Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

That's a clever way to mention (suggest) Mr. Peterson and evade the downvotes. :-P

Being an individualist I don't agree with his life advice one bit.

Those that are not looking to settle down to anything less than perfect in life I'd suggest looking up "Actual Freedom".

> Perhaps he shouldn’t bother linking order/chaos with gender at all.

The point he is making though is that they have traditionally been associated with gender. Just look at any religious art or any art for that matter pre-dating cameras (abstract art took over post the invention of cameras for obvious reasons) and you will find thematic ties to gender. In fact, walk into any church and look at the ceiling, that will show you how the west have thought about this chaos/order duality for 2000 years now.

With that said, is there a way to argue that perhaps feminine is order and masculine is chaos? hell yea. But please note that I wrote "most often", which is also his claim. You could however make the opposite argument and we can have a healthy discussion about the proper metaphorical language space we can use to describe such abstract concepts. But the idea of being offended because gender was used historically is rather nuts. People used what was historically available to them to use in terms of abstract story telling tools. Gender was one of those tools. Getting mad at it is borderline crazy imo.

> but what Peterson is trying to get at by this feminine chaos/masculine order thing - apart from a truly boring “the middle way is the best” argument that you point out and which clearly doesn’t require a gender linking to make - is completely unclear.

It seems to me that you are making the assumption that there IS more to it than that. Which I see no evidence for.

What I don´t really understand is: why really stop? why shouldn´t he link gender with the chaos/order duality? because people get offended? If that is the reason then all of us can say nothing at all. Because I can find a reason to get offended by anything you say. That can´t possibly be a reasonable demand either. How would we ever have any discourse in society if when someone is offended we are all required to be quiet about said thing?

The irony of this whole discussion is that you are demonstrating why Peterson keeps saying that we are slipping into chaos. We are trying to protect everyone who´s offended to the point where society as a whole is slipping toward the Oedipal mother pathology.

If there’s nothing more to it, what place does it have in a self-help book, or in any book? Why bother saying it? What interest should it hold for me? This continual argument I hear from people that he’s just “describing how things are” seems self-defeating - it makes him sound as boring as someone who goes around saying “the sky is blue, the sun is hot”. Yeah, and? So what? There’s no point engaging with or listening to someone who says “Femininity is linked with chaos. I’m not implying anything by that, and my argument should have no bearing on anything. I’m just saying that’s the way it is.” I don’t believe Peterson IS saying that, though - I think it’s just a convenience for him and most of his fans to be able to claim that he’s said nothing at all except raw falsifiable statements which might be wrong (but if they’re wrong it doesn’t matter anyway because they don’t mean anything). Why bother linking the concepts to gender? Well, it looks like the main reason is that it offends people, and some people seem to find that worthwhile in and of itself.

Read the originators of Peterson’s ideas. They certainly thought their statements about gender, archetypes, psychology, etc had deep meaning and informed how things ‘should be’, not merely how they are (of course, simply saying ‘this is how things are’ and nothing else can be an expression of deep conservatism, which is how many interpret Peterson - this is how things are AND YOU CAN’T CHANGE THEM, so just act in accordance with them).

The sexual-marketplace is not good advice on how to behave, but there is aspects of truth to acknowledge that humans are somewhat similar to tournament species where a smaller percentage of men have children compared to women. The semi-accurate 20/80 means that social status has a very direct impact on the probability that a man has children, and a sad aspect of human culture is the tendency for men to be rewarded with social status for cultural correct aggression.

But we are also somewhat similar to pair bonding species. I would not describe it as an outlier or unusual, but rather two different biological strategies that is expressed through genes and culture. Researchers has even found some specific genes that is linked to predicting it, and women and men who has more of the pair-bonding associated genes have longer and happier relationships.

Being aware of both strategies and knowing there is a biological aspect to it is useful information, but strictly following one is foolish. We are human with human brains so individuals will behave uniquely even if there is a bias when averaged over a population.

Wow, didn't expect it here. Chapman is an amazing guy. Influenced mostly by Buddhism, has a good grasp of western philosophy and his insights into AI make things even more interesting (he was playing part in the GOFAI).

The message is very subtle, but much closer to reality than most of the other suggestions here. The difficult part is that it requires letting go a lot of views to which we are very attached. Not your typical feel-good motivational book.