12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is a 2018 self-help book by the Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. It provides life advice through essays in abstract ethical principles, psychology, mythology, religion, and personal anecdotes. The book topped bestseller lists in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and had sold over five million copies worldwide by the end of 2020. Peterson went on a world tour to promote the book, receiving much attention following an interview with Channel 4 News. The book is written in a more accessible style than his previous academic book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999). A sequel, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, was published in March 2021.
Overview
Background
Peterson's interest in writing the book grew out of a personal hobby of answering questions posted on Quora; one such question being "What are the most valuable things everyone should know?", to which his answer comprised 42 rules. The early vision and promotion of the book aimed to include all rules, with the title "42". Peterson stated that it "isn't only written for other people. It's a warning to me."
Rules
The book is divided into chapters with each title representing one of the following twelve specific rules for life as explained through an essay.
"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 while they are skateboarding." "Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street."
Content
The book's central idea is that "suffering is built into the structure of being" and although it can be unbearable, people have a choice either to withdraw, which is a "suicidal gesture", or to face and transcend it. Living in a world of chaos and order, everyone has "darkness" that can "turn them into the monsters they're capable of being" to satisfy their dark impulses in the right situations. Scientific experiments like the Invisible Gorilla Test show that perception is adjusted to aims, and it is better to seek meaning rather than happiness. Peterson notes:
The book advances the idea that people are born with an instinct for ethics and meaning, and should take responsibility to search for meaning above their own interests (Rule 7, "Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient"). Such thinking is reflected both in contemporary stories such as Pinocchio, The Lion King, and Harry Potter, and in ancient stories from the Bible. To "Stand up straight with your shoulders back" (Rule 1) is to "accept the terrible responsibility of life," to make self-sacrifice, because the individual must rise above victimization and "conduct his or her life in a manner that requires the rejection of immediate gratification, of natural and perverse desires alike." The comparison to neurological structures and behavior of lobsters is used as a natural example to the formation of social hierarchies.
The other parts of the work explore and criticize the state of young men; the upbringing that ignores sex differences between boys and girls (criticism of over-protection and tabula rasa model in social sciences); male–female interpersonal relationships; school shootings; religion and moral nihilism; relativism; and lack of respect for the values that built Western society.
In the last chapter, Peterson outlines the ways in which one can cope with the most tragic events, events that are often out of one's control. In it, he describes his own personal struggle upon discovering that his daughter, Mikhaila, had a rare bone disease. The chapter is a meditation on how to maintain a watchful eye on, and cherish, life's small redeemable qualities (i.e., to "pet a cat when you encounter one"). It also outlines a practical way to deal with hardship: to shorten one's temporal scope of responsibility (e.g., focusing on the next minute rather than the next three months).
Canadian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge wrote the book's foreword.