Beyond Order
Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
Neither complete order or complete chaos will give you fulfilment.
Beyond Order encourage the readers to reach out into the domain beyond which is essential in adjusting to an ever-changing world.
The book unpacks the inherent dangers of being too complacent or afraid of change in our lives.
🎨 Impressions
I really disliked his first book, 12 rules for life. For me it was full of long-winded, irrelevant, unaccessible stories and the rules felt loose and unhelpful and with little substance.
However, this book has really surprised me. The rules are important and pivotal and the rules fit with our time and link to real current social issues. The book uses complex and sophisticated language but the word choice is impeccable. The book flows and the tone is appropriate for the topics he discusses.
The rules feel actionable and lead you on an interesting path of self-discovery through a process of questioning and seeing yourself in elements of his anecdotes, patients and narratives.
His views can often be contrary to my own personal views however this has pushed my own thinking further and I have welcomed this challenge on my ideas. I love his honesty about the yin and yang, light and dark of the world. And how the rules are set up in a way to balance one thing with another. The premise of their being a narrow path between chaos and order that we should aim to walk along feels very truthful to me.
There are too many unnecessary detailed passages surrounding religion but these can be scanned over.
How I Discovered It
I listened to a fair few Jordan Peterson podcasts including one with Tim Ferriss and another with Mark Manson. He talked about this book, and I was captivated by certain elements in particular ideas around social structures.
Who Should Read It?
This is a book for more experienced readers given the language is detailed and could at times be confusing. However, the ideas are very pivotal and important. If you are an avid thinker, want to expand your views and understand the world in a more detailed way - this book is perfect.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
We outsource the problem of sanity. People remain mentally healthy not merely because of the integrity of their own minds, but because they are constantly being reminded how to think, act, and speak by those around them.
That which you most need to find will be found where you least wish to look.
You are not only something that is. You are something that is becoming — and the potential extent of that becoming also transcends your understanding.
📒 Summary + Notes
We need to keep one foot in order whilst the other stretches tentatively into the beyond.
This book is about this foot into the beyond, that orientates us so we do not become overwhelmed by what is beyond us.
Rule 1: Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement.
It is the living interaction between social institutions and creative achievement that keeps the world balanced on the narrow line between too much order and too much chaos.
A certain amount of rules should be tolerated, to keep the world and its inhabitants together. A certain amount of creativity and rebellion must be welcomed to main the process of regeneration. Every rule was once a creative act, breaking other rules.
We must support the values of the past, with gratitude and respect. However we must also keep our eyes on the future - the visionary living.
The world depends on the stability and dynamism.
Rule 2: Imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that.
Everyone requires a story to structure their perceptions and actions. Otherwise there would be overwhelming chaos. Everyone requires a starting place that is not good enough and an ending place that is better. Nothing can be judged without that end place, the higher value. Without it, everything sinks into meaninglessness.
Aim at something. Pick the best target you can currently conceptualise and stumble toward it. Notice your errors and misconceptions. Face and correct them. You need to map your path so get your story straight - past, present and future.
You need to know where you were so you do not repeat mistakes of the past.
You need to know where you are so you can draw a line to your destination.
You need to know where you are going so you don't drown in uncertainty, unpredictability and chaos.
Aim at something profound and noble and lofty. If you can find a better path along the way, once you have started moving forward, then switch course. Be careful though, it hard to differentiate between changing paths and giving up.
In this manner you will zigzag forwards. it is not the most efficient way to travel but there is no real alternative given your goals will invariably change as you learn what you need to learn while disciplining yourself.
With will and luck you will find a story that is meaningful and productive and improves with time. With will and luck you will be the hero of your story, the creative transformer, the benefactor of your family and broader society.
Rule 3: Do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
It is best to find out if the sharp objects you feared were lurking there are real or fantastical. You can avoid the danger if you are willing to see.
If you knocked truly wanting to enter, the door would open. But there will be times in your life when it will take everything you have to face what is in front of you. Instead of hiding away from a truth so terrible that the only thing worse is the falsehood you long to replace it with.
Rule 4: Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
Meaning in life most effectively sustains itself in the adoption of responsibility. People look back and think 'I did that and it was valuable, it was not easy, but it was worth it.'
There is a relationship between the worth of something and the difficultly of accomplishing it.
What calls you out into the world is not ease - it's struggle and strife. The adventure of your life will likely frustrate and disappoint you. You feel as call of conscience and responsibility to set yourself and the world right. This is where you find the deep meaning that orientates your life.
That is where things will line up for you, where the scattered and broken will come together. Where purpose will manifest itself.
This is where the life that is worth living is eternally found - and where you can personally find it if only you are willing.
Rule 5: Do not do what you hate.
If you are at work and called upon to do something that makes you feel weak and ashamed, likely to lash out to those you love, unwilling to perform productively, and sick of your life - it's possible you need time to mediate, consider, strategise and place yourself in a position where you can say no.
Rule 6: Abandon ideology.
We should let ideology go, and begin to address and consider smaller, more precisely defined problems. We should conceptualise them at a scale which we can begin to solve them. Not by blaming others but trying to address them personally whilst also taking responsibility for the outcome.
Have some humility. Clean up your bedroom. Take care of your family. Follow your conscience. Straighten up your life. Find something productive and interesting to do and commit too. When you can do all that, find a bigger problem and dare to solve that. If that works move on to a more ambitious project.
Rule 7: Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
Lack of internal union also makes itself known in the increased suffering, magnification of anxiety, absence of motivation, and lack of pleasure that come from indecision and uncertainty. Clear goals limit and simplify the world. Volatility and directionless can rapidly conspire to produce helplessness and depression.
Those who do not choose a direction are lost. It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing. The worst decision of all is none.
If you can work as hard as you can on one thing, you will change. You will start to also become one thing, instead of the clamouring multitude you once were. That one thing developed properly is the disciplined entity formed by sacrifice, commitment and concentration. It is also what creates, destroys and transforms discipline and civilisation itself - by expressing a unity of personality and society.
Rule 8: Try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible.
Making something beautiful is difficult but worthwhile, if you can you have established a relationship with beauty. From there you can expand that relationship into other areas of life. It is a reconnection with the immortality of your childhood and the true beauty and majesty in simply Being.
If you study art, it is collected wisdom of our civilisation, what has been produced in art os a strange but rich beyond comparison guide. Your vision will be grander and your plans more comprehensive. You will consider other people more intelligently and completely.
Buy a piece of art. Find one that speaks to you. A real piece of art is a window into transcendence. And we need that in our lives, because we are finite and limited and this connection to transcendence will give you the strength to prevail challenges that feel daunting.
Beauty leads you back to what you have lost. Beauty reminds you of what remains forever immune to cynicism.
Rule 9: If old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely.
An unsolved problem still sits there. One lie breads the necessity of more. One act of self-deception generates belief with yet more delusions. One devastated relationship unaddressed damages your reputation and faith in yourself.
A refusal or inability to come to terms with errors of the past expands the source of such error - and expands the unknown that surrounds you, and transforms that unknown into something increasingly predatory.
And while it is happening you get weaker. You are less than you could be because you did not change. You have taught yourself by your own example that turning away is acceptable which will mean you are more likely to commit that errors in the future. And what you failed to face is now larger. This is a bad positive feedback loop to be trapped in.
In our destiny to transform chaos into order, if the past has not been ordered the chaos still haunts us. There is vital information resting in our memories that affect us negatively.
We are essentially assumptions - they structure the world for us. We have every reason to avoid the truth but making what is - and what was - clear and full comprehensible can only protect us.
If you are suffering from memories that will not stop tormenting you - maybe they are your salvation - waiting there to be discovered.
Rule 10: Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship.
Arrange some dates and then practice making those dates and going on them until you are an expert at it. Negotiate and practice that.
Become aware of what you want and need and let your partner know.
Devote yourself to a higher ideal upon which an honest relationship is dependent on.
Don't be naive and expect the beauty of love to maintain itself without effort on your part.
Distribute the requirements of your household in a manner you both find acceptable.
Rule 11: Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.
Our individual capacity determine the potential of the future and to transform it into the actuality of the present. The way we determine what it is the world transforms into is a consequence of our ethical, conscious decisions.
We wake up in the morning and confront the day with all its possibilities and terrors, we chart a course making decisions for better or worse. We know we can do bad, but know we can do good and great. To have the best chance of doing good we should be truthful, responsable, grateful and humble.
If we replace anger with gratitude and we did that with a diligent and continual purpose we would have the best chance of keeping at bay those elements of self, state and nature that manifest themselves so destructively and cruelly.
Rule 12: Be grateful in spite of your suffering.
if you confront the limitations of life courageously, that provides you with a physiological purpose that serves as an antidote to the suffering.
You might love people despite their limitations but you actually love them because of their limitations. Understanding this will help you see how gratitude remains possible. Despite the fact that the world is a dark place and each of us have our black elements of soul, we see in each-other a blend of actuality and possibility that is a kind of miracle: one that can manifest itself in the world, in the relationships we have that are grounded in trust and love.
This is something we can be thankful for. This is what we can discover as part of the antidote to the abyss and the darkness.
