Foreword
Honoré de Balzac, the novelist, once described the balls and parties in his native France, observing that what appeared to be a single party was always really two. In the first two hours, the gathering was suffused with bored people posing and posturing, and attendees who came to meet perhaps one special person who would confirm them in their beauty and status. Then, only in the very late hours, after most of the guests had left, would the second party, the real party begin. Here the conversation was shared by each person present, and open-hearted laughter replaced the starchy airs
His thinking was motoric; it seemed he needed to think aloud, to use his motor cortex to think, but that motor also had to run fast to work properly
My grandfather, her husband, survived the Mauthausen concentration camp, but choked to death on the first piece of solid food he was given just before liberation day
They sign up for a humanities course, to study greatest books ever written. But they're not assigned the books; instead they are given ideological attacks on them, based on some appalling simplification. Where the relativist is filled with uncertainty, the ideologue is the very opposite. He or she is hyper-judgmental and censorious, always knows what's wrong about others, and what to do about it
Moreover, by implying that values had a lesser reality than facts, science contributed in yet another way to moral relativism, for it treated "value" as secondary. (But the idea that we can easily separate facts and values was and remains naive; to some extent, one's values determine what one will pay attention to, and what will count as a fact)
When the ancient Greeks sailed to India and elsewhere, they too discovered that rules, morals and customs differed from place to place, and saw that the explanation for what was right and wrong was often rooted in some ancestral authority. The Greek response was not despair, but a new invention: philosophy
Socrates, reacting to the uncertainty bred by awareness of these conflicting moral codes, decided that instead of becoming a nihilist, a relativist or an ideologue, he would devote his life to the search for wisdom that could reason about these differences, i.e., he helped invent philosophy. He spent his life asking perplexing, foundational questions, such as "What is virtue?" and "How can one live the good life?" and "What is justice?" and he looked at different approaches, asking which seemed most coherent and most in accord with human nature
For the ancients, the discovery that different people have different ideas about how, practically, to live, did not paralyze them; it deepened their understanding of humanity and led to some of the most satisfying conversations human beings have ever had, about how life might be lived
Rule 1: Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back
just as it is in human societies, where the top 1 percent have as much loot as the bottom 50 percent and—where the richest eighty-five people have as much as the bottom three and a half billion.
That same brutal principle of unequal distribution applies outside the financial domain—indeed, anywhere that creative production is required. The majority of scientific papers are published by a very small group of scientists. A tiny proportion of musicians produces almost all the recorded commercial music. Just a handful of authors sell all the books. A million and a half separately titled (!) books sells each year in the US. However, only five hundred of these sell more than a hundred thousand copies. Similarly, just four classical composers (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky) wrote almost all the music played by modern orchestras. Bach, for his part, composed so prolifically that it would take decades of work merely to hand-copy his scores, yet only a small fraction of this prodigious output is commonly performed
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), an Italian polymath, noticed its applicability to wealth distribution in the early twentieth century, and it appears true for every society ever studied, regardless of governmental form. It also applies to the population of cities (a very small number have almost all the people), the mass of heavenly bodies (a very small number hoard all the matter), and the frequency of words in a language (90 percent of communication occurs using just 500 words), among many other things. Sometimes it is known as the Matthew Principle (Matthew 25:29), derived from what might be the harshest statements ever attributed to Christ: "to those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken"
It should be pointed out, however, that sheer physical power is an unstable basis on which to found lasting dominance, as the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal has taken paints to demonstrate. Among the chimp troupes he studied, males who were successful in the longer term has to buttress their physical prowess with more sophisticated attributes. Even the most brutal chimp despot can be taken down, after all, by two opponents, each three-quarters as mean. In consequence, males who stay on top longer are those who form reciprocal coalitions with their lower-status compatriots, and who pay careful attention to the troupe's females and their infants
If you are asked by a researcher to move your facial muscles, one at a time, into a position that would look sad to an observer, you will report feeling sadder. If you are asked to move the muscles one by one into a position that looks happy, you will report feeling happier. Emotion is partly bodily expression, and can be amplified (or dampened) by that expression
Rule 2: Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping
People are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves. That's not good. Even from your pet's perspective, it's not good. Your pet (probably) loves you, and would be happier if you took your medication.
It is difficult to conclude anything from this set of facts except that people appear to love their dogs, cats, ferrets and birds (and maybe even their lizards) more than themselves. How horrible is that
Because we are so scientific now—and so determinedly materialistic—it is very difficult for us even to understand that other ways of seeing can and do exist. But those who existed during the distant time in which the foundational epics of our culture emerged were much more concerned with the actions that dictated survival (and with interpreting the world in a manner commensurate with that goal) and with anything approximating what we now understand as objective truth
Before the dawn of the scientific worldview, reality was construed differently. Being was understood as a place of action, not a place of things. It was understood as something more akin to story or drama. That story or drama was lived, subjective experience, as it manifested itself moment to moment in the consciousness of every living person. It was something similar to the stories we tell each other about our lives and their personal significance; something similar to the happenings that novelists describe when they capture existence in the pages of their books. Subjective experience—that includes familiar objects such as trees and clouds, primarily objective in their existence, but also (and more importantly) such things as emotions and dreams as well as hunger, thirst and pain
In any case, that which we subjectively experience can be likened much more to a novel or a movie than a scientific description of physical reality. It is the drama of lived experience—the unique, tragic, personal death of your father, compared to the objective death listed in the hospital records; the pain of your first love; the despair of dashed hopes; the joy attendant upon a child's success
We already know all this, but we don't know we know it. But we immediately comprehend it when it's articulated in a manner such as this
You're bad enough, as other people know you. But only you know the full range of your secret transgressions, insufficiencies and inadequacies. No one is more familiar than you with all the ways our mind and body are flawed. No one has more reason to hold you in contempt, to see you as pathetic—and by withholding something that might do you good, you can punish yourself for all your failings
Only man could conceive of the rack, the iron maiden and the thumbscrew. Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have been able to formulate. Animals can't manage that, but humans, with their excruciating, semi-divine capacities, most certainly can. And with this realization we have well-nigh full legitimization of the idea, very unpopular in modern intellectual circles, of Original Sin
Rule 3: Make Friends With People Who Want the Best for You
Imagine someone not doing well. He needs help. He might even want it. But it is not easy to distinguish between someone truly wanting and needing help and someone who is merely exploiting a willing helper. The distinction is difficult even for the person who is wanting and needing and possibly exploiting. The person who tries and fails, and is forgiven, and then tries again and fails, and is forgiven, is also too often the person who wants everyone to believe in the authenticity of all that trying
When it's not just naivete, the attempt to rescue someone is often fuelled by vanity and narcissism
Maybe you are saving someone because you're a strong, generous, well-put-together person who wants to do the right thing. But it's also possible—and, perhaps, more likely—that you just want to draw attention to your inexhaustible reserves of compassion and good-will. Or maybe you're saving someone because you want to convince yourself that the strength of your character is more than just a side effect of your luck and birthplace. Or maybe it's because it's easier to look virtuous when standing alongside someone utterly irresponsible
Before you help someone, you find out why that person is in trouble. You shouldn't merely assume that he or she is a noble victim of unjust circumstances and exploitation. It's the most unlikely explanation, not the most probable. In my experience—clinical and otherwise—it's just never been that simple. Besides, if you buy the story that everything terrible just happened on its own, with no personal responsibility on the part of the victim, you deny that person all agency in the past (and, by implication, in the present and future, as well). In this manner, you strip him or her of all her power
Rule 4: Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not to Who Someone Else Is Today
The idea of a value-free choice is a contradiction in terms. Value judgments are a precondition for action. Furthermore, every activity, once chosen, comes with its own internal standards of accomplishment. If something can be done at all, it can be done better or worse [...] Furthermore, if there was no better and worse, nothing would be worth doing. There would be no value and, therefore, no meaning. Why make an effort if it doesn't improve anything? Meaning itself requires the difference between better and worse
There's some real utility in gratitude. It's also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment
When the internal critic puts you down using such comparisons, here's how it operates: First, it selects a single, arbitrary domain of comparison (fame, maybe, or power). Then it acts as if that domain is the only one that si relevant. Then it contrasts you unfavourably with someone truly stellar, within that domain. It can take that final step even further, using the unbridgeable gap between you and its target of comparison as evidence for the fundamental injustice of life. That way your motivation to do anything at all can be most effectively undermined. Those who accept such an approach to self-evaluation certainly can't be accused of making things too easy for themselves. But it's just as big a problem to make things too difficult
You are interested in some things and not in others. You can shape that interest, but there are limits. Some activities will always engage you, and others simply with not
You have a nature. You can play the tyrant to it, but you will certainly rebel. How hard can you force yourself to work and sustain your desire to work? How much can you sacrifice to your partner before generosity turns to resentment? What is it that you actually love? What is it that you genuinely want? Before you can articulate your own standards of value, you must see yourself as a stranger—and then you must get to know yourself. What do you find valuable or pleasurable? How much leisure, enjoyment, and reward do you require, so that you feel like more than a beast of burden? How must you treat yourself, so you won't kick over the traces and smash up your corral? You could force yourself through your daily grind and kick your dog in frustration when you come home. You could watch the precious days tick by. Or you could learn how to entire yourself into sustainable, productive activity. Do you ask yourself what you want? Do you negotiate fairly with yourself? Or are you a tyrant, with yourself as a slave?
Consult your resentment. It's a revelatory emotion, for all its pathology
We fling stones, and spears, and boomerangs, We toss balls through hoops, and hit pucks into nets, and curl carved granite rocks down the ice onto horizontal bull's-eyes. We launch projectiles at targets with bow, guns, rifles, and rockets. We hurt insults, launch plans, and pitch ideas. we succeed when we score a goals or hit a target. We fail, or sin, when we do not (as the work sin means to miss the mark). We cannot navigate without something to aim at and, while we are in this world, we must always navigate.
We are always and simultaneously at point "a" (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards point "b" (which we deem better, in accordance to our explicit and implicit values). We always encounter the world in a state of insufficiency and seek its correction. We can imagine new ways that things could be set right, and improved, even if we have everything we thought we needed. Even when satisfied, temporarily, we remain curious. We live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better. If we did not see things this way, we would not act at all. We wouldn't even be able to see, because to see we must focus, and to focus we must pick up one thing above all else on which to focus
it is your actions that most accurately reflect your deepest beliefs—those that are implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious apprehensions an articulatable attitudes and surface-level self-knowledge. You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don't know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself
Even a man on a sinking ship can be happy when he clambers aboard a lifeboat! And who knows where he might go, in the future. To journey happily may well be better than to arrive successfully
Rule 5: Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them
Such quotidian concerns are insidious. Their habitual and predictable occurrence makes them appear trivial. But the appearance of triviality is deceptive: it is the things that occur every single day that truly make up our lives, and time spent the same way over and again adds up at an alarming rate
Rosseau was a fervent believer in the corrupting influence of human society and private ownership alike. He claimed that nothing was so gentle and wonderful as man in his pre-civilized state. At precisely the same time, noting his inability as a father, he abandoned five of his children to the tender and fatal mercies of the orphanages of the time
Because children, like other human beings, are not only good, they cannot simply be left to their own devices, untouched by society, and bloom into perfection. Even dogs must be socialized if they are to become acceptable members of the pack—and children are much more complex than dogs. This means that they are much more likely to go completely astray if they are not trained, disciplined and properly encouraged. This means that it is not just wrong to attribute all the violent tendencies of human beings to the pathologies of social structure. It's wrong enough to be virtually backward. The vital process of socialization prevents much harm and fosters much good. Children must be shaped and informed, or they cannot thrive. This fact is reflected starkly in their behavior: kids are utterly desperate for attention from both peers and adults because such attention, which renders them effective and sophisticated communal players, is vitally necessary
we feel more negative about a loss of a given size than we feel good about the same-sized gain. Pain is more potent than pleasure, and anxiety more than hope
Nearby diners would tell us how nice it was to see a happy family. We weren't always happy ,and our children weren't always properly behaved. But they were most of the time, and it was wonderful to see people responding so positively to their presence. It was truly good for the kids. They could see that people liked them. This also reinforced their good behaviour. That was the reward
(... "all adults are ineffectual and weak." This is a particularly bad lesson, when every child's destiny is to become an adult, and when most things that are learned without undue personal pain are modelled or explicitly taught by adults). What does a child who ignores adults and holds them in contempt have to look forward to? And why grow up at all? That's the story of Peter Pan, who thinks all adults are variants of Captain Hook, tyrannical and terrified of his own mortality (think hungry crocodile with clock in his stomach)
"hitting" is a very unsophisticated word to describe the disciplinary act of an effective parent. If "hitting" accurately described the entire range of physical force, then there would be no difference between rain droplets and atom bombs. Magnitude matters—and so does context, if we're not being wilfully blind and naive about the issue. Every child knows the difference between being bitten by a mean, unprovoked dog and being nipped by his own pet when he tries playfully but too carelessly to take its bone
I am not saying we should be mean to single mothers, many of whom struggle impossible and courageously—and a proportion whom have had to escape, singly, from a brutal relationship—but that doesn't mean we should pretend that all family forms are equally viable. They're not. Period.
Rule 6: Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World
When the hurricane hit New Orleans, and the town sank under the waves, was that a natural disaster? The Dutch prepare their dikes for the worst storm in ten thousand years. Had New Orleans followed that example, no tragedy would have occurred. It's not that no one knew. The Flood Control Acts of 1965 mandated improvements in the levee system that held back Lake Pontchartrain. The system was to be completed by 1978. Forty years later, only 60% of the work had been done. Willful blindness and corruption took the city down.
A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known—that's sin. That's failure to hit the mark. And the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). The ancient Jews always blamed themselves when things fell apart. They acted as if God's goodness—the goodness of reality—was axiomatic, and took responsibility for their own failure
Rule 7: Pursue What Is Meaningful (Not What is Expedient)
Michelangelo crafted Mary contemplating her Son, crucified and ruined. It's her fault. It was through her that He entered the world and its great drama of Being. Is it right to bring a baby into this terrible world? Every woman asks herself that question. Some say no, and they have their reasons. Mary answers yes, voluntarily, knowing full well what's to come—as do all mothers, if they allow themselves to see. It's an act of supreme courage, when undertaken voluntarily
Earthquakes, floods, poverty, cancers—we're tough enough to take on all of that. But human evil adds a whole new dimension of misery to the world
Such expansion of status also provides unlimited opportunity for the inner darkness to reveal itself. The lust for blood, rape and destruction is very much part of power's attraction. It is not only that men desire power so that they will no longer suffer
Clearly Christian, he nonetheless adamantly refuses to make a straw man of his rationalist and atheistic opponents. Quite the contrary, in The Brothers Karamazov, for example, Dostoevsky's atheist, Ivan, argues against the presuppositions of Christianity with unsurpassable clarity and passion. Alyosha, aligned with the church by temperament and decision, cannot undermine a single one of his brother's arguments (although his faith remains unshakeable). Dostoevsky knew and admitted that Christianity had been defeated by the rational faculty—by the intellect, even—but (and this is of primary importance) he did not hide from that fact. He didn't attempt through denial or deceit or even satire to weaken the position that opposed what he believed to be the most true and valuable. He instead placed action above words, and addressed the problem successfully. By the novel's end, Dostoevsky has the great embodied moral goodness of Alyosha—the novitiate's courageous imitation of Christ—attain victory over the spectacular but ultimately nihilistic critical intelligence of Ivan
We rebel against our own totalitarianism, as much as that of others. I cannot merely order myself to action, and neither can you. "I will stop procrastination," I say, but I don't. "I will eat properly," I saw, but I don't. "I will end my drunken misbehavior," I saw, but I don't. I cannot merely make myself over in the image constructed by my intellect (particularly if that intellect is possessed by an ideology). I have a nature, and so do you, and so do we all. We must discover that nature, and contend with it, before making peace with ourselves. What is it, that we most truly are? What is it that we could most truly become, know who we most truly are? We must get to the very bottom of things before such questions can truly be answered
with time, I came to understand, through the great George Orwell, that much of such thinking found its motivation in hatred of the rich and successful, instead of true regard for the poor. Besides, the socialists were more intrinsically capitalistic than the capitalists. They believed just as strongly in money. They just though that is different people had the money, the problems plaguing humanity would vanish. This is simply untrue. There are many problems that money does not solve, and others that it makes worse. Rich people still divorce each other, and alien themselves from their children and suffer from existential angst, and develop cancer and dementia, and die alone and unloved
Searching through the lowest reaches of human though and action, understanding my own capacity to act like a Nazi prison guard or a gulag archipelago trustee or a torturer or a child in a dungeon, I grasped what it mean to "take the sins of the world onto oneself." Each human being has an immense capacity for evil. Each human being understand, a priori, perhaps not what is good, but certainly what is not. And if there is something that is not good, then there is something that is good
Rule 8: Tell the Truth — Or, At Least, Don't Lie
"I will be your worst nightmare," was his phrase of choice, in such situations. I have wished intensely that I could say something like that, after encountering unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles, but it's generally best to let such things go
It might be the noisy troublemakers who disappear, first, when the institution you serve falters and shrinks. But it's the invisible who will be sacrificed next. Someone hiding is not someone vital. Vitality requires original contribution. Hiding also does not save the conforming and conventional
If you say no to your boss, or your spouse, or your mother, when it needs to be said, then you transform yourself into someone who can say no when it needs to be said. If you say yes when no needs to be said, however, you transform yourself into someone who can only say yes, even when it is clearly time to say no. If you ever wonder how perfectly ordinary, decent people could find themselves doing the terrible things the gulag camp guards did, you now have your answer. By the time no seriously needed to be said, there was no one left capable of saying it
That is what totalitarian means: Everything that needs to be discovered has been discovered. Everything will unfold precisely as planned. All problems will vanish, forever, once the perfect system is accepted. Milton's great poem was a prophesy. As rationality rose ascendant form the ashes of Christianity, the great threat of total systems accompanied it. Communism, in particular, was attractive not so much to oppressed workers, its hypothetical beneficiaries, but to intellectuals—to those whose arrogant pride in intellect assured them they were always right. But the promised utopia never emerged. Instead humanity experienced the inferno of Stalinist Russia and Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia, and the citizens of those states were required to betray their own experiences, turn against their fellow citizens, and die in the tens of millions
Milton believed that stubborn refusal to change in the face of error not only meant ejection from heaven, and subsequent degeneration into an ever-deepening hell, but the rejection of redemption itself. Satan knows full well that even if he was willing to seek reconciliation, and God willing to grant it, he would only rebel again, because he will not change
Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us. In such cases, we might never recover or, if we do, we change a lot. A good friend of mine discovered that his wife of decades was having an affair. He didn't see it coming. It plunged him into a deep depression. He descended into the underworld. He told me, at one point, "I always thought that people who were depressed should just shake it off. I didn't have any idea what I was talking about." Eventually he returned from the depths. In many ways, he's a new man—and, perhaps, a wiser and better man. He lost forty pounds. He ran a marathon. He travelled to Africa and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He chose rebirth over descent into Hell
Rule 9: Assume That the Person You Are Listening To Might Know Something You Don't
Many of the people I listen to have no one else to talk to. Some of them are truly alone in the world. There are far more people like that than you think. You don't meet them, because they are alone
The past appears fixed, but it's not—not in an important psychological sense. There is an awful lot of the past, after all, and the way we organize it can be subject to drastic revision.
Imagine, for example, a movie where nothing but terrible things happen, but, in the end, everything works out. Everything is resolved. A sufficiently happy ending can change the meaning of all the previous events. They can all be viewed as worthwhile, given that ending. Now imagine another movie. A lot of things are happening. They're all exciting and interesting. But there are a lot of them. Ninety minutes in, you start to worry. "This is a great movie," you think, "but there are a lot of things going on. I sure hope the filmmaker can pull it all together." But that doesn't happen. Instead, the story ends, abruptly, unresolved, or something facile and clichéd occurs. You leave deeply annoyed and unsatisfied—failing to notice that you were fully engaged and enjoying the movie almost the whole time you were in the theatre. The present can change the past, and the future can change the present.
When you are remembering the past, as well, you remember some parts of it and forget others. You have clear memories of some things that happened, but not others, of potentially equal import—just as in the present you are aware of some aspects of your surroundings and unconscious of others. You categorize your experience, grouping some elements together, and separating them from the rest. There is a mysterious arbitrariness about all of this. You don't form a comprehensive, objective record. You can't. You just don't know enough. You just can't perceive enough You aren't objective either. You're alive. You're subjective. You have vested interests—at least in yourself, at least usually. What exactly should have been included in the story? Where exactly is the border between events?
I decided to listen. I learned not to steal my clients' problems from them. I don't want to be the redeeming hero or the deus ex machine—not in someone else's story
If you're reading this book, there's a strong probability that you're a privileged person. You can read. You have time to read. You're perched high in the clouds. It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order
Sometimes it takes a long time to figure out what someone genuinely means when they are talking. This is because often they are articulating their ideas for the first time. They can't do it without wandering down blind alleys or making contradictory or even nonsensical claims. This is partly because talking (and thinking) is often more about forgetting than about remembering. To discuss an event, particularly something emotional, like a death or serious illness, is to slowly choose what to leave behind. To begin, however, much that is not necessary must be put into words. The emotion-laden speaker must recount the whole experience, in detail. Only then can the central narrative, cause and consequence, come into focus and consolidate itself. Only then can the moral of the story be derived.
Imagine that someone holds a stack of hundred-dollar bills, some of which are counterfeit. All the bills might have to be spread on a table, so that each can be seen, and any differences noted, before the genuine can be distinguished from the false. This is the sort of methodical approach you have to take when really listening to someone trying to solve a problem or communicate something important. If upon learning that some of the bills are counterfeit you too casually dismiss all of them (as you would if you were in a hurry, or otherwise unwilling to put in the effort), the person will never learn to separate the wheat from the chaff
Rule 10: Be Precise in Your Speech
To the degree that we are patriotic, similarly, our country is not just important to us. It is us. We might even sacrifice our entire smaller individual selves, in battle, to maintain the integrity of our country. For much of history, such willingness to die had been regarded as something admirable and courageous, as part of human duty. Paradoxically, that is a direct consequence not of our aggression but of our extreme sociability and willingness to cooperate. If we can become not only ourselves, but our families, teams and countries, cooperation comes easily to us, relying on the same deeply innate mechanisms that drive us (and other creatures) to protect our very bodies
Her husband is not who she perceived him to be—but neither is she, the betrayed wife. She is no longer the "well-loved, secure wife, and valued partner." Strangely enough, despite our belief in the permanent immutability of the past, she may never have been.
The past is not necessarily what it was, even though it has already been. The present is chaotic and indeterminate. The ground shifts continually around her feet, and ours. Equally, the future, not yet here, changes into something it was not supposed to be
The escape from tyranny is often followed not by Paradise, but by a sojourn in the desert, aimless, confused and deprived
You have to consciously define the topic of a conversation, particularly when it is difficult—or it becomes about everything, and everything is too much. This is so frequently why couples cease communicating. Every argument degenerates into every problem that ever emerged in the past, every problem that exists now, and every terrible thing that is likely to happen in the future. No one can have a discussion about "everything"
Rule 11: Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding
Kids need playgrounds dangerous enough to remain challenging. People, including children (who are people too, after all), don't' seek to minimize risk. They seek to optimize it. They drive and walk and love and play so that they achieve what they desire, but they push themselves a bit at the same time, too, so they continue to develop. Thus, if things are made too safe, people (including children) start to figure out ways to make them dangerous again
Absolute equality would therefore require the sacrifice of value itself—and then there would be nothing world living for. We might instead note with gratitude that a complex, sophisticated culture allows for many games and many successful players, and that a well-structured culture allows the individuals that compose it to play and to win, in many different fashions
When softness and harmlessness become the only consciously acceptable virtues, then hardness and dominance will start to exert an unconscious fascination. Partly what this means for the future is that if men are pushed too hard to feminize, they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology
Rule 12: Pet a Cat When You Encounter One on the Street
Don't schedule your time to think in the evening or at night. Then you won't be able to sleep. If you can't sleep, then everything will go rapidly downhill
TWELVE RULES FOR LIFE: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-for-life/
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash