We now come to addressing the first of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.
His first rule (and hence the title of his first chapter) is Stand up straight with your shoulders back. When it comes right down to it, this rule is fairly straightforward: it is telling you to be prepared to take life head-on and not to shrink back from taking on the inevitable challenges in life.
The main example Peterson gives to illustrate his first rule is the lobster. Basically, Peterson argues that lobsters (as all other animals, really) have a dominance hierarchy. Anyone who has ever watched a National Geographic special has seen this sort thing, really. When two male lobsters (or lions, or dogs, etc.) fight, the victorious one gains status and influence within that lobster/lion/dog community, whereas the defeated one becomes more subservient in the community. In addition, the victor often ends up with his own proverbial haram of female lobsters/lions/dog, whereas the defeated one often gets pushed further down and outside the group. Peterson even says that if a formerly dominant lobster is badly defeated, its brain basically dissolves, and it grows a new, subordinate’s brain—“one more appropriate to its new, lowly position.”
Lobster Point #1
Peterson’s point about the lobsters, as far as I see it, is basically two-fold. First, that sort of thing is just natural to life across the board, be it lobsters, lions, dogs, or even human beings as well. Whenever there is competition (and that is pretty much everywhere), there will be winners and losers. The winners pretty much get the praise, the glory, and the extra confidence that comes with it. On top of that, the victory and adulation end up giving them even more energy and incentive to keep pushing forward and win some more.
By contrast, the losers (if the loss is downright humiliating) often get ridiculed, or at least get quickly forgotten. And if the loss was particularly bitter, that person’s confidence is shattered for good, and they just give up. Being a baseball fan, I remember the tragic story of relief pitcher Donnie Moore. In the mid-80’s he was one of the premier closers in the league and was an All-Star in 1985. In 1986, he was pitching for the California Angels in the playoffs against the Boston Red Sox when he came in to face Dave Henderson in the 9th inning. He was one strike away from sending the Angels to their first World Series appearance in team history. Instead, Dave Henderson hit a 2-2 splitter over the fence, and the Red Sox went on to the World Series.
Moore’s career would never be the same. He was out of baseball for good by June of 1989, when the Royals released him. Then a month later, on July 18th, he shot his wife three times, and then when his three children fled with their mother to the hospital, he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.
Now granted, that is a particularly tragic example of a person’s failure to deal with defeat in his life. But we all know that people—you and I—have inevitably faced defeat in their lives (and hopefully some victory as well). We are congratulated and praised by others when we overcome that challenge and are victorious, our self-confidence and self-esteem increases, and we feel energized—our whole outlook on life is brighter and it shows. By contrast, when we fail, even if we are not ridiculed, even if our loved ones try to comfort us, our self-confidence takes a hit and we just feel like crap. Some losses are obviously worse than others, but I’m sure we can all relate.
Lobster Point #2
So that is Peterson’s first point: victory and defeat, and the consequences that stem from them, are part of life. That is true throughout the animal kingdom as well as throughout human history. That’s just reality. And this leads me to what I believe Peterson’s second point is: How you choose to confront the inevitable challenges and defeats life will throw at you will in large measure shape the kind of person you become. After you experience failure and you feel like your world has been blown apart, how are you going to respond? Are you going to give up and let that failure continue to define you for the rest of your life, or are you going to re-invent and re-make yourself?
This idea gets us into Peterson’s concepts of order and chaos. He discusses these things in more detail in later chapters, but his point here is that both are a part of life—and that is true both in the natural world and in our own lives as well. In fact, Peterson argues this is an intricate part of evolution itself: it is essentially a dance between order and chaos being on display in the natural world. He says that nature itself “varies like a musical score” and that natural selection is essentially creatures dancing to that score.
Therefore, just as creatures and organisms in the natural world adapt to the forces of nature to eventually bring about a wider variety of species, Peterson says that can be applied to our own lives in regard to how we react to inevitable failures in life. Even though the temptation after defeat might be to crawl in a hole and die, that “death” of whatever it was, is also the opportunity for us to transform ourselves into different people. Peterson writes, “Every revolution produces a new order. Every death is, simultaneously, a metamorphosis” (12). When you think about it, this can also be applied to salvation itself: taking up your cross and dying to yourself in order to be remade in the image of Christ.
This very type of thing can also be seen in J.R.R. Tolkien’s creation account in his book, The Silmarillion. In it, the god Iluvatar creates the world through music, but then Melkor (clearly a satanic figure) who was one of the Ainur (clearly angelic figures) decided to interweave discordant music of his own into Iluvatar’s creation. But Iluvatar is able to use Melkor’s discordant themes into even greater and more powerful music. Hence, the discord ends up in the creation of something new and more beautiful. Such is the kind of “dance” that Peterson argues is not only evident in the natural world, in a process like evolution, but is also evident in what it means to be human. But make no mistake, the dance of living is really, really taxing and difficult.
Let’s Get Back to Lobsters for a Moment
Peterson says (as should be obvious) that people who suffer defeat often end up acting like lobsters who’ve lost a fight. Now the consequences for letting defeat and failure crush us are many. But one in particular that Peterson mentions is the psychological effects failure can have on a person. Simply put, when you are viewed by everyone as a loser on the low rung of the proverbial ladder, you are not going to be happy, and you are pretty much going to be stressed out all the time.
It can become a vicious cycle, really: failure in something leads to low self-esteem, which leads to stress and that self-defeating voice inside your head that you’ll never amount to anything, you’ll never get ahead in life, you’ll never find that “special someone,” and that leads you more inclined to make foolish decisions and jump at fleeting, short-term happiness or thrills that will end up making you feel even more horrible when they’re over.
Peterson is right when he says those are very real self-destructive tendencies that can take over our lives. And that is why, as the rule says, we need to stand up straight with our shoulders back. No, he doesn’t mean that you literally have to strike a Superman “power pose” every day to feel better. I think he simply means that you have to stand up for yourself, even in the face of defeat and oppression. Because if you give up, life is going to be relentless, and circumstances and people will just keep on beating you down if you let them. And sometimes, if that goes on long enough, a person might just snap and do something truly horrific. Beginning with Columbine, how many mass shootings have been done by people who had come to resent the whole world so much that not only did they see their own lives as worthless, but they decided they simply wanted to destroy as many lives as they could?
Simply put, you don’t want to let yourself ever get to that point. And don’t think you never could get to that point, because you can. I think Peterson is right when he says that people who choose to withstand failure and oppression do so because they realize how easy it would be to let life turn them into monsters: “They see that they have the ability to withstand, because they are terrible too. They see they can and must stand up, because they being to understand how genuinely monstrous they will become, otherwise, feeding on their resentment, transforming it into the most destructive of wishes.”
That it is so important to “stand straight with your shoulders back.” As Peterson writes, “To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order” (27). Simply put, it means to have to resolve to put the pieces of your life back together, even after those times when your world has turned upside down.
Conclusion Thus Far
Now, anyone who has gone through some truly trying and difficult times knows how hard it is to actually do that. The fact is, as I have come to realize in my own life, that failure, disappointment, and suffering injustice can not only beat you down, but it can reveal to yourself just how dark and potentially evil you could easily become if you let that suffering and failure define who you are. And so, I am going to bring this post to a close and devote my next post to some personal reflections from my own life about how I have struggled (and sometimes succeeded) with this first rule of Peterson’s.
Looking forward to your comments. In light of some the events at Willow Creek, a lot is applicable to those involved. I hope those in pain can move forward. Sometimes the pain is brought on by our own mistakes and sin, sometimes by situations not our doing, but our response to those problems that arise is important.
I actually went to Willow Creek for a couple of years during my college and post-college days.