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I’ve been planning to read “12 rules for life” by Jordan B. Peterson for a while now. For one thing because of the author himself who became widely recognizable due to his allegedly controversial opinions on gender equality, social structure, and other current issues which I personally found surprisingly stimulating and thought-provoking.
For this reason, I was looking forward to reading this book, which as the author himself indicated, was supposed to be much more approachable than his previous release - Maps of meaning.
“12 rules for life” is a collection of - unsurprisingly - 12 rules one should follow to enjoy meaningful and hopefully happy being. Tell the truth or at least don’t lie, be precise in your speech or do not bother children when they are skateboarding are a few suggestions the author gives us. But these recommendations are only an excuse for broader digressions on culture, religion, and society. Mr. Peterson frequently refers to the bible as well as other culturally significant benchmarks to prove his point or to illustrate what he is trying to explain.
This multidimensionality and broad perspective on discussed matters are surely advantages of this book. Although what really makes it special is the blunt directness in which the author points out habits and traits that make us miserable and doomed to failure - and how frighteningly accurately the reader can relate to all of this.
It nevertheless needs to be said that cultural and historical references however enjoyable and informative, tend to stray the author from the current subject (or at least the reader may have such an impression until Mr. Peterson wraps things up at the end of the chapter). For this reason, it is challenging sometimes to follow the author’s train of thoughts.
All things considered, this book is definitely worth recommending to everyone interested in making a change in their lives and having a chance for better tomorrow.
Rating: 7.5/10
R.
1Zdolność widzenia jest szczególnie istotna, gdy podkopuje nasze poglądy, które znamy i na których polegamy, irytuje nas i burzy nasz obraz świata. To akt widzenia informuje jednostkę i aktualizuje społeczeństwo. Będąc tego świadomym, Nietzsche powiedział kiedyś, że wartość człowieka determinowana jest ilością prawdy, jaką zdolny jest znieść. W żadnym razie nie jesteś jedynie tym, co już wiesz. Jesteś też tym wszystkim, co mógłbyś wiedzieć, gdybyś tylko zechciał.
- ‘12 życiowych zasad. Antidotum na chaos’, Jordan B. Peterson
1
i think a lot of people are gonna get burned real hard when they realize that all their therapy heroes are just the same as every other therapist in the whole world and a large part of our societal problems themselves
2Had a very weird thought last night as I was sort of mulling over the general Derrida stuff I posted about last night. One good thing about posting these things is that it’s very easy to get buried in a world of concepts, and communicating has the great effect of allowing an outside source to sort of hit the “reset” button and bring you back out to the low-resolution picture. This one gets pretty wild and fun, though.
Anyway, so Derrida had this idea that language is an insufficient method for conveying an idea because the recipient can never get a perfect 1/1 transference of the idea from the mind that conceived of it to the mind to whom it is being communicated. But if we take into account an observation by Jung, something interesting comes up.
So Jung had this idea–watch for the irony–that we don’t “have” thoughts. That we don’t create them, but that they sort of manifest themselves to us. Peterson then said that “thinking,” then is our active process of negotiating with those self-propagating thoughts, thus turning them into useful concepts.
Okay, so taking those two things into consideration, we have to acknowledge something else. That we think in language. We think in words. So if there is a conversation we are having between the voice in our heads and these manifested thoughts, there is a conveyance of an idea within our own heads before we even try to explain it to anyone else. And before that, even, the thought has to manifest itself in some familiar language. Generally, I believe, this is first through the language of emotion and then rapidly into the language in which we think–words.
So how are these thoughts manifesting themselves? Where is the source? Some communication has to take place in order for an idea to become coherent enough to occur in any practical sense, or it’s just chaotic data. So I’m trying to puzzle that part out at the moment, because we seem to be the processors of external information. Perhaps it is the case that thoughts are sourced at Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious, and that we process them at the individual level in order to maximize thought power, creating a sort of “conceptual natural world,” where our purpose is literally to be reality attempting to understand itself as efficiently as possible.
So that’s pretty wild. Just a fun thought exercise.
0March 711 ( 1971 Peterson / Pescarolo ) . 2013 Esperit de Montjuic - _DSC2239e by antarc
Via Flickr:
March 711 ( 1971 Peterson / Pescarolo ) Cosworth DFV V8 STP March Racing Team Mike Wrigley #30 FIA Masters Historic Formula One 2013 Esperit de Montjuic Circuit de Catalunya Montmeló, Barcelona. Catalunya1
