Jordan B. Peterson. 2018. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

Great
Britain. Published by Penguin Allen Lane , First edition. 409 pages.

A review written by Moldvai Barna, student, Babeș-Bolyai University, Faculty of Letters,

Norwegian major and English minor.

Jordan B. Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at

the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are in abnormal, social, and personality
psychology, with a particular interest in the psychology of religious and ideological belief, and
the assessment and improvement of personality and performance. He studied at the University of
Alberta in his hometown, Edmonton, and at the McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where
he remained as a post-doctoral fellow from 1991 to 1993. He also taught at Harvard University,
before moving back to Canada in 1998, where he currently is a full time professor since 1998.

His first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, published in 1999,
examined several academic fields to describe the structure of systems of belief and myths, their
role in the regulation of emotion, creation of meaning, and several other topics. His second book,
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, published in 2018, is accessible to a wider range of
audience and focuses more on personal growth, ethics and applied psychology.

Peterson became a public figure in 2016 when he released on YouTube a video series
criticizing political correctness and the Canadian government’s Bill C-16, which adds gender
expression and gender identity as protected grounds to the Canadian Human Rights Act and also
to the Criminal Code. Peterson claimed that this act introduces compelled speech into law. Due
to such claims, he received significant media coverage, attracting both support and criticism.

This review will focus on his second book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. The
book is the result of a Q&A forum website called Quora. Peterson was browsing it, asking
questions and giving answers. One random user asked if anyone could provide him with some
valuable life advices, to which Jordan answered with a list of forty rules to follow for a better
life. To his surprise, he received over a thousand upvotes and a dozen of messages suggesting
that he should write a book. So he decided to elaborate those rules by writing a mini-essay to
each of them. Eventually, he limited himself to twelve rules followed by thought provoking
essays with examples ranging from psychology, Disney movies and religion.

The book is structured in twelve chapters preceded by an overture written by Peterson,

where he explains the creative process of writing this book and the effect the media coverage had
and still has over his life and a foreword written by Dr. Norman Doidge. Before the
acknowledgement, Peterson also added a coda in which a personal happening of his summarizes
every chapter.

“Stand up straight with your shoulders back” (1-31) is the title of the first chapter.
Peterson starts his book in an unexpected way by talking about wrens, lobsters and nature.
Throughout the book, the reader may encounter such bizarre comparisons which could make him
question the authenticity of Peterson’s thoughts. Ranging from Disney movie characters, from
the following chapters, to lobsters, Peterson uses these examples to explain psychologically ideas
which are visible to the naked eye but only seen if looked upon with great carefulness. Besides
providing the reader with interesting lobster facts, Peterson draws a comparison between the
lobster brain and the human brain and goes on to explain the hierarchy from the lobster world,
which is almost the same as the hierarchies humans create. He uses lobsters as a primary
example because they are one of the oldest living creatures. While explaining the hierarchy, he
also makes an analysis of serotonin and octopamine and how these compounds can greatly affect
the individual’s daily life.

In the following chapter, “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping”
(31-67), the reader is presented with two concepts: chaos and order, which resonate in every
chapter. These notions are articulated by Peterson by the introduction of examples taken from
biblical stories, Taoism and Buddhism. He explains why we are social creatures and why the
above mentioned religions are what guide us through life.

Peterson furthers the previous chapter’s title by telling a story from his youth in the third
chapter called “Make friends with people who want the best for you” (67-85). The story serves
as an example of why one should carefully choose his friends and what happens if one gets too
involved or not involved enough with them.

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 “Know thyself” is the main illustrated in the fourth chapter, “Compare yourself to who
you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today” (85-113). Peterson brings forth the notion
of self-criticizing. This humane trait serves as a tool to better oneself in any hierarchy, but can
also do the opposite if its mechanisms are not understood. He compares life to a game called
hierarchy. Everybody plays it, some are winning and some are losing and the outcome defines
the individual’s value in the society. One must know himself.

Jordan B. Peterson shifts the focus from self-growth to an interesting and unexpected
chapter about raising children, “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike
them” (113-147). He claims discipline a crucial part of raising children and totally disregards J.J.
Rousseau’s theory about children being the ideal human beings due to them being untouched by
society, thus granting them a closer relationship with nature. He goes as far as saying that not
disciplining a child when needed may bring forth a new Genghis Khan or Adolf Hitler.

Throughout the chapters, Peterson cites the Bible as the main example of how to rule
over life as much as possible. He is a Christian and that is most evident in chapter six, “Set your
house in perfect in order before you criticize the world” (147-161). He gives the example of
Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was sentenced to work in a Russian gulag, but did
not hate life after he was freed. He went on to write his masterpiece, “Gulag Archipelago”,
written between 1958 and 1968, in which he describes life in the gulag and criticizes the Soviet
Union and communism. His bravery and endurance is what Peterson praises and suggests as the
right mindset towards life and the suffering it brings. Solzhenitsyn’s attitude towards life is the
example of man having enough control over his life to make a change, instead of succumbing
into pointless nihilism and blaming God and existence. Peterson cites the story of Cain and Abel,
where Cain’s offerings to God were refused and as a result he became so angry at life and at God
that he, in a fit of rage, murdered his brother, Abel, his ideal, the ideal which he could have
become if he had the right attitude towards life. Peterson claims that the right attitude and way
towards life must be balanced, between yin and yang. The yin must not overwhelm the yang and
vice-versa.

In my favourite chapter, the seventh, “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is

expedient)”(161-203), Peterson, as he does in some of the previous chapters, uses the Bible as
primary example. He denies happiness as the main goal of life and proposes that the true

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meaning of life is pursuing the higher Good, which is God. God is presented in the book, mainly,
as the meaning of life itself and the way towards God is by sacrificing. This means that one
should think through carefully what they want and not lower themselves to their momentary
cravings. “The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with
the future.” (169). Peterson also analyzes the evolution of Christianity over the course of time,
what impact it had on the world and the problem with it, often making references to Fyodor
Dostoevsky’s “The Karamazov Brothers” and Friedrich Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity.

Once again, Peterson returns to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” in

chapter eight, “Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie” (203-233), to explain how telling the truth
can destroy the credibility of a totalitarian regime or even prevent it. After Solzhenitsyn’s book
was published, it circulated, in underground, from one Russian citizen to another. “After reading
this book, even the most communist Russian could not hold the same ideas. ‘No one could ever
say again, ‘What Stalin did, that was not true communism.’” (215). Also, by telling the truth, one
is on the right path towards meaning. In Christianity, Christ is identified with the Logos. Logos
meaning the Word of God because in Genesis the world was created by the power of speech,
God made, with words, order from chaos and by telling the truth one also makes order from
chaos in their lives.

The following chapter, “Assume that the person you are listening to might know
something you don’t” (233-259), is similar to the previous one. Peterson relates a story about one
of his patients to prove how much strength thinking holds. He also cites psychotherapists who
discussed this topic (Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Alfred Adler) to further his point. Peterson’s
patient was a woman who was thinking that she had been raped, but she’s unsure of it.
Information about his patients are altered to protect their privacy. To try and clear things up in
her head, he must not abuse the theories invented by the above mentioned psychotherapists
because that could alter the patient’s thinking, so he must approach her in a Socratic fashion. He
has to ask the right questions at the right time to decipher her memory and suggests this method
whenever one is in a discussion with someone, so that both listening and talking is done.

The tenth chapter, “Be precise in your speech” (259-258) deconstructs the previous
chapter in a scenario between a cheating husband and a wife. From the outside, the man seems to
be at fault and the woman is the victim, but both are at fault. Adultery does not happen without

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cause. The situation gradually grows after many disagreements and arguing and finally explodes
and manifests itself into cheating. Peterson advices not to brush off every little thing that may
bother one because that will lead to greater problems that can have even greater consequences.
Speech should be used as a tool which carves life and gives meaning to it.

Probably the most controversial chapter is the eleventh, “Do not bother children when
they are skateboarding” (285-335). Peterson analyzes more profoundly the topics which made
him a superstar. Firstly, he rejects dogma and the dogma he most forcefully rejects is ideology.
He rejects the blind ideology of both the left and the right and what he dislikes most about these
ideologies, is their easily manipulated supporters.

In the final chapter, “Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.”(335-355),
Peterson tells the personal story about his daughter’s leg and hip injury and how he and his wife
got through this together by having the right mentality and approach towards life. The title a
metaphor which means: when life is hard, searching for the little things, such as a cat to pet, may
brighten up the day.

This book is both a mirror to one’s life and a mirror to Peterson’s life. As I was reading
the book, not only I discovered many interesting facts about the human mind and religion, but
also about myself and Peterson too. Thanks to his narrative skills, the reader can easily get to
know the Jordan B. Peterson who wrote this book. The titles he gave to his rules are self-evident,
but nonetheless deserve an in depth analysis. His love for literature not only made this book an
easy read, but also made it an entertaining and coherent one. Sometimes, I noticed, he tends to
drag an argument too long with too many examples just to prove a point, but that is not
something that would impede the reading experience. To cite the last page of the Coda “I hope
that my writing has proved useful to you. I hope it revealed things you knew that you did not
know you knew.”(368).

Bibliography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson 21.11.2018