Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

Whereas Peterson’s previous book, 12 Rules For Life, focused squarely on how to impose order upon the chaos of life, Beyond Order takes a more nuanced attitude to the relationship between the two forces. Peterson (implicitly following philosophers like Plato) draws an explicit parallel between order within an individual and order in society. 

As he states in the first full chapter:

discipline—subordination to the status quo, in one form or another—needs to be understood as a necessary precursor to creative transformation, rather than its enemy. Thus, just as a hierarchy of assumptions that make up the structure that organizes society and individual perceptions is shaped by, and integrally dependent on, restrictions, so too is creative transformation. It must strain against limits. It has no use and cannot be called forth unless it is struggling against something (35). 

The balance is not quite an equal one—as Peterson states in the previous passage, order is a “precursor” and must be present in some form for true creative transformation to happen. The God of the Hebrew Bible uses the logical device of “truthful speech” (259)—narrating the world into ordered existence from the formless mass it had been, and Isis, the goddess of the underworld, requires the severed phallus of Osiris in order to remake the world from the wreckage of Set.