12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos Hardcover – Jan 23 2018

I found Jordan Peterson off of YouTube videos and funny enough, he is the reason I began writing reviews on my purchases on Amazon (have bought many things and reviewed zero prior to this). I am not sure how he influenced me to do this, but I thought about how much value I get from reviews before making purchases and thought that I could provide to that. In the end, I think that is what JP wants from humanity, for all of us to just be nice and help each other out and improve each and everyday. I am still working on my writing as much as possible; but thought it would be both useful to practice by doing reviews and providing value to hopefully anyone reading this review.

I DIVERGE. This book has great insights even if you don't think you have any issues a "self-help" book could help with. Other than that, if you do buy and read this, it will definitely show how maliciously some media have misrepresented Jordan Peterson.

If you have not noticed, there is a problem in our society. True, there are many problems, but one is particularly pressing. This is nihilism, the absence of meaning in the sense of both ultimate goals and present values. Nihilism stands behind much of the purposelessness, joylessness, and moral chaos of our society. It has been particularly devastating to young males in North America, the audience for whom Jordan Peterson’s writing and videos appear to be created and by whom they are most eagerly received. Peterson offers meaning, order amidst the chaos of our society; he proffers purpose, a way forward towards fulfillment; he even offers happiness, the reward that comes at the end of the intentional pursuit of meaningful living.
Let’s be clear, what he is offering is a gospel, good news for the lost and oppressed. He is saying that hope, joy, and purpose can be found! But the gospel he offers turns out to be no gospel at all; it is a false gospel that leaves an even bigger hole than the one it was intended to fill. What is his answer? Take responsibility for being; take control of your present and choose to move forward in the future. Do not blame others for your circumstances or depend on another for rescue, but choose to walk the fine line between the chaotic unknown and the orderly known world by pressing forth to craft your own meaning.
This, he claims, is what the individual soul longs for and is how we can lead to a collective flourishing—over against the atrocities of the 20th century (e.g. xxxv). The 12 rules he outlines all unpack this charge—"take responsibility for your being”—from different angles. Instead of summarizing his rules, I think it will be more profitable to consider his agenda as a whole and why his gospel is no gospel at all.

If you have studied philosophy, you will quickly notice that Peterson is heavily influenced by the existentialist tradition mediated through Heidegger, finding himself very close to the “Christian” philosophers Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann. In Peterson’s brand of existentialism, the traditional questions of philosophy are collapsed into ethics, into the question of how should and do we live. Epistemology, the questions of truth and how we know it, and metaphysics, the question of standards for truth and the reality of experience, are collapsed into the central imperative of existentialism, “take responsibility for Being.” “Being,” capitalized by Peterson (following the tradition of Heidegger) refers to the “totality of human experience,” both individual (my experience) and corporate (our experience) (xxxi). How Peterson thinks “taking responsibility for Being” should be done is unpacked through the 12 rules explained in the book. The definition employed early in the book is helpful: “We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world” (xxxiii).

In the tradition of the old liberal theologians (namely Adolf Harnack) and the existentialist Rudolf Bultmann, Peterson presents his philosophy of life in Christians terms, redefining doctrines of depravity, atonement, original sin, and faith in terms of existentialism (e.g. 55, 59, 189-90, 226). This brings us to the first problem of the book. Many Christians I have talked to see Peterson’s concern for Scripture and its centrality for western society as a refreshing breeze in modern thought. But It becomes clear early on (e.g. 43, 359) that Peterson’s interest in Scripture is not that of a Christian nor of a sort that is compatible with Christianity. Instead, Scripture is a deposit of ancient wisdom, insights spewed forth from the depths of Being itself (think of Being in the corporate sense above) (e.g. 104).
The wisdom Peterson finds in the Bible is conveniently his own existentialist Jungian (as in the psychological system of Carl Jung) philosophy (e.g. Rule 2). It is not only that he rejects the inspiration and authority of Scripture, but he rejects its ability to communicate clearly. Instead, the Scriptures are demythologized to discover the moral teaching that is being communicated by its myths (xxvii, 34-35). This brings us to the second major issue.

Christians should be concerned with Peterson’s handling of Christian doctrine and Scripture, let alone his false Gospel. Yet not even the non-Christian will find a plausible gospel here. Instead, those who follow Peterson’s rules are bound to find themselves in deeper despair than that which drove them to Peterson in the first place.
Throughout the book he takes the stance of an old man dispensing wisdom, a scholarly authority dispensing his knowledge. Yet unlike the old person speaking from life-long experience or the authority speaking hard-earned truth, Peterson’s book does not escape the category of opinion. That is, he never offers a credible reason why we should believe the philosophy he offers.

The nihilism to which this book responds emerged from a vacuum of truth and meaning; with god dead, as 20th century thought claimed, no objective standard was left for truth and meaning. It was quickly discovered that humanity was insufficient to the task of formulating their own meaning (and formulating your own truth is a contradiction in terms). Instead of returning the reader to an objective foundation, Peterson suggests that taking responsibility for being will produce its own meaning (199-201, 283).
The problem, of course, is that meaning is not something that can emerge of its own accord. Peterson suggests that meaning will emerge as you take responsibility for being, yet this hardly seems the natural order of things. We are motivated to do something because we see it to be meaningful. We set goals and achieve them when we are assured they have meaning; we do not find meaning by setting goals. Without transcendence, without a God who orders reality, authoritatively sets out good and bad, right and wrong, there can be no meaning. Meaning is intrinsically tied with morality, pursuing what is good and true, and eschatology, pursuing the proper end. Without a purposeful plan for history, a distinct direction and a standard by which to evaluate progress in that direction, their can be no meaning.
By leaving meaning and truth (157-159, 230) in the hands of the individual, Peterson never manages to offer a reasonable or satisfactory answer to the problem he is attempting to solve. If truth is the story you tell with your life (230), what foundation is there for the hundreds of moral evaluations he makes? What reason do we have to trust his advice, listen to his opinion, when there is no foundation for the claims he makes?

Peterson offers some genuinely good advice and surely many people need to hear his call to take responsibility for life and do something with it (though I doubt those who need to hear this the most will bother reading the book). However, by giving no firm foundation for his advice, he ultimately sets the reader on the path to inevitable despair and disappointment. The advice may work for season, maybe two, but when some success is reached or when hardship comes, they will be confronted once again with meaninglessness. Like the rich and famous, they will discover at the end of their goals the same void from which they fled.

There is ultimately only one good news, and Peterson’s philosophy is not it. The good news is that Jesus Christ has acted to save us from the wrath of God not that we can save ourselves and society from hopelessness and despair. The good news is that Jesus Christ will one day return and bring an end to all pain and misery and bring justice to all the atrocities of our time and beyond; the good news is not that we will work together to forge a better future. The good news is that Jesus Christ redeems us, calls us, and commissions us to live for Him in this world, giving us meaning. He has revealed the truth, and only this truth will set us free. Believing in Jesus Christ is the only escape from Nihilism, not a vague hope in “the intrinsic goodness of being” and confidence in our own ability to craft truth and meaning.

This book is a dud. It consists of two elements, Baseless Speculation (BS) and the Blatantly Obvious (BO). Peterson seems to feel that he is the Universal Expert and Guardian of all Truths. In fact, he is way out of his depth. Had he simply set out to apply principles that he has observed in this clinical practice to a self help book for the young men who seek him out, this book might have been a success--albeit not a work of any originality.

Instead the reader is subjected to pseudo-intellectualism and bafflegab drawing upon fields as diverse as evolutionary biology, philosophy, political science, history and biblical criticism. The difficulty with this is twofold. First, Peterson possesses no expertise in these latter fields. Second, Peterson deliberately cherry picks morsels from each of these disciplines when they reinforce his ideas and violently rips them from their contexts when they don't. HIs approach is both intellectually dishonest and amateurish.

There are a great many self help books on the market. You could choose the timeless classic How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, the ubiquitous The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey or the deeply philosophical Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. If you're looking for advice on cleaning your room, pick up The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up or if you are a little shy on confidence, there is much better advice in Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers.

Better yet, you could just google the countless lists of the best self help books for men on the web. You won't find Peterson's book on any of them and for good reason.

Resist the hype! Peterson has plenty of money without yours.

I loved this book, it is just common sense, like reading an entire book about what your soul already knows, but needs reminding of. Everyone should read it. It feels good to be given advice that just makes you go, "YES," and is nothing extraordinary or that not everybody can do. This book is like a handbook for proper adulting.

This book is great. Found the second chapter got a bit dry but after a first read there is a much greater appreciation for the book as a whole.

Read it once to develop an understanding of the scope of rules, etc.
Read a second time to help apply some of the more applicable items within the book.

This is a great book to read, and return to when evaluating how well you are doing with being a strong and independent individual.

Certainly the best "self-help" (though I hate to use the term) book that I have read.