12 (Other) Rules for Life, Part I

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Rules, rules, rules… I personally hate them. Limitations usually suck the fun out of anything. The kinds of people who use rules often in their lives, lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians and police officers are hardly ever the life of the party are they? So why, you might be asking, did I write a whole twelve of them? No, I have not received a severe blow to the head recently. As much as I begrudge it, rules can be rather useful in navigating the complexities of life.

I may not have the years of clinical psychological experience of Dr Jordan Peterson, the original author of the book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, but nevertheless I am still a psychologist, albeit a young one, who comes at human psychology from a very different perspective. Where Peterson approaches psychology largely as a clinical practitioner and psychoanalyst in the Jungian school, I approach it as a research focused cognitive neuroscientist specialising in decision-making. These perspectives are not necessarily at odds with one another, but may lead to emphasis placed on differing areas by merit of the fact that they operate in very different paradigms. 

This article is the first of a three part series going through my twelve rules.

Rule I: Never Believe You Have Reached ‘The Truth’ about Something

There are people out there who do not believe that there is such a thing as objective reality–an external world outside of ourselves. They believe that everything is subjective, that we cannot know anything about the real world and that our impression of the outside is something we mentally construct. These people are, quite frankly, idiots. If the philosophical proponents of this understanding of truth were alive today, the likes of Descartes or Kierkegaard, I would invite them to prove their thesis by walking off a cliff. After all, if all of reality is just our subjective interpretation they do not need to worry about forces such as gravity. I am sure Kierkegaard would be the first to jump—he is known for his ‘leap of faith’. Whether they believed in gravity or not, the weight of their massive philosophical brains will leave them hurtling to the bottom of the cliff all the same. Objective reality does exist. Nevertheless, they were, in an unusual way, onto something.

Because of the limitations of the human condition, in that our inability to understand sensory information, to reason and understand the true conditions of the world, we can never be completely certain that we know the truth about anything. Our perspective is limited, our reasoning is never perfect and, often, circumstances are too complex for us to comprehend all of the relevant factors. This perspective, supported by the likes of Nietzsche, has considerable support from cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists alike. It means that, even if we feel certain about something, it pays to consider the fact that we could be wrong. The reason for this is that basing our decisions on faulty assumptions can be extremely detrimental. Acting on faulty assumptions could lead to a person being less able to accurately orient themselves in the world which comes with a whole host of potential material and psychological consequences.

It is far better to incorporate a certain amount of scepticism towards your assumptions, not to immobilise yourself with self-doubt, but to better apportion the amount of certainty to place upon a certain belief. Our level of certainty that something is true should be seen as a scale, one in which we can never reach absolute doubt or absolute certainty. That does not mean one should assign a score to our own beliefs, such an act would be needlessly time consuming, but the benefit of employing this cognitive conceptualisation of epistemic certainty encourages us to be more reflective of the assumptions that we might not have otherwise questioned. Through doing so, we can, at the very least, know what assumptions we are more certain about when compared with others. 

More introspection concerning why we believe what we do, what would change our mind and how likely what we believe is to be true can only be helpful in orienting ourselves more effectively in a complicated world that often lies beyond our comprehension.

Rule II: Do Not Reinforce the Delusions of Others

It may feel uncomfortable in the short-term to disagree with someone, especially if it is something they care deeply about, but in the long-term it is actually best for both of you for you to be upfront about how you really feel. If you believe someone to be wrong, the kindest thing you can do is to tell them politely that you do not share their perspective. Being belligerent and forceful is detrimental, as no one wants to listen to someone when they are being antagonistic. The reason disagreement is important is that someone who navigates life on a faulty assumption is far more damaged by this fact than by being politely contradicted. 

If a person is reasonable they may take what you say into serious consideration and weigh up the truth of what you claim against their own knowledge. Of course, you do not want someone to blindly discard what they believe either—they must integrate your perspective with their own. By weighing up the evidence for and against each competing perspective, they ultimately benefit from a better outcome whether they actually follow their perspective or not. Even if their actions remain unchanged, the addition of some greater scepticism of their own deluded position is still helpful. 

Of course, disagreement can backfire. Upon disagreeing with someone, they can sometimes, in turn, no longer wish to be associated with you. This may or may not matter to you, but nevertheless sometimes going your separate ways is still for the best. If someone is unwilling to consider a competing opinion, offered politely and with good intentions, then they are undeserving of your company and should not be regarded as much of a loss. 

Rule III: Be Utilitarian with Your Emotions

Emotional reactions are not things we choose to have, they just happen. If you have ever tried not to laugh when you are not supposed to, it only makes the laughter all the more difficult to contain. We cannot choose how we feel, but we can choose how these emotions manifest in our behaviour. Our emotions can, of course, have a harmless effect on the world in which case they require little attention. Our emotional responses to stimuli can also be positive; seeing a particularly picturesque scene restores us to a point of equilibrium and we feel more fulfilled as a result. However, emotions can also be detrimental. When emotions are harmful, a certain amount of self-control is required. 

Both Stoicism and Buddhism have enlightening perspectives on the matter; here we will look exclusively at Buddhism. Buddhists hold that some emotions are beneficial to achieve sukha (happiness), whereas others are not. However, this happiness is not to be understood as a fleeting positive sensation as we tend to conceptualise it in the West, but rather a product of mental balance and insight into the true nature of reality. Conversely, the Buddhist concept of duhkha (suffering) refers to a vulnerability to suffering created by misunderstanding the true nature of reality. Through developing one’s understanding of attention, emotional balance, and mindfulness, one can differentiate between how the world really is and what we mentally impose upon it. Thus, understanding is the path to enlightenment.

Buddhist teachings have a whole host of approaches to dealing with negative emotions, one of which is meditation. The aim of this form of meditation is not to suppress negative emotions, but to identify the conditions in which they arise, understand how they are experienced and how they influence both ourselves and others. Once the emotions are understood, one should reflectively monitor their emotional state with focus upon differentiating between positive and negative emotions. Once we can effectively identify the emergence of negative emotions, our understanding of the nature of said emotion allows us to deal with the emotion accordingly. How one does this is up to the individual in question, but how one feels should provide adequate feedback as to how effective one’s own mental intervention was.

With a greater awareness of how to deal with negative emotion, you can liberate yourself from the shackles of negative emotion and transcend to a state of emotional balance.

Rule IV: Think of Every Important Decision in Terms of a Conflict between Your Pragmatic and Idealistic Sides

It may be unusual to think of different parts of yourself working against one another, however, when it comes to decision-making this is almost certainly the case. Depending on the psychological conditions surrounding an otherwise identical decision, we make different choices. These choices are not massively different, but significant to consider them worthy of note. I believe that the explanation that best fits this discrepancy comes from Construal-Level Theory.

This theory proposes that our external environment is represented in abstract mental depictions. Our abstract mental depictions are based upon past and current experiences, which provide a basis to estimate future decisions; these are known as Construals. Our Current understanding of the purpose of forming Construals is that they provide a means of transcending your current state, forming a representation of a more psychologically distant state. Psychological distance can be defined as a scale of subjective relation of the external to the self. The distance aspect is metaphysical, referring to: space, time, and experience (real or imagined). For example, our own experiences are considered less psychologically distant than our imagined experience of others. 

Due to the fact that the self remains a constant frame of reference in all hypothetical thinking, the varying psychological distances will be cognitively related to one another. An increase in psychological distance corresponds to the level of abstraction of the mental construal: the greater the distance, the greater the level of abstraction. Therefore, differing construal levels result in different ways of thinking. 

To illustrate how one’s thinking can change depending upon the construal level, research has supported the idea that pragmatic thinking is more salient at lower construal levels and idealistic thinking more salient at higher construal levels. In short: how you think about a decision is determined by how related to you it is. If something is close to your direct experiences, you are more likely to think about it pragmatically; if something is far from your own experience, you think more idealistically.

If you are unconvinced by dense psychological theory, perhaps a historic example will do. The value of our contradictory capacities to come to decisions was recognised by ancient Persians, who were described by renowned ancient Greek historian Herodotus as having a:

“general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then on the morrow, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is then approved of, they act on it; if not, they set it aside. Sometimes, however, they are sober at their first deliberation, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine.” - Book I, Chapter 133 (~430 BC)