Something New, for a Change

When you are passed thirty, it doesn’t occur too often when you are confronted with arguments and opinions that may change the way you look at things or think about them. I actually actively look for such new perspectives and ideas, instead of staying idle in my bubble and arrogantly assume that there are not much new things to learn. Ignorance is harmful for humanity and not a bliss. That is why I felt quite joyful when a few years back I discovered the phenomenon of Dr. Jordan Peterson.

I write this post to organize my thoughts for the first video I am uploading for my new channel. What I would talk about is what new ideas, facts and opinions I have learned by listening to Dr. Peterson’s lectures, discussions and interviews. Some may be new, and some may have been laying dormant on the back of your head, waiting for someone wise enough to articulate it in a manner to consolidate those floating ideas into solid and factual opinions.

Since there are dozens of lecture and interviews by or about his ideas and propositions, it may be difficult for someone to invest that much time watching hours of lectures or debates. It might be even more difficult to find the relations and correlations between some ideas that may seem unrelated in the first glance (e.g. equity and patriarchy). So I thought I invest an extra few hours and summarize what I think his opinions are, on what facts or interpretations they are based on and how they are connected.

His conclusions are:

• Men and women are biologically different and will remain so regardless of (and often despite) social constructs
• Free speech is a right without which society declines
• Enforcing equity is fundamentally wrong and often murderous
• Left and right are both necessary for a flourishing society
• Family structure should be preserved and encouraged (e.g. by enforced monogamy)

Now wan go through each point and review his line of argumentation.

Issues

Biological differences of men and women

The fact that there are differences in personality between men and women (in additional to physical attributes) is nothing anyone disputes. The grand debate is whether these differences are primarily biological (basically coded into your DNA) or social (forced upon you by social norms and regulations). This is basically the ongoing interplay of Nature and Nurture.

Psychologically, the primary differences between men and women is in agreeableness (women are on average more agreeable), aggression (men are on average more aggressive) and interest in objects in contrast to people.

These differences results in men willing to work more dangerous jobs, go to prison more often, commit more suicide and have more presence in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. Comparatively, women dominate people-oriented jobs such as teaching or nursing, live longer, and engage less in criminal activities and violence. They are also smart in putting the joy of “life” and family first and are less interested in pursuing life-ruining careers such as top management positions (kudos to women).

Radical feminists believe that all these differences, (e.g. the fact that women are more interested in people than objects) is a result of unjust or discriminatory social constructs. That has been debunked by science. The main argument against it is the fact that in countries where women are the most “free” to do whatever they want and are raised in a relatively egalitarian environment (aka Scandinavian nations), these differences between men and women have grown. Those who have their logical head deeply placed up their ideological ass can simply not digest this. Some morons call it a “Paradox” (see for example Nordic “Paradox” or the Gender-Equality “Paradox”,…), which is simply nonsense. It is only a paradox if you refuse to attribute these personal choices to biology. Otherwise it is a reasonable outcome, and to be expected.

Will these differences disappear if we have equality of opportunity for hundreds of years? Highly unlikely. There is one major factor that cannot be changed: women can give birth, which makes them much more valuable in the society (as long as reproduction is your main objective, which it is and should be in any civilization). This means that men are simply replaceable. Maybe this explain why they have historically taken on (or forced to take on) more dangerous activities and jobs, fought wars as soldiers and are sacrificed in times of crisis to save women and children (imagine any situation where a crowd needs to be saved/evacuated due to some danger, and why women and children are automatically put first).

Ideologically possessed feminists refuse to see these facts and are, therefore, looking for some easy-to-digest conspiracy to blame “males” and their dictatorship for these differences or outcome. Which brings us to the next topic.

The repeated lie of male patriarchy

What does patriarchy or male patriarchy mean? It basically implies that Men have been a tyrannical “group” that have suppressed and abused women (or all other possible genders, if you are into that sort of thing) for their own benefits. JP points out that not only women, but almost everyone has been suffering until a century ago due to diseases, natural disasters, shortage of resources, tyranny, war, religious bigotry, famine, etc. And claiming that only women have suffered (or they have suffered more), AND primarily by men, is simply historically not accurate.

Are women being harassed, mistreated or discriminated against by individuals (mostly men) who are biased or sick? Of course. And we need to address and mitigate it. Have women been treated unfairly in history? Most certainly. However, they have not been the only group. This is true for their male counterparts as well. And maybe even more. And the delay in certain rights including studying or voting is certainly unfair and to be condemned, but due to certain circumstances and in no way an irrefutable proof for an entrenched historical patriarchy.

Most common reasons for radical feminists to “prove” patriarchy is the fact that women were given voting rights and studying opportunities later than men. And that women are being harassed on a daily basis by sexist men. As they are also being bullied by cunty women. All these allegations are true. And as a society we should try to reduce sick sexual behavior, bullying and bias against any group and individual that would deprive them of equal opportunities or make their lives miserable. However, these arguments cannot be accepted as evidence for patriarchy. “Why not?” you may ask. Let me review the history with a reverse -but equally stupid- lens, trying to prove that there has been a female tyranny (matriarchy!?). This way you can see how flawed this line of argumentation is:

“Men have been suppressed and abused by women throughout history. Women chose to stay at home and take care of children in a safe space, while they sent men to go to war and get killed or disfigured, to do hard and dangerous jobs (e.g. construction jobs, mining, drilling under the sea, etc.), carry the responsibility for feeding the family, building useful things, curing others as doctors, and innovating stuff that makes the lives of everyone easier. This was not enough for men not to be through into jail in disproportionate numbers (ca. 90% of inmates are men). Men continued to suck it up and even came up with discoveries and innovations such as tampons, birth-control pills, vacuum cleaners and washing machines that made the already easier lives of women simpler. Still, whenever a dangerous situation arrives, women along with children are the first the be brought to safety. Men can be disposed of, who cares.”

Are the arguments above ridiculous? You bet. So are “arguments” trying to prove patriarchy. They pretty m uch follow the same selective and subjective observation of events.

If one fails to acknowledge biological and behavioral differences of men and women, male patriarchy becomes an easy culprits to justify these differences. As mentioned in the previous section, biological differences between sexes stem primarily from 1) the higher value of women in society (their irreplaceability compared to men, for their ability to give birth) and 2) physical advantages of men.
According to radical feminists, women will be as strong as men (physically) and will have similar choices and occupy all positions and jobs in the society the same as men (50/50) if they are simply left alone or raised properly/equally (as social constructionists like you to believe). Such dogmatic and ignorant view about history, biology and psychology culminates in articles like this (by Vox) that claims Jordan Peterson’s statements is “reactionary politics that validates white, straight, and cisgender men at the expense of everyone else”. They just have to take a look at egalitarian countries or participation and success of women in certain areas such as playing chess or cooking (for which there has been no limitations) to wake up (if they are not pretending to sleep, which is the case for some power-seeking ideologues). They refuse to do that, since they are advocating an ideology, and not an idea based on logic and facts.

This ideology is not only invalid, but also dangerous. First, it undermines individual responsibility and blames some fictional reason (systematic suppression of women) for issues including lack of women in leadership positions or STEM fields. Second, it prevents you from setting the right goals and measures to tackle the actual issues and problems of both men and women, e.g. biased discrimination, unfair laws or sexual harassment.

And what could be a disastrous and wrong “goal” to set in order to fight some imaginary monster (patriarchy)? Welcome to the idea of Equity.

Equity, and why it is disastrous

Equity is a term used for Equality of Outcome. While equality of opportunity is something every healthy and reasonable mind would and should support, validity of equity as a concept or objective should not be taken as granted. Not only that, it has been proven wrong and murderous in the past, in more than one occasion and context. Simply put: despite it’s seemingly moral appeal on the surface, it is flat out wrong.

There are numerous arguments and historical facts that can be used to prove equity wrong. On an economic basis, Communism has been tried over and over and failed miserably EVERY time. JP asks a simple question on this matter: consider you have a theory (aka financial equity as a goal, or Communism). In order to prove your theory properly, you have to test it in different contexts, and on large sets of data and preferably in different time periods. This way you can remove culture and time as variables, and make it generalizable by using a large data set. That is EXACTLY what has happened with communism (or Socialism) in the 20th century (and sadly still ongoing in North Korea or Venezuela). It was tested in Russia, Eastern Europe, South America, East Asia and Africa, and failed EVERY TIME. Those who claimed that it was not implemented by the right people, or just failed due to external factors like intervention of capitalism, are either willfully blind and ignorant (for egoistic purposes) or drastically stupid.

Not let us see what equity in cultural matters means. It means we set a “desired” outcome, and then try to force it. This outcome can be an allocated slot for certain groups (e.g. 30% women in the board of directors or 20% foreigners or minorities in a university, etc.). This might seem appealing in the first glance (trust me, I ignorantly agreed with this until very recently), but inevitably results in counter-productive outcomes that make the situation more unjust and the lives are those who are supposed to be benefiting from it more miserable.

Consider an allocation of women in the board of directors. The first question one should ask is: what are the reasons for women not to be present in high managerial positions of large companies? Radical feminists would claim that it is due to suppression of men in power that won’t let women in. Well, fair enough. The counter-argument to this hypothesis is the percentage of women in those positions in countries that actively enforce and support equality of opportunity (again: Scandinavian countries or New Zealand can be considered). Or what are the percentage of women as partners in large law firms? These numbers are still very low, much lower than 50%, and much lower than the percentage of women graduating with a relevant degree. Although bias exists, and should be addressed, it is not a significant factor. Scientific studies have shown that the decisive factor is the choices women make, which is – as a matter of fact – much smarter than men. Being a board member of a large enterprise might seem appealing and brings wealth and power, however, it practically ruins your life. One should be willing to sacrifice all pleasant aspects of life (vacation, family, friends, etc.) for the sake of money they don’t have time to spend. Only a small percentage of population are dumb enough to choose such a life style, and they are disproportionately men. By forcing women into such positions one is not doing them a favor, but is acting against their interest, in a self-righteous manner.

The same effort can be put in ensuring and enforcing equality of opportunity. If a person is qualified for a job and willing to do it, he or she should be given that opportunity. Period. Anything beyond that is destructive social engineering. And do not forget the side-effects. Imagine you believe a society is racist and biased, and therefore foreigners or minorities need an allocated slot to flourish. This measure actively discriminates against people that are outside of those defined groups. If you are a competent man, and much more qualified for a position, and that position goes to a women who is obviously less qualified and competent, how would you feel about women? Does that increase your respect for them, or increases the chances of you being more biased and hateful (if you were a little in the first place)? And how would a women (or any other allegedly suppressed group for that matter) feel, when she finds herself in a position, for which she is clearly disqualified? And what happens to a society as a whole, when less competent and less qualified people go to the top of the pyramid? Is that a society that can tackle countless problems like poverty, discrimination, criminality, diseases, etc. effectively?

And who is to decide what groups should be defined based on what outcome (allocation) and to what degree? This brings us to the next problem and one of the most shameful theories/ideologies of the 20th century: Identity Politics.

Dangers and absurdity of Identity Politics

Dividing people into men and women might seem easy and quite straight-forward (to some degree of course). However, what would happen if we start categorizing people into different groups based on other attributes that are more of a spectrum than categories, including race, country, religion, etc.? After all, if one is pursuing equity, they are not going to stop on men vs. women (they usually don’t even believe that sex is 99% a binary thing). The list can go on forever and indefinitely.

But what is Identity Politics? According to Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, identity politics is dividing people based on certain social groups with a focus on their shared experiences of injustice. Asian Americans, homosexuals, vegans, African Americans, Women, Latinos, Arabs, Whites, etc. could all be viewed as specific groups with a shared identity and a shared perception of being oppressed or discriminated against.

In the first glance, it seems like a nice and constructive ideas. A groups of people, often minorities in a certain context, coming together and forging an alliance to create synergy and get stronger to fight more effectively against some social or political injustice. If it stays within these boundaries, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that and it is actually an admirable strategy to make the world a better place. However, the problem starts when the members of these self-defined groups suppress their own individuality, believe in the truth and righteousness of their group without critical thinking, and consider themselves as non-elected representative of anyone who can be theoretically be fit into that group and speak on behalf of them. And the bigger issue arises, when they start to enforce equity for such groups.

Equity, as a measure to make up for past discrimination (e.g. specific privileges for black minorities in the US) or reduce non-relevant factors might be helpful for a small set of problems as long as 1) it has a limited time-span (in order to make sure the equality of opportunity can be realistically established) and 2) its effects, both implicit and explicit are measured carefully and regularly.

So what could go wrong with identity-based equity? Literally everything. Imagine you would like to increase the number of minorities in a university. The first question is: what is your motivation? If it is to ensure diversity, it is scientifically counter-productive and morally racist. Allocating certain slots or capacities for different minority groups in order to increase diversity is fundamentally racist, in which the underlying assumption is that the differences between groups are bigger than the difference between individuals within that group. Basically the very definition of racism. If you have a team of 10 people, and would force a distribution of different racial or national backgrounds, studies have shown that the personal diversity of that group is less that selecting members based on objective criteria that are relevant to what the group is supposed to achieve. Forcing, for example, an Asian American in the team for the sake of diversity implies that we can generalize the characteristics of Asian Americans, assume that every member of that group is pretty much the same, and they are more different that other members solely based on their race or nationality. That is simply morally abhorrent.

The second problem in identity-based equity is its practicality, if you want to enforce it “correctly”. First is the judgment regarding that identity, if there is no clear border. For example, what constitutes a black or African American person? What is the right percentage of “blackness” to bestow that identity upon them? Another more important practical problem is the intersectionality. What happens if someone can be within two or more groups? How far is one willing to go? JP points out that we have done that sort of divisive categorization in the past couple of thousands of years and could narrow it down all the way to one individual. This is based on the fact that the number of groups and their combination is almost infinite. Just to name a few, you can group people based on country, city, districts, race, language, accent, gender, interest in anything, personality, education, wealth, experience, etc. What is the right way to enforce equity upon an infinite number of groups with sometimes spectral characteristics? There is none. These are the dangers that Guardian seems to have finally found out after a few decades.

And the symptoms of such an ideology (identity politics) are becoming more and more clear everyday. Discriminating or humiliating white people based on the fictional “White Privilege”, cancel culture, transsexual surgeries for children, etc. are all sad consequences of such an ideology.

You may ask if reason and logic is against identity politics, why has it lasted for so long? It should be discarded in transparent conversations based on free speech, right? Firstly, historically it has not been too long (long enough for our generation though), and secondly, they have come up with a tactic to kill free speech to not only fend up attacks, but also accuse others of lower moral standards and signal virtues. Welcome to the world of political correctness.

Political correctness, a pseudo-moral shield against free speech

Free speech matters. According to Jordan Peterson (and I totally agree), society’s progress is based on opposing forces stabilizing themselves by finding a common ground through transparent, honest and constructive conversations. There is no one true answer to a political system (Left or Right). Both Left and Right philosophies are necessary for a society. Depending on how corrupt or ineffective the established hierarchy of power and resources has become, one of them has to have more influence in order to regulate the system. Hierarchies exist and are a good thing for a productive, motivated and engaged society, however they tend to become tyrannical. Too much Right (order) and the system becomes rigged and corrupt. Here is where Leftist measures and programs can come handy. And on the other hand too much of Left policies leaves a society unproductively flat and slows down the accumulation of wealth and forces more people into poverty. Communist countries are a good example on this matter.

And how can this balance and compromise and regulation happen? Through debates and conversation and expressing ideas freely and without hesitation and fear. Political Correctness argues that speech cannot be free, if it hurts some group’s feeling or offends a certain group in one way or another. The problem is that one cannot defines limits on free speech based on peoples feelings. Feelings, as important as they may be, cannot be measures and are very subjective. If PC culture gets its way (which is what is happening in countries like the US, Canada or Germany), society becomes numb and fearful of candid conversation. And when people start swallowing their words and feel crippled when trying to communicate their opinion and ideas, the society is worse off. Not to mention that eventually political groups learn how to abuse this limitation and suppress free exchange of information for unjustified reasons (some group might feel hurt) and authoritarianism may ensue. Or a society comes to a point of having had enough with this PC crap and elects someone who is the opposite of PC. Look at the US and president Trump and the UK and Boris Johnson as two obvious examples. This is no good for anyone.

Now that some of talking points of JP were laid out, let us see summarize how these seemingly scattered topics come together and get a Big Picture.

Conclusion: The Big Picture

When ideologically possessed people ignore sound scientific facts, they have to come up with unsubstantiated but appealing explanations for how differences in personality happens (or have happened). One of the most advertised explanation is the existence of “(Male) Patriarchy“. Radical feminists assume Patriarchy to be THE reason for differences between men and women and their differences. As a result, they suggest certain measures to fight this (imaginative) patriarchy, namely forcing equity (equality of outcome) in areas including job positions, university admissions, etc and by doing so sacrifies equality of opportunity, which is what they need to be most concerned about. But what to do when faced with critical minds, historical facts and science? These people point out the danger of pursuing equity, the questionable assumption of the existence of patriarchy, and ridiculous claims of social constructionists that men and women will turn equal in their behavior and choices once all these measures have been forcefully implemented for a few generations.

Now in order to shut down such nuisances and implement their ideology, first, “Identity Politics” is created to gather support among minority groups that feel suppressed (fun fact: many “activities” do not represent the groups they pretend to try to defend). Second, and more potently, they tout and enforce Political Correctness to kill free speech and exchange of ideas and cancel and punish opposing minds, so that no one dares to suggest the invalidity of their ideology and presuppositions.

To sum up, according to Jordan Peterson, if you are a person (e.g. a radical feminist), who advocates for equity in order to fight patriarchy so that inequalities between men and women are reduced, and you use identity politics and political correctness as a method to silence opposing opinions, you are so wrong on so many levels that it is simply tragic.

Maybe that is why a lot of these so-called social justice warriors cannot accept and digest the facts and close their eyes and ears and minds and shout at everyone and everything in a self-righteous manner.

In the next post, I will lay out what I have personally learned from his views, on what issues I may disagree with him and on what conclusions I see potentials problems.