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pinkmooon 's review for:
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
by Jordan B. Peterson
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.