Hi all. Have any of you read Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life? Is it worth reading? I have heard that Dr. Peterson uses lobsters as an example of a hierarchy which, through evolution, has led to a hierarchy in humans. But from a biological point of view, this is not entirely true, since there are many creatures in the ocean that behave differently. Is this a biological error? Thank you.
- First, Jordan Peterson’s complete book title is “The 12 rules of Life: An Antidote for Chaos”.
- Each of the “12 rules” is a chapter title:
- Stand up straight with your shoulders back
- Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
- Make friends with people who want the best for you
- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
- Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
- Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
- Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
- Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie
- Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
- Be precise in your speech
- Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
- Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
- Each of the “12 rules” is a chapter title:
- Peterson clearly emphasizes the importance of individual responsibility, self-discipline, and the pursuit of personal meaning and fulfillment. His “scientific evidence” for rules is that “Humans and lobsters are genetically similar enough to be considered to mirror one another’s social hierarchies”. Lobster hierarchies developed as the perfect adaptation to an environment of ‘chaos’. That’s why the title of his book says that the 12 rules of life are an Antitdote to Chaos.
- You ask: “Is this a biological error?” That’s a “rabbit hole”, IMO. It’s “a literary device” chosen to make a point. Jordan’s point seems to be that “Life in this world is chaotic and in a chaotic world, you can’t be a 'wildebeest” running with the herd, you have be a “focused, meaning-driven individual.”
- Want a better model for living in a chaotic world? Pick one.
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I’m not sure what they mean by don’t let your kids do anything that makes you dislike them. That would have to be expanded on. It’s to ambiguous and seems like it could be applied to anything you don’t like. From don’t let them ahem animals like a budding serial killer (which I agree don’t let them ) to don’t let them watch anime ( which I don’t think is a reasonable amount of control ). Several times as a kid my mother went on a burning streak of destroying things of mine she did not like through a very satanic panic outlook where goosebumps and monster the gathering cards were destroyed. Once even my rock collection was attempted to be burned because the pastor told her it could be some kind of crystal reading occult temptation lol. It could be used to justify some kind of “gay camp “ conversion thing.
I agree parents need to protect their kids and part of that protection is to use reasonable restrictions to things that are dangerous or not appropriate, but it can be used for anything if they wanted to weaponize it like that.
I’m not 100% certain I know who this guy is. I think I’ve seen some videos of selected interviews with him, but I’m not certain it was him. I’m also not sure how this is associated to evolutionary hierarchy unless he’s just saying evolution shows parents are above their kids and are to rule over them?
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@Terry_Sampson , thanks! That was an informative post.
@SkovandOfMitaze thanks for providing your example. (You must be incredibly resiliant, or stubborn, or both!) It expanded my perspective. I was thinking he was talking more about character qualities to refuse to allow one’s kids to indulge in. “Sweetheart, no, you many not: manipulate, lie, defraud, arrogate, etc, etc etc. Those are the kind of people I can’t stand to be around. I want to really like and respect you, when you’re an adult. I can’t wait to have intelligent, thoughtful conversations with you, when you’re older.”
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I’ve not read Peterson’s book(s), but I’ve listened to a considerable amount of his online lectures, both old and recent, that I feel like I know his material well enough to comment here.
Biologists here can critique whether or not all his science is exactly straight, but I’ll just say this. His main point with the lobsters isn’t to try to lift the behavior patterns of any particular organism up as something we ought to emulate. His only or main point (as I see it) was to point out that social heirarchy structures are not entirely a social construct as the political left would have you believe - but that instead there is evolutionary hardwiring there also that runs so deep that we can literally find it all the way back in lobster behavior already, and how much more then also in all the later mamallian and primate evolution to follow.
And I should hasten to add (at the risk of misreading Peterson or getting this only partially correct), that I believe Peterson would not see all biologically hard-wired predispositions as some sort of moral endorsement of the resulting behaviors. I think he would (emphatically … Peterson tends to say a lot of stuff emphatically) probably say that there is biology that we are challenged to rise above and grow beyond - or get control of it for ourselves. I.e. Just because you feel like doing something, and may even have considerable biological impetus behind your desire, does not mean you ought to carry it out. He preaches responsibility and has no patience for anyone who preaches or promotes victimhood mentality. So he’s a darling of the Daily Wire as if all the other stuff wasn’t already enough to get him thoroughly written off by the left. But young people (especially young men - but not only them) are really latching onto his messaging as positive and hopeful encouragement, water to a parched landscape. Whatever else you may think of his messaging, he has not missed his mark in terms of what his audience is hungry for.
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- I. for one, propose the one-celled paramecium. I think it’s hard to get more basic than a one-celled animal-like protist with coordinated legs [a lot of them] that: can move forward or backward; eats bacteria or algae; metabolizes its food; grows; responds to the world outside of it; excretes; maintains homeostasis through response to the world outside of it; and reproduces. Doing all of those things gives it purpose and meaning. I’m with those who think it’s up there at the top of list of "conscious Animate Concrete things–without, I suspect, a soul–certainly pre-Original Sin creatures; that live and travel in herds.
- As an afterthought, because paramecium are not immortal, I’d conjecture that physical death preceded sin.
- P.S. The hard question is: “Are paramecium conscious or not?”
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thanks for the answer. I remember reading here on the forum how someone compared Peterson to creationists and anti-vaxxers for his views and comparing people to lobsters. Therefore, I became interested in whether this is so and whether his book deserves attention.
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Jordan Peterson is an evolutionary psychologist. Thus any idea that he is similar to creationists is completely incoherent.
Frankly this reminds me of rednecks calling everyone standing against their own prejudices by the name of “commies.” It is the epitome of ignorance. This behavior by itself ought to set off all kinds of warning sirens that one is dealing with people who have left rationality far behind.
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I can’t speak to how he feels about vaccines - though I’m almost afraid to ask, given all the company he’s associated with on “The Daily Wire”. But I can tell you this - he’s no Creationist, or not of the “young-earth” sort anyway. He leans on and draws inspiration fairly heavily from evolutionary psychology and our human development out of that evolutionary family tree. And he is a clinical psychologist (not a biologist).
All that said, I don’t think any of these questions would have bearing on the topics addressed in his Twelve Steps book. It isn’t a book about science. It’s a book about young people (particularly young men) growing up and learning to take responsibility. And it should stand on its own two feet in that regard regardless of whatever crazy stuff might have crept into his politics these last years. But I’d be surprised if he really signed on with much of anything crazy (on either political wing), because whatever you may think of his politics, he has a very sharp mind, and is keen to stay reality-based.
Now - we’ll see if I have to eat my words on that.
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Thanks for the answer. Here is a quote about Peterson from another biologos thread:
“Peterson wrote things so scientifically ridiculous that his writings now should be compared to creationism, anti-vax propaganda, and climate change denial. Same genre. Note that I make this judgment based on what seems to be a choice to mislead, and based on the failure (refusal) to correct huge errors.
The specific claims here are about lobster behavior and its relevance to human behavior. Peterson invites his readers to link the behavior of lobsters and humans, making an evolutionary “argument” so laughable that it reflects on the author’s credibility. For me, the lobster comparison in Peterson’s writing is bad enough to disqualify him as a voice worthy of attention.
Below is a very nice explanation. But before you read it, consider a thought experiment. Suppose you hear someone say “grasshoppers do X, and humans are related to grasshoppers, so I recommend you do X the next time Y happens to you.” What would you conclude about this person’s knowledge of the natural world?”
I don’t know who wrote what you’re quoting above, but they’ve obviously not understood Peterson’s arguments, - and it appears they think that Peterson was trying to “prove evolution” instead. I’m not aware of Peterson ever taking even the remotest interest in entering into the “creationist wars”. He just carries on like every other scientific professional, knowing that evolution has already been established in its own right and across many disciplines - and he runs with all the knowledge thus gained.
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Thank you. Sorry for the off-topic question. How can I quote here a phrase from another thread?
You can highlight whatever you want to quote in that thread, click the grey ‘quote’ button, which starts a post in that thread. But then navigate to the new thread above the post you’re composing. Then when you click to post it, it should ask you if you want to post it in the new thread or the original one. Tell it to post in the new place. I think that should work.
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Ahh… that would be sfmatheson who was kicked off the forum. He was very hostile to the science of evolutionary psychology (derived from his own studies of cultural science). I think it was carrying his hostilities a little too far which got him in trouble.
AND I never saw any objections of substance with scientific claims of Jordan Peterson, but only objections to philosophical conclusions which Peterson took from those findings. sfmatheson was apparently opposed to the idea that evolution could explain anything about human behavior, which is frankly absurd. I would agree with him only that evolution cannot explain everything about human behavior.
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What’s the difference between Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson concerning societal roles of being a man? I mostly hear of Peterson being quoted by online conservative men as supporting the same paradigms as Andrew Tate. Both of these are people I’ve only recently have heard much about. Mostly through instagram clips. So I just categorized Peterson as someone who basically shares the same typical “man’s man “ which I’m not hating on. I socially, naturally, whatever you want to call it lean that way, just processed it as conditioning despite knowing that many nowadays seem to view masculine and feminine as societal roles, not actual truths. At least with things with a positive connotation.
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For those interested there is a 50 minute read of a summary of this book on Hoopla. But they seem to just have a few of his books there. Not many.
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You’re warming my librarian’s heart!
Every library that uses Hoopla, though, selects the content they can afford to make available through that platform. So, while his titles are part of the entire Hoopla inventory, one’s particular library might not own access to some or any of his titles.
Some public libraries, however, will allow patrons to request the library purchase access to specific titles. If there’s not a request feature in Hoopla (or Overdrive, or…) one can always email the library and ask them to consider.
If Peterson were looking for possible evolutionary roots for human behavior it would make a lot more sense to look at our ape and more distant primate cousins. In fact, our closest relatives pose some very fascinating questions. The common chimpanzee is patriarchal and can be quite violent, even to members of their own species. However, bonobos are matriarchal and quite passive. I could go into a bit more detail, but it’s a bit too spicy for a Christian forum. Let’s just say that between chimps and bonobos you have the male dominated authoritarian side of humanity and in bonobos you have the peace and love hippies. The hierarchy in gorillas is also fascinating.
I would think that this would be of much more interest to Peterson than lobsters which mean as much to human behavior as the preying mantis or ants. I doubt anyone would think the mating habits of the preying mantis should be used as a model for human mating.
As to Peterson in general, he does set off a few bovine excrement alarms. Some of his books seem to be written in a style so dense and impenetrable as to make one think he is hiding bad ideas behind vocabulary. He has also taken some rather unfortunate positions on violence. Many of us don’t understand why he is as popular as he is. He might say some wise things here and there, but so do a lot of other people.
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I’d be curious what you’ve heard about that - since I’d be surprised to hear him put that forward as any sort of a commendable human attribute (beyond necessary self defense, etc. as many Christians quite readily allow for.) He might give rather more leniency to something like a “let boys be boys” attitude that spills over into justification, but he’s also usually pretty clear in that he expects people to grow up and solve problems in mature ways. But … yeah, there is so much toxicity dumped into so-called “masculinity” right now that … well, I know what sort of company he’s been keeping lately.
He’s also really drunk the koolaid when it comes to climate change. So he’s obviously not on top of the science on that.
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Steve wasn’t kicked off, he just shook the dust from his feet because he couldn’t stand how we humor Creationists. I think you are confusing him with that other guy, Gregory, (who did get kicked off the forum under both names he used) who was on a mission to hate on evolutionary psychology. Steve Matehson is/was the editor of the science journal Cell Biology.
And women. He will double down all day long when called on blatant misogyny. He is popular because that brand of manly man cheerleader is popular with a certain set of young men who are less than successful in attracting a woman. Or at least the kind of woman they imagine should exist to meet their manly man ideals.
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