12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Foreword-Overture

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapter 10-Coda

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Foreword-OvertureChapter Summaries & Analyses

Foreword Summary

Dr. Norman Doidge, author of The Brain That Changes Itself and personal friend of Jordan Peterson, provides a foreword in which he recounts meeting and getting to know Peterson, and otherwise characterizes him as a keen thinker and enthusiastic teacher. Part of the characterization is a defense of Peterson—Doidge notes the severe accusations that critics have leveled at Peterson for “being a right-wing bigot,” though Doidge alternatively describes the stances in question as belonging to “a classical liberal stand for free speech” (xv). Doidge does not elaborate on this controversy, however, and instead discusses some of Peterson’s philosophies and goals behind writing the book, as well as the value he thinks it provides to students of Peterson, whether at the University of Toronto or via the Internet.

Doidge values the “frankness” with which Peterson approaches sensitive topics (xvii). Among those topics is the frivolous pursuit of happiness in the face of “guaranteed” suffering (xvii). Instead of leading to despair, however, Peterson’s engagement with the inevitability of suffering allows people to navigate the world more practically and meaningfully, according to Doidge.

Doidge recaps the trap that Peterson sees millennials falling into: a forced dichotomy between cultural relativism that, in the view of these commentators, leads to “serious intellectual and moral neglect” (xix), and “the spread of nihilism and despair” that leads to a desperate pursuit of answers promised by dangerous ideologues (xx).

Noting that people often reject rules because they are confining and controlling, Doidge also insists that humans crave order and will find the rules presented in the book helpful in their everyday lives and in their larger ideas about sharing the Earth.

Overture Summary

In this short section, Peterson introduces the aims of the book himself. First, he explains “a short history and a long history” of how it came to be (xxv). The author had taken to responding to philosophical questions on the public forum site Quora, and his response to the question, “What are the most valuable things everyone should know?” went viral (xxvi).

Peterson recounts his first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, which expanded into public lectures. He explains that in that book, he posited “that the great myths and religious stories of the past, particularly those derived from an earlier, oral tradition, were moral in their intent, rather than descriptive” (xxvii). The explorations that ancient characters undertook were not of a scientific nature; they were studies in “how a human being should act” (xxvii). This framework centers on concepts of order and chaos, central concerns in all of Peterson’s intellectual work. He defines order as a mode of predictability and chaos as its opposite.

His public commentary on these matters caught the attention of a literary agent who solicited a book on this rumination of human thought and behavior in the past and present. The book aims to present these “rules” that also represent “standards” and “values” that enable us to navigate the world and human society (xxxvi). They work together to construct life’s meaning, located within each individual who experiences it.

Foreword-Overture Analysis

Though written by two different authors, the opening section reiterates a few crucial points. First, it outlines Peterson’s motivations for writing—his highest-level concerns to which he is responding. Peterson provides a more detailed account of how he actually imagined and produced the book’s content, but both authors situate the book in the context of a generational need to rethink matters of identity, belief, communication, and practical living.

Though both writers are members of the academic institutions and employed in higher education (and careers in medical practice), they stress the universality of the intended audience. This is not supposed to be a book for only the highly educated or philosophically-minded. The 12 rules presented in the book are intended to be applicable to any individual in (it is presumed) Western societies that battle self-doubt and pulls towards uncritical thinking. They both highlight Peterson’s success in online viewership as a testament to his ability to speak directly to common concerns and questions and provide engaging answers.

They also both acknowledge and dismiss the public controversy that surrounded Peterson in the late 2010s when he expressed traditionalist political views that challenged concepts of political correctness (particularly in schools) and many other left-wing priorities in and outside of academia. Doidge claims that “at best,” the accusations of right-wing bigotry leveled at Peterson come from people who “have simply not done their due diligence” in deciphering Peterson’s character (xv). Peterson himself says that the whole controversy “drew an inordinate amount of attention” (xxvii). Neither author discusses the issue in more than a few sentences.

Both authors ultimately express the desire for a wide readership to engage with Peterson’s teachings. They think the “rules for life” have a general applicability that could, in Peterson’s words, allow us to “collectively flourish” as a society (xxxv).