Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

by Jordan B. Peterson

Those with a conservative bent, drawn temperamentally to regard the status quo as protective, must to come to understand that mere order is insufficient. Because the future and the present differ from the past, what worked before will not necessarily work now, and it is necessary to understand that the line between the stability bequeathed to us by our ancestors and the tyranny that can so easily become shifts and moves with the transformations of existence. Equally, however, the more liberal types, prone to see the Authoritarian Tyrant everywhere, must work to develop gratitude for the social and psychological structures of interpretation that continually shield us from the terrors of nature and the absolute unknown. It is difficult for any of us to see what we are blinded to by the nature of our personalities. It is for this reason that we must continually listen to people who differ from us, and who, because of that difference, have the ability to see and to react appropriately to what we cannot detect.