The quote in the post headline is what Cathy Newman said after Peterson said:
There’s this idea that hierarchical structures are a sociological construct of the Western patriarchy. And that is so untrue that it’s almost unbelievable. I use the lobster as an example: We diverged from lobsters evolutionarily history about 350 million years ago. And lobsters exist in hierarchies. They have a nervous system attuned to the hierarchy. And that nervous system runs on serotonin just like ours. The nervous system of the lobster and the human being is so similar that anti-depressants work on lobsters. And it’s part of my attempt to demonstrate that the idea of hierarchy has absolutely nothing to do with sociocultural construction, which it doesn’t.Lots more quotes from the interview and analysis of what's going on at the link. I just want to quote something from the movie "The Lobster":
HOTEL MANAGER — The fact that you'll turn into an animal if you don't manage to fall in love with another person during your stay here is not something that should upset you... Have you decided what animal you would like to be if you end up alone?And here's the great David Foster Wallace essay "Consider the Lobster." Excerpt:
DAVID — A lobster.
HOTEL MANAGER — Why a lobster?
DAVID — Because a lobster lives to be over 100 years old, has blue blood just like an aristocrat and stays fertile all its life. And I like the sea very much. I water-ski and swim quite well, ever since I was a teenager.
HOTEL MANAGER — I must congratulate you. Usually the first thing people think of is a dog and that’s why the world is full of dogs.* Very few choose to become unusual animals, which is why they are endangered. Rarely does someone choose to be a tuna fish, due to the dangers it faces, or a polar bear, due to its adverse living conditions. A lobster is an excellent choice.
Still, after all the abstract intellection, there remain the facts of the frantically clanking lid, the pathetic clinging to the edge of the pot. Standing at the stove, it is hard to deny in any meaningful way that this is a living creature experiencing pain and wishing to avoid/escape the painful experience. To my lay mind, the lobster’s behavior in the kettle appears to be the expression of a preference; and it may well be that an ability to form preferences is the decisive criterion for real suffering. The logic of this (preference p suffering) relation may be easiest to see in the negative case. If you cut certain kinds of worms in half, the halves will often keep crawling around and going about their vermiform business as if nothing had happened. When we assert, based on their post-op behavior, that these worms appear not to be suffering, what we’re really saying is that there’s no sign that the worms know anything bad has happened or would prefer not to have gotten cut in half.______________
* Notice that "the British broadcaster doggedly tried..."
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Are you concerned?
I would say I'm confidently vigilant. The struggle for civil liberties in America has been and will be endless, but that doesn't mean we can't live together peacefully. I especially distrust those on the Left and Right who say otherwise.
An equivalence between those who advocate restricting other's civil liberties and those who note the explicit attempt to restrict those civil liberties.
Way to chart the middle path, Earnest Prole.
Do you read what you write?
An equivalence between those who advocate restricting other's civil liberties and those who note the explicit attempt to restrict those civil liberties.
No, an equivalence between those on the Right and Left who fantasize about going to war with each other to settle their disagreements. You know who you are.
So what you're saying is, women should be boiled alive and smothered in butter with a squirt of lemon juice. You sir, are disgusting.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Soon to be a puzzle on Wheel of Fortune, which I'm watching now to warm up the little gray cells for Jeopardy.
Surprisingly, he? doesn't pass spellcheck.
The whole conversation between Newman and Peterson seems to me a perfect example of "Men Are from Mars, Women from Venus".
"No, an equivalence between those on the Right and Left who fantasize about going to war with each other to settle their disagreements. You know who you are."
I fantasize about fleeing before you start.
I fantasize about fleeing before you start.
You flee? I thought you prided yourself on being a cold-blooded right-wing Leninist eagerly awaiting the acceleration of contradictions!
"You flee? I thought you prided yourself on being a cold-blooded right-wing Leninist eagerly awaiting the acceleration of contradictions!"
No, I'm a cold-blooded opportunist watching for oncoming misfortune.
Keeping an eye out for when the party looks to be over.
Yes indeed, I am prepared to flee, and take mine with me.
Karen,
Thanks for the heads up. I may well be that far off!
Earnest Prole strings together words that prove his middle of the road shtick a lie. Again.
"Right wing Leninist" is an incredibly dishonest turn of phrase.
Only a Leftist Collectivist would attempt such a lie.
"Right wing Leninist" is an incredibly dishonest turn of phrase.
"Right-wing Leninist" is a joke based on a previous exchange I had with buwaya. I don't really believe he's a right-wing Leninist, only that he plays one here -- much like yourself.
Francisco D,
A girlfriend with "therapists" (I.e. plural?). Social workers, also plural.
Whoa -- red flags; red flags all around.
A girlfriend with "therapists" (I.e. plural?).
Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. And mark my words: Never stick your dick in a woman who has more therapists than you.
Perhaps I can amend what I said to the following (what I observed of the interview)
-Peterson is challenging a common set of assumptions within British (increasingly American) institutional life, which is that Marxist and post Marxist epistemologies have much to recommend them (see the Academy, Politics, BBC). Cathy Newman, apparently, well represents this set of assumptions and likely shares with radfems and activists definitions of Equality and what is knowable and true about our interior lives, our social institutions and the world.
For the love of God, Terry Eagleton, Jeremy Corbyn, Christopher Hitchens, Eric Hobsbawm etc. are shining examples of how deeply entrenched such thinking is and has been across the pond (even Isaiah Berlin, who wrote Two Cocnepts Of Liberty helped to banish Roger Scruton from the academy for challenging Communism too directly). You are in a minority should you disagree.
Peterson’s line about Maoists and the challenges to the victimhood narrative (women as a class are oppressed and it’s partially Newman’s job to defend ALL women) display a fundamental disagreement and challenge to her. It’s not just TV. He thinks differently and is a threat. He is anti-Equality. He is morally questionable. He might be ‘alt-right’.
-He can challenge her so directly and openly because of his command of the empirical side of his argument and long experience in his profession (multi variant analyses, a complex view of women as individuals, exceptional care in choice of language). He’s got to be very accurate and open about what he thinks is true and knowable because, as usual, he’s going to be smeared, misrepresented. and mischarecterized. She tried (although I grant she has some incentive to play to a tv audience which won’t want to go so deep...as does Althouse in keeping pretentious blowhards from her site...).
She invited him, so tough shit if he’s too intense and interested in deep thrusting and jousting...:)
Peterson must know he’s also taking a stand on the grounds of political liberty against the inevitable consequences such Marxist collectivism poses to liberty (compelled thought and speech through rule and lawmaking, marching through institutions claiming the moral high ground and the latest moral idea, stifling free expression, placing group identity and group/class solidarity first, tearing down current institutional arrangements on the the promise of radical liberation which, as with Commies and Marxists, crushes individuals on the way towards presumed knowable ends and utopias).
****Where I might disagree epistemologically with Peterson is how much our direct sense experience of the world is mirrored within current psychological literature (the kinds of questions we ask of both reality matter,,as does analyzing our mental content in dealing with what our senses provide). His moral advice about how to live well, and meaningfully, I’d have to look at more carefully.
Jupiter said...
"Before I was a Trump critic, I was never mischaracterized in these ways on Althouse comments pages."
Correct me if I have forgotten something, but my first recollection of you commenting at Althouse was during the Presidential election, at which time you claimed to be saddened by the fact that Trump, who had won the nomination, was the only candidate who could not possibly win the election. Now that Trump has proven you were incorrect about that, you seem to have found other reasons for sadness.
You claim that you voted for him, so as to avert the disaster of a Hillary Clinton presidency. That disaster has probably been averted, but that does not mean the peril has passed. If you were what you claim to be, you would see that, and see that your continual attacks on the President are not helpful to the cause you claim to support. Your failure to make that elementary deduction is why I believe that you are a highly competent, and therefore probably Soros-paid, troll.
If you are suggesting that I was never a commenter at Althouse before the Trump campaign for president; yes, you are wrong. Completely, thoroughly, wrong. I was a commenter here going back to 2010-11, and the Wisconsin protests and WI Supreme Court fights. And I have been a regular, reliable, devoted supporter of conservatives and Republicans. If your memory is different, then your memory is defective.
If you simply have no memory of my commenting pre-Trump, that goes along with what I have said here previously; that as an ordinary loyal Republican and Walker-supporter, I was little-noticed among the Althouse commentariat. And I was fine with that. I wasn't looking for any fights with most other Althouse commenters.
The point here is to address your baseless and counter-factual that I am "probably a Soros-paid troll." Apart from the single metric of criticizing Trump, I have never taken up a single Soros-type position, and indeed I have been deeply anti-Soros. I have written favorably about Justices Scalia and Thomas; about the Citizens United line of free-speech cases; defending Republican redistricting; supporting Mitt Romney's campaign and candidacy; about Michigan's Republican governor Rick Snyder (in addition to Scott Walker); and too many other pro-Republican, pro-conservative topics to list.
So yeah; you are wrong and your memory is defective.
I was a commenter here going back to 2010-11, and the Wisconsin protests and WI Supreme Court fights.
Chuck, can you prove this? Anybody can style themselves "Chuck" or even "chuck" as its a pretty common name. Show us early posts that seem like you wrote them.
WHICH ANIMAL INSTINCTS CAN WE RESIST, & WHICH CAN'T WE RESIST?
Here's the part of Dr. Peterson's statement that seems questionable: "And it’s part of my attempt to demonstrate that the idea of hierarchy has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH sociocultural construction, WHICH IS DOESN'T."
If by that Dr. Peterson only means that there will always be some sort and degree of social-political-organization-economic hierarchy in any human group or society, then his remark is uncontroversial and obvious to all (except for a super tiny number of irrelevant, extremist, fringe social theorists).
But if Dr. Peterson means to say that there are absolutely no human-made social, cultural, and political factors that influence the kind or degree of any particular human hierarchical arrangement, then he'd clearly be wrong.
Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia each had very particular hierarchical structures for their respective societies that were written into law by leaders and enforced by police.
The old Segregationist South (U.S.A) had a very particular social hierarchical arrangement that was written into law by democratically-elected leaders and enforced by the police.
The American Revolution was fought for the purpose of casting off one kind of hierarchical rule (British monarchy & the Colonial System) and replacing it with another form of hierarchical rule (the U.S. Constitution).
For nearly everyone, the question isn't whether there shall be hierarchy or no hierarchy, but what form and degree the human hierarchy shall take.
This is why every introductory course in Psychology discusses the "Nature vs. Nuture" issue. Only a tiny few irrelevant nutjobs say that everything is Nuture, and that Nature plays no role in human behavior.
Everyone knows that humans share many of the same instincts as lower animals. The question that reasonable people can debate is which instincts we have not choice but to conform to, and which instincts we can resist and should resist.
Just 60 years ago, psychologists, biologists, and medical doctors were using science to argue that, for reasons of biology, women could not and should not serve as legislators, pilots, doctors, lawyers, professors, scientists, athletes in physically vigorous sports, and so on. That earlier "science" has been debunked.
So, it seems reasonable to assume that some of the Progressive-backed things that Conservatives today are claiming are impossible because of biology and human nature, actually are possible.
Jordan Peterson is, I believe, deliberately cagey and evasive when it comes to making clear his entire political agenda. But it seems pretty clear that he generally sides with today's Conservatives, and that this underlies and motivates a great deal of what he says.
But it may turn out that many or some of the Progressive things that today's Conservatives claim to be impossible and disastrous will end up being seen to be very good and feasible.
If that happens, the "wisdom" of Dr. Peterson won't seem so wise after all, just like the psychologists 60 years and more ago who swore that women could not be attorneys, doctors, professors, and so on.
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