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Jordan Peterson discusses Civilizational Collapse and
Causes of Gender Dysphoria
Throughout his appearance on a Joe Rogan podcast, Peterson spoke about what he saw as the decline of Western civilization. He specifically pointed to the obsession with gender as a sign of civilizational collapse, which caught the ire of the far-left progressive activist group Media Matters, which frequently demands that advertisers boycott conservative news commentators
The conversation about gender began when Rogan brought up remarks by Douglas Murray, associate editor of The Spectator and author of The Madness of Crowds, who also contends that civilization is collapsing. Rogan noted that in a previous episode of his show, Murray observed that when societies start collapsing, “they become obsessed with gender.”
“He was saying that you could trace it back to the ancient Romans, the Greeks,” Rogan continued.
Or, to Sodom and Gomorrah, for that matter.
Peterson expanded on that assertion, contending that “It’s not so much an obsession with gender, it’s a disintegration of categories as a precursor ... like so it’s a marker for — if categories just dissolve, especially fundamental ones, the culture is dissolving.” From there, he and Rogan began to engage in the conversation about the Bible.
At another point in the podcast, Rogan asked Peterson: “What do you think it means when someone is so attracted to the idea that they were born in the wrong body … that they’re willing to go through surgery?”
Peterson responded by saying, “A lot of the people who are manifesting serious issues with gender identity are on the autistic spectrum.” He further likened the widespread phenomenon of people identifying as transgender to the “satanic ritual abuse allegations that emerged in daycares in the 1980s.” Peterson attributed the aforementioned hysteria to “women going into the workforce en masse, leaving their children with strangers and starting to have pathological fantasies about it, especially if they were borderline schizophrenic.”
“Those fantasies propagated into the population,” he recalled. He suggested that something similar was happening with the widespread adoption of transgender identities, telling Rogan that a relationship exists between “creativity” and gender dysphoria.”
“They’re not stable in their identity” because “they’re creative,” Peterson insisted, adding that “creative people by definition aren’t stable in their identities, that’s what makes them creative.”
Later, Rogan sought to clarify that the motivating factor between “people who want to change their gender identity is creativity.” Peterson replied, declaring: “I don’t think so, I know so.”
Peterson’s latest appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” comes about a year after he began to speak openly about his faith journey. Peterson grew up Protestant and had spent much of his time as a public figure as a religious skeptic but appears to have embraced his faith following health problems.
Rogan, the former host of “Fear Factor,” continues to draw millions of listeners to his podcast despite receiving significant opposition for sharing what critics decry as coronavirus misinformation. When singer Neil Young threatened to remove his music from Spotify if it refused to cut ties with Rogan, the streaming platform elected to scrub Young’s songs from Spotify.
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Instagram, Snapchat sued over alleged role in girl’s suicide
The social media platforms are addictive to an extent that caused a kid
to kill herself, mother claims in lawsuit
© Philippe Turpin / Getty Images
Eleven-year-old Selena was apparently so addicted to Instagram and Snapchat that she suffered depression, eating disorders and sleep deprivation, before eventually killing herself, her mother Tammy Rodriguez claims. The woman, from Connecticut, sued the companies in San Francisco federal court this week.
According to the lawsuit, filed on Thursday against the platforms’ respective parent companies, Meta (formerly Facebook) and Snap, the photo-sharing and messaging apps lack parental control and “seek to exploit users’ susceptibility.” As an alleged result, the girl had “struggled for more than two years with an extreme addiction” and then took her own life in July last year.
While there are terms of service that warn that a person can only create an account from age 13 and older, the platforms lack strong age-verification checks, the lawsuit asserts. The absence of parental controls made it almost impossible for the mother to limit her child’s screen time on the social media, and apparently only caused further confrontations in the family.
“The only way for Tammy Rodriguez to effectively limit access to Defendants’ products would be to physically confiscate Selena’s internet-enabled devices,” the suit claims. To access her accounts through other means, the girl simply ran away from home.
A therapist to whom the girl had been taken evaluated the harm, saying that the practice has never before seen “a patient as addicted to social media.”
“There is a mental health epidemic among American teens,” attorney Matthew Bergman, founder of Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle, told Bloomberg. His company represents Tammy Rodriguez in the case. The attorney also filed a separate complaint this week, representing a mother in Oregon. “Numerous mental health conditions” of a 15-year-old are blamed on Snap and Meta.
Last year, anxiety over the wellbeing of young social-media users came under a spotlight and reached the US senate. Tech companies appeared in hearings, after product-manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen accused Mark Zuckerberg’s company of prioritizing money over children’s and teenagers’ safety. She called for more regulation, in particular of Instagram. Haugen also spoke before a European Parliament committee, discussing the social media companies’ negative impact on users.
University finds novel 1984 ‘offensive and upsetting’
Students are being warned of ‘explicit material’ awaiting them in a novel that,
ironically, describes the dangers of censorship
The University of Northampton has issued a harsh warning over potentially “offensive and upsetting” material contained in the famous dystopia by George Orwell, ‘1984.’
The novel, which describes the dangers of totalitarian rule and censorship, is now red-flagged, as it addresses “challenging issues related to violence, gender, sexuality, class, race, abuses, sexual abuse, political ideas and offensive language.”
The warning, issued to students taking a module called ‘Identity Under Construction,’ became public following a Freedom of Information request by The Mail on Sunday.
The news raised eyebrows among social media users, with one saying that Orwell is “grave turning” and another reacting with an emotional “Get me off this planet. I can't deal.”
“There’s something very Big Brother about it,” Conservative MP Andre Bridgen commented on Twitter.
“If a trigger warning prevents even one student from reading 1984, the University of Northampton has utterly failed in its mission. This book, more than any, should be read widely at the moment,” an Australian professor Andrew Timming noted.
However, Orwell’s classic novel is not the only one students at Northampton should beware of, according to the university’s management. Samuel Beckett’s play ‘Endgame,’ the graphic novel ‘V For Vendetta’ by Alan Moore and David Lloyd and Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Sexing The Cherry’ have also been listed by the university as “offensive and upsetting.”
Apparently, there are also some problems with books taught in other modules of Northampton’s English degree course as well. Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel ‘The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time,’ for example, might be upsetting for readers, as it includes the “death of an animal, ableism and disability and offensive language”, the warning explains.
The educational institution, currently ranked 108 out of 132 UK universities in the 2022 edition of The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, has issued a statement to defend its warnings. As quoted by The Daily Mail, Northampton says that “while it is not university policy, we may warn students of content in relation to violence, sexual violence, domestic abuse and suicide” because “some texts might be challenging for some students.”
And, Oh God, we wouldn't want to challenge our students, would we?
EU country bans gay ‘conversion therapy’
The new French law, which authorizes jail time and fines for practitioners,
was unanimously passed
Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly have given their unanimous backing to a new law which prohibits so-called ‘gay conversion therapy’, voting 142-0.
The new law, passed on Tuesday, prohibits attempts to “convert” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender roles. It also grants authorities the right to seek criminal charges against practitioners of conversion therapy.
Sustained efforts to “aim to modify or reprimand sexual orientation or gender identity,” which negatively influence the physical or mental health of victims, will be punishable by up to two years imprisonment and €30,000 ($34,000) in fines.
Penalties can be increased to three years imprisonment and fines of €45,000 ($50,000) when the victim is a minor or another vulnerable member of society.
Under the new legislation, campaigners will now be able file civil suits on behalf of victims of conversion therapy. The measure was hailed in parliament as a vital move to safeguard those who hesitate or are unable to alert police themselves.
Lawmaker Laurence Vanceunebrock-Mialon, who played a key role in the law’s passage, claimed it would target “all those who equated an identity or a sexual orientation with sickness.”
“There is nothing to cure,” she added, speaking to fellow lawmakers.
The law will come into effect in the next two weeks, with President Emmanuel Macron’s consent. The French leader hailed the bill’s passage, tweeting: “Because being oneself is not a crime.”
The practice is not widely prohibited across Europe. It is illegal in Albania and is prohibited for minors in Malta and Germany. The EU has urged nation states to ban conversion therapy. In October, the UK Government launched a consultation on banning conversion therapy in England and Wales.
Yet, those who convince children to become transgendered are easily the worst criminals in all this. More than half of all girls who transition to boys will attempt suicide. If that is not mental illness, then what is it?
Stossel: How Progressives Made San Francisco a Sick City
John Stossel
January 26, 2022
San Francisco’s liberal mayor declared a “state of emergency” to try to deal with the city’s “nasty streets.” How did it get so bad?
Journalist Michael Shellenberger’s new book, “San Fransicko,” argues that it happened because of progressive ideas. ”The town I love is sick,” says Shellenberger in my new video.
He came to San Francisco when he was in his 20s to support social justice causes. He still supports those ideas, but “it just went too far.” In 2014, California politicians decided to end mass incarceration. It’s a noble goal. America locks up a higher percentage of its people than any other country. Jails are overcrowded. People in jail are more likely to learn to be better criminals than to be rehabilitated.
So California converted many nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors. People who steal less than $950 worth of items are no longer jailed. Proponents said this would divert money from prisons that could go to mental health and drug treatment programs.
But not jailing people who break laws had nasty unintended consequences.
Shoplifters steal right in front of security guards. Police look the other way. They know if they make an arrest, they’ll face hours of paperwork and the person arrested will just return to the street. Cars are broken into 74 times a day.
“None of us want mass incarceration,” says Shellenberger, who voted for the law to stop jailing people. “But that was a recipe for disaster.”
Because no one is arrested for camping on the street, San Francisco is now filled with tent cities that supposedly house the “homeless.” But most campers are the mentally ill and drug users who choose life on the street. They shoot up or light up in public, confident no one will interfere.
In my video, one crack addict said she stays in San Francisco because it is “more lenient.” In other cities, she said, she’d be in jail. Other cities, like Miami, do treat the homeless differently. “They don’t let people use drugs in public, and they built sufficient homeless shelters,” says Shellenberger.
In San Francisco, new homeless shelters are blocked by progressive activists who argue that everyone deserves an apartment. Yet it costs $700,000 to build one apartment in San Francisco.
A few years ago, I made a video suggesting that the high cost of apartments was a major reason for San Francisco’s tent cities. California’s excessive regulation discourages new construction, so there’s a housing shortage. That keeps rental prices high and leads people to live on the street.
“It’s not true,” says Shellenberger. “If it were true that expensive places made for homelessness, why don’t we see large open-air drug scenes in Carmel? Why don’t we see large open drug scenes in many fancy neighborhoods? Homelessness is just a function of whether or not you allow people to camp in public or not.”
"Homelessness is just a function of whether or not you allow people
to camp in public or not.”
But if people are homeless, should the government arrest them? The Constitution gives us the right to peaceably assemble. “People have a right to be outdoors,” I tell Shellenberger. “We don’t have a right to force them off the street if they aren’t directly threatening anybody.”
“We should defend those rights because that’s part of our freedom,” he replies, “but you don’t have a right to shoot heroin at the public park.”
There need to be “consequences for people’s behaviors.” After researching his city’s problems, Shellenberger decided he could no longer identify as progressive. “Progressivism has become the abdication of personal responsibility.”
“Progressivism has become the abdication of personal responsibility.”
I think it has always meant that. But now parts of San Francisco have become such a sewer that even liberal politicians have changed their positions. The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, recently declared it’s time to end the “reign of criminals who are destroying our city!”
Not long ago, when protesters shouted, “Defund the police,” Breed cut San Francisco’s policing budget by $120 million. Now she says her town will be “more aggressive with law enforcement … and less tolerant of all the bulls—t that has destroyed our city.”
Progressive ideas almost always end badly.
As I have mentioned many times on this blog - sin is progressive!
John Stossel is creator of Stossel TV and author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.” For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
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