“12 Rules for Living” – Antidote to Chaos

04 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by Richard in Articles & Books of Interest, The Outer Loop

Tags

"12 Rules for Living", "Map of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief", David P. Stang, Jordan B. Peterson, YouTube

A review and commentary by MillersTime reader and friend, David P. Stang.

Dave wrote in his email containing an early draft of this post:

“My intent is to present a case for Peterson’s views that reasonably educated people would find appealing irrespective of their political parties.”

12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos” by Jordan B. Peterson

Jordan B. Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and had previously taught at Harvard. The New York Times stated that he is “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now.” Evidence of this claim can be found in the fact that his lectures recorded on and accessible through YouTube have attracted over 65 million viewers.

Peterson is also a clinical psychologist with a continuing active practice. He and his wife Tammy are parents of a daughter, Mikhaila and a son, Julian. Mikhaila has suffered enormous pain resulting from years of combating rheumatoid arthritis and enduring multiple surgeries. Her father fondly regards his daughter Mikhaila as a courageous hero.

Over the course of his life Peterson also has observed much suffering experienced by his patients who described their emotional pain problems during their psychotherapy sessions with him, and he learned about suffering experienced by many of his students over the years. He clearly feels great compassion for them and for others’ suffering which often results from tragedy and malevolence. So much so in fact that it drove him to write two books related to suffering.

In this new book he states, “The idea that life is suffering is a tenet, in one form or another, of every major religious doctrine…. We can be damaged, even broken, emotionally and physically, and we are all subject to depredations of aging and loss… It is reasonable to wonder how we can expect to thrive and be happy (or even want to exist, sometimes) under such conditions.” In 1999 he published his first book, entitled Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief which Peterson stresses constitutes the conceptual foundations of his 12 Rules.

Throughout his 12 Rules and YouTube lectures, Peterson presents a mixture of the diverse classic literature and teachings of the past several thousand years emanating from pre-scientific cultures, the hypotheses and scholarship of modern-day science (including particularly neurological and psychological studies) and he constantly injects first-hand, real-life examples of human and animal behavior which illustrate the concepts he is propounding.

Understanding that one’s individual self as divine or sovereign, according to Peterson, reveals the pathway to meaning in life. A major foundational principle of his 12 Rules is that every human life is confronted by order and chaos. By order he means “the place where the behavior of our world matches our expectations and desires; the place where all things turn out the way we want them to.” Chaos, on the other hand, is the “domain of ignorance itself” and is “unexplored territory.” He tells us chaos is present when you feel despair and horror and is the place you end up when things fall totally apart. Order can be disrupted by chaos and chaos can be constrained by order. Within chaos potential exists. He informs us that your attitude toward potential confers on you a certain moral obligation: The challenge is to live up to one’s potential. The potential is in the future. Contending with chaos that disrupts order is like meeting the Dragon head on.

As part of his extensive tour this year Professor Jordan B. Peterson has been lecturing about his book. In his talks he stresses that his twelve rules can be comedic, but that they are really metaphors which point to a deeper philosophic and psychological meaning. In his book he urges his readers to focus on their individual patterns of thought, belief and behavior. He stresses that his rules are not injunctions meant to make life easier. They are injunctions to make life more difficult. He asks his readers and listeners to aim higher and to seek to become the very best they can be. Peterson stated that I hope that what I’m aiming at is to tell people stories and provide them with clinical information that is derived from the best literature and science that I know so they can be fortified in their ability to contend with tragedy and malevolence.”

These are his rules:

Rule 1: “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.”

Peterson emphasizes that standing up straight with one’s shoulders straight reveals not only self-confidence but also indicates vulnerability. When one is standing up straight (instead of crouching or cowering) one’s most vital spots are unprotected and exposed to danger, signifying through that confident stance that one has mastered order while simultaneously that one is courageously prepared to face chaos head-on.

Rule 2: “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.”

Peterson’s main point here is that people tend to treat themselves more poorly than they treat others for whom they are responsible for caring. So he advises us to treat ourselves in the same way we would like our children to be treated.

Rule 3: “Make friends with people who want the best for you.”

One way of treating yourself like someone you are responsible for helping is to make friends with people who want the best for you. Some people tear you down. Don’t put up with that, he instructs, find others who lift you up. Therefore you have an ethical responsibility to surround yourself with people who support you when you do good and criticize you when you misbehave.

Rule 4: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to who someone else istoday.”

This is also a rule about avoiding envy and avoiding excessive self-criticism or self-loathing. Peterson tells us that in life we face an eternal landscape of inequality. There will always be people more competent than we are. This should not lead us to despair but rather encourage us to become the best we are able. This requires setting high goals, but ensuring that we choose goals that are possible for us to attain.

Rule 5: “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.”

An Apology and an Overture to Jane Austen

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by Richard in Articles & Books of Interest

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

"Pride and Prejudice", An Apology, An Overture, David P. Stang, Harry Siler, Jane Austen, Lady Herring-Hicks, Lexicographic Gratification: Confessions of an Introvert", Mr. Bennett

(Ed. Note #1: Upon reading a recent post on “MillersTime” — “Lexicographic Gratification: Confessions of an Introvert” — another long time friend offered the article below for readers of this website. His title was “Austen Apology,” but I have taken the editor’s liberty of giving it the title you see above and below.)

An Apology and an Overture to Jane Austen

by Harry Siler

Dear Miss Austen,

Writing this letter, most forward of activities on my part, is made necessary by the surprising realization that I have grown to like you. I had been quite ready to blame you, before coming to know your writings, for the most awful state of the gender-divide in the English Speaking World.

My original mistaken complaint was related to having assumed that you had, by your influence on young women readers, taught them to make marriage their goal and having provided them, thereby, with the very handbooks of just how their goal of marriage might be achieved. Your glowing stories of pretty ribbons and long dresses were unrealistic, and your endless discussion of gender-mingling continues as an energizing human endeavor among the lay people has only offered a partial story. There was no discussion of the not-so-niceties of life such as discussion of frequent trips to the privy, with its imagined attendant complications. Nor did you offer any suggestion, or warning, that life extends beyond the wedding day and deserves its considerable consideration if those lives, thereby being bound, are to be made “for better or for worse,” as the saying goes.

Or so it seems to me.

Another of my early complaints was toward the narrowness of your stories and subject matter. England was at war for most of your life, first with the rowdy Americans rebelling and then with the French. War, it seemed, to be of no concern to you. Neither, it seemed, was what must have been the clearly lesser lives of those who served you and your family, and your uppity friends. But, I soon came to see that, despite my initial objections, by the very narrowness of your focus, the story that you were telling was quite interesting to me, and was made more so, and more focused, by what you were not saying. I found myself reading late into the night, more interested in the lives of your people than in what the lack of my own sleep would mean for my own morrow.

The matchmaking and the miss-matches being made have been of keen interest to me, as has been the revealed secret that people do not always say what they mean. That that has been going around longer than my discovery of it is also a surprise. Perhaps it will not surprise you that such is happening still. (Indeed, one might say that new means of communications having been added, some with batteries, that permit increased misreading of the mind of others even more readily and at a much greater distance.) Or, that it often misleads those of us in the irony-challenged classes to jump forward, with our wishful-thinking, into, surprisingly to us, suddenly empty places, much as an eager bull might charge at a never-intended cape.

Your written discussion in Pride and Prejudice of Mr. Bennett’s marriage, its beginnings and its effects, showed me how, again, I had misjudged you. You did see, and I can only hope those generations of your young women readers also saw, the depth of life made possible, or thereby rendered impossible, by the marriages they were seeing you illustrate.

Dear Lady, you and I, if you will entertain my overtures, will have as our guide the good offices of Lady Herring-Hicks helping us with the protocol of our various times, places and stations. I will seek her advice at each turn as I next approach you. But this letter seemed the least I should do, in the way of a warning, before I attempt to engage with you further.

Our own rowdy American, Benjamin Franklin noted in his writings that older women much appreciate the attention of a younger man, and I must tell you it adds to my excitement no end to consider myself a younger man, as I wait your reply. There may be rattlers among your friends who will say, because you’re dead, that I can’t be taken seriously. Please know that I have, in my past life, gone out and about with some women who were quite similar in their presentation, and that I thereby feel I have been more that sufficiently prepared to meet you as you are presently situated. Your views on dancing alone suggest a liveliness unknown in my own past life. As a young man I attended a college that suppressed sexual relations among its attendants for fear that dancing might break out. I will bring my own set of peculiarities with me when I come to call.

Some wise person, finally and in time, has advised that marriage was an institution whereby, “one was capable of having your burdens halved, and your joys doubled” if it be done well. That seems a more complete statement, however ideal, of the institution’s potential. Even failing at the doing of that might be the better sort of enterprise to aim for. And if, as partners in the effort beforehand, each partner is pregnant with the knowledge that practice will be required in its achievement. The word “practice” has long held special meaning for me. Ages ago, back home visiting, I crossed paths with a friend from when we were both young and just married, and asked if he had children. He said, “No, we’re still practicing.”

Please do feel free to react to this overture in whatever fashion you are moved to. It is on of the great inventions of the new age that women are now free to speak their minds and that they have assumed the role of partners in this kind of enterprise, sharing in both the design and in the manufacture of the lives that they aspire to.

Your’s, & c.

Harry Siler

(Ed. Note #2: Mr. Siler can be reached by email – harrysiler@yahoo.com – if Ms. Austen or readers of this post would like to be privately in touch with him. Additionally, thoughts and/or comments on the above Apology and Overture can be left on this website in the Comment Section of this post. Finally, I am also willing to provide Mr. Siler’s home address (‘snail mail’) to certain individuals if I am convinced of an urgent need for some one to be directly in touch with him, using that sadly outdated but certainly more private method of communication.)

Lexicographic Gratification: Confessions of an Introvert

01 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by Richard in Articles & Books of Interest

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Americanisms, Charlton Laird, David P. Stang, Etymology, James Boswell, Language and the Dictionary, Lexicographic Gratification, Lexicography, Mitford M. Mathews, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Jefferson, Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, William E. Umbach

(Ed. note: My friend Dave chose to entitle this essay ‘Lexicographic Gratification’ and somewhat reluctantly agreed to my adding ‘Confessions of an Introvert’ to his title. I think he prefers to think of himself as an ambivert.)

By David Stang

Fred Scharf, the husband of my second cousin Anne Phillips and the only lawyer and intellectual in my whole extended family, gave me a Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary bearing the same copyright date, 1957, as my graduation from high school. Bookish Uncle Fred told me to “treasure it by reading its definitions for the pure pleasure of learning new words, including synonyms, antonyms and etymology – meaning the study of word origins. Besides that,” he said, “you’ll find tons of amazing information up front before the dictionary section begins and at the end after the last word beginning with the letter Z.”

This was an entirely new way of viewing dictionaries, in fact, nearly the opposite of how I felt about them, particularly, when as a schoolboy, I would ask my mother what is the meaning of ‘X word’? And she would say,”Go look it up and that way you’ll remember it better than if I tell you.” I would usually answer her by saying, “Mom, it’s a complete waste of time to go look it up in the dictionary when you already know the answer and can tell me now.” Sometimes I could browbeat her into giving me the answer, but usually she sternly pointed to the big unabridged dictionary resting atop its own four foot high podium. As soon as she would walk out of the room, I would whisper to myself, “The hell with it. I’m not looking it up.”

But that night back in 1957 I sat on the edge of my bed near the reading lamp, opened my new dictionary and discovered that Uncle Fred was right. There was an amazing amount of essays and commentary on the history of lexicography, etymology, the beauty and depth of the English language, and on and on. And at the back of the dictionary there were tables of all kinds: names and addresses of all the colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, symbols, abbreviations, proper forms of address, and a load of other miscellaneous information. I said to myself, “Maybe Uncle Fred is right. I ought to start reading this stuff. Maybe I should become a word junkie.” But would I ever really be able to convince myself that looking up words in the dictionary is more fun than a barrel of monkeys?

Anyway, I started to read the first article in my new dictionary which was about the history of the English language and the history of lexicography. I got about as far as the author’s discourse on the linguistic influence on the English language contributed by the Angles, Jutes and Saxons. In less than a minute I concluded that ‘All this crap is complicated and boring. I’m not going to waste another minute reading it.’ Then I reflected for a moment and realized I would seriously need this dictionary when I started college at the end of the summer because if I were doing some kind of course assignment and spotted a word I didn’t know I’d be better off looking it up than faking it.

While studying to earn my B.A., J.D. and M.T.S. degrees, I relied upon that dictionary quite a bit. Even more so years later when I was reading for pleasure and didn’t know the meaning of a word or when I was researching and writing a number of articles and a few books. By my recent off the cuff estimate, I must have used that dictionary at least 25,000 times. But rarely – in fact never – did I dare take the time to wallow extensively in all that good stuff printed before and after the dictionary part of the book.

Guest Post: “Thank You George Saunders & Colm Toibin”

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by Richard in Articles & Books of Interest, Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

"House of Names", "Lincoln in the Bardo", Afterlife Consciousness, Colm Toibin, David P. Stang, George Saunders, The Disincarnate, The Soul, The Spirit

(Ed. Note: David Stang, one of my dear friends (with whom I disagree on many issues), has long been interested in the concepts of an afterlife, the spirit, the soul, and the disincarnate, all of which are foreign to me. Nevertheless, we continue to meet and talk and exchange views about many things. Today, this Guest Post is spurred by David’s reading of two recent novels which have received strong reviews, including ones by MillersTime readers.)

The Literary Resurrection of Spirits in George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo and Colm Toibin’s House of Names

by David Stang

Introduction:

One powerful dogma of Science for well over a century has been only what is material or measurable with scientific instruments may legitimately be considered real and therefore any notion of spirit, soul, afterlife consciousness or disincarnate beings – or even that is possible for humans to communicate with such entities – is necessarily a hallucination or a delusion most likely arising out of a mental disorder. In place of religion Science offered us Darwinism, followed by Neo-Darwinism, the present day majority view. There are no deities. There was no Creation. There is no afterlife. There is only evolution and adaptations. Our only purpose for being alive is to propagate and perpetuate our species.

In addition to the attacks on anyone who questions Neo-Darwinist theory, there have often been attacks from the Christian Church on those who seek to make connections with spirit realm entities. Mediums, also called necromancers, who communicated with dis-incarnate spirits and other world entities have for centuries been accused by the Church of doing the work of the Devil.

The effect of the Church coupled with attacks from science adversely affected those persons engaged in the Arts who had interest into delving into matters involving deity, soul, spirit and the afterlife. Artists were intimidated from writing plays, novels, film scripts, short stories almost any other kind of fiction which showed sympathy or acceptance of such other worldly phenomena. In time the artists caught on and stopped writing novels, short stories and film scripts about the spirit realm and all of its varied denizens. But in recent years there have been signs that the pendulum was about ready to start swinging in the other direction.

Within the first six months of calendar year 2017 two novels with a heavy duty emphasis on necromancy have been published with little apparent risk that their authors would be subjected to defamation, scorn and other such as punishments. This year George Saunders (author of Lincoln In The Bardo) and Colm Toibin (author of House Of Names) each jumped fearlessly into the spirit realm with both feet. The term Bardo, based upon Buddhist tradition, is best defined as a state or states of being or consciousness following death.

Ireland: Thru Ellen’s Lens

05 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Ballynavinch Castle, Ballyvaughn, Baltimore, Beara Peninsula, Cape Clear Island, Cliffs of Moher, Coiunty Limerick, Connemara, Connemara National Forest, Cork, Count, County, County Clare, County Cork, County Galway, County Kerry, David P. Stang, Dingle Peninsula, Ellen Miller, Ellen Miller Photos, Ireland, Kenmare, Kerry Peninusula, Kinsale, neolithich molnuments, Southwest Ireland, stone circles, The Burren, Tralee, Western Ireland

We recently had the good fortune to spend two weeks driving in Southwest and Western Ireland. The trip included a few days in County Cork with overnights in Cork, Baltimore and on Cape Clear Island. Then we had five wonderful days with our good ireland_map-2 friend David Stang who has spent four or five months a year for the last 30 years at his home in Kenmare, County Kerry. Dave introduced us to both the historical richness of (Southwest) Ireland and to its geographic beauty. We spent most of four days driving with him on the Beara and Dingle Peninsulas and also had the good fortune to visit a diverse number of his Irish friends who gave us insights into their lives and their country.

Back on our own, we spent another week driving and wandering through Counties Limerick, Clare, Galway, and Mayo, including two nights at Gregan’s Castle in The Burren at Ballyvaughn and part of a day at the Cliffs of Moher. We spent another two nights at Ballynahinch Castle in Connemara, County Galway, where we also marveled at the small towns, the National Forest, and our personal interests in stone circles and neolithic remains.

The pictures below and the slide show that accompanies this post are Ellen’s choice of some of her favorite photos from the trip. Not meant as a travelogue — though the slide show is in chronological order of where we went — the photos are Ellen’s selection of what she saw through her lens of Southwest and Western Ireland.

And for those of you who might want more ‘written’ details, you can click here to see the multiple-choice quiz we made up near the end of our wonderful two weeks on the Emerald Isle.

I.16

I.24

I.18

I.26.

I.5

I.4

I.7

I.23

I.9

I.12

I.10

I.21

I.13

I.14

I.2

To see Ellen’s entire slide show (88 photos), use this link: Ireland: Thru Ellen’s Lens.

For the best viewing, click on the little arrow at the top right of the first page of the link to start the slide show. If the slide show appears to start in the middle, scroll to the top of the page where you’ll see the little arrow in a box.

See all the photos in the largest size possible (use a laptop or desktop computer if you have access to either). They are much sharper and better presented than in this (above) post.

“American Sniper” – Two Conflicting Views

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

"American Sniper", 9/11, Autobiography, Chris Kyle, Clint Eastwood, David P. Stang, Film, Iraq War, Richard Millier, Terrorism

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A long time friend suggested we both see Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper and then get together to talk about the film.

We haven’t had that talk in person yet, but I suggested we could both write about the film, and I’d post what we both wrote (without having seen each other’s comments).

I’ve posted his first and mine afterwards.

Please feel free to add your thoughts, civilly of course, in the Comment section of this post.

“Connecting But Not Intruding”

15 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Richard in Articles & Books of Interest, Family and Friends

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

County Kerry, David P. Stang, Ireland, Tuosist, Tuosist Parish

clogher-head-beach-dingle-peninsula-county-kerry-ireland_1280x768_77490

(My friend David P. Stang splits his time between Washington, DC and County Kerry, Ireland. A few days ago, he sent me the following in an email, reminding me St. Paddy’s Day was coming. He seemed to think” MillersTime” readers might enjoy his take on how living in Ireland differs from living in the US.)

The Admirable Tuosist Life Style

By David P Stang

For foreigners and urban blow-ins the way of the men and women of Tuosist, an important parish in County Kerry, Ireland, may take a long time to comprehend. At least for me it took many years. Some of the facets of the Tuosist life style in contrast to big city life are fairly obvious while others are far more subtle and difficult to detect.

Life After Death? A Current Controversy

15 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by Richard in Articles & Books of Interest, Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

" "Seeing God in the Third Millenium, "Hallucinations, "Proof of Heaven, "The Science of Heaven, David P. Stang, Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Oliver Sacks, Near Death Experiences

Family and friends can take you to some really strange ‘places.’ After joining my wife on a trip to Peru and into the Amazon recently, I went to Columbus, OH for six days for the Obama campaign because a friend urged me to do so. And now another friend wants to take a small group of us on horseback through the battlefield at Gettysburg. And then there’s this posting.

Essay: Seers of Sandy’s Eye

30 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by Richard in Articles & Books of Interest, Family and Friends

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

David P. Stang, Hurricane Sandy

(Tues., Oct. 30, 12:30 PM – The post below was written and sent to me just now by David P. Stang, long-time friend and faithful MillersTime reader.)

That malefic millibar drop spooked the cats. Their eyes rolled around without focus. The hair stood up on their backs. They’d suddenly hiss and leap into the air then run crazily. Bounce off walls. Climb under quilts. Curl into fetal shape and quiver.

In cat consciousness the careening millibars portended Armageddon. This was before any local precipitation. Before rising winds. Before the sky darkened. In fact, two days before disaster descended they saw Sandy’s eye.

They must have foreseen life support systems shutting down. Hospitalized geriatrics choking to death. Subways, tunnels and roads flooding. Sewers barfing out millions of drowned rats. Megatons of trees down. Bridges closed. Thousands of automobiles underwater. Public transport shut down. Transformer stations blown up in explosions of blue light. Millions of residences and businesses without electric power. Communication systems destroyed. Even the New York Stock Exchange became a battle casualty. Governors and mayors dishing out situation reports while Presidential candidates disciplined themselves not to exploit Sandy’s gift. Still fear and panic reigned.

The cats saw it coming. Feline foreknowledge was spot on.

Whistling winds, crashing down cloud bursts wailed like banshees all night long. Sandy’s eye, however, passed over like the locusts did in Ancient Egypt. Who survived? Who thrived? And how?

The survivors did so with reliable shelter by merely eating, drinking, defecating, sitting, standing, sleeping, bathing and dressing.

The survivors who lived on to thrive did so with education, training, skills, courage, vision, discipline , tenacity and some luck.

But of all the thrivers and survivors who ended up living meaningful, joyous lives? Those receptive to insight. Those with compassionate and loving hearts. Those who prefer giving to taking. Those whose mainstay is gratitude.

Yet in fairness, all these good results require higher millibars. Accordingly, without drooping millibars cats can’t help you as portenders. Their foreknowledge runs only on low millibars. Only then do they roll their eyes, let their hair stand up, make hissing noises, run crazily, bounce off walls, climb under quilts and go totally fetal.