Been thinking about the Peterson bit, a bit.

It's striking to me how far Peterson had to stretch to find an analogue in nature to his vision of individualist dog-eat-dog capitalism. Even if lobsters form the individualistic hierarchies he valorizes, they're still wet bugs. He might as well said "consider the ant," or "consider the krill" or "consider the dung beetle." All of these creatures have evolved social structures that allows them to fit into their environment, but it's only with this one particular category that Peterson finds anything resembling his ideals, and it's something far detached from humanity. If he had considered the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orangutan or the bonobo, far closer cousins, he's not going to find anything like the "natural order" he envisions.

I guess, this is to say that this vision of capitalism is a fundamentally alien concept, and it's fitting that Peterson had to draw on the stark and quite alien landscape of the ocean floor to find a metaphor for this system.

  • mazdak
    ·
    10 months ago

    deleted by creator

  • PKMKII [none/use name]
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    10 months ago

    Peterson’s arguments in general rest upon a shit ton of cherry picking. Like that whole “mythologies show men are order, women are chaos” bit completely falls apart the moment you look past the handful of carefully selected examples he uses (Loki, being the hugely obvious one).

  • keepcarrot [she/her]
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    10 months ago

    I'm sure he's saying "Even the lobster, so far and alien from us, has hierarchy, let alone animals closer to us likes apes and cats", which may or may not be true but commits the naturalistic fallacy off the bat. Obviously, he's not making a logical argument but a rhetorical one, though he's bad at that (at least to people who don't agree with him). And you can obviously find communal animals, though it would be hard to say sheep are bolsheviks or whatever.

  • Snackuleata [any]
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    10 months ago

    If he had considered the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orangutan or the bonobo, far closer cousins, he's not going to find anything like the "natural order" he envisions.

    I'm glad we're brushing past Mike Cernovich's considerably dumber analogy to "gorilla mindset."

    • PKMKII [none/use name]
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      10 months ago

      Gorilla mindset? What’s that, the mindset of sitting my ass in the forest and lounging about while I digest raw leaves?

  • ReadFanon [any, any]
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    10 months ago

    It's worth mentioning that humans are capable of overcoming their biological impulses because of our developed frontal lobe and our ability for metacognition.

    Just because something (allegedly) exists in human nature or it's part of our primordial state of being doesn't mean that we must therefore indulge in it and create a society around that phenomenon.

    This sort of appeal is just nonsense.

    If you believe so sincerely in human nature then log off of twitter already and go to Albania go live in a cave somewhere, you absolute freak.

  • durbutter [he/him]
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    10 months ago

    I don't know what he intended it to be, but it's not at all an argument against Marxism. Marxism isn't "hierarchies should literally never exist ever" it's "the bourgeoisie exploits the proletarians" You still have things like managers and foremen in socialist states (although they can be rotating positions, or responsibilities can be spread out and democratized). It's just like that book Anthem by Ayn Rand where people have weights on their ears to make them slower. It's a fundamental misunderstanding. Anyone who felt like they needed to seriously grapple with his weird idealism and calling themselves a Marxist should seriously re-examine how much they know about Marxism and consider

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