Jordan Peterson has become in only a few months my go-to spiritual leader, YouTube entertainer and role model. In 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos, he offers a compendium of life maxims to help you deal with life and its inherent suffering.
Three keywords: purpose, lobsters, suffering.
TLDR: Jordan Peterson is not a TLDR-able author.
Book Review
Jordan Peterson might be one of the most misunderstood contemporary thinkers. He’s been labeled part of the alt-right, a white supremacist, a woman hater and anti-gay/trans for saying simple truths that everyone should at least acknowledge are based in rational thought, even if you disagree with him. In “12 Rules For Life”, he presents a biblical, historical and psychological analysis of human emotion from the perspective of a clinical psychologist, father and husband. The book is almost too dense to explain in a 300-word blog post, but I’ll try, nobody said life was easy. That is one of the key takeaways of the book: life not being easy is not a bad thing. People need something to be responsible for in order to decipher their role in the world.
This is not a self-help book or even a book about how to reach happiness. It’s about so much more than that, it’s a fool-proof guide to understanding why life is worth living and how to integrate life’s inherent adversity into the picture of the best possible life you can have.
Don’t be fooled by the titles of the rules, as some are to be taken literally but some are a bit more profound and require an explanation. I won’t talk about all of them here, but I’ll mention my favorite rule:#7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what it’s expedient). I love this rule because in life there are people who tend to take the easy road: they choose an easy major in college, get an easy job, make low-risk life choices and want a very predictable future. Peterson argues that expediency leads to short-term based decisions and to an unfulfilling existence.
It turns out that I have done the exact opposite of pursuing short-term goals or that which is easy. I have opted for the difficult path when an easier one was available, I’ve made high-risk life choices and just last year, I quit a high paying “easy” job, all of this because I’m uncomfortable with doing things just because. There has to be a better reason that things being easy or readily attainable, it has to cost you a bit if you want to feel satisfied when you get it. And it must matter.
Who is this book for?
Everybody.
Key takeaways
The 12 rules were inspired in a Quora response by the author, the original list included a larger number of rules, but he narrowed it down to 12 for the book. Here is the complete list of rules:
- Stand up straight with your shoulders back
- Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
- Make friends with people who want the best for you
- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
- Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
- Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
- Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
- Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie
- Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
- Be precise in your speech
- Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
- Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
What am I doing because of this book?
There are things I already considered part of my code of conduct, like telling the truth, but this book does a wonderful job at explaining things in a different way than you would’ve explained it to yourself so it makes a lot more sense and it’s easier to remember. For example, rule #2 seems like something most of us would want to get behind, but the prompt: “is this how I would treat someone I love?” when making decisions about yourself is a strikingly powerful exercise that can help you make better life choices.
Just like that rule, the professor’s seemingly basic maxims are so compelling because of their universal appeal and simplicity. I have listened to this book 3 times and gone back to review certain sections. I’ve also watched multiple videos of Jordan Peterson crying and being his usual intellectually stimulating self. I think it’s helped me to be more intentional about seemingly small life choices or behaviors and I think it could help others do the same. In summary, this is a must-read for anyone looking to live a more meaningful life.
As a closing note, I just have to say that the ban of this book in New Zealand after the March 15th massacre doesn’t make any sense. There is nothing in this book that supports the horrible ideologies that motivated this attack and it’s an unfair measure.
Buy 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos on Amazon or get the audiobook
