Jordan Peterson: the Lobster as a Symbol in His Social & Psychological Philosophy.

perhaps the most misunderstood and
misrepresented image in jordan Peterson's best-selling book 12 rules for life is the image of the male lobster fighting for dominance in a hierarchy we all ignore way down at the depths at the bottom of the ocean it's an image with real pathos it's an image that elicits pity it's an image that in some ways shows the tragic futility of struggles to to be someone to be an important person to be on the to be on the top of the heap a hung struggling away in the obscurity 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea to be the lobster that gets to push other lobsters around I think this image has been remembered in public consciousness and in political discourse as if it were a justification for social inequality as if it were a rationalization of as if war an argument offered in support of the type of extreme inequality seen today and some some capitalist dystopias split that way that's neither the psychological nor philosophical nor political function of this image in the book I was really surprised to find on finally reading the primary source text that his point is ultimately to offer a justification for why he and his daughter depend on SSRI antidepressant drugs the most bizarre plot twist comes up after we have a few pages discussing how dejected and depressed the lobsters become who are in his words lobster losers lobsters who are not in the the fortunate minority and then he he takes several several leaps of intuition on the basis that reported claim reported studies about the significance of serotonin in in lobsters brains now there are many many different ways in which this is kind of misleading and even factually wrong it's very strange to me that Jordan Pearson has managed to live through the debunking of antidepressant medication the you know widespread well researched extensively published controversy that you know turned all of the assumptions of bio psychiatry inside out and upside a linear neural exam it's very strange to me that he's lived through the the proliferation of human addiction to psychiatric medication abuse of prescription drugs becoming of evermore epidemic portions that he's lived through this and he never developed more of a critical perspective on you know the use of antidepressants but what he's doing here in the truest sense of the word pathetic it's the pathos of a man who wants to go back to the drawing board and reinterpret evolution reinterpret the nature of nature in order to offer a justification for his own drug habit long after the pseudo scientific rationale for that drug habit has been debunked and it's been debunked within his own profession within his own area of research within his area his remit of academic expertise you know I wouldn't feel that I was being fair Jordan Peterson if I came here and I really harshly interrogated what he says about Taoism I obviously know more about Taoist philosophy Taoist religion than the Jordan Pearson knows or ever will know I would feel dishonest if I were raking him over the coals and cross-examining him for what he says about Buddhism Jordan Peterson has no expertise in Buddhism to some extent this is to be excused or I don't shrug it off with a laugh these things are far far removed from his supposed area of expertise but the matter of SSRI antidepressant drugs they're important in our their importance in our culture and society and even their importance for him and his family on the the microcosm level that should be right in his strike zone he should be able to really knock it out of the park and instead what we see is a man who has really been demented by kind of self-centered self justification a man clinging from Enoch who could go so far he goes so far as to say that the the lobsters who are losers in the hierarchy that they want to feel like winners and that the only way they can do this much like humans in our own society is by recovering their serotonin now there are many different ways in which the mono I mean mono amine hypothesis the assumptions about serotonin levels have been debunked and refuted one of the most fundamental is that the assumption that low serotonin levels correspond to depression either the feeling of depression or depressive behaviour that has been debunked they're not correlated or linked at all which was proven with horrible laboratory studies as you can imagine um that that association was false and originated in marketing claims it never originated originated in falsifiable scientific data now furthermore for certain many videos there's a real smoking gun piece of evidence in that we have SSRI drugs and then we have drugs with the opposite effect called SSR II drugs and the effects that these drugs have on depression are identical so you know if you have drugs that raise people's blood pressure and you have drugs that lower people's blood pressure but they both have the same effects on depression that's proof that blood pressure medication doesn't treat depression or the blood blood pressure is not linked to depression in this way there's not this kind of question so this has been debunked many different angles I have many different videos on this channel in which I'm just quoting and relaying to you information from experts who devoted decades their lives decades their lives not just at doing the research but to getting out in the public sphere and for pounding it to overcome you know frankly the the marketing hype um but let's just step back and ask hypothetically what if Jordan Peterson were right what if the philosophy he was presenting here were based on unfactual II true assumptions wouldn't that be the most pathetic philosophy of all what he's arguing is that he and his daughter are born losers and he said this in many ways and those of you for him talk especially the interviews he's done interviews of the daughters an accent that they were born with disabilities that they were born with disadvantages and the only way he can be happy is by chemically inducing the illusion that he's a winner by taking serotonin reuptake inhibitors by taking this this class of drugs what a what an absolutely terrible bleak vision of the universe the vision of the universe that from day one there have always been a small number of lobsters who claw their way to the top of the pile top of the social hierarchy and that nobody else can really be happy and that he identifies himself with those with those losers with the lobsters at the bottom of the pile who are shamed humiliated have their confidence broken again to what extent he's misrepresenting the science about lobsters I don't know I know the science about human beings in serotonin but he he goes to he goes so far as to say that the lobsters who lose have to dissolve their brains and grow a new brain to take on a new a new attitude a new place in their society doesn't doesn't sound like science but maybe there's some grain of truth there but he's poetically exaggerating or or what have you you know there there are drugs that can help you cope with unhappiness sorrow in your life short-term on a shallow basis one of the most effective you know is is nicotine and if you really read the scientific literature about what are the effects of nicotine you'll realize that it's one of the most powerful and underappreciated antidepressants it's one that people have relied on for centuries and of course the main reason we don't glorify it as an antidepressant is that it's bad it's bad in many different way it's not just because it gives you cancer for one thing it cultivates emotional dependence on the drug but you know I've read real scientific literature on this one of the reasons why nicotine is so addictive is that when you're low it raises you up just a little bit it helps you focus it helps you actually raise your stress levels when you're feeling despondent so when you're really low really depressed actually stress is in a sense positive you take on focus and have a sense of objective you get you gain stress in a positive sense coming from a lobe but when you're too stressed out when you feel nervous when you feel anxiety when stress is overwhelming then it brings the stress levels day home so nicotine addiction helps to keep you in this this narrow band and many people who are long-term smokers long-term smoking addicts this is consistent with what they report subjectively that when they first wake up in the morning they need a cigarette when they're when they're really dejected they need a cigarette but then on the other hand when they're stressed out with a problem when they need to calm down they also need a cigarette they feel this intuitively then apparently there's hard science to back up this element of you know this element of the science of addiction as it applies to dissonance if what Peterson was saying were true about antidepressants if what he was saying were true about evolution and inequality and even just his places hit his place in US and his daughter's place he would seem to me that the inevitable conclusion of the string opening chapter of this this now influential book this book that I can't really regard as anything more than the the aimless mutterings of a madman the conclusion would have to be that we live in a world of unfair competition and the way to cope with that unfairness is to become a drug addict just like you