragmatists mean by it).

Peterson is so philosophically incompetent that he quite clearly does not fully comprehend that his idiotic ethical system not only fully justifies the Holocaust, it can actually be logically utilized to require future repetitions on a regular basis! I suspect he may harbor a dim awareness of this, which would explain why he is clinging so desperately to the 115 IQ myth that I disproved.

I have not yet confirmed for myself that the way Peterson characterized his definition of truth during the interview is fully representative of his actual thinking on the matter, or that Harris and other commenters are correctly describing it. But if this "evolutionary pragmatism" is genuinely the basis for his conception of the truth, then I have absolutely no problem dismissing the man as an architect of an evil philosophy, an intellectual charlatan, and a false prophet whose works merit complete and comprehensive demolition.

Spare me the "oh, he does so much good for the broken little boys" argument. If this definition of his conception of truth is correct, then Jordan Peterson is not doing anyone any good at all, and unlike more honest atheists like Dawkins and Harris, he is a philosophical wolf in sheep's clothing, a Pied Piper who is attempting to transform those broken little boys into unethical monstrosities. He appears to have blown up his Gamma delusion bubble into an ethical system and a philosophy of life. I am even beginning to suspect that he isn't just comprehensively wrong, but that he is mentally ill. Not unlike Google muttering "don't be evil, don't be evil" to itself, Peterson is desperately seeking an antidote to the chaos of his mind.

So, if you're a Peterson fan, you might want to buckle up. I just read the transcript of the Harris interview, then put 12 Rules for Life and Maps of Meaning on my tablet. The baleful eye of the Dark Lord is now focused squarely upon the man. And we're not just looking at the possibility that the emperor has no clothes here, we're being forced to consider the very real possibility that the emperor is actually a recently shorn sheep that sincerely believes it's a cat.

Skin in the game

Last week, I was asked how the Israelis regard the Diasporans and their refusal to join the rest of the Jewish nation. This post by a Jew who lived for nearly 30 years in the USA before moving to Israel  is on the harsh side, but it generally sums up the contemptuous attitude of most of the Israelis I know:

I want a divorce. Not from my wife, whom I love dearly, but from the liberal and progressive American Jewish community. From those American Jews who believe that they have a special right to judge and advise the state of Israel because their parents were Jewish.... Your Jewish DNA does not make you any more knowledgeable than anyone else, nor does it give you a greater stake in the Jewish state, unless you decide to accept the generous offer it has made to all Jews everywhere by its Law of Return.

The fact that you had a Bar or Bat Mitzvah does not mean that your piece in the Forward or your letter to the New York Times in which you explain why, as a Jew, you are traumatized by Israel’s efforts to defend her southern border, should be published any more than that of any other person’s.

Even the fact that at some point in your life you have experienced antisemitism doesn’t qualify you to talk about how Israel should behave toward her own antisemitic enemies. If antisemitism in the US is problem for you, there is always that Law of Return.

There is no reason that the pronouncements of “If Not Now” are any more worth listening to than those of the American Nazi Party. Peter Beinart isn’t a more authoritative source about Israel and the Arabs than David Duke just because he has a bigger nose.

The head of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, likes to talk about how the demands he makes of Israel are made out of “unconditional love,” because he wants to “repair it” according to his notion of tikkun olam. What he calls “love,” I call hypocrisy. He owns an apartment in Jerusalem. He should live in it, send his kids to be combat soldiers in the army, pay taxes, and learn to practice situational awareness when he walks the streets or gets on a bus. Then he can try to fix things here (he probably would still give wrong advice, but then at least he would suffer the consequences).

It shouldn't be surprising that the Israelis are little more inclined to put up with the eternal backseat-driving and unrequested tikkun-olaming of their nomadic kindred than anyone else is. The difference is that unlike most other nations, they aren't hesitant to call out the Diasporans for their hypocrisy and their enmity-inspiring behaviors, especially since the latter tend to actively damage Israel's standing in the world.

For example, attempting to eliminate the First Amendment rights of Americans in the name of slowing down the BDS movement is a horrifically bad idea. There are few things more likely to lead to the USA cutting off all foreign aid to Israel; even the most philosemitic Christian Zionist is not going to legally amputate his own tongue for Israel.

Anyhow, this is the sort of thing that NN Taleb means when he talks about the importance of skin in the game; it is a very clear example of how those with skin in the game are always disinclined to respect or pay any attention to those who lack it.

EXCERPT: Hunter Killer

This is an excerpt from WARDOGS INC. #2: Hunter Killer, published today.

Two weeks later I stood on a platform behind Chief Executive Officer (Planetary) Heiermach, suited up and carrying both my Reaper and my Popov-Norinco 60. I was glad for my battlesuit’s climate control as I watched the important men and women around me sweating in the hot afternoon sun.

I’d placed Zelag and Ward down in front of the stage, behind the local fuzz. Jones was on the stage platform with me, also a bit behind Heiermach. The crowd was pretty big. I’d estimate between twenty and thirty thousand people were there. The whole thing was a legitimately big deal.

DVG and the Chrysalans had managed to put this event together and get it advertised quickly. I suppose you can do stuff like that when you have more money than God. There were plenty of locals present, along with more than a few offworld tourists, historians and media crews interested in the temple. I had no doubt I’d end up in the background of a half-dozen documentaries. Good thing I was wearing my exo and my visor was mirrored.

Wardogs had provided us with an armored luxury skycar and a driver to escort Mr. Heiermach. That got us to the mountain in about five minutes instead of driving an hour or two through the desert. Mount Xirtis looked close through the windows of DVG HQ but the flat terrain played tricks on you.

The ceremony itself was typical PR stuff. Sappy speeches by local politicians and a university professor, various religious stuff, some music, blah blah blah. At one point some young Chrysalans did a little dance with gauzy wings on their backs, then we had to listen to a guy playing some sort of glass organ with his feet. I was desperate for coffee to stay awake within the first ten minutes, and I’d been standing here for two hours.

Fortunately, our suits are well-stocked with pharma. I set it to zing me with a little chemical pick-me-up whenever I started nodding and my heart rate dropped too low.

Heiermach played emcee himself. He was good at it too. He made it look easy, introducing each person and pronouncing their names correctly, then standing back and letting them go for their allotted time, then stepping in and moving everything along to the next portion of the program if it looked like they were going to go on too long.

“And next we have a woman who is both a priestess of the temple and an honored historian,” Heiermach announced, his hand on the shoulder of a heavy, older woman with facial tattoos. “You may have seen her book on the divine origins of the temple and the many fascinating events which took place over the centuries on this very ground. Her work has been designated as worth preserving in the Alexandrian national library, as well as bring recognized by the Academy of the Ascendancy as a–”

Some yelling up front at the barriers caused Heiermach to pause. My visor was jacked into the security grid and gave me a tactical summary. Four yellows were pushing through the surveillance field and starting to scuffle with the local police.

“Possible hostiles at barrier!” I yelled into my comm, but I could already see Ward and Zelag converging rapidly on the scrum, so I held my position. Just to be safe, I pulled my Reaper and stepped in front of the CEO and the confused historian, holding it up so no one would think I was aiming it at them. Jones stood behind Heiermach, facing backwards in case a second threat materialized from behind the stage.

I focused on the four men and confirmed they were hostiles. They were dressed like tourists, but they’d pulled vibro blades and had put the police down fast. Two police already lay bleeding on the ground, while a third was staggering away holding his bleeding stomach. I flicked the Blitz to a moderate dispersion and braced to fire, but before I had the chance there were multiple flashes of plasma fire from both flanks and all four of the attackers went down hard.

The crowd was yelling and shouting and starting to get frantic.

“Tell them the threat is neutralized!” I said to Heiermach. “Keep them from rioting!”

He recovered fast, taking the mic. “Ladies and gentlemen—everything is under control. Please remain calm—please stay where you are!”

“Jones, stay with Heiermach,” I ordered, then jumped down off the stage.

On the ground were four men, two of them neatly burned through center mass by plasma bolts. Ward and Zelag were already there.

“Ward, Zelag? Who torched these two?” I asked.

“That was me,” Zelag admitted. “I nailed them with my Cerebus.”

“Good shooting,” I said. “Though non-lethal would have been better.”

I kicked myself mentally. I should have specified that to the team. We wanted captures, not kills. Assuming knowledge was not good leadership, especially since Zelag was a new guy.

“I didn’t kill mine,” Ward said, pointing to the other bodies on the ground. They were still breathing with no burns. Stunned. One of them had lost his hair—a wig? I looked at his detached hair, then at his head. On it was a network of green tattoos, ending at his face where they’d been obscured by makeup. I pulled at the other guy’s hair and it came off as well, also revealing ink.

Then I examined the other two. All of them were wearing wigs. They must be radical monks who hadn’t gotten the memo. Apparently the druid was right and not everyone was easily convinced of DVG’s contrition. Or maybe the gods were still pissed.

One of the two wounded police officers was now sitting up, his arm slashed from elbow to shoulder. The other one was being carried off on a stretcher.

“Damn Chrysalans,” said the local police chief, taking my arm and addressing me over the murmur of the crowd. I nodded. He shook his head. “I swear, I know they’ve been around a long time, but if I had my druthers…”

We’d introduced ourselves to the captain before the event when discussing the security plans and he’d told me in no uncertain terms what he thought of the “crazy cultists and their stupid temple.” I watched the police search the living and the dead. All four of the faux tourists had been carrying blades. I thanked Ares none of them had been wearing an explosive vest. Though the sniffers would have picked that up, I mused. Okay, a disrupter. Thank Ares none of them had a disrupter.

“You’d better make an announcement,” I said to the police chief, aware that the crowd was restless. “Get this thing back on track.”

I took the stage again, as did the police chief. He made a quick announcement, stating that two police officers had been injured in the line of duty but were receiving care and that “security had neutralized the threat and we shouldn’t let terror derail this momentous occasion.”

The event resumed, with Heiermach thanking the universe as well as the local gods and the sacred mountain for keeping everyone safe. We made it through without incident. As the sun set over the temple, the chief druid took the stage and publicly hugged Heiermach, accepting his repentance and blessing him for it, then sharing a drink from a large and glittering ceremonial chalice. It was passed around on stage among a circle of Chrysalans along with important members of the city and the DVG staff, then torches were lit and songs were sung for another half hour before the event came to a close.

And that’s when everything went rodeo.