The key ideas

Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

Jordan B. Peterson, 2021

What do you do when there is too much order in your life: rules that suffocate, habits that harden, things left unsaid for years? Jordan Peterson finished this book during the hardest years of his life, and he offers twelve new rules for living on the border between order and chaos. You will learn when to respect tradition and when to break it, why silence is more dangerous than a quarrel, and how gratitude becomes a form of courage.

Who it is for

For people who do everything right but feel their life has frozen in place. And for anyone who wants to see where rules help, and where it is time to take a risk and step into the unknown.

If you let yourself know what you want, you will know exactly when you are not getting it.

A book written on the edge

In early 2020, Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist behind the worldwide bestseller “12 Rules for Life”, ended up in a clinic in Moscow. For several years he had been taking sedatives called benzodiazepines, and he had become severely dependent on them. Coming off them went so badly that doctors put him into an induced coma. Not long before, his wife Tammy had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and for a long time the family did not know how it would end.

Those were the years in which he finished his second book of rules. The first one taught you how to deal with chaos: pull yourself together, stand up straight, take your life in hand. The second is about the opposite danger. Order can also become too tight, when rules turn to stone, habits suffocate, and safety becomes a cage.

Peterson's central idea is this: life is best lived on the border between order and chaos. Order is the familiar and the predictable, the things that already work. Chaos is the unknown. It frightens you, but it is where everything new is born. To stand with one foot in each is what it means to live a meaningful life.

Ahead are twelve rules, and each one has its own story: a patient who spent years learning how to be around people, the author's father-in-law and the plates that were too small, an Egyptian god who lost an eye. You will learn why old institutions deserve respect and when to break the rules, why fog in a relationship is more dangerous than a fight, and how gratitude becomes a form of courage.

Your sanity rests on other people

For many years Peterson saw a patient who lived completely alone. His wife had died long ago, his daughters had moved abroad, and he had no contact with the rest of his family. As a child he was ignored at home and bullied at school. Talking to people was so hard for him that in their sessions Peterson would often just wait in silence while he searched for the words.

Together they planned small steps, and the patient carried them out himself. He started going to art groups and music festivals, and he made friends. Later he read his poems on stage and even tried stand-up comedy. And the more time he spent with people, the more clearly he thought: he began bringing the solutions to his problems into the sessions himself.

From this story Peterson draws a surprising conclusion. We tend to assume that sanity lives inside our heads. In his words, we outsource the problem of sanity to other people. Friends correct us when we talk nonsense, customs tell us how to behave, and we keep our balance because the people around us keep bringing us back to it.

Hence the first rule: do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement. Marriage, a profession, traditions, the rules of a game: these are solutions people have found over centuries. The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget noticed that children playing marbles agree on the rules among themselves, and that this is how they learn fairness.

But blind obedience is no answer either. A rule is worth following until you understand what it serves, and worth breaking when it starts to get in the way of the very good it was made for. Every rule was once someone's creative act.

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About the author

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist who taught for many years at the University of Toronto. He is the author of the worldwide bestseller “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos”.

All books by this author: Jordan B. Peterson

Terms from the book

  • Goethe
  • Nietzsche
  • Tammy
  • Socrates
  • pop art
  • Roberts
  • Peter Pan
  • Osiris
  • Ressentiment
  • Benzodiazepines: A group of sedative drugs that ease anxiety and help you sleep. Taken for a long time, they can cause strong dependence.
  • Piaget: Jean Piaget, a twentieth century Swiss psychologist who studied how children think. He looked at how children at play agree on rules among themselves.
  • Enuma Elish: The Babylonian creation myth, written in cuneiform. Its name means “When on high”, after the opening words of the text.
  • Tiamat: The goddess of the primordial salt sea in Mesopotamian myth, the embodiment of chaos. In the Enuma Elish she is defeated by Marduk.
  • Marduk: The chief god of Babylon. In the myth he defeats Tiamat and makes the sky and the earth from her body.
  • Harry Potter: The hero of J. K. Rowling's series of novels about a boy wizard and Hogwarts, a school of magic.
  • Quidditch: An invented sport played on flying broomsticks in the Harry Potter books.
  • Snitch: A tiny winged golden ball in Quidditch. Catching it earns a team the most points and ends the match.
  • Curling: A team game on ice: players slide heavy granite stones towards a target while teammates sweep the ice in front of them.
  • Wendy: The heroine of the Peter Pan story, a girl who visits a magical land but decides to go home and grow up.
  • Set: The ancient Egyptian god of the desert, storms and disorder, the brother and murderer of Osiris.
  • Horus: The falcon headed ancient Egyptian god, son of Osiris and Isis. He defeated Set, losing an eye in the battle.
  • Flip chart: A board on legs holding large sheets of paper that are flipped over the top. It is used in meetings and training sessions.
  • Dostoevsky: Fyodor Dostoevsky, a nineteenth century Russian novelist, author of “Crime and Punishment”, “Demons” and “The Brothers Karamazov”.
  • Impressionists: French painters of the late nineteenth century who painted fleeting impressions, light and air. At first they were mocked; later they were recognised as classics.
  • Mephistopheles: The spirit of evil who tempts the hero in Goethe's tragedy “Faust”.

All terms

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