A six point summary of twelve rules

I’ve mentioned having read 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson already. After a number of conversations around Jordan Peterson with my friend Ryan, who’s about the smartest person I know, he gave this summary, which he has said I could post here. I said it would have been helpful if Jordan Peterson had written this in the front of his book, because I know a number of people, me included, who have read it and found it very interesting, yet at the same time gotten somewhat lost in the blur and not known how to say precisely what it was about, as the flow of ideas put forward is not especially coherent. I particularly found the point in the footnote about moral truth vs objective truth helpful as a way to grasp how Peterson makes his ideas work.

As a note, I did read this article in Eternity magazine this article in the Eternity Newspaper the other day, and honestly, I neither like nor agree with any of that conflation. I have a female friend who is as left-wing, green and progressive as people are (eg she knew about the protests to be organised at Peterson's Canberra lecture by the LGBTI folks because she’s on those social media pages) and yet still she admires and finds him helpful, and was prepared to drive to Sydney when she missed out on tickets to see him here. And I live in the capital state of left-wing ideology and extreme feminism, and there are a lot of folk here who appreciate Peterson but don’t fit those categories. Also, when you read what he says about chaos and order, masculine and feminine (p. 12, pp. 40-41 etc), those are ancient ideas he’s retelling, not original ones, and I’m not convinced he’s intending them be read as a currently negative statement about the feminine.

But, all that aside, here is my friend’s summary. I think it can help us understand the appeal of Peterson's ideas, and perhaps put them to some good use. I don’t believe he’s the font of all wisdom, I know full well he is not a Christian, but I do believe acknowledging the influence he’s having through what he is offering, and understanding why, is useful and potentially helpful.

1. Life is suffering.
2. Suffering is caused by chaos (both are by definition evil).
3. The battle between chaos and order (evil and good) exists in every person as well as the world.
4. To reduce suffering, you need to create order in your life - starting with the little things.
5. Ancient religious wisdom gives us a guide to how to achieve this as people have been grappling with it for millennia.
6. However, the only real way to discover the truth of how to be good / create order, is to start doing it yourself and commit to it as completely as possible. In doing that you will discover (create?) the truth of how to live a meaningful life.
6a. The moral truth** of how to live isn't something you can just be told, you have to life and grapple with it personally. 

** For Peterson, the moral truth is not the same as objective truth (but both are true). For example, on p. 188 of Twelve Rules for Life, he writes (about Nietzche) "the difference between moral or narrative truth and objective truth had not yet been fully comprehended (and so an opposition was presumed where none necessarily exists)."

Comment: His 12 rules are tips on how to create order in your life and therefore reduce (man-made) suffering.