I Watched a Jordan Peterson Video so You Don’t Have To
By: Matthew John
Tags: Patriarchy, Politics, Jordan Peterson, Philosophy, Incel

Jordan Peterson loves to talk about lobsters. I assume they are one of his favorite animals. In the 90 minute presentation I agreed to watch (after losing a bet), the best-selling author and former clinical psychologist recounted a cute little factoid about these crimson crustaceans.

“I was reading these articles on lobsters, and I came across this finding that lobsters govern their postural flexion with serotonin,” said the gaunt, middle-aged man in a crackling and nervous tone.

The anecdote was meant as an extension of Peterson’s first “rule for life”: Stand up straight.

“Fair enough,” I thought, “That is interesting.”

But shortly thereafter, mere minutes into his monologue, the “self-help” facade began to crumble. Peterson promptly advanced his discourse by using lobster “dominance hierarchies” as a vague metaphorical justification for hierarchies in human society.

This enigmatic notion got me thinking. First of all, if any behavior in nature should either be mimicked by humans or is “natural” when conducted by humans, then what about eating your babies? Does Peterson advocate cannibalism? Secondly, if he’s saying that human hierarchies are inherently justifiable simply because hierarchies exist in nature, then, in order to be logically consistent, he would have to say slavery, Jim Crow, apartheid, and other racial hierarchies were justifiable, as well as all other iterations of human dominance and coercion throughout history.

At this point I had more questions than answers. But I could surmise that Peterson was simply using the naturalistic fallacy in order to rationalize his pre-existing ideology. If I wanted to be really creative, I could defend one of my own beliefs in a similar fashion. For instance, abortions happen all the time in nature; they’re called “miscarriages.” Therefore, abortion is morally justifiable.

To be clear, I do think abortion is morally justifiable, but for other reasons (such as bodily integrity). I’m not arrogant enough to claim that my specific moral views are warranted by some pseudo-pantheistic “order.” I readily condede that my entire moral outlook hinges on my ostensibly functional amygdala and subsequent experience of empathy. I am therefore entirely biased in my opposition to the systems and institutions that perpetuate unnecessary death and suffering worldwide. But apparently Jordan Peterson can just breeze through conservative moral platitudes as though they are simple math problems with but one empirical answer.

Continuing with anti-Marxist remarks and statements like, “smart, hardworking people are the most likely to succeed,” Peterson asserted that individuals climb up social hierarchies based on their own competence (calling it a “competence hierarchy”). His related commentary made his support for the current class system (and economic hierarchies in general) crystal-clear. These sentiments seem perfectly delightful in a vacuum, but a glance at the reality on the ground (in the U.S., for instance) makes this meritocratic dogma look wildly delusional:

Three men own as much as half the population.

Half the population is living in or near poverty.

CEOs of large firms makes 300 times more than their average employee.

The vast majority of new income goes to the top 1 percent.

White families have nearly 10 times the net worth of black families.

Inheritance plays a huge role in determining individual wealth.

Your parents’ income strongly predicts how much money you will make and whether or not you will go to college.

I continued watching and taking notes. But the rest of Peterson’s performance followed suit; self-evident advice like “compare yourself to who you were yesterday” or “treat yourself like you’re someone you care about” peppered with neo-McCarthyist rhetoric and social Darwinism. Toward the end, the man was ranting about the superiority of Western culture like some washed up white nationalist. The entire presentation could be summarized by the following quote from journalist Nora Loreto: