Renowned clinical psychologist, author, and often controversial YouTube personality, Jordan Peterson, puts together a collection of essays, combining mythology, religion, and ethics with his own experiences to present us with ’12 Rules for Life’. With a set of seemingly simple, but stern statements that Peterson discusses aspects of discipline, responsibility, integrity, and freedom. That’s what gives this book the rare ability to inform, intrigue, counsel, and even provoke you at the same time. A fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone who has watched Jordan Peterson speak.
It wouldn’t technically be incorrect to label 12 Rules for Life as a ‘self-help’ book, especially if you dive deeper than the overarching stories and references to ethics and religion, and distil them into the core of what Peterson says about personal behaviour. But then again, I wouldn’t categorize this as ‘just a self-help book’. It is these stories and Peterson’s references that also make 12 Rules for Life a valuable text on literature, society, and philosophy. All coming together to make this book a special read for a world in seemingly unending chaos.
Balancing Chaos with Order
A key theme of ‘12 Rules for Life’ is Jordan Peterson’s concept of order and chaos. He uses the Yin and Yang philosophy to stress on the idea that order and chaos are not exclusive, but complimentary. Just how a little light exists in the dark and a little dark exists in the light, there is a little order that exists in chaos, and vice versa.
We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown— and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path.
Jordan Peterson
!2 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Life itself isn’t about steering clear of the chaos into order. That may not be possible, let alone practical. Order and chaos flow into each other to form an interconnected and often interdependent stream. Life is about living with and as a part of this dynamically flowing stream. Knowing that the only way to grow is by accepting the inevitability of both, order and chaos, and what they bring. ‘12 Rules for Life’ recommends some simple, hard-hitting rules to help you control what you can in this order-chaos dynamic, and deal with what you cannot.
12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos
One of the key highlights of Peterson’s book is the simplicity of his 12 rules. But at the same time, this simplicity is built on a complex web that combines biology, mythology, and philosophy. In a way, once again showing how chaos and order are in fact interconnected in more ways than we can imagine. And while Jordan Peterson outlines 12 rules, I’d like to talk about four that challenge you at a very behavioural level.
- Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order.”
Lobsters have inhabited the earth for nearly 350 million years, living within ‘dominance hierarchies’, where some scientists observe that the most powerful lobsters have a great posture, associated with a high serotonin produced.
What they essentially suggest is that a good posture results a high serotonin level. And that in turn means increased happiness. Peterson suggests the same is true of humans. To create order in your lives, pay attention to your posture. Stand up straight with your shoulders back. - Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for.
“You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself.”
In another one of his controversial messages, Peterson suggests that we as humans are more likely to give a prescribed medication to our pets, but not to ourselves. The reason? Because we don’t prioritise our needs. Because we, at least a large percentage of us, don’t have enough self-respect.
But if we can’t take care of ourselves, how can we be trusted to take care of anyone or anything else? What is the example we are setting for our young with our unhealthy lifestyle? These are the simple yet almost impossible to answer questions Peterson poses to each one of his readers. - Make friends with people who want the best for you.
“Don’t think it is easier to surround yourself with good healthy people than with bad unhealthy people. It’s not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person.”
Perhaps something we’ve all heard too often over the years. Surround yourself with people who want best for you. But that statement can have more interpretations than one. For many, this means surround yourself with the ones who agree with you. But that’s not always the case. Quite often it’s the opposite. If you surround yourself with people who support you and your goal, they will not tolerate your cynicism. They will not hesitate in punishing your self-destructive behaviour. And while that may not always be what you want, but it is what you need from a friend. - Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today.
“Comparison is the death of joy.”
Imagine for a minute that you won the lottery for half a million dollars. How would that make you feel? Now try to think how you would feel if you realise your neighbour won the lottery for twice the amount the next day.
While that may seem like a distant example, we experience the same emotions almost every day in today’s digital world. Log in to Instagram, and someone you know is on vacation while you’re chasing deadlines. Log in to LinkedIn, and someone you know has landed a new job while you wait for a call back from an interviewer.
At some level, our own happiness or disappointment it seems isn’t isolated to itself, but always compared to those around us. We let others’ status affect our emotions instead of focussing on our own goal. Whether we feel embarrassed about doing worse than someone else, or strut around with pride about doing better, they are both negative emotions that we would do well to avoid. As Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being better to your former self.”
Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules, and Religion
As you read through 12 Rules for Life, you realize that this is a book brimming with Christian theology. With pages dedicated to biblical texts and their interpretations, he even goes so far as to ask whether Eric Harris was in fact an incarnation of Satan.
But despite this, his own religious beliefs are something Peterson doesn’t seem to enjoy being asked about, once even complaining interviewer that the question itself is an attempt to ‘box him in’. Asking instead another important question. One with multiple interpretations that he himself talks about as well. “What do you mean when you say ‘believe’?” And how does your belief, or your interpretation of belief, affect how you behave?
Why you may not like 12 Rules for Life?
For all that it gives, 12 Rules for Life can at times can feel an extremely tedious read. Especially when he combines his own stories with biblical references, psychology, and philosophy, following Peterson’s thoughts in this book requires an almost undivided attention.
Secondly, and this isn’t really something about the book, but the author, if you follow Peterson’s interviews, you get a feeling of a kind of rigid persona in some ways where he almost refuses to stand by one of his own rules – Assume the person you are listening to might know something you don’t. Watching some of his interviews, you might believe he’s forgotten this rule himself. But then again, his staunch belief is one of his traits that make him both, controversial as well as a source of illumination to those watching him.
And that is exactly what you can expect from his book.
The Last Word
It’s not often you come across a book that combines philosophy, mythology, psychology, and religion. Nor is it too often that you would come across a text that would give you advice that could apply to your life, your career, parenting, and so much more. It’s a book that you must pick up, not just once, but over and over again. And every time you read it, you will perhaps have something new to take away. Because this isn’t just a guide for a particular phase of your life. But these are rules for life itself.
