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Jordan Peterson: Difference between revisions
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Peterson claims that in order to prevent cultural dissolution, states need an overarching goal such as economic growth or religious/transcendental goals and a fair amount of uniformity and hierarchical organization, which he also believes to be necessary for human well-being. | Peterson claims that in order to prevent cultural dissolution, states need an overarching goal such as economic growth or religious/transcendental goals and a fair amount of uniformity and hierarchical organization, which he also believes to be necessary for human well-being. | ||
To avoid corrupt hierarchies, he claims, it is necessary to keep them fairly flat (decentralization) and use a regulated free market such that the best players prevail and inefficient/corrupt players get outcompeted/destroyed by better ones. | To avoid corrupt hierarchies, he claims, it is necessary to keep them fairly flat (decentralization) and use a regulated free market such that the best players prevail and inefficient/corrupt players get outcompeted/destroyed by better ones. | ||
He regards country borders and social norms as fundamental for a functioning state, but admits there also needs to be some adaptability and flow of information (free speech, ''classical liberalism'') to avoid totalitarianism and warfare. He claims it is naive to assume there is a definite set of rules for ideally structuring a state (ideology), except for leaving up the determination of the rules to a competitive, democratic process, a free market of ideas. For this reason, men need to be socialized to be competitive and dependable. He also sees cultural norms that encourage telling the truth and admitting primacy to the individual as essential for social stability and as main reason for the success of Western civilization as this enables cooperation and economic growth. For this reason, Peterson is wary of | He regards country borders and social norms as fundamental for a functioning state, but admits there also needs to be some adaptability and flow of information (free speech, ''classical liberalism'') to avoid totalitarianism and warfare. He claims it is naive to assume there is a definite set of rules for ideally structuring a state (ideology), except for leaving up the determination of the rules to a competitive, democratic process, a free market of ideas. For this reason, men need to be socialized to be competitive and dependable, in addition to be able to satisfy women's hypergamous preferences and to be charmed against the natural occurrence of [[asshole|psychopaths]]. He also sees cultural norms that encourage telling the truth and admitting primacy to the individual as essential for social stability and as main reason for the success of Western civilization as this enables cooperation and economic growth. For this reason, Peterson is wary of automation, fearing it could lead to diminishing value of the individual being outcompeted by machines. | ||
This concludes the secular side. Peterson also has a series of esoteric views about so called ''Jungian archetypes'' that he believes to have emerged in human folklore and religious scripture, that exist across time and space and have been formed by gene-meme co-evolution to capture deeper truths about human nature than a modern atheist would assume. Peterson sees for example the primacy of the individual in Western culture with an emphasis on honesty to have emerged in such a cultural evolutionary process. He sees this framework of human culture as fundamental for | This concludes the secular side. Peterson also has a series of esoteric views about so called ''Jungian archetypes'' that he believes to have emerged in human folklore and religious scripture, that exist across time and space and have been formed by gene-meme co-evolution to capture deeper truths about human nature than a modern atheist would assume. Peterson sees for example the primacy of the individual in Western culture with an emphasis on honesty to have emerged in such a cultural evolutionary process. He sees this framework of human culture as fundamental for the construction of ''any'' meaning, and uses it to justify the importance of traditions, concluding the [[blackpill]] that culturally evolved memes protect us from the unknown ways of organizing society that could potentially throw it into chaos by mechanisms that are too complex for us to figure out otherwise: | ||
{{Quote|Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, in its intrapsychic or internal manifestation. The thing we do not understand is the chaos that gave rise to culture. If the structure of culture is disrupted, unwittingly, chaos returns. We will do | {{Quote|Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, in its intrapsychic or internal manifestation. The thing we do not understand is the chaos that gave rise to culture. If the structure of culture is disrupted, unwittingly, chaos returns. We will do anything–anything–to defend ourselves against that return.|Jordan Peterson, 1998 (Descensus ad Inferos)}} | ||
A main mechanism by which he believes chaos to occur is when important beliefs are suddenly changed (e.g. during a loss of culture or religion) and then the negative human emotion to this tends to be externalized as aggression, since people "prefer war to be something external, than re-forming our challenged beliefs", which he sees to be driven by the most fundamental drive of human cognition which is to transform chaos into order (in this case people attempt to restore order in the world by force, rather than in their belief system). Of course other things can cause chaos as well, e.g. when people cease to have incentives to cooperate. | A main mechanism by which he believes chaos to occur is when important beliefs are suddenly changed (e.g. during a loss of culture or religion) and then the negative human emotion to this tends to be externalized as aggression, since people "prefer war to be something external, than re-forming our challenged beliefs", which he sees to be driven by the most fundamental drive of human cognition which is to transform chaos into order (in this case people attempt to restore order in the world by force, rather than in their belief system). Of course other things can cause chaos as well, e.g. when people cease to have incentives to cooperate. | ||