Category: Jordan Peterson

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I worry about Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson is the most important public intellectual today. His only rival for pertinence and importance is Douglas Murray. By chance I was listening to Dr. Peterson’s podcast this afternoon in the car for quite a while and I had to turn him off. The ostensible subject was a Jungian interpretation of Disney’s the Lion King. But the tone of voice, the breathlessness, the apparent shouting (though he was not raising his voice): it was all wrong. It was all wrong for an enclosed space. It might have been effective in the presence of the large audience he was addressing, yet as a podcast, he entirely violated the basic rule of the radio: that you are talking into someone’s living room, that you are talking into someone’s ear.

My wife said he sounded extremely anxious. We spoke about his health problems. He seems to be a candle burning at both ends.

Just think about how Jeremy Irons would narrate a story.

Peterson, by contrast, is exhasuting to listen to.  He is like a man juggling chainsaws trying to recite the Iliad. All you hear is the ragged voice reciting the Iliad, and you cannot see him juggling the invisible chainsaws, but you can hear the effort. Jordan, please breathe deeply and do some enthogenic drugs and come to grips with your demons in a safe space. I wish you all the best and I do not want you to flame out. See Blade Runner for guidance.

 

Sexual selection, hypergamy and the patriarchy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start with the Jordan Peterson lecture of 3:16 duration. Chimpanzees and humans differ in that human females select their males, while chimpanzees do not (at minute 1:00 of Peterson). From this fact huge consequences have ensued.

This means that in humans there have been selective effects on males. About 40% of males will get to breed, over the course of millennia.  Thus, consequent to the tendency of females to select some males and not others to breed with, something we now call the patriarchy is developed. Peterson calls them ‘dominance hierarchies’. If females did not select, there would be little point in a patriarchy. The capacity to be useful, to be productive and to share is what we males are selected for.

Which selection has led to the evolution of the human species, including ‘cortical expansion’, a euphemism for the expansion of the brain, which is the basis of human domination of the planet.

So when women talk about the patriarchy as something bad, it is a contradiction to the results of their actual behaviours.

A Marine boot camp approach to the same issues is expressed in Rollo Tomassi’s lecture to young men. It is important for young men to be made aware of these facts of life. I spent many years not understanding them, and my life improved greatly when I got clear on them. In essence, the interests of human males and females diverge, and human males who do not understand this divergence are in for a world of pain.

 

 

 

My bubble

Occasionally I am forced to realize that i live in my own opinion bubble. Or if you prefer, sphere. We organize our lives to stay away from strife, and so we live as much as possible in a place where we have filtered out the unwelcome. I do it, you do it, he does it.

Today’s lesson came from members of the NDP (Canada’s lefter that Left opposition party) objecting to an invitation to Jordan Peterson appearing at a parliamentary committee. The National Post stated:

“The NDP is objecting to an invitation Conservative MPs have extended to psychology professor and author Jordan B. Peterson to testify before the House of Commons justice committee, calling it “irresponsible and morally reprehensible.”

“In a statement released Tuesday, NDP MP Tracey Ramsey said the Conservatives are “dangerously pandering to divisive politics instead of standing up for human rights.”

If I were an NDP member of Parliament, I would enjoy having a set-to with Jordan Peterson. What dismays me is the constant effort not to engage other ideas. As the NDP representative on a CBC television show once said, in respect of a mildly controversial topic, “We shouldn’t even be discussing this”. Wrong – we should.

Everything has been settled, in this view. Only we keep finding that the number of topics that have been settled: gay rights, abortion, global warming, keeps expanding, and the zone of the discussable keeps shrinking, all in the name of “inclusion” and “diversity”. Of course as you will know, inclusion means exclusion, and diversity means uniformity, only the Left does not know that, or if it knows it, will not admit it.