Announcement: BEYOND ORDER: 12 More Rules for Life

Hi, I'd like to announce my new book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, which I've been working on diligently for the past three years. As of today, the book is available for pre-order in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. I've linked to some major retailers, including international links for Amazon, in the video's description below. I've also included a link to the Beyond Order page on my website jordanbpeterson.com, where links to book retailers in different countries will be posted as they become available.

Beyond Order will also be published as an ebook and as an audiobook, which I have nearly finished recording. All formats will be released on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021. I want to provide you with a sense of the book in addition to announcing its existence, so I thought I would read you a section from the overture, the introduction, which describes the book's contents in some detail.

Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life—Why Beyond Order? It is simple. In some regard, order is explored territory. We are in order when the actions we deem appropriate produce the results we aim at. We regard such outcomes positively, indicating, as they do, first that we have moved closer to what we desire, and second that our theory about how the world works remains acceptably accurate.

Nonetheless, all states of order, no matter how secure and comfortable, have their flaws. Our knowledge of how to act in the world remains eternally incomplete, partly because of our profound ignorance of the vast unknown, partly because of our willful blindness, and partly because the world continues, in its entropic manner, to transform itself unexpectedly.

Furthermore, the order we strive to impose on the world can rigidify as a consequence of ill-advised attempts to eradicate from consideration all that is unknown. When such attempts go too far, totalitarianism threatens, driven by the desire to exercise full control where such control is not possible, even in principle.

This means risking a dangerous restriction of all the psychological and social changes necessary to maintain adaptation to the ever-changing world. And so, we find ourselves inescapably faced with a need to move beyond order into its opposite, chaos. If order is where what we want makes itself known when we act in accordance with our hard-won wisdom, chaos is where what we do not expect or ever remain blind to leaps forward from the potential that surrounds us.

The fact that something has occurred many times in the past is no guarantee that it will continue to occur in the same manner. There exists eternally a domain beyond what we know and can predict. Chaos is anomaly, novelty, unpredictability, transformation, disruption, and, all too often, dissent, as what we have come to take for granted reveals itself as unreliable.

Sometimes it manifests itself gently, revealing its mysteries in experiences that make us curious, compelled, and interested. This is particularly likely—although not inevitable—when we approach what we do not understand voluntarily, with careful preparation and discipline. Other times, the unexpected makes itself known terribly, suddenly, accidentally.

So, we are undone and fall apart, and can only put ourselves back together with great difficulty, if at all. Neither the state of order nor the state of chaos is preferable intrinsically to the other; that is the wrong way to look at it. Nonetheless, in my previous book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, I focused more on how the consequences of too much chaos might be remediated.

We respond to sudden and unpredictable change by preparing physiologically and psychologically for the worst, and because only God himself knows what this worst might be, we must, in our ignorance, prepare for all eventualities. And the problem with that continual preparation is that, in excess, it exhausts us. But that does not imply in any manner that chaos should be eliminated—an impossibility in any case—although what is unknown needs to be managed carefully.

As my previous book repeatedly stressed, whatever is not touched by the new stagnates, and it is certainly the case that a life without curiosity—that instinct pushing us out into the unknown—would be a much diminished form of existence. What is new is also what is exciting, compelling, and provocative, assuming that the rate at which it is introduced does not intolerably undermine and destabilize our state of being.

Like 12 Rules for Life, the current volume provides an explication of rules drawn from a longer list of 42 originally published and popularized on the Q&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, 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 instinctive 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.

What have I written about more specifically? Rule one describes the relationship between stable, predictable social structures and individual psychological health, and makes the case that such structures need to be updated by creative people if they are to retain their vitality. Rule two analyzes a centuries-old alchemical image, relying on several stories—ancient and modern—to illuminate the nature and development of the integrated human personality.

Rule three warns of the dangers of avoiding the information vital to the continued rejuvenation of the psyche, signaled by the emergence of negative emotions such as pain, anxiety, and fear. Rule four argues that the meaning that sustains people through difficult times is to be found not so much in happiness, which is fleeting, but in the voluntary adoption of mature responsibility for the self and others.

Rule five uses a single example drawn from my experience as a clinical psychologist to illustrate the personal and social necessity of attending to the dictates of conscience. Rule six describes the danger of attributing the cause of complex individual and social problems to single variables such as sex, class, or power. Rule seven outlines the crucial relationship between discipline, striving in a single direction, and forging of the individual character capable of resilience in the face of adversity.

Rule eight focuses on the vital importance of aesthetic experience as a guide to what is true, good, and sustaining in the human world of experience. Rule nine makes the case that past experiences whose current recall remains laden with pain and fear can be stripped of their horror by voluntary verbal exploration and reconsideration.

Rule ten notes the importance of explicit negotiation to the maintenance of the goodwill, mutual regard, and heartfelt cooperation without which no true romance can be sustained. Rule eleven opens by describing the world of human experience in a manner that explains what motivates three common but direly dangerous patterns of psychological response, delineates the catastrophic consequences of falling prey to any or all of them, and lays out an alternative route.

Rule twelve finally makes the case that thankfulness in the face of the inevitable tragedies of life should be regarded as a primary manifestation of the admirable moral courage required to continue our difficult march uphill. I hope that I am somewhat wiser in my explication of this second set of 12 rules than I was four years ago when I wrote about the first dozen, not least because of the informative feedback I received in the course of my efforts to formulate my ideas for audiences around the world—in person, on YouTube, and through my podcast and blog.

I hope, in consequence, that I have managed to clarify some of the issues that were perhaps left less than optimally developed in my previous work, as well as presenting much that is original. Finally, I hope that people find this book as helpful personally as they seem to have found the first set of twelve rules.

It has been a source of immense gratification that so many people have reported drawing strength from the thoughts and the stories I have had the privilege of bringing forth and sharing. That was the second half of the overture from Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. Once again, the book in all its forms will be published March 2nd, 2021. Links for pre-sale are posted in the description below.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your interest in and support of my work.