Rule 8: Tell The Truth, Or At Least Don’t Lie

12 Rules For Life Book Summary (Jordan B. Peterson)

“You can use words to manipulate the world into delivering what you want. This is what it means to act politically. It’s the speech people engage in when they attempt to influence and manipulate others. It’s what university students do when they write an essay to please the professor instead of articulating and clarifying their own ideas. It’s what everyone does when they want something and decide to falsify themselves to please and flatter.”

“To conduct life like this is to become possessed by some ill-informed desire and then to craft speech and action in a manner that appears likely, rationally to be bring about that end. Typically, calculated ends might include to impose my ideological beliefs, to prove that I am or was right, to appear competent, to avoid responsibility, to be promoted, to garner the benefits of martyrdom, to minimize immediate conflict, etc., etc. These are all examples of Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler theory called ‘life lies’. Someone living a life lie is attempting to manipulate reality with perception, thought, and action so that only some narrowly-desired and predefined outcome is allowed to exist.”