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Book Review
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos Published 2018 by Jordan B. Peterson Reviewed 2019 by Kris Freeberg |
I read this book during the Twelve Days of Christmas, from about Christmas Eve Day to January 6.
It took Peterson four years to write. Hm, four years versus twelve days: that's a pretty good deal. I'd call that leverage.
I can't remember how I learned about it. I just remember seeing or hearing the subtitle, "An Antidote to Chaos" and thinking, "Yes please" because I'm in the Order Business and, in both my professional and personal life, I've had my fill of chaos. Whenever there's a chance to relieve it, I'm in.
The "12 Rules" seem obvious enough, but they're loaded . . . in some cases, Peterson goes very deep. He's one of the century's most remarkable thinkers . . . indeed he may be one of the most remarkable thinkers ever because he integrates modernity with antiquity. He's well read in all of it. He has an amazing ability to connect disparate dots, to synthesize. He brings antiquity and modernity together in a way that only a citizen of the 21st Century can.
He's a brave thinker, more brave than I am, because he has read Nietzche. So far I haven't had the guts to read Nietzche because, bigot that I am, I think of him as the Nihilist "God Is Dead" guy whose sharp mind drove him mad. I just don't want to go near that.
I also think of Nietzche as the originator of the "Übermensch" or "Superman" which I have learned to associate with German Arianism that led to the Nazi Holocaust. I had blamed him for creating the philosophical basis for it, and dismissed his work as worthless madness.
But according to Peterson I may have thrown out the baby with the bath water. Perhaps I have misunderstood Nietzche. It would seem he's not an atheist or nihilist. On the contrary, from Peterson I get the sense that he's a philosopher who recognized the problems of atheism and nihilism. I gather he didn't believe that God is dead, but he recognized that a lot of people in society do, and he went to the trouble to contemplate and document the implications and consequences of this disbelief.
Perhaps some day I'll get brave enough to read him but for now, Peterson has shown me how it's possible to go near him, to go near the edge where he went, and survive.
As brilliant and philosophical as Peterson is, I must add that I was disappointed how he did not delve into Axiology, that sub-branch of Ethics that deals with experiential knowledge of value - what I call "The Better Meter." He made the mistake of writing about "good" and "better" presupposing that his readers are already clear about what those are.
As an Economist, I am necessarily an Axiologist. Being one is an occupational hazard because Economists deal with questions of value, most obviously manifested in the forms of prices and costs.
But there's so much beneath the tip of that iceberg, too. Warren Buffet became one of the most wealthy people on the face of the earth by dealing with value obscurity, with the discrepancy between Intrinsic Value and Share Price. Value can be, and often is, misunderstood. Position yourself on the favorable side of that misunderstanding, and you can make a lot of money.
For example, is divorce ever good? If you had asked me when I was young, idealistic, and in my first marriage, I would have said no, never. Marriage is for life and divorce is bad.
Don't misunderstand: I don't like divorce. I've never divorced anyone. One of the purposes of my Economics practice is to help hold marriages and families together.
But as a mature man, I have learned what Abuse is. I used to think it was synonymous with physical battery. Now I understand it in its complete Etymological sense: it's depletion or "using up."
With age, experience, and maturity, I have seen how many different kinds of abuse there are, how the worst abuse is not physical. Therefore, at this stage of my life, even though personally I've never sought it, I would have to say that yes, sometimes divorce can be salvific, and therefore good.
Or another example: is growth good? Is more money always a good thing?
No. There's such a thing as Optimality, or "Sweet Spot." There's such a thing as enough, and throwing more money at a problem can actually exacerbate it.
So in the case of Peterson's book, as good as it is, I have to say I was disappointed that he didn't dive at all into Axiology. Near the end of the book he writes in terms of what's good, beautiful, and true, and for such a brilliant thinker, this seems so naïve to me.
Yes I also champion those things but let's not naïvely presuppose that everyone knows what they are. If they did, the country and the world wouldn't be so divided.
Be that as it may, below, I'll first list the 12 Rules, then share a little of what I gained from beneath the surface from each.
The 12 Rules
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Obvious, right? What, "tell the truth?" Thank you, Captain Obvious. Tell me something I don't know, right?
But hold on. In all of these, there's so much beneath the surface. That's why they're book worthy. That's why this book was worth taking four years to write.
Yes, that's right: FOUR YEARS.
And thanks to Peterson's hard work and generosity, I was able to gain in less than two weeks what he required four years to create. What a gift.
Books are awesome right?
Anyway, let's take a dive beneath the surface of each rule and see what Peterson has to say about them.
What I Learned From Each Rule
1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
This chapter contemplated and illustrated lobster behavior because they're ancient crustaceans, survivors who've proven the test of time, who've survived Darwin's Natural Selection.
It left me feeling very grateful to the United States Marine Corps for training me how to carry myself. I've never had to think about it or try. I've always stood this way because they formed me. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps.
As an Economist, one of the things from this chapter that struck me the most was how comportment biologically influences how we handle energy and power if we're not ready for it. On page 16 he writes, "Even money itself may prove of little use. You won't know how to use it, because it is difficult to use money properly, particularly if you are unfamiliar with it. Money will make you liable to the dangerous temptations of drugs and alcohol . . . . [It] will also make you a target for predators and psychopaths . . . ."
In so many words, he discussed the primal Lizard Brain and how comportment affects it with chemicals like serotonin.
This chapter contemplated and illustrated lobster behavior because they're ancient crustaceans, survivors who've proven the test of time, who've survived Darwin's Natural Selection.
It left me feeling very grateful to the United States Marine Corps for training me how to carry myself. I've never had to think about it or try. I've always stood this way because they formed me. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps.
As an Economist, one of the things from this chapter that struck me the most was how comportment biologically influences how we handle energy and power if we're not ready for it. On page 16 he writes, "Even money itself may prove of little use. You won't know how to use it, because it is difficult to use money properly, particularly if you are unfamiliar with it. Money will make you liable to the dangerous temptations of drugs and alcohol . . . . [It] will also make you a target for predators and psychopaths . . . ."
In so many words, he discussed the primal Lizard Brain and how comportment affects it with chemicals like serotonin.
He alluded to autoimmune illnesses, which are at an epidemic in our society and he showed how standing up straight with your shoulders back can offset the patterns that cause them.
He explained how being in a Lizard Brain Four-F (Fight, Flee, Feed, Fawn) state is exhausting. It's an abuse of energy. He compares it to being in a car with both the gas and brake pedals pushed to the floor, fighting each other. It leads to panic attacks and beastly, self-defeating, self-destructive impulsivity.
He emphasized very practical things like getting enough sleep, having a consistent schedule, and getting a good breakfast. On page 18 he writes, "I have had many clients whose anxiety was reduced to subclinical levels merely because they started to sleep on a predictable schedule and eat breakfast."
As a bachelor in his fifties, this chapter taught me empathy for women in their forties. On pages 20-22 he discussed the agoraphobia (social anxiety) commonly suffered by women in this stage of life. He demonstrates both negative feedback loops that get them into it, and positive feedback loops that can get them out.
The beginning of the positive feedback loop is to rise up (23).
2. Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.
On page 33, in the section called "Why won't you just take your damn pills?" he points out how people are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves.
He defines Chaos as the Unknown and Order as what's Known. He introduces the controversial notion that archetypally, Feminine has always represented Chaos, and Masculine has represented Order. This really got me thinking about my own experiences and observations. Again, he's addressing primal, ancient Lizard Brain forces here and trying to explain how they affect us in the here and now. On page 41 he makes a connection between matter and mater (mother).
He explains how Being straddles Order and Chaos and how we need both. No Chaos makes life boring and mechanical. No Order makes life . . . well, chaotic.
Then he gets into an extensive discussion of the Garden of Eden story and shows on page 53 how the reason we do a better job of giving medicine to our pets than we do of taking it ourselves is because we loath ourselves with that ancient guilt.
In so many words, over the course of many pages, he writes that the remedy to this is to understand the Genesis story rightly, that is, to recognize the divine spark in humankind. We get so distracted by "the fall" and "original sin" that we forget how God made humankind in His own image and likeness and pronounced it all good. (This, by the way, is one of the key distinctions between Orthodox Christianity and all of the others, manifested in its doctrine of Theosis, or the process of restoring our original nature and becoming once again like the God who created us.)
In his own words, at the end of Chapter 2 on page 64 he writes, " . . . replace your shame and self-consciousness with the natural pride and forthright confidence of someone who has learned once again to walk with God in the Garden."
(But don't misunderstand this message as simply "Christian." It's not. To illustrate his principles about Order and Chaos, Peterson draws on pre-Christian concepts from Hinduism and Egyptian mythology as well, showing how they really are primal, eternal, and universal. He uses the Garden of Eden story simply because it's the most familiar and relatable to most of his readers.)
On page 33, in the section called "Why won't you just take your damn pills?" he points out how people are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves.
He defines Chaos as the Unknown and Order as what's Known. He introduces the controversial notion that archetypally, Feminine has always represented Chaos, and Masculine has represented Order. This really got me thinking about my own experiences and observations. Again, he's addressing primal, ancient Lizard Brain forces here and trying to explain how they affect us in the here and now. On page 41 he makes a connection between matter and mater (mother).
He explains how Being straddles Order and Chaos and how we need both. No Chaos makes life boring and mechanical. No Order makes life . . . well, chaotic.
Then he gets into an extensive discussion of the Garden of Eden story and shows on page 53 how the reason we do a better job of giving medicine to our pets than we do of taking it ourselves is because we loath ourselves with that ancient guilt.
In so many words, over the course of many pages, he writes that the remedy to this is to understand the Genesis story rightly, that is, to recognize the divine spark in humankind. We get so distracted by "the fall" and "original sin" that we forget how God made humankind in His own image and likeness and pronounced it all good. (This, by the way, is one of the key distinctions between Orthodox Christianity and all of the others, manifested in its doctrine of Theosis, or the process of restoring our original nature and becoming once again like the God who created us.)
In his own words, at the end of Chapter 2 on page 64 he writes, " . . . replace your shame and self-consciousness with the natural pride and forthright confidence of someone who has learned once again to walk with God in the Garden."
(But don't misunderstand this message as simply "Christian." It's not. To illustrate his principles about Order and Chaos, Peterson draws on pre-Christian concepts from Hinduism and Egyptian mythology as well, showing how they really are primal, eternal, and universal. He uses the Garden of Eden story simply because it's the most familiar and relatable to most of his readers.)
3. Make Friends With People Who Want the Best For You.
In this chapter he goes on for pages about his nihilist "friends" in Alberta. They were lost, self-destructive, and the relationships with them were sick and pointless.
On page 76, "Rescuing the Damned", he shows how motives to "help" people can actually be sick and twisted, a way of making ourselves feel relatively better, superior. On page 80 he writes, "Before you help someone, you should find out why that person is in trouble . . . . It is far more likely that a given individual has just decided to reject the path upward because of its difficulty."
Reading this chapter led me to reflect on my own what I already knew from the Gospels. Before Jesus healed the invalid at the pool of Bethesda, He first asked him, "Do you want to get well?" (John 5:6)
Good question.
He concludes this chapter, "Don't think that 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. Have some humility. Have some courage. Use your judgement, and protect yourself from too-uncritical compassion and pity.
Make friends with people who want the best for you."
In this chapter he goes on for pages about his nihilist "friends" in Alberta. They were lost, self-destructive, and the relationships with them were sick and pointless.
On page 76, "Rescuing the Damned", he shows how motives to "help" people can actually be sick and twisted, a way of making ourselves feel relatively better, superior. On page 80 he writes, "Before you help someone, you should find out why that person is in trouble . . . . It is far more likely that a given individual has just decided to reject the path upward because of its difficulty."
Reading this chapter led me to reflect on my own what I already knew from the Gospels. Before Jesus healed the invalid at the pool of Bethesda, He first asked him, "Do you want to get well?" (John 5:6)
Good question.
He concludes this chapter, "Don't think that 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. Have some humility. Have some courage. Use your judgement, and protect yourself from too-uncritical compassion and pity.
Make friends with people who want the best for you."
4. Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not to Who Someone Else Is Today.
Throughout this book, Peterson refers to the shadow work of Carl Jung, which is about being brave and honest enough to look at the hidden side of things, the sides we'd rather ignore. In the context of this chapter, while "comparing yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today" may seem common sense and obvious on the face of it, the shadowy part of this is that to set direction, you have to ask yourself what you want, because now you're in charge of setting direction instead of others.
That can be a scary question because sometimes we might discover things about ourselves that we don't like, or of which we're ashamed. When we let others call the shots, we can use their agendas to distract ourselves from our own desires. But when we call our own shots, we have to admit our own desires and face up to them. We might have to face a few demons we had conveniently locked in a Pandora's Box. It's a personal growth and self-understanding challenge.
In this chapter he alludes to the same "Invisible Gorilla" experiment mentioned by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow.
Throughout this book, Peterson refers to the shadow work of Carl Jung, which is about being brave and honest enough to look at the hidden side of things, the sides we'd rather ignore. In the context of this chapter, while "comparing yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today" may seem common sense and obvious on the face of it, the shadowy part of this is that to set direction, you have to ask yourself what you want, because now you're in charge of setting direction instead of others.
That can be a scary question because sometimes we might discover things about ourselves that we don't like, or of which we're ashamed. When we let others call the shots, we can use their agendas to distract ourselves from our own desires. But when we call our own shots, we have to admit our own desires and face up to them. We might have to face a few demons we had conveniently locked in a Pandora's Box. It's a personal growth and self-understanding challenge.
In this chapter he alludes to the same "Invisible Gorilla" experiment mentioned by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow.
He demonstrates how attention is a finite commodity that must be managed. When we focus on this, we ignore that. This is why it's so important to understand our own desires and manage them because whatever we desire is where we'll focus, to the neglect of everything else. "We only see what we aim at. The rest of the world is hidden" (101).
This scarcity of attention and the challenge of managing desires begs the question of whether desires can be managed. Peterson asserts that they can be if we are willing to entertain the possibility that Truth and Goodness are objective and absolute, not just relative notions stuck in our own heads. If we can be sure that they're objective and absolute, then we have an opportunity to desire them, just as we might desire anything else that is outside of ourselves.
On page 111 he concludes, "Now, your trajectory is heavenward. That makes you hopeful. Even a man on a sinking ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat!"
5. Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them.
On pages 119-120, Peterson calls out philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who fostered the belief that children have an intrinsically unsullied spirit damaged only by culture and society, for abandoning his own five children. He shows how actually, children are brutal, and that their brutal tendencies must be checked. Any parent who does not check their own kids' brutal tendencies does them a disservice because the kid winds up growing up to be a sociopath and a failure.
On page 137, he suggests these rules:
On page 142, he suggests these principles:
On page 143 he warns how if children are allowed to do things that make their parents dislike them, "a subtle turning away will begin" that is " . . . only the beginning of the road to total family warfare, conducted mostly in the underworld, underneath a false façade of normality and love."
On page 144 he concludes, "Clear rules and proper discipline help the child, and the family and society, establish, maintain, and expand the order that is all that protects us from chaos and the terrors of the underworld, where everything is uncertain, anxiety-provoking, hopeless, and depressing. There are no greater gifts that a committed and courageous parent can bestow."
On pages 119-120, Peterson calls out philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who fostered the belief that children have an intrinsically unsullied spirit damaged only by culture and society, for abandoning his own five children. He shows how actually, children are brutal, and that their brutal tendencies must be checked. Any parent who does not check their own kids' brutal tendencies does them a disservice because the kid winds up growing up to be a sociopath and a failure.
On page 137, he suggests these rules:
- Do not bite, kick, or hit, except in self-defense.
- Do not torture or 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 that 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 peoplee are happy you're around, so that people will want you around.
On page 142, he suggests these principles:
- Limit the rules (to the above)
- Use minimum necessary force.
- Parents should come in pairs.
- Parents should understand their own capacity to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry, and deceitful.
- Parents have a duty to act as proxies for the real world.
On page 143 he warns how if children are allowed to do things that make their parents dislike them, "a subtle turning away will begin" that is " . . . only the beginning of the road to total family warfare, conducted mostly in the underworld, underneath a false façade of normality and love."
On page 144 he concludes, "Clear rules and proper discipline help the child, and the family and society, establish, maintain, and expand the order that is all that protects us from chaos and the terrors of the underworld, where everything is uncertain, anxiety-provoking, hopeless, and depressing. There are no greater gifts that a committed and courageous parent can bestow."
6. Set Your House In Perfect Order Before You Criticize The World.
This is a short chapter that I am reluctant to distill. Every word is worth reading. He begins by presenting the mass murderers at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Columbine High School as examples of people who chose to criticize the world before setting their own houses in order.
He shows where this problem leads. It isn't just rude. It isn't just counterproductive. It's murderous. It's genocidal. It's diabolical.
He shows how people get that way: childhood trauma, etc. Then he pivots and gives examples of how others, who experienced similar traumas, used what Orthodox Christians call "Apophatic Theology" to react entirely differently. Starting with Nietzsche, he describes it this way:
"But it is also possible to learn good by experiencing evil. A bullied boy can mimic his tormentors. But he can also learn from his own abuse that it is wrong to push people around and make their lives miserable. Someone tormented by her mother can learn from her terrible experiences how important it is to be a good parent . . ." (153).
He proceeds to Solzhenitsyn: "[He] had cause to curse God. Job himself barely had it as hard. But the great writer . . . opened his eyes . . . [he] encountered people who comported themselves nobly, under horrific circumstances. He contemplated their behavior deeply. Then he asked himself . . . 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 . . . . How had he missed the mark? How many times had he acted against his own conscience? . . . How many times had he betrayed himself, and lied? . . . [He] pored over the details of his life, with a fine-toothed comb . . . . He took himself apart, piece by piece, let what was unnecessary and harmful die, and resurrected himself. Then he wrote The Gulag Archipelago . . . .
One man's decision to change his life, instead of cursing fate, shook the whole pathological system of communist tyranny to its core. It crumbled entirely, not so many years later, and Solzhenitsyn's courage was not the least of the reasons why" (155).
He offers the ancient Jews as another example: "The ancient Jews always blamed themselves when things fell apart. They acted as if God's goodness - the goodness of reality - was axiomatic, and took responsibility for their own failure. That's insanely responsible. But the alternative is to judge reality as insufficient, to criticize Being itself (becoming suicidal and/or homicidal), and to sink into resentment and the desire for revenge" (157).
On to remedies. I love how he recommends starting small, and with what you know:
"Have you cleaned up your life? If the answer is no, here's something to try: Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don't waste time questioning how you know that what you're doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is . . . . You can know that something is wrong or right without knowing why. Your entire Being can tell you something that you can neither explain nor articulate. Every person is too complex to know themselves completely, and we all contain wisdom that we cannot comprehend . . . ."
"You can use your own standards of judgment. You can rely on yourself for guidance. You don't have to adhere to some external arbitrary code of behavior . . . . Let your own soul guide you . . . .
When you are at work you will begin to say what you really think. You will start to tell your wife, or your husband, or your children, or your parents, what you really want and need. When you know that you have left something undone, you will act to correct the omission. Your head will start to clear up, as you stop filling it with lies . . . . After some months and years of diligent effort, your life will become simpler and less complicated . . . .
Perhaps you will then see that if all people did this, in their own lives, the world might stop being an evil place . . . . Who knows what eternal heavens might be established by our spirits, purified by truth, aiming skyward, right here on the fallen Earth?
Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world" (158-159).
In the margin, I wrote "Purification -> Illumination -> Divinization = Theosis."
Theosis is, I feel, the essence of this chapter; indeed, of the whole book when you really think about it.
This is a short chapter that I am reluctant to distill. Every word is worth reading. He begins by presenting the mass murderers at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Columbine High School as examples of people who chose to criticize the world before setting their own houses in order.
He shows where this problem leads. It isn't just rude. It isn't just counterproductive. It's murderous. It's genocidal. It's diabolical.
He shows how people get that way: childhood trauma, etc. Then he pivots and gives examples of how others, who experienced similar traumas, used what Orthodox Christians call "Apophatic Theology" to react entirely differently. Starting with Nietzsche, he describes it this way:
"But it is also possible to learn good by experiencing evil. A bullied boy can mimic his tormentors. But he can also learn from his own abuse that it is wrong to push people around and make their lives miserable. Someone tormented by her mother can learn from her terrible experiences how important it is to be a good parent . . ." (153).
He proceeds to Solzhenitsyn: "[He] had cause to curse God. Job himself barely had it as hard. But the great writer . . . opened his eyes . . . [he] encountered people who comported themselves nobly, under horrific circumstances. He contemplated their behavior deeply. Then he asked himself . . . 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 . . . . How had he missed the mark? How many times had he acted against his own conscience? . . . How many times had he betrayed himself, and lied? . . . [He] pored over the details of his life, with a fine-toothed comb . . . . He took himself apart, piece by piece, let what was unnecessary and harmful die, and resurrected himself. Then he wrote The Gulag Archipelago . . . .
One man's decision to change his life, instead of cursing fate, shook the whole pathological system of communist tyranny to its core. It crumbled entirely, not so many years later, and Solzhenitsyn's courage was not the least of the reasons why" (155).
He offers the ancient Jews as another example: "The ancient Jews always blamed themselves when things fell apart. They acted as if God's goodness - the goodness of reality - was axiomatic, and took responsibility for their own failure. That's insanely responsible. But the alternative is to judge reality as insufficient, to criticize Being itself (becoming suicidal and/or homicidal), and to sink into resentment and the desire for revenge" (157).
On to remedies. I love how he recommends starting small, and with what you know:
"Have you cleaned up your life? If the answer is no, here's something to try: Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today. Don't waste time questioning how you know that what you're doing is wrong, if you are certain that it is . . . . You can know that something is wrong or right without knowing why. Your entire Being can tell you something that you can neither explain nor articulate. Every person is too complex to know themselves completely, and we all contain wisdom that we cannot comprehend . . . ."
"You can use your own standards of judgment. You can rely on yourself for guidance. You don't have to adhere to some external arbitrary code of behavior . . . . Let your own soul guide you . . . .
When you are at work you will begin to say what you really think. You will start to tell your wife, or your husband, or your children, or your parents, what you really want and need. When you know that you have left something undone, you will act to correct the omission. Your head will start to clear up, as you stop filling it with lies . . . . After some months and years of diligent effort, your life will become simpler and less complicated . . . .
Perhaps you will then see that if all people did this, in their own lives, the world might stop being an evil place . . . . Who knows what eternal heavens might be established by our spirits, purified by truth, aiming skyward, right here on the fallen Earth?
Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world" (158-159).
In the margin, I wrote "Purification -> Illumination -> Divinization = Theosis."
Theosis is, I feel, the essence of this chapter; indeed, of the whole book when you really think about it.
7. Pursue What Is Meaningful (Not What Is Expedient).
I found this chapter to be long, ponderous, and abstruse. Peterson took another deep dive into the Garden of Eden story as well as Christ's 40 days of temptation in the wilderness, and ranged widely between Socrates, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Jung, Solzhenitsyn, Descartes, and without naming them, Apophatic Theology and Theosis.
The gist of all of this, however, as far as I can make out, is that God has so ordered the Cosmos as to reward those of us who recognize how cause-effect relationships work over time. He has set up a Sacrificial System that rewards deferred gratification with subsequent, consequential benefits.
I find this is best summarized at the bottom of page 200: "What is expedient only works for the moment. It's immediate, impulsive, and limited. What is meaningful, by contrast, is the organization of what would otherwise merely be expedient into a symphony of Being . . . ." And at the bottom of page 201, "Meaning is the Way, the path of life more abundant, the place you live when you are guided by Love and speaking Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly want takes any precedence over precisely that."
In my personal experience, I can say that one frequent example I've seen of Expedience is the avoidance of suffering. But I have found that suffering means something. It's like a warning light on your car's dashboard.
Apophatically, it teaches us about God's nature and will; and if instead of numbing ourselves to it we'll instead have the courage to feel and sensitize ourselves to it, we can learn what it means and overcome it. But as long as we seek to numb ourselves to the lesson and avoid the pain, we'll stay stuck in the very thing we're trying to avoid.
Pain is a great teacher. No pain, no gain.
I found this chapter to be long, ponderous, and abstruse. Peterson took another deep dive into the Garden of Eden story as well as Christ's 40 days of temptation in the wilderness, and ranged widely between Socrates, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Jung, Solzhenitsyn, Descartes, and without naming them, Apophatic Theology and Theosis.
The gist of all of this, however, as far as I can make out, is that God has so ordered the Cosmos as to reward those of us who recognize how cause-effect relationships work over time. He has set up a Sacrificial System that rewards deferred gratification with subsequent, consequential benefits.
I find this is best summarized at the bottom of page 200: "What is expedient only works for the moment. It's immediate, impulsive, and limited. What is meaningful, by contrast, is the organization of what would otherwise merely be expedient into a symphony of Being . . . ." And at the bottom of page 201, "Meaning is the Way, the path of life more abundant, the place you live when you are guided by Love and speaking Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly want takes any precedence over precisely that."
In my personal experience, I can say that one frequent example I've seen of Expedience is the avoidance of suffering. But I have found that suffering means something. It's like a warning light on your car's dashboard.
Apophatically, it teaches us about God's nature and will; and if instead of numbing ourselves to it we'll instead have the courage to feel and sensitize ourselves to it, we can learn what it means and overcome it. But as long as we seek to numb ourselves to the lesson and avoid the pain, we'll stay stuck in the very thing we're trying to avoid.
Pain is a great teacher. No pain, no gain.
8. Tell the Truth - Or, At Least, Don't Lie.
Peterson begins this chapter with a confession that when he was younger, he found that almost everything he said was untrue (205) because he wanted to win arguments, gain status, impress people, and get what he wanted.
He also found that dangerous people like paranoid clients and his drunk biker landlord have excellent "bullshit detectors" and how telling them hard truths actually pacified them.
He connects the dots between private lies and public atrocities. "Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other" (215).
He shows how truthfulness or deceit determine whether medical or natural disasters can be made bearable. "With love, encouragement, and character intact, a human being can be resilient beyond imagining. What cannot be borne, however, is the absolute ruin produced by tragedy and deception" (217).
He points out how Satan's moniker "Lucifer" means "light bearer." In other words, lies are often presented as truth, as false illumination. They're the shadows lurking behind diabolical light, behind a false story. The story is designed to illuminate, but it doesn't. It's fraudulent. As Hitler wrote, "In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility" (227).
He also defines and elaborates on totalitarianism. He writes that "totalitarian" means, "Everything that needs to be discovered, has been discovered" (218). It's know-it-all-ism; and he asserts that what saves us is our willingness to admit what we don't know, and learn from it.
Referring back to Egyptian antiquity, he points out how a moral of those ancient stories was that social organizations ossify with time, and tend toward willful blindness, and that an attentive son can restore his father's vision (222).
How can we know if we're being truthful? Echoing Charles F. Haanel, he mentions the solar plexus:
"If you pay attention to what you do and say, you can learn to feel a state of internal division and weakness when you are misbehaving and misspeaking. It's an embodied sensation, not a thought. I experience an internal sensation of sinking and division, rather than solidity and strength, when I am incautious with my acts and words. It seems to be centered in my solar plexus, where a large knot of nervous tissue resides. I learned to recognize when I was lying, in fact, by noticing this sinking and division, and then inferring the presence of a lie. It often took me a long time to ferret out the deception. Sometimes I was using words for appearance. Sometimes I was trying to disguise my own true ignorance of the topic at hand. Sometimes I was using the words of others to avoid the responsibility of thinking for myself" (224).
Because of this physicality that he describes, I'm convinced that lying makes people sick, that it contributes to the epidemic of stress related illnesses that ravages our time. Stress is when your mouth says yes, and your gut (your solar plexus) says no.
"And why not lie?" he asks. "The reason is simple: things fall apart" (228).
He points out how Creation was spoken into being with a word, and how Jesus' eternal name is "Logos."
He concludes,
"To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into Being. Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe. Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner rather than an enemy. Truth makes the past truly past, and makes the best use of the future's possibilities. Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It's the light in the darkness" (230).
Peterson begins this chapter with a confession that when he was younger, he found that almost everything he said was untrue (205) because he wanted to win arguments, gain status, impress people, and get what he wanted.
He also found that dangerous people like paranoid clients and his drunk biker landlord have excellent "bullshit detectors" and how telling them hard truths actually pacified them.
He connects the dots between private lies and public atrocities. "Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other" (215).
He shows how truthfulness or deceit determine whether medical or natural disasters can be made bearable. "With love, encouragement, and character intact, a human being can be resilient beyond imagining. What cannot be borne, however, is the absolute ruin produced by tragedy and deception" (217).
He points out how Satan's moniker "Lucifer" means "light bearer." In other words, lies are often presented as truth, as false illumination. They're the shadows lurking behind diabolical light, behind a false story. The story is designed to illuminate, but it doesn't. It's fraudulent. As Hitler wrote, "In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility" (227).
He also defines and elaborates on totalitarianism. He writes that "totalitarian" means, "Everything that needs to be discovered, has been discovered" (218). It's know-it-all-ism; and he asserts that what saves us is our willingness to admit what we don't know, and learn from it.
Referring back to Egyptian antiquity, he points out how a moral of those ancient stories was that social organizations ossify with time, and tend toward willful blindness, and that an attentive son can restore his father's vision (222).
How can we know if we're being truthful? Echoing Charles F. Haanel, he mentions the solar plexus:
"If you pay attention to what you do and say, you can learn to feel a state of internal division and weakness when you are misbehaving and misspeaking. It's an embodied sensation, not a thought. I experience an internal sensation of sinking and division, rather than solidity and strength, when I am incautious with my acts and words. It seems to be centered in my solar plexus, where a large knot of nervous tissue resides. I learned to recognize when I was lying, in fact, by noticing this sinking and division, and then inferring the presence of a lie. It often took me a long time to ferret out the deception. Sometimes I was using words for appearance. Sometimes I was trying to disguise my own true ignorance of the topic at hand. Sometimes I was using the words of others to avoid the responsibility of thinking for myself" (224).
Because of this physicality that he describes, I'm convinced that lying makes people sick, that it contributes to the epidemic of stress related illnesses that ravages our time. Stress is when your mouth says yes, and your gut (your solar plexus) says no.
"And why not lie?" he asks. "The reason is simple: things fall apart" (228).
He points out how Creation was spoken into being with a word, and how Jesus' eternal name is "Logos."
He concludes,
"To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into Being. Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe. Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner rather than an enemy. Truth makes the past truly past, and makes the best use of the future's possibilities. Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It's the light in the darkness" (230).
9. Assume That the Person You Are Listening To Might Know Something You Don't.
This chapter is the flip side of telling the truth: listening to it. At the start of the chapter he describes a sort of person I've known many times in my life. Here's how he describes her:
She was a patient of his, and he found that the remedy for her was not for him to give her advice. It was to listen because having a sounding board helped her think, helped her sort herself out. He asserts that the key to the psychotherapeutic process is that two people tell each other the truth, and both listen (245).
He shares a valuable listening suggestion from Carl Rogers: "Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker's satisfaction" (246).
In so many words over many pages, he explains how a genuine conversation is a Truth-Seeking, Wisdom-Loving thing. It's the kind of thing for which I personally yearn, and seldom experience. He writes, "A conversation like this puts you in the realm where souls connect, and that's a real place. It leaves you thinking, 'That was really worthwhile. We really got to know each other.' The masks came off, and the searchers were revealed" (255).
He closes this chapter with an allusion to Socrates: "It is for this reason that the priestess of the Delphic Oracle in ancient Greece spoke most highly of Socrates, who always sought the truth. She described him as the wisest living man, because he knew that what he knew was nothing" (256).
This chapter is the flip side of telling the truth: listening to it. At the start of the chapter he describes a sort of person I've known many times in my life. Here's how he describes her:
- "She was vague to the point of non-existence. She was a ghost of a person."
- "She didn't know how to think on her own. She had no self. She was, instead, a walking cacophony of unintegrated experiences."
- "She knew nothing about herself. She knew nothing about other individuals. She knew nothing about the world. She was a movie played out of focus."
- "You wander around like an accident waiting to happen and the accident happens and that's your life."
- "She wanders into a bar like a courtesan in a coma."
She was a patient of his, and he found that the remedy for her was not for him to give her advice. It was to listen because having a sounding board helped her think, helped her sort herself out. He asserts that the key to the psychotherapeutic process is that two people tell each other the truth, and both listen (245).
He shares a valuable listening suggestion from Carl Rogers: "Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker's satisfaction" (246).
In so many words over many pages, he explains how a genuine conversation is a Truth-Seeking, Wisdom-Loving thing. It's the kind of thing for which I personally yearn, and seldom experience. He writes, "A conversation like this puts you in the realm where souls connect, and that's a real place. It leaves you thinking, 'That was really worthwhile. We really got to know each other.' The masks came off, and the searchers were revealed" (255).
He closes this chapter with an allusion to Socrates: "It is for this reason that the priestess of the Delphic Oracle in ancient Greece spoke most highly of Socrates, who always sought the truth. She described him as the wisest living man, because he knew that what he knew was nothing" (256).
10. Be Precise In Your Speech.
In this chapter he points out how an "Emergency" emerges. It is the revelation, or the manifestation, or an appearance, of an overlooked truth that emerges from the depths.
At such times our bodies take over, they go into fight or flight mode. Everything is chaos and confusion, and in the reaction process, if we survive it, we wind up relying on language to figure out what is going on, sort things out, and cope.
He shares Jack Kent's story for children, "There's No Such Thing as a Dragon", about denial and avoidance . . .
In this chapter he points out how an "Emergency" emerges. It is the revelation, or the manifestation, or an appearance, of an overlooked truth that emerges from the depths.
At such times our bodies take over, they go into fight or flight mode. Everything is chaos and confusion, and in the reaction process, if we survive it, we wind up relying on language to figure out what is going on, sort things out, and cope.
He shares Jack Kent's story for children, "There's No Such Thing as a Dragon", about denial and avoidance . . .
. . . and he admonishes, "Don't ever underestimate the destructive power of sins of omission" (271).
If they're so destructive, why would anyone want to commit them? "Why remain vague, when it renderes life stagnant and murky? Well, if you don't know who you are, you can hide in doubt" (275). Doubt - obscurantism - makes a handy hiding place.
The whole chapter bears reading word for word. But in a nutshell, however, his point is that precise speech is necessary to solve problems. Without it, you'll stay stuck in them forever. With it, there is at least the possibility and the hope for solutions.
11. Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding.
This chapter is long, deep, and worth re-reading in its entirety. It's about ambition and motivation. It's about envy. It's about shadowy motives like concealing hatred of the rich behind feigned concern for the poor. It's about gender relationships. It's about the plight of boys, and what to do about it. It's about postmodern hostility toward patriarchy, and whether patriarchy is really as sinister as it's portrayed to be. It's about academic mendacity. It's about healthy assertiveness. It's about motherhood. "The opposite of a criminal is an Oedipal mother, which is its own type of criminal" (320).
It's about the healthy rough-and-tumble that makes a rugged work environment efficient, effective, and pleasant. It's about being considerate toward women, providing them both what they need, and what they like.
He concludes, ". . . if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.
Leave children alone when they are skateboarding" (332).
This chapter is long, deep, and worth re-reading in its entirety. It's about ambition and motivation. It's about envy. It's about shadowy motives like concealing hatred of the rich behind feigned concern for the poor. It's about gender relationships. It's about the plight of boys, and what to do about it. It's about postmodern hostility toward patriarchy, and whether patriarchy is really as sinister as it's portrayed to be. It's about academic mendacity. It's about healthy assertiveness. It's about motherhood. "The opposite of a criminal is an Oedipal mother, which is its own type of criminal" (320).
It's about the healthy rough-and-tumble that makes a rugged work environment efficient, effective, and pleasant. It's about being considerate toward women, providing them both what they need, and what they like.
He concludes, ". . . if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.
Leave children alone when they are skateboarding" (332).
12. Pet A Cat When You Encounter One On The Street.
There's hidden meaning in this final chapter, just as there is throughout this insightful book. The idea here is that there's a lot of suffering and sacrifice in life, but once in a while a gift will show up, like a cat who wants to be petted. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It's up to the cat. When these sweet moments happen, embrace them.
Learn also to see the other side of the coin. " . . . what can be truly loved about a person is inseparable from their limitations" (341). "When you love someone, it's not despite their limitations. It's because of their limitations" (347).
There's hidden meaning in this final chapter, just as there is throughout this insightful book. The idea here is that there's a lot of suffering and sacrifice in life, but once in a while a gift will show up, like a cat who wants to be petted. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It's up to the cat. When these sweet moments happen, embrace them.
Learn also to see the other side of the coin. " . . . what can be truly loved about a person is inseparable from their limitations" (341). "When you love someone, it's not despite their limitations. It's because of their limitations" (347).
Writing this review has been a pleasure. Peterson wrote the book in four years. I read it in twelve days. I wrote this review in less than six hours.
And now it's done, easy to share with a single hyperlink, forever.
I hope it has helped you. It has certainly helped me. It's one of the best, most consequential books I've ever read.
And now it's done, easy to share with a single hyperlink, forever.
I hope it has helped you. It has certainly helped me. It's one of the best, most consequential books I've ever read.
