12 Rules for Life: [Pursue It!] And Antidote to Chaos by Jason B. Peterson no rating

[Karin]

Wow. Apparently I live under a rock, because until someone IRL recommended this book to me, I'd never even heard of Jordan B. Peterson. If I didn't know this person well, I'd have tossed this book aside in chapter two and never looked at it again, because it was one of the chapters that made me want to throw the book at the wall or burn it, if I were a person who did such things. That would have been a shame, because despite quite a bit of garbage and citing of several studies I know have been debunked (some by the time I was in university), there are times when he makes some valid points, as shocking as may seem to some.

How can I say this, some of you will ask. Well, are you telling me that you don't agree with "Assume the person you are listening to might know something you don't?" While much of that chapter was not great, some of it was. And when he discussed what he and his wife do when arguing (not sure if it was this chapter or not ) is brilliant. They will force themselves to each go into separate rooms to calm down and to ask themselves if they have made any mistakes--this is easier said than done, of course, because most people like to be right in an argument or they wouldn't be arguing.

So I can't say that I hands down hate everything about this book even though I hands down hated parts of it. Nor can I say I loved it, because of course I hated parts of it. But some of it was really well done, and no matter what you think about him, you can't deny that he is brilliant. I was rather miffed at his handling of religion, naturally, but if you don't give a care about any of that stuff, it won't bother you in the least. As someone who is philosophical by nature, naturally I was arguing with much of that, as is my wont reading most philosophy.

This man appears to have read everything in many fields (a bit of hyperbole on my part, but I am using literary license for that statement). I read this for a Mental Health tag challenge and kept reading it because one of the words I was looking for was on page 7 (and I don't know if it's in the other books I then ordered) and I like to play by the rules (and it also had something else I was looking for later on).

Don't bother with the audiobook--I didn't last long--unless you can stand the tone of his speaking voice, and I am NOT talking about tone of voice as in being rude or polite, etc (eg "don't take that tone with me"), but as in vocal tonal quality (such as, that singer has a beautiful tone). That just grated on my nerves, but I was able to forget it before I finished the first chapter.

One of my huge pet peeves, and this is due, in part, to the influence of some of my favourite biology professors, one who taught ethology (animal behaviour interpreted in light of its biology, environment, etc)) as well as environmental bio, etc, is his propensity to extrapolate human behaviour from animal behaviour. I am not going to lecture you on this, since it is most likely something you are not particularly interested in, but suffice to say that it's dangerous to do this from one species to another, and I noticed that he either doesn't know or chose to ignore the animal studies that show animals who don't follow those generalizations. Feel free to disagree with me, of course, but in your mind as I really don't have the energy or desire to discuss this in my life right now as there are too many other things going on.

No stars. Just not even one. I thought of giving it one star many times but then now and then I found myself agreeing with something. Such as "tell the truth--or at least don't lie" even if that was not one of the better chapters. (favourite being a relative term here). The man has a very high IQ, but this book just shows that that is no guarantee that one can consistently use it well.