12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Jordan B. Peterson

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

Beta

Discussion Questions

Index of Terms

Chaos

Chaos is an extremely important concept in the rules outlined in the book. Peterson describes chaos in several ways, often invoking it figuratively rather than scientifically. Early in the book, he calls it “the domain of ignorance itself” (35). He contrasts it with its opposite, order, which is the realm of what is known and comfortable. Chaos therefore is a state of being or immersion in circumstances that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Peterson likens it to “the foreigner, the stranger […] the monster under the bed” (35). He stresses at many points that chaos emerges regularly in life and presents humans with enormous challenges—challenges they are more likely to overcome by following the rules he presents, called in the subtitle of the book the “antidote to chaos.”

While people tend to experience chaos negatively, Peterson also explains that it is full of possibilities. People who can cope with chaos directly and creatively can shape it into a new order than improves the old. Chaos holds potential precisely because it is not perfectly ordered. Therefore, Peterson directs people to have “one foot in what [they] have mastered and understood and the other in what [they] are currently exploring and mastering” (44).

Nihilism

Nihilism is a philosophy that assumes that everything is meaningless. It rejects popularly held values, morals, and organized religion. It also rejects the conventions of the standing social order among people. Peterson discusses nihilism regularly throughout the book. He calls it hopeless and full of despair (xxxi). He also draws links between nihilistic thinking and social ills such as mass murder and suicide at various points throughout the text. He further suggests continually that it is one of the factors at the heart of the social shortcomings of people raising children or growing up at the time of the book’s publication. Peterson rejects all tenets of nihilism, instead attempting to tell people how to find and recognize meaning in their lives that will allow them to overcome nihilism, elevate their lives, and contribute positively to (rather than reject) the society around them.

Order

Peterson presents order as the exact opposite of chaos. Instead of uncharted territory, it is precisely charted and understood territory. It is also, according to Peterson, what humans crave. Whereas disorder (chaos) is confusing and unsettling, order is comfortable and familiar.

Peterson discusses order in many practical ways. Sometimes, he presents order as a subjective, perceptive experience. Each individual has his or her own sense of order and feels grounded in particulars unique to him- or herself. Other forms of order are societal structures. In several chapters, he talks about various creatures’ (including humans’) tendency towards hierarchies. Hierarchies are orderings of social status. Social norms also constitute order (xxviii). Order establishes routines, and, according to Peterson, cooperation among people because they can share a set of predictable expectations rooted in an ordered, observable reality.

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Order and chaos are the yin and the yang, the dualistic human experiences of the world. Everyone will experience both.

Postmodernism

Peterson rejects postmodernism, which describes an intellectual movement that emerged in the late-20th century and rejects social norms. Peterson draws a link between postmodernism and Marxism, which Peterson also utterly rejects (306). To Peterson, ideology is not practical and is actually dangerous in the way it imagines utopia without a concern for ground-level realities (307).

Peterson also rejects postmodernism because it introduced theories of moral relativism. That mode of thinking suggests that any interpretation of the world is equally valid and that no one interpretation (or its followers) should exercise power over any other interpretation (or its followers). Postmodernists might reject things like social hierarchies or moral codes, interpreting them as arbitrary, or at least equally valid to any other organization. Peterson argues that there are finite valid interpretations and orders.