12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

by Jordan B. Peterson

you and I, like almost everyone else, can legitimately describe ourselves, in some way, as a victim of something or someone.

alongside our wish to be free of rules, we all search for structure.

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

rights, rights, rights that belong to them, would object to being told that they would do better to focus instead on taking responsibility. Yet

Order is where the people around you act according to well-understood social norms, and remain predictable and cooperative.

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.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion- and even nation-centred cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict.

But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement at all. While writing Maps of Meaning, I

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.

“It’s not what we don’t know that gets us in trouble. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

those who start to have will probably get more.

Stand up straight, with your shoulders back.

If we wish to take care of ourselves properly, we would have to respect ourselves—but we don’t, because we are—not least in our own eyes—fallen creatures. If we lived in Truth; if we spoke the Truth—then we could walk with God once again, and respect ourselves, and others, and the world. Then we might treat ourselves like people we cared for. We might strive to set the world straight. We might orient it toward Heaven, where we would want people we cared for to dwell, instead of Hell, where our resentment and hatred would eternally sentence everyone.

As God himself claims (so goes the story), “Vengeance

is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” According to this philosophy, you do not simply belong to yourself. You are not simply your own possession to torture and mistreat. 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

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 must become conscious of our desires, and articulate them, and prioritize them, and arrange them into hierarchies. That makes them sophisticated.

Does that mean that what we see is dependent on our religious beliefs? Yes! And what we don’t see, as well! You might object, “But I’m an atheist.” No, you’re not (and if you want to understand this, you could read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment,

You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.

Faith is not the childish belief in magic. That is ignorance or even willful blindness. It is instead the realization that the tragic irrationalities of life must be counterbalanced by an equally irrational commitment to the essential goodness of Being. It is simultaneously the will to dare set your sights at the unachievable, and to sacrifice everything, including (and most importantly) your life.

Infants are like blind people, searching for a wall. They have to push forward, and test, to see where the actual boundaries lie

“Come be with us as soon as you can behave properly.” This is a very good deal for child, parent and society. You’ll

Parents have a duty to act as proxies for the real world—merciful

Life is short, and you don’t have time to figure everything out on your own.

PURSUE WHAT IS MEANINGFUL (NOT WHAT IS EXPEDIENT)

Wish upon a star, and then act properly, in accordance with that aim. Once you are aligned with the heavens, you can concentrate on the day.

People are very tough. People can survive through much pain and loss. But to persevere they must see the good in Being. If they lose that, they are truly lost.