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Jordan Peterson: Difference between revisions
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→Beliefs and philosophy
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{{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)}} | {{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 challenged (e.g. during a loss of culture or religion). Then the negative human emotional response to this tends to be externalized as aggression, since people "prefer war to be something external, than re-forming [their] challenged beliefs". He sees this to be driven by the most fundamental drive of human cognition, especially male cognition, which is the drive to transform chaos into order. (In this case, people attempt to restore order in the world by force, rather than in their belief system.) He sees much of the world wars and cold wars to be driven by this mechansim, with people externalizing their disagreement about collectivist vs individualist orders of society as aggression. Of course other things cause chaos and conflict as well, e.g. when people cease to have incentives to cooperate and end up in downward spiral of resentment, | A main mechanism by which he believes chaos to occur is when important beliefs are suddenly challenged (e.g. during a loss of culture or religion). Then the negative human emotional response to this tends to be externalized as aggression, since people "prefer war to be something external, than re-forming [their] challenged beliefs". He sees this to be driven by the most fundamental drive of human cognition, especially male cognition, which is the drive to transform chaos into order. (In this case, people attempt to restore order in the world by force, rather than in their belief system.) He sees much of the world wars and cold wars to be driven by this mechansim, with people externalizing their disagreement about collectivist vs individualist orders of society as aggression. Of course other things cause chaos and conflict as well, e.g. when people cease to have incentives to cooperate and end up in downward spiral of resentment, blaming and revenge, often based on group affiliation which likely ties into tribal instincts (identity politics). He claims all major atrocities in human history have been committed by ordinary people who would have been honorable in different historic contexts and with different incentives. | ||
== Criticism == | == Criticism == | ||