When Peterson searched for life’s meaning in light of great suffering, he concluded that building character—learning to respond effectively to conflict and adversity—is a better strategy than chasing happiness. This is because happiness is conditional and fleeting, and what makes you happy isn’t necessarily what’s best for you. Moreover, virtually all groups of beings—from human society to lobster pods—are organized into dominance hierarchies, in which the strongest, smartest, and most industrious tend to prevail and succeed, while the weakest tend to fail. This “unequal distribution” naturally arises in everything from wealth distribution to artistic innovation to the dating pool. Peterson decries the tendency to view hierarchies as exclusionary and oppressive (an idea that he attributes to postmodernist ideology), instead drawing on evolutionary biology to suggest that they are an inevitable, ingrained reality. He thus encourages the reader to become the most competent and resilient possible version of themselves, both to set themselves up for success (to rank highly in the social dominance hierarchy) and to equip themselves to endure suffering. This can start with something as simple as “standing up straight with your shoulders back” (Rule 1). Doing so is not simply a physical posture—it encourages an attitude of assuming that life will be difficult, but being prepared to respond to challenges instead of passively bracing for catastrophe. He cautions against being overly passive, naïve, or kind to a fault, as such traits leave people vulnerable to being taken advantage of or becoming despondent when they inevitably fail. Instead, people should aim to be tough and formidable (both physically and mentally) in order to buffer themselves against hardship.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Character-Building and Hierarchy ThemeTracker
Character-Building and Hierarchy Quotes in 12 Rules for Life
During this time, I came to a more complete, personal realization of what the great stories of the past continually insist upon: the centre is occupied by the individual. The centre is marked by the cross, as X marks the spot. Existence at that cross is suffering and transformation—and that fact, above all, needs to be voluntarily accepted. It is possible to transcend slavish adherence to the group and its doctrines and, simultaneously, to avoid the pitfalls of its opposite extreme, nihilism. It is possible, instead, to find sufficient meaning in individual consciousness and experience.
High serotonin/low octopamine characterizes the victor. The opposite neurochemical configuration, a high ratio of octopamine to serotonin, produces a defeated-looking, scrunched-up, inhibited, drooping, skulking sort of lobster, very likely to hang around street corners, and to vanish at the first hint of trouble. Serotonin and octopamine also regulate the tail-flick reflex, which serves to propel a lobster rapidly backwards when it needs to escape. Less provocation is necessary to trigger that reflex in a defeated lobster. You can see an echo of that in the heightened startle reflex characteristic of the soldier or battered child with post-traumatic stress disorder.
But standing up straight with your shoulders back is not something that is only physical, because you’re not only a body. You’re a spirit, so to speak—a psyche—as well. Standing up physically also implies and invokes and demands standing up metaphysically. Standing up means voluntarily accepting the burden of Being. Your nervous system responds in an entirely different manner when you face the demands of life voluntarily. You respond to a challenge, instead of bracing for a catastrophe.
Humanity, in toto, and those who compose it […] deserve some sympathy for the appalling burden under which the human individual genuinely staggers; some sympathy for subjugation to mortal vulnerability, tyranny of the state, and the depredations of nature. It is an existential situation that no mere animal encounters or endures […] It is this sympathy that should be the proper medicament for self-conscious self-contempt, which has its justification, but is only half the full and proper story.
Pay attention. […] Notice something that bothers you, that concerns you, that will not let you be, which you could fix, that you would fix. You can find such somethings by asking yourself (as if you genuinely want to know) three questions: “What is it that is bothering me?” “Is that something I could fix?” and “Would I actually be willing to fix it?” If you find that the answer is “no,” to any or all of the questions, then look elsewhere. Aim lower. Search until you find something that bothers you, that you could fix, that you would fix, and then fix it. That might be enough for the day.
Parents have a duty to act as proxies for the real world—merciful proxies, caring proxies—but proxies, nonetheless. This obligation supersedes any responsibility to ensure happiness, foster creativity, or boost self-esteem. It is the primary duty of parents to make their children socially desirable.
The ancient Jews always blamed themselves when things fell apart. They acted as if God’s goodness—the goodness of reality—was axiomatic, and took responsibility for their own failure. That’s insanely responsible. But the alternative is to judge reality as insufficient, to criticize Being itself, and to sink into resentment and the desire for revenge.
During [tens or hundreds of thousands of years], the twin practices of delay and exchange began to emerge, slowly and painfully. Then they became represented, in metaphorical abstraction, as rituals and tales of sacrifice, told in a manner such as this: “It’s as if there is a powerful Figure in the Sky, who sees all, and is judging you. Giving up something you value seems to make Him happy—and you want to make Him happy, because all Hell breaks loose if you don’t. So, practice sacrificing, and sharing, until you become expert at it, and things will go well for you.”
Each human being has an immense capacity for evil. Each human being understands, a priori, perhaps not what is good, but certainly what is not. And if there is something that is not good, then there is something that is good. If the worst sin is the torment of others, merely for the sake of the suffering produced—then the good is whatever is diametrically opposed to that. The good is whatever stops such things from happening.
You may find that if you attend to these moral obligations, once you have placed “make the world better” at the top of your value hierarchy, you experience ever-deepening meaning. It’s not bliss. It’s not happiness. It is something more like atonement for the criminal fact of your fractured and damaged Being. […] It’s adoption of the responsibility for being a potential denizen of Hell. It is willingness to serve as an angel of Paradise.
Consider the following situation: A client in my practice recounts a long, meandering, emotion-laden account of a difficult period in his or her life. We summarize, back and forth […] It is now a different memory, in many ways—with luck, a better memory […] We have extracted the moral of the story […] That’s the purpose of memory. You remember the past not so that it is “accurately recorded” […] but so that you are prepared for the future.
If the consequences of placing skatestoppers on plant-boxes and sculpture bases […] is unhappy adolescent males and brutalist aesthetic disregard of beauty then, perhaps, that was the aim. When someone claims to be acting from the highest principles, for the good of others, there is no reason to assume that the person’s motives are genuine […] I see the operation of an insidious and profoundly anti-human spirit.
Boys are suffering, in the modern world. They are more disobedient—negatively—or more independent—positively—than girls, and they suffer for this, throughout their pre-university educational career. […] Schools, which were set up in the late 1800s precisely to inculcate obedience, do not take kindly to provocative and daring behaviour, no matter how tough-minded and competent it might show a boy (or a girl) to be.
Of course, culture is an oppressive structure. It’s always been that way. It’s a fundamental, universal existential reality […] Culture takes with one hand, but in some fortunate places it gives more with the other. To think about culture only as oppressive is ignorant and ungrateful, as well as dangerous. This is not to say (as I am hoping the content of this book has made abundantly clear, so far) that culture should not be subject to criticism.
It is almost impossible to over-estimate the nihilistic and destructive nature of this philosophy. It puts the act of categorization itself in doubt. It negates the idea that distinctions might be drawn between things for any reasons other than that of raw power. […] There is sufficient truth to Derrida’s claims to account, in part, for their insidious nature […] [T]he fact that power plays a role in human motivation does not mean that it plays the only role, or even the primary role.
