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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
I've been trying to read this book on and off since Nov. 2024. It's a library book so I was waiting in between to get it again. I've been trying to read it again since last week and for whatever reason, I just cannot connect to it. Today I decided to simply DNF it. Maybe I'll try again someday.
Whilst it does go off on some very long winded tangents, it's got solid advice that most of us could learn from.
Jordan Peterson is an extremely switched on academic and I would love to read more of his works
Jordan Peterson is an extremely switched on academic and I would love to read more of his works
I got interested in this author after watching on YouTube Jordan Peterson's entire Maps of Meaning lectures from 2017. He is mesmerizing as a professor and speaker and by reading this book I discovered that he is an engaging writer as well.
The text is packed with references to Nietzsche, Jung and the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, intertwining psychology with philosophy, history and a solid dose of religious wisdom. However, the ideas are explained clearly, with plenty of examples.
Generally speaking, this entire book is trying to define the guidelines for a meaningful life by standing on the shoulders of the giant thinkers of the past. It feels like a renovated compilation of all the great philosophical thinking of the western world, rebranded for a new generation. In the end, it actually provides a cohesive structure for life.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don’t know, what God they serve."
"An aim, an ambition, provides the structure necessary for action. An aim provides a destination, a point of contrast against the present, and a framework, within which all things can be evaluated. An aim defines progress and makes such progress exciting."
"The present is eternally flawed. But where you start might not be as important as the direction you are heading. Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak. Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived."
"When the wakening occurs—when once-naïve people recognize in themselves the seeds of evil and monstrosity, and see themselves as dangerous (at least potentially) their fear decreases. They develop more self-respect. Then, perhaps, they begin to resist oppression. They see that they have the ability to withstand, because they are terrible too."
"I have seen people define their utopia and then bend their lives into knots trying to make it reality. A left-leaning student adopts a trendy, anti-authority stance and spends the next twenty years working resentfully to topple the windmills of his imagination. An eighteen-year-old decides, arbitrarily, that she wants to retire at fifty-two. She works for three decades to make that happen, failing to notice that she made that decision when she was little more than a child. What did she know about her fifty-two-year-old self, when still a teenager? Even now, many years later, she has only the vaguest, lowest-resolution idea of her post-work Eden. She refuses to notice. What did her life mean, if that initial goal was wrong? She’s afraid of opening Pandora’s box, where all the troubles of the world reside. But hope is in there, too. Instead, she warps her life to fit the fantasies of a sheltered adolescent.
A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life-lie."
The text is packed with references to Nietzsche, Jung and the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, intertwining psychology with philosophy, history and a solid dose of religious wisdom. However, the ideas are explained clearly, with plenty of examples.
Generally speaking, this entire book is trying to define the guidelines for a meaningful life by standing on the shoulders of the giant thinkers of the past. It feels like a renovated compilation of all the great philosophical thinking of the western world, rebranded for a new generation. In the end, it actually provides a cohesive structure for life.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don’t know, what God they serve."
"An aim, an ambition, provides the structure necessary for action. An aim provides a destination, a point of contrast against the present, and a framework, within which all things can be evaluated. An aim defines progress and makes such progress exciting."
"The present is eternally flawed. But where you start might not be as important as the direction you are heading. Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak. Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived."
"When the wakening occurs—when once-naïve people recognize in themselves the seeds of evil and monstrosity, and see themselves as dangerous (at least potentially) their fear decreases. They develop more self-respect. Then, perhaps, they begin to resist oppression. They see that they have the ability to withstand, because they are terrible too."
"I have seen people define their utopia and then bend their lives into knots trying to make it reality. A left-leaning student adopts a trendy, anti-authority stance and spends the next twenty years working resentfully to topple the windmills of his imagination. An eighteen-year-old decides, arbitrarily, that she wants to retire at fifty-two. She works for three decades to make that happen, failing to notice that she made that decision when she was little more than a child. What did she know about her fifty-two-year-old self, when still a teenager? Even now, many years later, she has only the vaguest, lowest-resolution idea of her post-work Eden. She refuses to notice. What did her life mean, if that initial goal was wrong? She’s afraid of opening Pandora’s box, where all the troubles of the world reside. But hope is in there, too. Instead, she warps her life to fit the fantasies of a sheltered adolescent.
A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life-lie."
Certainly worth reading, not all chapters were engaging - each persons needs to choose within 12 ideas sth for himself.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
This book would have been better if it was half as long. Jordan Peterson spends way too much of this book rambling about lobsters and the Bible. It is not a good self help book. If you remove all the nonsense it might be a serviceable book about personal change. I would not recommend people take this book seriously.
I thought of giving this two stars, as it does have some good advice, but it’s so poorly written that comparing it to The Courage to Be Disliked, a book I had no great enthusiasm for, would do the latter no favours. I was as open-minded as one could be going into this book — had I not known of Peterson already, I probably wouldn’t have finished it, having already known of his most incoherent flights of fancy — lobsters, being emasculated by children, complaining about postmodernists — beforehand, and willing to overlook those.
Let me be charitable. Peterson seems like a nice enough man. When he kept his anecdotes and advice strictly within his purview as a psychotherapist, it all seems reasonable and helpful. Painfully simple, yes, but painfully simple advice is absolutely the most important to those suffering from afflictions-of-modernity as I have. My room needed a good cleaning badly last weekend, and after putting it off all day playing videogames, I did so and felt wholly new. It’s stupid that he’s won fame and financial reward for vocally giving dumb obvious advice like this, but the advice itself does help. I considered my reading this book with charitable intent as thanks for ‘clean your room’ becoming a meme.
Everything beyond the most absolutely mundane here is ridiculous, and unfortunately Peterson ties up most of his most practical advice in mealy-mouthed fairy stories. If those who cannot write, teach creative writing, those who study Carl Jung and mythology can’t tell a simple allegorical story to save their lives. Peterson centres the Bible in his interpretation of modern problems because it’s so easy to make your argument seem vaguely profound by borrowing from arguably the most influential single text (if one can call it that) in human history. Throwing the word ‘dragon’ into your motivational speech doesn’t imbue it with metaphysical significance, it just makes you and your target audience seem pseudointellectual, barely literate.
I’m not against Bible criticism or even Jungian explication, really, but Peterson is so bad at it. He sucks the beauty and intrigue out of everything. His clunky appropriation of the humanities is precisely why more careful study should be encouraged, because he manages to make the completely ignorant believe that a text doesn’t have only 1 meaning...it has two! Beware the damage someone can do when they’ve learned how to use only one tool.
I’d criticize more, but I’m pressed for time writing this. The greater problems are so self-evident as to not warrant my coming back to this review. I think self-help is an interesting, underdeveloped genre, at least when it comes to the explication of philosophy in everyday life. But this isn’t the book for that. I don’t know what is, and am presuming there cannot be any one such text. Read widely — read this, if it puts you on Dostoyevsky. Otherwise don’t bother.
Let me be charitable. Peterson seems like a nice enough man. When he kept his anecdotes and advice strictly within his purview as a psychotherapist, it all seems reasonable and helpful. Painfully simple, yes, but painfully simple advice is absolutely the most important to those suffering from afflictions-of-modernity as I have. My room needed a good cleaning badly last weekend, and after putting it off all day playing videogames, I did so and felt wholly new. It’s stupid that he’s won fame and financial reward for vocally giving dumb obvious advice like this, but the advice itself does help. I considered my reading this book with charitable intent as thanks for ‘clean your room’ becoming a meme.
Everything beyond the most absolutely mundane here is ridiculous, and unfortunately Peterson ties up most of his most practical advice in mealy-mouthed fairy stories. If those who cannot write, teach creative writing, those who study Carl Jung and mythology can’t tell a simple allegorical story to save their lives. Peterson centres the Bible in his interpretation of modern problems because it’s so easy to make your argument seem vaguely profound by borrowing from arguably the most influential single text (if one can call it that) in human history. Throwing the word ‘dragon’ into your motivational speech doesn’t imbue it with metaphysical significance, it just makes you and your target audience seem pseudointellectual, barely literate.
I’m not against Bible criticism or even Jungian explication, really, but Peterson is so bad at it. He sucks the beauty and intrigue out of everything. His clunky appropriation of the humanities is precisely why more careful study should be encouraged, because he manages to make the completely ignorant believe that a text doesn’t have only 1 meaning...it has two! Beware the damage someone can do when they’ve learned how to use only one tool.
I’d criticize more, but I’m pressed for time writing this. The greater problems are so self-evident as to not warrant my coming back to this review. I think self-help is an interesting, underdeveloped genre, at least when it comes to the explication of philosophy in everyday life. But this isn’t the book for that. I don’t know what is, and am presuming there cannot be any one such text. Read widely — read this, if it puts you on Dostoyevsky. Otherwise don’t bother.
Really enjoyed multiple sections of the book, however did find it difficult to get through at certain points. If you don't like religion, this book would not be for you as JP discusses it a lot in here. Not a terrible book, but likely won't read again.
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Quick Edit - May 2021: I read this book before BS about Jordan Peterson ended up in front of my face. Downgrading to 2 stars.
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Quick Edit - May 2021: I read this book before BS about Jordan Peterson ended up in front of my face. Downgrading to 2 stars.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
slow-paced
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
There is practically no value in this book. It is not even an interesting read provided we don't have to agree with each other on everything. The quotes and analysis from Bible was so out of the proportion comparing to other reasoning and the writing style of these endless sentences (I had audio book) sounded just like some of condemning preaching I have heard at churches. Rules are all quite uninspiring common sense. I don't remember when was last time I had such disappointment in such highly rated book.