By David Futrelle
Just a reminder that Jordan “Slappy” Peterson’s fanboys are totally not cult members in a cult or anything, why would you even think that?
Ok, ok, he doesn’t mean a LITERAL voice in his head telling him what to do and not to do., that would be weird, just that “‘the little voice’ telling [me] not to do stuff often takes on Peterson’s tone and speech pattern.” Which is TOTALLY NORMAL.
I mean, seriously, who doesn’t have some strange Canadian dude in their head — FIGURATIVELY — telling them what to do? In my case, it’s the late Doug Henning, the fuzzy-mustached magician dude who was born in Winnipeg.
In case you’d like to know what it would be like if Jordan B. Peterson were a voice in your head, this brief video should help.
The Muppets has gotten weird pic.twitter.com/fFLTQxD0ei
— Wild Geerters (@steinkobbe) March 30, 2018
@Lesley
If i was Jesus Peterson i would not be OK with this sentiment. It’s deification, which is just another kind of dehumanization. And yes, it is cult-like when applied to anyone.
@Lesley:
Apologies, this will be a long post.
Firstly, I feel that it is acceptable to have role models – we all do, especially when young or inexperienced, or we feel like we lack confidence.
However, it’s important to pick the right role models, bearing in mind that no human is perfect. If someone were to see me as a role model in how to handle depression, I would be honoured; if someone were to see me as a role model in how to handle personal finance, I would be horrified, because I’m awful at that.
Jordan Peterson is not a good role model: as a person he’s unpleasant, as an academic he’s mediocre, and as a thinker he’s unoriginal. If someone is taking him as a role model then that’s a worrying sign. There are many other role models, perhaps they should learn from them instead.
Secondly, there is the distinction between a teacher and an authority, and this is where it gets interesting and also where I would value corrections from people whose area of expertise is closer to this than mine.
You mentioned Nelson Mandela, who is a hero to me (as he is to many South Africans of my generation.) There are many things that I learned from Mandela’s speeches and writings, and especially from his actions.
However, when I learn things from him, those things become part of me. When I treat a disempowered person with dignity, I don’t do so because Mandela would have wanted me to do it; I do it because I want to do it. In this way, I am more than merely a puppet of my teacher: I internalise their teachings and can eventually move past them.
Some people can’t do this. We see Communists who quote Marx orthodoxly rather than trying to understand the meaning behind it, Christians who follow a shallow rather than a personal reading of the Gospels, and many others. I used to run in hardline atheist circles and I would meet people who would quote Dennett and Hitchens word-for-word. Many people can’t bring themselves to learn from a teacher instead of merely parroting them.
When a person can’t do this, then they are treating that teacher as an authority rather than as a teacher. The difference is that we can move past teachers. We can never move past authorities; their word is the final word and we cannot internalise it and make it our own.
In extreme cases, we may even take our own innate thoughts and assign them to the authority: instead of being kind to others because we are innately kind, for example, we will credit the feelings of kindness to the authority figure. This is how cults form.
Buddhists, wisely in my opinion, say that “if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” This is why. Do not seek the Buddha: instead seek what he sought.
This is why, if we hear a person say that they hear their own thoughts in Peterson’s voice, we worry. They have taken him as an authority figure to the extent that they take their own natural innate feelings, in this case the desire to live in a clean environment, and assigned them to him. This is how cults form; and the fact that others respond positively to it is a sign that cult formation may already be underway.
(As an aside, I think this is also why Carl Benjamin so dislikes being paraphrased even when it’s done accurately: he doesn’t want his followers to understand, learn from and move past him; he wants them to see him as an authority.)
@EJ
I agree with the bulk of what you’ve said, though I think it has a certain religious sensibility to it that a lot of people are probably not bringing to such considerations. What I mean is that you are describing what I would call a search for enlightenment of some kind or other and I’m not sure that most people are really capable of or particularly interested in enlightenment. In those circumstances, remembering that some authority figure expects me to behave well and I’ll disappoint them if I don’t and/or they would look down on me if they knew is probably a much heftier push towards good behavior than me relying on my internalized and abstract notions of right and wrong, which might be atrophied, underdeveloped, or whatever. The disappointment of my mother for not cleaning my room was always a much stronger incentive to clean my room than any kind of internalized sense that “dirty rooms ought to be cleaned.” So to make an example of relevance to this site: If some dude is respectful of women because his father taught him to be or because his mother taught him to be respectful to people in general and *not* because he had some sort of awakening about female personhood and dignity and etc., etc., does it really matter? Inasmuch as the goal of treating women like people worthy of dignity and respect is achieved, does it really matter how or why the person is doing it?
I am reminded of a quote by C. S. Lewis: “No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous…. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat,’ than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among [card sharks].”
There’s also times when it’s just plain good sense to listen to what some legitimate authority figure says simply because they are an authority figure and you are not. A good example of that would be about climate change. I know absolutely nothing about climatology or weather or the hard sciences generally so when a bunch of authorities in those fields say “Climate change is true and moreover we need to do X in order to alleviate some of the worst consequences” it is quite good sense for me to admit I know nothing, shut up, and do as they suggest.
I suppose I have to put forward the disclaimer that I don’t find Jordan Peterson particularly toxic, at least not anything like as toxic as most of the people quoted on this site so that probably shapes my opinion here as well. But my stance here is not so much a defense of Peterson per se as a defense of the idea that submitting to authorities is not always inherently unseemly.
@Lesley
Nice post – and welcome!
I’m going to look at one strand of your argument (much of which I agree with).
While true – this is contextual.
Using your climate change example – it makes sense for me, personally, to acknowledge the general consensus of authority of those speaking on it. They’ve studied climate for decades. I get rained on.
However – another climate scientist would be completely wrong to accept the authority’s pronouncement without testing it against their own knowledge and using their own tools.
In Petersons case, he’s not pronouncing on some esoteric area of study that only 3 people in the world can understand (that’s a call back to the release of General Relativity, not an exaggeration). He’s talking about shit you learn by living, which makes him no more of an authority than anyone else who’s drawn breath and interacted with others for a roughly equal period of time.
So – not only not an authority figure, but harmful if used as one.
@Shadowplay
Peterson is a tricky example because he *is* an expert inasmuch as he does have a doctorate in psychology, but psychology is one of those weird fields (like most of the sciences that deal with human behavior) where it’s hard to pinpoint the precise place where expertise about actual, documentable underlying mental processes and phenomenon end and where speculation begins. And that’s compounded by the fact that basically every field in the humanities: religious studies, philosophy, art & art criticism, and more have felt the need to speculate copiously about the nature of man and human behavior for thousands of years. It has so irreducibly muddied the waters that it’s very hard to distinguish quackery from legitimate knowledge, especially for laypeople, and it makes it relatively easy for people to latch onto whatever set of ideas they happen to like best.
I am in no way qualified to put forward what particular aspects of Peterson’s ideas are quackery and which aren’t. I do know that experts conducting studies in these fields that run afoul of people’s political sensibilities often find themselves vilified by one side and borderline deified by the other. Johnathan Haidt is one such person with studies that lend credence to some ideas considered right of center, as an example, who is borderline deified by the right and reviled by some on the left. I am sure people here could probably provide me with numerous examples of academics whose social research lends support to arguments put forward by the left. (Any number of people who study racialized cognitive bias, say).
That is a long rambling way of saying that any *actual* academic insight into human behavior is almost certainly going to butcher a lot of sacred political cows.
For this reason, I tend to exercise a lot of caution before I hop on either the vilification or the deification bandwagon when it comes to these types of academics.
I’m cooking right now, so can’t make a longer response, but:
I was an academic for a while, although I have since left and now work as a data scientist. I can speak about academia a little.
Your view of academia is a very common one for non-academics, or even for academics in different fields. The muddiness and the difficulty in telling quackery from sincerity are real things to outsiders. However, to people within the same field, it tends to be as clear as glass. That same complex language and web of background that makes it hard for us to understand, also enables rapid and precise communication between experts. This is as true of Peterson as it is of, say, Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Therefore, in order to judge whether an academic is any good, we can ask other academics in their field. In the case of Dr Tyson, we can see that he’s legit because the rest of astrophysics will vouch for him. In the case of Peterson, other academics in his field have described him with less glowing language; “mediocre” is a common term.
It is possible that the entire field of Jungian psychology is wrong and he’s the only person who’s right. But it is unlikely.
(I’ll respond on the matter of authorities and enlightenment in due course because it’s an interesting topic in its own right.)
@ E.G
But that’s also one of the things that complicates Peterson. If you go back to his “core” academic work, he *isn’t* treated as mediocre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maps_of_Meaning:_The_Architecture_of_Belief#Reviews
His underlying expertise about psychology does not seem to be dismissed. What’s dubious is his extrapolating that out into some wider speculative worldview. “Stand up straight because lobsters” as somebody further up the thread put it.
My point is that this breaking point is harder to identify with an academic like Peterson than it is with people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson. When Neil DeGrasse Tyson starts ranting about politics or sculpture or something, it’s fairly easy to go “Dude, you study stars. Go away.” When Peterson starts making declarations about human behavior, motivation, belief, decision making, etc. etc. and that’s what psychology studies, the exact point of departure where he is breaking down into speculation is not so easy to identify.
Another disclaimer: I am convinced that science has demonstrated that there are meaningful intrinsic psychological and behavioral differences between biologically typical men and women (on average) and that these almost certainly have to be taken into consideration when undertaking the development of any fair policy that moderates human behavior. Inasmuch as Peterson is pointing *that* out, I agree with him. Inasmuch as he is claiming to know precisely what those differences are as opposed to say socially constructed ones, precisely what the degree of difference is, precisely how to go about building a fair policy based on those, etc. I don’t agree with him.
http://derpicdn.net/img/2017/9/23/1542836/large.png
ᵈᵒ ʷᵉ ᵍᵒᵗᵗᵃ ᵈᵒ ᵗʰᶦˢ
For some reason I can’t find it in my history, but fairly recently I read an article that actually analyzed Peterson’s work. Possibly someone from here linked to it? If so, I’d love to find it again.
The main thing was that the writer had actually read Peterson – not his recent self-help book, but the 600-page tome his reputation is based on. It was not a very positive analysis.
The main takeaway, and I think the main danger signal, was the amount of verbiage in it. Specific examples are provided, including a spot where he took about twenty words to say “The cancer metastisized.” He’s not unlike many of the trolls we get here, or that David looks at: He uses big words when small ones would do and convoluted sentence structure rather than staying simple, meaning that his philosophy isn’t actually clear. He convinces his followers because he sounds like what they think a smart person should sound like, but he also makes himself hard to attack because his prose is so complicated. This is at the basis of his defense that if you disagree with him, you just don’t understand him, because you aren’t smart enough to. It’s hard enough to work out what he’s saying that he can always claim you’re misinterpreting. At best, he needs an editor; at worst, it’s deliberate.
When an academic’s writing style can be compared to that of MRAL, it doesn’t build confidence in the academic.
@ Schildfreja
Depends on what you mean by “this” because I honestly don’t know.
@Rabid Rabbit
I would be interested to see that as well. If it’s the case, I pretty much agree.
“This” as in “the topic I quoted in the quote above my squinty-eyes.”
sigh
What makes you think that we have conclusive scientific evidence? Which white papers are you citing?
Oh also, it’s Scildfreja, not Schildfreja. Common mistake.
Eh, the link between aggression and testosterone is pretty well documented for one. Is that even controversial?
Also, for the record, my assertion is limited to “they exist and therefore considering them probably matters.” It is in no way prescriptive.
Also, sorry for the name mistake.
Hi Lesley,
A few points you should know.
Firstly, Scildfreja is an academic; she studies human cognition. This means that you are talking to someone who probably either knows more than you do, or else has read your papers.
Secondly, when you say “I am convinced that science has demonstrated that there are meaningful intrinsic psychological and behavioral differences between biologically typical men and women”, please be aware that you are:
1.1: Doing the cognition-scientific version of saying “I’m not an expert but I think the earth is flat.” I’m afraid that mainstream scientific thought is somewhat against you on this one.
1.2: Saying something which is very much a shibboleth. Belief in evo-psych and its associated fields is strongly correlated with certain political views; which, given that we don’t know you very well, may paint a somewhat negative picture of you. Perhaps this picture is unjustified. Perhaps not.
From what we’ve seen, you’ve come here to defend the followers of Jordan Peterson, then Peterson himself, and then finally to propose a controversial scientific snake-oil of a type that’s popular amongst Peterson’s fans.
Please be honest, and no “devil’s advocate” or “just discussing ideas” claims, please. The internet is full of places to discuss: why are you here, why here specifically, and why these topics?
The reason I put the disclaimers forward is because I was admitting what I actually believe so I wouldn’t be accused of being a concern troll or being duplicitous about what I actually believe.
The reason I’m here is because I make a point of reading stuff from across the political spectrum and this place is a good place to keep tabs *both* on what assorted crazy MRAs are saying and also what assorted people who tend progressive are saying. It’s why I have lurked for a few years but never posted. If you want me to give you some kind of rundown of my politics or something I can.
The reason I posted was because this was the first post I ever encountered here that I really disagreed with in any substantive way and it spurred an impulse of the moment, I guess?
(Also, I post all over the internet on all kinds of topics. I didn’t specifically hunt this place up to do so on one particular topic).
*Gets popcorn, waves “Frejapone bestpone” sign*
The differences in aggression between people with high and low testosterone are small (Archer, Birring & Wu 1998; Archer, Graham-Kevan & Davies 2005), though they do exist. However, there appears to be greater dependence on other hormones, especially cortisol and serotonin (van Honk, Harmon-Jones, Morgan & Schutter 2010).
Specifically, one of the greatest indicators of violence isn’t testosterone but low serotonin reuptake. Animal studies (Valzelli & Bernasconi 1979, Taravosh-Lahn, Bastida &Delville 2006, Cervantes & Delville 2009 and others) indicate that serotonin is more correlational with aggression. It’s also got a relationship in humans (Virkkunen, Nuutila, Goodwin & Linnoila 1987), though there are some findings that are contradictory here (Coccaro & Lee 2010).
Note that last bit – things get weird in humans. We’ve got big brains with lots of things affecting our behaviours. That’s important. Anyone who talks about biological backgrounds for behaviours as if they were more than weak correlations is trying to sell you something.
Specifically, science journalists/magazines/websites. They love exaggerating things, and there’s no jucier science story than one which talks about racism or sexism.
I can provide you full citations if you like for those papers but they’re all behind paywalls – reputable science journals don’t sell eyeballs, they sell science.
Any recommendations for a decent popular science book by a reputable person on this topic?
Also, not really a question that directly taps into human cognition so much as sociology, but what do you say is a good explanation for the wide tendency of aggressive authority figures (warriors, kings, etc.) to be overwhelmingly male in most cultures that we know about? Is is really so stupid to see that tendency, in groups as disparate as say ancient Spartans and Comanches, separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles and not extrapolate that something about biological sex probably matters there?
https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244
Have I ever mentioned that watching Scildfreja takedowns is among the major reasons I read this site? I keep hoping for trolls just because they may spark one.
Also, found it: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve
Note that Peterson, like MRAs, is also given to incomprehensible diagrams.
@ Lesley
I’ll just repeat my oft mentioned sentiment that I can think of no finer memorial to posterity than to be remembered for “Boudiccan Destruction Layer”.
Cleverer people than I can explain why women were/are so often denied the opportunity for that sort of thing.
(ETA: Also known as Boudiccan Destruction Horizon for reasons that probably make sense to archeologists.)
Eh, I know about Boudicca (and Joan of Arc and this woman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Read and umpteen others I could find).
That women don’t have the *capacity* to do such things is not something I’m claiming. I’m claiming that on average they have tended not to as much as men have, and I’m aware of no sociological reason that sufficiently explains that of itself.
@Rabid Rabbit
Thanks, I’ll read it later.
@ Lesley
But women are under represented in a whole host of fields; and that was even truer in the past.
So there either is a sociological reason that sufficiently explains that, or your argument becomes that there’s an innate biological reason women can’t do science, engineering, medicine, law…..
[Is ‘truer’ a word? Well, guess it is now.]
How deeply have you actually delved into gender studies, sociology, anthropology, or any related field?
@kupo
I can answer that.
http://static.fjcdn.com/gifs/Diving+fail_560854_3243254.gif
WWTH’s link is good. Feminism / gender studies often gets derided as an intellectually impoverished field, but that derision always seems to come from Smart Dudes with Strong Opinions About Women And Races. Any gender studies book which talks about neurology is going to pick out the papers which relate to gender, after all. As for more generic behavioural-biology popular science book? Eeegh. I can’t really recommend much outside of, like, university textbooks. And even then, some are painfully reductive.
Like EJ said above with typical panache, biological foundations of behaviour is a shibboleth. The literature is polluted with bias, so any good science right now concludes by saying “this is a weak correlation, we don’t really know anything about it, no conclusions should be made from this work.” Because it’s devilishly complicated and we have the most tenuous handle on it. Meanwhile, racists and misogynists will latch onto any abstract that says something they can twist into support and run with it.
I’m of the opinion that no good book on behavioural biology can be written about humans right now, because we don’t know enough, and what we do know is contradictory and tainted with harmful biases. I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for, but I can’t answer otherwise.
EDIT: Oh boy, more to respond do. One sec.