Here’s my response to Peterson:
Hierarchies of competence are one thing, but most hierarchies are social ones built on dominating those around you, sometimes violently so. They serve no constructive purpose and instead, just reward ruthlessness. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and bullying of all kinds are a direct result of a social system founded in stratification and hierarchies. I find it completely ironic that Peterson never made that connection when he was looking into why individuals and groups participate in social conflict and create things like concentration camps and genocide. Hmmm…. what could it be, I wonder?
After all, we haven’t shared a common ancestor with lobsters for something like 700 million years and serotonin affects aggression in lobsters in the exact opposite way than it affects humans — not a very good analogy.
Human hierarchical structures are nothing like those of lobsters. Comparing the two is actually quite laughable. Lobsters are clearly extremely basic animals with a simple brain, much more influenced by body chemistry. Hierarchy is determined by body size and aggression. Clearly, we don’t determine our leaders based on the results of UFC matches. Sometimes I get the impression that men like Peterson believe that this is the case, or at least wish it were, that the more aggressive candidate should assume a leadership role. It’s a male power fantasy where they will be valued for their masculinity, aggression and physical strength. This is why it is young men in particular that find this nonsense appealing. They desire a world in which advantages are conveyed to them based on their nature and morphology alone. Clearly, our society has moved beyond this, the existence of art, music, science and literature all make Jordan’s comparisons to lobsters utterly facile. Science and Skepticism
Patriarchy predates writing (It’s about 6–9 thousand years old), but it’s an interesting hypothesis.
“However, scholars now recognize that writing was independently developed in at least five ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BC), Egypt (around 3250 BC),[6][7][3] China (2000 BC),[8] lowland Mesoamerica (by 650 BC),[9][3] and Peru (perhaps as early as 2700 BCE but more likely 200 CE).[3]”
“Pervasive violence and aggressive as well as coercive domination are relatively new parts of human culture, only appearing in the last 6–9 thousand years when Proto-Indo-European tribes (Kurgans) overtook the “peaceful, matrilinear (hereditary through the female line), matrifocal, though egalitarian cultures of ‘Old Europe’, replacing it with a patriarchal warrior society.” For the vast majority of human history, we lived in much more cooperative and partnership-oriented societies with minimal social stratification. Violent domination and coercion were not central elements of those societies, as they are today.”
