The Jordan Rules
A Review of Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life by Jordan Peterson
Jordan Peterson has had a rough couple of years. 2019 opened with a nasty spat with Cambridge University, where his offer to teach at the esteemed institution was withdrawn pending review. Then came the bizarre admission during his heavily publicized debate with Slavoj Žižek that he hadn’t actually read much of anything by Karl Marx beyond The Communist Manifesto in several decades, followed by Peterson being unable to actually name anyone who actually espoused something like “postmodern neo-Marxism.”
These professional hiccups were nothing next to the horrors Peterson would soon face, horrors which he chronicles with admirable candor in Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life, his new book.
Peterson’s wife experienced substantial medical issues, which drove Peterson to a worsening dependence on a vicious cocktail of antianxiety medications, followed by what must have been a truly awful global trot to beat it. Finally, 2020 caught up with Peterson as he was making a long-awaited recovery in Serbia: he contracted COVID after already having battled serious pneumonia.
Peterson survived these ordeals, but had clearly been shaken by them, and this brush with suffering stamps Beyond Order with a darkness befitting its black cover.
