Useful advice, drowned in unhelpful rants.

I am actually quite fond of Mr Peterson as a live speaker. But this is a book and not a podcast. He has spent little to no effort focusing, pruning and structuring the content of this book, resulting in an honestly mediocre book. This book is written in two modes. One delivers solid advice from an experienced psychologist and backs it up with a bit of science. That's 10% of the book. The remaining 90% of the book are the ramblings of your demented psychologist uncle. As soon as the advice has been laid down, he launches nonsensically on all directions. You can expect embarrassing attempts at poetry, bible study, rants about his favourite novelists, rants about his hatred of communism etc. While it all fits the bleak tone of the book, very little of that actually connects to the advice and is more like random things that he wanted to get out of his chest. Mr Peterson mentions at some point that there is a one-page version of his 12 rules, containing just the rules. You should find that list instead, and save 15 hours of life.

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A timely book - thinking with a Nietzschean Hammer

Würden Sie 12 Rules for Life noch mal anhören? Warum?

I'm going to listen to some of the chapters of Petersons book. The rules about "Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back" and "Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything, that makes you dislike them." are probably those that I will listen to once more. Not that the other chapters are no good, but those two advices and the information accompanying them, where those that I feel are the most relevant to me.
I've seen several of the lectures of Jordan B Peterson on his Youtube-channel, and there is a lot material, phrases and themes that are recurring in this book. It doesn't bother me, because they bear repeating. I've primarily been taken in by his lectures on personality, where I learned new things, to me, about e.g. the Big Five.
I've been surprised to what extent he is steeped in the existentialist thinking - I've seen that he has does lectures, but I haven't watched them.
His thinking is an amalgam of Jungian, Existentialist and Psychological thinking, where he also draws from literary sources, in particular Dostojevski and Solstjenetzyn.
On the negative side, I must admit that his many excursions in to Jungian thinking, and his interpretations of Biblical Motives leaves me unconvinced. I might give Jung a chance in a near future to see if I've been wrong about him as a thinker, but I wrote him off many years ago.
Where I find Peterson at his best and most timely is on his insistence, that that there are some prevalent misconceptions at the moment about the sexes, childrearing, equality etc. Ideas that are not helpful, but rather hurtful and a hindrance in the pursuit of meaningful lives.
Finally I was surprised and moved by the story about his daughter's plight.
Jordan B Peterson is a timely writer for these times. A psychologist with a Nietzschean Hammer for a pen, megaphoning out thoughts and truths about men, women, sex, children, the left, the meaning of life and existence.

9 von 12 Hörern fanden diese Rezension hilfreich

Gute Übersicht über Dr. Petersons Philosophie

Würden Sie 12 Rules for Life noch mal anhören? Warum?

Das Buch ist für jeden geeignet, der sich mit den Themen Sinn des Lebens und Moral auseinandersetzen will. Dabei ist es kein klassisches Selbsthilfebuch mit trivialen Einsichten sondern ehr eine Erleuterung und Aktualisierung der Werte des Abendlandes. Prof. Jordan Peterson verbindet dabei kompetent philosophie und religiöse Tradition mit fundierten wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen aus Psychologie und Biologie.Das Buch ist eine Fortführung der Philosophie von Prof. Jordan Peterson, für mich ist es eine etwas einfacher zugängliche Version von Maps of Meaning. Für Fans von Prof. Jordan Peterson gibt es nicht so viel Neues, jedoch ist es kompakter zusammen gefasst als seine ehr losen Vorträge und Vorlesungen auf Youtube.Gelesen wird das Buch von Prof. Jordan Peterson selbst. Er hat sicherlich keine klassische Radiostimme, aber aus meiner Sicht ist es am authentischten ihn selber zu hören.

Was wäre für andere Hörer sonst noch hilfreich zu wissen, um das Hörbuch richtig einschätzen zu können?

Insgesamt eine große Empfehlung!

8 von 11 Hörern fanden diese Rezension hilfreich

Listen/read only a few pages at a time

Peterson wrote this like a religious book. Repitition is common in a few segments of this book. This can be very annoying if listened to in long sessions. The ending part has a really weird amendments vibe to it, where peterson asks himself questions which he answers himself in a very theatralic way, almost as if god spoke to him. It's a solid book but bloated and at points close to religiously theatralic and vague.

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lobster gang

it is a very eye opening book about life in general by Peterson. definitely check out his YouTube as well.

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Little Life-Philosophy

Started interesting with big dramatugically pattern of Chaos and order. But transformed in a book containing simple and useless hints about Children and Pets. I am really bored and will Hive it back.

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This book is life changing and enlightening!

Every young person from generation Y and Z should read this book! We live in nihilistic times that force us to reevaluate why things we used to do might be important and why we shouldn't just randomly cast aside things that have established themselves through evolution itself. Read this, this book will help anyone understand themselves and the world better.

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Great book

I Enjoyed the book a lot and i will Read it again .
sou shoud to.

2 von 3 Hörern fanden diese Rezension hilfreich

the harsh truth of life mixed with the best advice

I wish someone had told me, what Dr. JP wrote in this book many years ago.
subconsciously I knew 70% of what he said, but it's a whole different thing hearing them, in such detail and honesty.
The examples used ( Bible verses ) might be a bit repetitive, but always on point with the topic.
Really looking forward to the audio version of "Maps of meaning"
thank you Dr. Jordan B. Peterson for making society great again.

3 von 5 Hörern fanden diese Rezension hilfreich

Well, I cannot quite put my finger on it, but

Listening to and finishing this audiobook was an ambivalent experience.

On the one hand, one can clearly perceive some of Peterson's genius and benefit from some of the rules laid out in this book.
On the other hand, Peterson's genius often seems to be squandered on abstract christian mythology. Moreover, the fact that these rules belong, or are intrinsic to a partly broken system, is not addressed. More often than not, the author equates literary and religious stories to some kind of ubiquitous god-given law, from which no one can escape and therefore must follow its rules.

One example: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Surely we can agree on the obvious benefits of following said rule. However, why not question our species primitive focus on symbols of strength and dominance, why take it as an immutable human universal?

Don't get me wrong, I will not go full SJW on this issue, but I believe the book was lacking some discussion on Peterson's own foundational myths and focused way too much on christian theology.

On occasion, I found myself listening to some kind of screachy preacher trying to convince me of the supreme christian God and his inescapable powers. The sporadic Dostojewski or Nietzsche references barely helped, as they too were always promptly connected to judeo-christian mythology.

I admit to being slightly allergic to religion, but I believe that even for an open-minded agnostic, there was simply too much talk about Adam and Eve.

Conclusion:
50 % helpful, sometimes brilliant insights on human psychology
50 % religious gibberish and weak metaphysical reasoning