Peterson's 12 Rules for Life v2.0-- actual book discussion

[paulpablo]

If you can afford a computer and an internet connection, there's a starving kid out there who's missing a meal.  I'll bet your yearly snack budget could feed little Akbar for about 10 years, no?

Sure. I've donated money for kids in need. I also give coins to homeless people when I have some with me.

Are black people in the U.S. struggling?  They have free schooling, no?  A welfare system?  Something like a basic health car system?  Did you earn all of the benefits that citizenship in your country (I'm assuming the US) provides?  Or was it handed to you by those who succeeded in establishing those systems before you?

Black people are copping shit in the US, in Australia, and elsewhere.

And no, I didn't earn any of the benefits granted to me because of my citizenship (I live in Australia), but I'm thankful that I have these benefits.

Should I be deeply concerned about inequity in the world?

It does bother me, but I'm not asking you to feel the same way I do. If you can't be concerned, then you can't. That's not the point, though.

Which should I focus on-- black people who can't get into college due to low SAT scores (oh the racism!), or the families of brown people who were bombed to shit by American drones, and are sifting through mountains of rubble for garbage that they hope will be edible?

Perhaps some honest self-reflection would be a better idea.

Should I draw the line at the human species?  What about the millions of livestock who literally live in shit, restrained even from moving, so you can have your daily Big Mac?  Am I required to care about them, as well?

Again, you're not required to care about anything you don't care about. All I'm saying really is that you're simply misguided when it comes to this topic, and that you're being misled by the likes of Peterson. Perhaps it's got something to do with what Khem calls "white man anxiety", I don't know. But you ain't a sociologist (or a social psychologist) and neither is Peterson, for that matter.

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In the case that Jordan Peterson was talking about the woman listed being able to move house where she wants to as an example of a tangible asset confered by identification as being white.

This is false for the obvious reason that it isn't granted to white people and she didn't get that privilege by being white.

Yeah, these landlords sure do not have a problem at all with letting a person of any ethnicity into their property, eh? It's not like a landlord has never requested from their agents not to consider Indian or Asian or black people. It's all fiction, after all.

I imagine those things happen all the time.