Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in 12 Rules for Life, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Order, Chaos, and Meaning
Suffering, Evil, and Responsibility
Truth
Knowledge and Wisdom
Character-Building and Hierarchy
Gender and Relationships
Summary
Analysis
Peterson says that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter and the Columbine killers fundamentally had a “religious” problem. When one of the Columbine shooters said that the human race was only worth killing, he and others like him “appoint themselves supreme adjudicators of reality and find it wanting.” Most people don’t go to the extreme of a mass shooter, but many people question Being itself when they encounter injustice or tragedy. Life is hard for everyone, and while sometimes it’s people’s own fault, it isn’t always—everyone, for instance, is subject to disease and death. Whose fault is that?
Here, Peterson is fundamentally dealing with the problem of evil. It’s shocking to read about mass school shooters at the beginning of this chapter, but Peterson is using these examples to point to a fundamental refusal to embrace Being. This is something many people can identify with, especially if they’ve suffered in life. Life is full of suffering that seems terribly unjust and demands some sort of response.
Themes
Whenever a mass shooting occurs, Peterson says, people react by claiming they don’t understand how it could have happened. But when we say this, we’re not being honest. Nobody who’s conscious of the world can avoid being outraged at it. There’s something logical about trying to take revenge on Being itself.
Jarringly, Peterson insists that on some level, everyone does understand why something as apparently meaningless as a school shooting happens. Anyone who pays attention to the pain of Being, he suggests, should be able to grasp why someone would lash out in response.
Themes
But it doesn’t have to be that way. While some victims of evil pay it forward, others can learn to do good after suffering evil themselves. It’s a fact, for instance, that most people who were abused as children don’t grow up to be abusers themselves.
Peterson also asserts that there’s nothing inevitable about people responding to evil by committing evil themselves. More remarkably, in fact, this isn’t what happens most of the time.
Themes
If anyone had reason to be bitter at God and existence, it would be Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He suffered terribly in a Soviet labor camp and then from cancer. But instead of dwelling on vengeance, Solzhenitsyn “opened his eyes” and marveled at people’s noble behavior under horrifying circumstances. He even asked himself hard questions, like whether he had contributed in some way to his own suffering. He looked for failures in his own past and thought about how to rectify them now. He channeled much of this soul-searching into writing The Gulag Archipelago, which ultimately helped undermine communist tyranny in the Soviet Union.
Peterson turns to one of his favorite examples, Solzhenitsyn, by arguing that if anyone had reason to lash out at the world in response to their own suffering, it would have been him—and yet he didn’t. Solzhenitsyn chose instead to pay attention to the unaccountable goodness of people under horrific circumstances, and to focus on the wrongs—primarily his own—that he was in a position to change.
Themes
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We can find similar patterns in the Hebrew Bible, where prophets repeatedly called wayward Israel to repent for failing to obey God’s word when they suffered. They “acted as if God’s goodness […] was axiomatic” and took responsibility for their suffering. The alternative is resentment and revenge.
Peterson draws a parallel between Solzhenitsyn’s experience in a Soviet labor camp and the suffering of the Israelites in the Bible. Instead of cursing or rejecting God, the suffering people of Israel took God’s goodness for granted and heeded God’s call to change their behavior instead.
Themes
If you’re suffering and starting to become corrupted by the experience, Peterson offers something to think about: Have you cleaned up your own life? If not, then “start to stop doing what you know to be wrong,” and start today. Don’t blame external forces until you’ve grappled with your own experience. The more you start to think, speak, and act authentically, you will find life becoming simpler. That doesn’t mean it will be free from hardship and tragedy, but those things will no longer be clouded by your own bitterness. They might even become easier to bear, letting you focus more on becoming a force for good. So, “set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.”
Peterson addresses those who are dealing with painful experiences in their own lives. By asking sufferers if they’ve “[cleaned] up” their own life, he isn’t necessarily saying that their problems are their own fault. He’s saying that they should first deal with the problems they can fix—namely, their own wrongdoing. Starting this way is, in his opinion, the main safeguard against becoming bitter and consequently worsening one’s own sufferings. “Setting your house in order” is no guarantee you won’t suffer, but it is, in Peterson’s view, the starting point for being able to counter evil with good.
Themes
