12 Rules for Life: Rule 8 Summary & Analysis

Peterson recalls encountering mentally ill people while training as a clinical psychologist. One day, a vulnerable schizophrenic patient approached him and his fellow students and wanted to join the group. Not wanting to hurt her, the students didn’t know what to say. Peterson quickly realized that they had basically two options: lie in a way that would save face, or tell the truth. So, he explained the situation to the patient as straightforwardly as he could. This was harsher than a lie, because it highlighted the status difference between the students and the patient. But he knew a lie could have unintended consequences. When he told the patient the truth, she looked hurt at first. But then she accepted it, and things were okay.

During his clinical training, Peterson became aware that he often said untrue things. Sometimes this was because he wanted to win arguments or impress people. So, Peterson started to practice “telling the truth—or, at least, not lying.” He came to discover that telling the truth often helped him figure out what to do in difficult situations, like with the schizophrenic patient.

Peterson has also dealt with paranoid patients. Such patients are challenging because they are hyper-alert, attend to nonverbal cues, and easily misinterpret those cues. Because of this alertness, they also detect falsehood easily—so it’s important to tell such patients the truth if you hope to gain their trust. This was true even with a patient who had bloodthirsty fantasies. He grew to trust Peterson because Peterson was honest with him when the patient’s fantasies alarmed him. Without Peterson’s willingness to listen and respond honestly, the patient would never have trusted him.

Peterson says you can use words to manipulate the world into getting what you want. When you live like this, you are “possessed by some ill-formed desire,” and you say and do everything that appears as though it will bring about that desire. Living life according to such a (mis)perception is based on two premises: the first is that what you currently know is sufficient to determine what will be good in the future. The second is that “reality would be unbearable if left to its own devices.” The first premise isn’t justified, because the thing you’re aiming at might not be worth it. And the second premise is worse, because it assumes that reality is intolerable and that it can be successfully manipulated. Thinking like this is arrogant, because it assumes that what you know is all you need to know.

When someone shapes their life around a naïve goal, that goal eventually gets distorted into what Peterson calls a life-lie. The same thing happens to ideologues. They shape their entire lives around an oversimplified view that’s supposed to explain everything, and they view all their experiences in light of that belief.

Peterson says there is another problem with “life-lies” when they are based on avoidance. For example, conflict-avoidant people might go through life trying to be invisible, but this means they’re suppressing themselves and their potential. It also means that you not only hide from others, but from yourself, too. When you avoid boldly exploring new situations, you don’t gather new information. From a biological perspective, this means that parts of your brain literally don’t develop. Thus, as a person, you are incomplete.

On the other hand, if you practice saying no to people when it needs to be said, you gradually become someone who can say no. The opposite is true when you always say yes—after a certain point, “yes” is the only thing you know how to say. Peterson says this is exactly how ordinary people get transformed into guards in gulags. More broadly, the more you say untrue things, the more you weaken your character. Then, when adversity hits you and there’s nowhere left to hide, you’ll end up doing terrible things.

Peterson says this isn’t vision—it’s actually willful blindness, a refusal to know something you could know. While small changes sometimes help a person move forward in life, it’s sometimes the case that a person’s whole “hierarchy of values is faulty.” It’s chaotic to change one’s values, but sometimes, error is serious enough that it’s necessary to embrace such chaos—to sacrifice. Accepting the truth necessarily means sacrificing. So, if you’ve suppressed the truth for a long time, Peterson warns, “then you’ve run up a dangerously large sacrificial debt.”

Brilliant people tend to be prideful and disregard error—a “mode of Being” that Peterson follows Søren Kierkegaard in calling “inauthentic.” An inauthentic person keeps acting in ways his experience has proved to be ineffective. Instead of changing his ways, he concludes that the world is unfair and it’s somebody else’s fault. This mindset is “inauthentic,” and it can lead to brutality toward others.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago that there was a direct relationship between the Soviet system of prison camps and the ability of Soviet citizens to deny that they were being oppressed by the Soviet state. Denial ultimately helped Stalin commit his crimes. When Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, he agreed with Solzhenitsyn that “deceitful, inauthentic individual existence is the precursor to social totalitarianism.” In essence, these and other thinkers concluded that “lies warp the structure of Being.” Lies corrupt both individuals and the state, and these forms of corruption are mutually reinforcing.

Even lives lived well can become warped by things beyond a person’s control, like catastrophic illness. But such things become unbearable and tragic when a sufferer’s family adds fighting and deceit to the situation. Yet with mutual honesty, acceptance, and support, families can come through terrible crises with stronger character and stronger connections.

Rationality is subject to the temptation of absolutism. The poet Milton personified the spirit of reason in the character of the angel Lucifer. Peterson says this makes sense because reason “lives” in each of us and is our highest faculty. Yet reason falls in love with and worships the things it creates. So, Lucifer is the spirit of totalitarianism. Such a spirit claims that nothing outside of itself needs to exist, that nothing else needs to be learned, and most of all, that it’s not necessary for an individual to confront Being.

Peterson says that what saves a person is their willingness to learn from what they don’t know. But the totalitarian says you must have faith in what you already know and rely on that alone. Such a stance envisions no possibility of a person changing, and it doesn’t challenge a person to take responsibility for Being.

Peterson says that refusal of redemption out of pride is Hell. And those who’ve lied enough already live in Hell. Deceit fills people with resentment and the desire for vengeance. From there, deceit leads to terrible suffering like that caused by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and it ultimately threatens civilization itself.

What happens, Peterson asks, if we decide to stop lying? And what would it mean to do that? Peterson reminds readers that human beings are limited in their knowledge and have to set a direction for the future somehow. So, how should people do that without becoming totalitarian in their thinking? Peterson suggests that a degree of reliance on tradition can help. In many cases, it makes sense to do what people have always done, like go to school, work, and have a family. But no matter how traditional your target is, you should aim at it with open eyes, knowing that you might be wrong and that there’s much you don’t know.

Peterson says it’s our responsibility to see what’s before our eyes and learn from that, even when it’s terrible. That’s how individuals and societies grow: “you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.” It’s difficult, though—learning is like a death. But if you can accept that death, there’s the possibility of rebirth.

So, Peterson says, set an ambition—preferably one that has to do with character rather than status or power—and start moving toward it, even if you’re uncertain. Be watchful and truthful. If you pay attention to how you speak, you will develop a discomfort with yourself when you don’t speak truthfully. As you move forward in this way, you’ll learn and grow, even if that means changing your goal as you go.

Peterson asks the reader to imagine going to engineering school, because that was what your parents wanted. But because you’re working against what you really want, you’re not motivated or successful, no matter how hard you try to stay disciplined: “Your soul will reject the tyranny of your will.” You might not have the courage to face the necessary conflict to free yourself from the situation. There’s an element here of not wanting to give up a childish view of the world, trusting that someone knows you better than you know yourself. But, eventually, you drop out and learn to live with your own mistakes. Free of your parents’ vision, you start developing your own. And that maturity means that, someday, you’ll be able to support your parents, too. But you couldn’t get there without being willing to face conflict.

Living according to the truth means accepting and dealing with conflict—that is part of Being. As you do that, you’ll gradually mature and become more responsible and wiser in your decisions. You’ll better understand what’s important and walk steadily toward “the good.” If you’d blindly insisted from the beginning that you were absolutely right, you could never have realized that good.

Every person needs a goal, a purpose, Peterson explains. It “limit[s] chaos” and helps make sense of a person’s life. But all such goals must also be aimed at a larger “meta-goal,” which Peterson sums up as “live in truth.” Such a meta-goal is both pragmatic and deeply courageous. Though “life is suffering,” as all major religions contend, no form of vulnerability—no social or bodily suffering—is hellish in the way that totalitarianism is. And totalitarianism isn’t possible without lies. And big lies start with small, seemingly harmless deceptions.

But it’s necessary to truthfully face reality. That’s because “things fall apart,” and it’s necessary to make changes rather than pretending things are all right. Inaction and deceit just hasten the falling apart. We can’t see the broader consequences of a lie, but it’s connected to everything else. And the biggest lies are actually made up of countless small ones. The apparent harmlessness of lies conceals how dangerous they are. Eventually, you’ll believe your own lies, and when you crash into stubborn reality, you’ll blame Being for it instead of yourself. You’ll become bitter and vengeful. On the other hand, the truth keeps your soul from becoming bitter and makes you strong enough to weather life’s hardships. So, “tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.”