Friday 26 June 2020

Maps of Meaning, Rules for Life

Noah Carl was a bad postdoc whose weeding out at such an early stage in his career was an occasional but welcome demonstration that the system could sometimes work. Not that it always does. The world class UCL continues to host the London Conference on Intelligence with Carl and the rest of the methodologically unsound.

Meanwhile, the students at Cambridge or at any other university are too old for Jordan Peterson. Meaning that everyone is now too old for Jordan Peterson. It is 21 years since Maps of Meaning, and 12 Rules for Life is a glorified self-help manual, if it is that. Pop stars have very limited shelf lives, and he is well past his. It is not just that his fans need to grow up. By now, most of them have.

Universities are well placed to open up the student and scholarly experience to those who upheld family and community values by seeking to secure economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.

To those who understood social solidarity as an expression of personal responsibility, personal responsibility as protected by social solidarity, international solidarity as an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty as protected by international solidarity.

To those who defined equality and diversity as economic equality and class diversity, as regional equality and regional diversity, as the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and as equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law and the presumption of innocence, which in turn requires that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt.

To those whose Britain was One Nation, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation, reorganising the British economy under State direction, and developing a fully independent British foreign policy, with no use of military force except in self-defence.

And to those who embodied the leading role of the people and places whose votes decided the outcomes of the 2016 referendum, the 2017 General Election, and the 2019 General Election, such as the rural working class, and the industrial and former industrial communities that were either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them.

We are going to hold a three-year cycle of annual day conferences outside London, in London, and outside Britain. The papers will be published. We are already in talks about next year's conference, our first. Eventually, we shall be holding three conferences per year, one outside London, one in London, and one outside Britain.

We also intend to develop a qualification for aspiring parliamentary candidates, of any party or none, who assented to our Founding Principles. Fees would be kept to a minimum, and would ideally be waived altogether for applicants who had not been awarded a university degree before the age of 25 if at all, who lived in rented accommodation, and who had annual incomes of less than £12,500.

We shall be maintaining a network of people who, assenting to and embodying our Founding Principles, will be available for appointment to public bodies, or for consultation by them, regardless of which party were in government. And we want to participate in the more inclusive and diverse programming that has recently been promised by the BBC. But we are always open to further offers. Please feel free to get in touch.

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