Book Review: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Tuesday, 6 March 2018
| Megan Powell du Toit
I can understand why Jordan Peterson is getting so much attention. For those worried about disaffected and angry young men, his message of personal responsibility seems like an antidote that might get through. For those worried about a perceived sidelining of Christianity, his fairly positive assessment and use of the Bible is encouraging. For conservatives afraid of the excesses of the alt right, his professorship and calm demeanour under pressure are comforting, while his criticism of postmodern society resonates.
He has been getting a lot of social media affirmation and interest. Friends I respect have shared him with approval. But some of what they were sharing gave me pause. The quotes and short videos shared meant it was difficult to judge what his main message was. So, in a spirit of genuine investigation, I read his new book. And I am concerned now that what I view as a flawed message is seemingly being hailed as the answer by many Christians. To those Christians, I want to say that I understand your fears about society. I also understand your desire to give dignity and purpose to people, especially young men. I have sons about to become young men. But I think we need to put those aside and read Peterson from a more critical position. Can we as Christians really embrace what he has to say? Or is there a better way forward?
His title ‘12 rules for life: an antidote to chaos’ puts the book squarely in the self-help genre. He explains in his preface that the book came out of an approach from a publisher for a guide to life, and he decided to base it around a list of rules he had already done for Quora. So my first concern as a Christian is the general usefulness of self-help books. One could say that the gospel is an answer to the failure of humanity to be able to ‘self-help’. People can find them useful, but they don’t substitute for deep personal transformation, and they tend to focus on individual change, ignoring the systemic causes for problems.
The second half of the title reveals two major pillars of the book. Firstly, the book is based upon Peterson’s theories around Order and Chaos. In this, he borrows from Taoist dualism (yin and yang). While we acknowledge the reality of both good and evil, this type of dualism in which the universe is conceived of as a balance of opposites is not a Christian view, and any attempt to shoehorn Christian thinking into it is going to fundamentally alter that teaching. Secondly, he specifically identifies Chaos as the ‘eternal feminine’. Thus an antidote to chaos is an antidote to what he identifies with the feminine. As a woman, I find this too easily collapsed into the female, and dispute the identifications he makes with what is feminine. The book constantly associates the feminine with the aspects of society that need to be countered. I say countered, as although Peterson says he seeks balance, in reality he rarely speaks positively about that which he sees as feminine. The subtitle ‘an antidote’ is only too apt. I found this troubling. While Peterson says he respects women, my experience of this book was that as a woman I felt misunderstood and viewed as that which must be countered.[1] I do not think we serve young men well by teaching them to view women in this simplified and, in my view, diminished, fashion. An image of God theology that teaches that all humans, men and women, have great dignity and value in a common bearing of the image of God is much to be preferred to this dualistic archetypal vision.
The twelve rules themselves are examples of individualistic self-responsibility. Certainly, teaching people to take responsibility for themselves is good advice. But it isn’t the whole story. We also need to teach people how society works, that some people have more power, and that some have less. That some are much more vulnerable. It is the tension held so beautifully in Galatians 6, in which we both carry our own load (v.5) but also each other’s burdens (v.2). For me, to carry another’s burdens must involve an acknowledgment of how power and privilege operate. This is why we have a God who gives preferential treatment to those with less power.[2]
We can’t counteract this by then giving people something more communal-minded to read alongside Peterson. For this mindset permeates every rule he has, the entire content of this book. The first three rules are good examples of this. The first: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. This reads like it advises a good dose of self-respect. But this is the chapter that leans heavily on a particular reading of evolution. This is a chapter about competition. He uses lobsters and the competitive dynamics between them to try to generalise to humans. This ignores the much more highly complicated social environment of human beings and the differing effects of brain chemistry.[3] Moreover, it reduces us as humans to our biology in a way that I think should make Christians uncomfortable. Whatever the call of our flesh, we are called to a better way. Thus, any argument that talks about top and bottom lobsters, and urges us to behave as a top lobster, should give us pause. Instead of an ethic based around trying to be the top lobster, ours should be based around self-emptying servanthood. Or take the second rule. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. Not bad advice for living sensibly. But look at how he uses the Golden Rule in this chapter. He quotes Jung to read it as ‘this means embracing and loving the sinner who is yourself, as much as forgiving and aiding someone else’. The emphasis isn’t on loving the other; it has swapped around to be about loving yourself. While the Golden Rule implicitly accepts a regard for self, I’m still of the view that most of us suffer from too much self-love, and not enough other-love.
The third rule is to make friends with those who want the best for you. Pragmatically this is excellent advice. Who we associate with makes an impact on our lives. But I’m rather glad Jesus ignored this advice. In fact, Jesus’ model is so problematic to Peterson’s argument that he specifically addresses it. He says ‘but Christ was the archetypal perfect man. And you’re you’. Our imperfection is used, not to urge us on to perfection, but to argue against the attempt. He argues that we wouldn’t like our loved ones to have bad friends. Well, I beg to differ. I would rather come alongside my sons and help them reach out in love to those friends who are struggling. He argues that the best aid we can give to the unhealthy is to cut ourselves off from them and show them an example of how to be healthy. It certainly is an easier path. It sometimes becomes a necessary path, but this should be a reason for regret. It also ignores why people may be ‘bad’ friends. It usually is to do with entrenched disadvantage, connected with poverty, race, family dysfunction and health issues.
I want to pick up on some key concerns I have in the rest of the book. The chapter on the seventh rule I found revealing about how we are to understand his use of Christian scriptures and values. It’s a rule about the delay of gratification. It’s good advice, but is an ethic that speaks to self-regard rather than to other-centred love. Within this chapter, though, is the acceptance of a Nietzschean criticism of the removal of moral responsibility in the protestant understanding of grace. This is not surprising in a book that deifies self-responsibility at the expense of compassionate social understanding. But grace is something we should take very seriously. Grace isn’t a side concept in our faith. It is central. To remove it is to radically change it.
In chapter nine, I was deeply troubled by a section on a woman he had counselled who seems to have been the victim of multiple sexual assaults. She herself, according to his account, is unsure about whether it is rape, but it seems clear to me her consent was impaired due to alcohol. Women are often likely to overestimate their own culpability in assault, as we have internalised the societal message that women are to blame. His internal monologue about what he thought about her is distressing. For instance ‘I thought, “part of you wants to be taken… part of you is guilty… another part is thrilled and excited” …’. He thinks ‘she is a danger to herself and others’ and states that ‘there was no way of knowing the objective truth’. He decides not to tell her his suspicions about her, but instead to listen. I remain disturbed, though, that he had these thoughts in the first place, since they reveal a victim-blaming mentality. He also refuses to acknowledge to her that evil was done to her. His view of her is saturated with disdain, and this makes me question his reporting of the case. The epidemic of sexual violence towards women is too pervasive for us to turn a blind eye to such attitudes, no matter how they may be couched, such as here in a lesson about listening and self-responsibility.
In chapter eleven, he suggests that children need to be given more freedom to take on risks and become more resilient. I’ve said this myself. It’s an often-stated critique of modern parenting. However, the chapter itself seems to be more about gender. This rule seems to be more what he thinks boys need, when I would argue it is good for both boys and girls. What follows is a very tendentious reading of history and statistics around gender. It overplays male struggles and sets up female struggles as a function of ignoring biology. In this, he ignores the vast literature on the oppression women continue to face. As Christians we need to break away from this type of argumentation. First of all, because it doesn’t serve truth well, and truth is a value we want to uphold. Secondly, because love calls us to recognise and alleviate the real pain and suffering in our world, whoever it affects and however it might unsettle our worldview.
In summary, there is some useful responsibility advice, but it is all stamped with an individualism that ignores systemic issues. Yes, this is Peterson’s point, that individual responsibility will produce better change. However, if this were the answer, Western society would be in a much better state than it is. This kind of advice has until recently characterised popular wisdom. Yet our troubles aren’t mere decades old. Moreover, Peterson has an underlying disrespect for women that will only cause more suffering. This leads to advice that, in my view, does not measure up to the teaching or model of Jesus. I do not think we should look to Peterson for an answer to the fears and desires I mentioned at the start of this article.
In this I agree with my friend Michael Jensen. Michael has a more positive view of Peterson than I, but he also offered this critique in an interview recently:
The thing I think Peterson misses out on is that actually Jesus Christ is the better story. He’s a better story for all human beings.
Exactly. So this is my plea to those of my Christian brothers and sisters who have found Peterson compelling. Please, instead, develop a Christian answer: one that centres on Jesus and overflows with grace.
Megan Powell du Toit is an ordained Baptist minister, Publishing Manager for the Australian College of Theology and editor of the academic journal Colloquium. She is currently writing a doctoral thesis on how we respond to tensions within evangelicalism.
[2] In biblical terms, the widows, orphans, slaves and foreigners.