anderpa's review against another edition
slow-paced
1.75
A harsh rating for a book in which 80% was good, useful and insightful content. However. The blatant sexism and overtly harmful statements made it necessary in my eyes (especially rule 11). I already decided on this rating while I was reading said rule. The truth is, many of the advices are actually good, and I will apply, but the essentialist statements are too damaging to leave undiscussed.
fflorencee's review against another edition
1.0
this shits so boring i dont know why my dad bought it
i think christ is mentioned as being perfect 15 times in 3 pages thats gotta be propaganda or smth lmao
i think christ is mentioned as being perfect 15 times in 3 pages thats gotta be propaganda or smth lmao
stanczakweron's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
danams16's review against another edition
Bought this years ago in Portugal at the recommendation of a friend who, as it later turned out, had very different views from me. Didn’t know anything about Jordan Peterson at the time.
At face value the 12 “rules” are hard to argue with. Yet I couldn’t get through more than a few chapters of the strange, convoluted lobster analogies he uses to justify the book’s lessons. The simple dichotomy of order versus chaos he tries to weave through his arguments also doesn’t sit right with me. I learned more about Peterson’s public persona and fanbase after putting the book down, so now I know I’m not missing anything. Might give it another try someday though, if only to better understand why he appeals to some folks and what might be done to reach the people who are filling some sort of void with voices like Peterson’s and (in some cases) getting radicalized in the process.
At face value the 12 “rules” are hard to argue with. Yet I couldn’t get through more than a few chapters of the strange, convoluted lobster analogies he uses to justify the book’s lessons. The simple dichotomy of order versus chaos he tries to weave through his arguments also doesn’t sit right with me. I learned more about Peterson’s public persona and fanbase after putting the book down, so now I know I’m not missing anything. Might give it another try someday though, if only to better understand why he appeals to some folks and what might be done to reach the people who are filling some sort of void with voices like Peterson’s and (in some cases) getting radicalized in the process.
itsmarkyall's review against another edition
5.0
The concepts in this book are simple enough. Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Be precise in your speech. Tell the truth or at least don’t lie. But it gets deep. Some of it’s even over my head. It’s so worth read though. Multiple reads. I’m going to let this digest and then dive back into it.
rick2's review against another edition
3.0
It's not bad. And I think I can understand why it's so popular. On its surface it’s a very empowering look of modern self help. First let me say I went into this as not a big fan of Peterson. Or more accurately, not a fan of those who I saw as fans of Peterson. Typically I imagine them clenching their jaw’s just a bit too hard while they peck type comments on Reddit threads or other places people like to bicker. Combined with the grandiose title, I would’ve been content to never read this. However, a friend just got through a really rough patch of depression, and he credits this book and Johan Hari's 'Lost Connections' with helping him begin to break out of some of his worse habits. Of the two I enjoyed Hari's book significantly more, but this still is a decent read.
I say that to acknowledge I had a negative bias going into this. And I was impressed to see much was unfounded. The actual overview of this book is decent. It's an aggregation of fairly simple principles to live your life by. You read Seven Habits, Dale Carnegie, or any of the other roughly million prescriptive self-help books out there, you could probably take a gander at what is in this book. Clean your room, don't throw stones while residing in glass domiciles, smell roses, treat other the way you want to be treated, etc. The broad strokes are good. I like that he wrestled with big ideas. He seems impressively well read on Eastern European literature and philosophy. If a bit skewed towards the darker Solzhenitsyn type stuff that I haven’t really gotten into. In due time maybe.
Now the problem I have with this book is not the meat, the problem with this book is that it goes to some weird places and relies on some weird foundations to flesh out its points. Peterson has a habit of making an incontrovertible statement like "cleaning your room is good“. I hardly think there is anyone who would argue for growing fungus on months old food plates under their bed. But then Peterson uses that simple statement as a springboard into much weirder tag along statements, using fanciful language to obscure his leaps the whole time. I think the best example is his digressions into lobster world. It seems like cherry picking to associate one social crustacean behavior with being relevant to humans, and to mostly ignore other weird behaviors lobsters do. Why are overwhelmed lobster nervous systems liquifying relevant, but scuttling backwards away from predators is not. Why do we not focus on the number of rings on their exoskeleton and how that relates to cosmic behavior or shell strength and survival rates? Maybe scuttling backwards is the true way we should interact with danger. Or filter feeding, l know it would be nice not to cook for a change. By the end of most of the chapters I found myself highly entertained by the thought process but skeptical of the conclusions and the route we took to get there. It felt a bit scattered. I’m struck by the visual of a cartoon starting on solid ground and running in a direction, they continue running until they look down and find out that they’ve been running on air, at which point they plummet to the ground.
Quite frankly thank the whole 12 rules could’ve been a banger of a blog post without the weird forced example shenanigans. I believe he addresses that in the introduction to this book. This book is the result of him fleshing out a blog post that went viral. Gotta give the man credit for honesty. Doesn't mean I have to like it.
To dig a bit deeper, and feel free to stop reading here, this feels self indulgent, the fundamental underpinning of Petersons worldview in this book is the interplay between order and chaos. He describes them both in a sort of Jungian metaphorical, yet tangible way. Theres a word for it, Simboyd-is-ism or something. Chaos becomes synonymous with disease, terrorism, in other things that go bump in the night. Order represents safety, the known world, picnics and puppies. It's a dark view, and not one I'm not particularly fond of. Life is not good and evil, black and white, chaos and order, us vs. them. I think anyone who claims so is woefully oversimplifying complex systems and interconnected arrangements. I believed the world was like that as a teen, as a proto-adult, I realize just how flawed and problematic that view is. The black and white model is too simplistic to accurately represent our world. To reduce things to the binary is to weaponize them. It’s the same problem I have with Robyn D’Angelo and “white fragility.” It makes a convenient case for in-group and out-group simplification for further arguments.
But the big problem that this worldview has is that it doesn't have predictive power and as such the value and accuracy seems limited. It's one of those ideas that tastes good, simple is nice, humans like simple, not much thinking here with simple. But the reality is that it’s a shorthand for argument that makes me think the author is not showing the whole picture. Its like letting your kids eat only sweedish fish for dinner. They might like it and enjoy the experience, but you aren't actually teaching them anything or giving them the nutrients they need. For someone like Peterson who bases a lot of his schitck on being a "smart man who knows many things" this reduction to a simplistic worldview seems to be a deliberate choice intended to make him seem smart, but in reality undermines his credibility to me.
I'm sure this won’t win me friends with the jaw clenching type, but It’s interesting that while reading I was struck by the similarity between Peterson and Benee Brown. Both are great storytellers. Both roughly base their conclusions and thoughts on what they claim is psychological research. Both are attempting to tell us more about what it means to be human and in doing so improve the quality of our life. Both seem to appeal to a similarly enrapt peck-and-hunt-while-typing audience. Both make me feel slightly uncomfortable in a "don't drink the Soylant" way. I wonder if the world can be reduced to THAT simple dichotomy. Maybe it is really only made up of Brene's and Peterson's?
I say that to acknowledge I had a negative bias going into this. And I was impressed to see much was unfounded. The actual overview of this book is decent. It's an aggregation of fairly simple principles to live your life by. You read Seven Habits, Dale Carnegie, or any of the other roughly million prescriptive self-help books out there, you could probably take a gander at what is in this book. Clean your room, don't throw stones while residing in glass domiciles, smell roses, treat other the way you want to be treated, etc. The broad strokes are good. I like that he wrestled with big ideas. He seems impressively well read on Eastern European literature and philosophy. If a bit skewed towards the darker Solzhenitsyn type stuff that I haven’t really gotten into. In due time maybe.
Now the problem I have with this book is not the meat, the problem with this book is that it goes to some weird places and relies on some weird foundations to flesh out its points. Peterson has a habit of making an incontrovertible statement like "cleaning your room is good“. I hardly think there is anyone who would argue for growing fungus on months old food plates under their bed. But then Peterson uses that simple statement as a springboard into much weirder tag along statements, using fanciful language to obscure his leaps the whole time. I think the best example is his digressions into lobster world. It seems like cherry picking to associate one social crustacean behavior with being relevant to humans, and to mostly ignore other weird behaviors lobsters do. Why are overwhelmed lobster nervous systems liquifying relevant, but scuttling backwards away from predators is not. Why do we not focus on the number of rings on their exoskeleton and how that relates to cosmic behavior or shell strength and survival rates? Maybe scuttling backwards is the true way we should interact with danger. Or filter feeding, l know it would be nice not to cook for a change. By the end of most of the chapters I found myself highly entertained by the thought process but skeptical of the conclusions and the route we took to get there. It felt a bit scattered. I’m struck by the visual of a cartoon starting on solid ground and running in a direction, they continue running until they look down and find out that they’ve been running on air, at which point they plummet to the ground.
Quite frankly thank the whole 12 rules could’ve been a banger of a blog post without the weird forced example shenanigans. I believe he addresses that in the introduction to this book. This book is the result of him fleshing out a blog post that went viral. Gotta give the man credit for honesty. Doesn't mean I have to like it.
To dig a bit deeper, and feel free to stop reading here, this feels self indulgent, the fundamental underpinning of Petersons worldview in this book is the interplay between order and chaos. He describes them both in a sort of Jungian metaphorical, yet tangible way. Theres a word for it, Simboyd-is-ism or something. Chaos becomes synonymous with disease, terrorism, in other things that go bump in the night. Order represents safety, the known world, picnics and puppies. It's a dark view, and not one I'm not particularly fond of. Life is not good and evil, black and white, chaos and order, us vs. them. I think anyone who claims so is woefully oversimplifying complex systems and interconnected arrangements. I believed the world was like that as a teen, as a proto-adult, I realize just how flawed and problematic that view is. The black and white model is too simplistic to accurately represent our world. To reduce things to the binary is to weaponize them. It’s the same problem I have with Robyn D’Angelo and “white fragility.” It makes a convenient case for in-group and out-group simplification for further arguments.
But the big problem that this worldview has is that it doesn't have predictive power and as such the value and accuracy seems limited. It's one of those ideas that tastes good, simple is nice, humans like simple, not much thinking here with simple. But the reality is that it’s a shorthand for argument that makes me think the author is not showing the whole picture. Its like letting your kids eat only sweedish fish for dinner. They might like it and enjoy the experience, but you aren't actually teaching them anything or giving them the nutrients they need. For someone like Peterson who bases a lot of his schitck on being a "smart man who knows many things" this reduction to a simplistic worldview seems to be a deliberate choice intended to make him seem smart, but in reality undermines his credibility to me.
I'm sure this won’t win me friends with the jaw clenching type, but It’s interesting that while reading I was struck by the similarity between Peterson and Benee Brown. Both are great storytellers. Both roughly base their conclusions and thoughts on what they claim is psychological research. Both are attempting to tell us more about what it means to be human and in doing so improve the quality of our life. Both seem to appeal to a similarly enrapt peck-and-hunt-while-typing audience. Both make me feel slightly uncomfortable in a "don't drink the Soylant" way. I wonder if the world can be reduced to THAT simple dichotomy. Maybe it is really only made up of Brene's and Peterson's?
johnmatthewfox's review against another edition
4.0
This has the gravitas of academia but the accessible message of a self help book.
Also, it wasn't nearly as political as I had expected (after exposure to Peterson in pop culture and news and Youtube).
Sometimes he gets in the weeds too much and could have used a strong-handed editor, but there are other places where he has long stretches of brilliance and clarity.
Also, it wasn't nearly as political as I had expected (after exposure to Peterson in pop culture and news and Youtube).
Sometimes he gets in the weeds too much and could have used a strong-handed editor, but there are other places where he has long stretches of brilliance and clarity.