Lately, most of my leisure time has been divided between my new hobby (embroidery, holla!) and rediscovered old ones (blogging, holla!), so reading has taken a backseat. For comfort, I’ve been reading some of the usual suspects (Anne Perry, the Maisie Dobbs mysteries, some previously read historical non-fiction), which probably do not warrant a post. I’ve got a few promising books coming my way – and a couple of vacations coming up as well – so I will have more to report later, but for now I only have one to talk about: 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson.
If you’re Canadian, the name may be familiar to you; in addition to being a well-respected clinical psychologist and tenured professor at the University of Toronto, Peterson is something of a media sensation at the moment, following his public critique of the federal government’s Bill C-16 (which proposed to add “gender identity or expression” as a prohibited ground of discrimination under Canadian human rights legislation). He has been characterized by many in the media as an alt-right supporter, which would have probably been sufficient to deter me from picking up his book, had that been my first introduction to him. However, I heard about the book from my BFF – who is about as far from alt-right as you can get, and is also not a self-help book type of person – and she told me that she was looking forward to reading 12 Rules. Out of curiosity, I picked up the book on Amazon.
Whoo, boy.
I have a lot of thoughts about it. Probably too many to fit into a post like this. My TL;DR take? 12 Rules is definitely worth a read because, even if you vehemently disagree with Peterson on some or all of his theses, there are a lot of interesting ideas in there that are worth debating.
As a “self help book” – which, in all fairness, 12 Rules probably isn’t, not really – it has a strong flavour of “pull yourself up by the bootstraps”; Rule 6 is “Set Your House in Order Before You Criticize the World”. Peterson’s approach to this will irk a lot of people, and not without reason. On one hand, I think it has a lot of merit; I strongly believe in taking personal responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences, and I agree with Peterson that we cannot change people – the way to change the world is by living/acting the values that we believe are right. On the other hand, I also think that some of Peterson’s thoughts on this (and mine as well, no doubt) are products of the perspective of someone who probably never experienced significant systemic disadvantages. This might be a dealbreaker for some, and I wanted to acknowledge that.
However, if you are willing to give Peterson a chance, he does make some points which are worth thinking about. Parenthetically, I want to add that there are points I agree with, points I disagree with, and points that I need to ponder further before making up my mind. What I liked about the book was that it challenged me to think critically with every chapter – something I haven’t done in my personal reading, on a consistent basis, since my 20s. (I call my books “comfort reading” for a reason.) Some of the things I found particularly interesting? Peterson’s discussion of dominance hierarchies (Rule 1); his views on chaos & order being the duality that underlies nature and, in turn, shapes human existence (recurring theme throughout the book); and his discussion of Rule 7, “Pursue What Is Meaningful (Not What Is Expedient) and Rule 8, “Tell The Truth – Or, At Least, Don’t Lie”. It’s apparent that Peterson was influenced by philosophies that I also, at one time or another, have studied – including Christian existentialism, Taoism, and Jungian psychology; no doubt, this made me more receptive to his arguments. It was interesting to me to see where our analysis or conclusions (based on those influences) converged and where they diverged.
In the interest of keeping this post at a manageable length, I will end here, but if you have read 12 Rules, I would love to hear your thoughts.
