Tuesday 6 June 2017

Intermission – An Apposite Jordan B. Peterson Citation - “Clean Up Your Room”


The recent events in Brasilia provide a momentary pause to the long-running weblog topic about the past, present and future of Brazil.

Time for an intermission, and so pause for thought.

The riots which led to enormous damage to public buildings in the supposed cause of anti-Reforms protestation appears to have been deliberately orchestrated; using the anger of a minority of disillusioned young men to 'vent-off' general anger.

Hence there looks to be more behind the riots than immediately meets the eye.

However, such visible extremism, seemingly secretly condoned by many with fantasies of yesteryear rebellion, indicates that this is a pertinent time for many now 'over-entitled' lower middle-class Brazilians - who themselves went on one day strikes - to undertake their own period of self-reflection.

To have some 'time out', see the bigger picture and their responsible place within that picture.

Temer's reforms are far from truly unpalatable and will help provide the necessary monies for new social safety nets for those nationals and immigrants who have long been 'under the radar' and truly marginalised. Those who to date have been merely surviving and existing. So allowing them to better secure, and participate within, a more meaningful future.

Those Brazilians who have long enjoyed the fruits of two decades of economic stability, and the comforts of the new middle class should now look to themselves to further improve metropolitan conditions and lifestyle. Firstly in the Confucian manner about ones-self, family, community and so city etc in obvious ways, from beautification to crime prevention. Instead of blaming the already over-burdened state.

Unlike the West which is still having to battle macro-economic headwinds, stagnation and possible decline – and which has a remit to fairly implement social security assistance (but often knowingly fails) – Brazil is on its long upward economic trajectory.

As the ethos of reduced state-interventionism takes hold and is slowly but gradually superseded by increasingly vibrant and forward-looking commercialisation within a myriad of sectors, so new thinking, improved competition, and new efficiencies for wealth creation for ever more people.

However, the recent Brasilia experience which turned the capital into a momentary war-zone and ghost-town is seemingly the consequence of overt leftist agenda which fails to recognise the power of a true mixed-economy. It is an ideology out of kilter with the realms of balanced fairness, and indeed appears a far cry from the righteousness of past Latin ideals for inclusion and social improvement.

Instead recent actions appear very much self-seeking and so highly retrogressive, even if profferred under the thin veil of of "social justice".

As is now understood, much of the western world has been similarly deeply tainted, through which nearly fifty years of academic post-modern ideology (from its Marxist 'Communard' roots) has through ever more fragmented identity-politics been inculcated via the mainstream media.

So whilst shock events in the UK - such as the Manchester Arena bombing and Grenfell Tower fire - provide a momentary basis for apparent unity, the truth is that society long ago became selfishly deconstructed into a multitude of 'them and us' agendas (on religious, sexuality and race bases) which when set against the 'new norm' of scant financial resources generated endemic fragmentation of western societies.

But thankfully there remain some true defenders of "reason and right"...none better known than the Canadian Professor Jordan B. Peterson.

His experiences of targeted persecution by the far left for countering the dominant, untrammeled liberal theocracy has become well known.

[NB Others who have stood alone against a sea of deliberately formed persecution of any kind, for any length of time, will understand his plight].

Thanks to his centrist, balanced, long-view critical thinking – absorbed from many of the Humanities fields and the Sciences - Peterson has become an icon of the modern age for those both young and old who vitally understand a necessary sense of responsibility regards themselves and society at large.

[NB regards one important topic - his opposition to the extrapolation of gender pronouns (as discussed by the befuddled Canadian Senate) has sound basis. Yet thus far one seemingly unrecognised issue in this burgeoning 'trans-gender' age, is the ability for criminals to deliberately abuse this trend, by disingenuously creating false 'alternatively gendered' identities of both sexes for highly lucrative illegal purposes].      
So at this pertinent watershed point in Brazil, those Brazilians who have deplorably similarly become as overly self-entitled and are approaching the worst of the West , should...in Peterson's words...”Clean Up Your Room”.

Only such a centrist attitude amongst the many will stop Brazil from slipping back into its distant history of crowd induced, swing politics which often assisted the political protagonists far more than the people; and under which enormous pendulum swings of social idealism gave inevitable way to the unwanted economic swings of continued long-time bust after long-period boom.
          
Time now for all to question themselves and heed Peterson's sentiments.