12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

by Jordan B. Peterson

The problem with asking yourself such a question is that you must truly want the answer. And the problem with doing that is that you won’t like the answer. When you are arguing with someone, you want to be right, and you want the other person to be wrong. Then it’s them that has to sacrifice something and change, not you, and that’s much preferable. If it’s you that’s wrong and you that must change, then you have to reconsider yourself—your memories of the past, your manner of being in the present, and your plans for the future. Then you must resolve to improve and figure out how to do that. Then you actually have to do it. That’s exhausting. It takes repeated practice, to instantiate the new perceptions and make the new actions habitual. It’s much easier just not to realize, admit and engage. It’s much easier to turn your attention away from the truth and remain wilfully blind.

But it’s at such a point that you must decide whether you want to be right or yo...

Perhaps that is true prayer: the question, “What have I done wrong, and what can I do now to set things at least a little bit more right?” But your heart must be open to the terrible truth. You must be receptive to that which you do not want to hear. When you decide to learn about your faults, so that they can be rectified, you open a line of communication with the source of all revelatory thought. Maybe that’s the same thing as consulting your conscience. Maybe that’s the same thing, in some manner, as a discussion with God.

What shall I do with my wife? Treat her as if she is the Holy Mother of God, so that she may give birth to the world-redeeming hero. What shall I do with my daughter? Stand behind her, listen to her, guard her, train her mind, and let her know it’s OK if she wants to be a mother. What shall I do with my parents? Act such that your actions justify the suffering they endured. What shall I do with my son? Encourage him to be a true Son of God.

To honour your wife as a Mother of God is to notice and support the sacred element of her role as mother (not just of your children, but as such). A society that forgets this cannot survive. Hitler’s mother gave birth to Hitler, and Stalin’s mother to Stalin. Was something amiss in their crucial relationships? It seems likely, given the importance of the maternal role in establishing trust217—to take a single vital example. Perhaps the importance of their motherly duties, and of their relationship with their children, was not properly stressed; perhaps what the women were doing in their maternal guise was not properly regarded by husband, father and society alike. Who instead might a woman produce if she was treated properly, honourably and carefully? After all, the fate of the world rests on each new infant—tiny, fragile and threatened but, in time, capable of uttering the words and doing the deeds that maintain the eternal, delicate balance between chaos and order.

To stand behind my daughter? That’s to encourage her, in everything she wants courageously to do, but to include in that genuine appreciation the fact of her femininity: to recognize the importance of having a family and children and to forego the temptation to denigrate or devalue that in comparison to accomplishment of personal ambition or career. It’s not for nothing that the Holy Mother and Infant is a divine image—as we just discussed. Societies that cease...

To act to justify the suffering of your parents is to remember all the sacrifices that all the others who lived before you (not least your parents) have made for you in all the course of the terrible past, to be grateful for all the progress that has been thereby made, and then to act in accordance with that remembrance and gratitude. People sacrificed immensely to bring about what we h...

To encourage my son to be a true Son of God? That is to want him above all to do what is right, and to strive to have his back while he is doing so. That is, I think, part of the sacrificial message: to value and support your son’s commitment to transcendent good above all things (including his worldly progress, so to speak, and his safety—and, perhaps, even his life).

What shall I do with the stranger? Invite him into my house, and treat him like a brother, so that he may become one.

extend the hand of trust to someone so that his or her best part can step forward and reciprocate.

What shall I do with a fallen soul? Offer a genuine and cautious hand, but do not join it in the mire.

What shall I do with the world? Conduct myself as if Being is more valuable than Non-Being.

How shall I educate my people? Share with them those things I regard as truly important.

What shall I do with a torn nation? Stitch it back together with careful words of truth. The importance of this injunction has, if anything, become clearer over the past few years: we are dividing, and polarizing, and drifting toward chaos. It is necessary, under such conditions, if we are to avoid catastrophe, for each of us to bring forward the truth, as we see it: not the arguments that justify our ideologies, not the machinations that further our ambitions, but the stark pure facts of our existence, revealed for others to see and contemplate, so that we can find common ground and proceed together.

What shall I do for God my Father? Sacrifice everything I hold dear to yet greater perfection. Let the deadwood burn off, so that new growth can prevail.

What shall I do with a lying man? Let him speak so that he may reveal himself. Rule 9 (Listen…) is once again relevant here, as is another section of the New Testament: Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them (Matthew 7:16-7:20).

How shall I deal with the enlightened one? Replace him with the true seeker of enlightenment. There is no enlightened one. There is only the one who is seeking further enlightenment. Proper Being is process, not a state; a journey, not a destination.

What shall I do when I despise what I have? Remember those who have nothing and strive to be grateful.

What shall I do when greed consumes me? Remember that it is truly better to give than to receive.

What shall I do when I ruin my rivers? Seek for the living water and let it cleanse the Earth. I found this question, as well as its answer, particularly unexpected. It seems most associated with Rule 6 (Set your house…). Perhaps our environmental problems are not best construed technically. Maybe they’re best considered psychologically. The more people sort themselves out, the more responsibility they will take for the world around them and the more problems they will solve.219

What shall I do when my enemy succeeds? Aim a little higher and be grateful for the lesson. Back to Matthew: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven” (5:43-5:45). What does this mean? Learn, from the success of your enemies; listen (Rule 9) to their critique, so that you can glean from their opposition whatever fragments of wisdom you might incorporate, to your betterment; adopt as your ambition the creation of a world in which those who work against you see the light and wake up and succeed, so that the better at which you are aiming can encompass them, too.

What shall I do when I’m tired and impatient? Gratefully accept an outstretched helping hand. This is something with a twofold meaning. It’s an injunction, first, to note the reality of the limitations of individual being and, second, to accept and be thankful for the support of others—family, friends, acquaintances and strangers alike. Exhaustion and impatience are inevitable. There is too much to be done and too little time in which to do it. But we don’t have to strive alone, and there is nothing but good in distributing the responsibilities, cooperating in the efforts, and sharing credit for the productive and meaningful work thereby undertaken.

What shall I do with the fact of aging? Replace the potential of my youth with the accomplishments of my maturity. This hearkens back to the discussion of friendship surrounding Rule 3, and the story of Socrates’ trial and death—which might be summarized, as follows: A life lived thoroughly justifies its own limitations. The young man with nothing has his possibilities to set against the accomplishments of his elders. It’s not clear that it’s necessarily a bad deal, for either. “An aged man is but a paltry thing,” wrote William Bu...

What shall I do with my infant’s death? Hold my other loved ones and heal their pain. It is necessary to be strong in the face of death, because death is intrinsic to life. It is for this reason that I tell my students: aim to be the person at your father’s funeral that everyone, in their grief and misery, can rely on. There’s a worthy and noble ambition: stre...

What shall I do in the next dire moment? Focus my attention on the next right move. The flood is coming. The flood is always coming. The apocalypse is always upon us. That’s why the story of Noah is archetypal. Things fall apart—we stressed that in the discussion surrounding Rule 10 (Be precise in your speech)—and the centre cannot hold. When everything has become chaotic and uncertain, all that remains to guide you might be the character you constructed, previously, by aiming up and ...

What shall I say to a faithless brother? The King of the Damned is a poor judge of Being. It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world—a handyman’s dream, if ever there was one—is to fix yourself, as we discussed in Rule 6. Anything else is presumptuous. Anything else risks harm, stemming from your ignorance and lack of skill. But that’s OK. There’s plenty to do, right where you are. After all, your specific personal faults detrimentally affect the world. Your conscious, voluntary sins (because no other word really works) make things worse than they have to be. Your inaction, inertia and cynicism removes from the world that part of you that could learn to quell suffering and make peace. That’s not good. There are endless reasons to despair of the world, and to become angry and resentful and to seek revenge.

What shall I do to strengthen my spirit? Do not tell lies, or do what you despise. What shall I do to ennoble my body? Use it only in the service of my soul. What shall I do with the most difficult of questions? Consider them the gateway to the path of life.

What shall I do with the poor man’s plight? Strive through right example to lift his broken heart. What shall I do when the great crowd beckons? Stand tall and utter my broken truths.

160. See Gibson, J.J. (1986). An ecological approach to visual perception, New York: Psychology Press, for the classic treatise on this issue. See also Floel, A., Ellger, T., Breitenstein, C. & Knecht, S. (2003). “Language perception activates the hand motor cortex: implications for motor theories of speech perception.” European Journal of Neuroscience, 18, 704-708 for a discussion of the relationship between speech and action. For a more general review of the relationship between action and perception, see Pulvermüller, F., Moseley, R.L., Egorova, N., Shebani, Z. & Boulenger, V. (2014). “Motor cognition–motor semantics: Action perception theory of cognition and communication.” Neuropsychologia, 55, 71-84.

165. As reviewed in Vrolix, K. (2006). “Behavioral adaptation, risk compensation, risk homeostasis and moral hazard in traffic safety.” Steunpunt Verkeersveiligheid, RA-2006-95. Retrieved from https://​doclib.uhasselt.be/​dspace/​bitstream/​1942/​4002/​1/​behav​iorala​dapta​tion.pdf

166. Nietzsche, F.W. & Kaufmann, W.A. (1982). The portable Nietzsche. New York: Penguin Classics, pp. 211-212.

167. Orwell, G. (1958). The road to Wigan Pier. New York: Harcourt, pp. 96-97.

188. Higgins, D.M., Peterson, J.B. & Pihl, R.O. “Prefrontal cognitive ability, intelligence, Big Five personality, and the prediction of advanced academic and workplace performance.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 298-319.

189. Carson, S.H., Peterson, J.B. & Higgins, D.M. (2005). “Reliability, validity and factor structure of the Creative Achievement Questionnaire.” Creativity Research Journal, 17, 37-50.

197. Heimberg, R. G., Montgomery, D., Madsen, C. H., & Heimberg, J. S. (1977). “Assertion training: A review of the literature.” Behavior Therapy, 8, 953–971; Boisvert, J.-M., Beaudry, M., & Bittar, J. (1985). “Assertiveness training and human communication processes.” Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 15, 58–73.

202. Eller, C. (2000). The myth of matriarchal prehistory: Why an invented past won’t give women a future. Beacon Press.

207. Buunk, B.P., Dijkstra, P., Fetchenhauer, D. & Kenrick, D.T. (2002). “Age and gender differences in mate selection criteria for various involvement levels.” Personal Relationships, 9, 271-278.

217. See Allen, L. (2011). Trust versus mistrust (Erikson’s infant stages). In S. Goldstein & J. A. Naglieri (Eds.). Encyclopedia of child behavior and development (pp. 1509–1510). Boston, MA: Springer US.

219. Consider, for example, the great and courageous Boyan Slaat. This young Dutch man, still in his early twenties, has developed a technology that could do exactly that, and profitably, and be employed in all the oceans of the world. There’s a real environmentalist: See https://www.theoceancleanup.com/​