{"id":42807,"date":"2018-03-26T03:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T07:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=42807"},"modified":"2018-05-07T10:32:50","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T14:32:50","slug":"rick-mcginnis-on-jordan-petersons-12-rules-for-life-an-antidote-to-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/03\/26\/rick-mcginnis-on-jordan-petersons-12-rules-for-life-an-antidote-to-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick McGinnis on Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peterson’s book and lecture series has been much in the news lately, so Rick McGinnis<\/a> shares his thoughts, particularly about the message and intended audience for 12 Rules for Life<\/em>:<\/p>\n

It was probably inevitable that this sudden notoriety would create a demand for a book-length statement of principles from Peterson, and he obliged earlier this year with 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos<\/em>. Deceptively packaged as a self-help tome, the book expands on a series of postings Peterson made on Quora<\/em>, a crowdsourcing website that, instead of asking for money, invites its readers to contribute answers to questions posed by other readers.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s structure is straightforward; after sketching in the origin of the dozen precepts, he states them at the outset of each chapter, explains them in varying degrees of complexity with examples from his practice as a clinical psychologist, anecdotes from his own life or \u2013 and this is proving to be most tantalizing \u2013 ruminations on quotes from history, philosophy, mythology or (most often of all) the Bible.<\/p>\n

On the surface, Peterson\u2019s edicts for a good life are self-evident: Stand straight; Obey the Golden Rule; Choose your friends wisely; Set yourself reasonable expectations; Raise your children well; Don\u2019t be a hypocrite; Cherish meaning; Don\u2019t lie; Listen before you speak; Choose your words carefully; Let children fail so they learn to succeed; Be kind to animals.<\/p>\n

But lest you think that short paragraph should save anyone the price of the book, it has to be understood that we are at least a generation, perhaps several, from the point where these commonsensical statements were known, understood or accepted by any sane adult. We are, at the end of a century of phenomenal technological advances and cataclysmic history, sorely in need of a book-length exposition on phrases that you\u2019d once expect to find on needlework samplers.<\/p>\n

Early on and quite often, Peterson comes across with butt-clenching dread as the smartest-man-in-the-room, laying out the stories behind the facts, culled from his years of reading and research, with the force and volume of a firehose. He relies heavily on evolutionary biology to explain our hardwired need to create and find our place in hierarchies, with examples that distill our endlessly troubling social responses to bluff, authority, and even violence down to chemical and neurological mechanisms set in place way back in time with far less complex creatures (a scenario that\u2019s easily satirized as \u201cwe are all lobsters\u201d).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been observed \u2013 and confirmed by Peterson \u2013 that the ideal audience for his book is young people in general and young men in particular. As a former young man, I can attest that being told by a wise older man, clearly on your side but unwilling to sugar coat the facts, that the bully and the big-man-on-campus are better armed than you are to jockey for status and fulfillment \u2013 the alpha lobsters, waving their claws around to appreciable effect \u2013 is very much less than comforting. Peterson\u2019s ideal audience will have to endure the climb up a very steep hill of biological determinism to reach the far more hospitable plateau beyond.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying Peterson is wrong. From the perspective of an older man, I\u2019ve seen this lobster battle played out too many times to deny its plausibility. But I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t suggest that the ideologies that he decries, imagining that there is no biological determinism \u2013 not even the binary division of gender \u2013 or even a landscape governed by measurable standards or objective truth, is far more appealing to young people raised to believe in an ever-expanding entitlement of \u201crights\u201d and a pursuit of \u201cjustice\u201d that needs to triumph above history or biology.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s when Peterson tries to explain the philosophical and even theological roots of our cultural systems that things might be rewarding, for both young and older readers. He has a core group of texts that he relies upon, with particular emphasis on Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn on the modern side, and while he will evoke ancient mythology \u2013 the gods of Egypt make several appearances, though even he can\u2019t overcome the essential strangeness of their myths \u2013 he reaps more rewardingly from the Bible, especially in one passage where he analyzes the difference between the Old and New Testament God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peterson’s book and lecture series has been much in the news lately, so Rick McGinnis shares his thoughts, particularly about the message and intended audience for 12 Rules for Life: It was probably inevitable that this sudden notoriety would create a demand for a book-length statement of principles from Peterson, and he obliged earlier this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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":""},"categories":[32,79,11],"tags":[360,86,1204,822,139,504],"class_list":["post-42807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-education","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-criticism","tag-jordanpeterson","tag-mythology","tag-psychology","tag-teenagers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-b8r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42807","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=42807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42808,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42807\/revisions\/42808"}],"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=42807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}