Pages: 355
It was towards the middle that I lost my grip on this book. I tried and failed, and soon enough, I stopped even trying to grasp what I was reading about. Like other books, I started Peterson’s ’12 Rules for Life’ with great enthusiasm and excitement. More so since the title promised sorted knowledge which is easier to consume and remember. And while it started off great, by the 5th rule, I hardly knew what I reading about, what rule is it, and what is Peterson trying to say here.
The book starts with a ‘forward’, as if it was a classic in its genre – maybe it is, but not that I knew anything about, nor came to know from reading it. Did this book deserve such a lengthy forward, maybe? But then again, every other book could deserve a forward had the publishers decided to ask someone to write one.
Anyways, prior to reading this book, I had heard some ill-reputated things about Peterson and this book on the internet. I mostly tried to avoid it – no one should take internet things seriously – and I also couldn’t really find where all this hate for him was coming from. Notwithstanding, I wanted to proof the preceding thoughts and ideas that I had landed upon on the internet about this book wrong. I wanted to like this book. I had good intentions walking in it. And sure enough, it started off great.
The first 3 or 4 rules, I enjoyed immensely and read them with great interest. Not only did I find Peterson’s neat and pointy rules relevant and timely to our modern world, I also found his psychological-driven discussions and arguments specifically helpful. Sometime, during the first chapters, I realized, this book is also about mental illnesses, like depression and anxiety, and also a book for the mental sufferers. Later, in the closing paragraphs of the first chapters, I even found Peterson poetic and fiercely pressing, trying ever hard to emphasize on his rules. In reading Peterson, I found his presence understanding, his arguments pressing, and his ideas challengingly inspiring.
But then, the 5th chapter arrived, and I felt myself getting ever more confused and lost. I didn’t want to lose my grip on the book, but it just didn’t get any clearer. It became difficult to follow what was being said and hard to understand the comprehension that Peterson so lost himself in. The comprehension – the rules started off neat: the title and early supporting paragraphs that shed a light on what we were about to read in the following chapter, but as the chapter progressed, all sorts of explanation made its way into the comprehension. Some of the most repeated examples were: the book of Genesis and the story of God, Adam and Eve, lots Freud and Carl Jung, lots of Nietzsche too, and from literature lots of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. No matter what rule Peterson was talking about, the above examples always made themselves relevantly contributive to the argument. So much so, that at in the middle of the chapters, these examples, or others, dominated the content, and as a reader I lost the track of what I was even reading.
Rules – something we don’t need more off, but something that needs to be implemented upon now more than ever. Peterson’s 12 rules for life might seem arbitrary and simple from a glance, but reading about these rules is totally another experience. Having a less-love more-hate relationship with this book, although I enjoyed the first chapters, I couldn’t help but feel irritated, lost, and uninterested in the rest of the chapters. Peterson was just too complicated in his own arguments – to the point that they even contradicted his neat and important rules.
Ratings 3/5
*** September 25, 2020