“Like 12 Rules for Life, the current volume provides an explication of rules drawn from a longer list of 42, originally published and popularized in the Q and A website Quora. Unlike my previous book, Beyond Order explores as its overarching theme how the dangers of too much security and control might be profitably avoided. Because what we understand is insufficient (as we discover when things we are striving to control nonetheless go wrong around us), we need to keep one foot within order while stretching the other tentatively into the beyond. And so we are driven to explore and find the deepest of meanings in standing on the frontier, secure enough to keep our fear under control but learning, constantly learning, as we face what we have not yet made peace with or adapted to. It is this instinct of meaning—something far deeper than mere thought—that orients us properly in life, so that we do not become overwhelmed by what is beyond us, or equally dangerously, stultified and stunted by dated, too narrow, or too pridefully paraded systems of value and belief.”
~ Jordan B. Peterson from Beyond Order
Jordan B. Peterson.
He spent a couple decades as a clinical psychologist and a professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto before publishing his first book 12 Rules for Life (check out those Notes), which has sold more than five million copies worldwide.
He’s reached millions of people via his YouTube channel and podcasts and his 1999 book Maps of Meaning revolutionized the psychology of religion. The New York Times described him as “The most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now” while David Brooks, author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain, tells us: “The Peterson way is a harsh way, but it is an idealistic way.”
This is the second Note we’ve created on one of Peterson’s books. We started with 12 Rules for Life. I loved that book and read this one when it came out a few years ago. I loved it as well. It’s another extraordinarily powerful book. (Get a copy here.)
Note1: Yes, I know Peterson is polarizing and controversial. And... The wisdom in this book is profound.
Note2: As I read this book, I thought of Yuval Noah Harari—another one of my favorite writers. Both Harari and Peterson have a penetrating, logical coherence to their writing and they both address very important themes in an iconoclastic style. (Check out our Notes on Harari’s Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century for more of his perspective.)
As you’d expect, the book is PACKED (!) with Big Ideas and we’re barely going to scratch the surface of its wisdom. I’m excited to share a handful of my favorites so let’s jump straight in.
We’ll start with a little Q and A from Professor Peterson and map out the 12 Rules.
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