Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

by Jordan B. Peterson

Rule I DO NOT CARELESSLY DENIGRATE SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OR CREATIVE ACHIEVEMENT

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 must submit the strategies and tactics we formulate to the judgments of others, to ensure their efficiency and resilience.

Sanity as a Social Institution

Why rely on our own limited resources to remember the road, or to orient ourselves in new territory, when we can rely on signs and guideposts placed there so effortfully by others? Freud and Jung, with their intense focus on the autonomous individual psyche, placed too little focus on the role of the community in the maintenance of personal mental health.

We outsource the problem of sanity. 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.

All that is left for you to do is watch, listen, and respond appropriately to the cues.

But how did we develop the broad consensus regarding social behavior that serves to buttress our psychological stability?

What we deem to be valuable and worthy of attention becomes part of the social contract; part of the rewards and punishments meted out respectively for compliance and noncompliance;

Compliance with those indications and reminders is, in large measure, sanity itself—and

The Point of Pointing

We compete for attention, personally, socially, and economically. No currency has a value that exceeds it. Children, adults, and societies wither on the vine in its absence. To have others attend to what you find important or interesting is to validate, first, the importance of what you are attending to, but second, and more crucially, to validate you as a respected center of conscious experience and contributor to the collective world.

to use the word for the thing—is essentially to point to it,

If you are not communicating about anything that engages other people, then the value of your communication—even the value of your very presence—risks falling to zero.

the mere fact of naming something (and, of course, agreeing on the name) is an important part of the process whereby the infinitely complex world of phenomena and fact is reduced to the functional world of value. And it is continual interaction with social institutions that makes this reduction—this specification—possible.

What Should We Point To?

But what does “important” mean? How is it determined?

social institutions are molded, too, by the requirements of the individuals who compose them.

companionship, play, touch, and intimacy. These are all biological as well as psychological necessities (and this is by no means a comprehensive list).

we must meet them in a manner approved of by others.

The manner in which I view and value the world, integrally associated with the plans I am making, has to work for me, my family, and the broader community.

A good solution to a problem involving suffering must be repeatable, without deterioration across repetitions—iterable, in a word—across people and across time.

there are a comparatively limited number of solutions that work practically, psychologically, and socially simultaneously. The fact of limited solutions implies the existence of something like a natural ethic—variable,

It is the reality of this natural ethic that makes thoughtless denigration of social institutions both wrong and dangerous:

The verbal framework that helps us delimit the world is a consequence of the landscape of value that is constructed socially—but also bounded by the brute necessity of reality itself.

In consequence, some will be better at solving the problem at hand,

Such a hierarchy is in its essence a socially structured tool that must be employed for the effective accomplishment of necessary and worthwhile tasks.

Bottom Up

It is therefore instructive to look into the distant past—far down the evolutionary chain, right to the basics—and contemplate the establishment of what is important.

Among more differentiated and complex creatures—the

the sensory and motor functions separate and specialize,

Among species that have established a neural level of operation, the “same” pattern of input can produce a different pattern of output

Basic motivational systems, often known as drives, appear (hunger, thirst, aggression, etc.), adding additional sensory and behavioral specificity and variability. Superseding motivations, in turn—with no clear line of demarcation—are systems of emotion. Cognitive systems emerge much later,

Negotiation for position sorts organisms into the omnipresent hierarchies that govern access to vital resources

The internal hierarchy that translates facts into actions mirrors the external hierarchy of social organization.

The collective establishment of a shared goal—the point of the game—conjoined with rules governing cooperation and competition in relationship to that goal or point, constitutes a true social microcosm. All societies might be regarded as variations upon this play/game theme—

The universal rules of fair play include the ability to regulate emotion and motivation while cooperating and competing

And life is not simply a game, but a series of games, each of which has something in common

there is an ethic—or more properly, a meta-ethic—that emerges, from the bottom up, across the set of all games.

the structure that will enable you to play properly (and with increasing and automated or habitual precision) will emerge only in the process of continually practicing the art of playing properly.

The Utility of the Fool

It is useful to take your place at the bottom of a hierarchy. It can aid in the development of gratitude and humility.

Gratitude: There are people whose expertise exceeds your own, and you should be w...

Humility: It is better to presume ignorance and invite learning

No one unwilling to be a foolish beginner can learn.

But the insufficiency of the fool is often better regarded as an inevitable consequence of each individual’s essential vulnerability, rather than as a true moral failing.

Thus, it is necessary even for the most accomplished (but who wishes to accomplish still more) to retain identification with the as yet unsuccessful; to appreciate the striving toward competence;

The Necessity of Equals

It is good to be a beginner, but it is a good of a different sort to be an equal among equals. It is said, with much truth, that genuine communication can take place only between peers.

Those well positioned (and this is a great danger of moving up) have used their current competence—their cherished opinions, their present knowledge, their current skills—to stake a moral claim to their status. In consequence, they h...