Overture: 12 Rules for Life

Good evening. Just a run of the mill blog post here on the same blog I've kept up for the past ten years of my life. I'm trying this new thing where I write out all aspects of my contemplation, nothing more. I spent a lot of time on writing it all out, so let me know if you like the new format or if you see any typos.

One of the best books I've ever read was 12 Rules for Life, by Jordan Peterson. In the overture of that book he explained how the book came to be. He was an academic working on his flagship book of answers for life. He spent years perfecting it, hitting every moral quandary backed with every historical example until it was complete. "The Maps of Meaning", by Jordan Peterson. 564 pages. Perfection. Honestly, I didn't read it. It seemed too long and complex for me to grasp in a short time; I needed short term answers for long term problems. The book seemed to set him back, he was a psychologist trying to come up with the perfect "Maps of Meaning" and he did that to a fair degree. But he was a scholar afterall, and I like to think he contemplated what he'd written to an obsessive degree.

He used Quora a lot, answering various psychology questions from whomever would ask a thought-provoking question. People ask Psychologists on Quora a ton of questions about the meaning of life. It became kind of a hobby of his to answer each specific question carefully, and he spent a lot of time doing that. He looked back at his most popular answers. There it was, his Maps of Meaning.

That's not to say the book was a failure. He used it as a template to structure a college course, that is much needed content for the world to have. But it wasn't the book that I read. I read his next book, listened actually, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos.

Throughout the book, he seems to have the tone that these may not be exactly tailored to your life, but it doesn't matter. It's tailored to his life but each is general enough in principal to work on anyone. It has always been very high on my bucket list to write a book. If there was one thing to prove you're self-actualized it's writing a book, and it doesn't matter what it's about. The book would mainly be inspired by me, but I'm a decent writer so it shouldn't matter. There is a "non-zero chance" that there are people in the world who think the 12 most important things to an Air Force pilot who's traveled the world in a happy marriage is something they'd like to read. I have enough interesting things to write about so it's definitely possible.

It's not that I haven't tried. There was a point in my life I thought, "Okay. This is the thing. Now I have the time. This is what my book is going to be about." And with enough work it would've probably been a decent book. But then I started pilot training (which really saps away that book-writing level of free time). Then I moved across the country and traveled more and also achieved my lifelong goal of becoming a US Air Force Pilot. I just learned a lot more and generally got better at life.

One thing grew more and more apparent to me the more I live. The book which I thought "This is the thing" and started writing, was exactly what you don't want your book of life to be. But I should probably start writing more things down.

So, now that the Overture is out of the way...

Chapter 1: Cat Pyschology with Finn and Gwen!

Just kidding. But could you imagine? No the first one's about The Good Place and the Ethics of COVID. 

If you haven't seen every episode of The Good Place in order and without spoiling it, you should probably do that someday. You're just gonna have to trust me on that. Every episode will be always be relevant in some way to your life in the way that the classics of Seinfeld, How I Met Your Mother, or Friends always will be. The Good Place is one of those shows where you can tell they wrote every script before they even started production. Lost was not one of those shows. 

There's this thing called the Pixar Test allegedly created by Steve Jobs while he was at Pixar. The test is as follows: Rule 1: Anything good that happens cannot happen by random chance, only personal growth can lead to anything good. Rule 2: Anything bad that happens cannot happen by personal growth, only random chance can lead to anything bad. Rule 3: If there is one thing in the script that breaks either rule, it fails the Pixar Test. The Good Place passes the Pixar Test. Lost did not pass the Pixar Test.

Everyone has done the Heaven thought experiment. You assume a Heaven exists in which you're happy for infinity in the afterlife, but in order for that to be true, it needs to have a robust system in place and what exactly would it be? The Good Place is this thought experiment. In case you don't trust me I thought of the perfect example that doesn't spoil anything.

In The Good Place, a Janet is a "soul guide". Sort of an amorphous being that looks like a human but lives in a void and knows everything about the universe. This is why I'm compelled to think I have either time traveled or seen the Good Place. I took an ambien on a deployment, sleep-dialed Karen saying very clearly "Janet told me to get you chocolate so I did". Decker...what? Who's Janet? "You know. Janet." I then woke up with a bar Toblerone in my suitcase and no memory of anything after the Ambien. This happened the night before I started watching The Good Place. No one will ever believe me, but Karen and I will always know, it happened EXACTLY like that.

There's also a Medium Place, population 1: Mindy. Mindy kind of sucks. She loves cocaine and is generally kind of mean but her specific circumstances didn't warrant her going to the Bad Place or the Good Place. She had a genuine change of heart one day on Earth but immediately died on the drive to the bank to give away all her money. Mindy realizes Janet can make a new amorphous being to keep her company, Derek, but since it's not a real Janet he turns out kind of... stunted. Every time a Janet or Derek is reset, it disappears for a few hours but it evolves a little. Mindy just kind of gets annoyed by Derek because he's obnoxious and resets him a lot. Like a lot, a lot. Like every time he comes in a room she just resets him because she can't be bothered by it. Well, in the very last episode Mindy has reset Derek a total of 62.8 million times. By the last episode he has literally evolved to the point of becoming the universe.

Okay. Got that out of the way. Do you want to know what happens next in this randomly selected non-spoiler example that you totally want to know the ending to now? Noted.

But that's what's so great about things like The Good Place or 12 Rules for Life or 12 Rules for Pilot Life that I may or may not be writing. Literally it's existence has made the world a better place. If it being written is all it takes to make the world a better place, even to just one person, it makes The Good Place possible in the system they created. The creator of the show was on some talk show promoting the show and said something to the effect of, "Well I wanted a show that was about Ethics and Morals and just being a good person. I think those are really interesting ideas that people should know. But I don't want it to feel like a college lecture because no one would watch it. So I wrote The Good Place."

Oh shit. You know what? It's already 2:30am and this is getting kind of long. Looks like we're not gonna get to my college lecture on the Ethics of COVID. Then no one would read this book.

Rule 0: If you have the time, the ability, the motivation, and lack literally anything in the universe to prevent you from doing it, even if it only effects one person... Do it.