This is the first book (other than the Bible) that I've read and then just turned around and read it again. As the linked review indicates, for a practicing Christian or Jew, a lot of what Peterson covers is pretty basic, but for many modern secularists, it is a bit like Dr Strange discovering that maybe they missed a couple things on their way to their assumed total intellectual victory party.
If you are not a reader, then this video covers the high points of the book quite well.
The message is very old and very simple -- MEANING is what is important to human life rather than "happiness", which is at best fleeting. What the meaning of your life is to be is the one great question posed by the universe(the Holy Spirit for Christians, Satan for others) to each of us (see "Man's Search for Meaning"). Once we find that meaning we have RESPONSIBILITY to be TRUE to it!
Meaning, responsibility and truth (the wisdom triad), rather than happiness, rights and tribalism (the leftist triad). Simple, but extremely powerful for lives worth living vs lives ended in despair -- too often by their own hand.
Peterson is an engaging author and speaker, so there is really no excuse to not hear what he says. Yes, of course he has been politicized, only because EVERYTHING is part of a zero sum tribal political game in the failed "liberal" West. From a traditional rendering of knowledge however, there is nothing political about him. He is as basic as Socrates, Jesus or Buddha -- What is the good? How are we to know it? How are we to practice it? How might we live our lives? Is this all there is?
My favorite quote from the NR review linked above ...
And so, as the secular Left pressed up against the church, it looked behind and saw the flames in its own camp. Peterson held the match, but the kindling was all around him. It’s not that men (and many women) failed to adjust to the new gender ideologies, it’s that the new gender ideologies too often fail to reckon with our deepest human longings and fail to recognize our fundamental human nature. As Peterson writes in 12 Rules, “We cannot invent our own values, because we cannot merely impose what we believe on our souls.”
What kind of a world might we live in if the small phenomenon that is Jordan Peterson grows and matures? Perhaps one where a majority finally accepts that we are not soulless automatons! Perhaps one rich with meaning and truthful relationships!
A worthy prayer!
