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Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

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Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#21

Post by rwj »

rusk wrote: post #15
psyc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to get a clearer picture of what Peterson is about, I did the unthinkable and watched a lot of his lectures. My opinion is that he's extremely thoughtful, formidable not so much in original thought, but careful synthesis of the many well-known sources he draws on most, and above all worthwhile. That is I think he says a ton of things that are fascinating (as Scott says, kind of in the Gladwell sense) and thi…

I simply don't have time to engage with his lectures. I've seen all the summaries and they're just something I don't need. Thankfully. What I do see is him continuously parading around the podcast circuit and the polarised discussion online about him. My gut reaction when I heard him on Joe Rogan was one of disgust, while quietly finding I actually agree with a lot of what he says. He's a guy who has access to "truth…

If you agree with some of the things he says, why are you disgusted?

Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#22

Post by clu1590 »

I've watched Jordan Peterson's Personality lectures back when he had only a few hundred subscribers and have been amazed at his immense traction of late. His book is mostly a regurgitation and summary of his lectures with some political and personal anecdotes thrown in; however, I would still recommend it as a introduction to some of Peterson's thought system and mostly agree with the review.

Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#23

Post by rusk »

danielvaughn wrote: post #9

I'll try to explain why I'm enamored with the guy, though I do try and resist it. I've fallen victim to a few cult followings in my past - Ayn Rand in my teens and then Noam Chomsky in my early twenties. So I know the danger signs of falling into an ideological trapping, and I do see that happening with some of Peterson's fans. But I don't care about the fight against "Postmodern Neo-Marxism" or any of his discussion…

Have you ever explored the dichotomy of religion and spirituality? We tend to think of them as synonymous but to me they represent two different things that are often coincident. The word "Religion" comes from latin words meaning "to bind together" and this to me suggests it's more about the collective, whereas "spirituality" is more about individual experience.

So religion is the whole thing of living by a particular moral code, going to church every sunday, marrying within your creed etc. it's a very "wordly" concept.

Spirituality then is the whole "higher consciousness" "explaining the unexplainable" thing.

We can be religious without being spiritual, and spiritual without being religious. Ayn Rand for instance, or much of modern atheism serve as examples of the former. Ayahuasca, psychodynamicm, meditation etc. the latter.

Of course we often have the two come together as they complement each other quite well but we often see spirituality subjugated by religion, or people scared off spirituality by it's religious connotations.

Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#24

Post by psyc »

rusk wrote: post #15
psyc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to get a clearer picture of what Peterson is about, I did the unthinkable and watched a lot of his lectures. My opinion is that he's extremely thoughtful, formidable not so much in original thought, but careful synthesis of the many well-known sources he draws on most, and above all worthwhile. That is I think he says a ton of things that are fascinating (as Scott says, kind of in the Gladwell sense) and thi…

I simply don't have time to engage with his lectures. I've seen all the summaries and they're just something I don't need. Thankfully. What I do see is him continuously parading around the podcast circuit and the polarised discussion online about him. My gut reaction when I heard him on Joe Rogan was one of disgust, while quietly finding I actually agree with a lot of what he says. He's a guy who has access to "truth…

>> I simply don't have time to engage with his lectures. I've seen all the summaries and they're just something I don't need.

Then it's easier to understand how you came by your opinions of him. Quite a bit harder, if you'll excuse me, to understand why you wrote more statements about him than anyone else in the thread, though.

>> I don't believe he's on the level of any of those people you've put up him up alongside.

I agree with this 100% (and would bet my entire net worth that Peterson does too), did not intend to give that impression at all, and edited my comment to reflect that.

Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#25

Post by rusk »

rwj wrote: post #21
rusk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply don't have time to engage with his lectures. I've seen all the summaries and they're just something I don't need. Thankfully. What I do see is him continuously parading around the podcast circuit and the polarised discussion online about him. My gut reaction when I heard him on Joe Rogan was one of disgust, while quietly finding I actually agree with a lot of what he says. He's a guy who has access to "truth…

If you agree with some of the things he says, why are you disgusted?

The term is called "Dissonance". It's okay and quite normal to have conflicting emotions about things. To have the head and heart in conflict. Peterson himself would say this is part of the process of getting to the truth. If you're just courting "comfortable" ideas all the time you'll get nowhere.

Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#26

Post by dragonwriter »

weego wrote: post #10
rusk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has absolutely hit a nerve, or hit a few nerves and done so with great accuracy. You see the thing about Peterson is for whatever reason (could even be just for the purposes of marketing himself), he is very much the controversialist. Time and again he'll say something controversial that he knows will troll a huge audience and then he's always got research and facts to back it up. That his take is often facile isn…

Is it really that controversial though? I'm nearly 40 and I feel like had Jordan Peterson said a lot of what he says now when I was at University it would have been of almost no note whatsoever. It feels more like his statements are elevated to controversy by how polarised, anti-contextual and narrow the margins of contemporary discourse have become rather than him being particularly controversial. "Enforcing equalit…

> Is it really that controversial though?

Yes.

> I'm nearly 40 and I feel like had Jordan Peterson said a lot of what he says now when I was at University it would have been of almost no note whatsoever.

Whether it would have been controversial in another context is irrelevant to whether it is controversial, which is never an inherent feature of an utterance and always a statement about its relation to a particular context.

But, yes, I'm nearly 45 and a lot of it would have been controversial when I was in college (in fact, a lot of it is almost identical to controversial things right-wing speakers were saying when I was in college; the only exception of note seems to be the factual controversy over his description of the content of specific current laws.)

> "Enforcing equality of outcomes though imbalanced policy is less desirable than giving equality of choice and letting other natural variables dictate the outcome" seems such an uncontroversial statement as to be almost self-evident, and yet...

...it's been a controversial statement from the right for four or five decades or so, and only not earlier because before then the right was almost uniformly overtly opposed to equality of choice, and didn't need to engage in elaborate concern trolling of this form.

It's not controversial because anyone disagrees that equality of choice and opportunity is the ideal, it's controversial as a criticism of specific policies because it assumed that equality of opportunities/choice is not their goal, and, where those laws directly address material circumstance as part of their mechanism, assumes that the circumstances addressed are immaterial to equality of choice/opportunity.

Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#27

Post by personlurking »

One thing I fight with, internally, is his idea that if you "clean up your room", so to speak, your life will start to have meaning. Because of him, and due to doing his Self-Authoring program, I followed the steps, took responsibility for my life and changed a lot of things, but the meaning part has yet to hit me. Perhaps it's there, yet buried, I don't know.

Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#28

Post by overthemoon »

He at least offers a structural critique, not minor tweaks, to the liberal order. If a young person is feeling alienated and disempowered, he recognizes that the solution isn't to just go to school or whatever watery prescription modern society might suggest. There are many conservative thinkers who, though they're basically irreligious, will tell young men to pull their pants up and take out the trash. Our moral landscape is such a wasteland that guys like this can tut about manners or whatever and he seems like a prophetic genius.

He's a thoroughgoing Jungian and a mediocre philosopher. He gets sassy with reporters, which people like, I guess. But he's still going to situate the problems with modern society with a couple of french theorists rather than the forces that actually affect people's daily lives.

I'd also argue that his popularity is a sign that people still really, really want religion/religious guidance in some form.

Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#29

Post by rusk »

psyc wrote: post #24
rusk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply don't have time to engage with his lectures. I've seen all the summaries and they're just something I don't need. Thankfully. What I do see is him continuously parading around the podcast circuit and the polarised discussion online about him. My gut reaction when I heard him on Joe Rogan was one of disgust, while quietly finding I actually agree with a lot of what he says. He's a guy who has access to "truth…

>> I simply don't have time to engage with his lectures. I've seen all the summaries and they're just something I don't need. Then it's easier to understand how you came by your opinions of him. Quite a bit harder, if you'll excuse me, to understand why you wrote more statements about him than anyone else in the thread, though. >> I don't believe he's on the level of any of those people you've put up him up alongside…

> Quite a but harder, if you'll excuse me, to understand why you wrote more statements about him than anyone else in the thread, though.

Fair enough. If he wasn't in my face everywhere I turned I wouldn't have had to perform such extensive meta-analysis of his epistemology.

The problem with Peterson is that it's this aspect of him that's cloudy, and which frightens some people.

His actual "teachings" as it were aren't really that interesting to me, but I fully support the pragmatic approach to self-help he promulgates.

Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

#30

Post by rusk »

personlurking wrote: post #27

One thing I fight with, internally, is his idea that if you "clean up your room", so to speak, your life will start to have meaning. Because of him, and due to doing his Self-Authoring program, I followed the steps, took responsibility for my life and changed a lot of things, but the meaning part has yet to hit me. Perhaps it's there, yet buried, I don't know.

I think you've come up against his particular brand of "pragmatic truth". It's true if the end result is good. You may not have found the meaning you thought you would when you started following his teachings, but perhaps you have improved your life. In the pragmatic sense in which Peterson wields the term (echoing William James), this is "truth" and thus "meaning" has been realised.
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