## Metadata - Author: [[Jordan B. Peterson, Norman Doidge (Forward), Ethan Van Sciver (Illustrator)]] - Full Title: 12 Rules for Life - Category: #books ## Highlights - It isn’t precisely that people will fight for what they believe. They will fight, instead, to maintain the match between what they believe, what they expect, and what they desire. They will fight to maintain the match between what they expect and how everyone is acting. It is precisely the maintenance of that match that enables everyone to live together peacefully, predictably and productively. It reduces uncertainty and the chaotic mix of intolerable emotions that uncertainty inevitably produces. ([Location 448](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=448)) - So: no value, no meaning. Between value systems, however, there is the possibility of conflict. We are thus eternally caught between the most diamantine rock and the hardest of places: loss of group-centred belief renders life chaotic, miserable, intolerable; presence of group-centred belief makes conflict with other groups inevitable. ([Location 466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=466)) - There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life. ([Location 969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=969)) - If you slump around, with the same bearing that characterizes a defeated lobster, people will assign you a lower status, and the old counter that you share with crustaceans, sitting at the very base of your brain, will assign you a low dominance number. Then your brain will not produce as much serotonin. This will make you less happy, and more anxious and sad, and more likely to back down when you should stand up for yourself. It will also decrease the probability that you will get to live in a good neighbourhood, have access to the highest quality resources, and obtain a healthy, desirable mate. It will render you more likely to abuse cocaine and alcohol, as you live for the present in a world full of uncertain futures. It will increase your susceptibility to heart disease, cancer and dementia. All in all, it’s just not good. ([Location 974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=974)) - To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. ([Location 1000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=1000)) - You could help direct the world, on its careening trajectory, a bit more toward Heaven and a bit more away from Hell. Once having understood Hell, researched it, so to speak—particularly your own individual Hell—you could decide against going there or creating that. You could aim elsewhere. ([Location 1604](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=1604)) - Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived. ([Location 2068](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2068)) - What you aim at determines what you see. ([Location 2105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2105)) - Children hit first because aggression is innate, although more dominant in some individuals and less in others, and, second, because aggression facilitates desire. It’s foolish to assume that such behaviour must be learned. A snake does not have to be taught to strike. It’s in the nature of the beast. Two-year-olds, statistically speaking, are the most violent of people. ([Location 2605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2605)) - Much more of our sanity than we commonly realize is a consequence of our fortunate immersion in a social community. We must be continually reminded to think and act properly. When we drift, people that care for and love us nudge us in small ways and large back on track. So, we better have some of those people around. ([Location 2768](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2768)) - So now we have two general principles of discipline. The first: limit the rules. The second: Use the least force necessary to enforce those rules. About the first principle, you might ask, “Limit the rules to what, exactly?” Here are some suggestions. Do not bite, kick or hit, except in self-defence. Do not torture and bully other children, so you don’t end up in jail. Eat in a civilized and thankful manner, so that people are happy to have you at their house, and pleased to feed you. Learn to share, so other kids will play with you. Pay attention when spoken to by adults, so they don’t hate you and might therefore deign to teach you something. Go to sleep properly, and peaceably, so that your parents can have a private life and not resent your existence. Take care of your belongings, because you need to learn how and because you’re lucky to have them. Be good company when something fun is happening, so that you’re invited for the fun. Act so that other people are happy you’re around, so that people will want you around. A child who knows these rules will be welcome everywhere. ([Location 2800](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2800)) - To hold the no excuse for physical punishment theory is also (fifth) to assume that the word no can be effectively uttered to another person in the absence of the threat of punishment. A woman can say no to a powerful, narcissistic man only because she has social norms, the law and the state backing her up. A parent can only say no to a child who wants a third piece of cake because he or she is larger, stronger and more capable than the child (and is additionally backed up in his authority by law and state). What no means, in the final analysis, is always “If you continue to do that, something you do not like will happen to you.” Otherwise it means nothing. Or, worse, it means “another nonsensical nothing muttered by ignorable adults.” Or, worse still, it means, “all adults are ineffectual and weak.” This is a particularly bad lesson, when every child’s destiny is to become an adult, and when most things that are learned without undue personal pain are modelled or explicitly taught by adults). ([Location 2848](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2848)) - And what about the idea that hitting a child merely teaches them to hit? First: No. Wrong. Too simple. For starters, “hitting” is a very unsophisticated word to describe the disciplinary act of an effective parent. If “hitting” accurately described the entire range of physical force, then there would be no difference between rain droplets and atom bombs. Magnitude matters—and so does context, if we’re not being wilfully blind and naïve about the issue. Every child knows the difference between being bitten by a mean, unprovoked dog and being nipped by his own pet when he tries playfully but too carelessly to take its bone. ([Location 2859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2859)) - And then later, when the younger child confronts you (maybe even in adulthood), you’ll say, “I never knew it was like that.” You just didn’t want to know. So, you didn’t. You just rejected the responsibility of discipline, and justified it with a continual show of your niceness. Every gingerbread house has a witch inside it that devours children. ([Location 2870](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2870)) - Disciplinary principle 1: limit the rules. Principle 2: use minimum necessary force. Here’s a third: parents should come in pairs.107 Raising young children is demanding and exhausting. Because of this, it’s easy for a parent to make a mistake. Insomnia, hunger, the aftermath of an argument, a hangover, a bad day at work—any of these things singly can make a person unreasonable, while in combination they can produce someone dangerous. Under such circumstances, it is necessary to have someone else around, to observe, and step in, and discuss. This will make it less likely that a whiny provocative child and her fed-up cranky parent will excite each other to the point of no return. Parents should come in pairs so the father of a newborn can watch the new mother so she won’t get worn out and do something desperate after hearing her colicky baby wail from eleven in the evening until five in the morning for thirty nights in a row. I am not saying we should be mean to single mothers, many of whom struggle impossibly and courageously—and a proportion of whom have had to escape, singly, from a brutal relationship—but that doesn’t mean we should pretend that all family forms are equally viable. They’re not. Period. ([Location 2889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2889)) - Here’s a fourth principle, one that is more particularly psychological: parents should understand their own capacity to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry and deceitful. Very few people set out, consciously, to do a terrible job as father or mother, but bad parenting happens all the time. This is because people have a great capacity for evil, as well as good—and because they remain willfully blind to that fact. People are aggressive and selfish, as well as kind and thoughtful. For this reason, no adult human being—no hierarchical, predatory ape—can truly tolerate being dominated by an upstart child. Revenge will come. Ten minutes after a pair of all-too-nice-and-patient parents have failed to prevent a public tantrum at the local supermarket, they will pay their toddler back with the cold shoulder when he runs up, excited, to show mom and dad his newest accomplishment. Enough embarrassment, disobedience, and dominance challenge, and even the most hypothetically selfless parent will become resentful. And then the real punishment will begin. Resentment breeds the desire for vengeance. Fewer spontaneous offers of love will be offered, with more rationalizations for their absence. Fewer opportunities for the personal development of the child will be sought out. A subtle turning away will begin. And this is only the beginning of the road to total familial warfare, conducted mostly in the underworld, underneath the false façade of normality and love. ([Location 2898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2898)) - Parents have a duty to act as proxies for the real world—merciful proxies, caring proxies—but proxies, nonetheless. This obligation supersedes any responsibility to ensure happiness, foster creativity, or boost self-esteem. It is the primary duty of parents to make their children socially desirable. That will provide the child with opportunity, self-regard, and security. It’s more important even than fostering individual identity. ([Location 2915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=2915)) - When you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information. That is the conceptual element. However, researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain. This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical of senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. ([Location 4061](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=4061)) - The capacity of the rational mind to deceive, manipulate, scheme, trick, falsify, minimize, mislead, betray, prevaricate, deny, omit, rationalize, bias, exaggerate and obscure is so endless, so remarkable, that centuries of pre-scientific thought, concentrating on clarifying the nature of moral endeavour, regarded it as positively demonic. This is not because of rationality itself, as a process. That process can produce clarity and progress. It is because rationality is subject to the single worst temptation—to raise what it knows now to the status of an absolute. ([Location 4153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=4153)) - An aim, an ambition, provides the structure necessary for action. An aim provides a destination, a point of contrast against the present, and a framework, within which all things can be evaluated. An aim defines progress and makes such progress exciting. An aim reduces anxiety, because if you have no aim everything can mean anything or nothing, and neither of those two options makes for a tranquil spirit. Thus, we have to think, and plan, and limit, and posit, in order to live at all. ([Location 4225](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=4225)) - Listening is paying attention. It’s amazing what people will tell you if you listen. Sometimes if you listen to people they will even tell you what’s wrong with them. Sometimes they will even tell you how they plan to fix it. Sometimes that helps you fix something wrong with yourself. ([Location 4403](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=4403)) - Many of the people I listen to have no one else to talk to. Some of them are truly alone in the world. There are far more people like that than you think. You don’t meet them, because they are alone. ([Location 4410](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=4410)) - If you drop a single crystal of sugar into that super-saturated solution, all the excess sugar will suddenly and dramatically crystallize. It’s as if it were crying out for order. That was my client. People like her are the reason that the many forms of psychotherapy currently practised all work. People can be so confused that their psyches will be ordered and their lives improved by the adoption of any reasonably orderly system of interpretation. This is the bringing together of the disparate elements of their lives in a disciplined manner—any disciplined manner. ([Location 4446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=4446)) - Sometimes it takes a long time to figure out what someone genuinely means when they are talking. This is because often they are articulating their ideas for the first time. They can’t do it without wandering down blind alleys or making contradictory or even nonsensical claims. This is partly because talking (and thinking) is often more about forgetting than about remembering. To discuss an event, particularly something emotional, like a death or serious illness, is to slowly choose what to leave behind. ([Location 4646](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=4646)) - People, including children (who are people too, after all) don’t seek to minimize risk. They seek to optimize it. They drive and walk and love and play so that they achieve what they desire, but they push themselves a bit at the same time, too, so they continue to develop. Thus, if things are made too safe, people (including children) start to figure out ways to make them dangerous again. ([Location 5265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=5265)) - People motivated to make things better usually aren’t concerned with changing other people—or, if they are, they take responsibility for making the same changes to themselves (and first). ([Location 5321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=5321)) - In societies that are well-functioning—not in comparison to a hypothetical utopia, but contrasted with other existing or historical cultures—competence, not power, is a prime determiner of status. Competence. Ability. Skill. Not power. This is obvious both anecdotally and factually. No one with brain cancer is equity-minded enough to refuse the service of the surgeon with the best education, the best reputation and, perhaps, the highest earnings. ([Location 5737](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=5737)) - group identity can be fractionated right down to the level of the individual. ([Location 5785](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=5785)) - Aggressive young children who don’t manage to render their temperament sophisticated by the end of infancy are doomed to unpopularity, as their primordial antagonism no longer serves them socially at later ages. ([Location 5826](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=5826)) - You must also know clearly what you want out of the situation, and be prepared to clearly articulate your desire. It’s a good idea to tell the person you are confronting exactly what you would like them to do instead of what they have done or currently are doing. You might think, “if they loved me, they would know what to do.” That’s the voice of resentment. Assume ignorance before malevolence. No one has a direct pipeline to your wants and needs—not even you. If you try to determine exactly what you want, you might find that it is more difficult than you think. The person oppressing you is likely no wiser than you, especially about you. Tell them directly what would be preferable, instead, after you have sorted it out. Make your request as small and reasonable as possible—but ensure that its fulfillment would satisfy you. In that manner, you come to the discussion with a solution, instead of just a problem. ([Location 5855](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=5855)) - Being of any reasonable sort appears to require limitation. Perhaps this is because Being requires Becoming, as well as mere static existence—and to become is to become something more, or at least something different. That is only possible for something limited. ([Location 6264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=6264)) - Hating life, despising life—even for the genuine pain that life inflicts—merely serves to make life itself worse, unbearably worse. There is no genuine protest in that. There is no goodness in that, only the desire to produce suffering, for the sake of suffering. That is the very essence of evil. People who come to that kind of thinking are one step from total mayhem. Sometimes they merely lack the tools. Sometimes, like Stalin, they have their finger on the nuclear button. ([Location 6289](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FPGY5T0&location=6289))