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

[esse]

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

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

Overture

This book has a short history and a long history. We’ll begin with the short history.

In 2012, I started contributing to a website called Quora. On Quora, anyone can ask a question, of any sort—and anyone can answer. Readers upvote those answers they like, and downvote those they don’t. In this manner, the most useful answers rise to the top, while the others sink into oblivion. I was curious about the site. I liked its free-for-all nature. The discussion was often compelling, and it was interesting to see the diverse range of opinions generated by the same question.

When I was taking a break (or avoiding work), I often turned to Quora, looking for questions to engage with. I considered, and eventually answered, such questions as “What’s the difference between being happy and being content?”, “What things get better as you age?” and “What makes life more meaningful?”

Quora tells you how many people have viewed your answer and how many upvotes you received. Thus, you can determine your reach, and see what people think of your ideas. Only a small minority of those who view an answer upvote it. As of July 2017, as I write this—and five years after I addressed “What makes life more meaningful?”—my answer to that question has received a relatively small audience (14,000 views, and 133 upvotes), while my response to the question about aging 

Soon after, I answered another question: “What are the most valuable things everyone should know?” I wrote a list of rules, or maxims; some dead serious, some tongue-in-cheek—“Be grateful in spite of your suffering,” “Do not do things that you hate,” “Do not hide things in the fog,” and so on. The Quora readers appeared pleased with this list. They commented on and shared it. They said such things as “I’m definitely printing this list out and keeping it as a reference. Simply phenomenal,” and “You win Quora. We can just close the site now.” Students at the University of Toronto, where I teach, came up to me and told me how much they liked it. To date, my answer to “What are the most valuable things …” has been viewed by a hundred and twenty thousand people and been upvoted twenty-three hundred times. Only a few hundred of the roughly six hundred thousand questions on Quora have cracked the two-thousand-upvote barrier. My procrastination-induced musings hit a nerve. I had written a 99.9 percentile answer.

It was not obvious to me when I wrote the list of rules for living that it was going to perform so well. I had put a fair bit of care into all the sixty or so answers I submitted in the few months surrounding that post. Nonetheless, Quora provides market research at its finest. The respondents are anonymous. They’re disinterested, in the best sense. Their opinions are spontaneous and unbiased. So, I paid attention to the results, and thought about the reasons for that answer’s disproportionate success. Perhaps I struck the right balance between the familiar and the unfamiliar while formulating the rules. Perhaps people were drawn to the structure that such rules imply. Perhaps people just like lists.

A few months earlier, in March of 2012, I had received an email from a literary agent. She had heard me speak on CBC radio during a show entitled Just Say No to Happiness, where I had criticized the idea that happiness was the proper goal for life. Over the previous decades ¹ In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual. On the radio show, I suggested, instead, that a deeper meaning was required. I noted that the nature of such meaning was constantly re-presented in the great stories of the past, and that it had more to do with developing character in the face of suffering than with happiness. This is part of the long history of the present work.

From 1985 until 1999 I worked for about three hours a day on the only other book I have ever published: Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. During that time, and in the years since, I also taught a course on the material in that book, first at Harvard, and now at the University of Toronto. In 2013, observing the rise of YouTube, and because of the popularity of some work I had done with TVO, a Canadian public TV station, I decided to film my university and public lectures and place them online. They attracted an increasingly large audience—more than a million views by April 2016. The number of views has risen very dramatically since then (up to eighteen million as I write this), but that is in part because I became embroiled in a political controversy that drew an inordinate amount of attention.

That’s another story. Maybe even another book.

I proposed in Maps of Meaning that the great myths and religious stories of the past, particularly those derived from an earlier, oral tradition, weremoral in their intent, rather than descriptive. Thus, they did not concern themselves with what the world was, as a scientist might have it, but with how a human being should act. I suggested that our ancestors portrayed the world as a stage—a drama—instead of a place of objects. I described how I had come to believe that the constituent elements of the world as drama were order and chaos, and not material things.

Chaos, by contrast, is where—or when—something unexpected happens. Chaos emerges, in trivial form, when you tell a joke at a party with people you think you know and a silent and embarrassing chill falls over the gathering. Chaos is what emerges more catastrophically when you suddenly find yourself without employment, or are betrayed by a lover. As the antithesis of symbolically masculine order, it’s presented imaginatively as feminine. It’s the new and unpredictable suddenly emerging in the midst of the commonplace familiar. It’s Creation and Destruction, the source of new things and the destination of the dead (as nature, as opposed to culture, is simultaneously birth and demise).

Order and chaos are the yang and yin of the famous Taoist symbol: two serpents, head to tail. Order is the white, masculine serpent; Chaos, its black, feminine counterpart. The black dot in the white—and the white in the black—indicate the possibility of transformation: just when things seem secure, the unknown can loom, unexpectedly and large. Conversely, just when everything seems lost, new order can emerge from catastrophe and chaos.

For the Taoists, meaning is to be found on the border between the ever-entwined pair. To walk that border is to stay on the path of life, the divine Way.

And that’s much better than happiness.

The literary agent I referred to listened to the CBC radio broadcast where I discussed such issues. It left her asking herself deeper questions. She emailed me, asking if I had considered writing a book for a Maps of Meaning, which is a very dense book. But I found that the spirit was neither in me during that attempt nor in the resultant manuscript. I think this was because I was imitating my former self, and my previous book, instead of occupying the place between order and chaos and producing something new. I suggested that she watch four of the lectures I had done for a TVO program called Big Ideas on my YouTube channel. I thought if she did that we could have a more informed and thorough discussion about what kind of topics I might address in a more publicly accessible book.

She contacted me a few weeks later, after watching all four lectures and discussing them with a colleague. Her interest had been further heightened, as had her commitment to the project. That was promising—and unexpected. I’m always surprised when people respond positively to what I am saying, given its seriousness and strange nature. I’m amazed I have been allowed (even encouraged) to teach what I taught first in Boston and now in Toronto. I’ve always thought that if people really noticed what I was teaching there would be Hell to pay. You can decide for yourself what truth there might be in that concern after reading this book. :)

She suggested that I write a guide of sorts to what a person needs “to live well”—whatever that might mean. I thought immediately about my Quora list. I had in the meantime written some further thoughts about of the rules I had posted. People had responded positively toward those new ideas, as well. It seemed to me, therefore, that there might be a nice fit between the Quora list and my new agent’s ideas. So, I sent her the list. She liked it.

At about the same time, a friend and former student of mine—the novelist and screenwriter Gregg Hurwitz—was considering a new book, which would become the bestselling thriller Orphan X. He liked the rules, too. He had Mia, the book’s female lead, post a selection of them, one by one, on her fridge, at points in the story where they seemed apropos. That was another piece of evidence supporting my supposition of their attractiveness. I suggested to my agent that I write a brief chapter on each of the rules. She agreed, so I wrote a book proposal 

This was partly because I had spent a very long time researching my first book: studying history, mythology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, child psychology, poetry, and large sections of the Bible. I read and perhaps even understood much of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Goethe’s Faust and Dante’s Inferno. I integrated all of that, for better or worse, trying to address a perplexing problem: the reason or reasons for the nuclear standoff of the Cold War. I couldn’t understand how belief systems could be so important to people that they were willing to risk the destruction of the world to protect them. I came to realize that shared belief systems made people intelligible to one another—and that the systems weren’t just about belief.

People who live by the same code are rendered mutually predictable to one another. They act in keeping with each other’s expectations and desires. They can cooperate. They can even compete peacefully, because everyone knows what to expect from everyone else. A shared belief system, partly psychological, partly acted out, simplifies everyone—in their own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Shared beliefs simplify the world, as well, because people who know what to expect from one another can act together to tame the world. There is perhaps nothing more important than the maintenance of this organization—this simplification. If it’s threatened, the great ship of state rocks.

It isn’t precisely that people will fight for what they believe. They will fight, instead, to maintain the match between what they believe, what they expect, and what they desire. They will fight to maintain the match between what they expect and how everyone is acting. It is precisely the maintenance of that match that enables everyone to live together peacefully, predictably and productively. It reduces uncertainty and the chaotic mix of intolerable emotions that uncertainty inevitably produces.

Imagine someone betrayed by a trusted lover. The sacred social contract obtaining between the two has been violated. Actions speak louder than words, and an act of betrayal disrupts the fragile and 

There’s more to it, too. A shared cultural system stabilizes human interaction, but is also a system of value—a hierarchy of value, where some things are given priority and importance and others are not. In the absence of such a system of value, people simply cannot act. In fact, they can’t even perceive, because both action and perception require a goal, and a valid goal is, by necessity, something valued. We experience much of our positive emotion in relation to goals. We are not happy, technically speaking, unless we see ourselves progressing—and the very idea of progression implies value. Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence. We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being.

So: no value, no meaning. Between value systems, however, there is the possibility of conflict. We are thus eternally caught between the 

While writing Maps of Meaning, I was (also) driven by the realization that we can no longer afford conflict—certainly not on the scale of the world conflagrations of the twentieth century. Our technologies of destruction have become too powerful. The potential consequences of war are literally apocalyptic. But we cannot simply abandon our systems of value, our beliefs, our cultures, either. I agonized over this apparently intractable problem for months. Was there a third way, invisible to me? I dreamt one night during this period that I was suspended in mid-air, clinging to a chandelier, many stories above the ground, directly under the dome of a massive cathedral. The people on the floor below were distant and tiny. There was a great expanse between me and any wall—and even the peak of the dome itself.

I have learned to pay attention to dreams, not least because of my training as a clinical psychologist. Dreams shed light on the dim places where reason itself has yet to voyage. I have studied Christianity a fair bit, too (more than other religious traditions, although I am always trying to redress this lack). Like others, therefore, I must and do draw more from what I do know than from what I do not. I knew that cathedrals were constructed in the shape of a cross, and that the point under the dome was the centre of the cross. I knew that the cross was simultaneously, the point of greatest suffering, the point of death and transformation, and the symbolic centre of the world. That was not somewhere I wanted to be. I managed to get down, out of the heights—out of the symbolic sky—back to safe, familiar, anonymous ground. I don’t know how. Then, still in my dream, I returned to my bedroom and my bed and tried to return to sleep and the peace of unconsciousness. As I relaxed, however, I could feel my body transported. A great wind was dissolving me, preparing to propel me back 

My dream placed me at the centre of Being itself, and there was no escape. It took me months to understand what this meant. During this time, I came to a more complete, personal realization of what the great stories of the past continually insist upon: the centre is occupied by the individual. The centre is marked by the cross, as X marks the spot. Existence at that cross is suffering and transformation—and that fact, above all, needs to be voluntarily accepted. It is possible to transcend slavish adherence to the group and its doctrines and, simultaneously, to avoid the pitfalls of its opposite extreme, nihilism. It is possible, instead, to find sufficient meaning in individual consciousness and experience.

How could the world be freed from the terrible dilemma of conflict, on the one hand, and psychological and social dissolution, on the other? The answer was this: through the elevation and development of the individual, and through the willingness of everyone to shoulder the burden of Being and to take the heroic path. We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world. We must each tell the truth and repair what is in disrepair and break down and recreate what is old and outdated. It is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. It’s asking a lot. It’s asking for everything. But the alternative—the horror of authoritarian belief, the chaos of the collapsed state, the tragic catastrophe of the unbridled natural world, the existential angst and weakness of the purposeless individual—is clearly worse.

I have been thinking and lecturing about such ideas for decades. I have built up a large corpus of stories and concepts pertaining to them. I am not for a moment claiming, however, that I am entirely correct or complete in my thinking. Being is far more complicated than one person can know, and I don’t have the whole story. I’m simply offering the best I can manage.

It took a long time to settle on a title: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Why did that one rise up above all others? First and foremost, because of its simplicity. It indicates clearly that people need ordering principles, and that chaos otherwise beckons. We require rules, standards, values—alone and together. We’re pack animals, beasts of burden. We must bear a load, to justify our miserable existence. We require routine and tradition. That’s order. Order can become excessive, and that’s not good, but chaos can swamp us, so we drown—and that is also not good. We need to stay on the straight and narrow path. Each of the twelve rules of this book—and their accompanying essays—therefore provide a guide to being there. “There” is the dividing line between order and chaos. That’s where we are simultaneously stable enough, exploring enough, transforming enough, repairing enough, and cooperating enough. It’s there we find the meaning that justifies life and its inevitable suffering. Perhaps, if we lived properly, we would be able to tolerate the weight of our own self-consciousness. Perhaps, if we lived properly, we could withstand the knowledge of our own fragility and mortality, without the sense of aggrieved victimhood that produces, first, resentment, then envy, and then the desire for vengeance and destruction. Perhaps, if we lived properly, we wouldn’t have to turn to totalitarian certainty to shield ourselves from the knowledge of our own insufficiency and ignorance. Perhaps we could come to avoid those pathways to Hell—and we have seen in the terrible twentieth century just how real Hell can be.

I hope that these rules and their accompanying essays will help people understand what they already know: that the soul of the 

If we each live properly, we will collectively flourish.

Best wishes to you all, as you proceed through these pages.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychology

Forward by Dr. Norman Doidge, the author of The Brain That Change Itself

- without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions

- 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.

- 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.

- He had this odd habit of speaking about the deepest questions to whoever was at this table—most of them new acquaintances—as though he were just making small talk.

- He had the enthusiasm of a kid who had just learned something new and had to share it. He seemed to be assuming, as a child would—before learning how dulled adults can become—that if he thought something was interesting, then so might others.

- I was always especially fond of mid-Western, Prairie types who come from a farm (where they learned all about nature), or from a very small town, and who have worked with their hands to make things, spent long periods outside in the harsh elements, and are often self-educated and go to university against the odds.

- Jordan’s wide-ranging approach to understanding how human beings and the human brain deal with the archetypal situation that arises whenever we, in our daily lives, must face something we do not understand

- One of the many virtues of the book you are reading now is that it provides an entry point into Maps of Meaning, which is a highly complex work because Jordan was working out his approach to psychology as he wrote it.

- In Maps of Meaning, and again in this book, one of the matters he cautions readers to be most wary of is ideology, no matter who is peddling it or to what end.

- Ideologies are simple ideas, disguised as science or philosophy, that purport to explain the complexity of the world and offer remedies that will perfect it. Ideologues are people who pretend they know how to “make the world a better place” before they’ve taken care of their own chaos within.

- Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence. Furthermore, when their social contraptions fail to fly, ideologues blame not themselves but all who see through the simplifications.

- Rearing kids is hard, work is hard, aging, sickness and death are hard, and Jordan emphasized that doing all that totally on your own, without the benefit of a loving relationship, or wisdom, or the psychological insights of the greatest psychologists, only makes it harder.

- The first idea or teaching is that morality is relative, at best a personal “value judgment.” Relative means that there is no absolute right or wrong in anything; instead, morality and the rules associated with it are just a matter of personal opinion or happenstance, “relative to” or “related to” a particular framework, such as one’s ethnicity, one’s upbringing, or the culture or historical moment one is born into.

- Today, the postmodernist left makes the additional claim that one group’s morality is nothing but its attempt to exercise power over another group.

- The study of virtue is not quite the same as the study of morals (right and wrong, good and evil) . Aristotle defined the virtues simply as the ways of behaving that are most conducive to happiness in life

Overture  

- Soviet Union. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great documenter of the slave-labour-camp horrors of the latter, once wrote that the “pitiful ideology” holding that “human beings are created for happiness” was an ideology “done in by the first blow of the work assigner’s cudgel.”

- From 1985 until 1999 I worked for about three hours a day on the only other book I have ever published: Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief.

- I proposed in Maps of Meaning that the great myths and religious stories of the past, particularly those derived from an earlier, oral tradition, were moral in their intent, rather than descriptive.

- Order and chaos are the yang and yin of the famous Taoist symbol: two serpents, head to tail.fn1 Order is the white, masculine serpent; Chaos, its black, feminine counterpart.

- For the Taoists, meaning is to be found on the border between the ever-entwined pair. To walk that border is to stay on the path of life, the divine Way. And that’s much better than happiness.

- I couldn’t understand how belief systems could be so important to people that they were willing to risk the destruction of the world to protect them. I came to realize that shared belief systems made people intelligible to one another—and that the systems weren’t just about belief.

- A shared belief system, partly psychological, partly acted out, simplifies everyone—in their own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Shared beliefs simplify the world, as well, because people who know what to expect from one another can act together to tame the world. There is perhaps nothing more important than the maintenance of this organization—this simplification.

- It isn’t precisely that people will fight for what they believe. They will fight, instead, to maintain the match between what they believe, what they expect, and what they desire.

- Shared belief systems—shared systems of agreed-upon conduct and expectation—regulate and control all those powerful forces.

- A shared cultural system stabilizes human interaction, but is also a system of value—a hierarchy of value, where some things are given priority and importance and others are not.

- Between value systems, however, there is the possibility of conflict

- That was not somewhere I wanted to be. I managed to get down, out of the heights—out of the symbolic sky—back to safe, familiar, anonymous ground. I don’t know how.

- the centre is occupied by the individual. The centre is marked by the cross, as X marks the spot. Existence at that cross is suffering and transformation—and that fact, above all, needs to be voluntarily accepted. It is possible to transcend slavish adherence to the group and its doctrines and, simultaneously, to avoid the pitfalls of its opposite extreme, nihilism. It is possible, instead, to find sufficient meaning in individual consciousness and experience.

- We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world.

- While writing, however, I cut the essay number to twenty-five and then to sixteen and then finally, to the current twelve.

- the soul of the individual eternally hungers for the heroism of genuine Being, and that the willingness to take on that responsibility is identical to the decision to live a meaningful life.  

RULE 1

STAND UP STRAIGHT WITH YOUR SHOULDERS BACK

- However, they are also similar in important ways. Both are obsessed with status and position, for example, like a great many creatures.

- Schjelderup-Ebbe observed (back in 1921) that even common barnyard chickens establish a “pecking order.”3

- The determination of Who’s Who in the chicken world has important implications for each individual bird’s survival, particularly in times of scarcity.

- Territory matters, and there is little difference between territorial rights and social status. It is often a matter of life and death.

- That means a third bird, an undamaged, canny bystander, can move in, opportunistically, and defeat the now-crippled victor. That is not at all a good deal for the first two birds.

- Anyone who has experienced a painful transformation after a serious defeat in romance or career may feel some sense of kinship with the once successful crustacean.

- chemicals that modulate communication between lobster neurons: serotonin and octopamine. Winning increases the ratio of the former to the latter.

- A third of a billion years ago, brains and nervous systems were comparatively simple. Nonetheless, they already had the structure and neurochemistry necessary to process information about status and society.

- It is a truism of biology that evolution is conservative.

- “In my kingdom,” as the Red Queen tells Alice in Wonderland, “you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.” No one standing still can triumph, no matter how well constituted.

- some things that are most real (such as the ever-present dominance hierarchy) cannot be “seen” at all.

- It is instead a near-eternal aspect of the environment, and much of what is blamed on these more ephemeral manifestations is a consequence of its unchanging existence. We (the sovereign we, the we that has been around since the beginning of life) have lived in a dominance hierarchy for a long, long time. We were struggling for position before we had skin, or hands, or lungs, or bones. There is little more natural than culture. Dominance hierarchies are older than trees.

- It is for this reason that routine is so necessary. The acts of life we repeat every day need to be automatized. They must be turned into stable and reliable habits, so they lose their complexity and gain predictability and simplicity.

- But just as often, people are bullied because they won’t fight back.

- When skillfully integrated, the ability to respond with aggression and violence decreases rather than increases the probability that actual aggression will become necessary.

- Such individuals typically come from hyper-sheltered families, where nothing terrible is allowed to exist, and everything is fairyland wonderful (or else).

- There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character.

- Positive feedback loops

- Stand up straight, with your shoulders back.

 RULE 2

TREAT YOURSELF LIKE SOMEONE YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR HELPING

- Before the dawn of the scientific worldview, reality was construed differently. Being was understood as a place of action, not a place of things.

- In any case, that which we subjectively experience can be likened much more to a novel or a movie than to a scientific description of physical reality.

- One of these is chaos. Another is order. The third (as there are three) is the process that mediates between the two, which appears identical to what modern people call consciousness.

- But order is sometimes tyranny and stultification, as well, when the demand for certainty and uniformity and purity becomes too one-sided.

- Order, when pushed too far, when imbalanced, can also manifest itself destructively and terribly. It does so as the forced migration, the concentration camp, and the soul-devouring uniformity of the goose-step.

- The Way, the Taoist path of life, is represented by (or exists on) the border between the twin serpents.

- To straddle that fundamental duality is to be balanced: to have one foot firmly planted in order and security, and the other in chaos, possibility, growth and adventure.

- Order is not enough. You can’t just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned. Nonetheless, chaos can be too much. You can’t long tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond your capacity to cope while you are learning what you still need to know. Thus, you need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering. Then you have positioned yourself where the terror of existence is under control and you are secure, but where you are also alert and engaged. That is where there is something new to master and some way that you can be improved. That is where meaning is to be found

- Why would someone buy prescription medication for his dog, and then so carefully administer it, when he would not do the same for himself?

- All the reasons we have discussed so far for taking a dim view of humanity are applicable to others, as much as to the self. They’re generalizations about human nature; nothing more specific. But you know so much more about yourself. You’re bad enough, as other people know you. But only you know the full range of your secret transgressions, insufficiencies and inadequacies. No one is more familiar than you with all the ways your mind and body are flawed. No one has more reason to hold you in contempt, to see you as pathetic—and by withholding something that might do you good, you can punish yourself for all your failings. A dog, a harmless, innocent, unselfconscious dog, is clearly more deserving.

- The story continues, in all its catastrophe and tragedy, and the people involved (that’s us) must contend with yet another painful awakening. We are next fated to contemplate morality itself.

- They’re predators, but it’s just their nature. They do not bear responsibility for it. They’re hungry, not evil. They don’t have the presence of mind, the creativity—and, above all, the self-consciousness—necessary for the inspired cruelty of man.

- Unlike us, predators have no comprehension of their fundamental weakness, their fundamental vulnerability, their own subjugation to pain and death. But we know exactly how and where we can be hurt, and why. That is as good a definition as any of self-consciousness. We are aware of our own defencelessness, finitude and mortality. We can feel pain, and self-disgust, and shame, and horror, and we know it. We know what makes us suffer. We know how dread and pain can be inflicted on us—and that means we know exactly how to inflict it on others. We know how we are naked, and how that nakedness can be exploited—and that means we know how others are naked, and how they can be exploited. We can terrify other people, consciously. We can hurt and humiliate them for faults we understand only too well. We can torture them—literally—slowly, artfully and terribly. That’s far more than predation. That’s a qualitative shift in understanding. That’s a cataclysm as large as the development of self-consciousness itself. That’s the entry of the knowledge of Good and Evil into the world. That’s a second as-yet-unhealed fracture in the structure of Existence. That’s the transformation of Being itself into a moral endeavour—all attendant on the development of sophisticated self-consciousness.

- Human beings have a great capacity for wrongdoing. It’s an attribute that is unique in the world of life. We can and do make things worse, voluntarily, with full knowledge of what we are doing (as well as accidentally, and carelessly, and in a manner that is willfully blind). Given that terrible capacity, that proclivity for malevolent actions, is it any wonder we have a hard time taking care of ourselves, or others—or even that we doubt the value of the entire human enterprise? And we’ve suspected ourselves, for good reason, for a very long time.

- no one understands the darkness of the individual better than the individual himself. Who, then, when ill, is going to be fully committed to his own care?

- but we retain an intimation of the prelapsarian state. We remember, so to speak. We remain eternally nostalgic for the innocence of childhood, the divine, unconscious Being of the animal, and the untouched cathedral-like old-growth forest. We find respite in such things. We worship them, even if we are self-proclaimed atheistic environmentalists of the most anti-human sort. The original state of Nature, conceived in this manner, is paradisal. But we are no longer one with God and Nature, and there is no simple turning back.

- So, here’s a proposition: perhaps it is not simply the emergence of self-consciousness and the rise of our moral knowledge of Death and the Fall that besets us and makes us doubt our own worth. Perhaps it is instead our unwillingness—reflected in Adam’s shamed hiding—to walk with God, despite our fragility and propensity for evil.

- The entire Bible is structured so that everything after the Fall—the history of Israel, the prophets, the coming of Christ—is presented as a remedy for that Fall, a way out of evil. The beginning of conscious history, the rise of the state and all its pathologies of pride and rigidity, the emergence of great moral figures who try to set things right, culminating in the Messiah Himself—that is all part of humanity’s attempt, God willing, to set itself right.

- Back is the way forward—as T. S. Eliot so rightly insisted—but back as awake beings, exercising the proper choice of awake beings, instead of back to sleep:

- Then, the primary moral issue confronting society was control of violent, impulsive selfishness and the mindless greed and brutality that accompanies it. People with those aggressive tendencies still exist. At least now they know that such behaviour is sub-optimal, and either try to control it or encounter major social obstacles if they don’t.

- But now, also, another problem has arisen, which was perhaps less common in our harsher past. It is easy to believe that people are arrogant, and egotistical, and always looking out for themselves. The cynicism that makes that opinion a universal truism is widespread and fashionable. But such an orientation to the world is not at all characteristic of many people. They have the opposite problem: they shoulder intolerable burdens of self-disgust, self-contempt, shame and self-consciousness. Thus, instead of narcissistically inflating their own importance, they don’t value themselves at all, and they don’t take care of themselves with attention and skill. It seems that people often don’t really believe that they deserve the best care, personally speaking. They are excruciatingly aware of their own faults and inadequacies, real and exaggerated, and ashamed and doubtful of their own value. They believe that other people shouldn’t suffer, and they will work diligently and altruistically to help them alleviate it. They extend the same courtesy even to the animals they are acquainted with—but not so easily to themselves.

- To sacrifice ourselves to God (to the highest good, if you like) does not mean to suffer silently and willingly when some person or organization demands more from us, consistently, than is offered in return. That means we are supporting tyranny, and allowing ourselves to be treated like slaves. It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.

- As Jung points out, this means embracing and loving the sinner who is yourself, as much as forgiving and aiding someone else who is stumbling and imperfect.

- This is partly because your Being is inexorably tied up with that of others, and your mistreatment of yourself can have catastrophic consequences for others. This is most clearly evident, perhaps, in the aftermath of suicide, when those left behind are often both bereft and traumatized. But, metaphorically speaking, there is also this: you have a spark of the divine in you, which belongs not to you, but to God. We are, after all—according to Genesis—made in His image. We have the semi-divine capacity for consciousness. Our consciousness participates in the speaking forth of Being. We are low-resolution (“kenotic”) versions of God.

- If anyone is fortunate enough to be in a rare period of grace and health, personally, then he or she typically has at least one close family member in crisis. Yet people prevail and continue to do difficult and effortful tasks to hold themselves and their families and society together.

- There are so many ways that things can fall apart, or fail to work altogether, and it is always wounded people who are holding it together. They deserve some genuine and heartfelt admiration for that. It’s an ongoing miracle of fortitude and perseverance.

- Some people degenerate into the hell of resentment and the hatred of Being, but most refuse to do so, despite their suffering and disappointments and losses and inadequacies and ugliness, and again that is a miracle for those with the eyes to see it.

- It is this sympathy that should be the proper medicament for self-conscious self-contempt, which has its justification, but is only half the full and proper story.

- You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued. You may therefore have to conduct yourself habitually in a manner that allows you some respect for your own Being—and fair enough.

- To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is, instead, to consider what would be truly good for you.

- You need to know where you are, so you can start to chart your course. You need to know where you are going, so that you can limit the extent of chaos in your life, restructure order, and bring the divine force of Hope to bear on the world. You need to know where you are going, so that you can limit the extent of chaos in your life, restructure order, and bring the divine force of Hope to bear on the world.

- You must determine where you are going, so that you can bargain for yourself, so that you don’t end up resentful, vengeful and cruel. You have to articulate your own principles, so that you can defend yourself against others’ taking inappropriate advantage of you, and so that you are secure and safe while you work and play. You must discipline yourself carefully. You must keep the promises you make to yourself, and reward yourself, so that you can trust and motivate yourself. You need to determine how to act toward yourself so that you are most likely to become and to stay a good person. It would be good to make the world a better place. Heaven, after all, will not arrive of its own accord. We will have to work to bring it about, and strengthen ourselves, so that we can withstand the deadly angels and flaming sword of judgment that God used to bar its entrance.

- Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction

- Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”

- You could help direct the world, on its careening trajectory, a bit more toward Heaven and a bit more away from Hell. Once having understood Hell, researched it, so to speak—particularly your own individual Hell—you could decide against going there or creating that. You could aim elsewhere. You could, in fact, devote your life to this. That would give you a Meaning, with a capital M. That would justify your miserable existence. That would atone for your sinful nature, and 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.

- You could begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.   

   RULE 4

COMPARE YOURSELF TO WHO YOU WERE YESTERDAY, NOT TO WHO SOMEONE ELSE IS TODAY

- When we are very young we are neither individual nor informed. We have not had the time nor gained the wisdom to develop our own standards. In consequence, we must compare ourselves to others, because standards are necessary. Without them, there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. As we mature we become, by contrast, increasingly individual and unique. The conditions of our lives become more and more personal and less and less comparable with those of others.

- The infant is dependent on his parents for almost everything he needs. The child—the successful child—can leave his parents, at least temporarily, and make friends. He gives up a little of himself to do that, but gains much in return. The successful adolescent must take that process to its logical conclusion. He has to leave his parents and become like everyone else. He has to integrate with the group so he can transcend his childhood dependency. Once integrated, the successful adult then must learn how to be just the right amount different from everyone else.

- Be cautious when you’re comparing yourself to others. You’re a singular being, once you’re an adult. You have your own particular, specific problems—financial, intimate, psychological, and otherwise. Those are embedded in the unique broader context of your existence. Your career or job works for you in a personal manner, or it does not, and it does so in a unique interplay with the other specifics of your life. You must decide how much of your time to spend on this, and how much on that. You must decide what to let go, and what to pursue.

- Our eyes are always pointing at things we are interested in approaching, or investigating, or looking for, or having. We must see, but to see, we must aim, so we are always aiming. Our minds are built on the hunting-and-gathering platforms of our bodies. To hunt is to specify a target, track it, and throw at it. To gather is to specify and to grasp. We fling stones, and spears, and boomerangs. We toss balls through hoops, and hit pucks into nets, and curl carved granite rocks down the ice onto horizontal bull’s-eyes. We launch projectiles at targets with bows, guns, rifles and rockets. We hurl insults, launch plans, and pitch ideas. We succeed when we score a goal or hit a target. We fail, or sin, when we do not (as the word sin means to miss the mark70). We cannot navigate, without something to aim at and, while we are in this world, we must always navigate.7

- The present is eternally flawed. But where you start might not be as important as the direction you are heading. Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak. Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived.

- Ask yourself: is there one thing that exists in disarray in your life or your situation that you could, and would, set straight? Could you, and would you, fix that one thing that announces itself humbly in need of repair? Could you do it now?

- Aim small. You don’t want to shoulder too much to begin with, given your limited talents, tendency to deceive, burden of resentment, and ability to shirk responsibility. Thus, you set the following goal: by the end of the day, I want things in my life to be a tiny bit better than they were this morning. Then you ask yourself, “What could I do, that I would do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward?” Then you do what you have decided to do, even if you do it badly. Then you give yourself that damn coffee, in triumph. Maybe you feel a bit stupid about it, but you do it anyway. And you do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And, with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher, and that’s magic. That’s compound interest. Do that for three years, and your life will be entirely different. Now you’re aiming for something higher. Now you’re wishing on a star. Now the beam is disappearing from your eye, and you’re learning to see. And what you aim at determines what you see. That’s worth repeating. What you aim at determines what you see.

- The dependency of sight on aim (and, therefore, on value—because you aim at what you value) was demonstrated unforgettably by the cognitive psychologist Daniel Simons more than fifteen years ago.72 Simons was investigating something called “sustained inattentional blindness.” He would sit his research subjects in front of a video monitor and show them, for example, a field of wheat. Then he would transform the photo slowly, secretly, while they watched. He would slowly fade in a road cutting through the wheat. He didn’t insert some little easy-to-miss footpath, either. It was a major trail, occupying a good third of the image. Remarkably, the observers would frequently fail to take notice.

- Perhaps what you want is blinding you to what else could be. Perhaps you are holding on to your desires, in the present, so tightly that you cannot see anything else—even what you truly need.

- And it doesn’t matter that you don’t know, exactly, right away, because you will start to slowly see what is “better,” once you have truly decided to want it. You will start to perceive what remained hidden from you by your presuppositions and preconceptions—by the previous mechanisms of your vision. You will begin to learn.

- This will only work, however, if you genuinely want your life to improve. You can’t fool your implicit perceptual structures. Not even a bit. They aim where you point them. To retool, to take stock, to aim somewhere better, you have to think it through, bottom to top. You have to scour your psyche. You have to clean the damned thing up. And you must be cautious, because making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining arrogant, deceitful and resentful.

- We only see what we aim at. The rest of the world (and that’s most of it) is hidden. If we start aiming at something different—something like “I want my life to be better”—our minds will start presenting us with new information, derived from the previously hidden world, to aid us in that pursuit. Then we can put that information to use and move, and act, and observe, and improve. And, after doing so, after improving, we might pursue something different, or higher—something like, “I want whatever might be better than just my life being better.” And then we enter a more elevated and more complete reality.

- A genuine religious acolyte isn’t trying to formulate accurate ideas about the objective nature of the world (although he may be trying to do that to). He’s striving, instead, to be a “good person.” It may be the case that to him “good” means nothing but “obedient”—even blindly obedient. Hence the classic liberal Western enlightenment objection to religious belief: obedience is not enough. But it’s at least a start (and we have forgotten this): You cannot aim yourself at anything if you are completely undisciplined and untutored. You will not know what to target, and you won’t fly straight, even if you somehow get your aim right. And then you will conclude, “There is nothing to aim for.” And then you will be lost.

- Of course, there must be vision, beyond discipline; beyond dogma. A tool still needs a purpose. It is for such reasons that Christ said, in the Gospel of Thomas, “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, but men do not see it.”

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

- Some of our knowledge of our beliefs has been documented. We have been watching ourselves act, reflecting on that watching, and telling stories distilled through that reflection, for tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. That is all part of our attempts, individual and collective, to discover and articulate what it is that we believe. Part of the knowledge so generated is what is encapsulated in the fundamental teachings of our cultures, in ancient writings such as the Tao te Ching, or the aforementioned Vedic scriptures, or the Biblical stories. The Bible is, for better or worse, the foundational document of Western civilization (of Western values, Western morality, and Western conceptions of good and evil). It’s the product of processes that remain fundamentally beyond our comprehension.

- And then “better” means to aim at the Improvement of Being, with a capital “I’ and a capital “B.

- You might start by not thinking—or, more accurately, but less trenchantly, by refusing to subjugate your faith to your current rationality, and its narrowness of view. This doesn’t mean “make yourself stupid.” It means the opposite. It means instead that you must quit manoeuvring and calculating and conniving and scheming and enforcing and demanding and avoiding and ignoring and punishing. It means you must place your old strategies aside. It means, instead, that you must pay attention, as you may never have paid attention before.

- “What is it that is bothering me?” “Is that something I could fix?” and “Would I actually be willing to fix it? If you find that the answer is “no,” to any or all of the questions, then look elsewhere. Aim lower. Search until you find something that bothers you, that you could fix, that you would fix, and then fix it. That might be enough for the day.

- If you ask nicely, and listen carefully, and don’t try any treachery, you might be offered one. Do this every day, for a while. Then do it for the rest of your life. Soon you will find yourself in a different situation. Now you will be asking yourself, habitually, “What could I do, that I would do, to make Life a little better?”

- Aim high. Set your sights on the betterment of Being. Align yourself, in your soul, with Truth and the Highest Good. There is habitable order to establish and beauty to bring into existence. There is evil to overcome, suffering to ameliorate, and yourself to better.

- Concentrate on the day, so that you can live in the present, and attend completely and properly to what is right in front of you—but do that only after you have decided to let what is within shine forth, so that it can justify Being and illuminate the world. Do that only after you have determined to sacrifice whatever it is that must be sacrificed so that you can pursue the highest good.

- You no longer have to be envious, because you no longer know that someone else truly has it better. You no longer have to be frustrated, because you have learned to aim low, and to be patient. You are discovering who you are, and what you want, and what you are willing to do. You are finding that the solutions to your particular problems have to be tailored to you, personally and precisely. You are less concerned with the actions of other people, because you have plenty to do yourself.

- Ask, and ye shall receive. Knock, and the door will open. If you ask, as if you want, and knock, as if you want to enter, you may be offered the chance to improve your life, a little; a lot; completely—and with that improvement, some progress will be made in Being itself.

- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A List of Book Recommended by Jordan B. Peterson

A List of Influential Books Everyone Should Read

1. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
2. 1984 – George Orwell
3. Road To Wigan Pier – George Orwell
4. Crime And Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Demons – Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. Beyond Good And Evil – Friedrich Nietzsche
7. Ordinary Men – Christopher Browning
8. The Painted Bird – Jerzy Kosinski
9. The Rape of Nanking – Iris Chang
10. Gulag Archipelago (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, & Vol. 3) – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
11. Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
12. Modern Man in Search of A Soul – Carl Jung
13. Maps Of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief – Jordan B. Peterson
14. A History of Religious Ideas (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3) – Mircea Eliade
15. Affective Neuroscience – Jaak Panksepp

---

Literature/Philosophy
1.Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea
2.Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell To Arms
3.Ernest Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
4.Stendhal: The Red and the Black
5.Stendhal: The Charterhouse of Parma
6.Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace

7.Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
8.John Steinbeck: Of Men and Mice
9.John Steinbeck: East of Eden
10.John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
11.Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
12.Samuel Shem: The House of God
13.Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
14.Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
15.Aldous Huxley: Point Counterpoint
16.Aldous Huxley: Island
17.George Orwell: 1984
18.George Orwell: Animal Farm
19.George Orwell: Road to Wigan Pier
20.Tom Wolfe: The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test
21.Ken Kesey: Sometimes a Great Notion
22.Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
23.Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon
24.William Golding: Lord of the Flies
25.Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep
26.Raymond Chandler: The Long Goodbye
27.Dashiel Hammet: The Maltese Falcon
28.Robert Graves: I, Claudius
29.Joyce Cary: The Horse’s Mouth
30.Margaret Laurence: The Stone Angel
31.Dostoevesky: Crime and Punishment
32.Dostoevesky: The Brothers Karamazov
33.Dostoevesky: Notes from Underground
34.Friedrich Nietzsche: The Will to Power
35.Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
36.Friedrich Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals
37.Hunter S. Thompson: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Clinical Psychology and Personality
1.Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning
2.Carl Jung: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
3.Carl Jung: Psychology of Religion: East and West
4.Carl Jung: Symbols of Transformation
5.Carl Jung: The Symbolic Life
6.Carl Jung: Psychology and Alchemy
7.Carl Jung: Mysterium Coniunctionis (Difficult; read the last half)
8.Sigmund Freud: An Outline of Psychoanalysis

Neuroscience
1.Oliver Sacks: The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
2.Oliver Sacks: Awakenings
3.Oliver Sacks: An Anthropologist on Mars

Religion and Religious History
1.Mircea Eliade: The Sacred and the Profane
2.Mircea Eliade: Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
3.Mircea Eliade: Myth and Reality
4.Mircea Eliade: The Forge and the Crucible
5.Mircea Eliade: Myths, Dreams and Mysteries

General
1.Theodore Dalyrymple: Our Culture: What’s Left of It
The State of the World: A 21st Century Update
1.Johan Norberg: Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
2.Steven Pinker: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
3.Matt Ridley: The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
4.Hans Rosling: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
5.Bjørn Lomborg: How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place

---

Clinical Psychology and Personality
1.Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams
2. Carl Jung: Modern Man in Search of a Soul
3. Carl Jung: Answer to Job
4. Carl Jung: Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
5. Carl Jung: Aion
6. Carl Jung: Psychology: East and West
7. Carl Rogers: A Way of Being
8. Carl Rogers: On Becoming a Person
9. Jean Piaget: Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood
10. Jean Piaget: The Moral Judgment of the Child
11. Henri Ellenberger: The Discovery of the Unconscious
12. Erich Neumann: The Origins and History of Consciousness
13. Erich Neumann: The Great Mother
14. Ernest Becker: The Denial of Death
15. May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H: Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology

General
1.Derek J. de Solla Price: Little Science, Big Science
2.Hans Eysenck: Genius
3.Hernando De Soto: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
4.John Gall: Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
5.Theodore Dalrymple: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass

Religion and Religious History
1.Huston Smith (introductory): The World’s Religions
2.A History of Religious Ideas (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3) – Mircea Eliade
3.Jeffrey Burton Russell: Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World
4.The Bible: Designed to be Read as Living Literature
5.Bernard Lewis: The Crisis of Islam

My Books
1.Jordan B. Peterson: Maps of Meaning
2.Jordan B Peterson: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Neuroscience
1.Jeffrey Gray and Neil McNaughton: The Neuropsychology of Anxiety
2.Jaak Panksepp: Affective Neuroscience
3.Joseph LeDoux: The Emotional Brain
4.Larry Swanson: Brain Architecture: Understanding the Basic Plan
5.JJ Gibson: An Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
6.Elkhonon Goldberg: The New Executive Brain

Literature/Philosophy
1.Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Devils
2.Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Idiot
3.Nikos Kazantzakis: The Fratricides
4.Nikos Kazantzakis: Zorba the Greek
5.Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
6.Solzhenitsyn: The First Circle
7.Solzhenitsyn: Cancer Ward
8.Friedrich Nietzsche: The Antichrist
9.Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science
10.Northrop Frye: The Great Code
11.Northrop Frye: Words with Power
12.Robert Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Biography
1.Henri Troyat: Tolstoy

History
1.Edvard Radzinsky: Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia’s Secret Archives
2. Theodore M. Porter: The Rise of Statistical Thinking 1820-1900
3.William L. Shirer: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jordan Bernt Peterson (born June 12, 1962) is a Canadian professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a practicing clinical psychologist, and public intellectual^[2][3][4] His main areas of study are in abnormal, social, and personality psychology,^[1] with a particular interest in the psychology of religious and ideological belief,^[5] and the assessment and improvement of personality and performance^[6]

Peterson studied at the University of Alberta and McGill UniversityHarvard University^[7][8] In 1998, he moved back to Canada, as a faculty member in the psychology department at the University of Toronto, where he is currently a full professor.

Peterson's first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, published in 1999, examined several academic fields to describe the structure of systems of beliefs and myths, their role in the regulation of emotion, creation of meaning, and several other topics such as motivation for genocide^[9][10][11] His second book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, was released in January 2018.^[7][12][13]

In 2016, Peterson released a series of YouTube videos criticizing political correctness and the Canadian government's Bill C-16gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination,^[14] which Peterson characterised as an introduction of compelled speech^[7][12][13] Peterson has been widely associated with the movement known as the Intellectual Dark Web^[15][16][17]

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Education
• 3 Career
• 4 Works
  • 4.1 Books
    • 4.1.1 Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999)
    • 4.1.2 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018)
  • 4.2 YouTube channel and podcasts
  • 4.3 Self Authoring Suite
• 5 Views
  • 5.1 Academia and political correctness
  • 5.2 Postmodernism and identity politics
  • 5.3 Bill C-16
  • 5.4 Gender relations and masculinity
  • 5.5 Climate change
• 6 Personal life
• 7 Bibliography
  • 7.1 Books
  • 7.2 Notable journal articles
• 8 References
• 9 External links

Early life

Peterson was born on June 12, 1962, and grew up in Fairview, Alberta, a small town northwest of his birthplace Edmonton, in Canada^[18] He was the eldest of three children born to Beverley, a librarian at the Fairview campus of Grande Prairie Regional College^[19][20] His middle name is Bernt (/ˈbɛərənt/ BAIR-ənt^[21]

When he was 13, he was introduced to the writings of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Ayn Rand by his school librarian Sandy Notley – mother of Rachel Notley, leader of the Alberta New Democratic Party and 17th Premier of Alberta^[22] He also worked for the New Democratic PartyThe Road to Wigan Pier, of "the intellectual, tweed-wearing middle-class socialist" who "didn't like the poor; they just hated the rich".^[19][23] He left the NDP at age 18.^[24]

Education

After graduating from Fairview High School in 1979, Peterson entered the Grande Prairie Regional College to study political science and English literature^[5] He later transferred to the University of Alberta, where he completed his B.A. in political science^[24] Afterwards, he took a year off to visit Europe. There he began studying psychological origins of the Cold Wartotalitarianism,^[5][25] and the works of Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,^[19] and Fyodor Dostoyevsky^[25] He then returned to the University of Alberta and received a B.A. in psychology^[26] In 1985, he moved to Montreal to attend McGill UniversityPh.D. in clinical psychology under the supervision of Robert O. Pihl in 1991, and remained as a post-doctoral fellow at McGill's Douglas Hospital until June 1993, working with Pihl and Maurice Dongier^[5][27]

Career

From July 1993 to June 1998,^[1] Peterson lived in Arlington, Massachusetts, while teaching and conducting research at Harvard University as an assistant and an associate professoraggression arising from drug and alcohol abuse^[24] Two former Ph.D. students, Shelley Carson, a psychologist and teacher from Harvard, and author Gregg Hurwitz^[7] In July 1998, he returned to Canada and took up a post as a full professor at the University of Toronto^[1][26]

Peterson's areas of study and research are in the fields of psychopharmacology, abnormal, neuro, clinical, personality, social, industrial and organizational,^[1] religious, ideological,^[5] political, and creativity^[6] Peterson has authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers^[28] and has been cited almost 8,000 times as of mid-2017. ^[29]

For most of his career, Peterson had an active clinical practice, seeing about 20 people a week. He had been active on social media, but in September 2016 he released a series of videos in which he criticized Bill C-16^[22][30] In 2017, he decided to put the clinical practice on hold,^[12] as well as, in 2018, temporarily stopping teaching because of new projects.^[20][31]

Works

Books

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999)

Main article: Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, in its intrapsychic or internal manifestation. The thing we do not understand is the chaos that gave rise to culture. If the structure of culture is disrupted, unwittingly, chaos returns. We will do anything – anything – to defend ourselves against that return.

— Jordan Peterson, 1998 (Descensus ad Inferos)^[8]

In 1999 Routledge published Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. The book, which took Peterson 13 years to complete, describes a comprehensive theory about how people construct meaning, beliefs and make narratives using ideas from various fields including mythology, religion, literature, philosophy and psychology in accordance to the modern scientific understanding of how the brain^[24][8][32]

According to Peterson, his main goal was to examine why both individuals and groups participate in social conflict, explore the reasoning and motivation individuals take to support their belief systemsidentification^[24]) that eventually results in killing and pathological atrocities like the Gulag, the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Rwandan genocide^[24][8][32] He considers that an "analysis of the world's religious ideas might allow us to describe our essential morality and eventually develop a universal system of morality".^[32] Jungian archetypes^[7]

In 2004, a 13-part TV series based on Peterson's book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief aired on TVOntario^[19][26][33]

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018)

Main article: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

In January 2018, Penguin Random House published Peterson's second book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. The work contains abstract ethical principles about life, in a more accessible style than Maps of Meaning.^[12][7][13] To promote the book, Peterson went on a world tour.^[34][35][36] As part of the tour, Peterson was interviewed by Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News which generated considerable attention, as well as popularity for the book.^{[37][38][39][40]} The book topped bestselling lists in Canada, US and the United Kingdom.^[41][42]

YouTube channel and podcasts

Peterson (right) speaking to Dave Rubin in September 2018

In 2013, Peterson began recording his lectures ("Personality and Its Transformations", "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief"^[43]) and uploading them to YouTube^[30][44] In January 2017, he hired a production team to film his psychology lectures at the University of Toronto. He used funds received on the crowdfunding website Patreon^{[22][30][45][46]}

Peterson has appeared on many podcasts, conversational series, as well other online shows.^[44][47] Peterson supported engineer James Damore in his action against Google^[13]

In May 2017, Peterson began The psychological significance of the Biblical stories a series of live theatre lectures, also published as podcasts, in which he analyzes archetypal narratives in Genesis^[13][48]

Self Authoring Suite

In 2005, Peterson and his colleagues set up a for-profit company to provide and produce a writing therapy^[49] Titled the Self Authoring Suite,^[19] it includes the Past Authoring Program (a guided autobiography); two Present Authoring Programs which allow the participant to analyze their personality faults and virtues in terms of the Big FiveMcGill University undergraduates on academic probation to improve their grades, as well as since 2011 at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University^[50][51] The programs were developed partially from research by James W. Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin and Gary Latham at the Rotman School of Management of the University of Toronto^[7] Peterson's co-authored 2015 study showed significant reduction in ethnic and gender-group differences in performance, especially among ethnic minority male students.^[51][52] According to Peterson, more than 10,000 students have used the program as of January 2017, with drop-out rates decreasing by 25% and GPAs^[19]

Views

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk pageconditions to do so are met (August 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Academia and political correctness

Peterson's critiques of political correctness range over issues such as postmodernism, postmodern feminism, white privilege, cultural appropriation, and environmentalism^[47][53]

Writing in the National Post, Chris Selley said Peterson's opponents had "underestimated the fury being inspired by modern preoccupations like white privilege and cultural appropriation, and by the marginalization, shouting down or outright cancellation of other viewpoints in polite society's institutions",^[54] while in The Spectator, Tim Lott^[25] Peterson's social media presence has magnified the impact of these views; Simona Chiose of The Globe and Mail noted: "few University of Toronto professors in the humanities and social sciences have enjoyed the global name recognition Prof. Peterson has won".^[30]

According to his study – conducted with one of his students, Christine Brophy – of the relationship between political belief and personality, political correctness exists in two types: "PC-egalitarianismauthoritarianism^[55] He places classical liberalssocial justice warriors^[19][5] The study also found an overlap between PC-authoritarians and right-wing authoritarians.^[55]

Peterson considers that the universities should be held as among the most responsible for the wave of political correctness which appeared in North America and Europe.^[30] According to Peterson, he watched the rise of political correctness on campuses since the early 1990s,^[56] and considers that the humanitiesStalinism and Maoism, which were not given the same attention as fascism and Nazismneo-Marxism, which defines everything in terms of relativism and power^[25][57][58]

Postmodernism and identity politics

And so since the 1970s, under the guise of postmodernism, we've seen the rapid expansion of identity politics throughout the universities, it's come to dominate all of the humanities – which are dead as far as I can tell – and a huge proportion of the social sciencesWestern civilizationJacques Derrida

— Peterson, 2017^[57]

Peterson says that postmodern philosophers and sociologists since the 1960s^[53] have built upon and extended certain core tenets of Marxism and communismWestern society without considering the influence of a strain of postmodernism thought that migrated from France to the United States through the English department at Yale Universityhumanities

... started to play a sleight of hand, and instead of pitting the proletariat, the working class, against the bourgeois, they started to pit the oppressed against the oppressorcommunitarian doctrine that makes racial identity or sexual identity or gender identity^[57]

Peterson's perspective on the influence of postmodernism on North American humanities departments has been compared to Cultural Marxist conspiracy theories^{[39][59][60][61]}

Peterson says that “disciplines like women's studies should be defunded” and advises freshman students to avoid subjects like sociology, anthropology, English literature, ethnic studies^[62][63][64] He says that these fields, under the pretense of academic inquiry, propagate unscientific methods, fraudulent peer-review processes for academic journals, publications that garner zero citations,^[65] cult-like behaviour,^[63] safe-spaces,^[62] and radical left-wing political activism for students.^[53] Peterson has proposed launching a website which uses artificial intelligence^[66][67]

Peterson has criticized the use of the term "white privilege^[53] In regard to identity politics, while the "left plays them on behalf of the oppressed, let's say, and the right tends to play them on behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride" he considers them "equally dangerous" and that instead should be emphasized individualism and individual responsibility^[68] He has also been prominent in the debate about cultural appropriation, stating it promotes self-censorship^[69]

Bill C-16

Main article: An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code

On September 27, 2016, Peterson released the first installment of a three-part lecture video series, entitled "Professor against political correctness: Part I: Fear and the Law".^[22][70] In the video, he stated he would not use the preferred gender pronouns of students and faculty, saying it fell under compelled speech, and announced his objection to the Canadian government's Bill C-16, which proposed to add "gender identity or expression‎" as a prohibited ground of discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and to similarly expand the definitions of promoting genocide and publicly inciting hatred in the Criminal Code^[70][71]

He stated that his objection to the bill was based on potential free speech implications if the Criminal Code is amended, as he claimed he could then be prosecuted under provincial human rights laws if he refuses to call a transsexual student or faculty member by the individual's preferred pronoun^[72] Furthermore, he argued that the new amendments, paired with section 46.3 of the Ontario Human Rights Code^[73] Other academics and lawyers challenged Peterson's interpretation of C-16.^[72]

The series of videos drew criticism from transgender activists, faculty and labour unions, and critics accused Peterson of "helping to foster a climate for hate to thrive" and of "fundamentally mischaracterising" the law.^[74][22] Protests erupted on campus, some including violence, and the controversy attracted international media attention.^[75][76][77] When asked in September 2016 if he would comply with the request of a student to use a preferred pronoun, Peterson said "it would depend on how they asked me [...] If I could detect that there was a chip on their shoulder, or that they were [asking me] with political motives, then I would probably say no [...] If I could have a conversation like the one we're having now, I could probably meet them on an equal level".^[77] Two months later, the National Post published an op-ed by Peterson in which he elaborated on his opposition to the bill and explained why he publicly made a stand against it:

I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words "zhe" and "zher." These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century.

I have been studying authoritarianism on the right and the left for 35 years. I wrote a book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, on the topic, which explores how ideologies hijack language and belief. As a result of my studies, I have come to believe that Marxism is a murderous ideology. I believe its practitioners in modern universities should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to promote such vicious, untenable and anti-human ideas, and for indoctrinating their students with these beliefs. I am therefore not going to mouth Marxist words. That would make me a puppet of the radical left, and that is not going to happen. Period.^[78]

Peterson at the University of Toronto in March 2017

In response to the controversy, academic administrators at the University of Toronto sent Peterson two letters of warning, one noting that free speech had to be made in accordance with human rights legislation and the other adding that his refusal to use the preferred personal pronouns of students and faculty upon request could constitute discrimination. Peterson speculated that these warning letters were leading up to formal disciplinary action against him, but in December the university assured him that he would retain his professorship, and in January 2017 he returned to teach his psychology class at the University of Toronto.^[79][22]

In February 2017, Maxime Bernier, candidate for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada^[80] Peterson's analysis of the bill was also frequently cited by senators who were opposed to its passage.^[81] In April 2017, Peterson was denied a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council^[29] A media relations adviser for SSHRC said "[c]ommittees assess only the information contained in the application".^[82] In response, The Rebel Media launched an Indiegogo^[83] The campaign raised C$195,000 by its end on May 6, equivalent to over two years of research funding.^[84] In May 2017, Peterson spoke against Bill C-16 at a Canadian Senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs hearing. He was one of 24 witnesses who were invited to speak about the bill.^[81]

In November 2017, a teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University first year communications course was censured by her professors for showing a segment of The Agenda, which featured Peterson debating Bill C-16 with another professor, during a classroom discussion about pronouns.^[85][86][87] The reasons given for the censure included the clip creating a "toxic climate", being compared to a "speech by Hitler",^[23] and being itself in violation of Bill C-16.^[88] The censure was later withdrawn and both the professors and the university formally apologized.^[89][90][91] The events were criticized by Peterson, as well as several newspaper editorial boards^[92][93][94] and national newspaper columnists^{[95][96][97][98]} as an example of the suppression of free speech on university campuses. In June 2018, Peterson filed a $1.5-million lawsuit against Wilfrid Laurier University, arguing that three staff members of the university had maliciously defamed him by making negative comments about him behind closed doors.^[99] Wilfried Laurier asked that the lawsuit be dismissed, saying that it was ironic for a purported advocate of free speech to attempt to curtail free speech.^[100]

Gender relations and masculinity

Peterson has argued that there is an ongoing "crisis of masculinity" and "backlash against masculinity" where the "masculine spirit is under assault".^{[18][101][102][103]} He has argued that feminism and policies such as no-fault divorce have had adverse effects on gender relations and destabilized society.^[101] He has argued that the existing societal hierarchy that the "left" has characterised as an "oppressive patriarchy" might "be predicated on competence."^[18] Peterson has said that men without partners are likely to become violent, and has noted that "enforced monogamy", i.e. societies wherein monogamy is a social norm, decrease male violence.^[18][101] He has attributed the rise of Donald Trump and far-right European politicians to what he says is a push to "feminize" men, saying "If men are pushed too hard to feminize they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology."^[104] He attracted considerable attention over a 2018 Channel 4 interview where he clashed with interviewer Cathy Newman on the topic of the gender pay gap^[105][106] Peterson disputed that the gender pay gap was solely due to sexual discrimination^{[106][107][108]} Writing for The New York Times, Nellie Bowles^[18]

Climate change

Peterson doubts the scientific consensus on climate change^[109] Peterson has said he is "very skeptical of the models that are used to predict climate change".^[110] He has also said, "You can't trust the data because too much ideology is involved".^[111]

In a 2018 Cambridge Union address^[112], Peterson replied that climate change will not unite anyone, that focusing on climate change is "low-resolution thinking", and there are other more important issues in the world.^[113]

Personal life

Peterson married Tammy Roberts in 1989.^[22] They have one daughter and one son.^[19][22]

Politically, Peterson has described himself as a classic British liberal,^[114][25] and has stated that he is commonly mistaken to be right wing.^[44] He is a philosophical pragmatist^[48] On the matter of his religious beliefs, and whether or not he is Christian, Peterson has emphasized that his conceptualization of Christianity is probably not what it is generally understood, stating that the ethical responsibility of a Christian is to imitate Christ, for him meaning "something like you need to take responsibility for the evil in the world as if you were responsible for it ... to understand that you determine the direction of the world, whether it's toward heaven or hell".^[115] When asked if he believes in God, Peterson responded: "I think the proper response to that is No, but I'm afraid He might exist".^[12] Writing for The Spectator, Tim Lott said Peterson draws inspiration from Jung's philosophy of religion, and holds views similar to the Christian existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard and Paul TillichTaoism^[25]

Starting around 2000, Peterson began collecting Soviet-era paintings,^[23] displayed in his house as a reminder of, he argues, the relationship between totalitarian propaganda and art, and as examples of how idealistic visions can become totalitarian oppression and horror.^[7][31] In 2016, Peterson became an honorary member of the extended family of Charles Joseph, a Kwakwaka'wakw^[23][116] Since late 2016, Peterson has been on a strict diet consisting only of meat and some vegetables, to control severe depression and an auto-immune disorder, including psoriasis and uveitis^[20][117] He stopped eating any vegetables in mid-2018.^[118]

Bibliography

Books

• Peterson, Jordan B. (1999). Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. RoutledgeISBN 0-415-92222-4
• Peterson, Jordan B. (2018). 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Penguin Random HouseISBN 0-345-81602-1

Notable journal articles

• Peterson J. B.; Rothfleisch J.; Zalazo P.; Pihl R. O."Acute alcohol intoxication and cognitive functioning"Journal of Studies on Alcohol. 51 (2): 114–122. doi:10.15288/jsa.1990.51.114
• Pihl R. O.; Peterson J. B.; Finn P. R. (1990). "Inherited Predisposition to Alcoholism: Characteristics of Sons of Male Alcoholics"Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 99 (3): 291–301. doi:10.1037/0021-843X.99.3.291
• Pihl R. O.; Peterson J. B.; Lau M. A. (1993). "A biosocial model of the alcohol-aggression relationship"Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Supplement. 11 (11): 128–139. doi:10.15288/jsas.1993.s11.128
• Stewart S. H.; Peterson J. B.; Pihl R. O. (1995). "Anxiety sensitivity and self-reported alcohol consumption rates in university women"Journal of Anxiety Disorders. 9 (4): 283–292. doi:10.1016/0887-6185(95)00009-D
• Peterson J. B.; Smith K. W.; Carson S. (2002). "Openness and extraversion are associated with reduced latent inhibition: replication and commentary"Personality and Individual Differences. 33 (7): 1137–1147. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00004-1
• DeYoung C. G."Higher-order factors of the Big Five predict conformity: Are there neuroses of health?"Personality and Individual Differences. 33 (4): 533–552. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(01)00171-4
• Carson S. H.; Quilty L. C.; Peterson J. B. (2003). "Decreased Latent Inhibition Is Associated With Increased Creative Achievement in High-Functioning Individuals"Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 85 (3): 499–506. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.85.3.499
• DeYoung C. G.; Peterson J. B.; Higgins D. M. (2005). "Sources of openness/intellect: cognitive and neuropsychological correlates of the fifth factor of personality"Journal of Personality. 73 (5): 825–858. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00330.x
• Carson S. H.; Quilty L. C.; Peterson J. B. (2005). "Reliability, Validity, and Factor Structure of the Creative Achievement Questionnaire"Creativity Research Journal. 17 (1): 37–50. doi:10.1207/s15326934crj1701_4
• Mar R. A.; Oatley K."Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds"Journal of Research in Personality. 40 (5): 694–712. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2005.08.002
• DeYoung C. G.; Quilty L. C.; Peterson J. B. (2007). "Between Facets and Domains: 10 Aspects of the Big Five"Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 93 (5): 880–896. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.880
• Mar R. A.; Oatley K.; Peterson J. B. (2009). "Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy: Ruling out individual differences and examining outcomes"The European Journal of Communication Research. 34 (4): 407–429. doi:10.1515/COMM.2009.025
• Hirsh J. B.; DeYoung C. G.; Xu X.; Peterson J. B. (2010). "Compassionate Liberals and Polite Conservatives: Associations of Agreeableness With Political Ideology and Moral Values"Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 95 (2): 655–664. doi:10.1177/0146167210366854
• Morisano D.; Hirsh J. B.; Peterson J. B.; Pihl R. O.; Shore B. M. (2010). "Setting, elaborating, and reflecting on personal goals improves academic performance"Journal of Applied Psychology. 36 (5): 255–264. doi:10.1037/a0018478
• Hirsh J. B.; Mar R. A.; Peterson J. B. (2012). "Psychological Entropy: A Framework for Understanding Uncertainty-Related Anxiety"Psychological Review. 119 (2): 304–320. doi:10.1037/a0026767