Greetings from the edge,
Yesterday, I began a gentle critique of 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, picking apart a handful of ideas that sound solid on the surface but wobble when you lean on them.
Today, we’re heading back into the lobster pot to deal with the remaining six rules, and to see whether they hold up any better under a bit of scrutiny.
As the saying goes, “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” The trick, of course, is knowing which is which… and whether the rules in question deserve either.
Let’s finish this.
Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
This is one of those pieces of advice that sounds profound on first contact, but starts to sag a little when you put any weight on it.
“Meaning” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. For some people, their lived reality is that survival isn’t just meaningful, it’s the only option on the table. When you’re keeping the lights on and the rent paid, “expedient” stops being a moral compromise and starts being a necessity.
It’s very easy to talk about purpose from a position of relative comfort, when the sharks aren’t circling, and the bills aren’t multiplying like an apocalyptic virus.
Of course, in an ideal world, we’d all pursue meaningful lives. But in the real one, meaning often has to be built on a foundation of the practical. Someone has to keep the lights on while you go looking for it.
Sometimes, doing what’s expedient isn’t a failure of character. It’s what makes everything else possible.
Tell the truth – or at least don’t lie
In the immortal words of Lionel Hutz, “There’s the truth, and ‘the truth’.”
As a baseline, yes, don’t lie. Solid advice. But real life immediately complicates that neat little moral package. Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and every well-meaning white lie you’ve ever told would all like a quiet word.
And then there’s the social reality of it. If you tell your friend the full, unfiltered truth about their manuscript, that it has all the complexity of an episode of Thundercats, characters as deep as a teaspoon, and dialogue so wooden it feels like it was written by Pinocchio, you’re probably not getting a birthday card that year.
Life is messy. It’s a tangle of relationships, emotions, and consequences where diplomacy, safety, and, most importantly, kindness often require a bit of nuance.
Brutal honesty without empathy isn’t virtue. It’s cruelty wearing a very thin disguise.
Assume the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
Solid advice. No notes.
As a computer technician, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve turned up to a job with someone in full panic mode, only to fix the issue in five minutes. Does that make me smarter? Not remotely. Put me in front of a tax return, and I start to feel like one of those apes that sort of know sign language but aren’t entirely sure what they’re saying.
Everyone has their “thing.” Knowing more about one subject doesn’t magically grant you authority over all the others.
Which makes it slightly ironic that this is a rule so often forgotten in the very debates it inspires. Curiosity, and indeed basic courtesy, should be universal, not selectively applied.
Be precise in your speech
Allow me to be precise: go away, you’re wrong.
Now, allow me to be precise without being a jerk. Clarity is good. Clear thinking, clear communication, all of that. But the problem starts when the pursuit of precision derails the conversation itself.
We’ve all been there, trying to sketch out a thought or just have a casual chat, when someone drops the dreaded “well, actually…” and suddenly the whole thing turns into a cross-examination. I’ve heard it so often at the gaming table that it now carries a house rule penalty.
Not every conversation needs to be dissected like a hostile witness. Sometimes people are reaching for an idea, not presenting a thesis.
And sometimes, being hyper-precise doesn’t make you right, it just makes you exhausting. In the worst cases, it actively works against your own interests.
Clarity is a tool. Used badly, it becomes a weapon.
Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
Like so many of Jordan Peterson’s ideas, this starts as a charming metaphor and then gets stretched until it starts creaking.
Yes, kids need to take risks. They need to fall over, skin their knees, and learn where the edges are. That applies to everyone, not just boys with skateboards.
But there’s a difference between letting someone learn and standing by while they do something catastrophically stupid. You’re an adult. If a kid is about to skate into traffic, you don’t nod approvingly at their risk-taking; you stop them from turning themselves into pâté.
And once you step out of the metaphor, the same logic applies. Let your friends take risks, absolutely. But if their judgment is off, if you know something they don’t, or if the risk clearly outweighs the reward, then yes, you bother them. That’s not interference, that’s responsibility.
Let people take risks. Just don’t build a philosophy of life on the back of a kid landing a kickflip.
Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
The worst I can say about this one is that it’s banal. It boils down to appreciating small moments in an increasingly harsh and polarised world.
And honestly? That’s fine. It’s a lovely sentiment and, for once, genuinely good advice.
Just… make sure the cat agrees.
Throughout the twelve rules, we start to see that Jordan Peterson’s real trick isn’t the rules themselves. On the surface, most of them pass muster, the sort of faux-philosophical platitudes you’ll find in almost any self-help book.
But beneath that, they quietly funnel readers towards a set of assumptions that deserve far more scrutiny than they’re given:
- hierarchies as natural and inevitable
- suffering as something to endure rather than challenge
- social issues reframed as personal failings
That’s the pressure point. That’s where you push.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t clean your room or tell the truth. What I am saying is that self-help shouldn’t double as an ideology wearing a fake moustache and insisting it’s just here to help.
Question the rules. Especially the ones that seem too simple to argue with.
See you in the margins,
Leave a Reply