Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
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Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
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Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
#2This is a nice even-handed review. It has been hard to get a clear picture of what Peterson is about and I've had to sift through an awful lot of partisan spite-pieces on both sides to try to get to the bottom of what's going on with him. The following paragraph jumped out at me here:
"The politics in this book lean a bit right, but if you think of Peterson as a political commentator you’re missing the point. The science in this book leans a bit Malcolm Gladwell, but if you think of him as a scientist you’re missing the point. Philosopher, missing the point. Public intellectual, missing the point. Mythographer, missing the point. So what’s the point?"
I think part of the problem with our initial impressions of Peterson is he (or comes across) tries to present himself as these things kind of like he misses the point of himself sometimes .. but maybe that's just from having been taking such an embattled position so long.
The article goes on to describe Peterson as "a prophet". As a student of psychology I don't personally think his views are "groundbreaking" but he does take a set of very well worn ideas and attune them to modern times.
I read Bertrand Russell's "Conquest of Happiness" [0] a number of years ago and to me it seems to tick a lot of the same boxes, but perhaps in a less timely fashion.
It's easy to think Russell managed to get his views out without annoying anybody but he had his fair share of partisan controversy in his time as well. It's only after the dust has settled that we view him as one of the most important western philosophers of the 20th Century.
Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
#3So how come not everyone can be a prophet? The Bible tells us why people who wouldn’t listen to the Pharisees listened to Jesus: “He spoke as one who had confidence”. You become a prophet by saying things that you would have to either be a prophet or the most pompous windbag in the Universe to say, then looking a little too wild-eyed for anyone to be comfortable calling you the most pompous windbag in the universe. You say the old cliches with such power and gravity that it wouldn’t even make sense for someone who wasn’t a prophet to say them that way.
“He, uh, told us that we should do good, and not do evil, and now he’s looking at us like we should fall to our knees.”
“Weird. Must be a prophet. Better kneel.”
Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
#4So how come not everyone can be a prophet? The Bible tells us why people who wouldn’t listen to the Pharisees listened to Jesus: “He spoke as one who had confidence”. You become a prophet by saying things that you would have to either be a prophet or the most pompous windbag in the Universe to say, then looking a little too wild-eyed for anyone to be comfortable calling you the most pompous windbag in the universe. Y…
I've noticed this in teams, too. Sometimes there is something which is clear to everybody, but which needs the right person to say it, in order for it to have the necessary gravitas to be followed.
I think a lot of people need authority figures to function.
Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
#5So how come not everyone can be a prophet? The Bible tells us why people who wouldn’t listen to the Pharisees listened to Jesus: “He spoke as one who had confidence”. You become a prophet by saying things that you would have to either be a prophet or the most pompous windbag in the Universe to say, then looking a little too wild-eyed for anyone to be comfortable calling you the most pompous windbag in the universe. Y…
I can't get onboard with this interpretation. There are a ton of people who are very charismatic and prone to making sweeping statements about the universe, and yet they don't gain a substantial following. Reza Aslan, for example. He's popular, but not nearly on Peterson's level. There are people who are drawn to Peterson simply due to his charisma, but I think at the end of the day there's something else going on. I think he's hit some kind of nerve though it's difficult to pinpoint it.
Edit: Ha, maybe I should read the goddamn piece before commenting.
Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
#6So how come not everyone can be a prophet? The Bible tells us why people who wouldn’t listen to the Pharisees listened to Jesus: “He spoke as one who had confidence”. You become a prophet by saying things that you would have to either be a prophet or the most pompous windbag in the Universe to say, then looking a little too wild-eyed for anyone to be comfortable calling you the most pompous windbag in the universe. Y…
I can't get onboard with this interpretation. There are a ton of people who are very charismatic and prone to making sweeping statements about the universe, and yet they don't gain a substantial following. Reza Aslan, for example. He's popular, but not nearly on Peterson's level. There are people who are drawn to Peterson simply due to his charisma, but I think at the end of the day there's something else going on. I…
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't really of consequence as any typical interviewer doesn't have the tools to take him up on it.
The guy is a professor of psychology. You may not like him or his views, but he is "smart", and fundamentally the meat of his message is actually quite benign so you can't even really accuse him of being "bad".
It's like he's built his own persona into this gigantic strawman that looks like an ogre to everybody.
Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
#7"But I actually acted as a slightly better person during the week or so I read Jordan Peterson’s book. I feel properly ashamed about this."
This is what happened to me as well. Strange stuff, I think it is well worth the time.
Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
#8This is a nice even-handed review. It has been hard to get a clear picture of what Peterson is about and I've had to sift through an awful lot of partisan spite-pieces on both sides to try to get to the bottom of what's going on with him. The following paragraph jumped out at me here: "The politics in this book lean a bit right, but if you think of Peterson as a political commentator you’re missing the point. The sci…
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 things that a lot of people could do with hearing these days. As far as the Gladwell thing goes, it's different because Peterson isn't making many scientific claims, or even claims as such. He's an intellectual psychologist synthesizing a - again, not original, but lucidly formulated - perspective on the human psyche itself. Not claiming how the world is, but how it is to us in our biological body-minds, which for many purposes is the only place that matters. His message is Jung meets Dostoevsky meets Joseph Campbell meets C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, but also meets Peterson.
Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
#9I'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 about free speech. His value for me is due to his religious content. I, like many people my age, grew up in a conservatively religious household and became irreligious as soon as I left home. I thought of it as breaking free from burdensome constraints.
But after years of attempting to "simply be a good person", I've found that there is indeed some kind of void that needs to be filled. And yet, I just cannot go back to being (in my case) an evangelical christian. Once you're out, you're out. So where should a modern, rational, scientifically literate person do when they need a deeper source of particularly religious meaning in their life? Peterson is the first person I've come across who has even come close to answering that question adequately. No matter how many faults the man has, he has done me this kindness. All the rest is fluff to me.
I do think he's a bit of a prophet, in that he has the ability to inspire conviction without guilt, passion without irresponsibility, and courage without hubris.
Re: Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't get onboard with this interpretation. There are a ton of people who are very charismatic and prone to making sweeping statements about the universe, and yet they don't gain a substantial following. Reza Aslan, for example. He's popular, but not nearly on Peterson's level. There are people who are drawn to Peterson simply due to his charisma, but I think at the end of the day there's something else going on. I…
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 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...