12 Rules for Life

12 Rules for Life

by Jordan B. Peterson

ISBN: 978-0-241-35164-2

First published 2018

368 pages

Publisher: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books

Cover design by Lisa Jager

3/5 Stars

2 / 5 Stars downgraded upon review

1 / 5 Stars downgraded upon sequel release.

A interesting read, spanning religion and mythology and psychology and modern day polemics.

Recommends There’s no such thing as a dragon by Jack Kent, and also this YouTube lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REjUkEjiO_o

The rules are as follows:

1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back
2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
3. Make friends with people who want the best for you
4. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
5. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
6. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
7. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
8. Tell the truth, or at least, don’t lie
9. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
10. Be precise in your speech
11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

 

Downgraded upon review, especially after watching this short clip from the masterful ‘Maps of Meaning’ lecture series. See here at 2:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-sCnYwQgfs.

Here he quotes why a set of rules will never work: “The kind of knowledge that the conscience and the puppet are supposed to co-create…is not something you can articulate easily cannot articulate as a table of rules. It’s not like that.

“Life is too complicated to just have 5 rules that you live by and that will solve every problem, partly because the rules will conflict.. ” Jordan Petersen

Downgraded to 1 /5 Stars upon release of the sequel. With no narrative, no story the booking of rules becomes meaning less. Why 12, why not 24, and now why not 36?

The exercise becomes irrelevant, instead of showing casing the author’s brilliance, it leads us nowhere. Better to have had an autobiography, or an abridged version of ‘Maps of Meaning‘, or even transpositions of his incredible lectures (Disney anyone?)