Narrative Theory & Beyond Order

A few minutes ago I finished reading Jordan Peterson's book BEYOND ORDER: 12 More Rules for Life. 

I normally do not write book reviews on this blog, and I hope this post doesn't turn into one. But I mention it here on the Moral Premise Storycraft Blog because Beyond Order has a great deal to say about Storytelling and Narrative Theory. 

While I enjoyed and heavily endorsed his 12 Rules for Life, Beyond Order is better.  I think Beyond Order is better written and edited, but it also has more explicit things to say about Storytelling and its importance to culture... things I have said for decades.  

Unlike many people who comment on Peterson's work, his writings have not revolutionized my life, but they have reinforced my worldview and how I attempt to live it. The life principles he examines are very much how I was brought up by responsible parents within a Biblical Christian worldview. But yes, Peterson challenges me (he often sounds like St. Paul) in areas of my life where I am weak and need improvement. Don't we all? In that respect, I hope his words will motivate me to change what needs to change. 

Peterson's view of the world in which we live as a frightfully terrible place should have deep resonance with most of us. It does for me, but then I was born, and my Mother exacerbated, my melancholy-choleric temperament. Peterson's understanding of the malevolence in the world, however, dovetails with a story's need for an overpowering antagonist or villain that threatens the protagonist at every turn. 

In speaking of Friedrich Nietzsche, (who was the philosophical inspiration behind Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, my all time favorite movie) Peterson does a concise and resonant explanation of Nietzsche's famous "God is Dead" pronouncement. Peterson writes: 

[Nietzsche's] fear that all the Judeo-Christian values serving as the foundation of Western Civilization had been made dangerously subject to casual rational criticism, and ... the existence of the transcendent, all-powerful deity—had been fatally challenged.  Nietzsche concluded from this that everything would soon fall apart, in a manner catastrophic both psychologically and socially. (p. 161-162)

I guess Nietzsche was write. Of course God is not dead in a literal sense, unless your POV is the current social-political culture. Least the importance of that to successful storytelling slip by, this fits well with the concept of the Moral Premise—

Ignoring Natural Law (transcendent reality and the values of Western Civilization) leads to psychological and social catastrophe; but Building up Natural Law et al leads to psychological and social harmony. 

If your story deals with the plight of persons trapped in poverty and their grit and determination to claw their way out, Peterson offers this juice fodder for story development.

There are many reasons... why people are poor. Lack of money is the obvious cause—but that hypothetical obviousness is part of the problem with ideology. Lack of education, broken families, crime-ridden neighborhoods, alcoholism, drug abuse, criminality and corruption (and the   political and economic exploitation that accompanies it), mental illness, lack of a life plan (or even failure to realize that formulating such a plan is possible or necessary), low conscientiousness, unfortunate geographical locale, shift in the economic landscape, and the consequent disappearance of entire fields of endeavor, the marked proclivity for those who are rich to get richer still and the poor to get poorer, low creativity/entrepreneurial interest, (and) lack of encouragement.  (p. 169)

Just the statement of Rule XI, Do Not Allow Yourself To Become Resentful, Deceitful, or Arrogant sounds to me like part of a Moral Premise Statement. Not only does it provide several ideas for the negative side of the moral premise, but it suggests that it is within the protagonist's power to change. 

As a further tease, here are the subtitles for the chapter on Rule XI:

The Story is the Thing / The Eternal Characters of the Human Drama / Nature: Creation and Destruction (see the Moral Premise Statement in that) / Culture: Security and Tyranny (more MPS fodder) / The Individual: Hero and Adversary / Resentment / Sins of Commissions / Sins of Omission / The Existential Danger of Arrogance and Deceit vs The Place You Should Be.

It's a long chapter (pp. 303–353) and a wealth of story themes perfectly laid out with motivations for both the hero and villain involved. I wrote in the margins on page 315 one of the great adages of storytelling: "To achieve our greatest desire we must face our greatest fear." That is true of every protagonist and hero. 

In the midst of that same chapter Peterson provides a case study of a real-life Sleeping Beauty. He essentially writes the treatment for a modern day, true life, live action drama. Someone should do the screenplay (pp. 321-328)

In short, read this book if you're serious about understanding character and motivations.