12 Rules for Life - Jordan B Peterson

Question 1

Rule 1 - Stand up straight with your shoulders back

Answer 1

stand up - stand up for yourself

with your shoulders back - posture of a winner

• Studying the neurocircuitry of lobsters has helped understand human brains
• Dominance hierarchies exists, consider Pareto distribution

The neurochemistry of defeat and victory

• Brain chemistry of defeated lobsters differs from victorious lobsters and is reflected in posture - based on two chemicals that modulate communication between lobster neurons Serotonin and octopamine
• Winning incr serotnonin and decr octopamine
• Drugs prescribed to human beings such as Prozac – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor – have much of the same effect
• Prozac cheers up lobsters

The principle of unequal distribution

• Top 1% of humans have as much money as the bottom 50%, richest 85 people have as much as the bottom 3.5 billion
• Not just financial – most scientific publications are done by top scientists
• Handful of authors sell all the books
• 4 composers wrote almost all the music played by modern orchestras

Pareto distribution/ price’s Law

All the girls

Based on dominance hierarchy

The nature of nature

• Nature is dynamic not static
• Taoist belief of Tao
• Yin and yang – order and chaos
• Low serotonin means low confidence

Top and Bottom

• Top of society – access to highest quality foods, areas to live, homes, partners
• Lowest of society – poor houses ( if any), low quality food, only access to partners is those as desperate, poor immune system as energy wasted on stress response chronically

Malfunctions

• Children need stable consistent routines
• So do adults
• Clinical clients – look at sleeping routine – do they wake up at the same time every day – first thing to fix
• Eat protein and fat rich breakfast
• Chronically anxious/depressed people are prone to hypersecrete insulin making them hypoglycaemic and psychophysiologically unstable

Question 2

Treat yourself like somone you are responsible for helping

Answer 2

Why won’t you just take your damn pills?

• Poor compliance and adherence of patients
• People take care of their pets more than themselves

The oldest story and the nature of the world

The domain, not of matterm but of what matters

Chaos and order: personality, female and male

The garden of Eden

• it is far better to render beings in your care competent than to protect them

question to parents - do you want to make your children safe or strong?

• women make men self conscious

origin of conscious/selfconsciousness in the Garden of Eden

The naked ape

continuation of the root of self consciousness Adam and Eve - the reason we don’t look after ourselves as much as we do people we care about

Good and evil

Humans nature to be maleolent - another reason we don’t take care of ourselves and others (? cynnicism)

A spark of the divine

Question 3

Rule 2 - Make friends with people who want the best for you

Answer 3

People chose friends who aren’t good for them because sometimes they want to rescue someone- not everyone who is falling is a victim, and not everyone who is at the bottom wishes to rise

A reciprocal arrangement

If you have a friendship you wouldn’t recommend to your sister, or your father, or your son, why would you have a friend for yourself?

Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement

You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place

You should choose poeple who want to make things better, not worse.

It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing to choose people who are good for you

associate with people whose lives would improve if they saw yours improve