Jordan Peterson And His Controversial Book: 12 Rules For Living

Jordan B Peterson, born in Canada in 1962, is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His studies in psychology focus on personality and social psychology, emphasizing this second branch of psychology. However, his treatises cover other disciplines and even talk about topics related to philosophy, politics and religion.

Peterson is known for criticize harshly to groups that do not share his political ideas, as he defines them:”the postmodernist left” either “the neo-marxists” According to Jordan Peterson’s point of view, these people denature the human order, deny categories and do not confront the idea that there is a hierarchy of competencies. In fact, Jordan claims that there are “superior” people to others according to their competencies, their own idea of violent historical movements

Although he published his first book “Maps of meaning: the architecture of belief“⁽¹⁾ in 1999, her theory has not been embraced worldwide until this year, with the rise of the feminist movement and her timely publication of the book “12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos“⁽²⁾. In this book, he divides into chapters what he calls the rules for living and surviving the chaos of the modern era, these twelve chapters are as follows:

1. Stand up straight and put your shoulders back. (avoid being pathetic )
2. Treat yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.
3. Become friends with those who want the best for you
4. Do not compare yourself with others; Compare yourself to who you were yesterday
5. Don’t let your children do things you hate (don’t overprotect your children)
6. Before criticizing someone, worry about having your life in perfect order
7. Dedicate your efforts to doing things with meaning, not what suits you best
8. Tell the truth, or at least do not lie
9. Assume that the person you are listening to may know something you don’t know.
10. When speaking, express yourself precisely
11. Leave the kids who ride skateboards alone
12. If you see a cat on the street, pet it

His well-structured speech, full of references and developed arguments, usually mitigates the dangerous impact of their conservative ideas and little tolerance at a socio-cultural level.

Jordan B. Peterson opened an account on this well-known platform with the aim of reaching a larger audience, sharing his classes and being able to give more voice to all his allegations and theories about today’s society. After the publication of his book and the controversial interviews that have come to light in recent months, his YouTube channel has exceeded one and a half million subscribers

With these figures, we can affirm that he is one of the most influential psychologists on the current scene. However, it is important to remember that his theories about hierarchy, politics, and criticism of feminism are accepted by the most conservative and least tolerant community. In fact, in the United States press, he has been defined as masculinity guru. A label he has earned as a result of his harsh statements about women and their behavior.

In an interview conducted in March 2018 for the National Post, Jordan Peterson provided his opinion on the #metoo movement to columnist Christie Blatchford. In this interview the Canadian psychologist explains sexual harassment as follows:

In the 60s with the appearance of the contraceptive pill, a new way of seeing sex was established (…) there were new rules and the line between invitation and harassment was blurred. When establishing these new rules, it is normal to make mistakes in the area of ​​​​sexual relations.

As we can read, Peterson calls sexual harassment “mistakes” and puts much of the responsibility on women In fact, in that same interview, he states that “Men invite women sexually and are almost always rejected, so it is normal to make mistakes in these types of invitations.“.

Another criticism that Peterson makes of the new generations and social movements is that calls them cynical for considering that any unwanted sexual act is harassment and denouncing the fact that law schools are filled with “postmodernists” since they give importance to the consequence of the act and not to the intention

That is, it protests the fact that importance is given to the consequences of a crime and not to its intention, For example : If a person has sexually assaulted another, Peterson focuses on the intention of the aggressor and not on the emotional consequences of the victim. This is very dangerous since on many occasions, the majority of aggressors usually hide behind the fact that they “did not want to abuse the other person.”

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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