12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos Book 49 - A Review and Analysis of Jordan Peterson's Bestsel

Peterson's interest in writing the book grew out of a personal hobby of answering questions posted on Quora; one such question being "What are the most valuable things everyone should know?", to which his answer[11] comprised 42 rules.[5] The early vision and promotion of the book aimed to include all rules, with the title "42".[12][13] Peterson stated that it "isn't only written for other people. It's a warning to me."[6]

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos book 49

Download File

The book's central idea is that "suffering is built into the structure of being" and although it can be unbearable, people have a choice either to withdraw, which is a "suicidal gesture", or to face and transcend it.[4] Living in a world of chaos and order,[15] everyone has "darkness" that can "turn them into the monsters they're capable of being" to satisfy their dark impulses in the right situations. Scientific experiments like the Invisible Gorilla Test show that perception is adjusted to aims, and it is better to seek meaning rather than happiness. Peterson notes:[6].mw-parser-output .templatequoteoverflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequoteciteline-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0

Hari Kunzru of The Guardian said the book collates advice from Peterson's clinical practice with personal anecdotes, accounts of his academic work as a psychologist and "a lot of intellectual history of the 'great books' variety", but the essays on the rules are explained in an overcomplicated style. Kunzru called Peterson sincere, but found the book irritating because he considers Peterson to have failed to follow his own rules.[85] In an interview with Peterson for The Guardian, Tim Lott called the book atypical of the self-help genre.[6]

Dorothy Cummings McLean, writing for the online magazine The Catholic World Report, called the book "the most thought-provoking self-help book I have read in years", with its rules reminding her of those by Bernard Lonergan, and content "serving as a bridge between Christians and non-Christians interested in the truths of human life and in resisting the lies of ideological totalitarianism".[88] In a review for the same magazine, Bishop Robert Barron praised the archetypal reading of the story about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden with Jesus representing "gardener" and the psychological exploration of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and The Gulag Archipelago but did not support its "gnosticizing tendency to read Biblical religion purely psychologically and philosophically and not at all historically" or the idea that "God ... [is] simply a principle or an abstraction". It is "valuable for the beleaguered young men in our society, who need a mentor to tell them to stand up straight and act like heroes", Barron wrote.[89] Adam A. J. DeVille took a very different view, calling 12 Rules for Life "unbearably banal, superficial, and insidious" and saying "the real danger in this book is its apologia for social Darwinism and bourgeois individualism covered over with a theological patina" and that "in a just world, this book would never have been published".[90]

Ron Dart, in a review for The Ormsby Review, considered the book "an attempt to articulate a more meaningful order for freedom as an antidote to the erratic ... chaos of our age", but although "necessary" with exemplary advice for men and women it is "hardly a sufficient text for the tougher questions that beset us on our all too human journey and should be read as such."[91][92] In a review for the Financial Times, Julian Baggini wrote, "In headline form, most of his rules are simply timeless good sense.... The problem is that when Peterson fleshes them out, they carry more flab than meat".[93]

In 12 Rules for Life, clinical psychologist and Harvard professor Jordan B. Peterson taught millions how to bring order to the chaos of modern life. The book became an overnight best-seller and launched him into self-help stardom.

Drawing on vivid examples from the author's clinical practice and personal life, cutting edge psychology and philosophy, and lessons from humanity's oldest myths and stories, 12 Rules for Life offers a deeply rewarding antidote to the chaos in our lives: eternal truths applied to our modern problems. 2ff7e9595c