Jordan B Peterson 12 RULES FOR LIFE An Antidote for Chaos Foreword by Norman Doidge Illustrations by Ethan Van Scriver Table of Contents Foreword by Norman Doidge Overture RULE 1 / Stand up straight with your shoulders back RULE 2 / Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping RULE 3 / Make friends with people who want the best for you RULE 4 / Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today RULE 5 / Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them RULE 6 / Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world RULE 7 / Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient) RULE 8 / Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie RULE 9 / Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t RULE 10 / Be precise in your speech RULE 11 / Do not bother children when they are skateboarding RULE 12 / Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street Coda Endnotes Acknowledgements Follow Penguin Foreword Rules? More rules? Really? Isn’t life complicated enough, restricting enough, without abstract rules that don’t take our unique, individual situations into account? And given that our brains are plastic, and all develop differently based on our life experiences, why even expect that a few rules might be helpful to us all? People don’t clamour for rules, even in the Bible … as when Moses comes down the mountain, after a long absence, bearing the tablets inscribed with ten commandments, and finds the Children of Israel in revelry They’d been Pharaoh’s slaves and subject to his tyrannical regulations for four hundred years, and after that Moses subjected them to the harsh desert wilderness for another forty years, to purify them of their slavishness Now, free at last, they are unbridled, and have lost all control as they dance wildly around an idol, a golden calf, displaying all manner of corporeal corruption “I’ve got some good news … and I’ve got some bad news,” the lawgiver yells to them “Which do you want first?” “The good news!” the hedonists reply “I got Him from fifteen commandments down to ten!” “Hallelujah!” cries the unruly crowd “And the bad?” “Adultery is still in.” So rules there will be—but, please, not too many We are ambivalent about rules, even when we know they are good for us If we are spirited souls, if we have character, rules seem restrictive, an affront to our sense of agency and our pride in working out our own lives Why should we be judged according to another’s rule? And judged we are After all, God didn’t give Moses “The Ten Suggestions,” he gave Commandments; and if I’m a free agent, my first reaction to a command might just be that nobody, not even God, tells me what to do, even if it’s good for me But the story of the golden calf also reminds us that without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions—and there’s nothing freeing about that And the story suggests something more: unchaperoned, and left to our own untutored judgment, we are quick to aim low and worship qualities that are beneath us—in this case, an artificial animal that brings out our own animal instincts in a completely unregulated way The old Hebrew story makes it clear how the ancients felt about our prospects for civilized behaviour in the absence of rules that seek to elevate our gaze and raise our standards One neat thing about the Bible story is that it doesn’t simply list its rules, as lawyers or legislators or administrators might; it embeds them in a dramatic tale that illustrates why we need them, thereby making them easier to understand Similarly, in this book Professor Peterson doesn’t just propose his twelve rules, he tells stories, too, bringing to bear his knowledge of many fields as he illustrates and explains why the best rules do not ultimately restrict us but instead facilitate our goals and make for fuller, freer lives The first time I met Jordan Peterson was on September 12, 2004, at the home of two mutual friends, TV producer Wodek Szemberg and medical internist Estera Bekier It was Wodek’s birthday party Wodek and Estera are Polish émigrés who grew up within the Soviet empire, where it was understood that many topics were off limits, and that casually questioning certain social arrangements and philosophical ideas (not to mention the regime itself) could mean big trouble But now, host and hostess luxuriated in easygoing, honest talk, by having elegant parties devoted to the pleasure of saying what you really thought and hearing others do the same, in an uninhibited give-and-take Here, the rule was “Speak your mind.” If the conversation turned to politics, people of different political persuasions spoke to each other—indeed, looked forward to it—in a manner that is increasingly rare Sometimes Wodek’s own opinions, or truths, exploded out of him, as did his laugh Then he’d hug whoever had made him laugh or provoked him to speak his mind with greater intensity than even he might have intended This was the best part of the parties, and this frankness, and his warm embraces, made it worth provoking him Meanwhile, Estera’s voice lilted across the room on a very precise path towards its intended listener Truth explosions didn’t make the atmosphere any less easygoing for the company —they made for more truth explosions!— liberating us, and more laughs, and making the whole evening more pleasant, because with derepressing Eastern Europeans like the SzembergBekiers, you always knew with what and with whom you were dealing, and that frankness was enlivening Honoré de Balzac, the novelist, once described the balls and parties in his native Wayne, Trans.) London: Penguin Books p 270 214 Dikotter, F Mao’s great famine London: Bloomsbury 215 See Peterson, J.B (2006) Peacemaking among higher-order primates In Fitzduff, M & Stout, C.E (Eds.) The psychology of resolving global conflicts: From war to peace In Volume III, Interventions (pp 3340) New York: Praeger Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23533 order_primates 216 See Allen, L (2011) Trust versus mistrust (Erikson’s infant stages) In S Goldstein & J A Naglieri (Eds.) Encyclopedia of child behavior and development (pp 1509– 1510) Boston, MA: Springer US 217 Lao-Tse (1984) The tao te ching (1984) (S Rosenthal, Trans.) Verse 33: Without force: without perishing Retrieved from https://terebess.hu/english/tao/rosenthal.html#K 218 Consider, for example, the great and courageous Boyan Slaat This young Dutch man, still in his early twenties, has developed a technology that could do exactly that, and profitably, and be employed in all the oceans of the world There’s a real environmentalist: See https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ 219 Yeats, W.B (1933) Sailing to Byzantium In R.J Finneran (Ed.) The poems of W.B Yeats: A new edition New York: MacMillan, p 163 Acknowledgements I lived through a tumultuous time when I was writing this book, to say the least I had more than my fair share of reliable, competent, trustworthy people standing with me, however, and thank God for that I would particularly like to thank my wife, Tammy, my great and good friend for almost fifty years She has been an absolute pillar of honesty, stability, support, practical help, organization and patience during the years of writing that continued during anything and everything else that has happened in our lives, no matter how pressing or important My daughter, Mikhaila, and my son, Julian, as well as my parents, Walter and Beverley, were also right there beside me, paying careful attention, discussing complicated issues with me, and aiding me in the organization of my thoughts, words and actions The same is true of my brother-in-law, Jim Keller, computer chip architect extraordinaire, and my always reliable and adventurous sister, Bonnie The friendship of Wodek Szemberg and Estera Bekier has proved invaluable to me, in many ways, for many years, as has the behind-the-scenes and subtle support of Professor William Cunningham Dr Norman Doidge went beyond the call of duty writing and revising the foreword to this book, which took far more effort than I had originally estimated, and the friendship and warmth he and his wife, Karen, continually provide has been very much appreciated by my entire family It was a pleasure to collaborate with Craig Pyette, my editor at Random House Canada Craig’s careful attention to detail and ability to diplomatically rein in excess bursts of passion (and sometimes irritation) in my many drafts made for a much more measured and balanced book Gregg Hurwitz, novelist, screen-writer and friend, used many of my rules for life in his bestseller Orphan X, well before my book was written, which was a great compliment and indicator of their potential value and public appeal Gregg also volunteered as a dedicated, thorough, viciously incisive and comically cynical editor and commentator while I was writing and editing He helped me cut unnecessary verbiage (some of it at least) and stay on the narrative track Gregg also recommended Ethan van Scriver, who provided the fine illustrations that begin each chapter, and I would like to acknowledge him for that, as well as tipping my hat to Ethan himself, whose drawings add a necessary touch of lightness, whimsy and warmth to what might otherwise have been a too-dark and dramatic tome Finally, I would like to thank Sally Harding, my agent, and the fine people she works with at CookeMcDermid Without Sally, this book would have never been written THE BEGINNING Let the conversation begin … Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@penguinUKbooks Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube.com/penguinbooks Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/penguinbooks Listen to Penguin at SoundCloud.com/penguinbooks Find out more about the author and discover more stories like this at Penguin.co.uk ALLEN LANE UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia India | New Zealand | South Africa Allen Lane is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com First published in Canada by Random House Canada 2018 First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2018 Copyright © Luminate Psychological Services, Ltd., 2018 Foreword copyright © Norman Doidge, 2018 Illustrations copyright © Luminate Psychological Services, Ltd., 2018 The moral right of the author has been asserted Cover design by Lisa Jager ISBN: 978-0-241-35165-9 FOREWORD fn1 Some argue—mistakenly—that Freud (often mentioned in these pages) contributed to our current longing for a culture, schools and institutions that are “non-judgmental.” It is true that he recommended that when psychoanalysts listen to their patients in therapy, they be tolerant, empathic, and not voice critical, moralistic judgments But this was for the express purposes of helping patients feel comfortable in being totally honest, and not diminish their problems This encouraged self-reflection, and allowed them to explore warded off feelings, wishes, even shameful anti-social urges It also—and this was the masterstroke—allowed them to discover their own unconscious conscience (and its judgments), and their own harsh self-criticism of their “lapses,” and their own unconscious guilt which they had often hidden from themselves, but which often formed the basis of their low self-esteem, depression and anxiety If anything, Freud showed that we are both more immoral and more moral than we are aware of This kind of “non-judgmentalism,” in therapy, is a powerful and liberating technique or tactic—an ideal attitude when you want to better understand yourself But Freud never argued (as do some who want all culture to become one huge group therapy session) that one can live one’s entire life without ever making judgments, or without morality In fact, his point in Civilization and its Discontents is that civilization only arises when some restraining rules and morality are in place OVERTURE fn1 The yin/yang symbol is the second part of the more comprehensive five-part tajitu, a diagram representing both the original absolute unity and its division into the multiplicity of the observed world This is discussed in more detail in Rule 2, below, as well as elsewhere in the book fn2 I use the term Being (with a capital “B”) in part because of my exposure to the ideas of the 20thcentury German philosopher Martin Heidegger Heidegger tried to distinguish between reality, as conceived objectively, and the totality of human experience (which is his “Being”) Being (with a capital “B”) is what each of us experiences, subjectively, personally and individually, as well as what we each experience jointly with others As such, it includes emotions, drives, dreams, visions and revelations, as well as our private thoughts and perceptions Being is also, finally, something that is brought into existence by action, so its nature is to an indeterminate degree a consequence of our decisions and choices—something shaped by our hypothetically free will Construed in this manner, Being is (1) not something easily and directly reducible to the material and objective and (2) something that most definitely requires its own term, as Heidegger labored for decades to indicate RULE 2: TREAT YOURSELF LIKE SOMEONE YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR HELPING fn1 It is of great interest, in this regard, that the fivepart taijitu (referred to in Chapter 1 and the source of the simpler yin/yang symbol) expresses the origin of the cosmos as, first, originating in the undifferentiated absolute, then dividing into yin and yang (chaos/order, feminine/masculine), and then into the five agents (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) and then, simply put, “the ten thousand things.” The Star of David (chaos/order, feminine/masculine) gives rise in the same way to the four basic elements: fire, air, water and earth (out of which everything else is built) A similar hexagram is used by the Hindus The downward triangle symbolizes Shakti, the feminine; the upward triangle, Shiva, the masculine The two components are known as om and hrim in Sanskrit Remarkable examples of conceptual parallelism fn2 Or, in another interpretation, He split the original androgynous individual into two parts, male and female According to this line of thinking, Christ, the “second Adam,” is also the original Man, before the sexual subdivision The symbolic meaning of this should be clear to those who have followed the argument thus far RULE 5: DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN DO ANYTHING THAT MAKES YOU DISLIKE THEM fn1 I draw here and will many times again in the course of this book on my clinical experience (as I have, already, on my personal history) I have tried to keep the moral of the stories intact, while disguising the details for the sake of the privacy of those involved I hope I got the balance right RULE 7: PURSUE WHAT IS MEANINGFUL (NOT WHAT IS EXPEDIENT) fn1 And this is all true, note, whether there is—or is not—actually such a powerful figure, “in the sky” :) fn2 In keeping with this observation is the fact that the word Set is an etymological precursor to the word Satan See Murdock, D.M (2009) Christ in Egypt: the Horus-Jesus connection Seattle, WA: Stellar House, p 75 fn3 For anyone who thinks this is somehow unrealistic, given the concrete material reality and genuine suffering that is associated with privation, I would once again recommend Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, which contains a series of exceptionally profound discussions about proper ethical behavior and its exaggerated rather than diminished importance in situations of extreme want and suffering RULE 9: ASSUME THAT THE PERSON YOU ARE LISTENING TO MIGHT KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T fn1 Here, again, I have disguised many of the details of this case, to maintain the privacy of those involved, while attempting to maintain the central meaning of the events fn2 The strategy of speaking to individuals is not only vital to the delivery of any message, it’s a useful antidote to fear of public speaking No one wants to be stared at by hundreds of unfriendly, judgmental eyes However, almost everybody can talk to just one attentive person So, if you have to deliver a speech (another terrible phrase) then do that Talk to the individuals in the audience—and don’t hide: not behind the podium, not with downcast eyes, not by speaking too quietly or mumbling, not by apologizing for your lack of brilliance or preparedness, not behind ideas that are not yours, and not behind clichés RULE 10: BE PRECISE IN YOUR SPEECH fn1 This is why, for example, it has taken us far longer than we originally assumed to make robots that could function autonomously in the world The problem of perception is far more difficult than our immediate effortless access to our own perceptions predisposes us to infer In fact, the problem of perception is so difficult that it stalled the early progress of artificial intelligence almost fatally (from the perspective of that time), as we discovered that disembodied abstract reason could not solve even simple real-world problems Pioneers such as Rodney Brooks proposed in the late 1980s and early ’90s that bodies in action were necessary preconditions to the parsing of the world into manageable things, and the AI revolution regained its confidence and momentum fn2 The recording is available at Peterson, J.B (2002) Slaying the Dragon Within Us Lecture, originally broadcast by TVO: available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REjUkEj1O_0 RULE 11: DO NOT BOTHER CHILDREN WHEN THEY ARE SKATEBOARDING fn1 Names and other details have been changed for the sake of privacy fn2 37-28/28 = 9/28 = 32 percent fn3 35-29/35 = 6/35 = 17 percent ... Jordan B Peterson 12 RULES FOR LIFE An Antidote for Chaos Foreword by Norman Doidge Illustrations by Ethan Van Scriver Table of Contents Foreword by Norman Doidge Overture RULE 1 / Stand up straight with your shoulders back... Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Eliade, Neumann, Piaget, Frye and Frankl, Maps of Meaning, published nearly two decades ago, shows Jordan’s wide-ranging approach to understanding how human beings and the human... motor cortex to think, but that motor also had to run fast to work properly To get to liftoff Not quite manic, but his idling speed revved high Spirited thoughts were tumbling out But unlike many academics who take the floor and hold it,