12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has been the #1 bestseller on Amazon for days now (weeks?). It is a popular-level application of many of his ideas put forth in his previous tome Maps of Meaning. It consists of meditations on a list of principles pared down from a longer list of “rules” he posted on a website called Quora a long time ago. Having been thrown into the limelight after opposing some tyrannical compelled-speech legislation in Canada, Dr. Peterson’s broader teachings (freely available in hours of lectures and interviews on YouTube, for starters) on evolutionary and developmental psychology, consciousness, morality, Western individualism, psychology of religion, and archetypal imagery, have intoxicated an entire generation of Westerners (particularly young men) who have apparently been disillusioned and fed up with the ideological bankruptcy of postmodernism and the nihilistic non-starter that is ethical relativism. Peterson means, partially, through his work, to point his audience toward a path of objective Meaning in life by encouraging individual growth, speaking truth to bring order out of surrounding chaos, fighting against malevolence (both within and without), and re-evaluating the wisdom of hastily abandoning the traditional values of Western culture.
Ultimately, Peterson fails to sufficiently ground his claims of finding objective meaning or transcendent value in the path of individual growth and the allegedly noble fight against chaos and evil in the world. This is no surprise since he does not subject his philosophical or anthropological thought to the self-revelation of the Triune God found in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as authoritative revelation. He considers himself a “Christian” in some sense, and respects the biblical text as an emergent collection of quasi-divine human wisdom and psychological self-reflection beyond any one individual human being’s conscious wisdom; therefore his teachings have many points of formal agreement with a truly biblical and historically Christian perspective. His years of clinical experience have also provided him with a unique quality of insight into human nature, directly studied. However, when the epistemic foundation is changed, each other fact in the system is twisted either a lot or a little.
All that said, I still think Peterson is worth a listen and/or a read for any Christian believer who is relatively theologically mature and able to read well “with a comb.” Much of his social critique is of the sort that is sorely needed in American political discourse today. He sees right through the often self-righteous, hypocritical, and myopic slogans of the far-Left regarding “tolerance” and cries for equality of economic outcome, etc.; but he is no less harsh toward those of the “alt-Right” who play right along with the Left’s game of identity politics, just from the other side—wild conspiracy theorizing, quasi-white-nationalism, and all. His proposed positive solutions for much of our social and psychological plight—voluntarily undertaking the “burden of Being” with all its attendant suffering, “putting your own house in order first,” speaking truth (or at least not lying so much), etc.—have many strong traditional Christian resonances, but sit on top of a disconcerting pile of presuppositional capitulations to neo-Darwinism, Greek stoicism, and Jungian psychology, the latter stemming from an alarming degree of occult influence (as a recent American Vision article pointed out).
As I began to read 12 Rules, I thought it would be profitable personally to write a little bit about each chapter (nowhere near anything like a comprehensive review). So I thought I would share on my theological blog some of my (hopefully biblically faithful) formal agreements with the contents of each chapter, as well as some critique. Given the antithesis (see Gen. 3:15), there can be no true principial agreement between unbelieving thought and believing thought (in the biblical sense of “belief”), but due to common grace and human inconsistency, especially on the part of the unbeliever who cannot live consistently in God’s world with his own anti-Christian professed beliefs about the Bible or the real Lordship of Jesus Christ, people often speak and live better than they know or understand, at a formal level. One might say they almost “prophesy” like Caiaphas did, at times (see John 11:49-53).
With that verbose introduction, let me give some of my reactions or thoughts about the first chapter (more to come, if I can manage to put forth the effort).
Rule 1: Stand up Straight with Your Shoulders Back
In this chapter, Peterson humorously sketches the social lives of lobsters in terms of their dominance hierarchies and corresponding nervous system processes. In short, when a lobster is defeated in a dominance contest, its posture changes radically, and it “loses” future contests radically disproportionately considering contests won or lost in the past. The reverse is also true. The change of posture and winning/losing future confrontations is driven by certain changes in neurotransmitter production. Peterson notes that human beings have nervous systems that are very similar to that of the humble lobster, at least in many respects. Since lobsters (or some form of their predecessors) have been around for millions and millions of years, he argues, social dominance hierarchies are not mere “cultural constructions” for us any more than they are for lobsters; they are emergent, unavoidable, biological facts. That’s the "social theory" payout for the chapter.
Psychologically and existentially, though, Peterson’s advice in this chapter is to “stand up straight with your shoulders back” because the neurological process works the other way, as well: when you straighten up your posture, your brain reacts by producing more serotonin and less octopamine—kind of a “fake it till you make it” approach, in a way. As a result, socially, you stand a better chance—people will be more likely to assume you are a competent, formidable person and treat you as such (“or at least they will not immediately conclude the reverse” p. 28).
Ignoring for the moment the evolutionary theory under-girding it all, there is something to be said for Peterson’s conclusions in this chapter. We are embodied beings, whether we are sufficiently accustomed to thinking this way or not (even the etymology of “embodied” insinuates that the “real ‘I’” has been “put in” a body, rather than being personally constituted, in part, by a physical body). And there is significant interplay not only between our brains and the rest of our body, but the whole of our body and the non-physical aspect of our mind or “soul.” When the cause is just—a large discussion in itself, to which we must return for another chapter—it is appropriate for a human being to “assert” themselves with strength and resolution in the world, and all else being equal, this happens most successfully when someone can express strength physically in certain ways.
The difficulty, from a Christian perspective, comes if some of Peterson’s exhortations end up being taken too far by themselves, or taken in abstraction from certain biblical ethical injunctions (perhaps Peterson himself wouldn’t agree with many such applications). He says, “To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life…shouldering the cross that marks the X, the place where you and Being intersect so terribly” (p. 27). Even apart from Peterson’s mythologizing denigration of the cross as a mere archetype or mere symbol of voluntary undertaking of the suffering of life (a consistent idea throughout his teachings), this advice is dangerous in general if separated from an insistence on conscious, child-like dependence on Yahweh for shouldering the difficulty that makes up so much of life. To be sure, a person who trusts in the living God to shepherd him or her through this earthly life will generally stand a little taller in the face of adversity, chock full of more serotonin than the despondent doubter. Very possibly his or her “…conversations will flow better, with fewer awkward pauses.” They may very well be “…more likely to meet people, interact with them, and impress them”, etc. (p. 28). But let’s put first things first. Man’s only real strength is whatever his Creator grants him—no more, no less—and acknowledgment of that fact is generally a prerequisite to availing himself of any significant amount of such strength. Man’s “position” is also most importantly determined in the heavenly counsel, not the earthly.
Moreover, when Peterson says, “Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others” (p. 28), it is at best a vague generality about how not to be unnecessarily trampled on by domineering personalities. Certainly some people could benefit from such a correction in their social approach. However, whether someone in fact has a right to any given desire depends entirely on the ethical value of that desire. In view of the Christian virtues of self-denial, self-sacrificial service, and deference to the good of one’s neighbor (not intentional martyrdom or bringing harm on oneself if it’s not necessary), the number of desires one should consider holding onto as legitimate “rights” in interpersonal relationships shrinks quite a bit. As Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him about greatness in the kingdom of God (right after one of Jesus’ plain predictions of His own crucifixion!), the least and most servant-like among His people will be counted greatest in due time. Paul traces Jesus’ voluntary emptying of His divine prerogatives for the sake of redemption, in the Carmen Christi of Philippians 2:5-11, ending with Jesus’ exaltation (as a man!) to the right hand of the Father. God exalts the humble and opposes the proud, as James tells us. In the approximate words of N. T. Wright in various lectures, Jesus taught His disciples essentially that “the pagan Gentiles do power one way; we’re now going to do it the other way.” He means the way of the cross.
Now there is a bit of a paradox in this way of thinking, because at the end of the day, Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of God, given all authority in heaven and earth, and is currently in the business of asserting His authority over all men, through the proclamation of the Church. Therefore, believing this, His representatives (first the apostles and prophets, now especially pastors and missionaries, but in a way all Christians) must speak with boldness. Christians must assert “their cause” in the world, with steel spines, but only because (and only to the degree that) their cause is Christ’s cause. We argue for the rights of the Church in the world, for example, not because it happens to be our group unified by mere human purposes, but because the Church is the bride of Christ and the bearer of the only thing that can (and will) save the world: the truth of the gospel and its covenantal rites and ordinances.
So: a coworker desires a spot closer to the CEO at the dinner table at the end-of-year soiree; a Christian arguably ought to defer to his coworker’s desire (after all, as Jesus pointed out and embodied, you can only be invited “upward” if you place yourself low to start out with in such a situation—not so if you grab for the “right-hand” position of your own accord). Alternatively: a “secular Satanist” group wants to erect a dishonoring portrayal of Christ in a public place to satirize Christianity or the Church, and argues for their right to do so on legal grounds of freedom of speech and religious expression; a Christian rightly asserts the crown rights of Jesus Christ over public life (even above functioning Constitutional principles if necessary), argues the fundamental incoherence of pluralism, and proclaims the real prospect of divine judgment against blasphemers, inviting them to repentance and faith instead.
We are not highly evolved collections of cells that should try and out-compete each other for position, survival, and propagation of DNA into the future like lobsters do. However, we are also not souls trapped in unimportant and unfortunate shells called “bodies” that have no dealings with other human beings in social hierarchies. We are body-soul image bearers of God, simultaneously inconceivably dignified and utterly dependent in every aspect of our being. And we live in community, reflecting God’s Trinitarian character. We must assert ourselves in the world in a sense, to be sure, but only for the divine cause (cf. Gen. 1:28; Matt. 28:18-20), which is a cause of humble servant-love. And we only press forward in reliance on transcendent divine power, not on mere human strength. At the last all things (all created things) shall be subjected to Man (by God), even angels; but only after Man has remained a little lower for a while (Ps. 8). Christ was our forerunner in this regard, as the Last Adam (Heb. 2:5-9; Rom. 5:12-21).
Peterson needs these transcendent, real categories, revealed in the historia salutis and in Scripture as something more than myths or archetypes, to justify, sharpen, and ethically qualify his socio-psycho-existential reasoning for his basic exhortation in this chapter. “Stand up straight and take on the world like a dominant lobster” needs a biblical “how,” “when,” and most importantly, a deeper “why.”
