An Antidote to Chaos
0241351642
Jordan Peterson
Rules
- Stand up straight with your shoulders back
- Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
- Make friends with people who want the best for you
- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
- Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
- Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
- Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
- Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie
- Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
- Be precise in your speech
- Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
- Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
Notes
There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life…To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open…As Jung points out, this means embracing and loving the sinner who is yourself, as much as forgiving and aiding someone else who is stumbling and imperfect.
If you have a friend whose friendship you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, or your father, or your son, why would you have such a friend for yourself?…If you surround yourself with people who support your upward aim, they will not tolerate your cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you when you do good for yourself and others and punish you carefully when you do not.
Summary of Principles
- limit the rules
- use minimum necessary force
- parents should come in pairs
Fundamental moral conclusions
- Aim up.
- Pay attention.
- Fix what you can fix.
- Don’t be arrogant in your knowledge.
- Strive for humility, because totalitarian pride manifests itself in intolerance, oppression, torture and death.
- Become aware of your own insufficiency—your cowardice, malevolence, resentment and hatred.
- Consider the murderousness of your own spirit before you dare accuse others, and before you attempt to repair the fabric of the world.
- Maybe it’s not the world that’s at fault. Maybe it’s you.
- You’ve failed to make the mark. You’ve missed the target. You’ve fallen short of the glory of God. You’ve sinned. And all of that is your contribution to the insufficiency and evil of the world.
- Don’t lie. Don’t lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell.
If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth.
Girls aren’t attracted to boys who are their friends, even though they might like them, whatever that means. They are attracted to boys who win status contests with other boys.
Men enforce a code of behavior on each other, when working together. Do your work. Pull your weight. Stay awake and pay attention. Don’t whine or be touchy. Stand up for your friends. Don’t suck up and don’t snitch. Don’t be a slave to stupid rules. Don’t, in the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, be a girlie man. Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever.