12 Rules for Life: A Book I Wanted to Like -

By John Horvat II

Dr. Jordan Peterson delivering a lecture at the University of Toronto in 2017. Author: Jacob Adams

Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is a book I wanted to like. I wanted so much to favor someone who proposes rules in our times of unrestraint. I see so clearly the need for an antidote to chaos. The fact that his book is on the top of many bestseller lists only made my desire greater. My expectations were high. I wanted to like this book. But I didn’t.

I will admit that the book has valid advice. Some might consider the book engaging and folksy. People like stories that illustrate points and the book is full of them. There are abundant Christian references. I was impressed by some commonsensical observations about childrearing and discipline drawing from his experience as both a parent and psychologist. So many things he said seemed to make sense.

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And yet, he failed to convince me. I became uneasy about the many favorable references to Freud, Jung and Nietzsche. There was too much Heidegger and no Saint Thomas Aquinas. There were too many strange formulations about Being (with a capital B) and yin-yang dualism. It was hard to pin him down on how he stands on Christ, truth … or even God.

A Modern Thinker Against Postmodernism

It took a while to figure the book out. But then it clicked.

Dr. Peterson is a modern thinker. He lives in the swirling existential world of thought patterns, narratives and archetypes. He is quite open about this. The book is full of passages that show how life is explained by personal and collective experiences. Everything is about Being with a capital B—whatever that means. He sees life as a Taoist interplay of order and chaos. He defends a Freudian, Darwinian world made in their image and likeness where his rules seem to make sense.

These rules even seem attractive because the Canadian professor’s message is directed againstpostmodernism and “cultural Marxism,” which challenge both his existential world and our own. Thus, he speaks with great passion and even brilliance against a politically correct world gone mad.

For this reason, many have praised the tell-it-like-it-is Dr. Peterson as a forceful voice in defense of order and even conservatism.

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Part of the Process Not the Opposition

However, it is one thing to rage against the madness; it is quite another to change the world. And this is where the book falls seriously short.

We cannot return to a Freudian, Darwinian world to find rules for life. That world is part of the problem. Indeed, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung and Darwin (all favorably cited in 12 Rules for Life) are responsible for the more mystical side of our modernity. They banished the supernatural order from society and enthroned a naturalism that sought to explain all spiritual things based on experience and evolved thought patterns. The existential obsession with Being with a capital B and other such concepts sought to replace God and morals. Nietzsche’s famous declaration that God is dead also attempted to decree the death of dogmatic certainty.

Postmodernism is the next step in the process of the West’s intellectual and moral decay. Just as modernity undermined the Church’s supernatural order, so postmodernity denies the naturalistic positions defended by these modern thinkers. Hence, the politically correct denial of reality that Dr. Peterson attacks so well has its origins in much of the thinking he professes.

Bible Stories Fabricated by Our Collective Imagination

Thus, the rules are based on faulty and uninspiring premises that are depressingly post-Christian.

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We are told, for example, that our Biblical texts are not the inspired Word of God but merely allegorical narratives “coding our observations of our own drama” and embedded in shared stories.

Dr. Peterson continues: “The Biblical narrative of Paradise and the Fall is one such story, fabricated by our collective imagination, working over the centuries. It provides a profound account of the nature of Being, and points the way to a mode of conceptionalization and action well-matched to that nature.”

Indeed, even the notion of a personal God is part of a fiction. “Our ancestors acted out a drama, a fiction: they personified the force that governs fate as a spirit that can be bargained with, traded with, as if it were another human being. And the amazing thing is that it worked” (emphasis his).

Dr. Peterson’s abundant Christian references and citations are all made in this context, mixed with similar references to other religious “stories.” Religion is not about man’s relationship with God but it “is instead about proper behavior” (emphasis his).

Rules in Esoteric Trappings

Thus, the substrata of the 12 Rules for Life I tried to like is based on this existential framework of reality. The rules themselves are experience-based directives, not moral imperatives. We are asked to derive inspiration from rules like number one which says: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Rule 5 says: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. And what are we to make of Rule 11, which says: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding or rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street?

Even the advice found in these rules, which seems so practical, is enveloped in esoteric trappings. After telling his stories, Dr. Peterson inevitably enters into notions of Being with a capital B or other existential jargon highlighting the plight of the individual in an unfathomable universe without certainties. He invites us, for example, to have faith, which he calls an “irrational commitment to the essential goodness of Being.”

The bottom line is that “we must each adopt as much responsibility as possible” and thus “we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world.”

Such advice may feel good, but it is hardly an antidote to the chaos that is devouring the world.

A Missing Link with the One True God

Missing is the link to the one True God Who desires our salvation. This is the problem with the 12 Rules for Life book I tried to like. There is no link. We are on our own and can expect no help from beyond.

Our fallen nature is not a shared story but a tragic reality for which we need concrete and supernatural help from Heaven to help us fight the chaos that threatens to overwhelm us.

Dr. Peterson and those who rave over his rules seem oblivious to the means of sanctification and salvation that the Church extends to us for this purpose. The power of prayer is immense to those who confide in God. The sacramental life nourishes and strengthens us in our daily journey. The grace of God allows us to do that which mere nature cannot do. These are truly antidotes to chaos.

What is needed is not abstract Being with a capital B but a personal, infinite, eternal, and transcendent God with a capital G.

As seen on Crisis Magazine.

12 Rules for Life: A Book I Wanted to Like - by John Horvat

Why Are Young People Killing Young People?

By John Horvat II

In the marches, walkouts and debates over gun violence, young people claim to be victims. Some even say they are the only valid, even prophetic voice speaking out. However, one question goes unanswered: Why are young people killing other young people?

There is so much talk about the responsibility of bad politicians, National Rifle Association members and corrupt officials. However, none of these have ever killed young people.

Inside the youth culture, the mass murderers are mostly young men killing members of their own generation. There is something wrong inside a youth culture in which young people kill other young people.

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Responsible for Their Acts

As all people are endowed with free will, these young people alone are also responsible for their acts. No one forced them to kill other young people. It was their decision.


However, those responsible for the killings can be influenced by others. Aside from family, the most important influence upon young people are usually other young people.

Indeed, youth culture is known for its rejection of outside “grown-up” influences. The fire of youth exalts in its incredible energy and desire to be independent of the older adult world. Thus, there must be some factors inside today’s youth culture that help explain why young people are killing young people.

Factors that Influence These Acts

The youth culture in question is the dominant pop culture as promoted by media and lived by youth idols and stars. It is the product of successive generations that have succumbed to the sexual revolution model introduced during the sixties. It is not necessarily how all young people live, but it does exert much influence on their lives.

It manifests itself in how youth think and express themselves, how they dress and what fads and fashions they follow. It is found in the music they listen to and the media they frequent.

There are three factors of this present youth culture that can be cited as influencing the violence.

A Self-Centered Culture

The first is that this popular youth culture is extremely self-centered. Everything is thought to exist in function of the individual. Persons can, for example, self-identify as whatever they wish to be. Individuals determine the terms of their own existence, behavior and values.

This creates an artificial and insecure world marked by self-gratification. In this culture, young people want everything instantly, effortlessly and regardless of the consequences. They have no patience with anything that stands in the way. They are easily offended by any certainty or moral standard that “micro-aggresses” them.

With the advent of social media, this self-centeredness is represented by an enormous pressure upon young people to project a self-image beyond reality. Social success is measured in validating texts, self-absorbing posts and impulsive likes. The selfie has become an expression of self-projection.

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In such a climate, concern for others is diminished, and people can quickly become ostracized. Those who fail to live up to the image of their self-aggrandizement become depressed and resentful. With few moral restraints, it can give rise to situations when young people kill other young people.

A Dearth of Meaningful Relationships

The second factor in contemporary youth culture is a dearth of meaningful relationships. It is no secret that many youths come from homes broken by divorce. Others grow up lacking one parent. These essential family relationships are foundational for the development of a stable personality. The profile of the mass murderers almost always reveals the lack of a good father and other important role models.

Outside the family, this popular youth culture also tends toward superficial links. This is especially seen in the casual sexual relationships that are facilitated by certain linking up apps. Social media adds to the shallowness with its offer of friends and followers that add little to social life.

The instability of relationships is further reflected in a lack of community involvement that sociologists have noted among youth. They lack those community links that normally add an extra layer of stability to personal development. The troubled individuals involved in the killings are generally loners without significant integration in the community.

Despite an incredibly interconnected world, there are those feeling entirely isolated, tormented by apathy, boredom, and restlessness. Such a situation creates the lonely conditions for the appearance of young people that kill other young people.

Looking for Causes Beyond Self

Finally, a self-centered materialist culture is asphyxiating and shallow. It especially suppresses the spiritual desires of the youth that naturally looks for causes beyond self and ultimately toward God.

That is why successive generations of youth since the sixties have looked for increasingly abnormal outlets for their spiritual hunger: drugs, religious sects, and bizarre lifestyles that so destroy their lives. The present generation has taken this same impulse farther by embracing the occult. Some even enter the macabre world of Islamic radicalism—found among some young shooters.

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When spiritual desires are absent, it can also give rise to emptiness. Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa II-II, q. 35) calls this condition acedia, which he defines as the weariness for holy and spiritual things and a subsequent sadness of living. This tragic emptiness is often found among those young people killing other young people.

Return to Christian Order

The only way to fight today’s corrupted youth culture is to replace it with another culture. This other culture must be contrary to the present one. It must be powerful enough to inspire selflessness, embracing enough to engender community, lofty enough to arouse dedication. It must be a refreshing alternative to a sad and weary world.

This effort to find a culture does not involve a search but a return. Christian order had this inspiring effect upon decadent Rome and countless other barbarian cultures. It united peoples in charity and captured their imagination as they joined their hearts and mind to God. Nothing could have been more unlikely than this new culture in those morally devastated peoples. But if it happened once, it can happen again, even in these unlikely times when young people kill other young people.

Why Are Young People Killing Young People? -