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Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

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Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#91

Post by stfwn »

> There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” -- David Foster Wallace

This is a nice analogy about how hard it is to understand what we live in every day. To know about 'water' I learned a lot from Thomas Eriksen -- Small Places, Large Issues. It's an introduction to cultural anthropology and it's a great academic read, but it also taught me a lot on a personal level; to clearly recognize different schools of thought and see their particular and universal value.

Good contextual knowledge of this sort tones down the general chaos of life for me. It just helps a lot to have a solid mental model of cultures and ideologies, know their overlaps and contradictions, and to have the ability to relate specific thinkers to this model.

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#92

Post by wesammikhail »

upatricck wrote: post #79
lisardo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see Jordan Pererson gets downvoted here, but recommend all critic to read “12 rules for life” themselves. This book helped me a lot.

I am currently listening to the 12 rules for life audiobook, He does have helpful advice. but in the book he argues that chaos if feminine and order is masculine, and he fails to give any logical reasons for that claim. I understand those who are heavily offended by that viewpoint. Except from that the book is generally good. 3.5 stars.

> he fails to give any logical reasons for that claim.

It would take a mere 10 seconds of googling to find the answer to that question as he is literally asked about it every few hours on twitter or in interviews. And every single time he explains it but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

> I understand those who are heavily offended by that viewpoint

I personally don´t understand those people because they are not really listening to the argument. They are selectively hearing what they want to hear. In your "question" there is an embedded assumption that order (masculine) is "good" and chaos (feminine) is "bad". And that´s why people get offended; if they didn´t equate chaos with bad, there would be no reason to get offended. This happens because they are not _actually_ reading Peterson. They are reading what they _think_ someone like Peterson would say but in doing so they miss the point completely.

Peterson argues that chaos in literature is most often presented as feminine (mother nature for instance) and order is presented as masculine most often (God, the heavenly father for instance). At any point in time, order OR chaos can both take hold to varying extreme degrees, which is not good for society. Example: Totalitarian states (extreme order/masculine) are bad, but so is anarchy/chaos and the complete lack of order. Both extreme order and extreme chaos are bad he argues constantly.

Would it be any better if Peterson argued that chaos was masculine and order was feminine? not really, people would still get offended because that´s what people want to be. They don´t actually stop and listen to what is being said, which is unfortunate :/

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#93

Post by koonsolo »

andai wrote: post #62

I was going to suggest Dr. Peterson, but Ctrl+F revealed a veritable graveyard of downvoted comments about him already. That's too bad. So I'll go with Steve Pavlina's [0] work instead. Steve Pavlina's blog is a mix of solid personal development advice mixed with a journal of his self experimentation. His most interesting work is on belief systems, and on deliberately installing new belief systems to improve your lif…

I used to love Steve's writing (back in the game developer days and some after). But I got the impression that he was becoming more and more eccentric/crazy.

I haven't read his articles in a while, so maybe they are more sane now.

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#95

Post by silveroriole »

wesammikhail wrote: post #92
upatricck wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am currently listening to the 12 rules for life audiobook, He does have helpful advice. but in the book he argues that chaos if feminine and order is masculine, and he fails to give any logical reasons for that claim. I understand those who are heavily offended by that viewpoint. Except from that the book is generally good. 3.5 stars.

> he fails to give any logical reasons for that claim. It would take a mere 10 seconds of googling to find the answer to that question as he is literally asked about it every few hours on twitter or in interviews. And every single time he explains it but it seems to fall on deaf ears. > I understand those who are heavily offended by that viewpoint I personally don´t understand those people because they are not really…

Perhaps he shouldn’t bother linking order/chaos with gender at all. There are plenty of arguments you could make that order IS feminine - who, in the American viewpoint, traditionally keeps house, tidies up, makes peace, establishes family routine, is someone you come home to every night? And who is a risk-taker, a go-getter, the one who leaves the comfortable routine and embarks on unknown adventures? I know various literary and psychological arguments about feminine chaos (ooh, the undefinable feminine lack and void! Jungian archetypes!), 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.

e: incidentally, if any of Peterson’s theory ramblings do appeal, just go and read Freud, Jung, Lacan, Marx, the Bible etc in the original. They are all vastly more interesting, subtle and worthwhile than Peterson’s jumbled, evo-psyched retelling of them.

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#97

Post by wesammikhail »

charliesome wrote: post #86
squirrelicus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth all the down votes and more. I'm sure you can divide the down voters into a handful of camps. Those who are somehow convinced he has ties to the despicable alt right, those who are annoyed they keep hearing about him, and those who have actually heard him speak but, ianno, think taking responsibility and straightening yourself out is bad or something. Maybe they're just afraid of confronting their shadow.

> Those who are somehow convinced he has ties to the despicable alt right, When he's hosting two prominent alt right figures as guests on his podcast [0], I think it's pretty fair to say that he has ties to the alt right. [0]: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/11164318379565834...

1. Ben Shapiro is alt-right. Yea and I shit cotton candy. https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-task-force-issue...

2. By that logic, Chris Wallace has ties to Russia too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHY8yG4mVzs

3. If Peterson is alt-right then so are you. Because I am pretty sure that in one way or another you associate yourself with someone who likes Peterson whether you know it or not. So you associate yourself with someone who associates themselves with Peterson who in turn associates himself with what you yourself would classify as alt-right. You disgust me you alt-right [insert insult here]. See how these things go? Maybe it´s best if we all just stopped with the stupid mental gymnastics.

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#99

Post by gexla »

silveroriole wrote: post #83
lisardo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see Jordan Pererson gets downvoted here, but recommend all critic to read “12 rules for life” themselves. This book helped me a lot.

I did read it. I decided not to take life advice from someone who writes, about a two-year-old child: “I picked him bodily off the playground structure, and threw him thirty feet down the field. No, I didn’t. But it would have been better for him if I had.” It’s a ‘joke’, but it’s a weird joke. I believe he thinks this over-aggression makes him seem dominant and powerful; in reality, a grown man getting so furious at…

> in reality, a grown man getting so furious at an infant that he fantasises about throwing it is just odd

You are getting that backwards. In reality, people think that way. They get angry with kids. They may even think violent thoughts. Tragically, they may actually be violent.

Any time you make a statement about what's weird about interactions between adults (especially parents) and kids, you should clarify that you do or do not have kids. So, I'll ask, do you have kids? I ask because we can be rational in an HN discussion. Dealing with kids tests that rationality.

> Is this good advice or information for men or women?

Men who are "alpha male" types get more selection. This may or may not be true. The "should" (rational decisions) is a different argument. JP is trying to explain how things ARE (and he could be wrong on that.) That's different from advice and the information is neither good or bad.

Re: Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

#100

Post by eafkuor »

hpvic03 wrote: post #14

Books on Stoicism. In particular, “A Guide to the Good Life” Some good stuff here: https://www.theschooloflife.com/

Seriously? I thought they were cartoonishly bad. A group of hipsters dispensing cheap philosophic pills for lazy fake intellectuals.
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