Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life

by Jordan B. Peterson

people depend on constant communication with others to keep their minds organized. We all need to think to keep things straight, but we mostly think by talking. We need to talk about the past, so we can distinguish the trivial, overblown concerns that otherwise plague our thoughts from the experiences that are truly important. We need to talk about the nature of the present and our plans for the future, so we know where we are, where we are going, and why we are going there. We must submit the strategies and tactics we formulate to the judgments of others, to ensure their efficiency and resilience. We need to listen to ourselves as we talk, as well, so that we may organize our otherwise inchoate bodily reactions, motivations, and emotions into something articulate and organized, and dispense with those concerns that are exaggerated and irrational. We need to talk—both to remember and to forget.

Have they been educated to the level of their intellectual ability or ambition? Is their use of free time engaging, meaningful, and productive? Have they formulated solid and well-articulated plans for the future? Are they (and those they are close to) free of any serious physical health or economic problems? Do they have friends and a social life? A stable and satisfying intimate partnership? Close and functional familial relationships? A career—or, at least, a job—that is financially sufficient, stable and, if possible, a source of satisfaction and opportunity? If the answer to any three or more of these questions is no, I consider that my new client is insufficiently embedded in the interpersonal world and is in danger of spiraling downward psychologically because of that.

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.

The internal hierarchy that translates facts into actions mirrors the external hierarchy of social organization. It is clear, for example, that chimpanzees in a troop understand their social world and its hierarchical strata at a fine level of detail. They know what is important, and who has privileged access to it. They understand such things as if their survival and reproduction depend upon it, as it does.

Someone who is sophisticated as a winner wins in a manner that improves the game itself, for all the players.

Highly social creatures such as we are must abide by the rules, to remain sane and minimize unnecessary uncertainty, suffering, and strife. However, we must also transform those rules carefully, as circumstances change around us.

follow the rules until you are capable of being a shining exemplar of what they represent, but break them when those very rules now constitute the most dire impediment to the embodiment of their central virtues.

If you understand the rules—their necessity, their sacredness, the chaos they keep at bay, how they unite the communities that follow them, the price paid for their establishment, and the danger of breaking them—but you are willing to fully shoulder the responsibility of making an exception, because you see that as serving a higher good (and if you are a person with sufficient character to manage that distinction), then you have served the spirit, rather than the mere law, and that is an elevated moral act. But if you refuse to realize the importance of the rules you are violating and act out of self-centered convenience, then you are appropriately and inevitably damned. The carelessness you exhibit with regard to your own tradition will undo you and perhaps those around you fully and painfully across time.

it is necessary to conform, to be disciplined, and to follow the rules—to do humbly what others do; but it is also necessary to use judgment, vision, and the truth that guides conscience to tell what is right, when the rules suggest otherwise. It is the ability to manage this combination that truly characterizes the fully developed personality: the true hero.

Every rule was once a creative act, breaking other rules. Every creative act, genuine in its creativity, is likely to transform itself, with time, into a useful rule. It is the living interaction between social institutions and creative achievement that keeps the world balanced on the narrow line between too much order and too much chaos.

The Seeker is therefore the person who is playing the game that everyone else is playing (and who is disciplined and expert at the game), but who is also playing an additional, higher-order game: the pursuit of what is of primary significance.

There is nothing more important than learning to strive under difficult and frustrating circumstances to play fair. This is what should be chased, so to speak, during any game (even though it is also important to try to obtain victory in the game).

It is the actual, particular, and unique demise of someone you love, for example, compared to the listing of that death in the hospital records. It is the drama of lived experience. It is because our own experience is genuinely literary, narrative, embodied, and storylike that we are so attracted to fictional representations.

pay attention, above all, even to what is monstrous and malevolent, and speak wisely and truthfully

Who dares wins

Those who break the rules ethically are those who have mastered them first and disciplined themselves to understand the necessity of those rules, and break them in keeping with the spirit rather than the letter of the law.

The healthy, dynamic, and above all else truthful personality will admit to error. It will voluntarily shed—let die—outdated perceptions, thoughts, and habits, as impediments to its further success and growth. This is the soul that will let its old beliefs burn away, often painfully, so that it can live again, and move forward, renewed. This is also the soul that will transmit what it has learned during that process of death and rebirth, so that others can be reborn along with it.

If you want to become invaluable in a workplace—in any community—just do the useful things no one else is doing.

Let us agree, to begin with, that you have a minimum moral obligation to take care of yourself. Maybe you are just selfishly interested in taking care of yourself. But then the questions arise: What do you mean by “care”? Which “yourself” are you talking about? We will just consider pure selfishness to begin with, uncontaminated self-interest. That keeps it simple. That means, for starters, that you are free do anything you want—because you do not have to care about anyone else. But then something in you might well object: “Wait just a moment. That will not work.” Why not? Well, which self are you taking care of? Are you taking care of the you that specifically exists this minute? What will happen, then, in the next? Because the future is coming, as certainly, for all intents and purposes, as the sun rises in the morning. And you are best advised to be ready for it. You know the risks if you choose to maximize now at the expense of later. Imagine that you are about to utter something thoughtless and angry. You think, “Take no prisoners,” and say whatever comes to mind, no matter how unjust and cruel. You experience a release of positive emotion and enthusiasm along with that, as well as the satisfying venting of resentment. Immediately thereafter, however, you are in trouble, and that trouble might stick around for a very long time. You have clearly not acted in your best interests, even though you did just what you selfishly wanted to. And no one with any sense tells thei...

If you are going to take care of yourself, you are already burdened (or privileged) with a social responsibility. The you for whom you are caring is a community that exists across time. The necessity for considering this society of the individual, so to speak, is a burden and an opportunity that seems uniquely characteristic of human beings.

I have never met anyone who was satisfied when they knew they were not doing everything they should be doing.

When your child purposefully trips an opponent during a soccer game, or fails to pass to an open teammate with a great opportunity to score, you frown. You feel shame, as you should, because you are witnessing the betrayal of someone you love, by someone you love—and that is your child’s self-betrayal. Something similar occurs when you violate your own sense of propriety. It is the same instinct, and it is best attended to. If you do not follow the right path, you will wander off a cliff and suffer miserably—and there is simply no way that the most profound parts of yourself are going to allow that without protest.

A sense of right can therefore be developed and honed through careful attention to what is wrong.

What is the antidote to the suffering and malevolence of life? The highest possible goal. What is the prerequisite to pursuit of the highest possible goal? Willingness to adopt the maximum degree of responsibility

opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.

being required to do stupid, hateful things is demoralizing. Someone assigned a pointless or even counterproductive task will deflate, if they have any sense, and find within themselves very little motivation to carry out the assignment. Why? Because every fiber of their genuine being fights against that necessity. We do the things we do because we think those things important, compared to all the other things that could be important. We regard what we value as worthy of sacrifice and pursuit. That worthiness motivates us to act, despite the fact that action is difficult and dangerous.

It is much more psychologically appropriate (and much less dangerous socially) to assume that you are the enemy—that it is your weaknesses and insufficiencies that are damaging the world—than to assume saintlike goodness on the part of you and your party, and to pursue the enemy you will then be inclined to see everywhere.

The carbon that makes up coal also becomes maximally durable in its diamond form (as diamond is the hardest of all substances). Finally, it becomes capable of reflecting light. This combination of durability and glitter gives a diamond the qualities that justify its use as a symbol of value. That which is valuable is pure, properly aligned, and glitters with light—and this is true for the person just as it is for the gem.

The artists do not understand full well what they are doing. They cannot, if they are doing something genuinely new. Otherwise, they could just say what they mean and have done with it. They would not require expression in dance, music, and image. But they are guided by feel, by intuition—by their facility with the detection of patterns—and that is all embodied, rather than articulated, at least in its initial stages.

Artists must be contending with something they do not understand, or they are not artists.

It is a psychological truism that anything sufficiently threatening or harmful once encountered can never be forgotten if it has never been understood.

if we act ethically, in the deepest and most universal of senses, then the tangible reality that emerges from the potential we face will be good instead of dreadful—or at least as good as we can make it.

Even the most malevolent, it appears, must find justification for his or her evil.

people who have matured enough to transcend their naivete have learned that they can be hurt and betrayed both by themselves and at the hands of others.

Furthermore, if you have an escape route, there will not be enough heat generated in the chamber you find yourself jointly trapped in to catalyze the change necessary in both of you—the maturation, the development of wisdom—because maturation and the development of wisdom require a certain degree of suffering, and suffering is escapable as long as there is an out.

Do not foolishly confuse “nice” with “good.”

most people have jobs, not careers).

Your life is, after all, mostly composed of what is repeated routinely.

We are all human. That means there is something about our experience that is the same.

if you shelter young people, you destroy them. You did not invite the Evil Queen, even for short visits. What are your children going to do when she shows up in full force, if they are entirely unprepared? They are not going to want to live. They are going to long for unconsciousness. And it gets worse. If you overprotect your kids, you become the very thing from which you are trying to shelter them. Depriving them of their young lives’ necessary adventures, you weaken their characters. You become the Destroying Agent itself—the very witch that devours their autonomous consciousness.