My friends often roll their eyes when I hesitate to embrace anything that’s popular. It’s true that I’m wary of popular things. It’s not because I’m a hipster (I’m not – I live in the suburbs and I like Bud Light and Taco Bell). I think the reason I balk at popular things is because I’m afraid of getting swept up in something that I’ll later regret. It’s better to test things on their own merit than to sign my name to something that sours.
So, when my friends recommended I read this bestselling popular book, I internally balked. The New York Times called the author “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now”. Ok, I thought. Let’s pump the brakes.
But Peterson, a clinical psychologist, professor, and family guy, won me over early and easily. The book is formatted as a dozen rules (ex. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street), each of which is expounded upon using psychology, Western and Eastern religious traditions, anecdotes, literature, and whatever else weaves together holistic thought. While all of that is in the book, Peterson maintains a good-humored, conversational tone.
This little project started as small, playful musings on a website, and bloomed into this opus of hopeful philosophy and cosmology that we need in 2018. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular: It’s a smart guy saying eloquently and with conviction that hope isn’t stupid. We can make things better, and that starts with making ourselves better. He proceeds to give a roadmap. More than that, though, he teaches the reader how to make their own roadmap to a life well-lived. That’s the job of a professor, in my opinion, and of a dad.
I brought up the NYT quote about Peterson because I think he would wave it off and point back at his readers. The point isn’t that he’s smart, or that he has a good rules. The point of the book is that we need to develop our own rules and live courageously. That is, we need to wake up, get out of bed, and be good.
Ooof. I have major problems with Jordan Peterson. He sits very comfortably as a cis het white man and lectures to women and minorities that what we see as a white patriarchal oppression is really a system “predicated on competence.” And he is a climate change denier.
Haha, yes, I found out about his controversial nature a few days after finishing the book. I think you know me well enough by now to know that I try to keep a pretty open mind and that I value all sorts of opinions. (Or maybe I don’t, and that’s a blind spot I feel comfortable you calling me out on after years of online friendship!) There are probably myriad ways I disagree with Peterson, including climate change (see my review of A Climate for Change by Hayhoe). Despite those disagreements I found a lot of encouragement and wisdom from this book.
I do know you well enough to know you keep an open mind and are not a climate denier. I won’t be organizing a protest in your general direction.
I am finding that as oppressive rhetoric is being turned into state policy, I have much less patience for people who think the way Peterson does about gender and identity. I’m glad you got something positive from him. I won’t be giving him my money or eyeballs.