Public intellectuals are a unique phenomenon; whereas most scholars dwell within university campuses and research habitats, their breed is more commonly found on our television screens.
One thinks of Noam Chomsky or Christopher Hitchens whose combination of intelligence, oratory and unorthodox views made them into cult icons. In 2022, our leading light seems to be a Canadian clinical psychologist named Jordan B Peterson.
This should worry us. While the aforementioned sought to push the boundaries of society and challenge the status quo, Peterson, much to the detriment of his capable mind, only seeks to legitimise the injustices of what already exists.
First, let me offer some brief context. Jordan Peterson broke into the public spotlight because of his denunciation of Bill C-16, a Canadian law that made gender grounds for discrimination and incitement of hatred, violence or genocide. His criticism was that the bill coerced private speech by compelling people to use gender pronouns.
Merits and demerits of this tenuous accusation aside, this episode enlisted Peterson in the till-raging culture war. However, far from a mere footsoldier, his ideas have become war cries of the counter-revolution.
Taking on what he terms ‘postmodern Neo-Marxism’, Peterson has attacked the “far-left” on numerous fronts, refuting transgenderism, feminism, and climate change activism as ‘woke ideology’ which he ascribes to a breakdown in traditional values. Although casting himself as an anti-establishment figure, Peterson is now a recognised household name. His book Twelve Rules for life has sold five million copies and he has recently started his own university.
But why should we care? How can this help us deal with real-world problems such as a looming global recession? Because ideas are the most powerful tools in the human arsenal. “You can kill a man but not an idea,” stated civil-rights activist Medgar Evers. Once an idea gains traction it disperses into society becoming common sense. If ideas are tools, then intellectuals are their craftsmen.
But as is often the case with public figures, we can become absorbed in their provocative personalities without understanding their ideas and the implications of them.
Although I disagree with Peterson on all his political expressions, he is a captivating public speaker, mixing a radical tone with a caring attitude towards those he deems oppressed by the ‘wokeists’. He has engendered relationships with popular figures, appearing on Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan’s podcasts as well as a smattering of others.
No doubt about it, Peterson is the first public intellectual to truly capture the information age. To his personal credit, he can also occasionally be funny and seems to take a genuine interest in helping people, especially disenfranchised young men, even if done for the wrong reasons.
However despite his rage against what he perceives as the woke establishment, Peterson’s ideas simply reaffirm notions that have existed for thousands of years. There is nothing radical about social conservatism, Peterson is simply using the discourse of the ‘culture war’ to dress it up. Peterson’s ideas are archaically reactionary and deserve to be critiqued as such. To take one such example, Peterson’s Lobster thesis.
The lobster thesis features prominently in the first chapter of Peterson’s book ‘Stand up straight with your shoulders back’ and essentially maintains that because lobster’s organise themselves in competence hierarchies, humans should do so as well. Lobsters compete based on the same serotonin responses as humans; for example, when lobsters battle over a potential mate their serotonin levels are at play, with the winner receiving a boost while the defeated lobsters slump. As a result, the winning lobster moves around with its chest puffed out and leads its group.
Peterson calls this a competence based social hierarchy, where power is assigned to individuals because they are the most capable. Peterson uses this to justify post-industrial capitalism, viewing the 1% as predicated on talent, in his words CEO’s are ‘exceptionally capable highly motivated individuals’ who deserve their position. Furthermore, equality of outcome is unattainable and undesirable since it would not be “natural.”
The lobster thesis exemplifies the fault that underlies most of his philosophy: taking on a narrow view of human nature and a supposition that just because something is ‘natural’ in this way, it is inherently desirable. This example of a naturalistic fallacy first ignores the fact that neither lobsters nor humans are one dimensional beings and behave in a multitude of ways that are paradoxical if viewed through an unmovable prism of human nature.
There is a natural urge towards self-interested conflict in all animals but there is also a natural urge to socialise, to redistribute, to look after the greater good of the pack. If this were not the case then humans would have died out long ago. We are not the most physically gifted animal, not particularly strong or fast, our faculty is one of highly developed speech for advanced coordination as well as the ability to wield tools.
These were developed so we could survive, so that we could hunt larger animals such as the mammoth and share the spoils. Hunter gatherer societies were both communistically and hierarchically organised to some degree; there were leaders, but they operated to coordinate the group rather than extract surplus from it.
Secondly, even if our human nature were solely that of hierarchical self-interested competence, that does not mean we should structure our societies around it. Just because something is natural does not mean that it is right or that it works.
Some of the greatest creations of humanity such as civil and human rights didn’t grow from trees or spring from the ground, they were man made to create a better society. If we had followed Dr Peterson’s advice millions of years ago we would still all be hunter-gathers, since that was the most natural system.
This is but one of Peterson’s ideas, there are many more that are premised on the same logic. In a world apparently warped by postmodern neo-marxists, one wonders when we are going to become post-Peterson.