Peterson's 12 Rules For Life, have you heard of this?

[bennyboy]

Virtue signalling and trading..but I'm the leftist radical...lol?

It's not "virtue signalling."  I'm saying explicitly that I've made a conscious effort to act virtuously, and I've found it more disadvantageous than advantageous.

Your feelings can be acknowledged as -your feelings- and still be deeply malinformed.  

What's a "malinformed feeling"?

My feelings represent my emotional reactions to my environment.  They are motivators, and will explain many of my behaviors (if you believe in free will) and ALL of them if you do not.  Blaming me for having the "wrong" feelings about things might make your farts smell better to you, but they are unlikely to lead me to align my behaviors with those who cause them.

Allow me to suggest that this is your anxiety speaking..again., and not in any way the message of the left.

Obviously, this is the condensed version, but your own comments in this very thread fit the spirit of that statement quite well. And in my experience, while I respect you more than most who make similar arguments, I'd say your arguments are pretty representative of that political cross-section.

Not particularly compelling.  My current position on this is: I'm going to live my life and try to better it, and foster relationships which I believe will improve my enjoyment of it.  I will avoid crazy fucks when I can, and beat them down if I have to.  I will try to better my family's position, and support my friends in doing the same.  As for everyone else: I will treat you as well as I can until I decide if you're a friend or a crazy fuck.  And in the likely case that I decide it's the latter, I reserve the right not to give a shit about anything you say, do, or want.

Not compelling at all..but then, you are clearly compelled by it regardless of whether or not it's the message of the left or the voice of the lesser hobgoblins of your mind (don't take this personally..you don't even want to know about the fucking spiders in my head - we all have them in some way or form) encouraged by people like Peterson to imagine boogeymen where there are none.

Over and above all of that though...let;s say that the current political climate is hurting your feelings, somehow.  So?  You having your feelings hurt isn't exactly the same sort or scale of problem as institutional or professional bigotry.

Well, let's take Tizheruk's issue with dream catchers as an example of me trying to participate in the identity politics.  I made the argument that cultural appropriation of natives was relevant, precisely because certain traditions hold value to people with a certain identity.  One of our members (I think I remember but I don't want to say the name in case I got it wrong) told him in no uncertain terms to go fuck himself, and I felt that such an off-hand dismissal was unnecessarily insensitive. I even suggested (to my current disappointment with myself) that the person involved was an entitled white oppressor, and should more seriously consider the plight of poor Tiz and his downtrodden people.

So, Tiz and I are best buds now, right?  He deeply appreciated my willingness to go to bat for him, to support him, and to stand up to several pages of verbal lashings on his behalf, right?

Nope.  Tiz is so busy thinking about himself, about what he believes and demands that everyone else must believe, he's so busy smelling his own farts, that he can't remember any of that, or at least doesn't care about it because it doesn't provide an immediate benefit to his current tirade.

That's fine.  Tiz is not under any particular compulsion to like me, and part of the nature of forums is that people often end up disliking those who express ideas contrary to their own.

But from my perspective, there's a clear lesson there: there's no benefit for me in standing up for anyone else.  Nobody's going to praise me for trying to be virtuous-- they are going to say I'm "virtue signalling," and use any good I've attempted to do as yet another way to put me in a box and to discard my opinions. Hire all black staff in a country where black people are almost ALWAYS rejected with prejudice? Oh. . . you're just doing it out of guilt/pride/anxiety. It's literally a climate in which I feel NO MATTER WHAT I DO, there cannot be any positive outcome for me.

But I have every right just to walk away from it all. "I don't give a shit anymore" is a perfectly rational position from someone who's tried, and not felt sufficiently rewarded for the effort.