The lobster debate, Social Hierarchy and Jordan B Peterson

While reading the latest book I picked up, I came across this fascinating and fantastic trivia about lobsters’ behaviours. I assure you that you too will be surprised to learn about it. It is a very excellent analogy, as well as the correlation between the human kingdom and animal ones. This can be utilized to reason out a few characteristics, such as male dominance, the effect of antidepressants and the social hierarchy, including even patriarchy. It goes like this:

1. Like any animal kingdom species, lobsters get into disputes and fights to register male dominance. As usual, the battle is to determine who is the most suitable mate to carry the gene forward. As decided by binary results, the lobster that won the brawl will flex and get bigger physically, advertising his victory. The loser will shrink physically.
2. Suppose you inject an antidepressant, like serotonin, into the lost lobster. It stretches and gets more enormous and ready to fight again. By the way, the same hormone work works on the human as well,
3. An interesting point to note is that these neurochemical behaviours have existed in the animal kingdom for 2.5 million years. i.e., Even before trees came into existence.
4. A defeated human, such as with PTSD, will have the hippocampus shrink and the amygdala grow. A hippocampus can grow back with the help of antidepressants. However, the amygdala never grows back. Similarly, a defeated lobster will have its brain dissolved, and a new one grows back but not of the same one before.
5. Basically, the argument is that the animal kingdom, including humans, organizes itself in the inevitably aligned social hierarchy, which is evolutionary and driven by neurologist chemical reactions, not due to a political system such as capitalism. In other words, the human hierarchical organization in the political system has the evolutionary design to blame, not the other way around.

Apparently, this conclusion is based on a study on lobster, collective behaviours, social hierarchy, etc. And the book where I picked up is “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos ” by Jordan B. Peterson. I will not be able to validate the theory as I am not qualified enough to do this. But he is a well-published author, Professor, clinical psychologist and public intellectual. I am gonna have to go with him this time.

Most rules of these books are controversial now, often unnecessarily. Jordan and his book are receiving the end of American university students’ anger and social figures leaning left. Most noise comes from those who have not read it, instead of having their knowledge based on 140 characters of Twitter. Understandably, the book is not an easy read. The technical terms, psychological reasoning, etc., make it a laborious read. Unless you made up your mind to complete it, it is not gonna finish itself.

I recommend this to you if you are still interested; take it as a fresh perspective on the latest sets of social debates.