Neanderthals, Morality, Ivy League Criticism
My latest in the WSJ + links and recommendations
You can now catch my appearance on the Gentleman’s Collective Podcast.
Links for Spotify and Apple Podcast.
Wall Street Journal
I have a new piece out in the Wall Street Journal about the weird code of silence expected from elite college graduates.
My Criticism of the Ivy League Isn’t Hypocrisy
Excerpt:
When politicians who graduated from Ivy League schools speak out against them, they’re often called hypocrites. Think of Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, JD Vance, Ron DeSantis and Elise Stefanik. In 2024, Rob McCarron, who heads the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, called it “unfortunate, and ironic, when individuals who have benefited greatly from a college education, and continue to reap those benefits, are the most vocal critics of higher education.”
I’m occasionally on the receiving end of this claim myself as a result of my Ivy League degree and vocal criticism of higher education. But I don’t recall agreeing either to keep my mouth shut or express only gratitude as a condition of acceptance. I never pledged an omertà when I matriculated.
[…]
Something must change. But defenders of elite universities would rather change the subject. They go after the critics instead of addressing the criticisms. If you went to an elite school, informed dissent is seen as a kind of betrayal. If you didn’t, you might be written off as someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation.
Read the whole thing here.
The Psychology of Morality
My new lecture series “The Psychology of Morality” is now available exclusively at Peterson Academy.
I delivered six lectures in front of a live studio audience that explore the origins of morality. The course examines the distinction between moral philosophy and moral psychology, showing how emotions and intuitions often guide our judgments more than rational principles. It also investigates frameworks such as Haidt’s moral foundations theory and Gray’s moral dyad theory. The series also covers dark personality traits and their relationship with moral behavior, and concludes by examining the relationship between morality and happiness, sex differences in moral judgment, and moral development across the lifespan.
Enroll here for immediate access.
Here’s the trailer:
Links and recommendations:
Boys can read by Richard V. Reeves Of Boys and Men
Many young guys have told me that Troubled is the first book they ever read cover to cover, some of them in a single sitting
You May Not Be Political, But Politics Finds You by Ethan Strauss
Is caring about democracy a luxury belief? by Milan Singh
Spoiler: No
A Classic Study from the Early Days of Pornography by Roy Baumeister
Follow me on Instagram here. The platform is less volatile and more chill than Twitter/X, so I post some spicier excerpts from my readings on my IG stories
You can follow me on TikTok here
Three interesting findings:
1. Tens of thousands of years ago, Neanderthals and modern humans interbred. In a recently published study, a team of researchers report that men with a lot of Neanderthal ancestry and women with a lot of modern human ancestry had a strong tendency to mate with each other. Maybe modern human women found something attractive about men with a lot of Neanderthal DNA, or vice versa.
2. Threatening people with massive punishments in the distant future is not a very effective remedy. This is well understood by criminologists, who have observed that the social stigmatization of criminality is a much more powerful deterrent than threats of lengthy incarceration. (source: Cooperation and Social Justice by Joseph Heath).
3. The personality trait of openness tends to correlate more strongly with crystallized intelligence—acquired knowledge and verbal competence—than with fluid intelligence, which reflects more abstract reasoning abilities. This is consistent with the idea that intellectually curious people accumulate more knowledge over time. (source).
The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.
If you have gained any value from this newsletter and want to support my work, please buy a copy today. For yourself. For a friend or a loved one. If you can’t afford it, please support your local library.
Order your copy now:
Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
