Jordan Peterson - Why Hierarchies are Necessary

One thing that I've been doing in my tour repeatedly When I talk about the first chapter of my book, which is stand up straight with your shoulders back It's a discussion of hierarchies and their eternal nature right because my claim is and is not my claim I think it's mere fact that Organisms that have to cooperate and compete with other organisms of their type Inevitably arrange themselves into hierarchies and that's been going on for so long Which is at least 300 million years that our nervous systems have adapted to hierarchies as if they're a permanent element of being right more permanent than trees like seriously permanent at the most fundamental neurochemical the one that regulates the entire brain serotonin is acutely sensitive to hierarchical distinctions and so that's part of the proposition I laid that proposition forward was to say whatever Pitfalls hierarchies might produce. You cannot lay them at the feet of the West's Patriarchy or capitalism. It's like that's a non-starter you're wrong and not just a little bit wrong You're so seriously wrong that if you insist upon doing that, you won't even achieve your own aims Because you're actually not grappling with the problem. The problem is if hierarchies are a problem, which they are the problem is way more serious than mere capitalism it's way deeper and if you're actually interested in rectifying the Constantly the negative consequences of hierarchies. Then you're gonna have to get a lot more sophisticated than they're then you're idiot Marxism So so part of the elaboration of that argument is well hierarchies are inevitable because We have to solve complex problems and them socially and when you implement a solution to a complex problem Socially you produce a hierarchy because some people are better at the implementation than others so there's a hierarchy of competence and then distribution of the Spoils and so and in both of those hierarchies you get a disproportionate Clumping of resource at the top and dispossession at the bottom. It's in the nature of hierarchies So what's the left for the left is to remind? those who are benefiting from the hierarchies that the hierarchy comes at a cost and the cost is the clumping of people at the bottom and that That's an eternal cost and it's not trivial And so that's what the left should be properly focused on providing The voice of those who are dispossessed by hierarchies and the right should be saying yeah But the damn hierarchies are necessary and they're not only necessary, but they're also productive Then the left says yes, but they tilt towards Tyranny, and they can be occupied inappropriately by people who are playing games of power Fair enough the right has to take that into account the hierarchy can reach it if I and is Likely to do that and it can be taken over by people who are corrupt and that's likely to happen. And so But it's okay because the dialogue can work out the right can say well, yeah we need the damn hierarchies and they need to be buttressed and the left can say yes, but They have to be maintained properly so they don't deteriorate and degenerate and I think that's ancient wisdom I think the ancient Egyptians had figured that out in their symbolic Representations so now when the left goes too far it does something like say well How about no hierarchies? It's like no, how about not? wrong because all that happens if you flatten one of the things out the hierarchy is that you can't even Organize your perceptions you can't perceive the world without looking at the world through a hierarchy of value and if Because you can't perceive the world unless you make one thing more Important than all the other things because you don't even know what to look at and if one thing isn't more important than all the other things then you have nothing to aim at if Then you have no meaning in your life. So the left can't just demolish the hierarchies in the name of some equality of outcome Let's say because you blow out the future You leave people aimless and you destroy the very institutions that allow people to make competent progress in the world That's not an acceptable outcome. So we have to agree to live with the tension Necessity for hierarchies the proclivity for them to pathologize and The necessary voice of the left in speaking for thee for the dispossessed