BEYOND ORDER

Today will be looking into 12 Life principles which have been prepared by clinical psychologist and international star Jordan Peterson. Today’s book “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life’’ is a spiritual and in part substantive continuation of his bestseller “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos’. Fortunately, Beyond Order is a better book than its predecessor and contains some really useful and timeless tips on the border of self-therapy, psychology, relationship building and identity. Why is it better? You’ll see some of my doubts at the very end after rule 12.!

Let’s get into the principles.

Principle 1

Do not destroy social achievements

We inherit, in a sense, the world left to us by our great-grandparents, grandparents and parents. In a sense inevitable generational change, social values and the system in which we operate in society is usually inherited. Although as we mature we begin to make numerous choices about what is important in our lives. Sometimes we use a personal compass, often guided by hedonistic desires and avoiding suffering. Sometimes our parents keep this compass for us, showing what is important and what is not. What’s more, we are surrounded by millions of such compasses, individual decision-making tools that ultimately shape our society, institutions, and democratically clarify the world of tomorrow.

This is complicated in itself, but we are moving in a world of extraordinary complexity. Take, for example, Royal Mail or any major postal institution of a given country. It consists of a very complex logistics system, thousands of tons of letters, parcels, border and customs controls, the movement of thousands of drivers, a connection of thousands of points. This solution has its drawbacks in every country, but it is so good that it works for millions and billions of people and businesses. The problem is that for many of us today, an email is enough. Our individual compass will indicate — “I don’t need traditional mail”. The problem is that others need it, which is why it is a good solution with social value that we inherit whether we like it or not.

So you could say that the first advice could boil down to saying — do not be selfish, open up to others, listen to how something works, see certain patterns beyond our needs, respect the value and complexity of this structure instead of destroying it.

Nevertheless, the first advice goes a little further. It goes towards creativity, because only when you actually start listening, only then will you understand a specific aspect of society and be able to propose changes and improvements. Peterson’s call for active listening is expressed in his anecdotes from therapy sessions with clients, where the best results are achieved by actually listening to what has been said, what is the essence, but also by catching what has been omitted. So we will do more good to our surroundings and when we actually start to listen, understand and find ourselves in the complexity of the world that we inherited, it will also help us to answer who I am and who I could be, which smoothly leads us to the next principle.

Rule 2

Imagine who you could be and aim for it exactly

This is, in my opinion, the most important principle of this book. Imagine the situation as a young person, analogous to the young heroes in fairy tales and stories we know from culture. You are at the starting point of the story without experience, untainted by work, naive, but full of potential. In theory, you can be anyone, of course within your surroundings or your environment. And yet, until you make a conscious decision to strive for something, for something greater than yourself, for something noble, nothing will change. You will become an old man who is existentially the same as he was 17. In the stories, the characters make choices that are motivated by the goals they set for themselves, and thus reach maturity.

Peterson’s analogy to alchemists is very telling. An alchemist of those pre-scientific times was able to turn lead into gold only if he undertook such an ambitious goal. I mean, it almost was because such a transformation was not possible. But by setting an absurdly ambitious goal in the process of pursuing it, the Alchemist became a true master. He chased the bunny, which he could not catch up, but it did not matter because during the race he became a champion. Therefore to imagine your goal as noble and ambitious, you will be more aware by the passing of time and how it is an extremely important factor. Standing still in life will be extremely frustrating.

There is also an unspoken element of this principle — how many things you will have to let go of to actually become someone in life. So learn to let go and set ambitious goals to achieve over time. It sounds simple, but when you think about it, very few people around you do this. Perhaps the only thing that does slightly confuse me in Peterson’s narrative is that it sounds idealistic at times — many of us have had a great deal of our potential from birth but it is limited by the outset. Considering, for example, the story of Harry Potter, to which Peterson refers many times. It is worth noting that in real life a child who lost his parents and was raised for the first few years of his life by despotic, unloving foster parents who kept him in a cupboard under the stairs — it would have the potential for adolescent depression, multiple personality disorders, auto-aggressive behaviors, and multiple complexes, rather than a great “new life” at Hogwarts. The potential that he realized in the novel adopted very idealistic assumptions. We only need to function in pursuit of these ideals. However, it is still a very important piece of advice that can change the lives of many of you and discover yourself and who you are.

Rule 3

Don’t hide unwanted things in the fog

The metaphorical title of the principle carries very important psychological advice, one of the most important that we can discover. It is so important that without psychological training we are not able to easily catch it and often only during psychotherapy we are made aware of this fact.

Namely, we ignore unwanted emotions. We literally function as if they didn’t exist. Dismissing such unwanted states does two things to us:

- Makes us ignore warning signals

- It teaches us to act against ourselves.

At the core of psychology and understanding emotions is the premise of causality. This means that every emotion that appears in us, most often in the form of a specific thought and feeling, has a more or less logical cause. The second assumption is the assumption of inevitability. Emotions will arise in us whether we like it or not. The only thing we can control in the process of emotions is our reaction to them. We can’t stop them. We cannot change them.

An emotion, especially an unpleasant and unwanted one, often grows up as a warning signal. That we don’t like something, that something is harmful to us, that something is happening to us, that we have different preferences, that we want something different, or that we have a disturbed perception of an event.

It is a very good step not to suppress your own emotions, let them appear and listen to them. This is a very basic and common-sense psychological advice, so much ignored by people who have learned to deny their emotions and their needs in the course of their lives.

Emotions can also be linked to the challenges we have had before us and hide. Problems in marriage, problems with addictions, problems with finances, which we know that if we leave them they will not go away and can become worse. Therefore, it is worth listening to yourself and it is worth reacting adequately to the emotions that arise.

Rule 4

Opportunity lies where responsibility is lacking

People miss many opportunities in life. Why? Because the opportunity almost always looks like more work. And more work is an unwanted thing for people who, in particular, get tired of their work. Let’s face it, aside from certain narrow groups of specific personalities and workaholics, work will always fail with immediate gratification and pleasure. And there is no need to tire yourself out because of it, this is how it is — life is not for working and getting tired in this work.

However, later we complain that nothing good happens to us in life, and when it does, we are completely unprepared for it and most often we refuse. So the first step you should take is to keep a close eye on your professional environment.

Step two is to answer the question — what would happen if I took responsibility?

Imagine yourself for a moment as a leader in a given professional and life situation. The person who takes the initiative in a specific project and starts making decisions that affect not only themselves but others as well.

It starts with little things — make food for your guests, add juice to the guests glass when you see that it is ending.

It goes through the more difficult things — at work, offering to complete tasks that have been abandoned by others or completely ignored by the team. When someone has abandoned responsibility, left a project, if you show up showing that you are not afraid to roll up your sleeves and do a difficult job, you will do yourself a favor in the long term, also for your self-esteem.

This is the leadership attitude — taking the initiative, taking responsibility. This on several levels will give you a better perspective:

First, it will show people around you that they can trust you, that you are a reliable work partner and a good host.

Secondly, you will naturally build your place in a given hierarchy, which in the long run, although it costs more effort, brings better rewards, e.g. a greater chance of promotion, better friendships and alliances.

Rule 5

Don’t do the things you hate.

It sounds obvious. Yet people do these things. They do things that destroy them under the guise of certain motives. It is a spiritual extension of his principle to always tell the truth, or at least not to lie from the previous book. Because you have to admit that life is complicated and we can really have a difficult time, but even in such difficult situations, it is better to keep some ethical backbone than to be “sold” and do things that you hate.

From simple things like work — when you go to work and do what you hate for a certain wage, you actually go back in development instead of developing. Nevertheless, if the circumstances force you to do so, try to do it as shortly as possible. Try to escape from this place that is destroying. You may like it too and suddenly discover that it’s harmful anyway, but ultimately it’s up to you to make the decision, no one will live your life for you. However, if you hate this place — strive to change, put extra effort to dig out of this hole in a month, quarter, half year or year and find another job.

So don’t do things that clearly hurt you. Sounds like a cliche, but when you look around, people around the world do things like that all the time, making excuses with great talent, acting like a beetle lying on its back and unable to turn around.

Rule 6

Give up ideology

It is, in a sense, a spiritual continuation of Peterson’s famous principle that before you go to change the world — clean your room or step out of this metaphor — take care of your well-being and your surroundings before pointing your fingers at others and trying to fix the world from a messy place. I have a few problems with this principle, because this metaphor completely ignores the fact that the contractual mess in your environment can be caused by the way the world is arranged and first you need to change something in the world to be able to clean effectively. This criticism was perfectly expressed by Slavoj Żiżek in the famous debate with Peterson, who rightly accused the inhabitants of North Korea that “clean up your room” is an extremely absurd and arrogant advice, where in the first place the system is to be changed, because their metaphorical room is in a disorder precisely because of the authoritarian system. On the other hand, the problems of the people of authoritarian Korea should not be an excuse for you to sit down, do nothing and grumble that this stupid advice is.

According to Peterson, abandoning ideology has this post-Nietzsche thought that not only society has abandoned God and religion and therefore has problems with the compass of morality and ethics, but within this emptiness it fills it with fragile creations. Societies are consumed by omnipresent nihilism, lack of faith in any socially established system, disappointment with capitalism, communism, democracy, intermediate systems, disappointment with religious systems. All this boils down to the accurate observation that modern societies follow a nihilistic path, where it is difficult to respect any value.

What Peterson points out to is a consequence of this confusion, i.e. the adherence of young people to numerous ideological movements tailored to the need of the moment, fragile, without depth, which unlike the systems that have been established for years, have a very simplified and black-and-white way of perceiving reality. Antagonizing people , creating artificial social divisions and imposing the narrative of the relationship between the victim and the oppressor. These narratives shift the responsibility for misfortunes to a very simple enemy that needs to be destroyed, making people often lose themselves in this fight, seeing themselves as noble warriors who sometimes simply escape into this narrative, avoiding confrontation with their own weaknesses.

Of course, there is no escape from Peterson’s conservatism and his views on the progressive movement at this point. Then this advice takes on such a bitter sweet tone, because on the one hand it is easy to agree with it, but at the same time with this consent one can completely ignore a large group of people. Treat them from one high rating place. The echoing this advice is telling people:

“Do something productive with yourself, take care of yourself and your immediate surroundings, build your sense of identity from the bottom, from yourself and beyond.”

On the one hand, it sounds like a grandfather whining for kids to “get down to business, they will not deal with stupid things”, on the other hand, it is true that contemporary world problems can and often take over a huge number of people, the enormity of their emotions , time, creativity and productivity. Keyboard activism and signaling false virtue are often in this confusion indistinguishable from those actually injured and acting. Therefore, this advice has a bittersweet undertone, because on the one hand it is easy to unfairly assess the actual victims of a given situation and system. On the other hand, it is the fact that when you start to develop by first solving small and then increasing problems — in the long run you will not only have a greater impact on reality individually than the person who immediately throws themselves into big problems, but you will also develop your identity as a person. So here we agree, but in spite of everything everyone has to decide in their own sense which way will be better for them.

Rule 7

Work as hard as you can on at least one thing

The question that can be raised is “How hard can we work on something?” and “What does this mean?” These are important attitudes that appear very often as a result of my many years of struggle with development literature. To challenge myself, to work on the edge of my own competences, so as to constantly develop a little and not fall into a routine. To dedicate this extra hour, this extra half hour, to push your life in the right direction.

However, to know your definition of what is “too hard” for you, it is worth making such an effort to start something and work on it until you actually lose your strength. Then you will know your limits. Of course, it is much easier to determine them in sport than in intellectual work, but just like in sport, in intellectual work you can move your boundaries.

So write down your goals and by knowing your limitations, try to work at the limit of your endurance in order to constantly develop.

Rule 8

Decorate at least one room in your apartment

The advice to beautify one room in your apartment is quite new to me. It is somewhat an extension of Peterson’s famous “room cleaning”, but there is more to it than that.

Competency is actually built, as we said in Principle 6, from the bottom, from the little things to the bigger things. It is reasonable and it builds our value.

Clutter literally struggles for your attention. We subconsciously register things that are at the sides of our field of view. This subconscious registration fosters our distraction. Moreover, a mess is conducive to chaotic and impulsive decisions, and worsens our productivity. Surprisingly, it generally leads to poorer life choices.

Therefore, order is the first step. Nevertheless, we aren’t just talking about embellishments here. It is more than that. It comes down to consciously paying attention to details. If you want to beautify something, you usually start with details. Maybe you will throw away an old piece of furniture, maybe hang something on the wall. You often want to give something that will somehow reflect your personality and give you satisfaction. Look at it from the other side: Most kids have a corner in their room. Posters with their idols, stickers — their subjective version of a beautiful place.

Beauty is precious, beauty is something we often strive for, admire, stimulate our creativity and delight. And it is worth arranging your space according to this idea.

Rule 9

If you are tired of things from the past, write them down in their entirety.

This principle reflects one of the key values ​​of journaling. Diaries are self-therapeutic, maybe not for everyone, but they can really help. Why is this? Writing is the key thing when keeping a journal. Writing is synonymous with thinking, only it has more rigor and order. This means that when we write, we are able to organize and formalize our thoughts.

So if something is following you from the past, and you are tired of it popping up in your memory or in your life — apart from classic psychotherapy, you can also try to write a personal journal and write down your memories. As Peterson advises — in full, in his own words.

This will help you not only not to make mistakes again, but it will give you a broader perspective of who you are and where you are here and now.

Rule 10

Try very hard to keep your relationships romantic

Undoubtedly, romance in relationships disappears with time. At the beginning, thanks to the support of hormones over which we have almost zero control, it is very easy to maintain romanticism for several months. What happens next? We will see this answer in the divorce statistics and in various marital wisdom's. Romance is about cultivating feelings, spending time with each other, the usual humanly “liking a person” and having a special feeling for each other.

Nurturing a relationship is an art of sorts. So let’s ask ourselves a seemingly trivial but important question:

When was the last time you did something romantic together with your partner?

But it’s not about making you feel guilty, but rather realizing that if you are going to spend the next 20–30 or even 50 years of your life with someone. Instead of settling on your praise of your relationship after your first romantic year — try to become a little better at such areas such as dating, surprising gifts, saying nice things, sharing important things, doing something exciting once a month, trying new things together, taking care of the home budget.

Note that the alternative to caring for these areas is, unfortunately, the grief and sorrow of living alone but together. How many marriages live together but don’t really know each other, yet they don’t break things off with each other, and end up coming to the conclusion that the other person is not only uninteresting, but becomes an enemy in their own home after a few conflicts.

The things that are very closely related in a relationship are the ability to communicate your needs, the ability to listen, it is the ability to choose a strategy to get out of crises together. It is also about respecting the other person. This may seem like a difficult thing to utilize all of these things. The reward, however, is very important — it is a truly intimate relationship, close, warm and able to survive any external problem. It is a safe home with trust that many really miss. A strategy of talking to yourself on important topics for at least 90 minutes a week will be a good start. Asking important questions about opinions or needs is the key to getting to know yourself better. Throw in 90 minutes at least a week for a date night, or spending time together having dinner at home, or talking about things you have found interesting that week.

Rule 11

Don’t let yourself be insulted, sneaky and arrogant all the time

We have something in psychology which is a bias towards negativity. This means that we pay more attention to negative events around us. In itself, this is a huge threat in the modern world, because as a result of a combination of several random, but quite probable events, you will have a strong belief that the world is unfair, cruel, full of evil, cheats and general corruption. Worse, because you will often have the impression that it all allied against you, because let’s agree — you will meet many adversities on your way.

So it’s easy to narratively describe your world around you as an unpleasant place full of enemies and fighting. I speak narratively on purpose, because we operate with two types of learning about the world — the rational one based on facts and the narrative one based on the general feeling of how we are doing, a bit as if we were actors in a movie. The narrative way of thinking is this way of describing the plot, maybe it is an action movie, a thriller, maybe a drama or maybe a comedy. Returning, however, to our natural tendency to negativity, most often narratively, the world and our narrative about it will not be a pleasant place.

This narrative narrows our worldview, and often means that narratively, we are in some wildly distant place, forgetting that we live here and now. So ask yourself an important question:

- What is my world made of?

and then follow up the question with;

- And what does it consist of at present?

Our narrative begins with waking up in the morning in bed, from the first contact with a partner or family. Being able to live in this narrative and not bring any anger or arrogance into it from another part of your narrative is the art of living in harmony with yourself and with what’s going on around you. There is also a large dose of patience in the ability to see things that, even if I try hard, I have no influence over what happens. It’s the ability to both let go of bad things in my narrative, but also appreciate what’s here and now in my reality.

You can then take a step forward and explore the possibilities the world presents. Ask yourself what it would be like if you started doing this.

When you are not stuck in anger and resentment at the world, you may find that beside you there are opportunities to change your reality that you have not noticed before.

Rule 12

Show gratitude regardless of suffering

Practicing gratitude is a well-documented method of increasing our satisfaction with life. Be it in the form of a religious prayer or ceremony such as thanksgiving, celebrating important moments in life, or simply affirming and practicing gratitude on a regular basis by regularly thanking others for their support. This is the most recommended and useful advice.

However, I have a problem with the other half of this rule, because it is a certain spiritual extension of the rule from the previous book about not disturbing kids skateboarding. This principle and the one similar to the one in the previous book make one significant factual mistake, because they focus to a very large extent on suffering. There is literally a kind of fetishization of suffering in Peterson as a path to development. Paraphrasing his reflections that without suffering there would be no awareness of what is good, or only by losing everything we can do everything, that good things limit us in some way in life and we must experience their lack in order to appreciate them. It almost smacks of old grandfather’s talk, who complains to young people that they can’t know about life, because they haven’t plowed through it like themselves. Only when they face hardship will they appreciate what they have.

The problem is that this view, in addition to fitting beautifully into this grandfather meme “in my time”, is also completely unsupported by research. As can be seen in this chapter, due to the complete lack of research footnotes. Because there are no studies that show how suffering makes people better, nobler, and their lives richer. On the other hand, there are very extensive studies that prove that suffering does just the opposite. That the nobility of suffering is a myth, and that suffering itself creates disturbed individuals, destroys people’s lives, leads them to depression and sometimes sociopathy. This sociopathy includes such aggressive propagation of the idea that people are made noble by metaphorical or literal beats in life. Unfortunately, Peterson repeats this myth because he directly encourages courage in the face of suffering, to resist the darkness, to explore it. His narrative is, of course, very endearing, but roughly not true.

Man is not a piece of steel worked and tempered by a blacksmith. This analogy, while very much alive in society, runs counter to our knowledge of psychology. We don’t need to see the bottom to appreciate how high we are. We do not have to experience everything personally to understand that life can have undesirable areas, just as an oncologist does not need to have cancer to understand the dramatic consequences that this disease can bring. On the contrary an oncologist with cancer would most likely be a worse specialist, because the suffering caused by this disease would make it difficult for him to function normally. And although it is obvious that when you are down, it is worth seeking help and showing courage, we cannot conclude that this will make us better people or that it will improve our situation. This is a conclusion not supported by psychology.

Currently, our knowledge of psychology is not deliberating from the armchair as Nietzsche, Jung or Freud used to do, which Peterson refers to on a regular basis. This knowledge comes from extensive research, for example, sick people or people who have suffered a life misfortune, such as Prof. Gabrielle Oetinngen on hope. The fetishization of suffering is harmful, and the nobility of suffering is a myth. What doesn’t kill you, it can hurt you for life — this is our sad reality.

And now this promised note:

From a series of some great tips like Rule 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, there are some controversial or weaker rules like 1, 6, 8, 11 or the unfortunate 12. It isn’t a problem, as I’m reading the enormity of development books. Various authors make a bit of a blunder or do not use the available knowledge, or sometimes they just write by hand, which is what they think, but they rarely do it from the pedestal of the prestigious title of professor of psychology, and this is a problem for me on a regular basis in Peterson. Sometimes he legitimizes advice where we do not have any research support, and strong research that exists says the opposite. For some reason he does not seem to notice them at all, although finding them is now trivially easy. Fortunately, there are only a few places in Beyond Order where this happens, there were many more in the previous book and I was afraid there would be a repeat. It is better, however, the mystical language that blows a one-page advice, to the four-page fight of the Chaos Dragon was also limited in Beyond Order — which I count as a big plus. After reading this massive pile of self-help literature, I try to get to the point as quickly as possible, and I hope this is the essence of Beyond Order in today’s film. Overall Beyond Order is a much better book than its predecessor.