12 Rules for Life by J.B. Peterson Book Review

I have previously listed the 12 Rules from the 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos book and here are my notes and underlines. You can now scroll down to the bottom for my message to Jordan Peterson.

Jordan Peterson is a prolific author, bookphile and speaker and his book doesn’t disappoint. He is controversial because it’s said to have been embraced by the alt-right. [Who would have thought chaos doesn’t like rules ?!] But that’s non-sense since he is against ideologues of any kinds. Also heard that this book is only for 20-year olds, and not for older people, is another bunch of non-sense pervaded by social media matrix warriors. The book is for a general audience of all ages, thus its popularity. Furthermore, Peterson has a lot of advice for raising and upbringing children, so parents will find it particularly useful. Beware, however, this is not a redpill book (the blog you’re reading is).

Professor Peterson draws heavily on Christianity and Bible aphorisms, and CJ Jung, among others.

Here are some thoughts and lessons that we can draw upon:

“You cannot know ahead of time. The success of a good example can always be attributed to luck. Thus, you have to risk your particular, individual life to find out.” -from Rule (Chapter 8). This is another way of saying SITG (Skin-In-The-Game). That’s why those selling you recipes for getting rich, getting scot-free, or getting-anything-they-know-you-want are snake oil salesmen.

“You should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.“- Rule 8, 12 Rules for Life.

“That is what totalitarian means: Everything that needs to be discovered has been discovered. Everything will unfold precisely as planned.” -Chapter 8 “When reason falls in love with itself…we have tyranny by reason.” Let me point out here there are people on the Internet, people with a large following, who’ve made it their business to explain how the “irrational” falls in line with their handpicked rational word vomit. They state the conclusion…and work their way to it with a reason of whale shit proportion. Remember they are reason propagandists who use the “tyranny of reason” on you.

“Every game has rules. Some of the most important rules are implicit.” -from Chapter 8
Precisely why I’m working hard on the rules for the underdog, the cause that I champion.

Avoid expedience. “Expedience-that’s hiding all the skeletons in the closet.” -from Chapter 7
Expedience, an unfortunate sign of our times, goes against the flow of the universe.

“Satan embodies the refusal of sacrifice; he is arrogance, incarnate; spite, deceit, and cruel, conscious malevolence. He is pure hatred of Man, God and Being.” –
Chapter 7 Wow, Professor Peterson, I didn’t know you’ve already met my former boss !

“Think not that I have come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” -Matthew 10:34 quote, -in Rule 8

“Something valuable, given up, ensures future prosperity.” “There is little difference between sacrifice and work.” -Chapter 7

“The future is a judgmental father.” -Chapter 7

“The ancient Jews always blamed themselves when things fell apart. They acted as if God’s goodness-the goodness of reality-was axiomatic, and took responsibility for their own failures. That’s insanely responsible.” -Rule (Chapter) 6

“Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong.” -Chapter 6

“Imagine a toddler repeatedly striking his mother in the face. Why would he do such a thing ? It’s a stupid question. It’s unacceptably naive. The answer is obvious. To dominate his mother. To see if he can get away with it.” –Ch. 5

“Parents have a duty to act as proxies for the real world-merciful proxies, caring proxies, but proxies, nonetheless.” -Ch. 5

Dominance hierarchies exist even in lobsters, which are 350 million years old, as well as in songbirds (wrens). Even common barnyard chickens have a pecking order. We learn that fighting lobsters have four levels of combat, a neurochemistry of defeat and victory.  “A vanquished competitor loses confidence sometimes for days. High serotonin/low octopamine characterizes the victor lobster.”

“Standing up physically also implies and invokes and demands standing up metaphysically” -Ch. 1 Dr Peterson describes us as “beasts of burden”.

What is chaos ?

“Chaos is the despair and horror you feel when you have been profoundly betrayed. It’s the place you end up when things fall apart; when your dreams die, your career collapses, your marriage ends. And chaos is freedom, dreadful freedom, too. Chaos, the eternal feminine, is also the crushing force of sexual selection.” -Ch. 2

“Women have been making men self-conscious since the beginning of time. They do this primarily by rejecting them -but also by shaming them.” When you understand this, you know Being a Man means dealing with rejection. Let me put it this way: You are NOT a man if you don’t take rejection well..

“In their vulnerability, now fully realized, A & E felt unworthy to stand before God.” -Ch 2

The Abel and Cain Story

Peterson writes on the story of Cain and Abel over and over again. These two guys, Cain and Abel, were struggling to show off to God.  Like all Christians, JP has a naive tone, his basic understanding is that life is good and God is great.

Max Cantor to Cain: Why didn’t you make things easy simple (KISS) ? Take God out of the equation. Stop showing off. Stop looking at your results. Stop expecting fairness. Your results are not good, even though you put in the effort ? Nobody cares. Welcome to the real world, Cain, Adam, all of you.
Jesus, you have a bunch of grown men thinking like twelve year-olds in this fable.

“I know a narcissist when I see one.” – Max Cantor to God, Cain et. al.

Does God exist ? That’s not the real question. The real question is, and maybe you’ve seen this poster meme, When Max Cantor Q&A is in session, are there any rat bastards still left standing ? Some people think that I am not a real person, that I am an algo dreamed up by Google or something. I plead the Fifth. So God is this kind of thing that can’t be proven or disproven. How convenient. Well, then, do what you do when you have something complex (if you’re A.I. or algo), take a step back to a lesser level of complexity.

Had Cain, even for a moment, KISS (Kept It Simple Stupid) he would have stood on firmer ground. But Cain (or Jordan Peterson) didn’t go to the same school I did. Gladiator school.

“The reason men don’t get into heaven is they get sliced up by God’s agents before they get up there.” –Max Cantor maxim

Peterson writes heavily on relationships, drawing on his experience as a clinical psychologist 

In Chapters 9 and  10, and earlier in the book, Peterson writes about the necessity of open communication.

“You have to consciously define the topic of a conversation, particularly when it is difficult – or it becomes about everything, and everything is too much. This is so frequently why couples cease communicating. Every argument degenerates into every problem that ever emerged in the past…” –from Rule 10

I can side with that opinion, but the problem is…with women. They will bring up “everything” so that they can overload your circuits. I should also note that decades-long, especially lifelong marriages are a thing of the past. Peterson’s generation, the Boomers, the ones raised in small communities lived that way. That went the way of the dinosaurs. It’s extinct. We live in a gynocentric, female-primacy order. If you’re are going to do any kind of advice on relationships, it is necessary to age-segment women: young (<26 years of age), pre-wall (26-33ish), post-wall (33-50) and matriarchs or madronas (50+).

“People think they think, but it’s not true. It’s mostly self-criticism that passes for thinking. True thinking is rare-just like true listening. Thinking is listening to yourself. It’s difficult.” –Brilliant

“True thinking is complex and demanding. It requires you to be articulate speaker and careful, judicious listener, at the same time. It involves conflict. So, you have to tolerate conflict.”-from Rule 9
In this Chapter, 9, Peterson gives a good distinction of the various types of conversation dynamics. He makes the point of slaying the dragon (conflict) while it is in its infancy.

“Maybe she never really liked her husband. Maybe she never really liked men, and still doesn’t. Maybe that was her mother’s fault – or her grandmother’s. Maybe she mimicked their behavior, acting out their trouble, transmitted unconsciously, implicitly, down the generations. Maybe she was taking revenge on her father, or her brother, or society.” -from Rule 9 A similar narrative is given for a male counterpart.

Look, when you understand change is the essence of things, and that men and women are fundamentally different,  you can’t go poking in every nook and cranny. You’ve had a poor filter when you entered the relationship to begin with. You dated “damaged” goods, went ahead and stuck with with it, and now you’re complaining “this thing from their past came back to haunt them”.

Peterson’s audience I think it’s 80-90% male, yet Peterson [in at least one video] wonders why. This is no mystery. Self-improvement as a genre is for men. Women have very little capacity for introspection and self-inquiry. Self-improvement is a theme in men lives. Worthy men. Men that follow me (those are the best men). What self-improvement means for women…well, let’s not get in there.

“When do you dislike your parents, your spouse, or your children, and why ?”

“Consult your resentment. It’s a revelatory emotion, for all its pathology. It’s part of an evil triad: arrogance, deceit and resentment.” -JP

I talk in my future books about emotions. If I dislike my boss, is that resentment, arrogance or deceit ? I don’t think so. It’s the “critical internal voice” that Peterson actually refers to earlier. “Inside us dwells that voice and spirit that knows it all, it can be very difficult to quell.”  I will agree that resentment building inside is unhealthy.

“Of course, the consequences of staying silent is worse. It’s easier in the moment to avoid conflict. But in the long term it’s deadly. When you have something to say, silence is a lie -and tyranny feeds on lies. When you start nursing secret fantasies of revenge; when your life is being poisoned with the wish to devour and destroy.”

Let me take a poll. How many of us had something very “uncomplimentary” to say to our bosses and did not ? How many had the secret fantasy of crushing the boss ? -Unless you’re a donkey, all hands went up. Now, silence is golden ! Thank God for that ! Peterson in his book likely refers to family members, not bosses.

The Big Lie Theory

I don’t know how much Peterson cozies up to Trump; it’s not worth speculating about. We know from a Vanity Fair 1990 interview with Trump “the billionaire businessman admitting to owning ‘Mein Kampf’  [or ‘The New Order’  (?)] but said he had would never read speeches.”  “Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.” -(Source: The Independent)

In Rule 8 Peterson quotes MK so that we can understand How the Big Lie is orchestrated and why does it take hold in people:

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods…” [my underscore]

Peterson is of course, opposed to lying small and big, since Rule 8 is telling the truth.

The Oedipal Mother

Peterson correctly identifies the Oedipal mother as a blundering idiot.

What is the Oedipal mother ? The Oedipal mother makes a pact with herself, her children, and the devil himself. The deal is this: “above all, never leave me. In return, I will do everything for you.”
-Chapter 11 The Oedipal mother “is that one that says to her child “I only live for you.”

Why he starts up Chapter 12 (Pet a Cat) with A Dog

Peterson starts of Chapter 12, the cat-related chapter with a description of his dog because of the “Tajfel minimal-conditions effect”. “Otherwise, the mere mention of a cat in the title would be enough to turn many dog people against him.” 

On Superheros

“A superhero who can do anything turns out to be no hero at all. He’s nothing specific, so he’s nothing. He has nothing to strive against, so he can’t be admirable.” – from Rule 12

From CODA:

“There is no enlightened one. There is only the one who is seeking further enlightenment.”

Conclusion

Maybe God is not the Heavenly Father Who Knows-It-All.  Perhaps God is that two-year old toddler who strikes his mother on her face at the dinner table. That silly little boy who cries out, pushes away the food, and embarrasses his parents at the restaurant to get attention. And perhaps it is time to discipline that ill-behaved brat. -Max Cantor to Jordan B. Peterson