Jordan Peterson and Social-Darwinism

Jordan Peterson and Social-Darwinism ©Michel Luc Bellemare The validity of Jordan Peterson’s notion of dominance-hierarchy is highly erroneous, in the sense that like Pavlov’s dog experiment, there is a myopic, narrow-minded bias to Jordan Peterson’s theory of dominance-hierarchies, a bias which supports the bourgeois status quo and attacks all things or theories, which might lead to positive radical social change. If, according to Marx, “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various way, [and] the point, however, is to change it”, then Jordan Peterson is the truly the anti-thesis to this statement, in the sense that Jordan Peterson’s Social-Darwinian-Ideology seeks only to buttress and reiterate ad nauseam, the dominance-hierarchies of the one percent over the 99 percent, nothing less, nothing more.[1] In effect, Jordan Peterson’s Social-Darwinian-Ideology is a reaction to the plurality, flexibility, and nihilism, found in the humanities and certain strands of post-modernism. It is an extreme existential reaction. In effect, departing from the seemingly secure ground of the hard sciences and discovering, according to Paul Feyerabend, that “anything goes” socially and in the humanities, Mr. Peterson hardened himself over time into a Social-Darwinist of sorts.[2] That is, a sort of rigid despotic authoritarianism, wherein dominance-hierarchies are deemed socially necessary and are most successful when based upon the bio-genetic imperatives of Darwinian natural selection. Subsequently, with Jordan Peterson, we are fundamentally dealing with a proponent of Social-Darwinism. That is, a form of Social-Darwinian-Ideology, which is, in my estimation, only designed to serve and buttress the lame bourgeois-capitalist status quo and the ruling capitalist aristocracy, as rightfully legitimate and worthy of their positions, academic and/or otherwise. Specifically, Peterson offers an apology or a myth of legitimacy for the statefinancial-corporate-aristocracy. Essentially, that they are worthy of their elevated positions in and across the dominance-hierarchies of bourgeois-state-capitalism based on the fact that they are superior beings in one way or another. Contrary to Mr. Peterson, the fact is that any honest intellectual looking at our society today, can factually see that the best and brightest do not always, or if ever, occupy the upperechelons of any contemporary dominance-hierarchy, academia, politics, business, sex, etc. In fact, the cream does not rise to the top under the current socio-economic-formation, namely, the formation of bourgeois-state-capitalism. Indeed, the reverse is the case, in the sense that we constantly see today that the best and brightest are being left behind, and/or are forced to remain on the lower rungs of capitalist society, scrounging for their existence, while the system favors and promotes an obedient herd-mediocrity at every level, namely, a type of herd-mediocrity that fully ascribes to the convoluted Darwinist ideologies of bourgeois-state-capitalism. It is those individuals, who best subserviently, ideologically, and obediently, reflect and express bourgeoiscapitalist ideology which are promoted and elevated, since, they unthinkingly buttress, safeguard, and propagate, the arbitrary-set of capitalist dominance-hierarchies dotting Western societies. Specifically, these docile subservient cogs are always eager to tow the party line with certain docile obedience. With heart and soul, they ascribe to the dominant capitalist ideologies, since, they are devoid of critical thinking and/or any lasting doubts. For them, money is the goal, money dictates. Thus, they blindly follow the pied-piper of Social-Darwinism, Jordan Peterson. In the end, Mr. Peterson is one of these obedient bourgeois-ideologues, who cunningly playing the outsider for the cameras, has cultivated a cult of personality for himself, a disenfranchised herd of followers whom he is now attempting to appease and, ultimately, fasten into ideological subservience, via a blend of Social-Darwinism and his personal brand of poppsychology. The system does not want free independent thinkers, it wants followers, zealots of the middle and center, hyper-centrists if you will. As a result, awash in mediocrity at every turn, this herd was always susceptible to Social-Darwinism, as most of these intellectually disenfranchised individuals have never encountered “real” radical left-wing politics in the classroom. In fact, what is always encountered on University campuses is always lame centristneoliberalism, namely, reformism of various types and sorts, purged of all revolutionary consciousness. Of course, centrist-neoliberalism is always peddled to students as hip, edgy, a product of vanguard thinking, but, this is a ruse, a ploy, designed by the powers-that-be to entangle the student body in neoliberal-reformist politics, rather than revolutionary politics. Subsequently, one of the reasons for Mr. Peterson’s recent popularity is that neoliberal bourgeois-universities have persistently for the past 35 years or so been purging its pedagogic hierarchies of radical academics in effort to sanctify the halls of academia, namely, to free it of dissent in favor of obedient, docile neoliberal bourgeois-cogs, which readily defend and peddle bourgeois-academic-mediocrity with zeal and fervor. How easily we forget that Einstein did most of his ground-breaking physics as an outcast, an outcast from bourgeois-academia, which, essentially forced Einstein to moonlight as a physicist by night and a patent-clerk by day. And today, little has changed, in the sense that neoliberal bourgeois-universities are still barren mindscapes and bodyscapes, devoid of critical thinking and new revolutionary ideas. In short, western neoliberal bourgeois-universities are places more or less where ideas go to die, rather than places where ideas flourish and thrive. Specifically, the point of the neoliberal bourgeoisuniversity has never been new ideas, or revolutionary ideas, for that matter, but an endless procession of bourgeois-capitalist ideas, that is, Social-Darwinism ad nauseam, uttered on cue by an endless parade of centrist-ideological facsimiles, the manufactured product of any neoliberal bourgeois-university. Clearly, Mr. Peterson is one of the proponents and ideologues of the conventional, bourgeois-capitalist status quo, in the sense that the man was at the center of Canadian academia for some 20 years, or more. At the University of Toronto, he resided in the comfortable, womblike center of conservative academia, wallowing in its profitable-mediocrity and bankruptcy. He was a tenured professor, a protector of the bourgeois scientific tradition, an upper-class Torontonian, a right-wing anti-communist crusader etc., fighting to prevent the radical restructuring of Canadian universities and its student body. In other words, this is a person who has endlessly championed the fundamental rule of neoliberal bourgeois-academia: “obedience is intelligence and intelligence is obedience”. And now, Mr. Peterson has taken this most basic of principles, undergirding the neoliberal bourgeoisuniversity, to the masses, evangelizing the uneducated and the narrow-minded alike about the transformative powers of obedience, docility, and a yielding faith in the legitimacy of any bourgeois-capitalist authority. All of which are used by the mainstream media to bombard the general-population into acquiescence, pertaining to the supremacy of the capitalist-system and the 1 percent over the 99 percent. Clean your room, stand up straight, and, most importantly, trust your western neoliberal-governments, since, they are your social betters, having submissively climbed the arbitrary dominance-hierarchies of bourgeois-state-capitalism as cutting-edge yes-men and yes-women. Thus, you must salute your superiors, for they occupy positions higher-up upon the dominance ladder. They are your emblems to socially emulate, so quash your doubts and criticisms, remain on the straight and narrow, and, most importantly, obey. Subsequently, Mr. Peterson is the equivalent of a bourgeois-conservative’s wet-dream, a throw-back to 1930s social engineering. Mr. Peterson is against all forms of radical social change and all forms of social mobility, as radical change and any form of fluid social mobility threatens the current rank and file of the ruling neoliberal dominance-hierarchies. Thereby, for Peterson, everything new and different is bad, everything tradition, bourgeois, and homogenized, is good. In fact, Peterson’s brand of Social-Darwinism alleviates the anxieties of the aristocratic 1 percent, by vindicating their pathological greed, their lust for power, their love of arbitrary hierarchies, and their down-right selfishness, as elements of their proper superiority. Systemically disseminated by the mainstream media, Peterson’s main argument is that whatever one’s station in life is upon the capitalist dominance-hierarchies, be it upper or lower, one’s position is always fundamentally based on a Social-Darwinist form of natural selection. So straighten-up and fly-right, bucko! Because you and your neighbor, whatever your positions upon the capitalist dominance-hierarchies, they are rightfully warranted, due to the autonomous ranking system that is Social-Darwinian natural selection. Therefore, from Peterson’s perspective, inequality of all types and kinds is valid, legitimate, and, more importantly, biologically necessary for the survival of the human species, despite the fact that SocialDarwinism is pure ideological nonsense, and reeks of 19th century, crackpot, master race eugenics. Indeed, surrounded by hapless ignorant sycophants, Mr. Peterson is fond of quoting Nietzsche, as if Nietzsche’s work expressed and reflected Social-Darwinian-Ideology. Yet, Nietzsche was never a proponent of Social-Darwinism. He is adamantly against SocialDarwinism and stated as much, on more than one occasion. In fact, Nietzsche would shriek in horror at Peterson’s proposition that any dominance-hierarchy, whatever it may be, is always legitimate on the grounds of Darwinian natural selection. In contrast to Peterson, Nietzsche always argued that throughout western civilization and western cultures, it is always the most mediocre types of the human species that are the most apt and most successful in reaching the top of its dominance-hierarchies, since, these herd-animals embody and represent the most enduring, conservative, and brutish characteristics of the human species, namely, the inhuman and the average. There propensity for inhumane-ness and averageness gives these mediocre-types an advantage over the more evolved creative-types of the human species, since, the mediocre-types think less, feel less, and empathize less with other people. To quote Nietzsche, “mediocrity always goes against everything new and exceptional, [since] the new [and the exceptional are] always against the herd. [Thus,] the [herd] grinds the unique into uniformity and turns it [all] into [itself, i.e., into the] herd”.[3] Moreover, according to Nietzsche, it is the duty of the herdsman “to retain…the herd, flatter it, work with [it, in order to] consolidate its mediocrity”[4], and direct it against the exceptions, i.e., the exceptional ubermensch. Ultimately, Mr. Peterson is Nietzsche’s herdsman and has always been so. He is not an ubermensch, since, according to Nietzsche, an ubermensch is an individual deserving of our admiration, because this individual extends and expends him or herself over the abyss, living creatively, solitarily, and differently, against the narrow partisan parameters set by this herdmediocrity. Ironically, in contrast to Peterson, the ubermensch is both without followers and constantly subjected to the cruelty of the herd and the mediocrity championed by the herdsman. For Nietzsche, “it is the object of herd education [via the herdsman] to create in the herd…a definite faith concerning the nature of man” and the hierarchies of society. [5] Whereby, “inertia…[and] the middle is considered the highest and the most valuable” of all human attributes.[6] Case in point, this is Mr. Peterson’s whole academic project: 1. to solidify the bourgeois-capitalist status quo, while, championing herd-mediocrity as the highest and most valuable attribute for climbing any neoliberal dominance-hierarchy. And 2., Peterson’s academic project consists in marshaling the vindictiveness embodied in herd-mediocrity against all that is different, plural, and exceptional, namely, all that is not generic, average, and/or a part of the neoliberal status quo, namely, all that reflects and expresses the heterogeneity of the openparticipatory-democracy that is post-modernity, i.e., post-modernism. Let’s have a little fun: If, for argument sake, we accept Mr. Peterson’s theory and ludicrous claims, concerning the fact that only the most powerful, i.e., the best and the brightest of the human species, are most apt to get to the top of any neoliberal dominance-hierarchy, sexual or otherwise, then, why is Mr. Peterson bemoaning, according to his own deluded conspiratorial perceptions, the rise of the radical left and post-modernity in academia (which, in fact, in my estimation, is totally the opposite). That is, why is Mr. Peterson bemoaning the rise of another red-specter, haunting the nooks and crannies of western bourgeois-civilization, when, by his own theoretical admissions, this red-specter would constitute the product of Social-Darwinian natural selection, i.e., the scientific fact that the cream always rises to the top. And if anarchist-communism is the cream, then, natural selection shall give unto Caesar what rightfully belongs to Caesar. In effect, his own Social-Darwinian-Ideology can be utilized to vindicate the rise of communism, anarchism, and radical post-modernism in academia, as well as the rise of political correctness, since, by Peterson’s own thinking, natural selection guarantees that the cream will always rise to the top. The fact is you cannot apply, in any deterministic fashion, biology to socio-economic conditions, hence, the fact that Jordan Peterson’s theory of dominance-hierarchy reflects and expresses the bias nature of neoliberal bourgeois-ideology in disguise. Thus, the fallacy of Social-Darwinism, in the sense that if natural selection is the fundamental arbiter of any dominance-hierarchy, then, whatever rules during any historical period, i.e., slavery, paternalism, homophobia, racism, sexism, Nazism etc., by Jordan Peterson’s own theoretical musings is deserving of our praise, as that which is most legitimate, most worthy, and most progressive for the continued evolution of the human species at any particular time in human history. In sum, Social-Darwinism validates any ideology that attains dominance, regardless of its barbarism, its horrors, and/or theoretical nonsense, whether this ideology is post-modernity, Christianity, and/or German National Socialism (Nazism) etc. In the end, the fact is that Jordan Peterson’s popularity, as some sort of socio-cultural phenomenon, is strictly a matter of the fact that he flatters the upper-echelons of the capitalistaristocracy, i.e., the 1 percent. His theoretical musings on natural selection flatter and vindicate the exploitations, the religious illusions, and the ideological bourgeois-fetishism of a conservative-aristocratic demographic, including all its low-brow acolytes, louts, and sychophants. Specifically, Peterson tells the 1 percent with confidence, guile, and boldness that they are worthy of their elevated positions and social status, because natural selection has made it so. It is their cross to bear as superior beings. Afterall, it is the state-finance-corporatearistocracy that gives Jordan Peterson his many slots of air-time in and across the mainstreammedia. In fact, few socialist theoreticians are ever given mainstream air-time like Peterson, despite the fact that these socialist theoreticians can run circles around Mr. Peterson. In the sense that they possess a wealth of revolutionary theoretical research, worthy of mainstream dissemination. Yet, these socialist theoreticians, for the most part, are continually relegated to obscurity and marginality, since, their revolutionary theoretical research contradicts mainstream neoliberal bourgeois ideology and/or the hard centrist nucleus lodged permanently at the center of any neoliberal academic hierarchy. In sum, Mr. Peterson is a conservative bourgeoisideologue, the lightning-rod for a low-brow right-wing fad, propagated by elitist bourgeoisaristocrats to piss-off the proletarian left. The Peterson phenomenon is an attempt by the 1 percent to reassert an old conservative, regressive mind-sets from a bygone era, back to the future, back to the 1950s, when men were men and women were accomodating and fawning house plants. All in all, the tragedy of the Peterson phenonmon are those segments of the workforce/population, i.e., the 99 percent, who have drank the Peterson cool-aid, since, they will be left footing the bill for this outrageous right-wing spectacle. Like another Doctor Phil, Peterson peddles a the tough love capitalist message that whatever happens to you in life is your own doing, regardless of socio-economic conditions, the class you are born into, and/or your genetic make-up. Afterall, even the mentally challenged, Forest Gump made it to the top of the capitalist dominance-hierarchy on his own grit and gumption. Granted, Peterson states life is brutish and a war of all against all, but ultimately, where you end up in the grand scheme of things, according to Peterson, is the result of your own choices and your own individual actions, i.e., your own free-will. And free-will, for any honest philosopher, is contestable. In the world of Jordan Peterson, there are no biased neoliberalinstitutions, no global economic reasons, no cultural reasons, or for that matter, no other scientific biological reasons for the wonderful or awful things that happen to a person. In the final analysis, according to Peterson, what happens to you is your own fault, for better or for worst. To paraphrase Peterson, the world only cherishes and remembers the winners, the higher species, not the losers. However, is it possible to say Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein comprise a higher species, that is, a more evolved species, higher on the Totem pole of human evolution, simply because these depraved sub-humans occupy, or have occupied, the upper-echelons of the 1 percent for many decades; all the while, comporting themselves as the brutish savages, Mr. Peterson so eloquently champions. Are these creatures, the creatures that young men and women should emulate! Is this natural selection at work, sifting and separating the cream from the rest, the strong from the weak? Indeed, dominance-hierarchies maybe strictly based on deterministic biology in the animal kingdom, namely, hierarchy may be founded solely on natural selection in nature, as Darwin stipulates, since animals are at the mercy of their natural instincts, but humans are not. They can rise above their natural inclinations. As the anarchist Peter Kropotkin observed, there is another principle at work in nature, in contrast to Darwinian natural selection, namely, the principle of mutual-aid, i.e., cooperation. Through mutual-aid, animals cooperate among themselves and among each other in order to overcome the brutalities of nature. According to Kropotkin, most animal species do collaborate together for their own mutual advancement and survival. That is, despite being supposedly at war, these species can and do cooperate with one another in mutually beneficial relationships. In many instances, these species can be seen helping one another in an altruistic manner. And such examples are endless in nature. The fact is humans construct all sorts of hierarchies, based on all sorts of premises and principles, not just the mechanistic laws of Darwinian natural selection. Moreover, not all humans construct hierarchies. Some live communally, sharing in relative equal measure. There are no biological imperatives that determine dominance-hierarchies. Socially speaking, sometimes there are hierarchies, sometimes there are not. And sometimes, we as humans, alternate between radically different hierarchies, simultaneously. In the hair-dresser’s chair, he/she rules, but in the classroom, the teacher rules as educator and diseminator of knowledge. Even, anarchist horizontal-hierarchies are possible, given the right socio-economic conditions, (such as the overthrow of bourgeois-state-capitalism). Consequently, not being deterministically governed by Darwinian natural selection, a society can rid itself of any form of dominance-hierarchy and has done so repeatedly throughout history. There are no deterministic biological imperatives by which we, today, must live under the thumb of the 1 percent, academically, politically, and/or economically etc. And, more importantly, contrary to Mr. Peterson, the overthrow of bourgeois-state-capitalism may very well be more progressive, more in-tuned with natural selection, and a better emblem of justice, than anything the partisan ideologies of bourgeois-state-capitalism have offered us to date. In sum, as Foucault states, power can be shared equally in relative equal measure, among all citizens, since, it circulates freely. In the sense that an anarchist society is a “way in which different [groups and/or people can]...coexist with each other according to a [horizontal] balance that prevents [anyone from] dominating [over any of] the others”.[7] Ultimately, an anarchist society is a society where resources and the means of life are distributed equally among all the citizens of the anarchist federation of micro-narratives. Wherein, in the end, the anarchist society is devoid of any unifying meta-narrative and/or totalitarian dominance. In contrast, Jordan Peterson argues for a singular dominance-hierarchy solely based on a might is right biological imperative, wherefore, the most powerful get all the sex and money they could ever want, while, the weak are relegated to obscurity and the dustbin of history. Thereby, it is high-time, we jettison these forms of Social-Darwinism in favor of mutual-aid cooperation, so that we can, ultimately, embrace horizontal anarchist-forms of socio-economic organization devoid of lasting permanent hierarchy. So finally, the cream may muster a fighting chance and rise, rise to the top of historical importance and concern, once and for all. Endnotes: [1] Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”, The Marx-Engels Reader. ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1978) p. 145. [2] Paul Feyerabend, Against Method. (London: Verso, 1975) p. 163. [3] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will To Power, Ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York, New York: Vintage Books, 1967) pp. 461-462. [4] Ibid, pp. 461-462. [5] Ibid, p. 159. [6] Ibid, p. 159. [7] Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, ed. Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchell, (New York, New York: Picador, 2007), p. 260.