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On 18 May 2021, the European Commission adopted a Communication on Business Taxation1for the 21st century which takes account of the G20 / OECDdiscussions on global tax reform and sets out both a short term anda long term vision to support the EU's recovery from theCOVID-19 pandemic. There are three key strands to thisCommunication:

Firstly, by 2023, the Commission will present a new frameworkfor business taxation in the EU. The BEFIT aims to:

BEFIT will replace the long pending but never agreed EU proposalfor a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) across the EU.It will be based on the key features of a common tax base and theallocation of profits between EU Member States based on a formula(formulary apportionment).

The Commission notes that "common rules for determiningthe corporate tax base will deliver substantial simplification forgroups of companies operating in the Single Market. Instead ofhaving to comply with up to 27 different sets of corporate taxrules, a group will be able to determine its tax liability in eachEU Member State according to one single set of rules. This willalso pave the way for even further administrative simplifications,such as the possibility of a single EU corporate tax return for agroup".

BEFIT will consolidate the profits of the EU members of amultinational group into a single tax base, which will then beallocated to Member States using a formula, to be taxed at nationalcorporate income tax rates.

Secondly, the Communication also defines a tax agenda for thenext two years, with measures that promote productive investmentand entrepreneurship, better safeguard national revenues, andsupport the green and digital transitions. This builds on the July2020 EU Tax Action Plan. Measures will include:

Thirdly, the Commission has adopted a non-binding Recommendationon the domestic treatment of losses. It encourages EU Member Statesto allow loss carry back for businesses to at least the previousfiscal year due to the pandemic. This will benefit businesses thatwere profitable in the years before COVID-19, allowing them tooffset their 2020 and 2021 losses against the taxes they paidbefore 2020. EU Member States are asked to inform the Commissionabout the measures it implements based on this recommendation.

Following on from the above, on 20 May 2021 the Commissionadopted an inception impact assessmentroadmap2 for an EU Council Directive to fightbusiness tax avoidance arising from the use of so called 'shellcompanies' and arrangements for tax purposes.

The Commission states that although the EU has taken severalactions to address abusive tax arrangements, the use of shellcompanies (entities with little or no economic substance, incross-border arrangements for purposes of avoiding taxes) continuesto be an issue.

The Commission noted that there are existing measures addressingthe substance of legal entities in the context of certainpreferential tax regimes, however there are no legislative measuresdefining substance requirements for tax purposes within the EU.This roadmap aims to provide an EU legislative measure whichdefines substance requirements for tax purposes to be met byentities within the EU. This will focus on situations where theultimate objective is to minimise the overall tax of a group orstructure.

Under the roadmap, several policy options will be analysed forthe purpose of designing the legislative proposal, including:

The roadmap acknowledges the potential risk that multinationalswould relocate shell companies to non-EU 'third countries',but states that this negative impact would be offset by thebenefits of a standardised common assessment of substance for taxpurposes.

This roadmap is open for feedback until 17 June 2021. It willsupport the preparation and inform the Commission's decision ofthis proposal. A public consultation will be launched in June 2021.The Commission is planning to adopt a Directive in last quarter of2021.

In addition to the corporate tax reforms set out in theCommunication, the Commission is to publish measures to ensure fairtaxation in the digital economy shortly.

This is a detailed and far reaching set of proposals from theEuropean Commission which would affect businesses based in andinvesting into the EU. It comes on top of already significant newEU tax measures such as the ATAD which have been or are currentlybeing implemented across the EU. It will be important that proposedmeasures in this initiative such as the DEBRA are carefullyconsidered by all stakeholders as it is similar to and would comein alongside the new EU 'interest limitation' rules whichare, and will continue to be, a very significant and complex taxchange for companies doing business in the EU.

The initiative as regards companies which do not have'substance' will also need to be carefully considered toensure that this is consistent with existing EU law, such as the'freedom of establishment' and 'free movement ofcapital' and European Court of Justice case such as the CadburySchweppes case (Case C-196/043), and also evolvingOECD and international tax principles such as the business'principal purpose test'. It should recognise thelegitimate use of holding companies in international groups andthat certain sectors, such as securitisation companies set upacross the EU, will outsource their business requirements toinvestment managers and service providers rather than employstaff.

We will be part of industry groups involved in the publicconsultations on the Communication and please let us know if we candiscuss any matters in that regard.

Footnotes

1 Future-proof taxation - Commission proposes new,ambitious business tax agenda

2 Tax avoidance - fighting the use of shell entitiesand arrangements for tax purposes

3 Case C-196/04 - Cadbury Schweppes plc and CadburySchweppes Overseas Ltd v Commissioners of InlandRevenue

The content of this article is intended to provide a generalguide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be soughtabout your specific circumstances.

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The European Commission has adopted (at long last) an updated version of the Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), bringing this popular data transfer mechanism in line with the GDPR and, we hope, the Schrems II decision issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union in July 2020. The SCCs are the most commonly used legal mechanism for transferring personal data from the EEA to non-EEA countries (known as third countries), so the new SCCs are very big news for organizations that transfer or receive personal data from the EEA (that is, the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). We anticipate that many of our clients will soon adopt the new SCCs as their primary legal mechanism for personal data transfers which will also require getting to grips with the risk assessment and supplementary measures required by the Schrems II decision. Organizations will need to start using the new SCCS in mid-to-late September 2021 for new transfers, and adopt them by roughly the end of 2022 to cover old transfers (assuming you still have the data).

Most US companies that receive European personal data are aware that the GDPR prohibits the transfer of personal data from the EEA to third countries that dont have the benefit of a Commission adequacy decision (currently only 12 countries have one) unless

Given that we are still waiting for the new, additional data transfer mechanisms anticipated by the GDPR, such as Commission-approved privacy certifications and codes of conduct, the SCCs play a fundamental role in making personal data transfers from Europe legal. In many data transfer situations, the SCCs are the only viable option.

The Commission decision adopting the new SCCs will go into effect 20 days after the decision is published in the Official Journal of the European Union (which is published daily on weekdays). Organizations that want to use the SCCs as the legal basis for new data transfers will need to begin using the new form of the SCCs from the date that is three months after their effective date (so assuming the decision is published on June 7, 2021, new transfers would need to be done under the new SCCs starting on September 26, 2021). For transfers that are already subject to the old SCCs, in most cases, organizations will have a grace period of approximately 18 months from now to transition from the old SCCs to the new SCCs (so roughly by the end of 2022). Importantly, it appears from the Commissions decision that even if a transfer made under the old SCCs is complete, the new SCCs will need to be executed if the data are still being used by the data importer. Furthermore, the Schrems II requirements for a risk assessment with respect to national security laws and the adoption of supplemental protective measures to mitigate any risks apply now.

The new SCCs represent a vast improvement over the current SCCs, which were last updated in 2004 (for controller-to-controller transfers) and 2010 (for controller-to-processor transfers). The new SCCs are modular in nature, covering the following data transfer situations:

The new SCCs offer a number of improvements over the old SCCs:

The new SCCs turn the Schrems II decisions diligence and supplemental measures requirements into a contractual requirement. The exporter and importer must cooperate in the assessment and document their assessment in writing. The written assessment must be available to EU supervisory authorities (i.e., an interested national or regional data protection authority) on request. However, the assessment does not need to be attached to the SCCs as the European Data Protection Board had recommended to the Commission.

In a nutshell, the exporter and importer need to warrant that they have no reason to believe that the laws and practices in the third country of destination applicable to the processing of the personal data by the data importer, including any requirements to disclose personal data or measures authorising access by public authorities, prevent the data importer from fulfilling its obligations under these Clauses (Clause 14(a)). In making this warranty, the exporter and importer must take into account, among other things, the laws and practices of the third country of destination including those requiring the disclosure of data to public authorities or authorising access by such authorities relevant in light of the specific circumstances of the transfer, and the applicable limitations and safeguards (Clause 14(b)(ii)). The SCCs include a long footnote explaining that this analysis should not be limited to the letter of the law in the destination country. Instead, practical experience can and should be taken into account.

This critical footnote in the SCCs adds a much needed counterweight to the European Data Protection Boards statement in its November 2010 guidance on the Schrems II decision that the assessment must not rely on subjective factors such as the likelihood of public authorities access to your data in a manner not in line with EU standards. The SCCs footnote helpfully clarifies that practical experience counts as a relevant, objective element rather than a subjective element that must be disregarded:

As regards the impact of such laws and practices on compliance with these Clauses, different elements may be considered as part of an overall assessment. Such elements may include relevant and documented practical experience with prior instances of requests for disclosure from public authorities, or the absence of such requests, covering a sufficiently representative time-frame. This refers in particular to internal records or other documentation, drawn up on a continuous basis in accordance with due diligence and certified at senior management level, provided that this information can be lawfully shared with third parties. Where this practical experience is relied upon to conclude that the data importer will not be prevented from complying with these Clauses, it needs to be supported by other relevant, objective elements, and it is for the Parties to consider carefully whether these elements together carry sufficient weight, in terms of their reliability and representativeness, to support this conclusion. In particular, the Parties have to take into account whether their practical experience is corroborated and not contradicted by publicly available or otherwise accessible, reliable information on the existence or absence of requests within the same sector and/or the application of the law in practice, such as case law and reports by independent oversight bodies. (Fn 12)

Overall, the new SCCs bring greater clarity and certainty to the rules governing EU-to-third-country data transfers. They stick tightly to the GDPR, while also spelling out specific obligations in a way that is (for the most part) both precise and achievable. While the new SCCs will require much more thought and background work on the part of data exporters and importers, they should result in more robust organizational and technical protections for the data in question, and for the individuals whose data are transferred.

Now that the new SCCs are in their final form, its time for US data importers to review their transfers and start assessing the risk that the US government could demand access to the personal data. If theres a risk, the importer and exporter will need to adopt supplementary protections that are considered by EU data protection authorities to mitigate the risk and ensure that the personal data are protected to a standard equivalent to that of the GDPR.

Conducting a Schrems II assessment is a significant undertaking. Mintz has prepared a detailed guidance note to assist clients in stepping through the analysis and documenting their assessment. Our Schrems II guidance note covers the following:

Part 1, Introduction, explains the basic concerns and effects of the Schrems II decision.

Part 2, Conducting and Documenting a Schrems II Due Diligence Exercise, describes how to perform and document a Schrems II due diligence exercise.

Part 3, Schrems II Due Diligence Decision Tree, presents a practical due diligence framework for assessing, through a simple multi-step decision tree, whether a particular personal data transfer is at risk of exposure to US intelligence agencies in light of US national security laws.

Part 4, Additional Safeguards, discusses some of the risk mitigation measures recommended by EU data protection authorities, with a focus on the measures that are most likely to be both effective and achievable within many US organizations.

Appendix A contains relevant provisions of the European Commissions draft of the new Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs).

Appendix B summarizes the key US national security laws that need to be taken into account when exporting personal data from the European Economic Area or United Kingdom to the US. It is designed to be incorporated (if desired) into the written documentation of the Schrems II due diligence exercise.

Appendix C, References and Resources, lists sources of additional information about the Schrems II decision, guidance issued by European data protection authorities, reference works concerning US national security laws and programs, and other resources that may be helpful for delving further into the matters covered by the guidance note.

We believe that our Schrems II guidance note will empower many clients to conduct assessments of routine, lower-risk transfers internally with limited need for outside counsel. However, we would be very happy to assist with assessments and discuss proposed transfers one-on-one, which may be particularly important for complex or higher-risk transfers.

[View source.]

Continued here:
Transferring Personal Data from Europe Working with the New Standard Contractual Clauses and Getting to Grips with Your Schrems II Assessment - JD...

Fully vaccinated travelers from all countries can now enjoy increased freedom and movement around the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

With proof of full vaccination (meaning, for example, two weeks after a second Moderna or Pfizer shot or single Johnson & Johnson vaccine), visitors are given a wristband at the airport and are able to immediately move about freely on the island: exploring on their own with a rental car, visiting local markets and supermarkets, and eating at any restaurants.

Unvaccinated travelers to St. Lucia will need to continue to adhere to a mandatory 14-day stay at COVID-19 certified accommodations those that have been determined to adhere to all key health safety protocols. Unvaccinated travelers can leave the villa or hotel property only to eat at COVID-certified restaurants and take COVID-certified excursions and tours.

Americans can prove their vaccination status using their original vaccination cards issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Visitors from the United Kingdom can show their vaccination status via the National Health Service app.

Unvaccinated minors traveling with vaccinated adults will need to take a PCR (nasal swab) test within a day of arriving on the island. This is at the visitors expense. Once the test comes back negative, unvaccinated minors can travel with their vaccinated adult guardians freely.

All visitors to St. Lucia over the age of five vaccinated or not must show a negative PCR test at least five days prior to arriving on the island.

All visitors vaccinated or not must still be transported from the airport to their accommodations via a COVID-certified taxi, and those accommodations must be at a COVID-certified hotel or villa.

Health screenings, such as temperature checks, will take place at the airport for all incoming travelers. Local safety protocols must be observed, including wearing face coverings in public places.

And all visitors aged 18 and up must fill out a health registration form before arrival. Those forms differ based on country of origin.

While St. Lucia still allows unvaccinated visitors to enter the country, as of May 29, St. Kitts and Nevis is now only allowing those who are vaccinated to enter its borders, due to an uptick in positive cases.

St. Lucia has seen 5,072 positive COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began, with 80 confirmed deaths.

All details on the current policies and procedures in St. Lucia, plus a number of helpful FAQs regarding eased restrictions for vaccinated travelers, can be found on the St. Lucia Tourism Authority website.

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The last time Europe thought it was close to brokering a deal between Serbia and Kosovo, it didnt end well.

In August 2018, Kosovos President Hashim Thaci and Serbias Aleksander Vucic surprised everyone firstly by sitting next to each other on a panel in Austria, and then by confirming that bilateral talks to end two decades of estrangement were producing results.

An additional bombshell was that part of the talks might include border correction, which could see Serb majority areas of northern Kosovo handed to Serbia in return for ethnic-Albanian parts of Serbia. Kosovo is home to around 120,000 Serbs out of its population of 1.8 million.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters that whatever outcome is mutually agreed will get our support, which was widely interpreted to mean she supported land-swaps. She also announced talks between the two men in Brussels the following month.

Thaci did not waste any time rolling back his comments, telling a press conference days after the Austria event that the claims he supported land-swaps was fake news.

The international response was swift. German Chancellor Angela Merkel described any talk of redrawing borders as dangerous, while three former high representatives for Bosnia and Herzegovina came out against the idea in an open letter to Mogherini.

Days before Vucic and Thaci were due to meet in Brussels, the talks were abruptly cancelled.

Then came the equally abrupt - and ultimately bizarre - intervention by U.S. President Donald Trump, who dispatched his envoy, Richard Grenell, to the region. In June 2020, the Washington Agreement was signed at the White House by Kosovos Avdullah Hoti and Vucic, flanked by a beaming Trump, who appeared to believe the two countries were still involved in open conflict.

The deal took European negotiators by surprise, but it was privately acknowledged that it contained little substance and got the two countries no closer to normalisation. It provided no solution to the two main issues: Serbias refusal to recognise Kosovos 2008 independence declaration and the future of Kosovos Serb minority in a Kosovar majority state.

By this time Mogherini had moved on and the EU had dispatched Miroslav Lajk to the region as special representative for the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue. The dialogue had been underway since 2008, but had produced few tangible results. It was hoped that Lajk, a Balkans veteran, Serbo-Croat speaker and former Slovak foreign minister, could break the impasse.

Now Lajk is confident that progress in normalising relations between Kosovo and Serbia - which fought a bloody war in 1998-99 after Serb forces invaded the ethnic-Albanian majority province - is realistic, even imminent.

There was a change of government in Washington, bringing President Joe Biden to power, but also in Kosovo, where Albin Kurti won a landslide in February 2021. It marked a changing of the guard in Kosovo, especially coupled with Thacis resignation as president over war crimes charges dating from his time with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

At first, Kurtis election didnt look good for the dialogue. He has called for an apology and war reparations from Serbia while his government is pursuing charges of genocide against Belgrade for the murder and displacement of ethnic Albanians. Vucic, meanwhile, has not shied away from nationalist rhetoric that presents Kosovo in its entirety as an essential part of Serbia.

Nonetheless, Lajk told Euronews he is optimistic, pointing out that what both politicians say in public and what they say around the negotiating table is different. Both Vucic and Kurti know, he said, that their only path to the EU membership - which both covet - is via the dialogue.

As for the role the Washington Agreement will play in the coming talks, Lajk was guarded.

It didnt help, it didnt hurt, he said.

We see it as an act that is not linked to the process and what is really important for us is the dialogue facilitated by the European Union. This is the dialogue that is based on European values, norms and standards and of course on the future of European membership.

Lajk is clearly relieved to see Biden in the White House, a man with a storied history of his own in the Balkans, and particularly Kosovo. Biden was an advocate of the NATO bombing campaign that forced Serbias withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999 and his late son, Beau, has a road named after him in Pristina in recognition of his role in post-conflict reconstruction.

Biden has visited the region several times, knows the issues, knows the problem, knows the people but also the senior appointments in his administration are people who know the history and who feel the responsibility and also the legacy, he said.

Unlike his predecessor as Balkan envoy, Lajk has clearly and repeatedly refused the idea of land-swaps as a solution to the Kosovo-Serbia impasse. Or, indeed, to any political stalemates in the region, such as in Bosnias Serb-majority province, Republika Srpska, whose leader Milorad Dodik has openly called for secession from Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Not only is talk of defining nations down ethnic lines dangerous in a region that three decades ago tore itself apart in bloody ethnic conflict, but Europe has committed to helping the nations of the Balkan become more European, he said, and ethnic nationalism is anathema to the European ideal.

We cant have multi-ethnic democracies in our member states and then ethnic states in the Western Balkans. What message would that send? That you cannot live with your neighbours, with whom you have been living for centuries - and at the same time, you claim to be able to live in the wider European family? The idea is wrong from the very beginning, he said.

It is very dangerous and it is clearly not European.

The EU has been criticised for being too soft on Dodik, who currently holds the rotating presidency of Bosnia & Herzegovina, especially given that the U.S. recently imposed sanctions on the nationalist leader. That criticism has been extended to Lajk personally, whose dealings with Dodik date back to the mid-2000s when he was EU special representative in Bosnia.

He would not confirm whether the EU had considered sanctions on Dodik, but he stressed that the European path for Bosnia & Herzegovina was as a united, multi-ethnic state, of which Republika Srpska is a part. That is a message that has been relayed to Dodik.

I [met] Mr Dodik recently and I told him what I just told you: That the offer for the European future is for Bosnia & Herzegovina in its current - and also future - [form], he said.

I dont believe that there can be a change to the territorial integrity of Bosnia & Herzegovina and the European Union strongly condemns any divisive - let alone secessionist - rhetoric. This is not what we support and we will never support it.

The other criticism of the EU throughout the Western Balkans is that almost two decades since many nations began talks over joining the EU, only one - Croatia - had become a member state.

In recent years, hostility towards enlargement from French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has further stalled the accession process for Western Balkan nations, while North Macedonias bid has been blocked in a row with its neighbour, Bulgaria.

Critics have drawn a line between the failure to join the EU and the rise in nationalist - and often ethno-nationalist - politics across the region, from Dodik in Republika Srpska to Vucic in Serbia to the new government in Montenegro, which includes Serb nationalists and which ousted a pro-European government that had led the country for three decades.

This despite overwhelming support from the populations of the Balkans for European membership, which is as high as 90% in Albania, 80% in Montenegro and over 60% in Serbia.

I understand their frustration. The process has been long and painful, it is true Lajk said.

But [the EU] is not an administrative or mechanical body. It is a living organism that is dealing with other issues and sometimes the list of priorities are changing, so this is understandable.

The commitment is there. [This] European Commission and this European leadership have made it very clear that enlargement is one of the top priorities of the European Union.

He said that it is legitimate and important for existing member states to question whether new additions to the European family will improve the European Union.

Our partners in the Western Balkans must understand that what we need to see and hear from them is their commitment to reform, not only verbal but in their deeds, he said.

They should demonstrate that - in action - when they join [...] they will be fully functional and be able to contribute to the better functioning of the European Union.

He conceded, however, that there had been an issue of perception of the EU in the region.

It is important [...] that we dont blur the European perspective or [...] act as if we are moving the goalposts because the feeling in the region has been such and that does not help us, he said.

It has been suggested frequently that the EUs failures in the Western Balkans open the door for other global players, first among them Russia, to exert influence and established powerful proxies. This has been accentuated during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Moscow handing out millions of doses of the Sputnik V vaccine as Europe hoarded its own stocks.

"Look, the European Union does not have exclusive ownership of the Western Balkans. It is legitimate that other countries have identified their interests in the region, which is the case with any region of the world," Lajk said.

If we are absent - or if we are seen as absent. If we are seen as not really interested or not really credible then we are creating a void, and of course, the void is filled by third actors. We should not blame them for using the space that we have created by lack of our attention and political presence. This is absolutely in our hands.

'I want to deliver'

But as a Slovak who witnessed firsthand his countrys accession to the EU in 2004 and the benefits that it has seen since, he believed that Europes offer is one that cannot be beaten. The EU remains the Western Balkans biggest trading partner, its biggest provider of financial assistance, and the economic benefits of EU membership far outweigh any other options.

We should not be worried about the influence of third actors. No third actor has an offer that can beat our offer, he said.

Personally, Lajk said that it is this personal experience of transformation after joining Europe that drives him in the Western Balkans, where he has spent most of the last 20 years as a diplomat.

His mandate as EU special representative for Serbia and Kosovo lasts another 17 months, and he is hopeful that progress can be made in that time.

What I am doing right now is not a job, it is a mission. This is how I see it, and I really want to deliver on the mandate and on the trust that I received from the members of the EU, he said.

Somehow it happened that I spent the last 20 plus years [...] engaged with the Western Balkans, [and] it has become part of my professional life, but also part of my personal [life]. I feel strongly for the region. I believe in the European future for the Western Balkans.

I know how much they helped to change my own country and I want to help the people in the Western Balkans achieve the same positive transformation.

Excerpt from:
In the Western Balkans, ethnic nationalism threatens the path to Europe - Euronews

The University of Toronto psychology professor, clinical psychologist, best-selling author and YouTube sensation Jordan B. Peterson published his third book and second international best-seller, Beyond Order, in March. The book expands in an intentional and direct way on its prequel, 12 Rules for Life (2018). Like 12 Rules for Life, Beyond Order offers 12 rules meant to help readers craft lives that include less pointless suffering (though not necessarily less suffering) and more meaning (though not necessarily more happiness).

As in 12 Rules for Life, the presentation of these rules ranges from the literal and mundane (Try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible) to the metaphoric and abstract (Do not hide unwanted things in the fog). Overall, Beyond Order is well argued and provocative, though more prone to discursiveness than its predecessor.

Petersons tendency toward tangents in Beyond Order belies the books even sharper focus on one overarching argument: The meaning in life is found in taking responsibility.

This contention is made explicit only in Rule 4: Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated. But in fact, the moral and psychological argument for shouldering heavier personal and professional burdens rather than lighter ones animates every chapter of Beyond Order.

After five years of international fame, Petersons reputation as a divisive public intellectual is often viewed as inextricable from his work itself. This is mostly because his controversial views on Bill C-16 (a Canadian law pertaining to the use of pronouns as related to trans people) got a great deal of media attention in 2017 and helped to grow his burgeoning international reputation.

Yet Peterson and his central message about responsibility are difficult to shoehorn into either of our increasingly polarized political camps.

Rhetoric on the left tends to be invested in acknowledging peoples suffering and the ways that trauma, oppression and the like can ravage the mind and the soul. Meanwhile, rhetoric on the right tends to be invested in telling people to strive regardless of their circumstances. Peterson does both; he is honest about how hard life is and how unfair it can be, and he offers practical guidance about how to order ones mind, body and environment to withstand inevitable suffering and pursue goals with purpose.

A deep dive into Petersons books and lectures raised three questions for me: 1) Why is this very old message about meeting profound suffering with heroic responsibility resonating in a new way in the 21st century? 2) Why is it resonating disproportionately with younger white men? 3) How does Petersons argument, and the cultural context around it, challenge us specifically as Catholics?

In many ways, life today is far easier than it was 100 (or even 25) years ago. People generally live longer and healthier lives, and there are ever more technologies that free us from drudgery and inconvenience. And yet this very technology has spawned new and unique mental, psychological and spiritual demands. One has to be quite organized to keep track of the average Americans 100 passwords. It is disconcerting and stressful to make choices when the options seem endless. And it is particularly difficult to manage the incessant demands of modern life absent the familial, communal and religious contexts that those before us mostly took for granted.

When my paternal grandparents got married in 1944, there was no question that they would live in Philadelphias Italian section. It was an equally foregone conclusion that the vast majority of their income would go toward paying their bills. They did not have a lot of choices, and they would not have known what to make of them if they did. Their parents had been born in Italy; neither of them had graduated from high school; and they were both Catholic.

Their load of responsibilities was not lightthey raised children without a lot of means, and had the same concerns and struggles as everyone both before and after thembut there were many sets of shoulders to help bear those burdens. They lived among scores of family members and friends and went to the same stores, church and social events as nearly everyone they knew. With their community thus institutionalized by both geography and custom, their familial dramas included a cast of characters large enough to absorb any particularly operatic incidents with less collateral damage than would have been possible otherwise. Thus, their lapses as individuals, as spouses and as parents were less consequential to themselves and to their children than they would have been without the collectivized, communal responsibility that lightened their individual loads.

When my husband and I got married in 2012, by contrast, we were both pursuing graduate degrees. Our decision to remain in the Philadelphia region, where I had grown up and we had met as undergraduates, was born of an explicit desire to achieve rootedness among family and friendsan outcome that we understood could no longer be taken for granted. And our decision to stay in Philadelphia was fraught rather than obvious. It meant not living in Cleveland, where my husband had grown up.

Moreover, even as we have sought to centralize, routinize and institutionalize many of our familial relationships and friendships, we recognize that our interactions with others are nearly always conscious choices rather than ever-present unconscious realities. For this reason, our responsibilitiesprofessional, marital and parentalare ours alone in a way that was not true for either my Italian-American grandparents or his Liberian ones. Hence no amount of self-awareness or hard work can render us truly fit for the sheer amount of personal responsibility required of anyone trying to be a decent citizen, worker or parent in todays newly individuated world.

Enter Jordan Peterson with his now 24 rules, making what was communal, implicit and abstract for my grandparents individual, explicit and specific for me.

Thus, it is Peterson himself who has noticed that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated. His resonance with younger people reflects the extreme demands of modern life and the new isolation in which we are expected to meet those demands. It also reflects the failure of our parents and grandparents to prepare many of us for the logistical, psychological and emotional reality that they unwittingly created.

Much has been made of the fact that Petersons audiences tend to be dominated by younger white men. Progressive critics have tended to assume that if a lot of white men are buying Petersons message about responsibility, there must be something sexist and/or racist in the message itself. If there werent, this line of reasoning goes, more women and people of color would be enthusiastic about Peterson, too.

Putting aside the fact that there is more gender and racial diversity among Petersons fans than the popular perception might lead us to believe, I speculate that there is a reason why comparatively fewer women and people of color find Petersons exaltation of responsibility life-changing. Its not that his message doesnt apply to us. Its that it isnt news to us.

In order for a person to receive Petersons injunction toward responsibility as transformative, he or she would have to have previously believed that avoiding adult responsibility while escaping dire consequences was not only desirable but possible. That is, he or she would have to have believed that failure to grow up could look more like the Neverland of Peter Pan than like the Pleasure Island of Pinocchio (both of which are among Petersons many Disney-adapted preoccupations).

Neverland, where Peter Pan resides indefinitely, is a seeming manifestation of childhoods wonder. Bright and carefree, filled with fairy dust and games, and stretching out over endless tomorrows without the worries of aging or mortality, residence in Neverland doesnt appear to extract any price from its inhabitants.

By contrast, Pleasure Island, where Pinocchio alights briefly after missteps in his quest to prove himself brave, truthful, and unselfish, is eerie even at first glance. Boys come to the ominously peripatetic carnival of their own volition; but they do not get to choose when or whether to leave. After a few hours of self-indulgent fun, they are transformed into braying donkeys, boxed and loaded onto ships. In short, their avoidance of responsibility robs them of their humanity.

No one needs Jordan Peterson to talk him or her out of a stay on Pleasure Island. Therefore, for those of us whose biological reality of gender, political reality of race, or material reality of socioeconomic status renders failure to take responsibility more likely to result in the kind of permanent and potentially dire consequences that Pinocchio so narrowly avoids, Peterson may be relevant but redundant. He echoes and explicates, rather than countering or complicating, what we understand already about our own Pleasure-Island-like proximity to danger.

But for some young white men with sufficient academic ability to comprehend Petersons writing and lectures, it is actually news that the worry-free irresponsibility offered in the seeming safety of Neverland has psychological, emotional and spiritual consequences. Many of these young white men were raised by baby boomers who accepted as individuals all the benefits of choices my grandparents never enjoyedbut not the attendant responsibilities of a revolutionized social regime that facilitated those choices by eradicating the communal safety net my grandparents took for granted. Now, as young adults, they actually need a psychologist to convince them of what the rest of us already know: Neverland has always been a lie.

Ultimately, the consequence of an extended sojourn in Neverland is just as bad as one in Pleasure Island. Perpetual childhood is just as much a form of dehumanization as transformation into an ass, since it is the ability to live a life of self-aware responsibility that renders humans different from asses in the first place.

Like most women, Wendy senses that Neverland has no real place for her (there are no other lost girls for a reason), so she leaves of her own volition. Peter knows that Neverland is made in his image, so he relinquishes the possibility of an adult relationship with Wendy and stays there.

One more young white man who desperately needs Jordan Petersons rules.

Peterson has said that to be Catholic is, in his view, to be as sane as a person can be. This makes sense, because Christ on the cross (and the Catholic determination to leave him there in our depictions, unlike our Protestant brothers and sisters) is the iconic representation of suffering. It is also the ultimate exhortation toward self-sacrifice (that is, the responsibility to love others) in the face of suffering.

So if we Catholics have both the crucifix and an intellectual tradition stretching back millennia that explains its significance, why does anyone need some psychologists rules to understand what 1.2 billion people worldwide (not to mention one billion Protestants, many of whom profess much of the same) ostensibly already know?

Why does Petersons ability to evince simultaneously both compassion for human suffering and insistence on moral responsibility despite suffering seem new, when it is the Catholic Churchthe oldest continually operating institution in the worldthat can most credibly lay claim to that concept?

The reason is that, per Peterson, opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated. And in the United Statesdespite the incredible work of many within the church (like Bishop Robert Barron, who recently had an illuminating conversation with Peterson)we Catholics have abdicated our responsibility and forfeited our credibility in the face of political polarization and increasing secularism.

Too many of us too often live in what Simcha Fisher calls a pre-furnished house of ideas. We allow political exigencies of the moment or sociopolitical stereotypes to dictate our uncontextualized expression of either the lefts too often thoughtless compassion or the rights too often heartless morality.

If more of us spoke at a uniform volume about the totality of what we allegedly professrather than loudly about the ongoing genocide of abortion but quietly about the evils of unfettered capitalisms sinful inequalities, or vice versawe would not only be sane, but sound credible.

Clearly, there is an audience for the kind of rigorous pluralism that Peterson is offeringthe kind that Catholic belief, rightly understood, demands. Moreover, an accurate understanding of our faith should render us fundamentally opposed to the craven creeds of each of todays increasingly monistic political camps.

So, just imagine if we American Catholics laid claim to a higher and more appealing truth than the political left, the political right or even a nonpartisan iconoclast like Peterson can provide. Judging by the sizes of the crowds at Petersons lectures, we might be able to stop closing our churches and start opening them again.

And then maybe, just maybe, we could help to create an American politics that did not incentivize and almost require the abandonment of each fundamental truth on the altar of another.

But that is a task for another day. After all, we should, per Rule 6 of the original 12 Rules for Life, Set [our] own house in perfect order before [we] criticize the world.

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Jordan Peterson is telling young white men what many of us already know: Neverland is a lie. - America Magazine