Even though this is the shiniest answer yet.

We must be approaching Spring, when the weather gets even worse. We had a brief thaw earlier this week, and all this liquid water trickled out from under the glacier covering our lawn, and then flowed across our sidewalk. Then the temperature dropped below freezing again, and is going to stay there for a few days. You know what that means: ice skating rink!

I tried to get into the lab again today, and saw that…and it gets much worse a little further on, where the walkway slopes downward. Decided I’m too old to risk these bones and turned around and went back home. That’s unfortunate, because nothing is more soothing than feeding the spiders. Instead I had to settle for salting down the sidewalk so I wouldn’t be at fault for any student casualties braving the path.

Then I decided I need to hang out with spiders for a bit, so I actually drove to the lab. It was a whole half a block! But it was safer than trying to walk on the ice ramp.

The spiders are fine, thanks for asking. They were hungry and wolfed down a couple of flies each.

Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Dave Rubin walk into a podcast and…it’s all one big joke! John Holbo thinks it’s funny, anyway. The three of them engage in their usual pseudo-philosophical babble — I’ll include a tiny sample of their long-winded gassing here, but there’s more at the link. Even more if you go to the original source, but I wouldn’t want to inflict that kind of pain on anyone.

Peterson: Here’s the idea. Imagine that you are in some sense the embodiment of that paternal spirit that has characterized mankind since the dawn of time. It’s locked in you, it’s part of your potential. That’s coded in part biologically, but it’s also coded sociologically, in the air and the mythos and the stories we tell each other … [snip out some stuff about Christianity]. It [the image] starts to force you to develop. The socialization. The stress of that transforms you biologically. That won’t be unlocked until you place yourself in the position … [snip more stuff about Christianity] … you actually produce a psycho-physiological-spiritual transformation that matures you into the representation of the Father on earth.

It must be nice to just wave your hands and claim that some complex phenomenon is coded biologically, without ever having to do the work to justify it. But here, Holbo is more interested in that idea that you’re the embodiment of a paternal spirit that also isn’t justified with evidence. You’re expected to accept it because feelings, and of course Ben Feelings Don’t Care About Facts Shapiro concurs.

The discussion concerns, so to speak, the status of certain feelings. You have a feeling that a certain image of positive masculinity (paternalistic, dominant) is valid, exemplary, normatively binding.

So: what is the status of this feeling?

Peterson speculates, on the basis of evolutionary psychology, that: facts care about his feeling. Shapiro backs him up by arguing that Aquinas and Leibniz concur. There has to be a reason why things are as they are, including our feelings about positive masculinity. There must be something underlying it! (My feeling can’t be resting on nothing. That would imply I am like a snowflake, liable to melt. Abzu forbid!)

Note: this is only masculine feelings. Facts care about guy feelings. It’s a priori!

To be fair, Peterson doesn’t claim certainty. But, to be fairer: the whole thing seems so transparently Just-So-Story-ish wishful and (to spin it in the most charitable way) wildly indulgent in rank speculation. (And Leibniz!) The conspicuously uncritical quality of it, especially in light of Shapiro’s famous catch-phrase?

Well, I thought it was funny.

Hey, I thought it was hilarious! But then, if you find entertainment in contradictions and pretentious foolishness stated with pompous certainty, then Peterson and Shapiro are world-class comedians.

I’d forgotten about the scenes with the spider in this video — they just make it better.

Maybe I should revise my mood: don’t eat the rich, feed them all to spiders.

March 11 is my day to feel depressed. I could never forget her birthday, because it was two days after mine, and she was my baby sister, 11 years younger than I am. I remember how she’d hold my hand as we walked down to the store for candy to celebrate, and how she would pop her head out the door and sing-song about how I had a girl friend when I was walking home from school with, OK, a girl, and sure, I would marry her several years later, but that was just premature. And embarrassing, as little sisters can be.

And then she died, and I’m stuck thinking of her every March, and more often. Dammit. Why doesn’t grief ever die?

One last walk to the candy store? I’ll get you whatever you want, I promise.