Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life

by Jordan B. Peterson

Whatever potential might be, therefore, it does not follow the simple rules of material logic. Objects that play by the rules of the game we consider real (when we assume that what is real is also logical) can only be one thing at a time, and certainly not themselves and their opposite, simultaneously. Potential, however, is not like that. It is not categorizable in that manner. It is tragedy, comedy, good and evil, and everything in between at the same time. It is also not tangible, in the sense that the things we consider must be tangible. It does not even exist—except as what could be exists. Perhaps it is best considered as the structure of reality, before reality manifests itself concretely in the present, where reality appears to most self-evidently exist. But creatures such as us do not contend with the present. It may therefore be that it is not the present that is most real—at least as far as our consciousness is concerned. We have to fight to “be here now,” the advice of the sages. Left to our own devices, we turn our minds instead to investigating the future: What could be? Attempting to answer that question—that is life. That is the true encounter with reality. What is? That is the dead past, already accomplished. What could be? That is the emergence of new being, new adventure, brought about by the conjunction of living consciousness with the great expanse of paradoxical possibility.