Finding Meaning in Life: A Review of Jordan B. Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life”

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis
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12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos started as a stack of answers to a question posted on Quora: “What are the most valuable things everyone should know?” Jordan B. Peterson, then a psychology professor in Toronto, replied with a list of 42 rules. The book that grew out of it carried a working title, 42, and an ambition to include every one of them. What reached shelves in January 2018 kept twelve, a subtitle about chaos, and a readership well beyond the academic one Peterson had built (Wikipedia).

This review covers where the book came from, what its twelve rules actually say, how critics split over it, and who will get something out of reading it today.

The Author and the Making of the Book

Peterson was born on 12 June 1962 in Edmonton, Alberta. He took two bachelor’s degrees at the University of Alberta, one in political science and one in psychology, then earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at McGill University in 1991. He taught at Harvard from 1993 to 1998 before moving to the University of Toronto, where he stayed until he retired in late 2021 and became professor emeritus (Wikipedia).

His public profile came from video, not from print. He published his first book, Maps of Meaning, in 1999 and opened a YouTube channel in 2013. In September 2016 he posted videos opposing Canada’s Bill C-16, which added gender identity and expression to the country’s human rights and hate speech protections, and the argument that followed turned a university lecturer into a national name. Legal scholars disputed his reading of the bill, and it became law in 2017. By the time the book appeared, a large audience was waiting for it.

The publication record is straightforward. Penguin’s Allen Lane imprint released the book in the United Kingdom on 16 January 2018, and Random House Canada followed on 23 January. The hardcover runs 448 pages. Norman Doidge, a Canadian psychiatrist, wrote the foreword, Ethan Van Sciver supplied the illustrations, and Peterson recorded the audiobook himself. As of September 2018 the book was slated for translation into 45 languages, and by May 2023 it had sold more than ten million copies worldwide (Wikipedia).

One oddity from the American launch is worth recording. The book topped the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Publishers Weekly lists but did not appear on The New York Times bestseller list. According to a report by the Toronto Star‘s books editor, the Times said it was not counted because a Canadian company had published it. Random House Canada said the book had been handled properly for the US market.

The Twelve Rules

Each chapter is built around a single instruction, and the instructions run from posture to pets. The chapter titles, as listed on Wikipedia:

  1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
  2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.
  3. Make friends with people who want the best for you.
  4. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
  5. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
  6. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
  7. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).
  8. Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie.
  9. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.
  10. Be precise in your speech.
  11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.
  12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
Empty lecture hall with wooden seats facing a chalkboard of handwritten diagrams in late-afternoon light

Lobsters, Scripture and Responsibility

Rule 1 sets the method. Peterson opens with lobsters, which signal and read dominance so that they can share scarce territory without fighting every encounter, and he ties the behavior to serotonin, the chemical he treats as the internal gauge of status. If a creature’s brain tracks how others treat it and adjusts its mood to match, the argument runs, then a human who stands tall and holds the shoulders back can start a better cycle. A summary at Shortform notes the limits of that evidence: it comes from animal studies, and it is unclear whether low status produces low serotonin or the other way round.

From there the chapters mix three kinds of material. Clinical anecdotes and psychology supply one strand. Mythology and the Bible supply another, and a reviewer such as Matthew Hosier, a pastor writing for Think Theology, credited the book with taking scripture seriously for readers who would never open it otherwise. Personal exhortation supplies the third. The result reads less like a research monograph than like a long, argumentative sermon addressed to the person who is tempted to blame everyone else.

The thread that holds the rules together is responsibility. Rule 2 asks the reader to treat the self as a person worth caring for. Rule 6 asks for order at home before criticism of the wider world. Rule 4 swaps comparison with others for comparison with a previous self. Each moves the burden of change from circumstances to the individual, which explains both the book’s appeal and most of the objections to it.

“The Peterson way is a harsh way, but it is an idealistic way.”

— David Brooks, The New York Times (as quoted on Wikipedia)

Peterson himself framed the book as a task he had set himself as much as his readers. He has said it “isn’t only written for other people. It’s a warning to me.”

Where the Book Divides Readers

Reviews were mixed from the start, and the disagreements tend to follow one line: whether the rules are wisdom or common sense dressed up in heavy language. Julian Baggini of the Financial Times granted that the rules amount to “timeless good sense,” then argued that the chapters surrounding them add more padding than substance. Kelefa Sanneh, in The New Yorker, found much of the advice unobjectionable if old-fashioned, and reserved his doubts for the empirical claims.

Harsher critics went after the foundations. Pankaj Mishra, writing in the New York Review of Books, described the book as a repackaging of pieties and discredited Jungian ideas, and faulted it for ignoring how traditionalism can serve demagogues. The philosopher Paul Thagard said Peterson’s views do not hold up under philosophical scrutiny. John Grohol of PsychCentral judged the advice sound in places but resting on anecdote and religious conviction in preference to data.

Defenders were just as specific. David French of National Review called the book a “beacon of light,” and Glenn Ellmers argued in the Claremont Review of Books that duty can be liberating and responsibility a gift. Bishop Robert Barron valued it as a mentor for young men while rejecting its psychological reading of religion. Richard Blackaby, reviewing it on his own site, landed on the recommending side (see Further Reading below). (Most of the reviewers named above are summarized from the reception section of the Wikipedia article; the originals were not each re-read for this post.)

The sharpest dispute outside the reviews concerned tone. Peterson answered one critic on Twitter with a remark about slapping him, and in September 2018 he threatened a defamation suit against the philosopher Kate Manne over comments she made in an interview. Neither episode bears on the book’s text, but both shaped how it was received.

Live lobster on dark wet rocks at the waterline with claws raised

A Book That Kept Selling

The first sales were quick. The audiobook reached the top of Audible Canada’s chart, and the print edition sat at number one on the Sunday Times hardcover list for five weeks in the spring of 2018. The author toured 45 cities that year, with more than 100,000 attendees by June. Alongside the tour, an interview on Britain’s Channel 4 News spread widely online: the video has since drawn tens of millions of views on YouTube.

Peterson published a sequel, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, on 2 March 2021. Its rules include “Abandon ideology” and “Be grateful in spite of your suffering,” and reviewers split over it much as they had over the first book. A Times critic said its ideas “look bloated and dead when strapped to the page,” while a Telegraph review gave it four stars out of five.

Since then Peterson has joined The Daily Wire, co-founded the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, and launched Peterson Academy. A 2020 medical crisis took him to Moscow for treatment, and the current Wikipedia biography reports that he has been out of public life since June 2025 owing to illness. That biography is the only source consulted for the recent period, so readers wanting an update should check a primary news outlet.

Watch: Peterson on the Rubin Report

For a direct look at how Peterson presented the book before its release, this interview with Dave Rubin, titled “12 Rules for Life – An Antidote to Chaos & Live Q&A,” is cited in the Wikipedia article as a November 2017 conversation:

Frequently Asked Questions

What is 12 Rules for Life about?
It is a self-help book organized around twelve instructions, such as standing up straight and telling the truth. The argument is that taking responsibility for oneself is the most reliable defense against disorder, in a life and in a society.

When was it published?
Allen Lane released it in the UK on 16 January 2018, and Random House Canada followed on 23 January 2018.

How well did it sell?
Wikipedia reports more than ten million copies worldwide as of May 2023, with bestseller placings in Canada, the US and the UK.

Is there a sequel?
Yes. Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life came out on 2 March 2021.

Is the science in the book reliable?
That depends on the chapter. The lobster and serotonin argument in Rule 1 relies on animal studies whose bearing on human posture is contested, and several critics, including Grohol and Thagard, argue the book leans on anecdote and religious framing more than on data.

Who is it for?
Readers who enjoy a moral argument made in blunt terms, and who are willing to disagree with it chapter by chapter. Readers who want a data-driven psychology text will probably be better served elsewhere.

Two armchairs facing each other across a small round table with an open book in a quiet library

Where to Read It

Further Reading

Richard Blackaby, on his own site, reviewed the book in February 2019 and concluded: “This book is worth reading.”

Matthew Hosier of Poole, England, wrote an assessment for Think Theology in January 2018 that gave the book credit for taking human nature seriously. His verdict: “He is kicking down doors we should be unafraid to walk through.”

Uri Harris on Quillette examined the Channel 4 interview, arguing that the interviewer treated a conversation as a debate to be won.

Sources

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