I've found that solid life advice usually comes from those who have to perform in high stress situations delivering on practical goals. I immediately question the advice and righteousness of a "guru" if there is profit involved in what they're hawking (followers, book sales, subscribers, etc).
Marcus Aurelius is my favorite for actual life advice. He had to rule Rome dealing with sickness, wars, admin duties. His teachings were in the form of letters to himself. No looking for attention or affirmation from others, or profit from his words. You know from this context and his background it was real practical advice for approaching hard situations in life that was tried and true. Its all straight forward and easy to digest in simple, condensed resources too. You don't have to read hundreds of pages to get his points.
Jordan's book 12 rules for life made some ok basic points, but none of it was original ideas and it was so bloated with psycho babble and lobster talk that it detracts from the core message. Psychologists and many in teaching often over-complicate and just repeat material blindly from their books, never having to actually implement ideas or concepts in real world uses, or deliver on practical goals. Sort of where the saying "Those who cannot do teach" comes from.
Still though, I did appreciate him standing up to some of the far left crap and cancel culture in the beginning even with these flaws. As others said though once the benzo/russia thing happened he has lost it. Whatever happened was obviously detrimental and permeant. He just made such a string of poor ignorant decisions, following his dumb as hell daughters lead. A man with a doctorate couldn't do the research on what he was going to take and the dangers of it. It was very obvious he wasn't practicing what he preached at that point. Yes were all human but when you make a living off being a professional guru you are held to a higher standard.
I found it interesting to read the early posts in this thread because we've gone a long way. User
@Harbinger of Kali Yuga was on point mentioning that his expertise on Psychology is hilariously outdated. He clings to Jung, and Psychodynamics, and Psychoanalysis, and Maps of Meaning and Archetypes and a lot of stuff that is mumbo jumbo with very little meaning.
Philosophically, he is, of course, adept at Post-modernism, post structuralism, semantics and other masturbatory ponderings of what meaning means.
I'm not saying that there is nothing of value on any of these things but it belongs into the most autistic fringes of both Psychology and Philosophy, and a cursory look on the proponents of these theories and ideas should give you a strong hint that you're now leaving the material, physical, practical world.
Of course, he got really butthurt when the other post modernists post truth truthiness differed with his own post truth truthiness, and therefore he's an anti post modern post modernist in the sense that he will pilpul his way to hell into supporting a rather twisted version of conservatism.
That's why he sucks at giving practical advice, and he comes off as cringe to anyone who is not impressed by academic post-modernist babble.
I don't see him as a malicious individual, I think he is a reconstructed conservative. Probably a weird case in which post-modernist deconstruction, instead of mind fuck conservative minded individuals into raging relativist progressives, somehow ended up reinforcing his conservative beliefs. Like some V for Vendetta out of Larkhill shit going on. He came back as conservative and crazy about it.
And I think he really believed, at some point, he could deconstruct and pilpul the youth back into conservative ideas, and by that I mean George W Bush / Stephen Harper early 2000s brand of conservatism. It's no mystery that after all the shit he got the YT algorithm flagged him as a deradicaliser as, at this point, the progressive left and the democrat establishment sucks Bush cock
hard and wishes for Republicans to go back to the Bush era. Freaky, but true.
Anyhoo, without politisperging more, Peterson got drunk on his platform, he saw himself as those Russian dissidents that stood up to communism and he would gladly have been sent to jail so that he could model himself more like the
american canadian version of that russki whose name I cannot spell and I refuse to look up.
His hilariously dysfunctional private life is funny because it's exactly the fucking stereotype of the sort of academic Peterson is. Like, if Trey Parker and Matt Stone, at the height of both Peterson and South Park political takes popularity, when Peterson's private life shortcomings were not well known back in 2019, had satirized him, they wouldn't have come close. He's just that of a real life flanderisation.
