Author: eboisen

I had never paid much attention to Anthony Bourdain during the height of his popularity. I thought his show was just a cooking show. Something, at the time, I was not really interested in. Recently, I have begun watching Parts Unknown and realize it is not really a cooking show. It is more of show that taught about different cultures. It also dabbled in politics, and of course, food.

This is the book that made him a household name. He had previously written two works of fiction, but they went nowhere. Before this book, he was basically an unknown, outside of New York city, journeyman chef.  It is clear from reading this that he is very well-read. He writes in a Charles Bukowski or William S. Burroughs sort of manner. Kind of a high-brow look at the gutter. He lays out his life, warts and all, for the entire world to see. He paints a very vivid picture of his life and the crazy characters he mingled with. Oftentimes, the individuals he described had me laughing openly. The debauchery and depravity is so outrageous that it appears more funny than sad. There is definitely talk of cooking contained in the book, but the story is more about his life and the lives of restaurant kitchen culture in New York city.

Bourdain mentions that he is risking his livelihood by publishing this book. He has pulled his life out of the throes of addiction and become a well-respected chef at this point. Revealing the worst points of his life was definitely a risk. If this book had only been a modest success, it may have been damaging. The fact that it was so honest and took so many risks, however, is probably what also helped make it successful. I found this to be an amazing book. Be warned, however, it can be a bit crude at times. This book is not for someone who is easily offended.

I wrote a little program to help myself learn the different degrees of the notes of each of the 12 musical keys. These would be the actual note names of the old Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do Solfège for a given musical key. The program randomly picks a key and scale degree and asks the user to pick the radio button corresponding to the correct response. The actual notes of each scale are not hard-coded into the program. Intervals of the chromatic scale are used to compute them when a question is randomly chosen.

The program:

The correct answer below would be “D” as the A major scale contains the notes A, B, C#, D, E, F#, and G#. The fourth note is “D”. Chords are constructed with the different scale degrees, for example, a plain major chord consists of the Root(first note), the Third(third note), and the Fifth(fifth note), or the A, C# and E notes for an “A” chord. All chords are constructed using rules of combinations of notes based on scale degrees. Knowing them will allow a musician, or even a hack like me, to construct chords of any type, in any key. Here is a screenshot of this simple, but effective program:

It works just like a deck of flash cards. I have found it to be a pretty effective way to help learn the notes of each key. You get one point for a correct answer and minus one point for an incorrect answer, but it does not let you get a negative score. If you have any interest in basic music theory, give it a try with the link below, if not, thanks for reading this until the end.

Scale Quiz

note:  For those of you with OCD, you may have become uncomfortable due to some misalignment in the quiz display. Sincere apologies-it has been corrected.

As with all Walter Walter Isaacson biographies, this is a fairly long book. I got stuck in Pennsylvania for an extended period because of the Crowdstrike debacle, so I was afforded quite a bit of time to read this in airports and on planes. It took less than two weeks to read the nearly 500 pages.

This book covers the story of the discovery of CRISPR and its use as a gene editing tool.  I had heard of it previously to picking up the book. I knew it involved gene editing, but I really did not understand its implications in detecting and curing diseases. I though it was just a way to selectively create designer organisms. It does in fact do that, and has actually been used in China, in 2018, to create three AIDS-resistant human babies, but there are many more applications that do not come with moral conundrums.

Bacteria have been using CRISPR for millions of years to fend off viruses. When a bacteria is exposed to a virus, it adds a little genetic code to its DNA so that it can identify and defend against a future exposure to a like virus. All future generations of this bacteria will have this coding, and thus be protected from this virus. Several scientists identified this behavior in bacteria and sought ways to understand and control it. Being able to control this process allows someone to edit the genes of virtually any living thing. The key figure in this book is the American scientist, Jennifer Doudna.  She, along with French scientist, Emmanuelle Charpentier, were awarded the 2020 Nobel prize in chemistry for their work on CRISPR. The book notes several other scientists that made similar advancements in gene editing using CRISPR, but Doudna and Charpentier were recognized as having figured out its workings first.

In addition to gene editing, CRISPR technology can also be used to detect disease. Many of the COVID tests used in the last pandemic, utilized CRISPR to create low-cost, home-based tests. Many of the COVID vaccines also used CRISPR technology. One of the key discoveries is that RNA is actually the component that directs changes in DNA. In the presence of the appropriate enzyme, RNA can be used to edit genes in cells.

Immunizations created using CRISPR for defense against a virus such as COVID can be manufactured far more cost-effectively than conventional methods that employ a non-viable variant of the virus. They can also be adapted to be used against other viruses, as needed.

I believe we have just scratched the surface of what biotechnology may bring. Currently, many of the treatments are prohibitively expensive, but there already exists cures for previously untreatable diseases such as sickle cell anemia. It has already cured one woman. The initial cost for treatment was about one million dollars. Sickle cell afflicts approximately 100,000 people in the US.  Sickle-cell generally means that the afflicted will not see life beyond their 50’s. Worry was that it would bankrupt the healthcare system, but new technology is always expensive at first. Costs will come down. CRISPR appears to have applications for many diseases, including many cancers. We are at the very beginning of this technology and there will be many new applications discovered in the coming years.

 

 

Viktor E. Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and Neurologist who became a concentration camp inmate during World War II.  He was born in Austria, earned his M.D. in 1930, and had established himself as an experienced physician when he was sent to his first of four concentration camps as an inmate.  Like most holocaust survivors, he was stripped of everything upon being taken by the Nazis. He was stripped of possessions, of family, and of title.

His training as a psychiatrist gave him a very unique look into every aspect of what it means to be human. He saw the extremes of human endurance, of compassion, and of course, cruelty. He saw how he, and those around him dealt with the incredible stress of knowing that each moment may be your last. He saw similarities in the actions and thoughts of those who succumbed to their situation and he saw similarities in those who survived it.

He concluded that humans are capable of enduring almost anything if they feel that they are enduring it for a purpose. Frankl used the idea that he needed to be there for his wife when this hell-on-earth ended. He endured years of hard labor, while consuming just scraps of bread and watered-down soup. He toiled outside in the winter months with tattered, inadequate clothing.  All the while knowing that a pause in his work or a glance in the wrong direction, at the wrong time, may draw a beating, or worse yet, a bullet.

Frankl occasionally saw unexpected kindness from a Nazi guard. He sometimes saw extreme cruelty from a capo. A capo was a fellow prisoner that was favored for some reason by the guards and put in charge of a work detail or barrack. A capo typically received extra rations and privileges. Apparently, a small amount of power was capable of quite a bit of moral corruption.

The life of a concentration camp inmate was the most stressful situation a human being could endure. This unlikely setting served as a sort of psychological observation laboratory for Frankl where he first began to develop a theory of motivation for human existence.  Contrary to fellow Austrian Sigmund Freud’s theory that humans are guided by pleasure, Frankl determined that they are guided by finding a purpose or meaning to their lives.

In the end, the image that kept Frankl alive, that of his wife, was found to be just a memory. His wife Tilly succumbed to illness in Bergen-Belsen well before his liberation.  Not knowing this likely greatly assisted in his survival. He was able to toil on in the hopes of one day being there for her.

The psychiatric field of Logotherapy is largely attributed to Frankl and has shown great success in helping patients with OCD, schizophrenia, and terminal illnesses. Its underlying philosophy is to help a patient find a meaning or purpose to his or her life. This purpose can often differ greatly from individual to individual, but upon finding, and pursuing it, one’s well-being is greatly enhanced.

 

This book is a continuation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This is the third book in the inaccurately named five-part trilogy. I have read two of these in a row. I hope I am not boring anyone, assuming anyone is reading this, with another Douglas Adams novel. Once again, the entire cast returns in this book. Even the thought-to-be-dead, perpetually depressed, Robot, Marvin. Marvin took some damage riding a stolen starship into a nearby sun, but somehow escaped incineration. Some of his replacement limbs have been cobbled together with odd spare parts, but he lives on.

The book starts where The Restaurant at the End of the Universe left us, with Arthur and Ford stranded on prehistoric earth. We discover, however, that they have split up. Arthur remained near the location of the original landing site, but Ford left to wander the earth. Arthur, still clad in his pajamas, robe, and slippers, has lived alone in a cave for four years. He has grown lonely and despondent. Finally, Ford returns. Initially, Arthur thinks he is a figment of his isolated imagination. Ford has returned because he believes he has tracked down a space-time eddy in the area where Arthur has been living. It presents itself in the form of a chesterfield sofa. Arthur and Ford chase it around as it moves around going in and out of existence. Finally, they leap onto it and are transported, sofa and all, to the Lord’s Cricket Ground just a couple of days before the timeframe of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. They arrive in the middle of the field as a match is in play. The crowd and announcers are bewildered by the appearance, out of thin air, of two long-bearded men on a chesterfield sofa.

Arthur is carried off the field on said sofa and both Arthur and Ford are questioned by police who aren’t quite sure if the duo have done anything wrong. As this is happening, the sofa vanishes out of existence. The police, fearful that they might be losing their grip on reality, let the two go. This seems to be the end of the excitement until a ship appears from the sky and out from it appears Slartibartfast, followed shortly afterwards by another ship that disperses violent white robots everywhere. The scene quickly escalates to pure chaos as the robots begin unleashing mayhem. The robots have come to steal the Ashes urn. This is the trophy given to the victor of the Australia versus England cricket series.

Arthur and Ford join Slartibartfast in his ship and leave earth to head for a party that has been going on for generations in an attempt to get information that will save the universe. Slartibartfast and Ford make it to the party, but Arthur does not. He has apparently upset a being known as an Agrajag. This  being has been reincarnated many times, only to have his existence snuffed out, mostly unwittingly, by Arthur. The Agrajag seeks revenge, but ends up getting killed, once again, by Arthur, who accidentally topples a statue of himself on the Agrajag.

In the end, Ford, Slartifartfast, Trillian, and Arthur are all reunited and learn that the Krikkit race is responsible for the killer robots that wish to end all life. They also learn that the Krikkits are being manipulated by an all-knowing super-computer named Hactar. Trillian persuades Hactar to cease existing, but his plan to end the universe is still in motion. On earth once again, Arthur attempts to return the Ashes Urn just after they have been stolen. He is is unsuccessful in this endeavor, but manages to save the universe by disposing of a cosmic-supernova-bomb and beheading a malevolent Krikkit robot with the robot’s own club. He does this still clad in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers.

There are two more books left in this series, but for the moment, I am moving on to something else. Perhaps I will revisit this series later.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is the sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  See that recap to get up to speed here.  It is the second book in the inaccurately named five-part trilogy. This book starts off with the same characters as the first book and starts right where the previous book ends with the cast of four fleeing the planet Magrathea where Arthur Dent’s brain is wanted to decode the meaning of everything.  As they leave in their ship, The Heart of Gold, they are attacked by Vogons. Under most conditions, fleeing from the Vogons would be trivial as The Heart of Gold has an improbability drive that can normally transport the ship to any part of any universe almost instantly. Unfortunately, Arthur has asked the ship’s computer to make tea with milk. This request overloads the computer’s processors and leaves the ship sitting ducks to the Vogon’s weapons.  Just before they are completely annihilated, a séance results in Zaphod’s deceased great-grandfather shrinking the ship and putting it in Zaphod’s pocket while also transporting Zaphod on a journey to find the ruler of the universe.

On his journey, he finds the ruler, who lives in a shack and has no idea he is the ruler of the universe. This is an ode to the theory that only someone who does not want to be in charge is qualified to be in charge.  Eventually, after the journey, Zaphod returns to The Heart of Gold  and sends the ship to the nearest restaurant.  Geographically, the nearest restaurant is exactly where they currently are, but many years in the future. This restaurant is built  at the literal chronological “end” of the universe.

After a dinner of steaks made from a being that introduced himself prior to the meal, Zaphod decides not to leave in The Heart of Gold, but rather in another ship that is in the parking lot. It turns out that Zaphod’s depressed robot, Marvin, is also in the parking lot working as a parking attendant. Many millions of years have passed since Marvin last saw Zaphod. Marvin is, geographically, exactly where he was left when the last book ended. Zaphod has Marvin let everyone into a sleek black ship and Marvin, Trillian, Ford, Arthur, and Zaphod venture away from the restaurant.

They soon discover that the ship is, for the most part, a drone designed to drive into the nearest sun and provide a sort of pyrotechnic display for a rock concert on a neighboring planet. They discover a transporter on the ship that allows everyone to escape before colliding with the sun. Everyone, except Marvin, who stays behind to control the transporter.

The book then loses Zaphod and Trillian who are transported to a different location than Arthur and Ford. Arthur and Ford are transported to an enormous ship filled with frozen, but still living bodies, and a small crew navigators. It turns out this ship was “fleeing” its home world to populate another planet. It was supposed to be one of three ships that was travelling to a new world. It turns out that this ship was really the only one travelling. It was filled with hairdressers, middle-managers, telephone sanitizers, and others who where deemed irrelevant to their society and were tricked into being expelled as a way to rid their planet of its worthless members.

They eventually arrive at their new planet which Arthur and Ford determine to be prehistoric earth. They find a small population of inhabitants already on the planet, but soon realize they are dying off due to the new people arriving. This makes Arthur realize he is a descendant of the cast-offs on the recently arrived ship, rather than the native inhabitants. The book ends with Arthur and Ford stranded 2 million years in the past on a planet of Neanderthals and morons.

A collection of short stories and writings from Kurt Vonnegut. It was compiled and released about a year after Kurt’s passing. A book released like this can sometimes be a money-grab, but there are many good stories in this compilation. All are based on some sort of Armageddon, be it war or the coming of Satan.

Included in the beginning is a copy of the letter Kurt wrote to his parents after he was released from a POW camp towards the end of WWII. His parents had not heard anything from him for over six months, other than he was missing in action. He does a pretty good job of bringing his parents up to speed on what he has endured, and does so with his trademark humor. He was not treated well as a prisoner of war. Who would have guessed that Nazis were not hospitable captors? He gets this point across, but manages to keep the letter in good spirits. He was a pretty good writer, even back then. After reading this, I got a pretty good insight into what gave him his unique perspective on the world. The fact that he got to live and breath humanity at its worst as a prisoner of war and still come out ok gave him insights into the human condition that few others can claim. He always seemed to find the humor in a situation, regardless of how dire. Seemingly more so, if it is really dire. This is absolutely reflected in his writing. This ability to sprinkle humor into nearly anything is much of the reason he is my favorite author.

Three of the stories really stand out. The first is Brighten Up. It appears to be an account of a situation he actually lived through while a POW. One of his fellow prisoners, Louis, somehow was always able to charm the people that ran the prison into letting him do things no one else could get away with. This allowed him to exploit his fellow prisoners who were desperate for cigarettes and bread. The story details each of Louis’ prison schemes that eventually drained all the prisoners of anything of value. It paints a vivid and humorous picture of how humans can exploit with a smile.

The second story that really stood out was called, Just you and me Sammy. It also involves prisoners of war just before they are liberated, but this is one is definitely a fictional account. I do not want to give away too much on this one. It is the best of the bunch. I will leave it at that. Please give it a read.

The third story that really stood out is the same as the title of the book, Armageddon in Retrospect. It is definitely the funniest, despite its main theme being Armageddon. It uses the theme of people exploiting each other for their own gain and also shows the incompetence of people who are often in charge of things, such as the government. It addresses widespread misinformation and manipulating the public for personal gain. I doubt these kinds of stories will ever get old as these themes seem to be more and more prevalent in modern life.

I believe that any of these three stories would make for a pretty good film, if adapted. Despite his popularity, adaptations of Vonnegut’s films have not fared well. I believe this is mostly due to the time in which they were made coupled with the elaborate nature of his stories. The special effects were not good enough to make his visions believable, particularly with his best novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. Perhaps some producer will have another look at his work and bring it to life on the screen once again. If not, we still have his wonderfully funny novels and short stories in print to enjoy.

I just finished The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was a pretty easy read and a fairly short book. I did not know when I started reading it that it was part of a “five-part trilogy” (This is the sort of humor you are in for). This book is written as a sort of a science fiction meets Monty Python type epic storytelling. Absurdist humor is always the go-to. It starts off with the main character, Arthur Dent, a typical, snobbish, living-alone, middle-aged Englishman, trying to prevent his house from being bulldozed to make way for a new highway bypass. His quirky friend, Ford Prefect, convinces Arthur to leave his home and have some ales at the pub while his house is being demolished and informs him that the earth is about to be destroyed. It turns out that Ford Prefect is actually an alien that has been living on earth for 15 years and is trying to help his earth friend, Arthur, escape the planet before the Vogons destroy it. The Vogons need earth out of the way to create a hyperspace bypass.

Previous to this, Arthur had no idea that his friend Ford is an alien. Ford gets both of them off the planet just before earth is destroyed by hitching a ride on a Vogon ship.  After a short time, the grumpy Vogons learn of Arthur and Ford’s freeloading and eject them into space. Fortunately for them, another ship happens to be in the area and rescues them 29 seconds after they were hurled into space.

The rescue ship is piloted by Zaphod Beeblebrox and an earth woman named Trillian. In a twist of fate, both Arthur and Ford know Zaphod. Arthur through a chance encounter at a party on earth and Ford as a distant cousin of Zaphod. Arthur also knows Trillian. It is a woman he had a crush on and made unreturned advances on at a party on earth. Zaphod, disguised as an earthling, left said party with Trillian.

Zaphod is on the run and has stolen the ship they are in. It turns out that Zaphod has a good reason for stealing the ship, he just doesn’t remember what it is because he did a sort of targeted, self-lobotomy, so that his thoughts could not be read regarding this information.

In their travels, they end up at what is thought to be a planet of folklore.  Magrathea is populated with a race of beings that used to build planets, but when a recession hit, they decided to sleep until it was over. No one can afford new planets during a recession. They had been asleep for five million years when Ford, Trillian, Arthur, and Zaphod arrive on the planet. It is revealed that the Magratheans had built earth for mice, which ran it until the Vogons destroyed it. The mice had been using earth as a sort of laboratory to determine the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything. The answer, it turns out, is 42, which provides no one with any meaningful information.

At the end of the book, the mice feel that they could perhaps get some meaning from the answer through one of earth’s former inhabitant’s brains, namely Arthur Dent. Arthur and his mates are appalled and make a run for it just as the galactic police arrive to try and apprehend Zaphod. With no hope of escape, and the galactic police blasting at them with their space weapons, the shooting abruptly stops and it is revealed that the galactic police’s life support computer committed suicide after a short conversation with Zaphod’s perpetually depressed robot, Martin. With this, they board their ship en route to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe for a meal.  Restaurant at the End of the Universe is name of the next novel in the series.

If my description of the plot of this book seems ridiculous, it’s because it is. The plot is fairly absurd, but nonetheless captivating. If the biography of Elon Musk, see previous post, is correct, this book is the impetus for Elon Musk’s creation of SpaceX and desire to travel to Mars. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction – even absurd science fiction.

At the conclusion of this book I will have read all but one of Walter Isaacson’s biographies.  The only remaining one is that of Henry Kissinger. These books are all 600+ pages, so they are quite the investment in time.  I felt that all were fairly easy reads. Isaacson is quite adept at writing very captivating biographies that do their best to paint an accurate and interesting picture.  It tells the story, warts-and-all.  I do not feel that anything was written to placate the billionaire subjects in instances where they were the focus.  (Musk is one, Steve Jobs was the other. )  Steve Jobs’ biography was written while he was alive and my review of it can be found in the November, 2019 page of this blog.

A year-or-so ago, I mentioned Musk in one of my meetings at work during a casual break.  I did not realize that he was such a polarizing figure, at the time.  It was pretty obvious I actually made some people uncomfortable by mentioning him.  Much akin as to what might happen if I mentioned a former billionaire President. It seems like the love’em or hate’em mentality came into our culture along with social media.  Musk can definitely be blunt and off-the-cuff at times, but I find it hard to believe that, at least in some peoples’ minds, it negates all his accomplishments.  Someone this driven is going to have some sharp edges.  If we value a person based on whether or not he or she made the world a better place than would have existed in his or her absence, then I feel pretty strongly that Elon Musk ends far on the plus side of that equation.

Before reading this book, I thought I knew most of what I was about to read. I did not.  Elon Musk has his hands in many more ventures than I had realized. He founded OpenAI because he felt that AI might “get away” from humanity. Musk wanted to ensure that human consciousness was preserved and not usurped by AI.  Preservation of human consciousness is also his motivation for SpaceX (more on that later). OpenAI was originally created as an open source alternative to AI that was being developed privately by huge companies. He felt that there needs to be some form of human conscience monitoring the application of AI that is not driven purely by profits and where a community can review its use and source code. Musk initially had intended to have a strong role in the non-profit company, but his attentions led him to his other endeavors, and OpenAI has since gone to a “capped” for-profit. Musk was not happy with this outcome. It was done without his consent by Sam Altman, OpenAI‘s CEO.  Microsoft appears to have assumed a great deal of control over this entity. AI may enslave and/or eliminate humanity after all.

SpaceX was created to satisfy Musk’s desire to make human beings a multi-planetary species. This company earns it money largely by putting satellites into orbit for governments and private industries, but Musk has said that this is just a means to advance technology so that humans can some day travel to, and inhabit Mars.  Again, this is to preserve human consciousness in the event Earth becomes uninhabitable. Most of the space travel in the world is now done through SpaceX, and by a large margin. NASA has basically handed off its duties to SpaceX. SpaceX operates for private corporations and even foreign governments. Musk’s motivations seem a little far-fetched at times, but everything he claims seems to come to fruition at some point. He may very well send people to Mars.

Musk seemed to be driven by the typical economic motivators early in his career, when he developed a company called Zip2 and X.com (not the company formerly known as Twitter), which morphed into Paypal. After basically being forced out of these companies that he created, he had a net worth of somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million. At this point, he seemed unconcerned with acquiring additional wealth. His motivation turned to the preservation of human consciousness. Ironically, he has acquired most of his fortune since he quit pursuing money for money’s sake. He invested in Tesla when it was little more than an idea to make an electric version of a Lotus Elise. He gambled his fortune entirely on Tesla in the hopes of providing sustainable transportation for humanity. He later updated this motivation to include self-driving transportation.  The company is worth more than half a trillion dollars at the moment. Full self-driving still has not happened for Tesla, but it now seems like it is inevitable. Waymo, although a Google, and not a Tesla product, is a driverless taxi service currently available in Phoenix. This is happening.

In addition to OpenAI, Tesla, and SpaceX, Musk also formed Nueralink. This company was also aimed at preserving human consciousness by creating  direct interfaces between the human mind and machine. This is so we can “go along for the ride” AI is creating. One of the most interesting things they developed was an interface between a chimpanzee and a computer. A chimpanzee can play a game of pong with just his mind. Video here.  Musk hopes to use this technology to help those with spinal cord injuries walk again by bypassing the spinal cord in the interface between the brain and legs.

Finally, there is Twitter. Elon saw social media being taken over by governments and private interests. Much of social media is currently controlled by the FBI, CIA, foreign governments (TikTok), and large corporations. They dictate the algorithms that decide what you see and determine who will see what you post (This has been well-documented). Musk sees this as damaging to humanity. I do too. Acquiring Twitter turned out to be much more time-consuming for him than he expected. Upon realizing what he had gotten into, he tried to back away from the deal. His lawyers advised him that he has to, “swallow the hairball.” He had legally committed to do so. The repercussions are still occurring with Musk recently being pulled into a lawsuit with the Brazilian government regarding Twitter‘s refusal to ban accounts the Brazilian government deems unworthy.

As stated earlier, this book is over 600 pages. I have left much out. I cannot condense 600 pages into 1199 words, but I hope this gives the reader some additional insight into Elon Musk. He clearly acts in ways that appear cold and inhumane at times. He regularly demands results from employees and ends his demands with terms to the effect of, “in the absence of these results, I will consider your resignation tendered.” Certainly not the norm for the modern workplace, but it is hard not to recognize his impact on the world. Musk is definitely a polarizing figure and his story and personality is very interesting. He seems to care most about people on a macro scale, rather than an individual one. This book was a fascinating read. It contains a great deal of personal and family history, which I have omitted here for brevity’s sake, but if I have piqued your interest, please give it a read.

I guess this book falls under the category of “self-help”.  I am not sure why I seem to be reading more of these types of books lately. The last one, The Four Agreements, just happened to be on my bookshelf when I was looking for something else, and it caught my eye. I am not saying that I don’t need self-help, but I bought this book because Jordan Peterson kept popping up on my social media news feeds he always seemed to be giving wonderful perspectives on difficult topics in video clips. Jordan Peterson is a psychologist by training, with a PhD in clinical psychology. He was an associate professor at Harvard and then a full professor at the University of Toronto. I am not sure of the status of his current employment, as he has gotten into some hot water for his seemingly constant presence in the current social media zeitgeist, but this book was quite successful, so I doubt you will find him anywhere with a tin cup at arm’s length.

As far as interesting reading goes, this was what I would consider an enthralling book.  It always held my attention. As a self-help book, I feel that The Four Agreements was more useful in that I am able to remember and apply all the principals in The Four Agreements in my everyday life situations exactly as they are written.  12 Rules For Life gave me a kind of direction, but the principles are not as cut and dry in their application. The thing that surprised me most about the 12 Rules For Life is the many references to religious texts. There is no hint of it on the cover, or in the marketing of the book. Probably a wise move, as a book deemed to be a religious text may only appeal to a niche audience.  As far as references to religious texts, Peterson does tend to grab more from the Christianity than other religions, but he certainly hits some Buddhist, Judaist, and Hinduist principles as well.  

These are the rules:

1. “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.”
2. “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.”
3. “Make friends with people who want the best for you.”
4. “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
5. “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.”
6. “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.”
7. “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).”
8. “Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie.”
9. “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.”
10. “Be precise in your speech.”
11. “Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.”
12. “Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. “

Rule 1 is akin to smiling when you are not feeling happy. The act of smiling will actually improve your mood.

Rule 2 is a reminder to step back and view yourself and your actions as a third-party observer – should you be drinking that much alcohol or eating that much fast-food?

Rule 3 is very important. Are your friends scumbags, or good people? They will strongly influence who you are. Make sure they are good.

Rule 4 means that you should not engage in comparisons with yourself and others. Just make sure you are better than you were yesterday and you will eventually find the high ground.

Rule 5 should be something like “don’t let things fester”. In other words do not ignore a situation or behavior until it has turned into an untamable monster.

Rule 6 is pretty obvious, but if you look at most comments on social media, it appears to be largely ignored.

Rule 7 is another rule that appears to be largely ignored nowadays. Immediate gratification is rarely the best path for you.

Rule 8, 9, and 10 are pretty self-explanatory, but are nevertheless important.

Rule 11 Refers to not Nerfing the world. Kids can be empowered by having to rely on their skill in the face of danger.

Rule 12 means to try take advantage of and find joy in the simple opportunities that life provides.

What I got out of this book, in a nutshell, is that you need a purpose. The most rewarding purpose is helping others. Self-improvement is also very important. You should always be working to be better than you were yesterday. You also need to find God. Life can be hard sometimes. Belief in a higher power can often be the only thing that will get you through tough situations. If you do not intend to read this book, please re-read this paragraph a few times. When employed, these simple ideas will improve your life.