24/26 (19?) Rules for Life - a skim

12 Rules

1. “Stand up straight with your shoulders back."

   1. This is an hubristic stance, the parade rest alluded to here. Showy, exposed. Not humble. Not a problem per se but a weird one out of the gate. Why pretend it from the outside instead of emanate it from within? Exercise and stop eating garbage until the natural urge to do this kicks in, if that’s what you’re after.

2. "Treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping."

   1. How do I treat people I’m responsible for? I find that I respond best on average to objectification personally. Is that good? Would anyone else accept that from me, even if it was good for them?

3. "Make friends with people who want the best for you."

   1. How are people defining friends these days? How low has the bar sunk that you would call a jealous non-advocate a friend?

4. "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today."

   1. Guarantees consistent relapse as you regress to the mean, even as that mean improves. Myopic, non-exploratory. Alternative: talk. Risk being less than someone else sometimes.

5. "Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them."

   1. Full agreement.

6. "Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world."

   1. This one is both a little too tongue-in-cheek to be a rule rather than an object lesson, and that it shows some rather stark hypocrisy on Peterson’s part. That said, understood to be allegory rather than code: I agree.

7. "Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)."

   1. WORDY and weakly worded at that. Pursue meaning, reject expedience.

8. "Tell the truth — or, at least, don’t lie."

   1. Again with the weak wording! “Sound Axiom — undermining sub-axiom”. This is one of those rules that people obsess over the exceptions, as if the principle is false just because you occasionally can’t follow it. Peterson buckles to this pressure halfway through his pithy formulation of it. Coward.

9. "Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t."

   1. Important corollary: stop listening to people who demonstrate they don’t know something you don’t.

10. "Be precise in your speech."

    1. Full agreement, but again: wordy (aka imprecise). Speak with precision.

11. "Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding."

    1. What if I hate skateboarding? Are these rules ordinally ranked? Does 5 outweigh 11?

12. "Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street."

    1. There is an asshole cat that lives around my property, frequently on the street. Fuck that cat. No pets.

12 More Rules

1. "Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement."

   1. Sloppy extension of set 1 rule 6 (re: house in order). I doubt JBP would want anyone to do anything carelessly, so that qualification suggests a weak rule.

2. "Imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that."

   1. Every murder-suicide is a perfect realization of this rule, also remarkably myopic (again) for someone sure people don’t innately understand what they want. Going to personally recommend imagining a couple people you could be and giving each of them a shot.

3. "Do not hide unwanted things in the fog."

   1. All at once? How quickly does this fog need to lift? As a strange person I don’t personally have to grapple with this much, but I hope the book outlines some disclosure strategies.

4. "Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated."

   1. Bullshit passive tense to spin this idea into a rule, and a numbingly prosaic one at that. Where no one is in charge, you can be in charge. Or can you? Perhaps consider how that power came to be abandoned first?

5. "Do not do what you hate."

   1. Reasonable, but also what you will do naturally. If you actually hate something, you won’t do it: the emotions have a pretty solid handle on this kind of thing. Might I submit you instead focus on determining exactly what you hate, so your mind does less shadowboxing in the process?

6. "Abandon ideology."

   1. n. - a system of ideas and ideals, such as those found in a self-help book full of rules.

7. "Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens."

   1. This is rule 2 with an ending.

8. "Try to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible."

   1. This one I actually like a lot (“try to” notwithstanding). It sounds like a fun exercise. Not really a rule, though. This isn’t “12 Cool Things To Do For Life”.

9. "If old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely."

   1. Practical self-therapeutic. Not a rule.

10. "Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship."

    1. I did this before and, granted it was as a third wheel, but the reward was short-lived. Do I regret it? No, regret is for babies. Reasonable rule.

11. "Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant."

    1. Three rules in one, which is cheating (aka deceitful behavior).

12. "Be grateful in spite of your suffering."

    1. Copies one of the rule 11 sub-rules.

Giving this list a C-. Might use my powers as a generally successful and satisfied individual to make my own jumble of good-sounding stuff people should do. That’s what the folks want. Deserve even!