Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order, 12 More Rules For Life

 This review from the Guardian seems decent, though I quibble with parts of it. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/02/beyond-order-by-jordan-peterson-review-more-rules-for-life

If you have read 12 rules, then reading this one is a good idea, but not an urgent one. I loved "12 Rules For Life", I really like "Beyond Order".

Rule V, "Do Not Do What You Hate", is a good one for our time. It opens with the story of a woman struggling with the daily idiocy of life in a large bureaucratic corporation in the age of Woke ... something I have lots of sympathy with after a 34 year IBM career. Her specific example was "Flip Chart" being banned in her workplace because it was problematic to Filipinos ... a claim supported here.  

I personally know of a case where "blacklist/whitelist" had to be removed from a computer tool for racial concerns. In the age of Woke, EVERYTHING has racial, sexual, or God knows what hidden implications. 

This makes it virtually impossible to not to end up stepping into a PC pothole -- as Dr Seuss, Pepe Le Pew,  and unfortunately, Aunt Jemima have. Tragically, Aunt Jemima was once a great success story. Even if you ARE very careful, as was Amy Coney Barrett, when she said in her confirmation hearing in the AM that she had never discriminated on the basis sexual preference". Webster agreed that was fine in the AM, by the PM it was "offensive". 

Corporate, government, families, and basically everything are  becoming Woke minefields, and it is hard to love working and living in a minefield. 

Rule X, "Plan and work diligently to retain the romance in your relationship" ought to be read by every couple, and especially by people considering, or avoiding marriage. The overarching of the chapter is NEGOTIATE! Which means you are both honest and you both talk rather than evade. It points out the now sad fact that virtually all women deep down want to be mothers, and sometime as they approach 30, their biological clocks start screaming. For the secular society that worships evolution, it is hard to understand why this is not obvious. Procreation is a MAJOR foundation for natural selection. 

Perhaps nature is just weeding out those too blinded by ideology to figure that out? Rule VI, "Abandon Ideology" would aid in clearing this hurdle. 

Like pretty much all of Jordan's (and the Bibles) or for that matter, Buddhist, teaching, the necessity of Rule XII "Be Grateful in spite of your suffering" is woven through the book. "Life is suffering" (Buddha), "Take up your cross" (Christ).

As with "12 Rules", being a practicing Christian would cover 90%+ of what Jordan preaches -- but the number of us practicing Christians is shrinking. Can Jordan "save" you / us / Western civilization ? I surely don't believe so ... we are in a condition where we require GRACE to save us. Even AA says one needs a "higher power" to escape addiction to alcohol. Alcoholism is just one form of avoiding the reality of suffering ... workaholism, video game addiction, constant entertainment distraction, and many others are other pitfalls. 

I highly recommend both "Order and Chaos"  ;-)  for both Christians and secularists. The advice is good -- I'm just not sure you can keep much of it without the Holy Spirit. 

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