ANT!PETERSON ONE:

Peterson argues that agreeable men tend to strive for win-win situations, whereas unagreeable men tend to produce win-lose situations wherein they are themselves the winners. It follows logically and cynically that human life is predominated, as in the works of Nietzsche and Steinbeck, by the unagreeable men who exploit the effeminate agreeableness of “beta men”. Yet, as per usual, Peterson focuses so intensely upon one angle that he misses the bigger picture. Consider, for instance, the role that Conscientiousness plays in win-win situations. Peterson panders to his neoconservative market (another part of his anti-Marxist pitfall) by defining conscientiousness within the extremely narrow (lacking in Openness) confines of “work ethic”. Yet by so doing he casts a curtain over the entire history of ethics. Traditionally, win-win situations promote the Greater Good, including Greatest Good for the Greatest Number, and deontologically speaking the pursuit of Good for the Other as Well as the Self remains consistent with the ideals of Social Justice, both inside and outside of the courtroom. Conscientious individuals might easily qualify their agreeableness by standing by their convictions, yet only to the extent that this does not risk substantial harm to the Other Party; in such a negotiation, they assume the Moral High Ground at the moment that their interlocutor attempts to overstep a boundary they hold sacred, and against the leverage provided by their values they manage to force the unagreeable egoist into a win-win situation, even if it means mitigating the winnings for the consequently compromised egoist. The only manner in which this enterprise fails is if the conscientious, agreeable person is somehow fooled into surrendering his (or her, though Peterson conveniently ignores the success of such women) stance. One method by which a manipulator might bypass the conscientious person is by accusing him of lacking Openness. (May the record show that this is a falsehood, since the conscientious person has the entire history of morality to avail himself of, whereas I have provided ample warrant to prove that Peterson lacks openness by ignoring the bulk of this history.) So long as the manipulator can PRETEND to understanding moral principles on a high context, he or she can challenge the authority of the conscientious man. Yet another attempt at manipulation comes about if the manipulator manages to pit conscientious against agreeableness. If the manipulator can somehow convince either his interlocutor or an “authoritative” third party that the conscientious man’s values (and largely unyielding insistence upon those values) in fact HARMS the manipulator, then in an attempt to PREVENT a win-lose situation in his own favour our hero will unwittingly produce a win-lose situation in the villain’s favour. We must only hope that most conscientious, open, and agreeable men are also discerning when it comes to con artistry, even if this renders them more jaded than they’d like to be or they deserve.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]