“It’s Just Tyranny!”

From Jordan Peterson’s Biblical Series VI: The Psychology of the Flood, at about 35 minutes; he is addressing the common complaints aimed at patriarchy (cited as accurately as I could after a few passes):

The patriarchal aspect of existence can become tyrannical, it does that quite regularly.

Every solution carries within it certain problems; no solution is perfect.  ….That’s why I am so irritated with the post-modernists, yammering about the patriarchy, and it’s very, very annoying.  It’s self-evident that social systems are tyrannical; that’s not news, folks!  That’s obvious. 

But that’s not all they are.  It’s the reduction of the entire complex solution to a unidimensional problem.  “It’s just tyranny!”  No, it’s not just tyranny.  If you spent six months someplace that was just tyranny, you’d know the difference very, very rapidly.

And that doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t give up a pound or two or ten or twenty of flesh to participate in a society that’s as free as a western society is.

I have argued here regularly that there will always be governance in any society – governance, not necessarily meaning government as we today use the term.  For the libertarian who recognizes that no solution is perfect (i.e. we are human), this means as decentralized and voluntary as possible.

I have suggested that while I would like to see about 1.5 billion governance units (one per household, aka “patriarchy”), I would settle for a few thousand.

I find the family unit (and, by extension, kin, tribe, nation) to be the most naturally occurring and decentralized governance unit.  Certainly not at birth (for the child), but at some point the family unit becomes rather “voluntary” for each member in it.

Of course, leaving a family unit can be liberating; it also comes with some risks – real costs.

It is easy to point to the “tyranny” of social systems (especially patriarchy), as Peterson suggests.  “But that’s not all they are.”  Such social systems cannot be viewed in this unidimensional manner.

Every solution carries within it certain problems; no solution is perfect.

We live in a world of imperfect humans; there will be no perfect solution.  Our hope for realizing something toward liberty lies in decentralization, choice.  Our hope is to build on social systems that take only a pound of flesh, not the ten or twenty pounds as currently taken in the west.

Our hope lies in taking advantage of social systems that are the most voluntary and least coercive.  History has shown this to be found in patriarchy.

Destroy this, and we will get to spend far more than six months in real tyranny.  This is the path of the left, whether self-described as libertarian or Cultural Marxist.  Their ends might be different; their means are identical.

Yet, in the end, only one of the two ends (liberty or slavery) can win.  Which one of the two this will be, if society continues on this path, is obvious.