12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

hundreds of millions were murdered in the name of utopia. It took getting used to,

the myth of the hero, a cross-cultural theme explored psychoanalytically by Otto Rank,

parents should come in pairs.

After the experience of terrible atrocity, isn’t forgiveness just cowardice, or lack of willpower? Such questions torment me. But people emerge from terrible pasts to do good, and not evil, although such an accomplishment can seem superhuman.

the discovery of the causal relationship between our efforts today and the quality of tomorrow motivated the social contract—the

“No tree can grow to Heaven,” adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, “unless its roots reach down to Hell.”134 Such a statement should give everyone who encounters it pause.

The society produced by Christianity was far less barbaric than the pagan—even the Roman—ones it replaced. Christian society at least recognized that feeding slaves to ravenous lions for the entertainment of the populace was wrong, even if many barbaric practices still existed. It objected to infanticide, to prostitution, and to the principle that

If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself.

lies warp the structure of Being. Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other.

Logos is the Word of God.