Philosophical Thought: Morality and Power

My today's philosophical thought:

Morality is a plea to be oppressed fairly, and not excessively.

Dominants have little use for morality, except that a society with fair oppression is more stable against degradation, revolution, civil war, and sabotage.

(All societies are dominance hierarchies, and oppression is a structural feature of any dominance hierarchy.)

Inspirational background: the 1939 book "The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939" by EH Carr

My most important social theory interview? The Dominance of Dominance

I did this interview with TaniaTheHerbalist (our Episode 1) on 29 January 2021.

In it, I lay out the overarching role of dominance hierarchy in groups of social animals, including humans, and some of the main implications of this always-changing self-organized structure on the individual's health, freedom, and influence in society.

My starting point in the interview is an interesting recent theoretical physics paper about self-organized social hierarchies: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0211403

Tectonic Shifts Unnerve Both Factions of the USA Ruling Elite

My latest social analysis article, published at Dissident Voice:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/11/dear-young-progressives-the-white-supremacist-anti-immigration-anti-political-correctness-free-speech-fascists-are-your-friends/

Dear Young Progressives: The White-Supremacist Anti-Immigration Anti-Political-Correctness Free-Speech Fascists Are Your Friends

Tectonic Shifts Unnerve Both Factions of the USA Ruling Elite

By Denis Rancourt

Yup. The ruling elite are doing everything they can to divide you. They are doing everything they can to promote hate between you.

In this article, I argue that the real enemy is the ruling elite, which manipulates us all. I explain that the Western USA-based ruling elite is desperate these days, and exceptionally adversarial, which is driven by the successful rise of Eurasia (economically led by China, and supported by Russia), and by increased global abundance of extractable energy reserves. We allow ourselves to be collateral idiots and pawns in this saga.

The ruling elite and the captured media want you to be convinced that their oppression of everyone comes from either a tsunami of irrational “socialism” or spontaneous upsurges of “fascism”; that fascist cells are nucleating and growing at an unprecedented rate, and that you and all your immigrant, brown, black, LGBTQ compatriots will be deported or imprisoned or deprived of medical attention, if the said cells are not deplatformed, censored, run out of town, punched in the face, and exterminated.

Actually, no, that is not true.

The ruling elite in the USA, and in the Western world, by projection, are comprised of two opposing and collaborating factions: The “Democrats” and the “Republicans”, which represent different and overlapping blocs of the Western ruling elite.[1][2][3][4]

Both blocs or networks agree to use military force and covert means to exploit and extort, in the world that they consider their plantation. Both networks use their influence to constantly transform national and global rules to their advantage, to the point even of literally writing the laws, and to the brink of destabilizing the USA domestic society itself,[5] and the global economic and strategic balance.

The ruling elite (acting together, consistently and deeply) manipulate, socially engineer, and exploit the rest of us, to different qualities and degrees, depending on social class. The main mechanism is to divide to conquer. The divisions are first along class lines, and, within classes, along cultural, race, religion, and gender lines.

Democracy is a constant threat to the ruling elite. Therefore, democracy must be constrained to a manageable form, and crushed wherever it actually emerges. The remnants of electoral democracy are used in more-or-less a show-competition between the two opposing networks, which serves them both by floating the illusion of popular participation and by dividing the public.

The “Democrats” are tied to global finance and push for a global carbon economy, and global “development”, in the image of their malicious interest. Their deep-state base is the CIA and they excel in media and entertainment-industry control.

The “Republicans” are more tied to the USA domestic-energy sector (such as the exploded shale-oil economy), to the army, and to the armament industry. They are more nationalist in their power centre, more into the extraction and wage-slave-production industries in Latin America and Africa, via USA corporations, and have less use for the UN in their manipulations.

Both ruling-elite networks have collaborated together since the end of the Second World War, with the deep state, to establish and maintain the USA dollar as the global currency, which is their most potent weapon of global exploitation, and now overt extortion, backed by violent military interventions, campaigns of economic devastation, and covert coups and proxy wars.[6][7]

Fast-forward to today: Two global tectonic shifts have and are occurring, which fundamentally threaten the USA/Western ruling elite, in that USA hegemony itself is challenged.

The first global tectonic shift is the continuous rise of Eurasia, economically led by China, with strategic, diplomatic and organizational support from Russia. This coincides with Russian emergence in protecting its national interests in Syria and Venezuela, while offering military technology (S-400 air-defence missile system) that neutralizes USA air dominance, to Turkey and others.

The second global tectonic shift is the increased global abundance of easily extractable fossil-fuel reserves. It turns out that shale-oil is everywhere, as is natural gas; and Chinese coal, not counting secure imports,[8] is plentiful enough to power China, using modern centralized generation and transformation stations, for decades. There is oil and gas in Venezuela, Russia, Syria, Iran… Canada, USA… more places than can easily be controlled to starve competitors, to ensure high prices for preferred producers, and to keep the petro-dollar alive.[6]

These global tectonic shifts divide the ruling elite, as they scramble to settle and impose a response strategy, and as their differing economic interests collide.

The globalist “Democrats” want an enforced carbon economy (to save humanity) and a crypto-currency that they control,[9] and, in their daydream, want to include Eurasia, the whole shebang. They don’t want all-out trade wars that drive Eurasian exclusionary integration. They prefer covert power rather than military campaigns, and prefer to preserve the UN as a tool.

They are content to deprive their ruling-elite adversaries of oil-supremacy if they can keep finance supremacy, enforced by military might as needed. They are habituated to occupation by social engineering, and hope for an entire world woke to climate change, public health by vaccination, life-extension by big-pharma, food abundance by GMOs and glyphosate, and human rights by gender-reassignment medical and pharmaceutical procedures, “anti-racism” and “gender equity”.[6][7]

The nationalist “Republicans” want to control oil by force, using blockades, sanctions, and military occupation (Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, even Canada in a pipeline-propaganda war[10]), sell USA oil at top dollar (with an emphasis on “dollar”), save the USA-dollar-as-world-currency gravy train, and extort military-protection rent and arms sales from its “allies”, while making Eurasia enemy number one.

In a nutshell, the governing elite are running a vast and violent exploitation and extortion racket that is now in decline in the world. The decline is putting tremendous pressure on the scheme, and the elite are desperately lashing out to slow or reverse the inevitable. Their disagreements are more urgent than ever, and they are willing to have unprecedented adversarial battles in the open, and to use us all as triggered or engaged idiots.

“White supremacists” are just ordinary folks sick of being manipulated and cheated by the ruling elite. “Black bloc” anarchists are ordinary youth sick of being brushed aside and made irrelevant by the ruling elite. Both need to see the strings and stop looking for schoolyard fights. Our best friends need to be all those harmed by the same elite manipulators. Our worst immediate enemies are the collaborators. We need to treat words as words, and stop looking to punish our compatriots. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and the “white supremacists” are thereby eminently your friends.

Free-speech enthusiasts are right of course but they need to see those wanting false protection from censorship as merely misguided targets of the common enemy. It is the enemy that is implementing the censorship, not snowflakes. The elite will censor using any pretext. Woke automatons are just proof of the broad destructive power of social engineering. Woke automatons are not the enemy of the Right: Ignore them, insult them if this has civil-jolt value, but focus on the real enemy. The real enemy determines school curricula, writes laws, attacks democracy, censors speech, funds everything, and campaigns for war.

Endnotes

[1] “U.S. Economic Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses”, Keynote Paper delivered at the 14th Forum of the World Association for Political Economy, July 21, 2019, by Michael Hudson, The Saker, 25 July 2019. http://thesaker.is/u-s-economic-warfare-and-likely-foreign-defenses/

[2] “Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy”, by Michael Hudson, ISLET-Verlag, 2015, ISBN 13: 978-3-9814842-8-1.

[3] “Denis Rancourt Democrats & Republicans Use Identity Politics As Cover For Economic Devastation”, Jamarl Thomas - YouTube Channel, 24 July 2019. https://youtu.be/EukGQ33x-To

[4] “The Classic Political Theories of Socialism, Capitalism, and Anarchism are Unrealizable”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, 12 August 2015. https://dissidentvoice.org/2015/08/the-classic-political-theories-of-socialism-capitalism-and-anarchism-are-unrealizable/

[5] “Cause of USA Meltdown and Collapse of Civil Rights”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, 7 September 2017. https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/09/cause-of-usa-meltdown-and-collapse-of-civil-rights/

[6] “Geo-Economics and Geo-Politics Drive Successive Eras of Predatory Globalization and Social Engineering: Historical emergence of climate change, gender equity, and anti-racism as State doctrines”, by Denis G. Rancourt, Ontario Civil Liberties Association, OCLA Report 2019-1, April 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332182416_GEO-ECONOMICS_AND_GEO-POLITICS_DRIVE_SUCCESSIVE_ERAS_OF_PREDATORY_GLOBALIZATION_AND_SOCIAL_ENGINEERING_Historical_emergence_of_climate_change_gender_equity_and_anti-racism_as_State_doctrines

[7] “From Dollar Hegemony to Global Warming: Globalization, Glyphosate and Doctrines of Consent”, by Colin Todhunter, Dissident Voice, 10 June 2019. https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/06/from-dollar-hegemony-to-global-warming/

[8] “China's `Friendly' Neighbors Seize Coal Share From Australia”, Markets - Bloomberg News, 26 April 2019. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-26/china-s-friendly-neighbors-seize-coal-share-from-australia

[9] “Is The Fed Preparing to Topple US Dollar?”, by F. William Engdahl, New Eastern Outlook (NEO), 1 September 2019. https://journal-neo.org/2019/09/01/is-the-fed-preparing-to-topple-us-dollar/

[10] “Over a Barrel”, Documentary Film, 8 October 2019 (Canada), producer Shane Fennessey, based on the research of Vivian Krause. www.overabarreldoc.com

LAWS THAT PUNISH FOR HYPOTHETICAL HARM MUST BE ABOLISHED

By Denis Rancourt

Given the state of laws in Canada, it has become necessary to state the obvious:

An individual legitimately can be punished solely for proven actual harm that is also proven to have been caused by the individual.

In a free and democratic society, laws that punish an individual for harm that is hypothesized to have occurred, or hypothesized to have been caused by the individual, or hypothesized to have both occurred and been caused by the individual, are pathological in that such laws attack democracy itself in its foundation, as explained below.

Canada and institutions and corporations sanctioned by the State enforce many laws and rules that punish individuals for hypothesized harm, in which the State or State-sanctioned actor does not have to prove actual harm or actual cause.  With these laws, proving actual harm is not relevant in the prosecution, and is considered inadmissible and unacceptably wasteful of court and tribunal resources.

Instead, the prosecutor merely needs to argue that there is “likelihood” that unspecified harm has occurred to unspecified “victims”, which is caused via an unspecified mechanism by the accused. Here, the prosecutor can rely entirely on the “judgement” of the court or tribunal, or can bring an “expert” witness to give opinion evidence about the said “likelihood” of harm.

No victim will testify or be cross-examined. No evidence of actual harm, physical or psychological, will be entered. No victim will even be named or identified to the court. There is a total absence of evidence of actual harm caused by the accused person.

The proceedings are separate and distinct from any criminal proceedings of responsibility for actual physical or psychological harm against an actual and identified victim.

What are these laws, you ask? These are the so-called “hate speech” laws, the codes of conduct, and also the common law of defamation.[1][2][3]  These laws include:

• “hate speech” provisions of the Criminal Code
• censorship codes, rules or “guidelines” enforced by social-media corporations
• censorship rules and practices of employers regarding the personal actions of employees
• professional-ethics codes or rules regarding personal expression on public media
• codes of conduct on campuses
• common law of defamation

In all of these laws — in a total absence of proven actual harm, from mere expression of comment, opinion, thought or belief, excluding criminal harassment, intimidation or threat against any actual and specific person, often made through the filter of a public social-media platform rather than any face-to-face interaction — the punishments range from fines, to unlimited “damage” awards, to workplace or professional-association discipline, to loss of access to education, to loss of employment, to loss of professional certification, to lengthy jail terms or house arrests, and include gag orders or compelled speech enforced by imprisonment.

Such is the status of Canadian law, despite the fact that Canada has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which expressly prohibits all such written or unwritten censorship laws.[1][2]

As a result, Canada has spawned a legal landscape not unlike that of past eras having blasphemy laws to prevent the alleged deleterious effects of the most offensive and subversive utterances of the day. This legal landscape vitiates the fundamental right of freedom of expression and incapacitates democracy itself.

The fundamental right of freedom of expression is the right that allows the individual free expression, and the personal agency that derives from free expression, even though the individual is confined by society’s changing and democratically agreed-upon rules.  Free expression is the right to express.  It is essential for personal development and emancipation.  It does not, in itself, confine others, and it is up to the individual to seek and secure receptive listeners. This is the essence of both personal growth and society. 

Beyond person growth within the fabric of society, freedom of expression plays a second role that is equally important. Democracy is susceptible to capture by a self-interested elite, and politics must not be solely a contest between dominant-elite special interests. The balancing force against runaway capture, in a democracy, is freedom of expression, together with freedom of association, which permit effective democratic participation, and are the true sources of the often touted “transparency” (whistle blowing) and “accountability” (popular opinion making).

Censorship, including censorship actuated with the pretext of preventing hypothetical harm, does not protect the individual.  It is a lockdown designed to frustrate the essential democratic process of expression, discussion, debate and argument, in an increasingly illegitimate and intolerant system. Its use by politicians in exploiting the oppression Olympiad in their partisan manipulations is unconscionable, as is its use in special-interest propaganda by litigation. 

For these reasons, the State must not provide laws that enable an influential elite in-effect to neuter vehement individual expression that has transformative potential. The State must not be allowed to thus erode and suppress individual agency. Instead, it is the duty of the State to protect individual freedom of expression. If democracy cannot be trusted, then there is no democracy.

Relation to recent work

In her 2018 book [3], Nadine Strossen brilliantly reviews the research showing that “hate speech” laws are harmful to society. While this scholarship brings current empirical support for abolishing “hate speech” laws, I don’t find it to be satisfying. We should not be reduced to making policy arguments regarding harm reduction in order to justify preventing the State from suppressing fundamental human freedom, or preventing the State from enabling elite interests and corporations from suppressing the said freedom. If history itself and the study of sociology[4] cannot inform us about the necessity to safeguard the fundamental human right of freedom of expression, then we are lost.[5]

Opposing “hate speech” law is not “free-speech absolutism”

Unfortunately, in the present climate of clamouring to ask the State to limit fundamental personal freedoms “for our own safety”, the arguments become polarized, and many have used the sophistry that the position of opposing the aberrant inherent features of “hate speech” law is equivalent to advocating for “free-speech absolutism”.  This is a false equivalency.

If the State were to strike down all “hate speech” laws, limit the codes of conduct to exclude “hate speech”, and strike down the common law of defamation (which presumes falsity, damages and malice), then there would still independently exist: the civil tort of malicious falsehood, the Criminal Code provisions against threats, coercion, intimidation, harassment, and so on; and all the laws against discrimination. The individual would not lose any of these common law, statutory and constitutional protections.

Limiting the State’s power to prosecute victimless speech crimes (presuming harm at large, and presuming causation) does not limit the State’s power to enforce crimes that have proven victims and cause, irrespective of the role of expression in these offences, and does not limit the individual’s means to obtain redress.

This article has been published at Dissident Voice, and at Research Gate.

Endnotes

[1] “Canadian defamation law is noncompliant with international law”, by Denis Rancourt, Ontario Civil Liberties Association report, 1 February 2016. http://ocla.ca/our-work/reports/canadian-defamation-law-is-noncompliant-with-international-law/

[2] “Towards a Rational Legal Philosophy of Individual Rights”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, 15 November 2016. https://dissidentvoice.org/2016/11/towards-a-rational-legal-philosophy-of-individual-rights/

[3] “HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship”, by Nadine Strossen, Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-19-085912-1. http://www.nyls.edu/faculty/wp-content/uploads/sites/148/2018/04/endnotes.apr2818.pdf

[4] “Self-organization and time-stability of social hierarchies”, by Joseph Hickey and Jörn Davidsen, 29 January 2019, PLoS ONE 14(1): e0211403. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211403

[5] “Cause of USA Meltdown and Collapse of Civil Rights”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, 7 September 2017. https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/09/cause-of-usa-meltdown-and-collapse-of-civil-rights/

Stability and Dynamics of Individual Personality in a Dominance Hierarchy

By Denis Rancourt

First published here:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/01/stability-and-dynamics-of-individual-personality-in-a-dominance-hierarchy/


In this article, I develop a physics model of the bimodal personality of the social animal. The model uses free-energy barrier-crossing theory and provides a new and testable paradigm of individual behaviour and perception in a dominance hierarchy.

A realistic theory of social organization must use a correct model of the individual. The said correct model must not only contain correct elements but it must also be sufficiently complete to be predictive and to produce observed social behaviour.

For example, it is correct to say that the individual is intrinsically driven to seek safety, resources and to reproduce, however actually expressed in society.  By “intrinsic” I mean “hard-wired” or “evolutionary” or “physiologically prescribed”.  But these correct biological characteristics of the individual are not sufficient by themselves to explain that dominance hierarchy is virtually always the organizational type in societies of social-animal species.

Nor do these correct characteristics of the individual explain the long-term stability of a given class-structured dominance hierarchy, or the phenomenon that many individuals in society can choose to forgo reproduction or even forgo striving to obtain optimal levels of safety and access to vital resources.

Having posited the internal drivers for safety, resources and reproduction, the next level of complexity of the model of the individual is to describe the individual’s intrinsic response function to external (i.e., societal or environmental) signals. Such signals include both positive and negative social feedback, and include both aggression and rewards from the dominance hierarchy.

Regarding the individual’s intrinsic response function, in a 2011 article I postulated that the strong causal relation between poor individual health and subjection to dominance-hierarchy stress was a biological reality that both enabled the formation of dominance hierarchy and provided a mechanism to cull burdensome individuals from the society.¹

However, this was a linear response function that incorrectly does not admit any beneficial effect from stressor events, in any circumstances. It also did not make the important distinction that the “stress” that determines health is not an objective consequence of the external stressors but, instead, must be understood as the “experienced stress”. I described the important additional concepts of “experienced stress” and comparative “self-image” in 2014.² These modulators move us towards the needed non-linearity of the response function, and in themselves explain many health outcomes.

Independently, it has been a major theoretical breakthrough, in the area of individual health, to explicitly posit that the individual’s intrinsic response function is not linear and has a “U” shape. This is scientist-reviewer Sapolsky’s “inverted-U” function.³ I have reviewed these advances in my critical assessment of cancer science.⁴  The inverted-U idea is that there is an optimum degree of stress, not too little (isolation) and not too great (overwhelming oppression), which maximizes individual health.

While the inverted-U curve of stress response is a useful unifying concept, it does not account for the capricious nature of experienced stress, which in turn is the actual determinant of health in a given individual.  The same objectively measured external stress can have opposite health effects in different individuals in the same social class, and opposite effects in the same individual at different times while remaining in the same social class, for example.

The above considerations, the overwhelming importance of dominance hierarchy as the main organizational principle in animal societies, and a review of the science of the monoamine neurotransmitter serotonin in relation to social status, aggression and dominance interactions led me to propose the simplification that “social animals have two modes of being”, which I explained in the following way:⁵

I propose that the animal has two modes of being, which are binary end-points on an attitudinal, self-image and behavioural psychological-state-scape.

I’m not saying that each individual is permanently in one or the other mode of being. Rather, I propose that the individual shifts and slides into one or the other mode depending on his immediate social circumstances and on his history (biological and metabolic memory) of being predominantly in one mode or the other.

The modes of being that I propose map onto the social dominance hierarchy, and are consistent with the roles of different individuals within the hierarchy.

Specifically, one mode is the mode (and strategy) adopted by the dominated individual. This mode is one where the individual seeks “fairness” and minimal aggressions in their environment. The individual seeks a “safe space” and has no actual design to displace dominants. The culture of individuals that coalesce into such a stratum of the hierarchy is one where “kindness” and “being a good person” are the highest social values that are encouraged and rewarded. Altruism and “goodiness” are elevated to a status meriting religious indulgences. Viciousness actuated by enforcers within the social stratum is turned towards violators of this code.

The other mode is the mode (and strategy) adopted by the individual who intends to be and to remain dominant. It is an outlook of waging and winning battles for dominance. This is the climber with a “killer’s instinct”, prepared to joust for relative advantage and eager to dominate.

These modes are distinct mental and physiological states of being. …

In the present article, I want to extend and formalize the proposal of two modes of being by casting it within the physics paradigm of thermally induced transitions between two free-energy minima of different depths. My intention is to optimally capture the biological, metabolic and social dimensions of the problem with a minimalist model that is sufficiently realistic to explain non-trivial social phenomena.

Within this new picture, the individual’s intrinsic response function (response to external signals), realistically depends on the state (or mode of being) that the individual temporarily occupies and on the landscape of possibilities for given expenditures of metabolic energy.

The single-variable “free-energy” function that I will draw has a y-axis labelled “E”, which is excess metabolic energy expenditure that the individual needs to use in changing their circumstances on the road to transitioning between modes of being.  “E” is analogous to the so-called free energy in physics and chemistry. However, it is excess energy expenditure (or effort) and is therefore on a per-unit-of-time basis for the individual. It is a rate of energy expenditure. It is an “excess” rate because there is always a basal metabolic rate of energy expenditure simply to sustain the life of the inactive individual (beating heart, etc.).

In chemistry, one could be looking at transitions between two bonding configurations of a molecule. In physics, one could be modelling transitions between two orientations of a supermoment on a magnetic iron-oxide nanoparticle. In all cases, the x-axis (or variable) in the “free-energy” picture is a quantity that represents the “state” of the system (molecule, nanoparticle, individual animal) at a given instant.

I label the x-axis “S”, for “state”. In the chemistry example, “S” is a parameter that captures the molecular configuration (a bond angle or an inter-atomic separation). In the physics example, “S” is a parameter that captures the magnetic state of the nanoparticle, such as the angular orientation of the supermoment relative to the ambient magnetic field.

In the case of the individual in a dominance hierarchy, “S” is defined to capture the bio-metabolic state of the individual. For example, we could posit that “S” is the concentration in the blood of a neurohormonal substance that determinatively modulates animal behaviour and perception, which in turn can be interpreted to map onto a “mode of being” or some intermediate transitional mode. Several researchers and scientist reviewers have suggested that serotonin is a candidate to be this substance, but the details of the candidate substance(s) or metabolic quantities do not alter my model.

The possibility of transitions controlled by a modulating substance and occuring in a bimodal state-scape was envisioned for animal behaviour in the landmark 1988 article of Kravitz:⁶

Such compounds, therefore, can influence large areas of the nervous system in a way that parallels the manner in which transmitters, acting through second messengers, alter the properties of individual nerve or muscle cells: they bring the system (a cell for a transmitter or a circuit for a hormone) from one stable state to a second new stable state that now shows a changed response to selective stimulation. This is done by the alteration or sensitization of a logical set of component pieces that together modify the output of the system.

To continue, here is my picture of the excess metabolic rate versus the state variable value (E-vs-S) function. In fact, five different E-vs-S functions are represented for five different individuals in a dominance hierarchy, subjected to five corresponding different degrees of perceived dominance signaling from their social environment:

The curves “1” to “5” for the five different individuals are labelled in order of increasing dominance oppression perceived by the individual. In most circumstances (2, 3 and 4), there are two troughs (labelled “L” for “loser” and “W” for “winner”) in the E-vs-S functions, separated by a barrier maximum labeled “B”.

Here, L and W correspond to the “two modes of being” described above. L is the dominated mode, whereas W is the dominant mode.

At small values of S, such as small blood concentrations of serotonin, say, the individual naturally settles into the L-mode simply by minimizing its rate of excess metabolic energy expenditure. Moderate expenditures of excess metabolic energy do not allow the individual to escape the L-mode, as it simply relaxes back down to minimal expenditure after the temporary exertion.

Similarly, at large values of S the individual naturally settles into the W-mode by minimizing its rate of excess metabolic energy expenditure. Moderate expenditures of excess metabolic energy do not bring the individual into the L-mode.

A winning fight, requiring expenditure of metabolic energy up to the barrier value (L to B) can allow an individual to cross over from the L-mode into the W-mode. Likewise, a losing fight that requires metabolic energy expenditure from W to B can push an individual out of the W-mode and into the L-mode.

Some individuals (curve-1 in the figure) cannot escape the W-mode that, for them, is the only stable mode. This shape of E-vs-S curve occurs for individuals that get constant re-enforcement of their high “dominant” societal status, and that are not subjected to threatening hierarchical oppression. An example would be a high-status government or industry leader that is always accompanied by a small army of ego-boosting sycophants.

Similarly, some individuals (curve-5 in the figure) cannot escape the L-mode that, for them, is the only stable mode. This shape of E-vs-S curve occurs for individuals that are constantly reminded of their low “dominanted” societal status, and that are subjected to threatening hierarchical oppression. An example would be a forced coal-mine worker or a prisoner of war in a forced-labour camp.

Importantly, however, the degree “dominance oppression” that determines the shape of the E-vs-S curve for a given individual is subjective rather than objective. It is the “perceived dominance signaling” from the individual’s environment. As noted above, the said signaling includes both positive and negative social feedback, and includes both aggression and rewards from the dominance hierarchy.

Therefore, a low-social-class individual can be in a stable W-mode although this will be rare, on a population basis at a given time, and so on. Put another way, on a time basis for a given individual, such a given low-social-class individual will, through the metabolic expenditures of interacting, spend most of their time in the L-mode but some of their time in the W-mode. And these outcomes are similar but inversed for high-social-class individuals.

The said “perceived dominance signaling” that determines the shape of the E-vs-S curve for a given individual plays a central role. Let’s simply call it “H”, for the sake of convenience. H is analogous to the ambient constant magnetic field experienced by the nanoparticle in our physics example, and it is analogous to a uniaxial stress (pressure) experienced by the molecule in our chemistry example.

In our case of an individual in a dominance hierarchy, H can be defined as H = fp.Mp − fn.Mn, where the first term is the product of the occurrence frequency (fp) of positive signals and the average magnitude (Mp) of a positive signal. The second term is the product of the occurrence frequency (fn) of negative signals and the average magnitude (Mn) of a negative signal. A signal is a social feedback, such as a facial expression or a look, or an interaction in the dominance hierarchy, including aggressions and rewards.

H has a value that is measured on a certain sensitivity or measurement time (ts) of the individual. The value of H is not sensitive to environmental changes that occur within times smaller than ts, and H may vary in time on timescales larger than ts. The sensitivity time, ts, is the integration time for establishing a long-term memory that modulates perception. For adult humans, it can be as short as days and as long as years. In other words, the frequencies (fp and fn) of signals in the above formula are determined on the time window ts, where fp and fn are necessarily (much) larger than 1/ts.

All this to say that social environmental changes occurring on a timescale larger than ts can change an individual’s E-vs-S curve that in turn determines both (a) the relative amount of time the individual spends in either the L-mode or the W-mode, and (b) the kinetics of the individual’s transitions between the L-mode and S-mode. See below.

The picture I have described so far gives a statistical-mechanics view, based on animal metabolism of a social animal in a dominance hierarchy, to explain an individual’s inertia regarding personality, perception and behavioural changes, and provides a model for an individual’s transitions between the dominated and dominant modes of being, as follows.

If we define a correct “temperature” of the system, then the model will give quantitative predictions for time spent in each mode and kinetics of transitions between modes.

By analogy with the systems in physics and chemistry to which free-energy barrier-crossing theory applies, we can define “temperature” as follows. Let the temperature, T, of an individual in a dominance hierarchy be the mean magnitude of the rate of spontaneous excess metabolic energy expenditure, which is self-generated by the individual (same units as E). This is the rate at which the individual expends metabolic energy to act in the world, beyond just being alive.

Key predictions follow. Let E(L) be the E-value at the bottom of the L-trough, E(W) be the E-value at the bottom of the W-trough, and E(B) be the E-value at the barrier maximum (see figure). And write the natural exponential function (of x) as “exp[x]”.

Then the average time, t(L), spent by the individual in the L-mode before transitioning to the W-mode is given by this simple formula:

t(L)  =  t(TLW)   exp[ (E(B) − E(L)) / T ]

where t(TLW) is the average time between temperature events (of average magnitude T) that constitute attempts to crossover into the W-mode.

The corresponding formula for the average residence time in the W-mode of being is:

t(W)  =  t(TWL)  exp[ (E(B) − E(W)) / T ]

where t(TWL) is the average time between temperature events (of average magnitude T) that constitute attempts to cause cross-over into the L-mode. Here, 1/t(TLW) and 1/t(TWL) are the so-called attempt frequencies of free-energy barrier-crossing theory.

The ratio of residence times is independent of E(B):

t(L)/t(W)  =  (t(TLW)/t(TWL))  exp[ (E(W) − E(L)) / T ]

The latter equation can be tested experimentally, since all the quantities are times and rates of energy expenditure that can be measured.

The above equations may be the first physics equations that predict average residence times of individuals in given L and W metabolic states (modes of being), and that describe the underlying statistical mechanics of animal transitions between the two modes of being.

My model predicts how an individual embedded in a class (characterized by “H”) within a dominance hierarchy is confined to react to their environment to adopt a mode of being. Is your E(L) larger or smaller than your E(W)…? Dominants have E(W) < E(L), whereas dominated individuals have E(L) < E(W), assuming t(TLW) = t(TWL). Arguably, the single number that best characterizes the main coarse features of the individual’s true personality is the dimensionless ratio E(L)/E(W), which largely results from the individual’s environment (H).

The model shows how the dominance hierarchy creates two kinds of individuals that predominantly reside either in the L or W (dominated or dominant) modes of being. In this way, the animal’s intrinsic bio-chemical response to environmental signals provides a foundational mechanism for creating a stable dominance hierarchy, irrespective of the individual health consequences of an individual’s mode of being.

Dominance hierarchies are highly successful from an evolutionary perspective, such that social organization and individual metabolic reaction mechanisms would have co-evolved to be inseparable.
For humans, therefore, while complex institutions, technology and resource extraction efficiency theoretically permit individual emancipation, nonetheless the human animal cannot escape its intrinsic socio-bio-metabolic nature. Dominance hierarchy rules.⁷,⁸

1. “A Theory of Chronic Pain – A social and evolutionary theory of human disease and chronic pain”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, December 26, 2011. []
2. “Self-Image-Incongruence Theory of Individual Health”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, October 26, 2014. []
3. “Stress and the brain: individual variability and the inverted-U”, by R.M. Sapolsky, Nature Neuroscience, October 2015, vol. 18, no. 10, pages 1344-1346. And see: “The Influence of Social Hierarchy on Primate Health”, by R.M. Sapolsky, Science, 29 April 2005, vol. 308, pages 648-652. []
4. “Cancer Arises from Stress-induced Breakdown of Tissue Homeostasis. Part 1: Context of Cancer Research”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, December 4, 2015. []
5. “Social Animals have Two Modes of Being”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, July 2, 2018. []
6. “Hormonal Control of Behavior: Amines and the Biasing of Behavioral Output in Lobsters”, by Edward A. Kravitz, Science, 30 September 1988, vol. 241, pages 1775-1781. []
7. “Cause of USA Meltdown and Collapse of Civil Rights”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, September 7, 2017. []
8. “Humanity against People. Nature of the maturing geographical and global Western class conflict of Trump and Macron”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, December 16, 2018. []

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association. He has published more than 100 articles in leading scientific journals, on physics and environmental science. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. Read other articles by Denis.

Humanity against People

Gilets jaunes: Investment-predation globalism for the mobile urban elites versus rural nationalism for the sedentary and threatened middle-class

In the West, there is a global class conflict, decades in the making, which is a direct consequence of the globalization of investment predation. For the good of humankind, and for the good of the planet, and for social peace and stability, we should side with the deplorables.

by Denis Rancourt, PhD

First published at Dissident Voice:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/12/humanity-against-people/

Nature of the maturing geographical and global Western class conflict of Trump and Macron

Thanks to the Gilets jaunes in France, a few astute social theorists are finally being heard on YouTube, despite mainstream resistance and diversion. They are finding words more lucidly than could be achieved in the absence of such revolutionary upheaval.

I’m referring to the renowned French economic analyst and essayist Charles Gave who, in his near-twilight years, has broken rank with his class in order to impart a penetrating and devastating analysis of the current French melt-down, based on the original work of French social geographer and author Christophe Guilluy.¹

Guilluy has been describing an emerging Gilets jaunes backlash for some fifteen years, through his analysis of the class structure, and its geographical, demographic and ideological basis, in France; which is virtually identical in most Western nations, certainly the UK, Canada, the USA and many more.²

Basically, what was a relatively stable, balanced and integrated post-second-world-war working-class / middle-class / professional-class / managerial-class societal structure, has, over the course of several decades, and accelerated by the fall of the Soviet Union, devolved into three classes separated by large geographical, wage, ideological and mobility gaps.

The dominant class is comprised of the “bobos” (“bourgeois-bohème”). This is the highly-paid professional class of financial managers, media pundits, politicians, corporate lawyers, institutional professionals, governance civil servants, and so-on. They are urban, and espouse humanistic global “values” such as “free trade”, “human rights”, climate concerns, immigration justice, and so on.

The recently manufactured underclass is comprised of the imported immigrants that serve the bobos. They are restaurant workers, parking attendants, child-care workers, cleaners, cab drivers, food producers, and so on. They are malleable and obedient, as they benefit from First World amenities. They generally live in the urban-satellite suburbs and are provided with efficient mass-transportation to work, and so on. They are kept in-line and policed as needed.

The third class are the “deplorables”.³ They live outside of the large urban centres, in rural France, USA, UK… They are Trump, Le Pen, Brexit, the Gilets jaunes… They were the white factory workers, farmers, loggers, miners, industrial plant workers… who have largely been made redundant by the globalization that is managed by the bobos, always to the great and increasing benefit of the bobos, of course.

As such, the societal structure has evolved towards two camps: Those who are mobile and could live the same life anywhere, and those who want to live their lives where they are; those who share grandiose global values and those who struggle to stay at the same level.

The bobos run the show and see little utility in the rural remnants of the former society; a “remnant” that comprises half of the national population and is fiercely proud and nationalistic, while being imposed “values” that are out of sync with their daily concerns.

The transformation, especially since the early 1990s, has been spectacular. Executive salaries have skyrocketed. Professional salaries have increased disproportionately. Taxing of the ultra-rich has been eliminated. “Democracy” has been mechanized, with virtual impossibility of grassroots representation. Globalization logic is the new mantra, and protectionism is made to sound Neanderthal.

National sovereignty has been eliminated wherever possible. Sanitized globalist doctrine is infused everywhere: climate alarmism, generic anti-racism, generic gender equity, generic human rights, political correctness of language and attitudes… Meanwhile, actual genocidal military campaigns of economic blockades (“sanctions”), regime change, conquest, and nation destruction are the main drivers of the whole system. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, Palestine… to name just the most recent and ongoing trillion-dollar mass-murder and plunder projects.

Language is one of the strongest indicators of the new social-structure’s pathology. George Orwell could not write his novel today because it would be perceived as a second-rate current affairs report. Forced speech has reached epidemic proportions. Its importance cannot be over-stated. With virtuous regulated language comes the instant ability to recognize those who stand out and must be eliminated.

The conflict clearly opposes two distinct ideologies: Globalism and continued economic elitism versus nationalism and reconstruction of rural communities.  The elitist “Left” has been globalist and reckless. The rural Right wants to preserve place and home.  The battle is not capitalism versus socialism.  The battle is between re-establishing class balance within national boundaries versus continued and accelerating global class exploitation, carbon taxes and all.⁴

Both sides have much to lose, and the bobos can manipulate the two underclasses to oppose each other rather than cooperate to force restructuring. Will Western societies completely become managed serfdoms and parallel favelas?  Or will a more egalitarian and stable structure be imposed by the deplorables?

Theoretical physics studies of the stability of dominance hierarchies are relevant and provide a guide for the macroscopic approach that would newly stabilize society. From his PhD research, Joseph Hickey writes:⁵

The model thus suggests that the violence of societal interactions (δ) and the degree of authoritarianism (α) in the society must be kept in check in order for the society to retain its structure over long periods of time and not degrade into a totalitarian state. As either of these features of inter-individual interactions is increased the inequality of the society increases. When the level of inequality becomes large enough that the society nears the transition into runaway deterioration of its class structure, the society may be required to reduce one or both of the parameters in order to retain a viable structure. Analysts have suggested that several recent major political events, including Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, are best understood as backlashes against increasing societal inequality. According to the model, for such backlashes to have a stabilizing effect on the social hierarchy, they must result in decreases in the violence of societal interactions, the degree of authoritarianism in the society, or both.

The enabling institutional mechanisms that accompany the said “degradation into a totalitarian state” of gap-divided classes were described by me here.⁶

1. “Gilets Jaunes : Vers une Guerre Civile ?”, interview, YouTube channel Planetes360, uploaded December 12, 2018. []
2. “France is deeply fractured. Gilets jaunes are just a symptom”, by Christophe Guilluy, The Guardian, December 2, 2018. []
3. “Clinton: Half of Trump supporters ‘basket of deplorables‘”, BBC News, September 10, 2016. []
4. “Most Oil Sector Emissions Will Be Exempt From Federal Carbon Pricing: Report”, by Canadian Press, Huffpost Business, updated December 11, 2018. []
5. “How Societies Form and Change”, by Joseph Hickey, Dissident Voice, December 26, 2017. []
6. “Cause of USA Meltdown and Collapse of Civil Rights”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, September 7, 2017.

Social Animals have Two Modes of Being

By Denis Rancourt, PhD


This article was first published on Dissident Voice:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/07/social-animals-have-two-modes-of-being/


I want to describe what I think is a fundamental truth about the individual bio-psychology of social animals, including humans.

Setting for the model

The setting for my model is arguably the greatest current scientific revolution: The formal realization and empirical demonstration that virtually all of social behaviour and individual psychology is encased in the evolutionary, biological and metabolic reality of dominance hierarchy.

For example, see Sapolsky’s influential 2005 review of primate studies [1], and my critical review of medicine [2]. The metabolism of the monoamine neurotransmitter serotonin and the associated evolutionary biology is now an established area of science [3][4][5][6]. In my opinion, the said area of science, although far from complete, constitutes a foundational building block of the new tectonic-plate theory of social science, whether social scientists are aware of it yet or not. And it has started to infuse the popular culture [7].

This knowledge implies that the metabolic biochemistry of dominance locks us in. No socialism theory that presumes altruistic cooperation as its organizing principle can ever work. Non-hierarchical anarchism and its libertarian cousin are useful conceptual end-points that can never be sustainably achieved. The best we can do is to have a responsive and optimally (evolutionarily) beneficial dominance hierarchy that is actively prevented from exercising pathological excess [8].

The model

In this setting, I propose that the animal has two modes of being, which are binary end-points on an attitudinal, self-image and behavioural psychological-state-scape.

I’m not saying that each individual is permanently in one or the other mode of being. Rather, I propose that the individual shifts and slides into one or the other mode depending on his immediate social circumstances and on his history (biological and metabolic memory) of being predominantly in one mode or the other.

The modes of being that I propose map onto the social dominance hierarchy, and are consistent with the roles of different individuals within the hierarchy.

Specifically, one mode is the mode (and strategy) adopted by the dominated individual. This mode is one were the individual seeks “fairness” and minimal aggressions in their environment. The individual seeks a “safe space” and has no actual design to displace dominants. The culture of individuals that coalesce into such a stratum of the hierarchy is one where “kindness” and “being a good person” are the highest social values that are encouraged and rewarded. Altruism and “goodiness” are elevated to a status meriting religious indulgences. Viciousness actuated by enforcers within the social stratum is turned towards violators of this code.

The other mode is the mode (and strategy) adopted by the individual who intends to be and to remain dominant. It is an outlook of waging and winning battles for dominance. This is the climber with a “killer’s instinct”, prepared to joust for relative advantage and eager to dominate.

These modes are distinct mental and physiological states of being. They occur inside the individual and cannot always be ascertained reliably from outside indicators. For example, climbers in a corporate or government office hierarchy may achieve success by “kissing ass” rather than by confronting superiors. Advancement in these institutions may arise from actuation of the goodiness mode rather than the competitive mode, or competition within an office level may be the selector used by superiors. Anything is possible in a given corporate enterprise, in terms of utilization of intrinsic human behaviours.

The two distinct modes are real regarding the individual’s experience and bodily biochemistry, in the circumstances, rather than ascertainable from superficial outside features such as house or car or ring size.

The psychological-state-scape is binary in the two modes because the metabolic physiologies of the two modes are incompatible. The holistic state of being cannot be both simultaneously. Different blood biochemistries and tissue and organ responses are in play. It’s one or the other: Vying for dominance or accepting subservience. Fight or flight. Challenge or hide. More than a billion years of evolution ain’t goin anywhere.

“Bosses” will find each other to fight. Subservient individuals, subservient in the circumstances, will lower their eyes, group to the edges of the room and exchange vital information about who is “a nice person”.

Application to politics

The establishment bosses that run the Left, more than the Right, exploit the population of individuals that are most easily corralled into the goodiness mode and seduced by goodiness promises.

The boss propaganda (mainstream media, institutional messaging) is clearly designed in this direction: human rights, minority rights, environmentalism, democracy, participation… whereas the state continues its vicious wars of dominance world-wide and its violent apartheid of aboriginal and low economic classes and of non-violent Criminal Code offenders.

It is a textbook illustration. Extreme social justice warriorism and safe-space obsessionism are, in my opinion, pathological and predictable outcomes of unchecked exploitation by those who ride the Left.

As a backlash against the overly successful establishment Left propaganda and institutional capture, individuals who are inhabited by the competition mode react in revolt by violating the goodiness rules of expression and behaviour, causing generalized and amplified outrage. They break the taboos, express racism, use the N-word, graffiti swastikas, speak their minds, and trigger and troll the masses.

The establishment bosses that run the Right have not been keen to use this relatively unmanageable population and have been only tentative in exploring how to use it. Trump changed that. There is no denying that Trump unsettled traditional Republican forces.

This does not mean that all Right-thinking voters are competition-mode individuals, not by any stretch. Most Right-thinking voters are conservatives who seek the “safe space” of traditional family and religious values. They are horrified at the prospect of an eroded institutional framework that could threaten this safe space and they seek the good-person representatives that would protect them.

The establishment bosses that exploit both the Left and the Right understand that goodiness is a winning electoral formula, since most individuals in a dominance hierarchy are goodiness-mode followers rather that competition-mode individuals who vie for higher echelons. This is the nature of a stable dominance hierarchy: Most people just want to be oppressed fairly, to know their place and to be safe. In a so-called “democracy”, since show elections are required, the only question is the flavour of the goodiness.

A problem arises when the flavours of goodiness are so different that the other side is threatened when institutions are captured. Then many will feel they are in danger and the conditions are ripe for competition-mode redress.

In these circumstances, the Right voters shift to seeking and supporting competition-mode leaders that will fight back on their behalf, and more of the Right adopts a competition-style stance. It could have gone the other way, like it did for decades. The Right could have accepted defeat, accepted the humiliation of being “bad persons”, and sought refuge in their own spaces. The Right could have stayed in a social state with most of its individuals in the goodiness mode being pampered by goodiness-mode representatives promising elusive “justice”.

In Canada, I think Preston Manning was a goodiness organizer (reform by rational argument) whereas Harper organized a coup and dismantled as much Left capture of institutions as possible. The Left stuck with goodiness and turned it on, screaming about the Right’s demolition of “human rights”, “environmental protection” and “democracy”. We got Trudeau. Now the Right is rightly pointing to some of the pathologies of going too far with Left goodiness, and its managers are exaggerating the institutional threats against family and against human nature itself, no less.

So goes the seesaw of political manipulation, perfectly in resonance with the intrinsic modes of being of the individual. The individuals naturally self-organize and are corralled into protective communities, both within and between strata of the hierarchy.

Application to religion

Institutionally organized religion is a perfected system of goodiness rules, which stabilizes and strengthens a dominance hierarchy. Even environmentalism can be understood as such a state religion [9].

Religious belief and practice, for most people, is deeply ingrained in the goodiness mode of being of the individual, as should be obvious from my above description. The rituals of recycling, healthy lifestyle practice, donations to The United Way and so on, while they have no positive effect on population health, systemic negative class bias or “the planet”, nurture and solidify a prolonged and robust adoption by the individual of the goodiness mode of being.

As long as a majority of citizens reside in the goodiness mode of being, the dominance hierarchy cannot be challenge and major displacements will not occur. Public peace will prevail.

Of course religious seminal texts, nowadays including much of the so-called scientific literature, are more complex than state propaganda and can be used, as needed or desired, to incite individuals into the competitive mode of being, into the confrontational state, to be manipulated by political organizations.

This is actively seen today in Zionist Israel with Torah and holocaust scholarship, where the texts are used to incite and rationalize genocidal displacement, confinement and suppression of the native population. Interestingly, hard science (genetics) has established that white European Jews that have always run the modern state of Israel do not have a relevant ancestry that originated in Palestine.[10] If science mattered.

Conclusion and verification

It is in our animal and human nature — inherited on our evolutionary path — to occupy either the goodiness or competitive modes of being, which represent biochemical and physiological states of either accepting or challenging the dominance of others.

The reality of my model of individual modes of being can be tested (experienced) by experimentation with LSD, which alters serotonin metabolism.[11] A common description of mild LSD experiences is that the subject is able to escape their persona and become conscious of their identity programing and conscious of the identity or motivational programming of others.[12] Dominance hierarchy is dissolved by blocking serotonin receptors on neurons. No wonder that’s illegal.

Endnotes

[1] “The Influence of Social Hierarchy on Primate Health”, by R.M. Sapolsky. Science, 29 April 2005, vol. 308, pages 648-652. DOI: 10.1126/science.1106477. http://pinniped.net/sapolsky2005.pdf

[2] “Cancer arises from stress-induced breakdown of tissue homeostasis”, by Denis Rancourt, Research Gate, December 2015, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1304.7129. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285574571_Cancer_arises_from_stress-induced_breakdown_of_tissue_homeostasis

[3] “Serotonin, social status and aggression”, by Donald Edwards and Edward Kravitzt, 1997, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, vol. 7, pages 812-819. http://animalnecessity.com/doc/research/Serenin/Serotonin-Social-Status.pdf

[4] “Serotonin modulates behavioral reactions to unfairness”, by Molly J. Crockett et al., Science, 2008 June 27; 320(5884): 1739. doi:10.1126/science.1155577. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2504725/

[5] “Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior through effects on harm aversion”, by Molly J. Crockett et al., PNAS, October 5, 2010, vol. 107, no. 40, 17433-17438. http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/107/40/17433.full.pdf

[6] “Serotonin and Dominance”, by Anna Ziomkiewicz, January 2016, In: Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1440-1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310586509_Serotonin_and_Dominance

[7] “Jordan Peterson and the Threat of Working-class Intellectual and Attitudinal Liberation”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, June 3, 2018. https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/06/jordan-peterson-and-the-threat-of-working-class-intellectual-and-attitudinal-liberation/

[8] “Cause of USA Meltdown and Collapse of Civil Rights”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, September 7, 2017. https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/09/cause-of-usa-meltdown-and-collapse-of-civil-rights/

[9] “The Climate Religion”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, September 15, 2016. https://dissidentvoice.org/2016/09/the-climate-religion/

[10] “A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages”, by Marta D. Costa et al., Nature Communications, vol. 4, Article number: 2543 (2013). https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3543

[11] “Serotonin and Hallucinogens”, by GK Aghajanian and GJ Marek, Neuropsychopharmacology, vol. 21, pages 16S–23S (1999). https://www.nature.com/articles/1395318

[12] “Larry Hagman 'All Politicians Should Use LSD'”, interview of Larry Hagman, YouTube, November 24, 2012 upload by xBehindthetruthx. https://youtu.be/UBanX4kpswo

Jordan Peterson and the Threat of Working-class Intellectual and Attitudinal Liberation

By Denis Rancourt, PhD

[This article was first published at Dissident Voice: LINK.]


SUMMARY: Why the industry of glib and vehement mainstream character assassinations of clinical and research psychologist Jordan Peterson? My examination of Peterson’s “Rule 1: Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back” suggests that it is a seminal work anchored in a prestigious body of scientific research that should form the theoretical basis of social science in the coming years. Peterson is simply presenting this nascent scientific paradigm of the primacy of dominance hierarchy directly to the people, without an institutional filter, and using it in a cognitive therapy approach to solve the self-image catastrophe that white males in particular are experiencing. There is no valid basis for the attacks against Peterson, which are motivated by establishment machinations.


I’m a world-class scientist. I’m a physicist with an h-index of 36 (i10-index 81). I was a university professor at 29 and a full and tenured professor at 40. I’ve made discoveries in physics and some of my most cited papers are in soil and environmental science. I’m not clever in navigating society’s dominance hierarchy but I am intellectually honest and I am damn smart when it comes to understanding concepts and recognizing new phenomena.

Only those of my enemies who are professional liars (lawyers) have ever dared to call me stupid: “Mr. Rancourt is an intelligent man Your Honour”, but not repeatedly.

That is why I have been surprised to observe the deluge of strident voices, opinion leaders of our time, who use the establishment’s highest media venues to launch character assassinations of clinical and research psychologist Jordan Peterson based on… nothing.

Peterson is a fascinating media and social phenomenon worth investigating. I looked at his outstanding research record on Google Scholar and read several of his most cited and recent scientific papers. I watched several of his debates against said opinion leaders and several of his pedagogical presentations.

The scientific papers are exemplary, with correct applications of sophisticated statistical, significance and factor analysis tools. I often find sloppy and incorrect applications to be the norm in the medical field,¹ for example, but not here.

In the presentations, I find clear and intelligent statements on the questions related to his many areas of expertise, and ya, some exaggerations and incorrect statements in areas where his gaze has not been objective, it appears.

For example, I don’t understand how an authentic intellectual could read the landmark works of Karl Marx and the critiques of the said work by the great anarchist theorist Kropotkin and not be thoroughly impressed by the genius of Marx, and the elements of his theory that are seminal and fundamental even if incorrectly extrapolated by Marx. I conclude that Jordan has not actually read this stuff or he is being irrational in his evaluation, for whatever reasons related to his personal history.

In my evaluation, however, Peterson’s occasional stupid summaries are entirely a result of his boldness to put ideas out there, on the fly, in his broad and continuous interactions with the world; and they remove nothing from the depth and rigour of his other written and spoken words. Even Einstein wrote naïve and silly things without the prerequisite background study: “Why Socialism?”, 1949.

Next, I decided to get myself a copy of his record-breaking best seller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. I’m a slow reader, and I read all the notes and most of the articles themselves that are cited. I have now finished up to the end of: “Rule 1: Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back”.
I thought: “Holy crap. This guy is doing something unprecedented. He is taking a nascent scientific paradigm and bringing it directly to the people, with no institutional intermediaries. Brilliant.”
I’ll explain what Peterson is doing and its significance but before I do…

I next went back to the products of the character-assassination professionals to see what the service intellectuals had said about “Rule 1”, and I looked for “Rule 1” summaries and explanations on line.
I was shocked to find the degree to which the said service intellectuals had done their job. What a distasteful spectacle. Such vile dishonesty. Only an assigned mission and attempts at opinion mobbing could produce such trash, which actually hurts the brain unless your purpose is mindless subservience to establishment spin.

What is the “nascent scientific paradigm”, which threatens key tenets of the current social engineering complex if it is not sufficiently buried? Let me be blunt. In the last decade or more, biochemists, biologists, animal behaviourists and psychologists have established proof of what some astute observers have been saying for centuries: Dominance hierarchy rules, across the animal kingdom and over evolutionary time. It is rooted in a primordial physiology and metabolic biochemistry.

The metabolism of the monoamine neurotransmitter serotonin, and the associated evolutionary biology, is the first synthesis of the new tectonic plates theory of social science, whether social scientists are aware of it yet or not. Period.

The metabolic biochemistry of dominance locks us in. No socialism theory that presumes altruistic cooperation as its organizing principle can ever work. Non-hierarchical anarchism and its libertarian cousin are useful conceptual end-points that can never be sustainably achieved. The best we can do is to have a responsive and optimally (evolutionarily) beneficial dominance hierarchy that is actively prevented from exercising pathological excess.²

Jordan is spelling this out (p. 14-15):

This is because “nature” is “what selects,” and the longer a feature has existed the more time it has had to be selected-and to shape life. It does not matter whether that feature is physical and biological, or social and cultural. All that matters, from a Darwinian perspective, is permanence—and the dominance hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a billion years. It’s permanent. It’s real. The dominance hierarchy is not capitalism. It’s not communism, either, for that matter. It’s not the military-industrial complex. It’s not the patriarchy—that disposable, malleable, arbitrary cultural artefact. It’s not even a human creation; not in the most profound sense. It is instead a near-eternal aspect of the environment, and much of what is blamed on these more ephemeral manifestations is a consequence of its unchanging existence. We (the sovereign we, the we that has been around since the beginning of life) have lived in a dominance hierarchy for a long, long time. We were struggling for position before we had skin, or hands, or lungs, or bones. There is little more natural than culture. Dominance hierarchies are older than trees.

The part of our brain that keeps track of our position in the dominance hierarchy is therefore exceptionally ancient and fundamental. [Footnote 17: “Serotonin and dominance”, by Ziomkiewicz-Wichary, 2016] It is a master control system, modulating our perceptions, values, emotions, thoughts and actions. It powerfully affects every aspect of our Being, conscious and unconscious alike. This is why, when we are defeated, we act very much like lobsters who have lost a fight. Our posture droops. We face the ground. We feel threatened, hurt, anxious and weak. If things do not improve, we become chronically depressed. Under such conditions, we can’t easily put up the kind of fight that life demands, and we become easy targets for harder-shelled bullies. And it is not only the behavioural and experiential similarities that are striking. Much of the basic neurochemistry is the same.

Consider serotonin, the chemical that governs posture and escape in the lobster. Low-ranking lobsters produce comparatively low levels of serotonin. This is also true of low-ranking human beings (and those low levels decrease more with each defeat). Low serotonin means decreased confidence. Low serotonin means more response to stress and costlier physical preparedness for emergency—as anything whatsoever may happen, at any time, at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy (and rarely something good). Low serotonin means less happiness, more pain and anxiety, more illness, and a shorter lifespan—among humans, just as among crustaceans. Higher spots in the dominance hierarchy, and the higher serotonin levels typical of those who inhabit them, are characterized by less illness, misery and death, even when factors such as absolute income—or number of decaying food scraps are held constant. The importance of this can hardly be overstated.

There is an unspeakably primordial calculator, deep within you, at the very foundation of your brain, far below your thoughts and feelings. It monitors exactly where you are positioned in society …

What the ignorant hit men against Peterson have failed to recognize is that Peterson has summarized the greatest scientific advances of the last few decades, which have immediate relevance to human anthropological consciousness—not to mention representing a direct threat to the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry.²

Peterson is doing this as part of a state-of-the-art cognitive therapy guide or companion.
How can his glib critics be oblivious to this? Simple: Their place and the place of their bosses within the dominance hierarchy are threatened.

Jordan goes on (p. 23-24) to explain the fundamental roles of anger and of fighting back, both as necessary elements of personal liberation and as the fundamental agent to prevent societal spiralling into totalitarianism. His summary on this point is brilliant, and is as seminal as Ward Churchill’s Pacifism as Pathology in the geopolitical field.

The same point is also the main thrust of my 2013 book³ and was made in my 2011 blog extract from the book:

There is no denying the first reality about humans. We are social beings, first and foremost regarding the forces that determine our lives. Our societies are hierarchical and, when not constrained by geography or balancing natural forces, spontaneously grow in size towards more hierarchy and fascism.

A recent antidote against the runaway excesses of Western monarchical and religious hierarchies has been the development of an ethos of individual freedom, spawned in the Enlightenment and anchored in mid-layer economic independence from the top hierarchical predators. …⁴

Peterson is not waiting for the social and medical sciences to catch up to the paradigm elucidation that has recently occurred among dominance-hierarchy pioneers. He is taking those discoveries as his world view and as the foundation for his advice to the youth.

The dominance-hierarchy view of nature is powerful and compelling, now supported by a few decades of hard science. It is a predictive model with unlimited capacity to organize our perception of the world. It is a dangerous truth, as is any truth about ourselves, which is not dominance-hierarchy-given but which instead is anchored in objective reality.

In the words of Harold Pinter:

[T]he majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
– Nobel Lecture (Literature), 2005

Peterson is having an impact because his important words are true and because oppressive false words have gone too far.

Goodiness is helpful in stabilizing the domestic dominance hierarchy, but goodiness has been co-opted and used to excess by one side of the establishment forces, the so-called “Left”. In a classic positive feedback loop—not unlike Jordan’s explanation of alcoholism—goodiness (political correctness) has achieved pathological levels and its totalitarianism is spraying dead bodies all over the landscape.

Regular white males are very publicly being told to “check their privilege” (that is, to shut the fuck up), to cower and to apologize and make amends for a historical accumulation of “toxic masculinity”. Privileged (professional class) non-white and non-male service intellectuals are recruited into a deceitful industry of supposedly fixing society by engineering language and by mounting witch hunts against perceived attitudinal blasphemy.

Dominance hierarchy theory tells us that this is a recipe for backlash. Self-image catastrophe is the dominant determinant of ill-health and is accompanied by violent outbursts or self-destruction.⁵
Jordan Peterson is furiously working to prevent and alleviate a violent race and gender civil war, waged by competing hierarchical exploiters, and guided by a disgusting array of careerist social managers.

Jordan Peterson is also fighting for reason and objectivity and against ideological madness.
I mean, come on:

[T]he idea that there is no binary male/female sex divide in humans is simply a vast overstatement of the fact that many other things also occur in the genital and metabolic physiology of a minority of individuals. …

That environmental factors—including culture and the violence or authoritativeness of the local social dominance hierarchy—affect both natural reproduction and the said set of sex-differentiating physiological attributes does [not] invalidate the sex binary in human society.⁶

Jodan’s Rule-1 explanation about gender roles (pp. 15-16) is anchored in science. His Footnote 18 is “Darwinian sex roles confirmed across the animal kingdom”, which has:

Combining Bateman’s principles with Darwin’s conception of eager males and discriminating females, the Darwin-Bateman paradigm is now the most commonly invoked concept to explain conventional sex roles (…). Specifically, it provides the conceptual framework to understand two central manifestations of conventional sex roles—female-biased parental care and male-biased sexual dimorphism.⁷

What is next? Are we going to pretend that sexual dimorphism is not real? Or postulate that virtually all animal behavioural studies are cultural fantasies imagined by the field observers? Are we going to throw out evolutionary biology and all of Darwin’s ideas as “male science”? Why not discount Einstein’s theories as “Jew science” while we are at it?

Look, white males are assholes, fine. But the “Words that Wound” industry service intellectuals are going too far.⁸ Establishment “science” can be lethal, as is literally the case with medicine,¹ but that does not negate what we actually know about cell biology and metabolic reactions. Likewise, fundamental empirical discoveries about dominance and sex are not negated because Freud was off and psychiatry is a horror. You cannot simply extrapolate cherry picked scientific reports of anomalies into broad self-serving ideological conclusions.

These are the things that Jordan Peterson is responsibly questioning. Thank god.

1. “Cancer arises from stress-induced breakdown of tissue homeostasis”, by Denis Rancourt, Research Gate, December 2015, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1304.7129. [↩] [↩]
2. “Cause of USA Meltdown and Collapse of Civil Rights”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, September 7, 2017. [↩] [↩]
3. Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism, by Denis Rancourt, Stairway Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-9859942-8-0. [↩]
4. “Individual freedom versus collective oppression as the determinative conflict in a hierarchical society”, by Denis Rancourt, Activist Teacher, August 16, 2011. [↩]
5. “Self-Image-Incongruence Theory of Individual Health”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, October 26, 2014. [↩]
6. “Respecting ‘Rules of War’ in Societal Battles: Science, Sex and Hate Speech”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, November 8, 2016. [↩]
7. “Darwinian sex roles confirmed across the animal kingdom”, by Janicke et al., Science Advances, 12 Feb 2016: Vol. 2, no. 2, e1500983 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500983 [↩]
8. “Critical Race Theory and Freedom of Speech” by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Chapter 5 in: The Future of Academic Freedom, edited by Louis Menard, University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780226520049; which is a critique of Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, by legal scholars Mari Matsuda, Charles Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, and Kimberlè Crenshaw, Westview Press, 1993. [↩]