12 Rules for Life Themes

In an attempt to understand 20th-century tragedies and conflicts (including the Holocaust and the Cold War), Jordan Peterson immersed himself in the world’s great myths and religious writings. In doing so, he noticed a repeated pattern of order and chaos. By “order,” he means people acting according to predictable social norms—familiar, stable structures that keep society functioning smoothly. “Chaos,” on the other hand, is the unexpected bursting into the familiar, which can be both…

Peterson posits that “life is suffering,” a basic truth that he traces back to humanity’s oldest belief systems. And when life’s challenges inevitably cause people to suffer, it’s easy for them to become resentful of Being (existence) itself, which can then cause them to inflict suffering—something he defines as objectively evil. But rather than lashing out at existence at large, Peterson suggests that it’s more effective (and more meaningful) to “aim up”—to orient our values…

Peterson defines wisdom as the continual search for knowledge, and he values examining a breadth of information in that search. As a psychologist, he finds it valuable to look deep into history to understand human behavior. This includes looking far back into the evolutionary past and also looking at how humans have thought about and symbolized their actions and standards of behavior for millennia—often through myths and other literature, historical events, and even science. For…

When Peterson searched for life’s meaning in light of great suffering, he concluded that building character—learning to respond effectively to conflict and adversity—is a better strategy than chasing happiness. This is because happiness is conditional and fleeting, and what makes you happy isn’t necessarily what’s best for you. Moreover, virtually all groups of beings—from human society to lobster pods—are organized into dominance hierarchies, in which the strongest, smartest, and most industrious tend to prevail…

Peterson traces the categories of male and female deep into humanity’s primordial history. For millennia, these predictable forms have been symbolically associated in human consciousness with order and chaos, respectively. He argues that this dichotomy doesn’t reflect a value difference between male and female. Its origins might have to do with the fact that much of human and animal society is structured according to male hierarchies (order), and that all human beings are born…