My morning is made. I have read a review of Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos in the Johannesburg Review of Booksthat savages it appropriately. I chortled through the whole dang thing. Cheered me right up, it did.

And what sort of intellectual does the Idiocracene usher forth? The kind that writes a self-help book for assholes, basically. 12 Rules for Life is a Gladwellian shotgun blast of childhood anecdotes, Bowdlerized mythology, common sense behavioural techniques, grossly undercooked philosophical concepts (Heidegger’s ideas get a proper reaming here), along with a soupçon of mystical Christianity, a dash of Eastern religious-type stuff—oh, and emoticons. (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) It’s all ready-made for the Trump era, where resentment of ‘postmodern’ campus lefties and their intersectional, Black Lives Matter, materialist tendencies have become fodder for prime-time alt-right outrage.

Every paragraph is a wonderful shellacking.

How did Peterson become such an effective Iron John bromide machine? He is a clinical psychologist, a professor of psychology, and a renaissance-style polymath, which in his case means cinching seven or eight basket-weaving disciplines together into one spectacular black hole of knowledge, a negation of the very principles of rigorous scholarship. Peterson appears to have read widely, which is to say: not deeply. Many academic bullshit merchants have done queasy work jamming thinly understood Big Concepts into stocking-stuffer books, but never have they tried to force Charles Darwin, Carl Jung, Jesus Christ, Goethe, Dante, Erich Neumann, Yeats, and literally hundreds of others into a fucking Huffington Post listicle.

Maybe I ought to just quote the whole thing?

Peterson, it should now be clear, is a crank of drunk uncle proportions. But he is also the ‘the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now’, which should not be mistaken for an exaggeration. It’s all caved in on itself, the Western world and its various satellites, in their various stages of orbit decay or escape velocity—we’re all Walter Benjamin’s ‘Angelus Novelus’, gazing at the detritus of history, blown back to the future by the force of the mess. And there’s Jordan Peterson, waiting for us with his rulebook, reminding us to eat a decent breakfast, to pull our flies up, and to refuse futzing with pronouns to accommodate the transgendered.

Nah, I’ll stop there. Go read the whole thing.

Why, you might be wondering, am I so pleased with such a brutal takedown? I’ll tell you. It’s because I made two YouTube videos, Jordan Peterson and the Lobster and PZ Replies to the Lobsterians, which means I am now inundated with comments and email from Very Serious Fanbois, and also more than a few Very Hateful Fanbois, all trying to set me straight. They sound similar to the Cultural Marxism Haters, who also send me similarly clueless tirades. They like to read my mind and tell me how they understand biology so much better than I do, thanks to Peterson’s instruction. It’s utterly nuts.

Here’s a recent example.

Peterson’s point is that through the process of sexual selection we have evolved to climb social hierarchies. The male that rises to the top has more offspring. But I guess sexual selection isn’t a thing in biology anymore. Females don’t select for the most powerful male they can get, they don’t want guys at the top of the social ladder, they prefer the stressed out poverty stricken guys at the bottom instead. Gender is a social construct now anyway, so I guess that explains why PZ Myers doesn’t “believe” in sexual selection. Maybe old PZ’s can explain why dominance hierarchies exist across species, cultures, and throughout time if they have no basis in biology?

They all have this caricature of how males acquire mates — it’s by dominating them, don’t you know — and they love to cite “sexual selection” as a singular force with a singular direction that every biologist ought to bow down before and acknowledge.

Here’s my reply to that guy.

No. That is Peterson’s CLAIM. It is unsupported by the evidence.

Of course biologists accept sexual selection: females choose mates, & vice versa.But it’s far more complex than you imagine. Define “powerful”: is it the guy who can beat up other guys, or the guy who gathers the most food, or the guy who is most helpful with children, the guy who can help her achieve her professional goals, etc.? There are multiple criteria for mate selection. You and Peterson WANT it to be a certain narrow type of behavior that is often the antithesis of what a woman might desire.

It’s not that they prefer stressed out poverty stricken guys — it’s that most people want a cooperative peer who can respect and understand their situation, the better to assist them in living the life they have. Many of us chose our partners because we like them, because we live and work together well, not because we dominate or are dominated by them.

I am so sorry you have fallen for these Peterson lies. They are a recipe for a miserable life.

So he insists on telling me again what Peterson’s point is, as if it wasn’t all laid out in its simplistic glory, and tells me I shouldn’t be reading 12 Rules for Life, I need to read his other works to savor the full force of his obscurantism.

Peterson’s point is that through the process of sexual selection we have evolved to climb hierarchies and that’s partly why they keep showing up everywhere. He’s saying that the ‘patriarchy’ is not some huge conspiracy, and that hierarchies have been around longer than humans. Males further up the hierarchy are more attractive to females. But I guess in a world where gender is a social construct this is taboo. His 12 rules for life book is an extremely cut-down and simplified version of what he’s saying, it is not intended for an academic level of analysis – his papers are. Attacking him at an academic level based on his ‘childrens’ book is like a creationist attacking biologists based on a grade 1 science book – you of all people can do better than that (and as a skeptic who’s been listening to you for years I really wish you would). If you actually want to make a meaningful contribution to the discussion (and I for one hope you do) you’d have to first dig a little deeper. Maybe you could even have an actual discussion with him, I’m pretty sure millions of people would listen to it.

Again, I replied.

I know what Peterson’s point is. You keep telling me. But it’s obvious. And it’s wrong. The hierarchy is a social construct! Try hard enough, and you can imagine them everywhere, exactly as you’re doing.

And oh, god, don’t tell me to read his academic work. I looked some of it up. I started his Maps of Meaning book. They’re WORSE. They are impenetrable gobbledygook. You think they’re brilliant because they’re so difficult, but the reason they’re so difficult is that they’re garbage.

Now I’m getting these comments outraged that I said “The hierarchy is a social construct!”, because they translate “social construct” into “imaginary, nonexistent” thanks to all the repetition of that theme in their cohort, and are trying to convince that dominance hierarchies really do exist, as if I was saying otherwise.

This is a pseudo-intellectual movement led by an ignorant guru that I would like to see collapse under the weight of its inanity, but I know from experience that that won’t happen. People still think Deepak Chopra has something to say, and they’ll be revering Peterson for decades to come, in exactly the same way.

I was reading Gretchen Koch’s review of the American Atheist convention in Oklahoma city (net positive), and she links to a Christian pastor’s review of the same (not positive at all). Koch’s article is a thoughtful balance of concerns about atheism’s problems and the good aspects of community.

The Christian review is a collection of familiar tropes. Atheism is just like a religion because they have speakers and try to persuade people that they’re right! Welcome to the real world, guy: then auto dealers and the society for developmental biology are religions, because they have meetings with speakers and argue.

Then he scorns the attendance.

The organizers were impressed with the fact that 850 people attended the conference. But I have attended a dozen church conferences in the past year that have more people than that. In some ways, I think the church has little to worry about from such a small, insignificant organization, but in other ways, I am very concerned because their goal is nothing short of transforming our entire nation from one with Christian foundations to a completely secular nation where the religious would be forced to keep their beliefs confined to the inside of their homes.

This is correct. 850 people is not that many; the Society for Neuroscience annual event draws in 20,000+ attendees, just to put it in perspective. Atheism is a minority view, so don’t be surprised when events are smaller than some rally filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. But it doesn’t mean that they can’t be influential, especially when the majority view is becoming increasingly repellent. Donald Trump’s support by evangelical Christians does so much hard work for us.

Stop me if you’ve heard this canard before.

The reason most people are atheists is because they want to have the freedom to sin. At the atheist conference I saw people promoting abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, premarital sex, and polyamory. The most common theme at the conference was, “There is no god” but the second most common theme was, “I want to have sex unhindered by religious morality.”

The theme is actually more like “Consenting adults ought to be free to find happiness in their own way,” but OK, yes, we do want to get rid of narrow, dogmatic religious morality that too often disregards the happiness and consent of its citizens to meddle in personal matters.

How about this oldie?

The atheists also celebrate homosexuality which is weird because if evolution is true as atheists believe then the gene for homosexuality should disappear within a few generations.

If god is true then why haven’t all the gay people been on the receiving end of a thunderbolt, huh? My answer to his fallacy is that, like all behaviors, there are biological compromises. Fine-tune the specificity of human mate preferences too much, and you get a population that doesn’t want to breed with anyone. And, since we’re a social species, maybe loving people of your own sex is just fine and even advantageous in building a community.

And then…

American Atheists are mad about the recent school shootings, but their founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair is the one responsible for taking prayer out of schools. When an objective moral standard is removed from education and prayer to Almighty God is forbidden in the classroom, then lawless behavior is the inevitable result. Who is responsible for school shootings? I think the American Atheists are.

Takes your breath away, doesn’t it? Taking prayer out of schools has nothing to do with school shootings; and it’s not true that prayer has been removed, because anyone can still pray all they want in school, you just can’t have an authority dictating to you how and to whom you must pray. This pastor is some kind of generic Protestant. I wonder how he’d feel if a Catholic were to decide on the prayers to be dictated in the schools, or even more horrifying to him, a Muslim? Separation of church and state has been a blessing that allows every weird sect to flourish in this country, including his profitable ministry.

But to blame atheism for the shootings? Over the top. Fuck you, Daniel King.

Hello, Calgary. I hear you’re having a holistic medicine convention with a famous speaker.

David Stephan is listed as one of the presenters for the “Body Soul & Spirit Expo,” which bills itself as a “holistic lifestyle show” that showcases products, services and resources for “growth, wholeness and self-understanding.”

According to the show’s website, Stephan will speak about how to achieve brain and thyroid health during a session on Friday. He runs a natural supplement business called Truehope Nutritional Support.

He’s being brought in as an expert on brain health? But…but…

In 2016, Stephan and his wife were convicted of failing to provide the necessaries of life to their 19-month-old son Ezekiel. During the trial, the court heard the couple tried to treat their son’s bacterial meningitis with natural remedies such as, garlic, onion and horseradish instead of taking him to a doctor. Ezekiel died in 2012.

Stephan was sentenced to four months in prison and his wife was given three months of house arrest.

Dang. When trying to decide which of my three kids to murder in order to get these speaking gigs, should I ask for volunteers, or just have them draw straws?