Jordan B. Peterson - 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

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*I started a new thread since this is mainly about the book. However, if it will be better served in one of the current ones then maybe it can be moved to the appropriate thread.

I’ve recently finished reading 12RFL and I really enjoyed it. The rules came about from his distillation of a list he posted on Quora a few years back called What are the most valuable things everyone should know? which reminded me very much of Gurdjieff’s aphorisms.

One thing I found interesting was reading some of the negative reviews on Amazon. What was it they didn’t like about the book? A small percentage described his writing as too verbose, incoherent and long, unreadable, etc. I do get where they are coming from, he does tend to repeat some things and wind his away around them – very much like his lectures, where he goes in many different directions but eventually gets back to his line of thought and ties things together. Even if at times loosely. My impression is that they are expecting some easy answer(s). There’s the concept, but also the reasoning behind it. Those who aren’t just content with what but also the why and the how I think are those who are able to get more from the book.

He may not be as good a writer as he is a speaker, but I still found it quite readable overall and it didn’t take too long to finish the book (though it wasn’t exactly a fast read either). Rather than verbose, at some points I found the language used almost ‘poetic’. Perhaps that was what turned off some people. Or then again, maybe they think they’ve got it all figured out. In which case, the book wouldn’t be really all that appealing since it does spur one towards introspection. At least that was the case for me.

So while there’s also quite a lot of overlap between concepts in the sections – themes like chaos, order, tragedy, suffering and meaning are central to the book and each chapter brings a different angle as to how these relate to a common thread running through our lives: tragedy and suffering are inevitable. We can’t truly learn what real sacrifice is without them. But that also provides a way to which we attribute value to things. This value system is born out of trying to bring some order to the chaos surrounding us and the act of overcoming these challenges is where we can find meaning in our lives.


Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back

Peterson uses his now infamous lobster analogy to describe how dominance hierarchies have been around for a very long time, and that includes the bodily systems that detect status in society as well. They are part of our makeup. We exhibit very similar responses in our physiology (he gives the example of low ranking lobsters having low levels of serotonin similar to humans). Low serotonin (or low status) leaves one more anxious and prone to anxiety, reactive, generally more stressed compared with someone with higher status. For a low status person, change can mean disaster while for a high status person it can mean opportunity. He gives example how things can become a negative or positive feedback loop and ‘standing up straight with your shoulders back’ is a way to attend to that positive feedback loop. But it’s also more than that....

But standing up straight with your shoulders back is not something that is only physical, because you’re not only a body. You’re a spirit, so to speak— a psyche— as well. Standing up physically also implies and invokes and demands standing up metaphysically. Standing up means voluntarily accepting the burden of Being. Your nervous system responds in an entirely different manner when you face the demands of life voluntarily. You respond to a challenge, instead of bracing for a catastrophe. You see the gold the dragon hoards , instead of shrinking in terror from the all-too-real fact of the dragon. You step forward to take your place in the dominance hierarchy, and occupy your territory, manifesting your willingness to defend, expand and transform it. That can all occur practically or symbolically, as a physical or as a conceptual restructuring.

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...It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).

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...you may choose to embrace Being, and work for its furtherance and improvement. Thus strengthened, you may be able to stand, even during the illness of a loved one, even during the death of a parent, and allow others to find strength alongside you when they would otherwise be overwhelmed with despair. Thus emboldened, you will embark on the voyage of your life, let your light shine, so to speak, on the heavenly hill, and pursue your rightful destiny. Then the meaning of your life may be sufficient to keep the corrupting influence of mortal despair at bay.

So perhaps, things need to happen both practically and symbolically. It’s like they need to happen together and work off each other. Practically is a good place to start since doing things like getting diet on track, thoughts/emotions under control, limiting exposure to “A” influences and even physical conditioning are what allow you ‘set the stage’ for all of the other things that come down the road.

Yes, one can say that in itself is symbolic and sends a message to the universe that you want better for yourself – but there’s more to it I think. There are also the little things in your actions that demonstrate an understanding of your environment and how to act towards another. Easier said than done of course but the main idea is to avoid making choices that go against one’s being, or deter one from that path while at the same time contributing in positive way to your environment to the best of your ability.


Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping

Peterson gives an example of someone treating their dog better than themselves and explores it by using a story from the Old Testament. Ultimately we don’t take care of ourselves because we shoulder things like shame, self-contempt and self-consciousness, thus don’t value ourselves or think we are deserving of better. So we neglect ourselves. This is to the detriment of others, even more so when it’s disguised as trying to make their life ‘better’ by trying to be seen as ‘virtuous’ when it really is self-serving. The most important point is that he tell us treating ourselves well is vital to the health of those close to us:
You are not simply your own possession to torture and mistreat. This is partly because your Being is inexorably tied up with that of others, and your mistreatment of yourself can have catastrophic consequences for others.

[...]

We deserve some respect. 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 . You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued. You may therefore have to conduct yourself habitually in a manner that allows you some respect for your own Being —and fair enough.


Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for you

What’s interesting in this chapter is that although the rule is about choosing friends wisely and avoiding those that will bring you down to their level, he supplements it with some good examples of why the reasons that people choose ‘bad friends’ is that they want to rescue them or really just feed their own ego. It also ties into the same notion of ‘giving’ love mentioned in this session. The C’s said “one does not become STO by ‘determining the needs of others’. This bit in the chapter he really nails it. I felt as if I was being given a mirror reading it! Perhaps that’s because there was a time where if I had any sense to really look at myself and see what I was doing, it was probably exactly that.

Imagine someone not doing well. He needs help. He might even want it. But it is not easy to distinguish between someone truly wanting and needing help and someone who is merely exploiting a willing helper. The distinction is difficult even for the person who is wanting and needing and possibly exploiting. The person who tries and fails , and is forgiven, and then tries again and fails, and is forgiven, is also too often the person who wants everyone to believe in the authenticity of all that trying.

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Maybe you are saving someone because you’re a strong, generous, well-put-together person who wants to do the right thing. But it’s also possible —and, perhaps, more likely— that you just want to draw attention to your inexhaustible reserves of compassion and good-will. Or maybe you’re saving someone because you want to convince yourself that the strength of your character is more than just a side effect of your luck and birthplace. Or maybe it’s because it’s easier to look virtuous when standing alongside someone utterly irresponsible.

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My long serious talks with you about your badly failing marriage convince both of us that you are doing everything possible and that I am helping you to my utmost. It looks like effort. It looks like progress. But real improvement would require far more from both of you. Are you so sure the person crying out to be saved has not decided a thousand times to accept his lot of pointless and worsening suffering , simply because it is easier than shouldering any true responsibility? Are you enabling a delusion? Is it possible that your contempt would be more salutary than your pity?

[...]

Before you help someone, you should find out why that person is in trouble. You shouldn’t merely assume that he or she is a noble victim of unjust circumstances and exploitation. It’s the most unlikely explanation, not the most probable. In my experience— clinical and otherwise— it’s just never been that simple. Besides, if you buy the story that everything terrible just happened on its own, with no personal responsibility on the part of the victim, you deny that person all agency in the past (and, by implication, in the present and future, as well). In this manner, you strip him or her of all power.

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How do I know that your suffering is not the demand of martyrdom for my resources, so that you can oh-so-momentarily stave off the inevitable? Maybe you have even moved beyond caring about the impending collapse, but don’t yet want to admit it. Maybe my help won’t rectify anything—can’t rectify anything—but it does keep that too-terrible, too-personal realization temporarily at bay. Maybe your misery is a demand placed on me so that I fail too, so that the gap you so painfully feel between us can be reduced, while you degenerate and sink. How do I know that you would refuse to play such a game? How do I know that I am not myself merely pretending to be responsible, while pointlessly “helping” you, so that I don’t have to do something truly difficult—and genuinely possible?


Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today

This chapter is about the internal critic - very much like what you'd call the ‘negative introject’. He explains that value judgements are necessary and without them we would not have anything to judge against and uses the analogy of it being a game with a defined end. The problem is with our tendency towards black and white thinking, which is like having only one value system to judgement yourself against. Like playing only one game when there are in fact many. Not only are there many, but they are also so unique and personal to you that comparing them to others brings no value.

However that’s the main feature of the negative introject, because it more often than not becomes a comparison against a straw man. Although it is generally seen as a negative thing meant to bring us down, Peterson says it has its purpose if used properly. It’s the thing that will bring to light something that does indeed need fixing, the voice that tells you there could be something that needs to be ‘set in order’ in your life. Rather than ignoring it or trying to shut it down, it’s better to negotiate with it and he gives some good advice on how to deal with it. And it has to be [dealt with]. Else, if you don’t learn how to deal with, it can lead to resentment. Left unchecked, it can destroy any relationship (or what’s left it) and turn you into a bitter, hateful person.
Who are you? You think you know, but maybe you don’t. You are, for example, neither your own master, nor your own slave. You cannot easily tell yourself what to do and compel your own obedience (any more than you can easily tell your husband, wife, son or daughter what to do, and compel theirs). You are interested in some things and not in others. You can shape that interest, but there are limits. Some activities will always engage you, and others simply will not.

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...Before you can articulate your own standards of value, you must see yourself as a stranger— and then you must get to know yourself.

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Consult your resentment. It’s a revelatory emotion, for all its pathology. It’s part of an evil triad: arrogance, deceit, and resentment. Nothing causes more harm than this underworld Trinity. But resentment always means one of two things. Either the resentful person is immature, in which case he or she should shut up, quit whining, and get on with it, or there is tyranny afoot—in which case the person subjugated has a moral obligation to speak up. Why? Because the consequence of remaining silent is worse. Of course, it’s easier in the moment to stay silent and avoid conflict. But in the long term, that’s deadly. When you have something to say, silence is a lie—and tyranny feeds on lies. When should you push back against oppression, despite the danger? When you start nursing secret fantasies of revenge; when your life is being poisoned and your imagination fills with the wish to devour and destroy.

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It takes careful observation , and education, and reflection, and communication with others , just to scratch the surface of your beliefs. Everything you value is a product of unimaginably lengthy developmental processes, personal, cultural and biological. You don’t understand how what you want— and, therefore, what you see— is conditioned by the immense , abysmal, profound past. You simply don’t understand how every neural circuit through which you peer at the world has been shaped (and painfully) by the ethical aims of millions of years of human ancestors and all of the life that was lived for the billions of years before that.

We could also add to that all our previous past lives and karmic debts that came from it. It’s no wonder that learning to truly know and understand ourselves is such a monumental task!


Rule 5: Don't let children do things that make you dislike them

So although this chapter speaking about children, it also sometimes us who are the children in it. The stories he describes are not only about how to raise children to become well integrated adults, but can really be applied to everyone. In a sense, some people didn’t get that in childhood, and never really ‘grow up.’ His ideas on how to raise good children can still be incorporated and maintained in adult life. It’s more difficult as we are set in our ways and have acquired years of bad habits but it can be done. Maybe, you could say ‘don’t let yourself do things that make you dislike you’.

Negative emotions, like their positive counterparts, help us learn. We need to learn, because we’re stupid and easily damaged. We can die. That’s not good, and we don’t feel good about it. If we did, we would seek death, and then we would die. We don’t even feel good about dying if it only might happen. And that’s all the time. In that manner, negative emotions, for all their unpleasantness, protect us. We feel hurt and scared and ashamed and disgusted so we can avoid damage. And we’re susceptible to feeling such things a lot. In fact, we feel more negative about a loss of a given size than we feel good about the same-sized gain. Pain is more potent than pleasure, and anxiety more than hope.

Emotions, positive and negative, come in two usefully differentiated variants. Satisfaction (technically, satiation) tells us that what we did was good, while hope (technically, incentive reward) indicates that something pleasurable is on the way. Pain hurts us, so we won’t repeat actions that produced personal damage or social isolation (as loneliness is also, technically, a form of pain). Anxiety makes us stay away from hurtful people and bad places so we don’t have to feel pain. All these emotions must be balanced against each other, and carefully judged in context, but they’re all required to keep us alive and thriving. We therefore do our children a disservice by failing to use whatever is available to help them learn, including negative emotions, even though such use should occur in the most merciful possible manner...

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Here are some suggestions. Do not bite, kick or hit, except in self-defence. Do not torture and bully other children, so you don’t end up in jail. Eat in a civilized and thankful manner, so that people are happy to have you at their house, and pleased to feed you. Learn to share, so other kids will play with you. Pay attention when spoken to by adults, so they don’t hate you and might therefore deign to teach you something. Go to sleep properly, and peaceably, so that your parents can have a private life and not resent your existence. Take care of your belongings, because you need to learn how and because you’re lucky to have them. Be good company when something fun is happening, so that you’re invited for the fun. Act so that other people are happy you’re around, so that people will want you around. A child who knows these rules will be welcome everywhere.

{Sounds simple but it’s amazing to see how many people seem unable to do that.}

[...]

Resentment breeds the desire for vengeance. Fewer spontaneous offers of love will be offered, with more rationalizations for their absence. Fewer opportunities for the personal development of the child will be sought out. A subtle turning away will begin. And this is only the beginning of the road to total familial warfare, conducted mostly in the underworld, underneath the false façade of normality and love.


Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world

Everyone’s a critic as they say and life is hard and it’s easy to criticize the world. Although, when taken to the extreme, it can lead to bitter resentment at the world. Combine that with arrogance and it’s a recipe for things like mass murder. On the other hand, there are those that have had terrible tragedy befall them and they manage to pull through and go on to do great things. We have a choice to either perpetuate the wrong things done to us (whether they were caused purposely by others or happenstance) by continuing the cycle or we can stop it. A choice between vengeance or transformation. Or maybe at an even more basic level - the choice to express the duality within us, the capacity for good or evil.

He gives an example of one of a client he had. She suffered terrible abuse growing up with her grandparents. Later in life she had a son and raised him to be good person. She didn’t inflict what she had gone through on him and stopped the cycle. I was particularly touched by it because I know my mother went through something similar. And despite all that, she did her best to allow me to have the childhood she could never have and is one of the kindest most compassionate people I know.

But there is one thing I find a little devious in this rule. Once we’ve gone through all the trouble of getting our house in perfect order, and then maintaining that order – there won’t be much time left to sit there criticizing everything. Keeping your house in order is a full time job!

During his many trials, Solzhenitsyn encountered people who comported themselves nobly, under horrific circumstances. He contemplated their behaviour deeply. Then he asked himself the most difficult of questions: had he personally contributed to the catastrophe of his life? If so, how? He remembered his unquestioning support of the Communist Party in his early years. He reconsidered his whole life. He had plenty of time in the camps. How had he missed the mark, in the past? How many times had he acted against his own conscience, engaging in actions that he knew to be wrong? How many times had he betrayed himself, and lied? Was there any way that the sins of his past could be rectified, atoned for, in the muddy hell of a Soviet gulag?

Solzhenitsyn pored over the details of his life, with a fine-toothed comb. He asked himself a second question, and a third. Can I stop making such mistakes, now? Can I repair the damage done by my past failures, now? He learned to watch and to listen. He found people he admired; who were honest, despite everything. He took himself apart, piece by piece, let what was unnecessary and harmful die, and resurrected himself.

[...]

But success makes us complacent. We forget to pay attention. We take what we have for granted. We turn a blind eye. We fail to notice that things are changing, or that corruption is taking root. And everything falls apart. Is that the fault of reality—of God? Or do things fall apart because we have not paid sufficient attention?

They can, do and will if we don’t. Remember this? That was more than 15 years ago....

“Life is religion. Life experiences reflect how one interacts with God. Those who are asleep are those of little faith in terms of their interaction with the creation. Some people think that the world exists for them to overcome or ignore or shut out. For those individuals, the world will cease. They will become exactly what they give to life. They will become merely a dream in the "past." People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the "Future." -- Cassiopaeans, 09-28-02


Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient

When I hear the word expedient I usually think of quick and practical. But that’s not what it actually means. Yes, it can be that but with the connotation that the end was gained by actions that could be considered improper or immoral for the sake of convenience. At first I didn’t quite get why the rule but in this light, it’s very apt. It’s doing things the right way, not the ‘quick and easy’ way. It’s learning to sacrifice, which at a very basic and mundane level is the delay of gratification. He weaves biblical stories, the stoics and Jung to illustrate the point that sacrifice is what improves the future, or we can be expedient at the expense of the future. If you don’t pay now, you’ll eventually pay later. There’s no free lunch. The price may even be your soul should it happen that your nihilistic mode being will deprive of you of a meaningful life. That’s not to confuse it with living in the present... being present also includes the past and future. Both are components that when integrated and included in the ‘now’ present an expanded awareness of how we came to be and where we are going. The difference is that nihilist ‘lives’ solely for the present. Past and future don’t matter – nothing matters.


Second question (set of related questions, really): We’ve already established the basic principle—sacrifice will improve the future. But a principle, once established, has to be fleshed out. Its full extension or significance has to be understood. What is implied by the idea that sacrifice will improve the future, in the most extreme and final of cases? Where does that basic principle find its limits? We must ask, to begin, “What would be the largest, most effective—most pleasing—of all possible sacrifices?” and then “How good might the best possible future be, if the most effective sacrifice could be made?”
It took me decades to understand what that means (to understand even part of what that means). It’s this: once you become consciously aware that you, yourself, are vulnerable, you understand the nature of human vulnerability, in general. You understand what it’s like to be fearful, and angry, and resentful, and bitter. You understand what pain means. And once you truly understand such feelings in yourself,and how they’re produced, you understand how to produce them in others. It is in this manner that the self-conscious beings that we are become voluntarily and exquisitely capable of tormenting others (and ourselves, of course—but it’s the others we are concerned about right now).

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Expedience is the following of blind impulse. It’s short-term gain. It’s narrow, and selfish. It lies to get its way. It takes nothing into account. It’s immature and irresponsible. Meaning is its mature replacement. Meaning emerges when impulses are regulated, organized and unified. Meaning emerges from the interplay between the possibilities of the world and the value structure operating within that world.

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Expedience—that’s hiding all the skeletons in the closet. That’s covering the blood you just spilled with a carpet. That’s avoiding responsibility. It’s cowardly, and shallow, and wrong. It’s wrong because mere expedience, multiplied by many repetitions, produces the character of a demon. It’s wrong because expedience merely transfers the curse on your head to someone else, or to your future self, in a manner that will make your future, and the future generally, worse instead of better.


Rule 8: Tell the truth—or, at least, don't lie

At first I got the impression that he meant to tell the truth with everyone, but I don’t think that’s not really what he’s is getting at. It’s more about being honest with yourself. Though it’s generally better to be honest with others, there are situations where lying is warranted. Don’t cast pearls before swine but don’t lie to yourself about it. They undo all the hard work you’ve spent working on the self. It’s very easy to create the wrong narrative in order to justify it and more often than not, that’s the case. According to Gurdjieff, “To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; and one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to be able to speak the truth.” Our default state is geared towards surrounding our lives with useless lies to ‘keep the peace’ and we need to first learn to tell the difference between the two. From there we can begin to actively choose truth over lies. It’s a long process and it won’t happen overnight but each time we make the choice to act right and in accordance with our principles we become a little stronger and more capable of dealing with the things that really matter.

To conduct life like this is to become possessed by some ill-formed desire, and then to craft speech and action in a manner that appears likely, rationally, to bring about that end. Typical calculated ends might include “to impose my ideological beliefs,” “to prove that I am (or was) right,” “to appear competent,” “to ratchet myself up the dominance hierarchy,” “to avoid responsibility” (or its twin, “to garner credit for others’ actions”), “to be promoted,” “to attract the lion’s share of attention,” “to ensure that everyone likes me,” “to garner the benefits of martyrdom,” “to justify my cynicism,” “to rationalize my antisocial outlook,” “to minimize immediate conflict,” “to maintain my naïveté,” “to capitalize on my vulnerability,” “to always appear as the sainted one,” or (this one is particularly evil) “to ensure that it is always my unloved child’s fault.” These are all examples of what Sigmund Freud’s compatriot, the lesser-known Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler, called “life-lies.”

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If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward. This is a biological truth, as well as a conceptual truth. When you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information. That is the conceptual element. However, researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain. This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical of senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on. And, if not… you remain incomplete, and life is too hard for anyone incomplete.

[...]

If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character. If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will, inevitably. You will hide, but there will be no place left to hide. And then you will find yourself doing terrible things.

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All these thinkers, all centrally concerned with pathology both individual and cultural, came to the same conclusion: lies warp the structure of Being. Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other. Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other.


Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't

Peterson talks about 3 modes of conversation: just listening to someone, conversation as a form of dominance (many times this is the case) and conversation as a form of mutual exploration. He says truly thinking is a difficult thing. It involves a conversation with yourself, to be two people at once who confront each other’s thoughts and emotions. Sometimes having someone there to listen while you work out your thoughts is helpful as they can be that other person instead of you having to take the difficult role of doing that yourself. This is where the conversation is really happening more in terms of the other just listening. But it’s not easy since the person listening is often to compelled to evaluate, to add their commentary or take on it – but that’s not conversation as listening.

Conversation as a dominance hierarchy maneuver is talking to look or sound better than the other person, to one-up them. It’s where no one is really listening to each other or thinking about what they are going to say or what the other is saying. More often than not this is the direction most conversations end up going and nothing particular insightful will be gained from them.

The third one is conversation as mutual exploration, a place where real discussion takes place, where everyone is speaking from the position that they have something to learn from it, while contributing in what manner they can to the topic. Discussion of the highest order, akin to philosophy where the end goal is to arrive at the truth or at least closer to it and everyone having taken something from the conversation. So if you assume the position that a person speaking might know something you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll learn something new.


People think they think, but it’s not true. It’s mostly self-criticism that passes for thinking. True thinking is rare—just like true listening. Thinking is listening to yourself. It’s difficult. To think, you have to be at least two people at the same time. Then you have to let those people disagree. Thinking is an internal dialogue between two or more different views of the world. Viewpoint One is an avatar in a simulated world. It has its own representations of past, present and future, and its own ideas about how to act. So do Viewpoints Two, and Three, and Four. Thinking is the process by which these internal avatars imagine and articulate their worlds to one another. You can’t set straw men against one another when you’re thinking, either, because then you’re not thinking. You’re rationalizing, post-hoc. You’re matching what you want against a weak opponent so that you don’t have to change your mind. You’re propagandizing. You’re using double-speak. You’re using your conclusions to justify your proofs. You’re hiding from the truth.

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When a genuine listening conversation is taking place, one person at a time has the floor, and everyone else is listening. The person speaking is granted the opportunity to seriously discuss some event, usually unhappy or even tragic. Everyone else responds sympathetically. These conversations are important because the speaker is organizing the troublesome event in his or her mind, while recounting the story. The fact is important enough to bear repeating: people organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves. The input of the community is required for the integrity of the individual psyche. To put it another way: It takes a village to organize a mind.

Much of what we consider healthy mental function is the result of our ability to use the reactions of others to keep our complex selves functional. We outsource the problem of our sanity. This is why it is the fundamental responsibility of parents to render their children socially acceptable . If a person’s behaviour is such that other people can tolerate him, then all he has to do is place himself in a social context. Then people will indicate— by being interested in or bored by what he says, or laughing or not laughing at his jokes, or teasing or ridiculing, or even by lifting an eyebrow—whether his actions and statements are what they should be. Everyone is always broadcasting to everyone else their desire to encounter the ideal. We punish and reward each other precisely to the degree that each of us behaves in keeping with that desire— except, of course, when we are looking for trouble.

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A conversation of mutual exploration has a topic , generally complex, of genuine interest to the participants. Everyone participating is trying to solve a problem, instead of insisting on the a priori validity of their own positions. All are acting on the premise that they have something to learn . This kind of conversation constitutes active philosophy, the highest form of thought, and the best preparation for proper living.

The people involved in such a conversation must be discussing ideas they genuinely use to structure their perceptions and guide their actions and words. They must be existentially involved with their philosophy: that is, they must be living it, not merely believing or understanding it. They also must have inverted, at least temporarily, the typical human preference for order over chaos (and I don’t mean the chaos typical of mindless antisocial rebellion). Other conversational types—except for the listening type—all attempt to buttress some existing order. The conversation of mutual exploration, by contrast, requires people who have decided that the unknown makes a better friend than the known.

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To have this kind of conversation, it is necessary to respect the personal experience of your conversational partners. You must assume that they have reached careful, thoughtful, genuine conclusions (and, perhaps, they must have done the work that justifies this assumption). You must believe that if they shared their conclusions with you, you could bypass at least some of the pain of personally learning the same things (as learning from the experience of others can be quicker and much less dangerous).

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A conversation like that places you in the same place that listening to great music places you, and for much the same reason . A conversation like that puts you in the realm where souls connect, and that’s a real place.


Rule 10: Be Precise in Your Speech

When everything is running smoothly and things go as planned they can be straight forward and simple. It’s when they don’t go as planned and stuff starts to fall apart that they get very complex and sooner or later (preferably sooner) we realize we are out of our depth and see our limitations. It also makes the chaos surrounding it worse. The longer we deny that there is a problem, the worse it gets. But sometimes it’s subtle enough that we have a hard time pinpointing it. This is where precision comes in.

Being imprecise with speech leads to vagueness. It’s easier to be vague because then the problem will be vague. And why would someone want it vague? Because they fear that the problem might be them. No one wants to admit that – who likes being wrong and all the negative emotion that comes with it? However this doesn’t lead to any solutions and enables the chaos to continue. The devil is in the details. And precise speech can lead you to him, because that’s the only chance you have at confronting him.

This also ties into the previous chapter on conversation. It’s a key element of good conversation. Until we know what the problem on hand is, you just end up going around in circles, and never get to the heart of the matter.

When we’ve been careless, and let things slide, what we have refused to attend to gathers itself up, adopts a serpentine form, and strikes— often at the worst possible moment. It is then that we see what focused intent, precision of aim and careful attention protects us from.

[...]

If we speak carefully and precisely, we can sort things out, and put them in their proper place, and set a new goal, and navigate to it— often communally, if we negotiate; if we reach consensus . If we speak carelessly and imprecisely, however, things remain vague. The destination remains unproclaimed. The fog of uncertainty does not lift, and there is no negotiating through the world.

[...]

If you shirk the responsibility of confronting the unexpected, even when it appears in manageable doses, reality itself will become unsustainably disorganized and chaotic. Then it will grow bigger and swallow all order, all sense, and all predictability. Ignored reality transforms itself (reverts back) into the great Goddess of Chaos, the great reptilian Monster of the Unknown—the great predatory beast against which mankind has struggled since the dawn of time. If the gap between pretence and reality goes unmentioned, it will widen, you will fall into it, and the consequences will not be good. Ignored reality manifests itself in an abyss of confusion and suffering.

Be careful with what you tell yourself and others about what you have done, what you are doing, and where you are going. Search for the correct words. Organize those words into the correct sentences, and those sentences into the correct paragraphs. The past can be redeemed, when reduced by precise language to its essence.


Rule 11: Don’t bother children when they are skateboarding

This chapter is full of a lot more than just children and skateboards. It’s just a small part of it, the tip of the iceberg for what lies below it. Although it revolves around the concept of masculinity, it’s also a commentary on how society has been taken over by postmodern ideology – an ideology that is nihilistic and destructive. How this connects to skateboards is that feminist ideology (born out of post-modernism) is destroying masculinity. This also hurts women as well since a balanced human being requires healthy elements of both. The second connection is the story of the Oedipal mother. It’s quite an old story – a vampiric relationship where she makes a pact with the child: she’ll always protect and care for them provided they never leave. The problem is that the child will never learn to be independent, or ever have to take risks. On a larger societal level, it is the same archetype with our “Nanny State,” continually finding ways to protect us and keep us safe. All they ask is that we never leave the system aka ‘The Matrix’. It’s safe there.

However, making things too safe ends up causing people find ways to make them dangerous again (just a bit more dangerous). When it’s too safe there is no more challenge in it. It doesn’t have to be just things that are physically dangerous. It can apply to emotional or ideological situations as well.

The danger of being hurt makes the challenge worth it, gives it value. Things that are too easy or safe don’t help us learn anything knew or develop skill. It is also what prepares us for when things do happen that threaten our safety or being. Otherwise we will have no tools with which to confront such chaos when it inevitably happens and be useless in the face of it. You can see the results of this overprotectiveness in the ideological war that’s playing out between the left vs right in the US. Nanny state and its institutions have made people weak and now are unable to deal with criticism or conflict in a rational let alone healthy way and have turned people into screaming 3 year olds.


When untrammeled—and encouraged—we prefer to live on the edge. There, we can still be both confident in our experience and confronting the chaos that helps us develop. We’re hard-wired, for that reason, to enjoy risk (some of us more than others). We feel invigorated and excited when we work to optimize our future performance, while playing in the present. Otherwise we lumber around, sloth-like, unconscious, unformed and careless. Overprotected, we will fail when something dangerous, unexpected and full of opportunity suddenly makes its appearance, as it inevitably will.

[...]

We experience almost all the emotions that make life deep and engaging as a consequence of moving successfully towards something deeply desired and valued. The price we pay for that involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchies of success , while the inevitable consequence is difference in outcome. Absolute equality would therefore require the sacrifice of value itself— and then there would be nothing worth living for.

[...]

It is almost impossible to over-estimate the nihilistic and destructive nature of this philosophy. It puts the act of categorization itself in doubt. It negates the idea that distinctions might be drawn between things for any reasons other than that of raw power. Biological distinctions between men and women? Despite the existence of an overwhelming, multi-disciplinary scientific literature indicating that sex differences are powerfully influenced by biological factors, science is just another game of power, for Derrida and his post-modern Marxist acolytes, making claims to benefit those at the pinnacle of the scientific world. There are no facts. Hierarchical position and reputation as a consequence of skill and competence? All definitions of skill and of competence are merely made up by those who benefit from them, to exclude others, and to benefit personally and selfishly.

[...]

The Terrible Mother is the spirit of careless unconsciousness, tempting the ever-striving spirit of awareness and enlightenment down into the protective womb-like embrace of the underworld.

[...]

A woman should look after her children—although that is not all she should do. And a man should look after a woman and children—although that is not all he should do. But a woman should not look after a man, because she must look after children, and a man should not be a child. This means that he must not be dependent. This is one of the reasons that men have little patience for dependent men. And let us not forget: wicked women may produce dependent sons, may support and even marry dependent men, but awake and conscious women want an awake and conscious partner.

[...]

When softness and harmlessness become the only consciously acceptable virtues, then hardness and dominance will start to exert an unconscious fascination. Partly what this means for the future is that if men are pushed too hard to feminize, they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology.

[...]

The spirit that interferes when boys are trying to become men is, therefore, no more friend to woman than it is to man. It will object, just as vociferously and self-righteously (“you can’t do it, it’s too dangerous”) when little girls try to stand on their own two feet. It negates consciousness. It’s antihuman, desirous of failure, jealous, resentful and destructive. No one truly on the side of humanity would ally him or herself with such a thing. No one aiming at moving up would allow him or herself to become possessed by such a thing. And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.


Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

Here Peterson gives a personal account of the personal tragedy in his life and gives some good strategies on dealing with crisis and to limit its effect. Everyday life doesn’t just stop when those things happen and you still have to remain functional to survive. However, despite what’s going on, it’s important to take the opportunity to embrace the small things in life that provide some relief, even if momentarily, from a bad day. It can also help reminds us that beauty and wonder can be found in the strangest of places, when we least expect it. And that makes them all the more meaningful.
A superhero who can do anything turns out to be no hero at all. He’s nothing specific, so he’s nothing. He has nothing to strive against, so he can’t be admirable. Being of any reasonable sort appears to require limitation. Perhaps this is because Being requires Becoming, as well as mere static existence—and to become is to become something more, or at least something different. That is only possible for something limited.

[...]

Something supersedes thinking, despite its truly awesome power. When existence reveals itself as existentially intolerable, thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations—in the depths—it’s noticing, not thinking, that does the trick. Perhaps you might start by noticing this: when you love someone, it’s not despite their limitations. It’s because of their limitations. Of course, it’s complicated. You don’t have to be in love with every shortcoming, and merely accept. You shouldn’t stop trying to make life better, or let suffering just be. But there appear to be limits on the path to improvement beyond which we might not want to go, lest we sacrifice our humanity itself.

[...]

Be careful. Put the things you can control in order. Repair what is in disorder, and make what is already good better. It is possible that you can manage, if you are careful. People are very tough. People can survive through much pain and loss. But to persevere they must see the good in Being. If they lose that, they are truly lost.


CODA

@seek10 gives a brief summary here which I thought covered it well. I’d like to add one more bit here that stood out for me.

Failure to make the proper sacrifices, failure to reveal yourself, failure to live and tell the truth—all that weakens you. In that weakened state, you will be unable to thrive in the world, and you will be of no benefit to yourself or to others. You will fail and suffer, stupidly. That will corrupt your soul. How could it be otherwise? Life is hard enough when it is going well. But when it’s going badly? And I have learned through painful experience that nothing is going so badly that it can’t be made worse. This is why Hell is a bottomless pit. This is why Hell is associated with that aforementioned sin. In the most awful of cases, the terrible suffering of unfortunate souls becomes attributable, by their own judgment, to mistakes they made knowingly in the past: acts of betrayal, deception, cruelty, carelessness, cowardice and, most commonly of all, willful blindness. To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell. And once in Hell it is very easy to curse Being itself. And no wonder. But it’s not justifiable. And that’s why the King of the Damned is a poor judge of Being.


So all in all, it was a good read and well worth it. Even though there’s nothing particularly groundbreaking for a regular reader of the Cass forum, reading ideas we are familiar with framed in a slightly different way helped me to solidify a little better things I am learning or have learned. It’s also refreshing to see that this isn’t the only place that someone has arrived at a similar understanding on what might be the best way to conduct oneself in an STO like manner.

Despite my reservations with regards to his knowledge on political issues (see discussion here), I still really like listening to him speak on what he knows best – the human condition. He has a real talent for speaking to people that connects them to what he’s saying by relating it back to them in interesting and compelling ways. You can be in a crowd but it feels personal. His messages of empowerment and acknowledgement of the struggle they are in I feel are genuine and I think that’s part of the reason why they resonate so strongly today. The other part is that the result of years of being subjugated to post-modern/feminist ideology has deprived many (esp. young men) of any real sense of self-worth and has glorified victimhood. Peterson’s blend of 'fatherly' advice framed with psychological and spiritual truths fills the void created by these ideologies that many are desperately looking to fill. In that respect what he is doing is a good thing and a great service to society. But I do wonder how long he will last and if he will be able to weather the crushing force of the general law or be corrupted by it. Time will tell and I can only hope the best for him.
 
I just finished the chapter on raising children, rule 5, which was excellent. It's my opinion that every expecting parent should read that chapter. It distills many thoughts/ideas that have been discussed here in regards to child rearing, and I think it's essential reading.
 
It was a great read! After 'Maps of Meaning' I was sort of wondering what more he would have to say. There was a little overlapping with M of M but not much. He has that ability to get on a role with his writing where you (the reader) are pretty much just blown away, and keep it going for several paragraphs. He did that particularly well at the end of each chapter. I loved it! It fired me up. He has a great mind no doubt about it.
 
Thanks for starting this thread @fabric, I read 12 Rules earlier this spring and I really enjoyed it. I don't have much to add to your excellent summary and review at the moment, but I'll sleep on it and try to pick out some of my favorite passages to share.

I just finished the chapter on raising children, rule 5, which was excellent. It's my opinion that every expecting parent should read that chapter. It distills many thoughts/ideas that have been discussed here in regards to child rearing, and I think it's essential reading.

Absolutely, I had the same thought.
 
Thanks for the summary fabric! It's really helpful to have the ideas in each chapter put together like that as reminders.

I'm listening to the audio-book and going slowly because I usually re-listen to each chapter a few times... they're so good! I've just finished rule 8 now and it was incredibly full of great advice and reflections that it touched me to the core. Every chapter is condensed with so much practical advice and also examples, it's amazing. And I also think that how he puts things into perspective helps a lot... he makes you think about things in a different way and you're like "Wow! I didn't think about it in that way". I guess that's also why I have to listen again... :lol:

I just finished the chapter on raising children, rule 5, which was excellent. It's my opinion that every expecting parent should read that chapter. It distills many thoughts/ideas that have been discussed here in regards to child rearing, and I think it's essential reading.

I agree! That chapter is excellent! Sometimes I get tangled up thinking about some of the issues he talks about there, but his arguments make them much clearer.

Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world

{...}

But there is one thing I find a little devious in this rule. Once we’ve gone through all the trouble of getting our house in perfect order, and then maintaining that order – there won’t be much time left to sit there criticizing everything. Keeping your house in order is a full time job!

That's true! But I guess that for many people, just starting to get the house in order is a big job.

I took some notes on some of the questions he asks in that chapter because I think they are very helpful for a start. I'll paste them here but just take into account that I'm taking the notes from what I hear so they might be written differently in the book (punctuation and all that) and they are more like notes, not full excerpts from the book. That whole sub-section is great and I think it should be read entirely but... here are the notes anyway:

Clean up your life

Consider your circumstances. Start small.

Have you taken full advantage of the opportunities offered to you?

Are you working hard on your career? Or even your job? Or are you letting bitterness and resentment hold you back and drag you down?

Have you made peace with your brother? Are you treating your spouse and your children with dignity and respect?

Do you have habits that are destroying your health and well-being?

Are you truly shouldering your responsibilities?

Have you said what you need to say to your friends and family members?

Are there things that you could do, that you know you could do that would make things around you better?

{...}

Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong.

{...}

Stop acting acting in that particular despicable manner.

Stop saying those things that make you weak and ashamed. Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that could speak up with honour.

{...}

Your head will start to clear up as you stop filling it with lies. Your experience will improve as you stop distorting it with inauthentic actions.
 
I just finished the chapter on raising children, rule 5, which was excellent. It's my opinion that every expecting parent should read that chapter. It distills many thoughts/ideas that have been discussed here in regards to child rearing, and I think it's essential reading.

Some parts were also hilarious! :lol: I think it is also very useful for those with children that are very young. My sister has 2 young boys and they are very pleasant to be around with (most of the time anyway) but after hearing some of the stories she tells me about other people's kids (and some I've met) :scared: I can see Peterson is right on the mark about it in that chapter.

It was a great read! After 'Maps of Meaning' I was sort of wondering what more he would have to say. There was a little overlapping with M of M but not much.

That's good to know. I've been thinking about getting Maps of Meaning and was wondering if there was going to be much overlap between the 2 books.


Every chapter is condensed with so much practical advice and also examples, it's amazing. And I also think that how he puts things into perspective helps a lot... he makes you think about things in a different way and you're like "Wow! I didn't think about it in that way". I guess that's also why I have to listen again... :lol:

Yes, there is so much in each chapter that I found myself re-reading a lot of it too! His way of posing questions I found was a great way to take some of his ideas and apply them in a practical way by trying to answer them. A great way to spur self-reflection I thought.
 
Thanks for the summary Fabric. I agree with some posts about how sometimes the topics were a bit meandering, but on the whole it was a pleasure to read so much of JBP's wisdom condensed into one readable book.

Interesting story. A friend of mine I've seen off and on over the years was going through a depressed phase, and ended up becoming a little toxic so I cut down on out visits for awhile. He's not what you'd call an intelligent person, but he was genuinely interested in some questions about the meaning of life, etc. (I suppose his suffering was what spurred this). We reconnected about a year ago and he seemed genuinely to be in a better spot, seeing a psychologist (good) and taking antidepressants (not so good). But one of the few things he asked me about when we first met up again were about uplifting books I've read. I don't know if JBP came up in that specific conversation, but a few months later I did mention I was reading Twelve Rules for Life. Eventually he decided to move to Toronto to look for better work, and when we met up for the last time before departure I found out he was reading 12 Rules quite avidly. I was really impressed because even though he's not the most sophisticated reader something spurred him to persist through that dense tome. I guess what I found interesting about my friend's story is that once he began changing his attitude toward life and actively working on himself, JBP's work just resonated with him. During the initial period of our friendship I never would have thought he would have been interested in something like that.
 
I finished the audiobook, which is read by Peterson himself. It felt like he was riffing and I was going down winding paths to who knows where. The strength to me seemed to be seemingly isolated or unconnected nuggets of wisdom. One thing that I remember is his point that Being only exists because of Nonbeing, that limitations define a person and allow for growth, that breaking the limitations is cheap storytelling that is unsatisfying. I was wondering perhaps this is the nature of the rules that hold back 4D STS. Another thing I remember is about staying functional through a crisis and treating it as a war and not just one battle. I think that monitoring one's own energy level and conserving and rebuilding the energy level is important always, war or no war. Also, he was terribly naive and not thinking of his family when he allowed his mentally unstable acquaintance to move into his home.
 
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I've read 12RfL earlier this year, during the worst depression period I ever had in my life. JBP helped me a lot. This forum also made me to dive into JBP work, and I'm tremendously grateful for that. I recommend this book to everyone I know if they "want to do 'something' with their life". The most important thing for me is that JBP goes out from his own life experiences and he is advising kind of "baby steps" in the process of going out of "miserable state of being". i think it is very important to be gentle to yourself, especially if you were in this not pleasant conditions most of your life and you simply do not know how to deal with your internal enviroment. For me the biggest asset of this book is a simplicity. Some people may find it is to simple or naive, but i think that for the "beginners" it suits well. No hard philosophy, just words from a human being to another, fragile, human being. IMHO, people who are against this book or JBP in general just simply do not want to truly look at themselves and take responsibility for their own life and enviroment. Simply like that, but also tragic if you take on account that there are many, many people who just don't care about Human Enviroment, internal and external, in general.
Thank you for this thread and summary of each chapter. Good reminder. I write down many many quotes from this book, kind of unusual for me, but from this book I've started doing that. The same goes with P. Convey "7 rules...".
My favorite thoughts from JBP are about looking at oneself as sincerely as never before in order to realize that we are lazy, not trustworthy, devious, etc. And of course - "This is not life who have a problem - you have". For me this is an essence of taking full responibility for yourself, for the Work, which is no easy, but is essential for us. I wish everyone on the planet could read that book with open mind and heart. A very great read, and for sure will be re-read soon.
 
In JP News Letter he writes yesterday:

1. Sunday, December 22, I released podcast Season 2, Episode 40: Another 12 Rules for Life, recorded in San Diego, CA on January 25, 2019. It can be found at https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/ or at your favorite podcast download site.

Here’s a selection:

Here are some of the new rules. The first one is, “do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement”. I like that one because you are more prone to carelessly denigrate social institutions if you are liberal—on the left side of the spectrum, let’s say—because you are interested in lateral thinking, spontaneity, novelty, and you are leery of structures that constrain. Then, if you are more on the center or the right, you are more likely to denigrate creative achievement, because the creative types are always moving laterally and breaking things apart. I mean the genuinely creative types; the ones who are on the avant-garde. They are a bit of a threat to social institutions, but the truth of the matter is that you need both. There is this line in Alice in Wonderland, when Alice goes down the rabbit hole, underneath the structure of things. She meets the Red Queen down there. The Red Queen is basically mother nature, and she is red because mother nature is red in blood. That’s why the Red Queen is always running around, yelling, “off with their heads!” She is the queen of mayhem and murder. One of the things she says is, “in my kingdom, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.”
 
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