{"id":42294,"date":"2018-02-18T05:00:20","date_gmt":"2018-02-18T10:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=42294"},"modified":"2018-05-07T10:33:12","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T14:33:12","slug":"nitay-arbel-on-jordan-petersons-12-rules-for-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/02\/18\/nitay-arbel-on-jordan-petersons-12-rules-for-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Nitay Arbel on Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A guest post at According to Hoyt<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Those looking for an \u2018alt-right\u2019 manifesto will be sorely disappointed. Peterson actually says explicitly that on some economic issues (e.g., income disparity) he leans somewhat left, and elsewhere in the book laments that the cultural demonization of anything masculine is (as he describes it) causing a backlash, in terms of a resurgence in popularity of European parties he calls \u2018far right\u2019 or even \u2018fascist\u2019. (For Trump, to be clear, he uses the term \u2018populist\u2019, which undeniably fits.)<\/p>\n

Nor will you find a camouflaged Christian revivalist tract here, as some claim. To be sure, Peterson heavily draws on the Bible and particularly on the Christian New Testament for quotes, but there are plenty of references to Eastern religious philosophies as well, particularly Taoism (\u2018yang vs. yin\u2019, which here becomes \u2018order vs. chaos\u2019) and classical Buddhism (the concept that life is suffering). Among Christian theologians, Kierkegaard\u2019s \u201cact of faith\u201d comes up repeatedly. During an interview, he was asked point-blank \u201cAre you a Christian, and do you believe in G-d?\u201d His intriguing answer: \u201cI think the proper response to that is No, but I\u2019m afraid He might exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor is it some sort of \u201cEST\u201d-type (quasi-)cult manual, with Peterson setting himself up as a guru.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it does not purport to be a reasoned scholarly tome of conservative philosophy. This is where Peter Hitchens (brother of the late Christopher) gets a little dyspeptic in his review in The Spectator<\/em>, as he found it wanting there. http:\/\/archive.is\/4eQIE<\/a> (h\/t: masgramondou)<\/p>\n

David Solway, in his much more sympathetic article on PJMedia, hits the nail on the head, I believe. https:\/\/pjmedia.com\/trending\/jordan-peterson-phenomenon\/<\/a> Like Solway, I find it hard to identify a single new idea in the book \u2014 pretty much everything Peterson says would be familiar to those of us who have been reared on Scripture and the Great Books.<\/p>\n

But we have reached the level of intellectual corruption where, as George Orwell put it, the first duty of any thinking person is the restatement of the obvious<\/strong>. And that, Peterson does very well indeed. The book is a coherent whole, an engaging read, yea even a compelling \u2018recap\u2019 to the well-read. Peterson makes his discourse more engaging through extensive illustrations from psychological research, his own clinical practice, neuroscience, and his own life experience. Most importantly, it will bring wisdom of the ages (and of rational-empirical thinking) to a millennial generation drowning in derp and denial of objective reality. To those who<\/strong>, if you will pardon me the phrase, \u201cknow not the gods of the copybook headings\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I just finished reading the book myself, and I largely agree with this summary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guest post at According to Hoyt: Those looking for an \u2018alt-right\u2019 manifesto will be sorely disappointed. Peterson actually says explicitly that on some economic issues (e.g., income disparity) he leans somewhat left, and elsewhere in the book laments that the cultural demonization of anything masculine is (as he describes it) causing a backlash, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,11],"tags":[360,262,1204,576,139],"class_list":["post-42294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-culture","tag-jordanpeterson","tag-philosophy","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-b0a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42295,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42294\/revisions\/42295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}