LogFAQs > #901582817

To expound a bit my thoughts on Peterson:

While him and his supporters try to play him up as some sort of apolitical figure, or a "classical liberal," his project is in fact laden with politics and those politics are pretty reactionary at their core. His gist is:
1) Society cannot change; we as human beings are beholden to these primordial narratives and hierarchies that have existed from time immemorial.
2) Society should not change; these hierarchies are natural, and by virtue of being natural, are good and ideal:

So he was radicalized, he says, because the radical left wants to eliminate hierarchies, which he says are the natural order of the world. In his book he illustrates this idea with the social behavior of lobsters. He chose lobsters because they have hierarchies and are a very ancient species, and are also invertebrates with serotonin. This lobster hierarchy has become a rallying cry for his fans; they put images of the crustacean on T-shirts and mugs.

The left, he believes, refuses to admit that men might be in charge because they are better at it. The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they dont want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence, he said.

If anything, he's looking not to preserve the status quo but to restore the status quo ante.
3) Given 1 and 2, those frustrated with the state of things should look inward and strive for self-improvement rather than seeking to right perceived wrongs in the world

I think he's flat wrong on 1 and 2; the hierarchies he supports are both deeply flawed and not as natural as he makes them out to be.
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kin to all that throbs