Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life - Book Summary
The 12 rules for life delineated by dr. Jordan B. Peterson in Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life
In Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, dr. Jordan B. Peterson provides twelve additional principles for life to bring back the balance of order and chaos when there is excess order, broadly speaking. Excess order in our life is just as dangerous as excess chaos, contrarily to what some of us may think. Striking a great balance between chaos and order, yin and yang, is the ultimate ingredient of a meaningful life. All together, the twelve rules presented by Dr. Peterson in this book form a north star that can guide our existence. Strong principles for life. The recurring underlying theme (omnipresent in dr. Peterson's work): personal responsibility.
Below is a breakdown of each rule, accompanied with a description of it.
Rule One — Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement
While our responsibility and actions are the most immediate means of power we all have available, society shapes our personas. Society is composed of the people we surround ourselves with, the wider community, social institutions.
““People remain mentally healthy not merely because of the integrity of their own minds, but because they are constantly being reminded how to think, act, and speak by those around them.””
Personal responsibility needs to be coherently integrated with society and the broader community. We can expand our efforts to the broader community once we have our "house in perfect order." There is utility, according to dr. Peterson, in being the "top dog" in a community and society at large. But one does not become top dog merely through power. Power is not the landmark of functioning societies. Competence is. Confusing or even mixing the two concepts (power and competence) is a dangerous mistake. There must be competence over time in order for authority and power to arise. In well-functioning organizations, it is the most competent individual who rises to the top, recognized by others for his ability and intellectual capacities.
Societies are a careful mosaic of social games. Social institutions are necessary but not sufficient. The sanity of individuals is pivotal when it comes to shaping a healthy society.
"Sanity is knowing the rules of the social game, internalizing them, and following them."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
"The best player is therefore not the winner of any given game but, among many other things, he or she who is invited by the largest number of others to play the most extensive series of games."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
Rule Two — Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindedly at that
We are more than our thoughts, identities, actions. We are potential. The key question is not "who are you?" It is "who could you be?" Several "eternal forces" are at play in our deepest layers. Excessive order can be stultifying. A voluntary death and rebirth transformation is necessary when too much petrifying order has been established in our lives over the years. We can be much more than we currently are. But consciously deciding who to be requires careful attention and looking into the darkest of places within ourselves.
““Aim at something. Pick the best target you can currently conceptualize. Stumble toward it. Notice your errors and misconceptions along the way, face them, and correct them. Get your story straight. Past, present, future—they all matter. You need to map your path. You need to know where you were, so that you do not repeat the mistakes of the past. You need to know where you are, or you will not be able to draw a line from your starting point to your destination. You need to know where you are going, or you will drown in uncertainty, unpredictability, and chaos, and starve for hope and inspiration. For better or worse, you are on a journey.””
Rule Three — Do not hide unwanted things in the fog
““Failing to look under the bed when you strongly suspect a monster is lurking there is not an advisable strategy.””
The fog is willful blindness. It is our refusal to notice emotions and motivational states as they arise—and the refusal to communicate them to ourselves and to the people around us. We, human beings, are very capable of deception, and oftentimes willing to deceive in order to remain "hidden behind the fog." Life is primarily composed of habits and routines. Pretending to be happy about a situation when we know very well, deep inside, that we are not, is willful blindness. As dr. Peterson points out, "have the damn fight. Unpleasant as that might be in the moment, it is one less straw on the camel's back." When we know that there is something unpleasant we could come to know and cease to explore for avoiding discomfort, that is plausible deniability. It may feel a relief in the moment, but a catastrophe in the future.
““If you truly wanted, perhaps you would receive, if you asked. If you truly sought, perhaps you would find what you seek. If you knocked, truly wanting to enter, perhaps the door would open. But there will be times in your life when it will take everything you have to face what is in front of you, instead of hiding away from a truth so terrible that the only thing worse is the falsehood you long to replace it with.””
Rule Four — Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated
Responsibility is what propels the world forward. It is the potential of human beings, "the meaning that most effectively sustains life." The true source of positive emotions is not happiness. Happiness breeds hedonic adaptation. The quintessential source of positive emotion is aiming at a goal, maybe with other individuals, or a broader community, and experiencing progress along the path to achieving that objective. That is responsibility. Turning around and confronting the future "standing up with your shoulders back" and enjoying the journey.
"That is responsibility. Constrain evil. Reduce suffering. Confront the possibility that manifests in front of you every second of your life with the desire to make things better, regardless of the burden you bear, regardless of life's often apparently arbitrary unfairness and cruelty."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
"You think, "The world is not set right. It is deeply troubling to me." That very disenchantment, however, can serve as the indicator of destiny. It speaks of abdicated responsibility—of things left undone, of things that still need to be done."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
Rule Five — Do not do what you hate
If we do not object when we feel that there is a minor transgression happening around us merely for the sake of maintaining the perception of stability and order in our life, that is dangerous. It is dangerous because following the status quo even when we deeply feel there is something toxic about it is a failure to take responsibility. If there is something in life that we are doing right now, and that makes us feel contemptuous and weak, it is possible that it is time to deeply reconsider our position, strategize, and make firm decisions that involve saying "no." Doing what you hate merely to maintain fake order in your life may be detrimental for your existence.
““And this is something to deeply consider, if you are concerned with leading a moral and careful life: if you do not object when the transgressions against your conscience are minor, why presume that you will not willfully participate when the transgressions get truly out of hand?””
Rule Six — Abandon Ideology
““Ressentiment—hostile resentment—occurs when individual failure or insufficient status is blamed both on the system within which that failure or lowly status occurs and then, most particularly, on the people who have achieved success and high status within that system.””
Have some humility. Pay close attention to how you place the evil on something external to you. It is easy to fall prey to bitterness, resentment, hostility when you can distort the truth by identifying a seemingly clear enemy that is not you. But you know full well what you are capable of. Assume you are the enemy. Your weaknesses and flaws that can truly damage the world. "Set your house in perfect order before criticizing the world."
Rule Seven — Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens
Aiming at something precise is what adds fuel to our existence. If we aim at nothing, the immense array of possibilities in life manifests itself in front of us, and we can become weak and "plagued by everything." Aiming at nothing means not having a well-defined direction, and that is a dangerous trajectory to take in life. Bad decisions are everywhere around us. But deciding something is far better than staying idle waiting for nothing.
"A deeply conflicted person can therefore be stopped, metaphorically, with the pressure of a single finger exerted on his chest (even though he may lash out against such an obstacle)."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
"Those who do not choose a direction are lost. It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
Rule Eight — Try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible
There is deep power and meaning in artistic endeavors. Working to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible is an artistic endeavor. Art can be frightening because of its wide and encoded nature. "We need the new, merely to maintain our position. And we need to see what we have become blind to, by our very expertise and specialization, so that we do not lose touch with the Kingdom of God and die in our boredom, ennui, arrogance, blindness to beauty, and soul-deadening cynicism."
"Artists teach people to see."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
Rule Nine — If old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely
We keep a map of the world and our existence that is composed of our experiences. We understand the world through experience and shape our personality and values. Not integrating events that belong to the past into our present self is dangerous for our psychological and physiological well-being. A truly integrated person is one that has deconstructed, understood, and broken free from more or less traumatic events that happened in the past. If there is even one past memory that feels blurry and is deeply hurting, it is necessary, for the well-intended individual, to confront the dragon by truly understanding that memory. Failing to do so means failing to attend to what we could be capable of in life, our potential. Past events that have not been integrated can haunt us for good, and that is much worse than trying to "hide behind the fog."
"We remember the pitfalls and successes of the past so that we can avoid the former and repeat the latter."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
““It is for such reasons we are so captivated by people who can tell a story—who can share their experiences concisely and precisely, and who get to the point. That point—the moral of the story—is what they learned about who and where they were or are, and where they are going and why.””
Rule Ten — Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship
"Trust between people who are not naive is a form of courage, because betrayal is always a possibility, and because this is consciously understood."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
Maintaining a healthy, long-lasting relationship is a process that requires deep commitment, patience, clear expression of thoughts and emotions from both parties involved. Something as complex as a marriage cannot be managed without a proper long-term balance between order and chaos. The first way you can keep the crucial romantic component in your marriage, as dr. Peterson points out, is the authentic commitment to not lie. Lying erodes trust, and trust is the core foundation of a genuine relationship. Not lying even when things are rough—because you better be aware that tough times come and go—is a milestone of a relationships founded on negotiation. Negotiation is one of the "states of social being" dr. Peterson illustrates in this part of the book. The "fundamental states of social being" are three: tyranny, slavery, or negotiation. In a romantic relationships, you are required to negotiate every little detail, carefully and honestly.
"You will be tempted by avoidance, anger, and tears, or entice to employ the trapdoor of divorce so that you will not have to face what must be faced. But your failure will haunt you while you are enraged, weeping, or in the process of separating, as it will in the next relationship you stumble into, with all your unresolved problems intact and your negotiating skills not improved a whit."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
““To make peace is to manage a negotiated solution. And you want and need to come to a negotiated solution about every responsibility and opportunity you share as a couple—and about every obstacle you encounter.””
Rule Eleven — Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant
We must integrate the concept that malevolence and "good and evil" exist within each of us. Each of us harbors immense potential and immense possibility for chaos as well. Understanding that the world can be damaging, dishonest, and a negative force playing against you means not being naive. Keeping trust in people and their innate potential for making the world a better place is an antidote to cynicism, which, dr. Peterson argues, is an attitude toward life that we need to avoid (although cynicism is an improvement from naivete).
There are two types of deceit, as broken down by dr. Peterson: sins of commission (those you know full well they are wrong), and sins of omission ("things you merely let slide—you know you should look at, do, or say something, but you do not"). Deceit and arrogance are dangerous for our existence. We can make the conscious decision of not acting as a truthful person. But then we need to bare the consequences of that decision. Deceiving warps "the mechanisms guiding the instinct that orients you."
"When you habitually engage in deceit, you build a structure much like the one that perpetuates addiction, especially if you get away with it, however briefly."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
"The right attitude to the horror of existence—the alternative to resentment, deceit, and arrogance—is the assumption that there is enough of you, society, and the world to justify existence."
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
"How much better could things become if we all avoided the temptation to actively or passively warp the structure of existence; if we replaced anger with the vicissitudes of Being with gratitude and truth?"
— Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order
Rule Twelve —Be grateful in spite of your suffering
There is value in authentic gratitude. Despite the seemingly inherent pain of existence, we can keep a grateful attitude toward our surroundings. We can decide so and take responsibility for that. Pain is inherent to life. Suffering is a choice. We can, ultimately, live a life that is filled with gratitude, despite suffering.
““Gratitude is therefore the process of consciously and courageously attempting thankfulness in the face of the catastrophe of life.””
