Interesting books, and news items about books and periodicals, particularly with respect to political and social issues. Since May, 2016, many of my larger book reviews have been put on a hosted Wordpress site; so now this blog emphasizes previews, interviews with authors, booklets, large periodical articles, and literary business issues. Note: no one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules", well, the executive summary, and the Lobster Metaphor (and "Clean Your Room")
I recently bought a paperback copy of Jordan Peterson’s “12
Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” (2018). There has been a lot of controversy about this book being "banned" by some sellers in New Zealand and other places (video).
Well, I thought I did.The original book from Random House Canada runs over 400 pages.What I actually bought was a booklet from the
Executive Growth Summaries for Personal Growth series. It runs 80 pages with ISBN
978-172598071-6. This apparently is not written by Peterson himself.
Nevertheless, the summary gives you enough to demonstrate the
controversy. On page xi, it gives you a QR code to point your smartphone camera
at to open a link with the 12 rules.
Furthermore, when I picked up my copy at a UPS store, the
teenager working there pointed out to me that Amazon or the UPS driver had
opened it “by mistake”.Spying on
someone for buying “right wing” literature?
A few of the points
help demonstrate the controversy.
The most disturbing to some people is the first one, “stand
up straight”.Peterson gets into a
metaphor about the life of a male lobster to develop his idea that social
hierarchy in nature is essential for anything to work. He sees it as almost a
mathematical axiom. But roughly speaking, this sounds like a justification of
authoritarianism and “ranking” or “rightsizing” people, a preoccupation of both
fascism and communism (as in China today with the idea of a “social credit
score”).This observation might have motivated
the 2015 satirical movie “The Lobster”, from director Yorgos Lanthimos, where
single people are forced to find partners or be turned into beasts.
Point #6 is the “clean your room” idea, get your own life in
order no matter how “unfair” the world has been to you. That call for unconditional
self-discipline has drawn a lot of anger and indignation, to say the least. This sounds like my essay “Assimilate (or
join a resistance and assimilate)” or my father’s dictum “to obey is better
than to sacrifice”.
Point #12 suggests we have a lot to learn from animals, more
from cats (for their independence) than dogs. It is certainly very good for teenagers to have experiences with wilder animals, and learn communication skills with beings that are a lot smarter (about their own worlds) than we realize.
Martin Goldberg is very critical of Peterson’s hyperindividualism
in his own “clean your room” video, and says people need to be open to joining
others with collective activism, sometimes.
It's not clear how Peterson replies to bullying.
It's interesting that Peterson grew up in a remote town even north of Edmonton, Alberta (the edge of civilization at the West Edmonton Mall).
Wikipedia attributionlink for photo of lobsters in a supermarket tank in CT (CCSA 4.0)
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