The Evil of Indifference

Kerry from Glenbervie

It is a well known strategy that to put a fire out, you must either starve it of the fuel that keeps it burning, or starve it of oxygen. Hence the saying "don't give him any oxygen" is an enormously successful social ploy that has taken the wind out of many a sail, if I may mix my metaphors.

But, as with any fire, it is surely a good thing first of all, to find out if the fire is cooking your dinner, or burning the house down?

New Zealand today, is very much a skeptic society, that has developed an increasingly secular outlook on reality- I think this may be said without fear of contradiction.

Along with this increase in secularism there exist alarming metrics that point to what I believe most would agree are undesirable traits. And I would say that the most concerned generation are in the older age brackets simply because they have the natural advantage of their own upbringing with which to bring into stark contrast that which we see today, going on all around us.

The statistics on children, raised without a father figure. Children not only raised in dysfunctional families, but often enough, scarred for life through cruelty, either physically or mentally, even losing their lives as a result. Teenage suicides that represent such a vast loss of potential is another measure of a failing, or at least a flailing culture. The sense of aimlessness among the younger people is appalling. The abuse of drugs and other substance abuse should set us all questioning the direction we are taking.

The cost of not taking this seriously, is so great that I would suggest that instead of adopting the usual policy of starving an unpopular view simply on the basis that it is impolite, or not to your taste, and that you are over it- that you swallow your personal opinions just long enough to give serious consideration to the video that follows.

But before I do, I heard this wonderful quote from a hero of his day, Sir Winston Churchill which speaks very much to our shared responsibility for the direction this country takes.

"One of the signs of a great society is the diligence with which it passes culture from one generation to the next. This culture is the embodiment of everything the people of that society hold dear: its religious faith, it's heroes.....when one generation no longer esteems it's own heritage and fails to pass the torch to its children, it is saying in essence that the very foundational principles and experiences that make the society what it is are no longer valid. This leaves that generation without any sense of definition or direction, making them the fulfillment of Karl Marx's dictum, 'A people without a heritage are easily persuaded.' What is required when this happens and the society has lost its way, is for leaders to arise who haven't forgotten the discarded legacy and who loves it with all their hearts. They can then become the voice of that lost generation, wooing an errant generation back to the faith of their fathers, back to the ancient foundations and the bedrock values . . . Those who seek to plan the future, should not forget the inheritance they have received from the past. If the present tries to sit in judgement of the past it will lose the future.”
Please give thought to this video, and then share your opinions. Dr. Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist, currently enjoying unprecedented international popularity as a speaker on controversial issues that face the West. Here he is speaking with former deputy Prime Minister, Australia's John Anderson published just a few days ago, of a series of meeting held in March.

*At approximately 1:08 minutes in Peterson uses a philosophical term that many (myself included) may be unfamiliar with.

"Phallogocentric" In critical theory and deconstruction, phallogocentrism is a neologism coined by Jacques Derrida to refer to the privileging of the masculine (phallus) in the construction of meaning. The word is a portmanteau of the older terms phallocentrism (focusing on the masculine point of view) and logocentrism (focusing on language in assigning meaning to the world). Wikipedia.

youtu.be...