12 Boomer Rants
A review of 12 Rules for Life for the 2022 Freddie DeBoer Book Review Contest
Jordan Memerson* is, to say the least, a polarizing figure. Every part of him, from his all-raw-meat diets, Kermit-the-Frog voice, and Canadian accent, to his wild popularity among the decidedly wrong type of person, seems designed to elicit the viral scorn of Twitter Elites.
Only vaguely familiar with the shallower parts of Memerson lore, I decided to give 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos a read, partly as a performative middle finger, and mostly as a permanent ticket to “Well, Actually” my way into future online mudslinging. As I took in the audiobook on my daily commutes (his voice really does sound like Kermit the Frog’s!), I gave my wife a simple, one-sentence review:
“I can’t imagine having so little of my life together that 12 Boomer Rants would improve it.”
And they are, essentially, Boomer rants, styled to a formulaic recipe. Start with “Kids these days” as a base, pair it with a “Back in my day” anecdote, stir in a cup of Psych 101, and sprinkle with “advanced topics” like evolutionary psychology, neurochemistry, Jungian archetypes, or clinical anecdotes. Then fold in Western Judeo-Christian Conservative values and wrap it all up in a snappy title.
And yet a couple weeks later, I found myself drawing advice from its pages and recommended that my wife give it a shot. She recalled my review, and I shrugged, sharing some of her disbelief. This interaction would repeat itself over the next few years. Somehow, Memerson’s sappy bestseller took a grand slam victory in my life, placing first in “books I’ve drawn from in conversations,” “books I’ve recommended,” and “books I’ve found myself thinking about.”
Rule 5: Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them
My wife and I are raising a son together. I sometimes view my wife as the roommate who, upset that the cat meows at her “for no reason,” gives the cat treats “to shut up.” Meanwhile, I think Bean Dad did nothing wrong, and, if Bean Daughter was hungry for 6 hours but learned a skill and the meta-skill of figuring it out herself, that’s more than a fair trade. And I find myself looking down on those who would not at least try to make that trade. I look down at those whose kids are glued to an iPad at restaurants, unwilling or unable to spend even an hour with their parents without defaulting to a brain-dead stare at cartoons or video games. It says to me that these parents don’t have the will to say no and mean it, even when it’s good for both the parents and the children. It says to me that the kids have been trained into bad behavior, never corrected to something better.
Imagine my satisfaction as I heard the story of young Jordan Memerson playing host to his kids’ friends for a Parents’ Night Out. One parent greeted him with a videotape and an explanation that “He won’t sleep. After you put him to bed, he will crawl out of his bed, and come downstairs. We usually put on an Elmo video and let him watch it.” Memerson privately decided “There’s no damn way I’m rewarding a recalcitrant child for unacceptable behaviour and I’m certainly not showing anyone any Elmo video,” but said nothing. They all played, then went to sleep, and when, as predicted, the little brat got up, Memerson said “Lie down.” The kid didn't, and Memerson proceeded to tell the kid “Lie down or I will lay you down.” His warning ignored, Memerson laid the kid down and persisted through the resulting struggle with gentle patience and an absolute determination to see it through to the end. Despite having to physically hold the two-year-old down for a time, Memerson was eventually rewarded for his efforts with a sound asleep child. The parents came back shocked to hear that the kid slept without his video tape, and Memerson refused to tell them the dark magic.
Don’t cast pearls before swine, as the old saying goes. And you might think that’s harsh. But training your child not to sleep, and rewarding him with the antics of a creepy puppet? That’s harsh too. You pick your poison, and I’ll pick mine.
This story brought me great comfort. It proudly admits to what many of us consider a shameful reality. In hushed tones, a mother at a birthday party once admitted that she achieved a weekend nap-time only because she once went through a similar 2-hour ordeal of clenching the child’s bedroom doorknob shut, through screaming and wailing and pounding. But once was enough. Now, knowing that an iron will stands ready to enforce the naptime, the child will nap. It’s good for the child, and it’s good for the parent.
Rule 2: Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping.
My long-time friend, Janet, struggles through her Ph.D. program. She began it for apparently no reason other than that everyone told her it was “the thing to do,” and has since drifted aimlessly in a wall-less prison for the last “don’t ask” years. In some combination of depression, ADHD, and low social expectations, she spends her days aimlessly browsing memes and “news,” tending to potted plants, and complaining about her lot in life. Her complaints touch on the “news,” the lack of food in her fridge that forces her to scrounge up dinner out of a box of cookies here and a can of beans there, but mostly how sad and lonely she is and how ridiculous it is to expect anyone to work under her conditions. As a result, she has elected to do no research for two years, fulfilling only the teaching and grading necessary for her to live off a teaching assistant stipend.
On my own pathway out of alcoholism, ADHD, and low social expectations (and as a Ph.D. dropout myself), I overheard her talking about her box of cookies for dinner and snapped. As I am prone to do, I went on a rant.
There’s this old joke about how people will treat their cars better than they treat themselves, paying extra for synthetic oil and premium gas for their precious baby, while scarfing down fast food. For Janet, it’s her plants, but the concept is the same. She’ll research their unique needs for fertilizer, light, and watering, but keep herself up to 3 AM doomscrolling, fueled only by the cookies that were her breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There’s simply no way that she would treat her plants the same way. While it’s tempting to hypothesize that she loves her plants more than herself, the more likely scenario is that we use our super-ego for our responsibilities and our id for ourselves.
I explained it as I saw it, which happened to be the way Memerson saw it: as a moral obligation. Just as it’s not a choice whether I take care of my son—feed him healthy food, bathe him, give him outdoor playtime—I can place my body within this category of “things I am responsible for.” Now I must feed myself healthy food, exercise, clean my room, acquire knowledge, and get to bed at a reasonable time.
To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is, instead, to consider what would be truly good for you. This is not “what you want.” It is also not “what would make you happy.” Every time you give a child something sweet, you make that child happy. That does not mean that you should do nothing for children except feed them candy. “Happy” is by no means synonymous with “good.” You must get children to brush their teeth. They must put on their snowsuits when they go outside in the cold, even though they might object strenuously. You must help a child become a virtuous, responsible, awake being, capable of full reciprocity—able to take care of himself and others, and to thrive while doing so. Why would you think it acceptable to do anything less for yourself?
I have a responsibility to my son. I have a duty to do these things to him and for him. I can just expand this mental category to include my own body and mind as things that I am morally obligated to take care of. It has worked surprisingly well for me, so why couldn’t it work for Janet? She could treat herself as a plant: what kind of soil and lighting makes her thrive? Maybe this “grad student” plant needs a bedtime, or food that’s more nutritious than a bag of sugar.
She understood the point, and said it back to me like this: “I love my plants, and I show them my love by taking care of them. You love your son and show him your love by taking care of him. I should love myself, and show myself my love by taking care of myself.” While my wife cringed at yet another Memerson reference, she was glad that someone said something.
Memerson was addicted to benzos, had a breakdown, went into a coma, and came back a depressed husk of his former self. In his after-the-fall state, he interviewed with fellow Intellectual Dark Web founder Bret Weinstein, with a passage that will never leave my mind. Memerson says he “had no idea how deep the desperation was for people who lack encouragement” and that this realization, hammered in by the adoring fans that attended his book tour, has broken him. “To see the depth of hunger that people had for an encouraging word was unbelievably tragic. And for people to come up to me, repeatedly, over and over and over, hundreds, maybe thousands, of times and say ‘you know I was in such desperate straits looking for some encouragement, unable to find it, and then you know I came across your lectures…’ I thought ‘Jesus it’s pretty thin gruel to feed a starving population’.”
So, are these people starving for encouragement, lost so badly they need old Kermit to give them 12 Boomer Rants to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Well, it turns out it’s my wife, my close friends, and me.
*I’m sure on legal documents his name is Jordan Peterson. But in my heart, and in this review, his name is Jordan Memerson as there really is no better way to describe him than as a living meme.
This review was my submission to the 2022 Book Review Contest hosted by Freddie De Boer at his substack:
