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The #1 Sunday Times and International Bestseller from ‘the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now’ (New York Times)
What are the most valuable things that everyone should know?
Acclaimed clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson has influenced the modern understanding of personality, and now he has become one of the world’s most popular public thinkers, with his lectures on topics fr
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12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson Book Review
Name: Alex
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: This book = 12 Rules (rock solid advice) + Peterson’s Philosophic musings
Date: Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2018
Review: Jordan Peterson is a beacon of light in this chaotic world, a psychologist whose writing combines science and common sense. One of his talents is his ability to articulate complex ideas to a wide audience. Regardless of whether you have a background in psychology or not, you will understand this book. It covers his twelve rules for life, which are intended not only as a guide for life of the individual, but as a remedy for society’s present ills. Peterson believes that the cure for society starts with curing the individual, the smallest unit of society. Peterson’s well-known advice to clean your room is a reflection of the truth that if you can’t even manage the most basic and mundane responsibilities of life, then you have no business dictating to others how to fix society.
One of the main themes of this book is: Personal change is possible. There’s no doubt you can be slightly better today than you were yesterday. Because of Pareto’s Principle (small changes can have disproportionately large results), this movement towards the good increases massively, and this upward trajectory can take your life out of hell more rapidly than you could believe. Life is tragic and full of suffering and malevolence. But there’s something you can start putting right, and we can’t imagine what good things are in store for us if we just fix the things that are within our power to do so.
The 12 Rules for Life:
In Peterson’s own words, it’s 12 rules to stop you from being pathetic, written from the perspective of someone who himself tried to stop being pathetic and is still working on it. Peterson is open about his struggles and shortcomings, unlike many authors who only reveal a carefully curated façade.
Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. People have bad posture, and the meaning behind it can be demonstrated by animal behaviors. Peterson uses the example of the lobster. When a lobster loses a fight, and they fight all the time, it scrunches up a little. Lobsters run on serotonin and when he loses, levels go down, and when he wins, levels go up and he stretches out and is confident. Who cares? We evolutionarily diverged from lobsters 350 million years ago, but it’s still the same circuit. It’s a deep instinct to size others up when looking at them to see where they fit in the social hierarchy. If your serotonin levels fall, you get depressed and crunch forward and you’re inviting more oppression from predator personalities and can get stuck in a loop. Fixing our posture is part of the psycho-physiological loop that can help you get started back up again.
Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. People often have self-contempt whether they realize it or not. Imagine someone you love and treat well. You need to treat yourself with the same respect. Take care of yourself, your room, your things, and have respect for yourself as if you’re a person with potential and is important to the people around you. If you make a pattern of bad mistakes, your life gets worse, not just for you, but for the people around you. All your actions echo in ways that cannot be imagined. Think of Stalin’s mother and the mistakes she made in life, and how the ripple effects went on to affect the millions of people around him.
Rule 3: Choose your friends carefully. It is appropriate for you to evaluate your social surroundings and eliminate those who are hurting you. You have no ethical obligation to associate with people who are making your life worse. In fact, you are obligated to disassociate with people who are trying to destroy the structure of being, your being, society’s being. It’s not cruel, it’s sending a message that some behaviors are not to be tolerated.
Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. You need to improve, and you may even be in real bad shape, but many unfairly compare themselves to some more seemingly successful person. Up till around age 17, random comparisons to other people can make sense, but afterwards, especially age 30+, our lives become so idiosyncratic that comparisons with others become meaningless and unhelpful. You only see a slice of their life, a public facet, and are blind to the problems they conceal.
Rule 5: Don’t let children do things that make you dislike them. You aren’t as nice as you think, and you will unconsciously take revenge on them. You are massively more powerful than your children, and have the ability and subconscious proclivity for tyranny deeply rooted within you.If you don’t think this is true, you don’t know yourself well enough. His advice on disciplinary procedure: (1) limit the rules. (2) use minimum necessary force and (3) parents should come in pairs.It’s difficult and exhausting to raise children, and it’s easy to make mistakes. A bad day at work, fatigue, hunger, stress, etc, can make you unreasonable.
Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. Life is tragic and there’s malevolence. There’s plenty to complain about, but if you dwell on it, you will become bitter and tread down a path that will take you to twisted places. The diaries of the Columbine killers are a chilling look into minds that dwelled on the unholy trinity of deceit, arrogance, and resentment) . So instead of cursing the tragedy that is life, transform into something meaningful. Start by stop doing something, anything, that you know to be wrong. Everyday you have choices in front of you. Stop doing and saying things that make you weak and ashamed. Do only those things that you would proudly talk about in public.
Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient). Meaning is how you protect yourself against the suffering that life entails. This means that despite the fact that we’re all emotionally wounded by life, we’ve found something that makes it all worthwhile. Meaning, Peterson says, is like an instinct, or a form of vision. It lets you know when you’re in the right place, and he says that the right place is midway between chaos and order. If you stay firmly ensconced within order, things you understand, then you can’t grow. If you stay within chaos, then you’re lost. Expediency is what you do to get yourself out of trouble here and now, but it comes at the cost of sacrificing the future for the present. So instead of doing what gets you off the hook today, aim high. Look around you and see what you can make better. Make it better. As you gain knowledge, consciously remain humble and avoid arrogance that can stealthily creep on you. Peterson also says to be aware of our shortcomings, whatever they may be; our secret resentments, hatred, cowardice, and other failings. Be slow to accuse others because we too conceal malevolent impulses, and certainly before we attempt to fix the world.
Rule 8: Tell the truth — or, at least, don’t lie. Telling the truth can be hard in the sense that it’s often difficult to know the truth. However, we can know when we’re lying. Telling lies makes you weak. You can feel it, and others can sense it too. Meaning, according to Peterson, is associated with truth, and lying is the antithesis of meaning. Lying disassociates you with meaning, and thus reality itself. You might get away with lying for a short while, but only a short time. In Peterson’s words “It was the great and the small lies of the Nazi and Communist states that produced the deaths of millions of people.”
Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t. A good conversation consists of you coming out wiser than you went into it. An example is when you get into an argument with your significant other, you want to win, especially if you get angry. If you’re more verbally fluent than the other person then you can win. One problem is that the other person might see something better than you, but they can’t quite articulate it as well. Always listen because there’s a possibility they’re going to tell you something that will prevent you from running headfirst into a brick wall. This is why Peterson says to listen to your enemies. They will lie about you, but they will also say true things about yourself that your friends won’t. Separate the wheat from the chaff and make your life better.
Rule 10: Be Precise in Your Speech: There is some integral connection between communication and reality (or structures of belief as he likes to say). Language takes chaos and makes it into a ‘thing.’ As an example, imagine going through a rough patch in your life where you can’t quite put your finger on what’s wrong. This mysterious thing that’s bothering you — is it real? Yes, if it’s manifesting itself as physical discomfort. Then you talk about it and give it a name, and then this fuzzy, abstract thing turns into a specific thing. Once named, you can now do something about it. The unnameable is far more terrifying than the nameable. As an example, the movie the Blair Witch project didn’t actually name or describe the evil. Nothing happens in the movie, it’s all about the unnameable. If you can’t name something, it means it’s so terrifying to you that you can’t even think about it, and that makes you weaker. This is why Peterson is such a free speech advocate. He wants to bring things out of the realm of the unspeakable. Words have a creative power and you don’t want to create more mark and darkness by imprecise speech.
Rule 11: Don’t bother children when they are skateboarding. This is mainly about masculinity. Peterson remembers seeing children doing all kinds of crazy stunts on skateboards and handrails, and believes this is an essential ingredient to develop masculinity, to try to develop competence and face danger. Jordan Peterson considers the act of sliding down a handrail to be brave and perhaps stupid as well, but overall positive. A lot of rebellious behavior in school is often called ‘toxic masculinity,’ but Peterson would say to let them be. An example would be a figure skater that makes a 9.9 on her performance, essentially perfect. Then the next skater that follows her seems to have no hope. But she pushes herself closer to chaos, beyond her competence, and when successful, inspires awe. Judges award her 10’s. She’s gone beyond perfection into the unknown and ennobled herself as well as humanity as well.
Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. This chapter is mainly autobiographical and he writes about tragedy and pain. When tragic things are in front of you and you’re somewhat powerless, you must keep your eyes open for little opportunities that highlight the redemptive elements of life that make it all worthwhile. The title of this chapter comes from his experience of observing a local stray cat, and watching it adapt to the rough circumstances around it. Another thing you must do when life is going to pieces is to shorten your temporal horizon. Instead of thinking in months, you maybe think in hours or minutes instead. You try to just have the best next minute or hour that you can. You shrink the time frame until you can handle it, this is how you adjust to the catastrophe. You try to stay on your feet and think. Although this chapters deals about harsh things, it’s an overall positive one. Always look for what’s meaningful and soul-sustaining even when you’re where you’d rather not be.
Name: Thomas J. Farrell
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent first chapter
Date: Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2018
Review: My favorite scholar is the American Jesuit polymath Walter J. Ong (1912–2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955). Now, in the American Catholic subculture in the United States, it is customary to address celibate priests with the honorific title “Father” — for example, Father Ong. In certain other cultures around the world, the honorific term “Father” is also used to address specific men. Whether or not celibate priests always live up to this honorific title, they are supposed to stand as father figures to the faithful. In our Western tradition of philosophic thought, Aristotle as a real father famously wrote a treatise on ethics for his real son — after whose name the treatise is now known as the Nicomachean Ethics (University of Chicago Press, 2011).
In his new book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2018), the Canadian psychology professor at the University of Toronto and practicing psychotherapist Jordan B. Peterson presents himself as a father figure on a mission to instruct and enlighten perplexed young men who have grown up under the influence of the verbal ventilation of feminists against the so-called “patriarchy” (etymologically, this word refers to fathers) — just as the men’s movement of the 1990s attempted to reach out to perplexed young men. His writing style is chatty and meandering, but your guess is as good as mine as to how many perplexed young men are willing to read the 370 pages of his chatty and meandering text. But at least he is fighting the good fight against feminist zealotry — just as Paglia has in recent decades.
But so-called second-wave feminists and later feminists have excelled in denouncing the so-called “patriarchy” (i.e., father figures) in Western culture. Nevertheless, Father Ong tried to the best of his ability to alert feminists about the male agonistic (contesting) spirit in his book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press, 1981), the published version of his 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University — but to little avail. Despite Father Ong’s best efforts, feminists of both the female and the male varieties have verbally ventilated against the so-called “patriarchy” for decades now.
Ong imagined his 1981 book to be a non-materialist’s contribution to sociobiology as pioneered by the philosophical materialist E. O. Wilson (1975). Even though Plato and Aristotle lived centuries before Darwin and others, including Wilson, formulated evolutionary theory, Plato and Aristotle understood that we humans are basically animals, but with a significant difference — we have human reason to direct our animal tendencies — later known as our concupiscible and irascible tendencies. In the Phaedrus, Plato uses the famous imagery of a charioteer directing two powerful horses pulling the chariot/body. The two powerful horses represent the strong animal spirits known as our concupiscible and irascible tendencies. Both Plato and Aristotle use the Greek term transliterated as “thumos” (or “thymos”) to refer to our animal spirit known as our irascible tendencies. But in Ong’s 1981 book, he does not happen to advert explicitly to Plato’s or Aristotle’s discussion of “thumos” (or “thymos”). Nevertheless, what Ong refers to as the male agonistic (contesting) spirit is a manifestation of what Plato and Aristotle refer to as “thumos” (or “thymos”).
Now, in general, Plato and Aristotle and certain other ancient Greek thinkers thought of virtue as the mean between extremes. Courage is the virtue that our animal spirit of “thumos” (or “thymos”) needs to become a pro-social force for fighting the good fight. The virtue of courage represents the mean between the extremes of pusillanimity and brashness. In today’s parlance, the virtue of courage represents proper assertiveness — not the extremes of non-assertiveness (passivity) and hostile assertiveness.
For Aristotle’s discussion of “thumos” (or “thymos”) in the political arena, see Barbara Koziak’s book Retrieving Political Emotion: Thumos, Aristotle, and Gender (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).
By the 1990s, certain men such as the American poet Robert Bly and the Jungian psychotherapist and theorist Robert Moore were concerned enough about the feminists’ verbal ventilation against so-called “patriarchy” that they attempted to start a men’s movement. With Douglas Gillette as co-author, Moore published five important books about the archetypes of the mature masculine (1990, 1992a, 1992b, 1993a, 1993b). But the efforts of the men’s movement were of little avail against the verbal ventilation of the feminists against the so-called “patriarchy.”
In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I should also give Camille Paglia credit for her spirited critique of feminist zealotry in her book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale University Press, 1990) — but to little avail. No doubt the scholarly acumen that Paglia manifests in her book is impressive. However, her book is also sui generis. Not even Paglia herself has published a follow-up volume. But she has continued to inveigh incisively against feminist zealotry.
Because Paglia’s 1990 book is the revised version of her doctoral dissertation in English at Yale University, I would point out that Ong’s massively researched doctoral dissertation in English at Harvard University was published, slightly revised as the book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press, 1958). Like Paglia, Ong subsequently never published such a thoroughly researched book. Incidentally, Peterson’s first book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (Routledge, 1999) is thoroughly researched.
In Ong’s 1981 book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness, he discusses (pages 18–19, 25, 92, 100, 111, 115, and 148) the Jungian Israeli psychoanalyst Erich Neumann’s book The Origins and History of Consciousness (1954). In Paglia’s 1990 book Sexual Personae, she discusses (pages 42, 43, 47, 52, 88, 93, and 380) Neumann’s books The Origins and History of Consciousness (1954) and The Great Mother (1955). In Peterson’s new book, he also discusses (pages 323; 374, note 37; 387, notes 203 and 204) Neumann’s two most widely known books). In addition, Peterson discusses (pages 59–60, 180, 185, 188, 189, 193, 195, 198–199, 215, 288, 289–290, and 323) Jung extensively. In the endnotes, Peterson provides bibliographic references to Jung’s publications only twice (page 381, notes 134 and 139). However, in Peterson’s 1999 book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, mentioned above, he refers to 15 of Jung’s specific publications (page 507).
Just as feminist zealotry is the predominant ideology of the Democratic Party in its zealotry for identity politics, so too anti-abortion zealotry is the predominant ideology of social conservatives in the Republican Party — which also includes economic libertarians. Feminist zealotry has been reinvigorated recently by the Harvey Weinstein affair and related down-sizing of certain other male sexual predators — but not of President Trump, the playboy sexual predator.
However, President Trump has also been criticized for being an agent of chaos, and Peterson claims that he has formulated 12 rules for life as an antidote to chaos — Trump. So with Trump’s chaos dominating news cycles, Peterson may get a hearing for his 12 rules.
With our ego-consciousness, we strive to establish order in our lives. But chaos can overcome us. When chaos disrupts our lives, we usually experience abandonment feelings. Our efforts to resolve our abandonment feelings aim to restore our sense of order in our lives. Because Trump’s chaos disturbs many Americans, those Americans need to work to restore their sense of order in their lives.
Nevertheless, the Americans who voted for Trump saw him favorably as a disrupter of the establishment order. Thus, even for Trump voters, Peterson’s contrast of chaos and order can work to characterize what they saw in him that enabled them to vote for him.
Put differently, the 2016 presidential election featured an electoral contest between two competing predominant orders, and similarly, between two competing senses of chaos.
But Peterson claims that he wants to see more people confront chaos in their own personal lives and somehow manage to work out a renewed sense of order in their lives. He sees all 12 of his rules for life as oriented to doing this. Consequently, in theory, both Democrats and Republicans might benefit from following his 12 rules for life.
Rule 1 is “Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back” (pages 1–28). Peterson’s exposition of Rule 1 involves a brilliant account of evolutionary psychology. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
But Peterson’s account of evolutionary psychology should be complemented and further developed with Pete Walker’s account of our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses in his excellent self-help book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (2013). Because Ong’s book, mentioned above, is titled Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (1982), we should note that the title accentuates the fight response pattern delineated by Walker.
Peterson’s account of evolutionary psychology deepens our understanding of Vance Packard’s book The Status Seekers (1959). The developer Donald J. Trump exemplifies the spirit of alpha male status seekers. In contrast, Pope Francis exemplifies the Christian counter-spirit of certain other alpha males seeking to distinguish themselves through loving service of others. Basically, however, both Trump and Francis exemplify the fight response pattern that Walker delineates.
Rule 2 is “Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping” (pages 31–64). Basically, the helping spirit discussed by Peterson represents the fawn response pattern discussed by Walker. As Peterson discusses in rule 2, we often tend to help others far more eagerly than we tend to help and care for ourselves. But when we help others and ignore ourselves, we run the risk of experiencing burnout.
Rule 3 is “Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You” (pages 67–83).
Rule 4 is “Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not to Who Someone Else Is Today” (pages 85–111).
Rule 5 is “Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them” (pages 113–144).
Rule 6 is “Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World” (pages 147–159). But President Trump’s White House is not known for its order, but for its chaos. Both Trump and Pope Francis like to criticize the world.
Rule 7 is “Pursue What Is Meaningful (Not What Is Expedient)” (pages 161–201).
Rule 8 is “Tell the Truth — Or At Least, Don’t Lie” (pages 203–230). Ah, if only President Trump would tell the truth — or at least not lie!
Rule 9 is “Assume That the Person You Are Listening to Might Know Something You Don’t” (pages 233–256). I was really impressed with Peterson’s discussion of Carl Rogers’ account of interpersonal communication.
Rule 10 is “Be Precise in Your Speech” (pages 259–283). In Ong’s publications, he writes with precision — and concision.
Rule 11 is “Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding” (pages 285–332).
Rule 12 is “Pet a Cat When You Encounter One on the Street” (pages 335–353).
Peterson rounds off the text of his book with a “Coda” (pages 355–368). His book also includes a lengthy “Foreword” by Norman Doidge, M.D. (pages vii-xxiv), an “Overture” by Peterson (pages xxv-xxxv), “Acknowledgements” (pages 369–370), “Endnotes” (pages 371–389), and an “Index” (pages 390–409).
However, whatever merit Peterson’s 12 rules may have in the practical order, I would urge young men and women to undertake the three conversion processes that the Canadian Jesuit theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) outlines in his philosophical masterpiece Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 5th ed. (University of Toronto Press, 1992): (1) intellectual conversion involves their orientation to the intelligible; (2) moral conversion involves changing the criterion of their decision-making and choices from satisfactions to values (arguably similar in spirit to Peterson’s rule 7); and (3) religious conversion involves being grasped by ultimate concern (also known as God).
Regarding what Father Lonergan refers to as intellectual conversion, I would also call attention to Martha C. Nussbaum’s article “Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism” in the journal Political Theory, volume 20, number 2 (May 1992): pages 202–246.
People who do not experience what Lonergan refers to as intellectual conversion tend to live out their lives as tricksters dedicated to verbal trickery.
In conclusion, I admire Peterson for writing his new book as a father figure offering guidance for perplexed young men by setting forth 12 rules for life for them to follow. However, I think that Father Ong and Father Lonergan offer more salient and cogent guidance to young men and women.
