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A review by bittersweet_symphony
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
3.0
Regarding the 12 Rules, I echo the similar criticism that others have given--the book has a meandering structure. Peterson explains in his preface how this book came to be--distilled down from a much longer list of rules--and why he has it organized in this way. Still, I found it wandered through many thoughts that weren't totally relevant to the chapter headings, and not the clearest even when it broke down into the subsections. His conversational style mostly works for him though. His book exists as a blend of self-help and life philosophy. Although I wasn't particularly moved and enlightened by it, I know several people who have been (Peterson has mentioned receiving thousands of emails from readers, some who came back from suicide's ledge to live thriving lives).
As for Peterson, I have my disagreements with him, but I appreciate his existence as a recently brandished public intellectual. He's part of the new counter-culture, if one can say that about a person who is offering order as an antidote to the excesses and chaos that have derived from Postmodernism and Critical Theory. He stands far more traditionalist than me, but I value his role as a corrective against the deconstructive nature and illiberalism coming from the far left. He's a classical liberal drawing from the accumulated wisdom from millennia of mythology, psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience. I would have loved much deeper dives into mythology, particularly those from non-western traditions. Also, he commits a great heresy among mythologists of taking the symbolic literally (including that many of his claims around gender are too binary).
He occasionally misspeaks when it comes to politics, but he provides a philosophy of empowerment grounded in individual responsibility. Get your shit together before you go about shaming and telling other people what to do. Meaning supersedes the pursuit of happiness, which is a distractor. Life at its base is suffering, but we can find ways to thrive within and because of our human limits.
I'd be interested in reading his Maps of Meaning, if it didn't cost $60.
For further thoughts on Peterson and the pitfalls of postmodernism, see my article published in Erraticus.
As for Peterson, I have my disagreements with him, but I appreciate his existence as a recently brandished public intellectual. He's part of the new counter-culture, if one can say that about a person who is offering order as an antidote to the excesses and chaos that have derived from Postmodernism and Critical Theory. He stands far more traditionalist than me, but I value his role as a corrective against the deconstructive nature and illiberalism coming from the far left. He's a classical liberal drawing from the accumulated wisdom from millennia of mythology, psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience. I would have loved much deeper dives into mythology, particularly those from non-western traditions. Also, he commits a great heresy among mythologists of taking the symbolic literally (including that many of his claims around gender are too binary).
He occasionally misspeaks when it comes to politics, but he provides a philosophy of empowerment grounded in individual responsibility. Get your shit together before you go about shaming and telling other people what to do. Meaning supersedes the pursuit of happiness, which is a distractor. Life at its base is suffering, but we can find ways to thrive within and because of our human limits.
I'd be interested in reading his Maps of Meaning, if it didn't cost $60.
For further thoughts on Peterson and the pitfalls of postmodernism, see my article published in Erraticus.