Lamenting and Dementing

(The Right Wing of the Leftwaffe)

I keep coming back to the infamous “Yale Halloween Incident” because it was something of a watershed moment for me. It was the first inkling I had that the wheels on the shopping trolley of society had gone a bit wonky.

The students were obviously passionate about something. Feelings are feelings and their feelings had certainly been stoked up. If you watch some of the longer videos you’ll find plenty to comment about - the calm rationality of Prof Christakis contrasting with the emotional bullying of the students being one of them. But what stood out for me was one student saying something along the lines of having to fight for her existence.

Yale is one of the world’s foremost institutes of learning. Students there are amongst the most privileged people on the planet. How could it be that it was also simultaneously a place where a student was having to fight for her existence?

I still don’t fully understand all of the drivers and emotions that led to that incident but perhaps the word that can best characterize the student reaction is excess.

But it’s just students isn’t it? Isn’t it their job to whip themselves up into some sort of excessive ideological frenzy whilst at university where they can safely play at being aggrieved and righteous before growing up?

The problem is that this excessive zeal appears to have leached out into wider society and certain sections of society are becoming somewhat unhinged. I’d like to say it’s all on the “left”, but the “right” has gone a bit demented too. Maybe it’s just a chicken and egg thing - but my impression is that a lot of things are being pushed to extremes.

You know that thing you show kids with bathwater? Where you start moving the water back and forth and if you get the frequency right it starts sloshing out over the sides? It’s a very unwise thing to show kids as I learned to my cost - but it feels like society is kind of like this. The resonance is building up and the sloshing is getting worse.

It was 2016 when I first became aware of the fascinating psychology experiment that played out in the quad at Yale. It was also the year which began another psychology experiment - this time at a country level. Trump took up residence at the White House and the reactions were spectacular.

I don’t really know enough about the day-to-day politics in the US so I can’t really comment on whether Trump did a good or bad job (although he did seem to be someone who turned down the dial on war and successfully brokered some Middle East peace deals which had eluded many prior Administrations - kind of not at all ‘dictatorial’ and ‘fascist’ and ‘end-of-democracy’ worthy), but the reaction to him from certain quarters was off-the-scale batshit insane. Looking at it from the outside it really did appear to be utterly deranged and unbalanced.

Even now he still holds a bizarre fascination - like someone has fought off a whole bunch of secret service agents to firmly grip the steering wheel of their minds.

I saw something similar when I first became aware of a certain notorious individual who is called Jordan Peterson. I became aware of him shortly after seeing the “Yale Incident” - a YouTube suggestion took me to the case of Lindsay Shepherd. Shepherd was a graduate teaching assistant who was investigated in a style befitting the Spanish Inquisition by the academic management. Her ‘crime’ was to show a clip from public TV to her students.

It was a news clip in which two academics were arguing about gender - and one of those academics was Jordan Peterson. During Shepherd’s interrogation one of the academic luminaries sitting in judgement described Peterson as some kind of lunatic Nazi not fit for presentation in a classroom setting.

Awesome, I thought, I really have to find out more about this nutjob. I do quite enjoy seeing crazy people say crazy things - it’s an eccentricity of mine. Just like I thoroughly enjoy conspiracy theories. It’s fun.

Imagine my surprise when Prof Peterson turned out NOT to be quite as drooling and demented as I had been led to believe. In fact he seemed remarkably sane, level-headed and reasonable to me. As I watched more of Peterson’s material I could only marvel at his raw intelligence and eloquence and the way he tried to bring science into much of his reasoning. His opinions, right or wrong, were all mostly sourced from his own career and understanding of psychology - and he’s certainly no academic lightweight by any conventional measure (very high H-index, thousands of citations to his research work).

After many, many hours of watching interviews and lectures I still hadn’t found a single example of him being ‘hateful’.

Yet this curious mythology seemed to emerge where Peterson was reviled, on the “left”, as some sort of demonic mad evil person. I experienced this myself. During a family meal at a restaurant I happened to mention Peterson in a neutral to positive light. I can’t remember why, or what we were discussing at the time, but I can tell you I would have had a better reaction had I dropped my trousers and laid a fresh one on the table.

It was a kind of Peterson Derangement Syndrome every bit as real as TDS. Of course, none of those present at the table could actually provide any example of anything Peterson had said that was hateful or extreme. They’d been ‘programmed’ into a certain response that had become instinctual - a kind of Pavlovian angst.

And we are now seeing this kind of excessive reaction everywhere. There’s Rowling Derangement Syndrome, for example, where she is being utterly abused online, by some, for her view that maybe, you know, this biology stuff might be important for women. But maybe had JKR been writing her famous series today it would have been “Harriet Potter”

Everywhere we’re seeing this kind of derangement in response to individuals.

Yet another example of a reasonable, balanced response to a point of view which says “hang on a blessed minute, if anyone can be a woman what the hell have feminists been fighting for this past century?”

There have always been disagreements, different ways of seeing things, heated arguments and a whole variety of beliefs and ethical priorities. And long may that continue - it’s in the crucible of argument that new ideas are formed. But I’m seeing an apparent rigidity and extremity now that I don’t think was as prevalent in recent previous decades.

The conspiracy theory loving part of me might speculate that not only are certain ideas being deliberately promulgated but extremity is too. We are being driven to ever more rigid and extreme positions.

It has certainly characterized the response to covid. You were either “all in” for the ludicrous interventions - or you were some crazy science-denying fruitloop who, as Trudeau implied, should not be ‘tolerated’.

It’s not acceptable to have concerns about the Glorious Goo - it is, without doubt, the single most perfect, safest, most effective, vaccine ever created and we should worship and thank Pfizer with every laboured breath as we struggle through our 4th covid infection.

It really does seem that someone, somewhere, is pulling the strings to turn society into something like this

And what’s more, the “tea” drinkers are being encouraged to hate the “coffee” drinkers.

Yes the Leftwaffe are loons at times - and seem to behave more ‘right wing’ than any demented dictator, and I certainly enjoy pointing out some of the craziness. But ultimately we need to find our way through this and to resist this push towards hating one another. We need more of “your views are clinically insane, having delusions of adequacy would be a significant step up for you, and there is no beginning to your talents - but I love you just the same”

Trying to appreciate different perspectives really does matter

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