12 Rules for Life

## Basic Info

Author: Jordan Peterson

Published: 2018

* But the story of the golden calf also reminds us that without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions - and there's nothing freeing about that.
* When the aristocracy catches a cold, the working class dies of pneumonia.
* They let the males fight it out and peel their paramour from the top.
* "It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know for sure just ain't so. - Mark Twian
* In my kingdom you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. - Red Queen

### Chapter 2

* Most people would rather be mugged than audited.
* Chaos and order are two of the most fundamental elements of lived experience.
* Do you want to make your children safe or strong.
* If there is a rifle hanging on the wall in act one, it must be fired in the next act. - Anton Chekov
* Women have been making men self-conscious since the beginning of time.
* "This produced an evolutionary arms race between fetal head and female pelvis."

### Chapter 3

* Marijuana isn't bad for anyone any more than alcohol is bad for everyone.
* The delinquency spreads, not the civility.
* Before you help someone, you should find out why that person is in trouble.
* That's a problem for Future Homer. Man, I don't envy that guy.
* If you have a friend whose friendship you wouldn't recommend to your sister, or your father or your son, why would you have such a friend for yourself?
* Well, loyalty is not identical to stupidity, Loyalty must be negotiated, fairly and honestly.

### Chapter 4

* It was easier for people to be good at something when more of us lived in small, rural communities.
* More of Less - If you are one in a million but from New York, there are 20 of you.
* Who cares if you are prime ministers of Canada when someone else is president of the United States.
* The winners don't take all, but they take most, and the bottom is not a good place to be.
* Talking yourself into irrelevance is not a profound critique of Being. It's a cheap trick of the rational mind.
* How much can you sacrifice to your partner before generosity turns into resentment.
* Ask yourself: is there one thing that exists in disarray in your life or your situation that you could, and would, set straight?
* Making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility.
* We only see what we aim at.
* The Bible is, for better or worse, the foundational document of Western civilization.

### Chapter 5

* I cite Wikipedia because it is collectively written and edited and, therefore, the perfect place to find accepted wisdom.
* A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success.
* Proper discipline requires effort.
* Violence, after all, is no mystery. It's peace that is the mystery. Violence is the default. It's easy.
* Infants are like blind people, searching for a wall.
* Old age a treachery can always overcome youth and skill.
* No grudge after victory.
* Don't cast pearls before swine.
* We need to learn because we are stupid and easily damaged.
* We must be continually reminded to behave and think properly.
* Bad laws drive out respect for good laws.
* Watching people respond to children restores your faith in human nature.

## Principles

### Chapter 1

* Rules must be accompanied by context/stories in order for those being asked to abide by them to effectively accept them.
* Critical that one learns to establish dominance incurring too great a lose of themselves when attempting to do so.
* Women outsource determining their ideal mate to the male hierarchy system.
* Higher on the hierarchy = more serotonin
* Low rung on the hierarchy --> Less Serotonin --> More alert of surroundings and potential higher ranking males --> more stress --> more prone to jumping at any opportunity for short term pleasure (ie drugs, alcohol, unsafe sex)
* Habits and more uniform schedules --> Less complexity --> Less Stress --> Better life
* Work on sleep and breakfast first before anything when trying to self-improve
* Strong posture --> More serotonin
* Rule 1 Summaries;
	+ Back straight shoulders back
	+ Speak your mind
	+ Put your desires forward
	+ Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead
	+ Dare to be dangerous
* Rule 1 Results:
	+ Confidence
	+ Better social awareness
	+ Better conversations
	+ Other will better perceive you

### Chapter 2

* People take better care of their pets than themselves
* Chaos = Ignorance, Unexplored territory
* Order = Explored territory
* To live a truly balanced life, one must balance having their life have elements of both order and chaos. When you are both alert and engaged but also have the basic terror of existence under control.
* Men blaming women for their actions, and then eventually God is a pattern established in the Bible.
* Don't beat yourself up too much over your weaknesses and inadequacies. Also do not subject others to a similarly harsh judgement.
* Rule 2: Treat yourself as if you are somebody you are responsible for helping.

### Chapter 3

* People often associate with bad friends or people because they believe they can "rescue" them.
	+ People may also do this to make their own vices appear less severe compared to those with worst vices than there own.
* Only people who truly want to improve can actually be helped.
* Some people stay in relationships with miserable and self-destructive people because they feel they are helping. However, these people generally are only providing shallow help that is not really addressing the deep and real issues at hand.
* Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for you.

### Chapter 4

* Don't expect to be the best at all your pursuits.
* The unconstructive internal critic in everyone's mind tends to focus on comparison in only one domain and not in a composite manner.
* Standards are necessary.
* When we leave our home as a child for school and hanging our with friends, we learn to become more like everyone else and then as we mature we must find a balance between being unique and conforming.
* We are continually in a state of discomfort or dissatisfaction because we are constantly comparing the present with an ideal future we are seeking to bring to pass.
* It's important for us to "negotiate" with ourselves when seeking to become better. We must reward ourselves for small improvements and accomplishments.
* Aim small when setting goals and seeking to improve. If you attempt to shoulder yourself with too many goals and expectations at first you will quickly become discouraged.
* Building yourself up one small goal and improvement at a time, day by day, will yield compound returns.
* Vision is psychophisiologically expensive, we can only focus on so much at any point while the majority of our vision is "low res"

### Chapter 5

* The preferences for males in parts of the world like China and India may be because males have a much greater potential for passing along their genes compared to females.
* Rosseau was largely incorrect in his "noble savage" ideology has hunter gatherers are much more prone to murder than individuals in civilized societies.
* Society does not corrupt children as much as many would leave you to believe. Their early upbringing largely determines their mental and social health.
* Lacking healthy interaction or guidance from parents can greatly damage a child's development. Parent's fear being disliked by their children too much so they don't chastise or instruct them as much as they should.
* For children anger is the most common reason by far for crying
* Rewarding proper behavior effectively means finding a good balance between a reward that is not too small to be inconsequential but at the same time not too large so that future rewards are devalued. One must also be observant like a hawk, watching those they seek to change or teach for any sign of proper behavior and then rewarding immediately.
* Humans are generally speaking very loss adverse
* Principles of Discipline:
	+ First: Limit the Rules
	+ Second: Use the least force necessary to enforce those rules
	+ Third: Parents should come in pairs
	+ Fourth: Parents should understand their own capacity to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry and deceitful.
	+ Fifth: Parents have a duty to act as proxies for the real world.
* Parents who fail to immediately discipline children will punish them eventually with their long-term resentment that they are largely unaware of building up or even exhibiting.
* Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

## Fun Facts and Info

* Lobster brains have large and very easy to observe neurons
* Lobsters can shoot jets of water laced with chemicals from their eyes. These chemicals indicate a lobster's size and overall health and can help intimidate other lobsters and prevent a mutually detrimental fight from breaking out.
* Female lobsters shed their shells before mating
* Lobsters are 350 million years old
* Dialysis must be done 5-7 times a week, for 8 hours at a time
* Following an organ transplant anti-rejection medication is prescribed which weakens the immune system
* Women on dating sites rate 85% of men as below average in attractiveness
* About 2/3 of any person's ancestors are female
* Star of David:
	+ Upward pointing triangle = Male
	+ Downward pointing triangle = Female
* Yin and Yang Symbol: The correct Taoist path is the line dividing the two serpents
* Creation story of the bible is a fusion of two creation stories. The first is the priestly version of Genesis 1 and the second is the Jahwsit story of Genesis 2 to 11.
* The deeply rooted and natural fear that humans have of snakes is likely genetic, as snakes were very common in the cradle of humanity in East Africa.
* Snake Detection Theory - the belief that dangerous snakes cause humans to evolve better eyesight to detect them. Humans who could not detect them got killed and so the remarkable vision human's possess is in part thanks to snakes.
* Aprons = loincloths in almost every version of the bible save the King James Version.
* Human babies are so helpless because the larger human brain requires a larger head, which requires a much earlier birth to prevent the mother from always dying in childbirth.
* Humans perhaps are much more willing to care for a dog because it is largely unselfconscious and thus innocent. There is no reason to resent or judge them.
* Fairview, Alberta is the hometown of Jordan Peterson
* Arctic foxes developed short ears and tails to limit exposure to frostbite.
* People from small towns are largely over-represented among the wealthy and successful.
* The word "sin" means to miss the mark
	+ This is what the Hebrew word used for sin means in the Old Testament
* Daniel Simmons - Creator of the "Gorilla" vide that demonstrated how a singular focus can cause normal people to miss very obvious changes in their surroundings.
* An overarching concept of the Hindu Vedas is that the world is an illusion, that our personal desires blind us to many truths. Each person perceives the world very differently.
* 8% of all men in Central Asia are direct descendants of Genghis Khan.
* Rosseau abandoned five of his children at orphanages
* Jane Goodall hid her observations that chimps kill one another secret for some time
* Unit 731 - Japanese biological and chemical warfare and research unit that committed horrific experiments and developed weapons used by the Japanese on the Chinese. It has been estimated that the unit killed up to half a million people. Many members were give immunity by the US government when captured in exchange for data collected, much like Nazi scientist.
* Murder rates
	+ UK - 1/100000
	+ USA - 4/100000
	+ Honduras - 90/100000
* Project Pigeon - Attempt during WWII to have missiles guided by conditioned pigeons. The program was headed by B. F. Skinner.
* Sleeping Beauty Symbolism:
	+ Spinning Wheel - Wheel of Fate
	+ Prick and the blood it produces - Loss of virginity
	+ Overall the story symbolizes the transition from child to woman
* Adultism - idea that adults are favored over children, that young people are discriminated against
* Occam's Razor - the simplest explanation is likely the most correct

## New Words and Terms

* Idealogue - One who is smitten with fanciful ideas; an idealist
* Price's Law - 50% of work at a company, money made, books published, etc., is done by a small fraction of people.
	+ Also known as Matthew's Law: For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. — Matthew 25:29
* nouveau riche - the new rich. Derogatory term for those who acquired their own wealth and did not inherit it.
* fitness (biological) - the chance that an organism will successfully reproduce\
* Elephantiasis - Disease that damages lymph nodes and enlarges and even hardens parts of the body. If a parasite that is spread by mosquitos.
* Guinea Worm - parasitic worm that infect humans (generally in Africa) through contaminated drinking water.
* Edenic - like Eden
* Agoraphobia - a fear of open-spaces, very public areas, and just generally of being put into a stressful situation and not being able to escape
* Dominance Counter - coined by Jordan Peterson it is the part of your brain that determines one's position in the social hierarchy.
* Axiom - a statement that one holds to be unequivocally true
	+ Example - "People never change"
* Troupe - group of monkeys; group of performers
* Goose-step - military march where the legs are kicked up very high
* Proclivity - tendency
* Androgyny - to exhibit both male and female qualities
* Quotidian - everyday; ordinary
* Repition Compulsion - an unconscious need to reenact early traumas. Coined by Freud.
* Idiosyncratic - being peculiar or individual
* recalcitrant - having an uncooperative attitude towards authority, leadership, etc.
* quotidian - ordinary or everyday