[squirrelicus]

Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning, 12 Rules for Life, and his many tens of hours of content on YouTube.

If you're willing to entertain the idea for a brief moment that the Bible has any wisdom at all, his Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories is a must. I recommend them even if you aren't willing, in fact. They converted me, and i was a fairly nihilistic atheist for almost all of my thinking life.

[lisardo]

I see Jordan Pererson gets downvoted here, but recommend all critic to read “12 rules for life” themselves. This book helped me a lot.

[silveroriole]

I did read it. I decided not to take life advice from someone who writes, about a two-year-old child: “I picked him bodily off the playground structure, and threw him thirty feet down the field. No, I didn’t. But it would have been better for him if I had.” It’s a ‘joke’, but it’s a weird joke. I believe he thinks this over-aggression makes him seem dominant and powerful; in reality, a grown man getting so furious at an infant that he fantasises about throwing it is just odd. I can see why young men on the internet find it appealing to be told that being aggressive is actually cool and powerful and good, but that doesn’t actually make it good advice.

I also don’t agree with his sexual-marketplace ideas about how women choose mates, and why it’s a good thing for women to choose men who behave badly towards them because they’ll change: “[female lobsters] identify the top guy quickly, and become irresistibly attracted to him. This is brilliant strategy, in my estimation. It’s also one used by females of many different species, including humans. ... His aggression has made him successful, so he’s likely to react [to the female] in a dominant, irritable manner. Furthermore, he’s large, healthy and powerful. It’s no easy task to switch his attention from fighting to mating. (If properly charmed, however, he will change his behaviour towards the female. This is the lobster equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, the fastest-selling paperback of all time, and the eternal Beauty-and-the-Beast plot of archetypal romance. This is the pattern of behaviour continually represented in the sexually explicit literary fantasies that are as popular among women as provocative images of naked women are among men.)” Is this good advice or information for men or women? Personally, I don’t think so, but since it bears absolutely no relation to how I chose my partner, I suppose Peterson would say I am some kind of outlier or unusual female. Readers may make their own minds up about the quote.

[aquad]

I thought it was a funny joke. You have to remember he's a psychologist. When it comes to children they think very simply in terms of reward and punishment to "train" children to learn to behave. You should've seen that from everything else he said about his interactions with children. I don't know how you can also come away with that psychoanalysis of him, I'd say you're reading into it too much. In reality, we are human and small things tend to irritate the majority of us from time to time. I'd also add that aggression is a tool that has certain uses throughout life, you can't always live life on the defensive. Young adults of any gender should be told that this is a tool at your disposal and completely okay to use at certain times.

For the lobster thing, I read it as neutral information. I took it as he was bringing up a similarity he has observed between the lobster behavior and popular plots in entertainment that seem to be popular with certain types of women. He's just presenting a connection for readers to make up their own minds about rather than stating some fact. However I also think most young men who read that will tend to agree with him quite easily, it definitely feels like it could partially be true (bad boy stereotype is a thing isn't it?). Also would you consider yourself in general to be a 'usual' female compared to the general population say personality wise or any other metric even? Just being on HN tells me you're already unusual, wouldn't you say?

[gexla]

> in reality, a grown man getting so furious at an infant that he fantasises about throwing it is just odd

You are getting that backwards. In reality, people think that way. They get angry with kids. They may even think violent thoughts. Tragically, they may actually be violent.

Any time you make a statement about what's weird about interactions between adults (especially parents) and kids, you should clarify that you do or do not have kids. So, I'll ask, do you have kids? I ask because we can be rational in an HN discussion. Dealing with kids tests that rationality.

> Is this good advice or information for men or women?

Men who are "alpha male" types get more selection. This may or may not be true. The "should" (rational decisions) is a different argument. JP is trying to explain how things ARE (and he could be wrong on that.) That's different from advice and the information is neither good or bad.

[silveroriole]

He is just describing “how things are”, not giving advice or telling you what you should do, in his self-help advice book about his “rules for life”? That’s surprising to me, I must say!

[gexla]

Heh, good point.

Okay, you're right. It's a self help book with advice. ;)

[belorn]

The sexual-marketplace is not good advice on how to behave, but there is aspects of truth to acknowledge that humans are somewhat similar to tournament species where a smaller percentage of men have children compared to women. The semi-accurate 20/80 means that social status has a very direct impact on the probability that a man has children, and a sad aspect of human culture is the tendency for men to be rewarded with social status for cultural correct aggression.

But we are also somewhat similar to pair bonding species. I would not describe it as an outlier or unusual, but rather two different biological strategies that is expressed through genes and culture. Researchers has even found some specific genes that is linked to predicting it, and women and men who has more of the pair-bonding associated genes have longer and happier relationships.

Being aware of both strategies and knowing there is a biological aspect to it is useful information, but strictly following one is foolish. We are human with human brains so individuals will behave uniquely even if there is a bias when averaged over a population.

[rdtsc]

> This is the lobster equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, the fastest-selling paperback of all time,

There is something strange about that book being so popular.

I think one can argue that women have been socialized to want aggressive men so that becomes a common fantasy vs it's a biologically based phenomenon. I wonder if there is a way to compare how popular the book is in relation to how strongly stereotypical the education and culture is.

[fucking_tragedy]

> I think one can argue that women have been socialized to want aggressive men so that becomes a common fantasy vs it's a biologically based phenomenon

Or it's just a popular form of easily consumable 'taboo'. No need to theorize about women secretly wanting violent relationships when there's a much simpler explanation on the table.

[rdtsc]

Sure, but why is it a popular taboo? Otherwise it's like saying "this book is popular because the topic is popular".

[0_gravitas]

I feel like I tend to agree with Peterson 80-90% of the time, what with all the clean-your-room stuff, but the last 10-20 I really disagree with

[wesammikhail]

Which is fine really. It would be more worrisome if you agreed 100% or disagreed 100%. That means that you´re not really listening.

[squirrelicus]

It's worth all the down votes and more. I'm sure you can divide the down voters into a handful of camps. Those who are somehow convinced he has ties to the despicable alt right, those who are annoyed they keep hearing about him, and those who have actually heard him speak but, ianno, think taking responsibility and straightening yourself out is bad or something. Maybe they're just afraid of confronting their shadow.

[charliesome]

> Those who are somehow convinced he has ties to the despicable alt right,

When he's hosting two prominent alt right figures as guests on his podcast [0], I think it's pretty fair to say that he has ties to the alt right.

[0]: https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/11164318379565834...

[wesammikhail]

1. Ben Shapiro is alt-right. Yea and I shit cotton candy. https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-task-force-issue...

2. By that logic, Chris Wallace has ties to Russia too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHY8yG4mVzs

3. If Peterson is alt-right then so are you. Because I am pretty sure that in one way or another you associate yourself with someone who likes Peterson whether you know it or not. So you associate yourself with someone who associates themselves with Peterson who in turn associates himself with what you yourself would classify as alt-right. You disgust me you alt-right [insert insult here]. See how these things go? Maybe it´s best if we all just stopped with the stupid mental gymnastics.

[squirrelicus]

The first thing that must be said is that there is no true definition of alt-right. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-ma...

The second thing that must be said is that in order to communicate, we must use a consistent definition of the category for it to be useful.

The third thing that must be said is that when we argue "semantics", we're trying to figure out a shared definition of a category. Without it, there is no agreement. With it, arguments usually evaporate pretty quickly.

The left side of the aisle commits a dishonest fallacy constantly with respect to "alt-right". There is a category of despicable people. There is a category that includes non-despicable people. It's not right to waffle between the two to bolster rhetoric.

There is a category of despicable people that believe Western civilization is good because of its whiteness. These are the original "alt-right" people that everyone agrees are "alt-right". They are racist and pretty much everyone rejects them across the entire political spectrum. Maybe they number 100k globally with a very generous estimate.

There is a subset of those people who believe that enforcing ethnostate boundaries is good. They number maybe 10k globally, generously speaking. They are definitely "alt-right" by everyone's definitions.

There is a larger category that uses the word "alt" to imply simply an "alternative" right, which includes all conservatives that don't agree with traditional turn off the century neoconservative figures. So if you don't like Hannity and O'Reilly but do like Shapiro, then you're "alt-right" because you attach yourself to this new wave of conservative thought that doesn't agree with the old guard.

The definition here matters. People on the left want to stretch and shrink the definition to fit their rhetoric. But this is key here: the final category of alt-right doesn't really even overlap with the racist ethnostatists that everyone hates.

All that being said, Peterson isn't really even conservative. He just happens to be criticising more left leaning figures than right leaning figures because today, the left is far closer to totalitarianism than the right, in his estimation.

[badpun]

There are at least three more reasons why people dislike or even actively attack him:

- he says that there can be value in religion, and it for some reason triggers some people

- he's a critic of the "neo-Marxist post-modern left"

- he promotes emphasis on oneself before emphasis on collective, which in left's eyes is "reactionary". I.e. in his opinion, lots of people have vast room for personal improvement, which will in turn make their life better and easier - while in the left's eyes this is just a diversion, because the best way to life improvement is unionisation, political movements etc.

[upatricck]

I am currently listening to the 12 rules for life audiobook, He does have helpful advice. but in the book he argues that chaos if feminine and order is masculine, and he fails to give any logical reasons for that claim. I understand those who are heavily offended by that viewpoint. Except from that the book is generally good. 3.5 stars.

[wesammikhail]

> he fails to give any logical reasons for that claim.

It would take a mere 10 seconds of googling to find the answer to that question as he is literally asked about it every few hours on twitter or in interviews. And every single time he explains it but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

> I understand those who are heavily offended by that viewpoint

I personally don´t understand those people because they are not really listening to the argument. They are selectively hearing what they want to hear. In your "question" there is an embedded assumption that order (masculine) is "good" and chaos (feminine) is "bad". And that´s why people get offended; if they didn´t equate chaos with bad, there would be no reason to get offended. This happens because they are not _actually_ reading Peterson. They are reading what they _think_ someone like Peterson would say but in doing so they miss the point completely.

Peterson argues that chaos in literature is most often presented as feminine (mother nature for instance) and order is presented as masculine most often (God, the heavenly father for instance). At any point in time, order OR chaos can both take hold to varying extreme degrees, which is not good for society. Example: Totalitarian states (extreme order/masculine) are bad, but so is anarchy/chaos and the complete lack of order. Both extreme order and extreme chaos are bad he argues constantly.

Would it be any better if Peterson argued that chaos was masculine and order was feminine? not really, people would still get offended because that´s what people want to be. They don´t actually stop and listen to what is being said, which is unfortunate :/

[silveroriole]

Perhaps he shouldn’t bother linking order/chaos with gender at all. There are plenty of arguments you could make that order IS feminine - who, in the American viewpoint, traditionally keeps house, tidies up, makes peace, establishes family routine, is someone you come home to every night? And who is a risk-taker, a go-getter, the one who leaves the comfortable routine and embarks on unknown adventures? I know various literary and psychological arguments about feminine chaos (ooh, the undefinable feminine lack and void! Jungian archetypes!), but what Peterson is trying to get at by this feminine chaos/masculine order thing - apart from a truly boring “the middle way is the best” argument that you point out and which clearly doesn’t require a gender linking to make - is completely unclear.

e: incidentally, if any of Peterson’s theory ramblings do appeal, just go and read Freud, Jung, Lacan, Marx, the Bible etc in the original. They are all vastly more interesting, subtle and worthwhile than Peterson’s jumbled, evo-psyched retelling of them.

[wesammikhail]

> Perhaps he shouldn’t bother linking order/chaos with gender at all.

The point he is making though is that they have traditionally been associated with gender. Just look at any religious art or any art for that matter pre-dating cameras (abstract art took over post the invention of cameras for obvious reasons) and you will find thematic ties to gender. In fact, walk into any church and look at the ceiling, that will show you how the west have thought about this chaos/order duality for 2000 years now.

With that said, is there a way to argue that perhaps feminine is order and masculine is chaos? hell yea. But please note that I wrote "most often", which is also his claim. You could however make the opposite argument and we can have a healthy discussion about the proper metaphorical language space we can use to describe such abstract concepts. But the idea of being offended because gender was used historically is rather nuts. People used what was historically available to them to use in terms of abstract story telling tools. Gender was one of those tools. Getting mad at it is borderline crazy imo.

> but what Peterson is trying to get at by this feminine chaos/masculine order thing - apart from a truly boring “the middle way is the best” argument that you point out and which clearly doesn’t require a gender linking to make - is completely unclear.

It seems to me that you are making the assumption that there IS more to it than that. Which I see no evidence for.

What I don´t really understand is: why really stop? why shouldn´t he link gender with the chaos/order duality? because people get offended? If that is the reason then all of us can say nothing at all. Because I can find a reason to get offended by anything you say. That can´t possibly be a reasonable demand either. How would we ever have any discourse in society if when someone is offended we are all required to be quiet about said thing?

The irony of this whole discussion is that you are demonstrating why Peterson keeps saying that we are slipping into chaos. We are trying to protect everyone who´s offended to the point where society as a whole is slipping toward the Oedipal mother pathology.

[silveroriole]

If there’s nothing more to it, what place does it have in a self-help book, or in any book? Why bother saying it? What interest should it hold for me? This continual argument I hear from people that he’s just “describing how things are” seems self-defeating - it makes him sound as boring as someone who goes around saying “the sky is blue, the sun is hot”. Yeah, and? So what? There’s no point engaging with or listening to someone who says “Femininity is linked with chaos. I’m not implying anything by that, and my argument should have no bearing on anything. I’m just saying that’s the way it is.” I don’t believe Peterson IS saying that, though - I think it’s just a convenience for him and most of his fans to be able to claim that he’s said nothing at all except raw falsifiable statements which might be wrong (but if they’re wrong it doesn’t matter anyway because they don’t mean anything). Why bother linking the concepts to gender? Well, it looks like the main reason is that it offends people, and some people seem to find that worthwhile in and of itself.

Read the originators of Peterson’s ideas. They certainly thought their statements about gender, archetypes, psychology, etc had deep meaning and informed how things ‘should be’, not merely how they are (of course, simply saying ‘this is how things are’ and nothing else can be an expression of deep conservatism, which is how many interpret Peterson - this is how things are AND YOU CAN’T CHANGE THEM, so just act in accordance with them).

[sridca]

Peterson only describes the masculine perspective on order vs chaos (and therein lies his bias). If you however include the moral and covert domains, order actually becomes feminine, as Ms. Arianna Stassinopoulos wrote: [quote]: ‘Women are the carriers of society’s values ... men are deviant in the sense that many of the qualities admired in them are also one’s that society has to regard with disapproval ... Women’s Lib portrays society and morality as a male invention to coerce and punish women ... [yet] women are a virtuous group seeking to impose their moral standards on men’. [endquote].

[squirrelicus]

This thread got really deep, but the answer is simple.

Peterson is describing traditional mythological associations, not prescribing anything. Chaos is tradtionally associated with the feminine. Order is traditionally associated with the maculine. This is true historically. He's not saying anything should be any way on this topic.

[ai_ia]

I agree. I used to watch Peterson's lecture on Youtube even before his rise. It brought me out of despair and my constant feeling of meaninglessness of life.

To all people, who are downvoting Peterson, take some time to watch his classroom lectures on Youtube.

[tareqak]

Do you not believe that some people might have already watched some of his classroom lectures, speaking tour lectures, and broadcast debates and then decided to downvote afterwards?

Edit: tense

[ai_ia]

Well, it's not big assumption since there has been a continuous negative coverage about Dr.Peterson in the media. Also, recently a NZ bookstore banned his books.

But if people have watched his lectures and didn't like it, then I don't have any issues getting downvoted.

[sridca]

> This book helped me a lot

In what way did the book help you a lot? What do you now do differently in life?