The Full Address

On June 24th, 2018, Jordan Peterson engaged in a Q & A at the Oxford Union in England. What follows are my notes on this over one-hour session and my responses to his remarks and answers to student questions. Jordan commences with a 15-minute speech on hierarchy and its political significance. He describes humans as complex biological creatures that must move forward in the world, from a place less favored or valued, towards a place more favored and valued. Humans are ancient creatures avoiding something and approaching others We require to move to live and want to live and value all. To move towards something is to value it, and there is no escaping living in a world of value in human life. Both physiologically and psychologically we must pursue value. It is a deep truth that we are vulnerable and suffer but an even deeper truth is that we seek value and meaning to transcend the suffering. We pursue things of value. He quotes Nietzsche that who has a why can bear anyhow. My response: I follow his line of thought here, and cannot disagree with it, or add useful insights to it. Jordan warns that those without purpose in their lives turn bitter, then resentful, then revengeful and cruel, and can even go more wicked than that. My response: Amen, I concur. Jordan continues: to pursue value in social space is to compete and cooperate against other people. In ranking value of any pursuit, hierarchies of competence emerge--never mind what the activity is. Inevitably a few people rise to the top, being very good at the specific activity with most people at the bottom. The few at the top end up with the wealth, power and acclaim, and the masses huddled at the bottom of the hierarchy end up as have-nots. Jordan and conservatives argue that we require hierarchies to express value performances and to give humans meaning and something to do. Jordan adds that the Left has a legitimate role here to mitigate the severity of the inequality and distribution of rank, wealth and power, the byproducts of hierarchical society. Tyrants and power-seekers make the hierarchy corrupt with a few at the top and most at the bottom. If the hierarchy is too corrupting and the people at the bottom suffer too much, they may well revolt and overthrow it. Jordan points out that conservatives are conscientious and possess the right temperament to like and support the hierarchy, working and succeeding within it. Liberals are not as conscientious but create new hierarchies and economic opportunities. The economy and democracies require both conservatives and liberals. My response: So far, I cannot disagree with Jordan’s depiction of reality. As I have pointed out elsewhere, all are very talented, and talent is not rare like Jordan the snob and elitist insists upon, as maverizers, most should end at as upper middle class, with only a few people stranded at the bottom. That would take most of the sting of injustice out of capitalists hierarchies and the issue of inequality. By individuating most will flourish, and thus change is constant, helpful and the desperate need for revolution is avoided. Jordan continues: Liberals keep society fresh and innovative, introducing new hierarchies and new territories, new values. Conservative turn static and deadly dull without liberals and their creativity, but liberals are not good at created actualities. They require conservatives to run and administrate these new hierarchies. My response, Jordan Peterson is an ethical and metaphysical moderate, like I am, and he plainly believes in hierarchies, but he wants them to be refreshed and updated. Order is good, but so is chaos, and any extreme is bad for society. I have been advocating these values since 1976. Jordan is conservative, but he is not alt-right conservative. That libelous attribution is hurled at him by Leftists. Jordan continues: Liberals and conservatives are at permanent odds, but perhaps a compromise can be reached (My suggestion.). Humans require hierarchies to provide them with something to do. Hierarchies are not going away, and capitalist hierarchies create wealth, but there will always be poor people in that system. My response: By instilling in most young people the desire to maverize, hierarchies can be minimalized, kept competent and un-corrupted, flattened and deinstitutionalized as individuating anarchist supercitizens do their own things to the maximum, generating upper middle-class income for their family and themselves. The class and poverty issues will mostly disappear. What hierarchies and institutions that exist will be strong, effective, efficient, small and not intrusive as individual supercitizens wield maximum power and enjoy maximum liberty. Jordan continues: The moderator asked him to address political correctness whose backers want to limit, censor, restrict and suppress offensive free speech as undesirable hate speech. Even offensive clothes are to be outlawed. Jordan seems to link political correctness with tyranny, fascism, communism and restriction on individuals and personal liberty. He opposes it vehemently. He accuses Marxist fascists promoting hate speech as those that see the world from a low-resolution narrative. Low resolution narrative do have some value in that they provide humans with schemas to quickly characterize incoming stimuli, and then have a way to characterize and react to it quickly and efficiently. People should use low resolution narratives when useful and fair, and high resolution and more complex resolution when applicable. (Fair enough, I respond.) Low resolution existential theory or narrative is not the same as a description of objective reality, but it is a socially agreed-upon narrative as to how the world is constituted, so that we have a way to live and operate. There are two low resolution narratives that people in society resort to: 1. Collectivism or communal living is a tribal outlook hundreds of thousands of years old. It was useful and practical for a long time, but it turns deadly and ruinous in the modern world as tribes go against tribes and become warlike and violent. This in a world of weapons of mass destruction is not viable. This tribal, vicious rivalry is seen in chimpanzees where the young patrol the border of their territories and find and rip apart chimpanzees from tribes outside their territory. Jane Goodall's discovery in the 1970s of natural viciousness evinced by chimpanzees towards foreign chimpanzees shocked everyone. Most scientists were liberals, believing with Rosseau that humans are innately gentle and good, but learn to be violent, cruel and commit atrocities in society. Her discovery reveals that cruelty is natural to primates, and that tribal units amplify organized, collective acts of cruelty. All humans belong simultaneously to too many tribes, so which tribe that we belong to is canonical, and how do we conceptualize a person by a single tribe membership when that is not anyone's actual reality? This renders intersectionality a meaningless dragon that will eat its own tail. Those advocating political correctness argue that there is no truth, no values, all is opinion only. Reality is but a battleground of competing tribes or groups warring and clambering up hierarchies to amass power for their tribe. This Marxist, postmodernist ethos leads inevitably to chaos and mayhem. 2. Individualism as the alternative, low resolution view is the one championed in the West, and none have done it as well as the UK. The fundamental idea of the sovereign individual is very old but can be articulated as a democracy in which the individual has intrinsic value, and runs the government, and it rules him by his consent. Under this humane and effective narrative, the sovereign citizen is viewed as a member of a tribe--though he is--and he is a sovereign individual whose rights and responsibilities included treating all other citizens as sovereign citizens in regard to their rights and responsibilities Where polities are collective, tyranny and tribal warfare are the result. Where polities are individual, the polities are functional, peaceful, wealthy, free and generate wealth, but some inequality. My response: I agree with most of what he told the students. Jordan continues: He is ashamed that universities are faithless, pushing the tribalist, collective view, doing all they can to undermine the sovereign, individual view. The universities' view is political correctness. When asked if his view of truth was similar to that of the postmodernists, Jordan answered yes and no. Yes, in that he agrees with their history of literary criticism where it was revealed that there are infinite numbers of ways to view the world, and that there is no obvious canonical interpretation of literature, so there is no justifiable grand narrative. He would say no in that there are infinite ways of interpreting the world but only a few that work, and those come close to being weavable into a grand narrative. Postmodernists deny that there is a grand narrative but somehow sneak Marxism, which is contradictory to postmodernist relativism and subjectivism, in the back door (This defunct, discredited 19th century scientific theory that was a grand narrative.), bringing Marxism back into the game. Postmodernists and collectivist use Marxism to grant their ideology or world view motive force. Raw power is the motive ruling the universe, as tribe wars against other tribes endlessly, eternally. (My point: Jordan would agree that this pessimistic, cynical, dark view of human nature is evil and too brutal; humans are also motivated by love, play and cooperation.) My response: Jordan well understands postmodernists, and they hate him for it. Jordan's view of truth is that there is a grand narrative, perhaps not of certain truth, but of highly probable truth--this is my point and my opinion also. Jordan, when considering truth ethically, is tricky. Truth is ethically defined and then scientifically or ontologically described and considered in the objective world, but that consideration is not well sorted out. Jordan digresses introducing a theory of ethics that grows out of Darwinian biology. It evolved and was orderly and articulated over thousands of years. He follows psychologist, biologist Yak Panseth, that documented cooperative fair play in rats, as they have an instinct for iterated, ethical interactions among young, wrestling male rats over time. This is a huge discovery for it shows that even rats develop an ethic of cooperation and communal harmonious settling of disputes over time for the survival of their species. (My point: Jordan seems to be offering scientific, biological proof that the fundamental motive force among animals, and by analogy, for humans is not just competing and warring to amass raw power, but that cooperation and keeping the peace for social benefit is also a powerful, instinctual urge or motive.) Jordan points out that these ethical, iterated interactions among humans and other animals helps these species survive, thrive and adapt and evolve. These iterated, ethical interactions and rules emerged and manifested themselves in our great mythological stories. These interactions were manifested and described as great narratives, the mythologies underlying our culture. They are not based on arbitrary assumptions but based on observations of what promotes survival and reproduction of the human race. The mythologies speak in a Darwinian manner over thousands of years. This benevolent, grand narrative is biologically based, not a mere deconstructivist truth, or one of infinite truths, but is grand, successful, objective or universal. Jordan describes how our primitive humans, prehistoric humans, could manifest this cooperative, gentle ethic as behavior or dram in mythologies but we were not yet ideationally equipped to represent it or articulate the ethic in words. Nonetheless, a universal, human ethic governs our behavior, but early humans acted out ethics but did not understand it or articulate it. The cooperative, benevolent motive really goes along with the rise of the sovereign individual and this very old idea is portrayed in the great mythologies as a narrative structure based on behavior patterns over time. Our modern ethic is built in biological structures and patterns that emerge reliably over time, a universal human ethic built into our biological and social natures, growing out of Darwinian unfoldings as a universal modern ethic. My response: I am no biological expert, but I like and accept his account for the most part. Jordan continues: What is the source of human meaning, a girl asked him, or is it just human fostered or manufactured? Nietzsche announced the Death of God but not happy about this reality. Nietzsche worried about what would happen to humans living without meaning or value, once God was dead. Nietzsche predicted that we would or must create our own values. But Nietzsche died before he could describe how values, new, should be generated But Freud came along a bit later and demonstrated that there is no evidence that humans are masters of our own houses. We are not strong enough to make our own values, for there are too many internal forces we cannot control. Jung came along and agreed with Freud that humans are too other-controlled to make our own values. We can participate at best in helping create values but only God can create values. My response: As an individuator, I believe that God creates values but that we as great souled theologians and ethicists, should be able to help in creating values, and that we would-be expected by the Mother and Father to do so. Jordan continues: Jung interested in how internal forces organized themselves across time, and this is accomplished in two ways: 1) We set up society as a hierarchy with Christ at the top' 2) Christ is a symbol of the self, and the self is an emerging consequence of the internal arranging of motivational states in a hierarchy and a psychological reaction of activity and social pressure on that self. Jordan then jumps to Piaget as defining meaning as a manifestation of a deep instinct, an elaboration orienting reflex. This reflex orients you towards what you do not understand, an anomaly, which this instinct is present in your psyche to help you make sense of what you do not understand. The reflex operates on many levels of one's nervous system and this reflex is a source of meaning; 3) Our brain hemispheres are specialized. The Left one deals with what has been explored and the Right hemisphere is oriented to what is new and unexplored. In the Right hemisphere is where the orienting reflex manifests itself as imagination where one does not know what is happening, and the Right hemisphere thinks in metaphors. Still, the two hemispheres work together to find meaning. Meaning or purpose or ordering our life is the telos bubbling up in the Darwinian landscape. We don't describe the world; we live in the world. We can live in the Newtonian/materialist world that conflicts with the evolutionary/Darwinian world, and meaning is here. Your telos is real so to survive and not be miserable, seek meaning in the Darwinian sense. And this telos is spiritual or theological, I add. My response: Jordan is wildly imaginative and speculative here, but he might be correct. It would seem that pursuing our divine telos is the welling up of a Darwinian drive that helps us imagine what it all means, and this is our spiritual, emerging grand narrative which all humans sense and work to articulate, and this grand narrative gives us a sense of ultimate meaning. Jordan continues: Conservatives preserve the hierarchy and liberals challenge the hierarchy. If we are too conservative, we end up with pathological order, and if we are too liberal we end up in chaos. These extremes are out of balance, but free speech is important source of respecting and manifesting the logos, a balance of order and chaos. We need to think, talk, disagree and reach compromises, better than war and death. We need free speech to be free and offensive, and we do not want to shut down what people say. My response: This is where Peterson's genius and moral greatness comes to the fore. Now this is my freewheeling interpretation of his rambling defense of free speech: His defense of free speech is a vital, necessary warning to not restrict free speech, because free speech is an engine of discovery, of intellectual growth among conversing humans, and that free speech in the private and public arena is a prayer, a way of contacting and articulating how the Logos, the rational principle running the universe, is reaching out to inquisitive humans. Free speech between humans and the Logos or God is how we update our values, and grow love and knowledge in the world, and allow peace, prosperity, law and order and liberty to coexist for a happy productive citizenry in any polity. Free speech, unrestricted is that critically important to human welfare and survival. Logos, or rational principle ordering the universe, that is reason or spirit, expressed as speech or natural law, running the ordered natural world, is perhaps God at work in the ordered universe. Through the social exchange and untrammeled expression of free speech, we can bring into human consciousness and knowledge the nature, will and expectations that the Divine Couple have for us, as we reinforce good traditional values and instantiate new or update values. Free speech is how the sovereign individual is to find himself, maverize and worship the divinity as he connects with the Logos, and bring love, order, balance, reason and liberty to operate in his personal life, for his family and his society. The politically correct types, the feminist extremists, the intersectional, Marxist revolutionaries and postmodernists of every stripe criticize and loathe free speech which is love speech even where it offends. Unfree speech is the true hate speech and it will lead to totalitarian terror, centralized power, and social misery across the globe. Jordan Peterson knows this and is alerting us to the dangers of postmodernists and their hate speech laws. These are cruel, nasty people to be ignored, marginalized and allowed no say and now power in how to run society or educate the young. These are hateful, wicked, hating elitists that mean to ruin society and reintroduce Communist hell upon all Americans and the entire West. Attacking free speech as hate speech and racism is their ticket to gaining absolute power, and the young have come to accept that free speech is evil and that hate speech curbs are the moral replacement. But who defines what hate speech is, and where does it start and stop, restricting all kinds of free speech once they get rolling. Jordan continues: Men and women are more alike than different especially at the mean, but at the extremes, where examples of aggressive behavior or career preference are expressed, the differences between these genders does show up strongly. 9 out of 10 people in prison are men because men are born aggressive, and that is no social construct. Men do the STEM fields because they like things, and women chose the low-paying helping fields because they like people. Men and women are equally smart, but career choices are more biological than sociocultural, and this accounts for much of the pay gap. Scandinavian egalitarianism made for women choosing to be nurses not engineers, and that proved that the genders are different, and the differences are biological, not sociocultural, although sociocultural influence is still considerable. Hate speech laws are bad but hate speech exists. There is not total free speech in the West, even now since we cannot incite to violence, nor libel others. Free speech goes with the sovereign individual as everyone's logos has the opportunity to clarify the unknown and reconstitute the world to receive everyone's insight. We want the individual to develop to also help the community. Just let people speak hatefully in public and let and sort the public to sort out of truth. To regulate hate speech is to bring about tyranny. To talk about difficult things is to offend people. Let the community decide what is hateful or acceptable on an ongoing basis, and this is not a perfect solution but there are no perfect solutions. (My Point: Perfect solutions sought after only lead to government enforcement and imposition of tyranny upon the people.) My response: My take is that individuated anarchist supercitizens, with their free speech, will donate to human development the wonders of their private art, research, ruminations and philosophizing. Without mostly unrestricted free speech, such high civilization level advancements will not be forthcoming. Jordan continues: High resolution thinking, or solutions forced on people but rejected as too complicated, so they refute it just labeling it as bad and inferior to their low-resolution ideology. But this utopian/tribal/oppression/inequality ideology is leading us straight to hell. He likes the complicated view of reality held by the wise American Founders who pushed balanced of power to prevent ideologues of good intentions from setting up a new tyranny, all in the name of chasing after utopian perfection. When good intentions go wrong, be careful. It is much easy to make things worse but hard to make things better. The wise Founders were humble enough to worry about their inability to bring utopia to America, but the arrogant, incompetent modern Leftist ideologues have full self-confidence in their ability and genius to bring perfection (hell) to America. Jordan self-defines as a traditionalist that openly worries that only a wise social scientist doubts that his advised reforms will make thing better; usually reformers make things worse. They need metrics for measuring how effective their reform is once implemented. He advises individual self-improvement first, because that way one does no harm, and not hurting the world. My response: His complicated, conservative high-resolution traditionalism is really political moderation at work. Where the country is good, just with little racism, injustice and inequality, as in America, then reformers need to be really cautious not to make things worse, and that is what the postmodernists excel at, wrecking tradition, bringing poverty, corruption, pain, suffering, injustice and tyranny to the masses.