Welcome! Today we’ll be reviewing 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Dr. Jordan Peterson.
Review Summary
- Length: 12 chapters, 409 pages
- Cover Type: Hard
- Personal Completion Time: Two Months
- TL;DR Summary: One of the most important contributions to modern philosophy, Dr. Peterson lays out some very basic, and often unintuitive, rules for living an optimal life.
- Book Link: Amazon
- Final Rating: 5 / 5 Stars
Dr. Peterson has widely been lauded, as the book cover suggests, as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now” – a statement I wholeheartedly agree with. Dr. Peterson has stood firm in his convictions, drawing both widespread criticism and fame, by defending the fundamental principals of freedom of speech and speaking the truth making himself, in my eyes, more than deserving of the title attributed to him on the cover of this book. On the topic of the author, Dr. Peterson is a multi-time award winning author and is a familiar name on the New York Times “Best Sellers” list. Recently, Dr. Peterson has written many more books including a sequel, “Beyond Order”, in addition to 5 or 6 others.
Plainly put, this book is a compilation of 12 rules that Dr. Peterson thinks you should follow for life. A tall order for most of us, but after reading most of this book I think I can agree: the rules Dr. Peterson outlines are based in biblical and ancient truths, passed down generation after generation, and stand firm on their own, well outside of the usual clickbait or “self help” books you might expect from other authors.
At the risk of spoiling the book, here’s the first 6 rules as an example:
- Stand up straight with your shoulders back
- Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
- Make friends with people who want the best for you
- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
- Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
- Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
And of course, you’ll have to pick this book up if you want to figure out the second half of these rules; I’d venture to guess that the other 12 rules Dr. Peterson lays out in his “Beyond Order” sequel are also worth following, though I can’t speak to that personally since I haven’t read it yet. Simply put – this book is fantastic. Its not your average “self help” book; Dr. Peterson speaks not only from his own experience, but also seamlessly ties in both biblical truths and peer-reviewed studies in such a masterful way that, when I later discovered that the book had topped multiple “Best Seller” lists as #1 I didn’t find it at all surprising – the book really is that good. If you have any interest at improving your life or the lives of those around you in a small, but meaningful, way I think this book is a great place to start and is definitely something I would recommend to any audience.