12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
BOOK REVIEWS BY BINOD
BINOD’S RATING: 7/10Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan B Peterson has, in recent years, become an internet celebrity, producing a slew of videos and interviews on all manner of political and social topics. And while his views have marginalized him within the academic community, they have bolstered his reputation in conservative circles and among millions of young men and women.
12 Rules for Life is his long and often peculiar foray into the self-help genre. It is a book that combines sensible advice obtained from his clinical practice with inspirational anecdotes from his personal life, accounts of his academic work in the field of psychology and a lot of intellectual history of the “great books” variety, which he interprets in highly tendentious ways.
“I don’t tell people, ‘You’re okay the way that you are.’ That’s not the right story. The right story is ‘You’re way less than you could be.’”
Key points
Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
People have bad posture, and there is meaning behind it. If your serotonin levels fall, you get depressed and lean 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 and 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.
Rule 3: Choose your friends carefully.
Evaluate your social circle and eliminate those who are hurting you. You have no ethical obligation to associate with people who are making your life worse. Disassociate with people who are trying to destroy your well being.
Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
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 much more powerful than your children, and have the ability and subconscious proclivity for tyranny deeply rooted within you. JP’s 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.
Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticise 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. 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.
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 although we’re all emotionally wounded by life, we’ve found something that makes it all worthwhile. 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.
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.
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. If you’re more 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 screwing up.
Rule 10: Be Precise in Your Speech
Language takes chaos and makes it into a ‘thing.’ Fuzzy, abstract thing turns into a specific thing once named and you can now do something about it. 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 darkness or confusion by imprecise speech.
Rule 11: Don’t bother children when they are skateboarding.
This is mainly about masculinity. Peterson recalls seeing children doing all kinds of stupid and dangerous stunts on skateboards and handrails, and believes this is an essential ingredient to develop masculinity, to try to develop competence and face danger.
Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
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. 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.
One main theme is that life swings between order and chaos for all of us. We need both in order to grow.
What I liked
JP takes an axe and tries to demolish many of the long held assumptions about the many things that we have been “informed” by tradition, the media and so called “experts”, from gender equality to parenting to politics. His advice runs contrary to much of the conventional wisdom on life and learning, but it is like a breath of fresh air
While it's true that this is a self-help book, it's thankfully devoid of the "quick fix" solutions promised by the ethically and cognitively challenged majority of the self-help industry
Peterson’s encourages you to think hard about yourself and your behavior
JP demonstrates a high degree of intellectual - and personal - integrity and courage.
He is a deep and philosophical thinker - and he learns from history. He is extremely careful with his words, and he speaks what he thinks, without pretense of any kind. He writes with honesty yet in a self-controlled manner and maintains civility. In short, his combined writings are often a master class on how to write in a compelling manner and you can learn to marshal your thoughts and write well.
The foreword by Norman Doidge is (unusually for a foreword!) lucid and insightful.
“Because it’s like in a chess game, right, there’s lots of things you can do, although you can’t break the rules of the chess game and continue to play chess. Your biological nature is somewhat like that, it sets the rules of the game, but within those rules you have a lot of leeway”
What I didn’t like
His tendency to insert religious connotations throughout the book gets tiresome. Peterson does not like to be asked if he believes in God, complaining to an interviewer that the question is intended to “box him in”, but 12 Rules for Life is saturated with Christian theology. Many pages are devoted to biblical exegesis. JP seems to think that morality and insight can only be constructed upon biblical stories (as opposed to, say, science), which I disagree with.
The book could have been 120 pages—10 pages per rule. Make it clearly anecdotal. Trim the biblical analysis. Get to the point. What should be simple topics are over complicated in what appears to be a quest for proving not the “rules” but how intelligent and well read he is.
Each chapter included examples and stories but their relevance to the chapter’s “rule” wasn’t always adequately clear. While trying to sort through the run-on sentences and stories of questionable relevance, I often couldn’t even remember what “rule” the chapter was addressing and had to return to the beginning of the chapter.
I was a trifle disappointed with the lack of new material. If you are familiar with his YouTube material like the Uni lectures, interviews and the podcasts (Like I am- I have listened to many hours of these and taken copious notes), you will find little that is new or insightful here. Pretty much all of his standard examples/stories are present, from lobster dominance hierarchies to gender roles and the wisdom of fixing your own problems before pointing out those of others.
Next ( or alternative) steps
If you like reading Peterson ( or simply are curious about that JP is all about), you may enjoy listening to him in interviews and lectures rather than this book. In the interviews and lectures he is animated, concise, has a high regard for logic and facts, is respectful of those with whom he interacts and listens actively to what they have to say. He thinks before answering. He readily admits his limitations, but boldly insists on clear definition of terms etc.
Conclusion
Is this book a perfect guide to living life? No. You must craft your own principles, and feel free to borrow or modify some or all of what JP talks about.
Is it helpful? Does it give insight to great truths? Yes.
I recommend this book for anyone who wants a fresh look at and/or is searching for deeper meaning in their life.