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vitelliusmergus t1_ja4tkl3 wrote

A lot of his ideas are really outdated forms of psychology and psychoanalysis, so if youre wanting to learn, other sources are best. Hes basically just doing generic self help (not a criticism of self help books, but thats pretty much all hes doing) and its under a layer of debunked Jungian psychology. Id give Peterson a skip

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[deleted] t1_ja4twk3 wrote

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bot_exe t1_ja4vl9q wrote

Peterson cites authors a lot, you can read Jung, Piaget, Nietzsche and others he keeps mentioning, he does a decent job at summing up some of their ideas, but he obviously has his bias in putting it all together on his own model/grand theory, so he is not an unbiased secondary source (well no one is, so that is why you should check the wiki and other secondary sources on those authors for context, but then read their books directly as well)

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[deleted] t1_ja4vxs9 wrote

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bot_exe t1_ja4whf1 wrote

Beyond good and evil is probably the easiest one to read first. He is a very polemic writer, and purposefully so, it might be difficult to understand what he means exactly or to misinterpret him, so you gotta read carefully and look for some context and diverse commentary on his writings.

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Amphy64 t1_ja4uu6g wrote

A better room-tidying book is Decluttering at the Speed of Life. Otherwise, what were you wanting to learn/why were you interested?

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[deleted] t1_ja4v9vc wrote

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tigerCELL t1_ja55ku2 wrote

Reading is great, but experiencing is even more impactful. You can read about racism, for example, but when you actually meet Black people, spend time with them, talk and eat with them, worship with them, listen to them, it has a bigger and longer lasting effect. It's like learning languages, you can Rosetta Stone all day, but get on a plane and actually go to the country and immerse yourself. Then you'll get it, often even without it being explained.

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Amphy64 t1_ja4x37k wrote

Big topics! He's not going to teach you about those things - he can be criticised on purely factual grounds. If you just read fiction from different time periods you'll soon see what Peterson is claiming plain isn't true (this isn't about political divides, rightwingers here in the UK would extremely rarely be taken in by him, just because here we tend to be exposed to more history), and I think you'll learn about people, too.

If the references to mythology Peterson makes appeal to you, then it may also help you start picking more of those up, and you could read about it directly. Maybe even a book about Roman civilisation - I wanted to know more about that and felt a bit confused/overwhelmed, found SPQR is really accessible while containing loads of information.

Maybe you can narrow the topics down further, to a specific area of interest?

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[deleted] t1_ja4xs5g wrote

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Amphy64 t1_ja53koj wrote

I'd definitely recommend SPQR as a starting point then, it really helped me put the pieces together later when references to Roman history came up in what I was reading, and there's a lot about the politics in it.

Religion as you mentioned above, a lot of writers in the Western canon are coming from Christian traditions, from Chaucer's corrupt and model religious officials in The Canterbury Tales, to vice, virtue and hypocrisy in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, to Dickens' redemption of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, to Trollope's examination of different approaches to Christianity in The Barchester Chronicles and also some of the Palliser series (which is more about the contemporary political structure. Trollope himself had tried to become a MP). Honestly, if you read just Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey, which is pretty short, think about how Agnes relates to contemporary ideas of Christian virtue (Anne especially is interested in these ideas, her sisters less so but it's still an aspect, they were the daughters of a clergyman) and about women's role, I'd guarantee you'd learn more than Peterson will ever teach you about how women actually lived (if reading fiction, don't forget to notice lower class women, who may not always feature prominently. Men too).

Life of Pi is a contemporary novel that's significantly about faith and its importance to people, and very quick to read - it can also be interpreted in terms of Jungian archetypes. Jungian models are much better for analysing literature than real people, though. I'm going to see the play streamed to cinema next month, and there's also a movie adaptation.

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