Peterson Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life. An Antidote to Chaos

Foreword by Norman Doidge. — Illustrations by Ethan Van Scriver. — Penguin, 2017. — 263 p.Rules? More rules? Really? Isn’t life complicated enough, restricting enough, without abstract rules that don’t take our unique, individual situations into account? And given that our brains are plastic, and all develop differently based on our life experiences, why even expect that a few rules might be helpful to us all? People don’t clamour for rules, even in the Bible … as when Moses comes down the mountain, after a long absence, bearing the tablets inscribed with ten commandments, and finds the Children of Israel in revelry. They’d been Pharaoh’s slaves and subject to his tyrannical regulations for four hundred years, and after that Moses subjected them to the harsh desert wilderness for another forty years, to purify them of their slavishness. Now, free at last, they are unbridled, and have lost all control as they dance wildly around an idol, a golden calf, displaying all manner of corporeal corruption. “I’ve got some good news … and I’ve got some bad news,” the lawgiver yells to them. “Which do you want first?” “The good news!” the hedonists reply. “I got Him from fifteen commandments down to ten!” “Hallelujah!” cries the unruly crowd. “And the bad?” “Adultery is still in.” So rules there will be—but, please, not too many. We are ambivalent about rules, even when we know they are good for us. If we are spirited souls, if we have character, rules seem restrictive, an affront to our sense of agency and our pride in working out our own lives. Why should we be judged according to another’s rule? And judged we are. After all, God didn’t give Moses “The Ten Suggestions,” he gave Commandments; and if I’m a free agent, my first reaction to a command might just be that nobody, not even God, tells me what to do, even if it’s good for me. But the story of the golden calf also reminds us that without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions—and there’s nothing freeing about that. And the story suggests something more: unchaperoned, and left to our own untutored judgment, we are quick to aim low and worship qualities that are beneath us—in this case, an artificial animal that brings out our own animal instincts in a completely unregulated way. The old Hebrew story makes it clear how the ancients felt about our prospects for civilized behaviour in the absence of rules that seek to elevate our gaze and raise our standards.Foreword by Norman Doidge
Overture
Rule 1 / Stand up straight with your shoulders back
Rule 2 / Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
Rule 3 / Make friends with people who want the best for you
Rule 4 / Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
Rule 5 / Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Rule 6 / Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
Rule 7 / Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
Rule 8 / Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie
Rule 9 / Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
Rule 10 / Be precise in your speech
Rule 11 / Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
Rule 12 / Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street