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Rule 2: Treat Yourself as Someone You are Responsible for Helping

Like the first rule, I'm sometimes good at this and sometimes not. On the one hand, I've been very self-interested -- I've gotten an education and regularly update my knowledge; I've had a successful career and moved on to new fields when necessary; I've brought myself back to health after being 100 lbs overweight. But this last point highlights another painful fact, namely, that I have also had a tendency to self-sabotage. I've blown up my life on more than one occasion. And this isn't as easy to implement a correction for as, say, standing up straight with my shoulders back.

I really like Peterson's take on sacrifice, as giving up something in the present for the benefit of a better future. In his lectures, he says that we can help our future selves. My past self exercised and dieted so that her future self (my present self) could be healthy. Nowadays I think of the future self of mine that is going to need the most help, which as best I can tell will be my dying self, for when I die, I will have no more power to do anything to help myself. So how can I set up the best conditions of my death? I really don't want to have regrets when I die, so I don't do things I'll regret, and I do things I'd regret not having tried. I like Nietzsche's "eternal return" demon who suggests that we'll have the same life over and over again for eternity, and the me who rejoices at this!

There's an admonition here to take personal responsibility, which ties into other rules like Clean Your Room and Do What's Meaningful, Not What's Expedient. In much of my life, I've been more eager to take responsibility for other people around me, but those efforts have often ended in failure, as the problems of my own egoism and self-destruction interfere. It's taken a long time for me to grasp that I do that, but I've taken steps to minimize that tendency -- like, I've quit drinking (almost four years now) and quit smoking pot. I had the discipline to be a vegetarian for 25 years; now I'm pescatarian, and have a much more balanced diet.

What do you do to take care of yourself, and what challenges have you faced in cultivating personal responsibility?

SophiaPistis 5 June 25
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Somewhat difficult to wrap my mind around. Being in the dying stage of life (who the F knows when that will happen) I'm obviously somewhat older. That said, I envy the young and the upcoming generations for having some sense of self care and celebrating ones self. I grew up at a time when such was taught to be selfish and self-centered. Add to that that I am a "service" sign (astrological) I seriously wonder how different my own life might have been had self-care and self-love been incorporated into my life in ANY way. I watch the young, including Millenials and those who came after them and am in awe of the simple ability to enjoy their own being.

Sophia I hope more people do respond to you. I was saddened that none had at this point.

You're here, that's good enough for me!

As I prepare for Rule 3, it dawned on me that there's something else about Rule 2 that also has embedded in it a profound metaphysical proposition. To say that we are responsible for caring for ourselves, and to have friends who want the best for us, is to posit that we all have inherent value. And that, I think, is at the core of Peterson's religious sensibility. That it is, in fact, a kind of religious sensibility. I'm trying to be precise with my words here, and I'm struggling.

"Value" is a subjective construction. "Value" doesn't have mass, it doesn't have energy. In a very basic sense, it doesn't exist. So to say that something has value, especially ourselves, to me is kind of a like an article of faith. It's a map to the territory, not the territory itself. But it's a hugely important map. Peterson famously says, when asked if he believes in God, that he doesn't like the question because there are so many ways of construing "belief" -- but then goes on to say that he behaves as if God exists. In other words, he employs a conceptual framework that includes a notion of God -- which is to say, he uses a "map" that gives him better results for navigating the Territory with respect to wherever he happens to be aiming, with respect to his intentions.

Choosing to use a map that has written on it the notion that the Territory of the human being has "inherent value" yields different results in our lives: much, much better results. Even though it's an article of faith.

You're a person of service. To do that, you have to use a map that says that other people have inherent value. Rule 2 says you just have to extend that map to yourself as well.

@SophiaPistis and therein lies the problem. A culture that denigrated that "you" map pretty much guaranteed self-alienation.

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