Classics Considered

Well...I promise I'm not trying to milk this for all it's worth.  But I realized that after "finishing" the review of 12 Rules for Life , I'd failed to answer my starting questions from Part 1 : What is about [Jordan Peterson] or his message that generates commonality between such disparate groups? What kind of person, with such a prestigious CV, is so willing to go out on a limb [against political correctness]? Is he really courageous, or is there some other reason? I think the answer to #1 is pretty simple.  Peterson's appeal lies in his embrace of core values, like honesty, hard work, integrity, and self-respect.  Any belief systems that value the individual and accountability are going to gravitate towards his message, which puts a big emphasis on you, the individual, taking action - making your life better and making the world better.  So that is what seems to make his following so diverse. To the second question - my takeaway from reading 12 Rul...

I've decided to share these quotes in the order they appear in the book, plus occasional commentary. All quotes are from the 2018 hardcover edition. Key: plaintext - Worthy quotes bold - Favorite quotes italics - Quotes I disliked 12 Rules for Life: Best and Worst Quotes The dominance hierarchy is not capitalism.  It's not communism, either, for that matter . . . We (the sovereign we , the we that has been around since the beginning of life) have lived in a dominance hierarchy for a long, long time. (p. 14) - Agreed, seems pretty self-evident. . . . the familiar Western images of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child and the Pietà both express the female/male dual unity, as does the traditional insistence on the androgyny of Christ.   (p. 42) - "traditional insistence on the androgyny," what is he talking about? You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued. ...

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn by Evstafiev [ CC BY-SA 3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons "No one could stand up for communism after The Gulag Archipelago - not even the communists themselves." ( 12 Rules for Life , p. 310) I would like to think that's true.  Unfortunately, admiration for Joseph Stalin is, by all appearances, far from dead .  The mass murderer has been rebranded as a WWII hero first and dictator second. While not all Russians subscribe to that narrative , there are some who are nostalgic for the USSR. I once briefly dated someone who felt that way.  It wasn't apparent on first impressions, but, as we got to know each other better, I learned he was an ardent Stalinist, fully heroizing Stalin and believing all the bad to be exaggerations, lies, or American propaganda, or (barring all that) nothing any worse than what U.S. presidents had done.  Though born in a former Soviet republic, he was not really old enough to remember life in the Soviet Union, yet ...

So... I have this get it back to the library ASAP (fines are accruing), but I can't seem to write a short review.  I tried, I really did, but it's hopeless.  Here is Part 1, and I hope to have Part 2 up tomorrow. First, some background... Jordan Peterson Gage Skidmore [ CC BY-SA 3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons As I mentioned in a previous post, my purpose in reading this book was to see what the fuss was about.  Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto (and formerly at Harvard and McGill), has become a controversial figure in recent years, for voicing his views on forms of political correctness which he sees as threatening to freedom of speech.  It's a long story which you can read about on Wikipedia , and I only mention it to give some context.  Peterson, whose YouTube lectures attract millions of followers, went on two years after the publicity to publish his 2018 book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos .  This book became a huge...