Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

This French term, most famously used by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morals, is closely related to the English word ‘resentment’ but bears a particular psychological meaning. In this case, it implies a sense of blame for a certain group that causes the feeling of resentment. Peterson affirms that because the feeling is directed against an external adversary, it fails to reckon with the true, internal sources of personal difficulties. While Peterson acknowledges that external difficulties may be very severe, he insists that there is an internal way to solve them, and that the only alternative is to succumb to bitterness and other behaviors which will only make matters worse.

In Rule VI, “abandon ideology,” Peterson is using this common term in a very particular way. By ideology, he does not merely mean a political belief or partisan alignment. He instead means a comprehensive view of how the world either does or ought to work, often with the implication that failure to organize political life along these lines will lead to negative outcomes. Peterson regards this as a secular mimicry of the religious impulse, one which gives human beings the power to create heaven on earth. He accordingly regards it as one of the most dangerous forces of the modern world, one which has unleashed incalculable horrors on humanity, particularly with totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Peterson’s reliance on multiple sources of wisdom, from zoology and psychology to religion and myth, is meant to provide a humanistic counterbalance to a pernicious force.

Peterson does not use this precise term in the book, but much of his discussion of the problem of evil (especially in Rule IX) echoes the concept. Coined by the German philosopher Hannah Arendt in the early 1960s, it suggests that evil in the real world does not take the form of a ferocious monster or cackling supervillain, but more often results from a casual indifference to moral principles and a refusal to take accountability for one’s actions (her chief example was Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust whom she found to be an irritating and self-justifying bureaucrat rather than a cruel mastermind). This depiction might appear to conflict with Peterson’s effort to reproduce the high drama of fairy tales in real life, but as he points out, fiction is meant to draw out that which ordinary life conceals. Outsized depictions of evil help us know its essential nature, but real life is better at concealing it, requiring vigilance to detect and defend against it.