Rule #5: Don’t let your children do anything that makes you dislike them, was mainly focused on controlling a future chaos for your children, with some ‘real-time’ benefits for your own well-being. Rule #6 – Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world, is back firmly in the here and now, with Dr. Peterson as philosophical psychiatrist at his finest. So far, this is my favorite chapter. It is philosphical, while still maintaining a focus on ‘what can this do for me now’. As always, very well written but for the first time it is also well-focused. There is a problem statement, background, current (mistaken) approach, and a solution that is focused on the individual. I can’t say I agree with EVERYTHING in this… but that is good! If I wanted to agree with everything in a book I would read it myself! So lets get started!
Thesis:
Ecclesiastes 12:13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
Summary:
Dr. Peterson quotes Leo Tolstoy, and there isn’t a better summary of the Problem Statement: My position was terrible. I knew that I could find nothing in the way of rational knowledge except a denial of life: and in faith I could find nothing except a denial of reason, and this was even more impossible than a denial of life. According to rational knowledge, it followed that life is evil, and people know it. They do not have to live, yet they have lived and they do live, just as I myself had lived, even though I had known for a long time that life is meaningless and evil.
Solution?: Start to stop doing what you know is wrong.
My reaction:
I loved this chapter! The good Doctor tackles mankind’s deepest mystery – why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? What is the meaning of all this pain and suffering? He, correctly, correlates mankind’s universal struggle with this question to the existential nihilism that is destroying Western Society today – and brutally uses the mass shootings that have become so commonplace as direct evidence of our failure to wrap our heads around this. Though to be fair, mankind has struggled and failed to come to peace with this problem for all of recorded history:
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
King Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, tried to tackle this problem. He did not fail – but the solution he agonized to was, and is, simple. And the same solution Dr. Peterson comes to. Yes, life is hard and painful, yes – as the Buddhist claims – life is suffering. And that, perhaps, is man’s greatest purpose: to fight against that suffering, that pain, that vanity. No, you can’t take on the burden of the world – but you can start with what you do have. Yourself, your family, your friends, neighbors…enemies (!?). Begin now, even if success seems impossible. Start now. And Dr. Peterson does not direct you to any Bible or specific philosophy to determine WHAT you should start on! I fully agree – you start with what is in front of you. What can you start to make a little bit better – right now. A little less chaos. Maybe even that is too much. Maybe… getting the dishes washed will suffice. A little less clutter and filth. Then, play with your kid instead of scrolling on your phone (yes I know ironic…you are reading this and I am typing this). DO SOMETHING that moves the needle away from oblivion and one tiny step towards heaven. Then do it again tomorrow, and again tomorrow. There is meaning – fighting the Nothing. Will you lose? Sure. Entropy will take it all away from you someday – but your progress, however small, will be handed to the next generation to continue. If we all did this, instead of being amazed at how easily we destroy ourselves…dismayed at how we have created our own Hell on earth (what is the point of denying God’s Hell when we have bypassed God and made our own?) we can mirror God’s heaven here on earth – if only…
—-Rule #7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient) —->
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