Category Archives: Uncategorized

I have been reading Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae with a great deal of annoyed delight. I say delight because it is wonderful to find someone talking openly about so many of the things I have been thinking about for so long. I’m annoyed because it’s so frustrating to always be discovering that someone has alreadyContinue reading “Reading Camille Paglia”

One thing you learn if you grow up in a good church is about the dangers of Pharisaism. If you don’t know who the Pharisees were, they were the best people. Social leaders, influencers, educated, active in the community, obsessed with being ethical, respected, innovative. They had ethical living down to an absolute science, alwaysContinue reading “The embarassing and overlooked gifts of the Jews”

I’ve taken some time to think about this from different perspectives. It’s true, in a way. A persona is a kind of appearance. And it emerges out of our collective interaction and negotiation. It is a practical social tool. But it’s also more than that. The persona is what emerges out of us in responseContinue reading “Is the persona a false appearance?”

If you like this blog but want a different format, it’s available on Substack now. https://mnobody.substack.com In the future I’m hoping to provide some podcasts and read alongs, which will be accessible from that page. But if you want to latest published articles, the WordPress site is, for now, the best place to get them.Continue reading “I’m on Substack!”

I think people misunderstand how experimentation works on a social scale. Innovation doesn’t render up its results immediately, it renders them up on a generational time scale. When you run an experiment, when you genuinely innovate with the structure of society and truly try something new and different and disruptive and progressive, you cannot tellContinue reading “The revolution isn’t behind us, it is today”

It’s silly to talk about wanting equal value for all endeavors or cultures or lifestyles, although it’s a perfectly ordinary sentiment to express these days. We all say it, but no one really believes it; we really just want equal recognition for us. I think children are the most instructive example for figuring out whatContinue reading “Do we want equality?”

Last night was a night of historic firsts at the Oscars. And among those firsts the most memorable is sure to be the onscreen pairing of Will Smith’s hand and Chris Rock’s face. Everyone seems to want to talk about this incident. And it’s perfectly understandable, even with all the other crazy news going onContinue reading “So Will Smith slapped Chris Rock”

https://pulpitrock.com/resisting-complacency/ I came across this article, and I really love the spirit in it. Life is a struggle. The world is pulling us in a hundred ways so hard, so quickly, that learning to sort the signal from the noise is one of our biggest problems. You have to be calm and quiet and centeredContinue reading “Does God want you to change the world?”

Women, sympathy, and violence (Part 1) In my life, I’ve found women to be unusually sympathetic. But I think there is one group that women, in general, find it very difficult to have any sympathy for, whose sufferings don’t really matter to them. Men. Women can sympathize with other women and with children unusually well;Continue reading “Women, sympathy, and violence”

The value of a crisis of faith and assumptions about it.  I recently heard someone give a talk about having a crisis of faith. And their conclusion was that it’s not a bad thing. It isn’t a problem. It’s a good thing. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, in fact it means thatContinue reading “Is doubt good or bad?”

What do we do about social values? This is a very difficult question. We see that there is a problem, but many intelligent people are uncertain about what to do about it. Perhaps this uncertainty is more of a reflection on the uses and limitations of intellectuals (they’re not great at execution, they’re thinkers) thanContinue reading “Asserting social norms is easy”

I want to talk about this clip. This is a very confrontational statement for Jordan to make. I know he’s famous for being confrontational, but generally he’s takes a more clinical approach, the approach of a therapist; listening and sympathizing, but ready to question and challenge.    This statement is a refusal, an indictment, a declaration,Continue reading “Jordan Peterson declares war”

Everyone wants you to engage. Engagement is the traffic of and goal of the internet. Engagement produces currency. Either social currency or literal currency. So that’s why everyone wants it from you; it’s what the internet is designed to mine. At any cost, by any means, your engagement. Engagement is success, success is value, valueContinue reading “Engagement as the currency of value”

One of the strange abilities the human race possesses, that is responsible for the proliferation of thousands and thousands of different cultures across time, is that we have the ability to catalyze an identity around anything. Even things that are purely fictional, like Star Wars. We can very easily form collective identities around shared narrativesContinue reading “Identitization”

I think life presents a problem in general about all human endeavors and how we judge them. We all have very fine ideas and intentions, but we’re all human, so the reality of our actual lives rarely comes close to what our principles and intentions aspire to. If we were all to truly take stockContinue reading “Hope in the face of human evil”

Tyrannical femininity expresses itself through an invitation. Tyrannical masculinity expresses itself through a confrontation. Both have similar ends. Both are trying to $#@& you over. They just have different ways of doing it.     In the feminine power structure, if you don’t make yourself pleasing, if you don’t come in and make yourself fit, you’llContinue reading “The terrible power of invitation”

    I think the most important question about borders is permeability. You need borders because you want to select what crosses them.     The state is like a living organism. Living organisms have cell membranes and cell walls. That’s one of their defining, necessary features. And there’s a selectivity that allows certain thingsContinue reading “Borders and cell biology”

When I first had kids, I was really looking forward to when they would be a bit bigger and could do more activities, play more games, and watch movies with me. Share the fun things and be playmates. I was never very interested in babies and was eager to have eight to ten-year-olds. But nowContinue reading “Missing my young children”

I’ve always been someone who was attracted to a variety of fields of study, and so I have always appreciated your (Jordan’s) efforts to synthesize and connect knowledge across multiple domains. And I wanted to share a story about an unusual domain you have helped connect me to.     In my own life, I haveContinue reading “A letter to Jordan Peterson”

Is being nice to women weakness? That’s a question that came up in a discussion about being a simp. If you don’t know what being a simp is, it’s basically a guy who does things to please women but gains no reward or respect for it. He’s simply being exploited. He sucks up to women withContinue reading “Is being nice a sucker’s game?”