Well, that would indeed be a core issue to dispute with him. I also talk about dominance hierarchies, but I see them not as our destiny but as something to which we can regress when we fall back on some primitive instincts. I suspect that that's what he means to say, or at least that that's all he's entitled to say about them, but he gets carried away with the thrill of scaring and bullying his audience.

I have two more articles coming out soon on Peterson. One of them will dive into what I take to be his motives, the aim being to solve the mystery of why he's so angry and why he seems to resent his critics. The question is what makes this particular dilettante so dangerous. In part, of course, it's that he broke through and is famous and influential. But I think there's more to it.