Book Review: Twelve Rules for Life

I have nothing against people gathering to find a sense of community but I am somewhat against the beliefs of most organized religions that I am familiar with.

He has done a good job surfing the wave of fame for sure. In my opinion the core of it is not about fame though, the core is a message he's promoted for decades and that he truly thinks is correct, and helpful to people.

I think you're falling into a trap that's easy to fall into, and perhaps lies at the crux of the criticisms leveled against Peterson. What I'm about to say has certainly been more eloquently stated by someone else, but I'll do my best here. As I see it there are effectively two types of knowledge acquisition and transference. The first is explanatory knowledge. Scientists and philosophers work to build new explanations of the world. In this realm, it makes no sense to re-tread familiar territory, and the faster we accumulate this knowledge, the better.

There's another realm, and it's what I would call cultural knowledge. These are like "social truths" that are arrived at via some method of consensus in a given group of people. In this realm, the re-treading of familiar territory is acceptable, so long as the knowledge still needs to propagate throughout society or be contested by those who deviate from it. In this realm faster is not better, because these truths act as societal stabilizers.

I see Peterson's influence as belonging to the second realm. I find it irritating when people point out that "it's been said before". Yes, I'm sure it's been said before, but that is not the point. The point is to revivify that knowledge within a culture. To assume he needs to tread new ground is to treat him as belonging to the first realm, and I don't think that's the correct approach here.

You're writing off people in "the spotlight" as if it is incapable of shining on people who convey rational ideas.

To be frank, you also assert your opinion on the competence of thinkers as if it's factual.

What I do see is him continuously parading around the podcast circuit and the polarised discussion online about him.

My gut reaction when I heard him on Joe Rogan was one of disgust, while quietly finding I actually agree with a lot of what he says. He's a guy who has access to "truth" (in the pragmatic, William James sense) that many of his attackers do not.

I don't believe he's on the level of any of those people you've put up him up alongside. I think he draws on their work, mediates and applies their ideas as a clinical psychologist does.

Clever, no doubt, and with a message that is undoubtedly of value to many, and certainly making a lot of money at it too.

My first encounter with Peterson was hearing his "lobster theory", which struck me as such pseudoscientific piffle that I've tried to pay him as little attention as possible ever since.

I imagine the reason Peterson elicits such strong reactions is because he presents differently for different audiences. As suggested elsewhere in the comments, "he's built his own persona into this gigantic strawman that looks like an ogre to everybody", luring them into attacking a position he never held so that he can appear calm, wise and reasonable in his rebuttal, and take the role of the poor attacked underdog.

He speaks of "postmodern curtural marxism", yet by his own admission, has never debated a marxist. Like the best controversialists, he picks his fights very carefully, preferring to "debate" with campus teenagers than other "intellectuals".

For those who haven't heard it, his "lobster theory" goes:

1. Lobsters are animals with a hierarchical society

2. Lobsters have a "seratonin based nervous system". Humans also have a "seratonin based nervous system".

3. Therefore, a hierarchical society is natural (and therefore best) for humans.

I'm only 10 minutes or so into it, but this is a quote (not exact, but close enough) from Jordan Peterson:

"(music and cathedrals) are ways of trying to symbolically represent how things could be if they were put in the proper state of balance or harmony"

What does that even mean? The only concrete nugget of knowledge I can get from that is that cathedrals are designed in a relatively balanced manner. Symmetrical, I guess.

I plan to listen to the rest of this interview but that statement was a particularly good example of the hand-waavy nonsense that I was talking about so I decided to record it here so I didn't forget.

>You don't feel any sort of pride after getting yourself in order? Are you sure you have yourself in order?

alt: "You didn't feel touched by Jesus/the holy spirit because you didn't reach out with full sincerity."

You see the thing about Peterson is for whatever reason (could even be just for the purposes of marketing himself), he is very much the controversialist.

Time and again he'll say something controversial that he knows will troll a huge audience and then he's always got research and facts to back it up. That his take is often facile isn't really of consequence as any typical interviewer doesn't have the tools to take him up on it.

The guy is a professor of psychology. You may not like him or his views, but he is "smart", and fundamentally the meat of his message is actually quite benign so you can't even really accuse him of being "bad".

It's like he's built his own persona into this gigantic strawman that looks like an ogre to everybody.

That said, I don't think he comes across as completely intellectually honest in a lot of his interviews. I think that this might be more a product of a lot of the bad faith he's been subjected to than anything intrinsic to his ideas. Though I do think he plays it up a bit now to broaden his reach.