48 pages • 1-hour read
Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life
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Themes
The Balance Between Order and Chaos
Whereas Peterson’s previous book, 12 Rules For Life, focused squarely on how to impose order upon the chaos of life, Beyond Order takes a more nuanced attitude to the relationship between the two forces. Peterson (implicitly following philosophers like Plato) draws an explicit parallel between order within an individual and order in society.
As he states in the first full chapter:
discipline—subordination to the status quo, in one form or another—needs to be understood as a necessary precursor to creative transformation, rather than its enemy. Thus, just as a hierarchy of assumptions that make up the structure that organizes society and individual perceptions is shaped by, and integrally dependent on, restrictions, so too is creative transformation. It must strain against limits. It has no use and cannot be called forth unless it is struggling against something (35).
The balance is not quite an equal one—as Peterson states in the previous passage, order is a “precursor” and must be present in some form for true creative transformation to happen. The God of the Hebrew Bible uses the logical device of “truthful speech” (259)—narrating the world into ordered existence from the formless mass it had been, and Isis, the goddess of the underworld, requires the severed phallus of Osiris in order to remake the world from the wreckage of Set. People need order, and hierarchy, in order to have any meaningful knowledge of who they are, where they belong, and what they are meant to do.
Within an orderly framework, chaos serves two roles. It animates a baseline human impulse to rebel against that which is strictly logical, championing things like beauty and honor which we know are important even when their precise definition is difficult to capture. Artists may not always be aware of the significance of their actions, but “they are guided by feel, by intuition—by their facility with the detection of patterns […] striving to bring something new into clear focus” (216). The wonders of art speak to a reality in many ways richer than everyday existence. Chaos is also a useful foil for order, a challenge by which the hero proves their merit. Great heroes from St. George to Harry Potter have attained that status by slaying dragons, the great symbol of a primordial earth that cannot coexist peacefully within an orderly society, and yet helps that orderly society understand itself by defining itself against everything the dragon represents.
The Importance of Stories
In multiple chapters, Peterson cites a wide range of stories, from ancient myths and religious texts to modern pieces of popular culture, particularly the Harry Potter series. Stories perform many functions in Peterson’s schema to achieve a balance between order and chaos. Ancient stories in particular contain motifs and themes that illustrate core truths about human experience, and therefore they are worth revisiting again and again, even after thousands of years. For example, Peterson uses the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish to show how the chaotic forces of nature must ultimately come under the control of a single authority (in this case, the god Marduk) before there is sufficient social order for human society to flourish. Harry Potter, among many other lessons, shows how “the soul that will let its old beliefs burn away, often painfully […] can live again, and move forward, renewed. This is also the soul that will transmit what it has learned during that process of death and rebirth, so that others can be reborn along with it" (86). For Peterson, stories not only convey universal aspects of the human experience but also inspire people to be the heroes of their own lives and exhibit the virtues that they see in those stories.
Because stories have the power to shape and direct people’s lives, it is important that they tell themselves the right kinds of stories. Peterson argues that people ought to tell themselves stories that push them to the limit, encouraging them not to settle for mediocrity, so that they can look back on their lives with the aesthetic satisfaction that comes at the end of a good story. Toward the end of the book, Peterson hits this theme with a peroration, a rhetorical flourish intended to make the reader toss the book aside and pursue their own heroic quest. He writes:
If you do not know that the treasure is guarded by a dragon, or that nature, beautiful nature, can turn its teeth on you in an instant, or that the peaceful society you take for granted is threatened constantly by authoritarianism and tyranny, or that you contain within yourself the adversary who might wish all those negative transformations occur, then you are…someone blind in a manner dangerous to themselves and others alike (335).
Unless people learn to recognize and confront the antagonistic forces within themselves, they risk becoming unwitting villains.
Peterson argues that life itself, unmediated by narrative, is an inherently chaotic, frightening, and often painful jumble of experience. The core function of narrative is to impose order on the chaos of experience. The reason so many ancient stories contain dragons and other inarticulate, implacable, inhuman enemies is that these creatures represent the forces of chaos and disorder in life. By giving these forces a visible form and then demonstrating the heroic virtues that allow one to confront them, stories show how individuals can vanquish the malevolent forces in their own lives. One way or the other, stories are going to determine the course of one’s life. They do so by creating meaning out of the meaningless but overwhelming rush of experience and by offering a guide for how to vanquish chaos and derive satisfaction from life.
The Power of Purposeful Thinking
One of the cornerstones of self-help literature is Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). Peale argues that one’s attitude goes a long way in shaping one’s circumstances and that people who believe in themselves are more likely to inspire confidence in others. Countless self-help books have played with variations of this theme, such as The Secret (2006), which turns positive thinking into a psychic force capable of achieving nearly anything. Peterson’s argument has some important similarities with this tradition—he doesn’t exactly describe the attitudes he recommends in terms of positivity, but he ultimately argues that a belief in the essential goodness of life and the possibility of overcoming suffering can have a transformative impact on a person’s mental health and overall quality of life. Peterson also frequently states the obverse of this proposition, that the lack of such beliefs is highly likely to produce an unhappy and meaningless life:
lack of internal union also makes itself known in the increased suffering, magnification of anxiety, absence of motivation, and lack of pleasure that accompany indecision and uncertainty. The inability to decide among ten things, even when they are desirable, is equivalent to torment by all of them […] the poorly integrated person is thus volatile and directionless—and this is only the beginning (183).
The alternative to this dissolution is a life dedicated to a singular purpose. Peterson argues that it does not much matter what this purpose is, so long as one pursues it with dedication and rigor.
Peterson frequently predicts misery for those whose attitudes run contrary to his message. In discussing how to sustain a happy marriage, Peterson bleakly warns that divorce quite literally makes people wish they were dead (285). In the case of marriage, he more frankly admits that partnerships ought to be maintained (with reasonable exceptions such as abuse) as a threat as much as a vow. This attitude toward marriage aligns not only with the attitudes of religious conservatives but with Peterson’s broader understanding of purpose. Once one has decided on the course of one’s life, he argues, one should never waver. Just as one should remain dedicated to one’s chosen career path despite setbacks, one should also remain dedicated to one’s chosen marriage partner despite any emotional obstacles that may arise. Peterson differs from his cheerier forebears in the self-help canon in that, for him, fear of bad outcomes provides at least as much motivation as a desire to achieve. In either case, one’s thinking must be purposive, at once driven to achieve a goal and terrified of the behaviors that will place the goal beyond one’s reach. In Rule XII, Peterson makes his boldest statement concerning people’s ability “to transcend their suffering” (355), but as he later makes clear, he does not so much mean to overcome or abolish suffering as to grow more comfortable with it as a necessary part of achieving one’s purpose.
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