Maggie's Farm

That business of letting people weaponize guilt against you is awfully important. We'd better figure out what we really believe our duty is and mean it, or we'll be at the mercy of people who have crazy ideas about duty. Why should we accept a stranger's notion of duty, particularly when his own life and the system he supports is a horrifying, dysfunctional mess?

What I love about Jordan Peterson, and why I continue to listen to him speak, is that central message "It's on you." Yes, societies can be deranged and can exert dysfunctional forces on their members and perpetuate injustices, but nothing can change the fact that only individuals act. Peterson says we'd better be as ethical as we are powerful. When the state acts, it acts through individuals, those wielding small powers and those wielding large ones.

I've long been accustomed to think about how a Hitler or a Stalin or a Pol Pot induces others to act according to his vile scheme. More locally and concretely, I think about 19 police officers standing around in a hallway in Uvalde. We have personal duties that are not delegable and not subject to nullification by any human authority. For the rest of our lives, as Thomas Harris would say, we'll be a person who did the right thing or a person who did not. C.S. Lewis would say, for eternity we will be a soul that obeyed God or one that did not. Our choice is our identity.

Peterson always raises the right issue. Of course we should seek to improve society, but we should never do it primarily by assigning fault and duties to others. It has to start with what we are personally willing to do. If we can then enlist others in the same effort, excellent. You want to feed the poor? Do it. Sell your car and buy food for the homeless. Stop asking your neighbor to do it for you. Tell the truth. Do your duty, and the rest will follow. You're in charge of you.