This response captures much of what, for good and ill, informs 12 Rules for Life, his long and often peculiar foray into the self-help genre. Metaphysically I am an American pragmatist who has been strongly influenced by the psychoanalytic and clinical thinking of Freud and Jung.” Philosophically I am an individualist, not a collectivist of the right or the left. In an emailed rebuttal to a journalist who termed him a figure of the “far right”, he described his own politics as those of a “classic British liberal … temperamentally I am high on openness which tilts me to the left, although I am also conscientious which tilts me to the right. His work on the psychology of political correctness has raised eyebrows, given his recent proposal to purge “corrupt” academic departments of courses and teachers he deems infected by this pathology. Peterson’s personal political lean and observations of the world around him lead him to characterize the world in this way and imagine the antidote as a path, forged by habits and decisions, that neither blindly accepts nor rejects philosophies, worldviews, and other influences, but that leads to a meaningful sense of self and productive march through life.His academic work includes many papers in which he seeks to understand political and religious belief in terms of the so-called “big five” personality traits – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The book is for millennials-a generation that Peterson believes has been forced into habits of destructive moral relativism that leads them to lack convictions in the face of diversity, and into nihilism, a mode of thinking that essentially casts life as meaningless and rejects all ideas of truth. ![]() Peterson fears the destructive powers of ideologues and aims to present tools for developing personal character and a moral compass that can carry people through the uncertainties in a world of sweeping social change. The rules focus on personal reflection and behavior. While some of the rules are quite literal, others are metaphorical, or at least tongue-in-cheek expressions to present a more practical and widely applicable idea. Raising children is an important theme in the book, for they represent the direction in which society will go. They are simple line drawings and often feature the same children-a young boy and a young girl. An illustration accompanies each chapter. ![]() Twelve chapters then present the titular “rules for life”: “Stand up straight with your shoulders back,” “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping,” “Make friends with people who want the best for you,” “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today,” “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them,” “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world,” “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient),” “Tell the truth-or, at least, don’t lie,” “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t,” “Be precise in your speech,” “Do not bother children when they are skateboarding,” and “Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.” The book then ends with Peterson’s “Coda,” as well as notes and an index. ![]() Norman Doidge, and an Overture written by Peterson himself. The book opens with a foreword by Peterson’s friend and colleague, Dr.
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