Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

Psychopaths can't cooperate.

If I interact with you and I get what I want from you on our first interaction and then to hell with you, you're not going to interact with me again.

So psychopaths are itinerant.

Even psychopathic chimps don't do very well.

The idea that the fundamental human motivation is one of power is about the most cynical and self-serving story that you could possibly tell.

Now, it's a bit compelling, eh?

It's compelling because when a human social organization goes wrong, it degenerates in the direction of power.

You know, if you and your wife are not getting along, you can't cooperate, you can't communicate,

That's all off the table.

You're left with the relationship of tyrant to slave.

And maybe you swap those roles, but it's in the degeneration of the institution that the manifestation of power takes place.

I suppose it can degenerate into a kind of puerile and infantile hedonism too.

No, if you can't organize yourself at some relatively high level of sophistication, you can degenerate into the situation where you do nothing but allow yourself to be possessed by your basest whims.

There's not much difference between that and being psychopathic, by the way.

It's an unbelievably corrosive doctrine.

But then you might object.

That's naive because everything runs on power.

I don't think it's naive at all, by the way.

But a more fundamental objection would be, well, if it's not power that the world is founded on, if it's not the war of all against all, then on what principle is the world founded?

And on what principle should the world be founded?