Lets us turn to another very fun topic. This is the very curious case of Dr. Jordan Peterson.

For those who don’t know him Dr. Peterson is a Canadian academic and clinical psychologist who has earned the ire of the politically correct commissars of our time.  He has done this by saying things that are semi-obvious but unsaid and unsayable in our politically correct world because we like to pretend they don’t any truth to them.

He was cancelled in various places but then reinstated. Recently he has given a talk at Cambridge, a place be had previously been kind of cancelled from. So he is back in the news.

About the political correctness controversies we have no interest and so we will not go into them. However what is interesting is his big hit book  ’12 rules for life’, the first of which is to clean your room. This simple homily generated lots of controversy.

While this might seem surprising it is not, as it is a perfect symbol of the grim censorious times we live in. Let’s unpack this and in the process we will discover a 13th rule for life, one that might just be the most important of them all.

So what was the problem with this rule no 1, that first and foremost you should clean your room? As it turns out, people found plenty of problems with it. First off, people complained that it was such a mundane rule.  Really, that’s your advice to people, to clean your freaking room?

Yes on the face of it it seems a little banal.  However it might not be, let’s take a closer look.  Our room is our most immediate space. It is the space we can most influence. I have seen this many times, how a person keeps their room is a reflection of their inner state. There is a vast range here mind you, some are just more naturally neater than others.  However if someone is having a hard time, going through some kind of breakdown, not looking after themselves, then chances are their room is going to be a mess by their standards.

As I covered in the previous post about Sailing Home, to come home is to put things in boxes, to give everything its proper place and priority, i.e. to clean the room of your life. And what better place to start than your actual room? The work can’t just be intellectual, it has to have directed action behind it so you actually get things done. And continue getting them done, so continue keeping your room clean.

So not such a simple homily then, which brings us to the next critique, that even if it useful wouldn’t it have been better to have focussed on big issues like climate change, economic opportunity etc as this young lady challenged Dr Peterson on Australian television.

However if you can’t sort out your own room, how can you sort out the world? Keeping your room in good shape on a regular bases requires certain disciplines. These same disciplines are required on a larger scale to tackle big societal issues.

It is a bit much to hope that while you don’t have the discipline to keep your room well, you will be able to turn it on for the big thing because the bigness will motivate you. Perhaps you might, but it is unlikely. Most likely you will do the big thing with the same sloppiness you do your room and not really get much done and make any much of an impact.

So having the discipline to keep your room well(by your standards) is a necessary step towards a productive life and making some kind of meaningful impact.

Peterson’s style has drawn to him a large audience of young men/adolescents. His appeal is especially strong to ‘softer’ men.  By softer I mean those young men who are perhaps more sensitive, more intellectual, more artistic even.  They enjoy the call to improve themselves, to find ways to make them harder, more disciplined, more capable.

This has drawn the ire of some feminists who would much prefer that these men focus on all that is bothering them v/s developing themselves. This is all well and good but my dears, if this happens who will you date then? You will be left complaining there are no good men left.

But I have digressed. For the softer man a stern sounding mentor calling him to self-discipline is an ideal foil for projection, providing an energetic pull towards what is incomplete in him.

Robert Johnson has a beautiful little book on Projection.  It gets a bad rap in therapeutic circles but it serves a very useful purpose, says Robert. We sometimes do need things outside ourselves to help us grow. Indeed if these things didn’t exist we wouldn’t grow.

We know when the right person comes along who can provide us the hold with which we can climb upwards.  And we may have many such teachers. Indeed in ancient India you had a word for them, Guru. This is another much maligned word these days.  Guru in Sanskrit literally means remover of darkness.

Speaking of Gurus, Shri Brahmananda Saraswati, one of the many yoga Gurus who came to the US in the sixties has a beautiful saying – the outer Guru exists only to reveal the inner Guru.  This is another simple but very profound teaching.

A friend who is a yoga teacher once remarked how insane it was that so many of her students would walk into her class and seek to hand over their lives to her.  And she is just a yoga teacher with no claims to be a spiritual teacher of any kind.

The hunger is there and it is real and needs to be honored, you will gain much if you do. The mistake happens when you don’t withdraw the projection once it has done its work. When you don’t move forward into your own light but remain clinging to the outer teachers, expecting them to live your life for you, to be your substitute parent, then you get the shock of your life when one day you have to face the fact that they are fallible human beings like everyone else.  This has happened countless times – western students go to an eastern teacher, devote their life to them, then when the projection wears off go through a period of disillusionment and write books about it.

So it does seem like many have adopted Dr. Peterson as a mentor of sorts. And fallible he certainly is. In a twist to the tale he himself ended up falling into some kind of medicine addiction and very nearly died.   He ended up spending a good period of time trying to get well before coming back into the public eye.

So what happened? Did he fail to follow his own rule to clean his room? You could certainly interpret what happened that way and it is a good lesson – all our teachers and Gurus are fallible humans. They will stumble and make mistakes.

This brings us to the 13th rule for life, perhaps the most important one. Dr Peterson’s academic research has involved a great deal of study of religions and the classic Hero’s Journey from a psychological point of view.  In this he seems to have taken the baton from Joseph Campbell who pioneered the exploration of the Hero’s Journey.

Some readers might know who Campbell is from his famous Power of Myth series with Bill Moyers on PBS.  George Lucas was heavily influenced by Campbell’s work which informed the mythology of Star Wars. Power of Myth is a fantastic series, go find it and watch it, you will learn much.

It is very interesting to contrast Campbell and Dr Peterson’s styles.  If you have watched any of Campbell’s videos, you will notice a radiant aliveness. He is cheerful, calling people to ‘follow your bliss’.  You get a sense he has lived with this bliss and The Hero’s Journey appears to have a great deal of joy in his presentation.

Dr Peterson on the other hand, if we are honest we have to admit, no matter how useful we find his teachings, sounds a bit dour and sour doesn’t he?  So, so, so grim. As do his critics and then the entire discussion around him too.  Grim, like the Hero is weighed down by a billions pounds of garbage. This is very much our zeitgeist – a grim censoriousness as we sit around in an (online) circle and scold each other, looking for faults in what the other has said, finding problems, finding reasons to get offended.

So then this is the 13th rule for life. Lighten Up.  Notice that the word enlightenment has lighten in it. This is what happens when you get enlightened, you lighten up.  You tell a joke. And you laugh.

So laugh. Yes the world is going to hell in a hand basket and it is the other guy’s fault.  It always is. Nothing you have belongs to you, not even your cherished principles.  It is all dust in the wind, and then maybe even not that. Dust is still something. Even dust will, like all things, pass. It is no use taking life so seriously, you are never getting out alive.

So log off the internet. Take a walk in the park and notice the flowers and the bees. Call your parents. Talk to your siblings. Talk to your friends. Share a nice moment with your partner.  Play with your kids. Have a cigar (yes cigars are bad for you blah blah blah). Drink some cognac (yes alcohol is bad for you blah blah blah).

Tell a joke. Hear a joke. And laugh. Laugh, laugh, laugh. Laugh a small laugh, laugh a big laugh. Chuckle with a knowing smile, laugh till the tears are streaming down your face.

Perhaps this comedy short will help. Best 2m16s of your life, guaranteed. And then by all means, clean your room.  Doing so can only help.