Don't Hide Things in the Fog
Have the small messy conversation now, or have the unsurvivable one later.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 91%
This is the chapter of Beyond Order that Peterson describes as concentrating on paying attention to your negative emotions, resentment particularly. The input is any recurring irritation you have decided not to mention. The mechanism is specificity: you drag the grievance out of the fog by naming the exact incident, stating your reading of it, and explicitly offering your own hypersensitivity or immaturity as one of the possible explanations, then inviting a joint diagnosis. Peterson's motive is counterintuitive — he calls things out precisely because he does not want more conflict. He would rather have genuine peace, which is very hard to obtain, than the peace people generally obtain by sweeping things under the carpet. His diagnostic extension is environmental: walk into a house where the kitchen is a mess, there is food that is not fresh in the fridge, and packages on shelves that have not been opened since the wedding, and you are looking at a domestic relationship where the bargaining about who does what was never fought through.
Origin
Peterson attributes the capacity partly to clinical training but says it is not just that — he has learned to see where things are going, the same faculty that lets him read what people are up to. It became a chapter in Beyond Order titled don't hide things in the fog.
Core principles
- 01Genuine peace is very hard to obtain, and most people obtain a counterfeit of it by sweeping things under the carpet.
- 02Some things, if you do not address them, just get worse — the avoidance is not neutral, it compounds.
- 03Calling things out is not a preference for conflict; Peterson's stated reason for doing it is that he wants less conflict overall.
- 04Vagueness is the enabling condition: a grievance kept in the fog cannot be resolved because it has no edges.
- 05Physical disorder is diagnostic of unfought arguments — a chaotic kitchen usually means the bargaining about who does what was never fought through.
- 06You have to have those fights to put things in order, and if you do not, you end up with a worse fight in the future.
- 07Peterson has a horrible aversion to conflict himself, so the practice is a learned discipline rather than a temperament.
How to run it
- 1
Notice the thing you have decided not to mention
Start from the negative emotion, resentment particularly, and trace it back to a concrete unaddressed event rather than a general sense of being wronged.
Pro tip If you cannot date the incident, you are still in the fog.
- 2
Read the environment for unfought bargains
Peterson's tell is physical: things out of order in a particular way. Too much chaos in the kitchen means something is wrong, and what is wrong is usually that the domestic bargaining about who does what was never conducted.
Pro tip The same reading works on teams — perpetually broken shared systems usually encode an ownership argument nobody has had.
Watch out Cleaning the kitchen without having the argument fixes the symptom and leaves the bargain unmade.
- 3
State the specific with your own fallibility included
The scripted form: you said something snarky at dinner which I did not think was appropriate; now I might be hypersensitive and touchy and immature, and maybe you hit me in a weak spot, or maybe you are playing some power game — why don't we figure that out.
Pro tip The clause admitting you might be the problem is what keeps the other person in the conversation.
Watch out Delivered as a verdict instead of a question, the same content starts the fight you were trying to prevent.
- 4
Accept the mess
Peterson is explicit that this is messy and that people do not like conversations like that, and that his own aversion to conflict is horrible. He does it anyway because he can see where things are going if he does not.
Pro tip Judge the conversation by whether the rule changed, not by whether it felt pleasant.
- 5
Have the fight now to buy order later
His formulation is that you have to have those fights to put things in order, and if you do not then you end up with a worse fight in the future. Trade a small argument at a chosen moment for a large one at an unchosen moment.
Pro tip Choose the timing deliberately — the whole advantage of raising it early is that you pick the ground.
Watch out Sweeping it under the carpet produces the appearance of peace while the debt accrues interest.
In the wild
Peterson describes walking into someone's house and paying attention to things out of order in a particular way — the kitchen is a mess, there is food that is not fresh in the fridge, there are packages up on shelves that have not been opened for two years or since the wedding. His read is that this is too much chaos in the kitchen and something is wrong, and what is wrong is in the domestic relationship: the bargaining about who does what in the kitchen has not been fought through.
→ A physical, checkable proxy for unhad conversations, which converts a vague relational unease into a specific negotiation.
Asked why he is peculiar in refusing to let these things go, Peterson says the positive reason as far as he can tell is that he does not want more conflict. He would rather have genuine peace, which is very very very hard to obtain, and he observes that people generally obtain peace instead by sweeping things under the carpet. He also concedes he has a horrible aversion to conflict and does not like it.
→ A reframe in which confrontation is conflict-minimising rather than conflict-seeking, available to people who hate conflict.
Common mistakes
Mistaking a swept-under carpet for peace
Peterson's point is that the peace most people obtain is procedural rather than genuine. The disagreement has not resolved; it has been relocated somewhere it cannot be addressed.
Raising the mood instead of the incident
A complaint with no date, no quote and no specific request cannot be answered. It reads as an attack on character rather than a request to renegotiate a rule, and it produces defensiveness instead of a bargain.
Waiting until you feel calm enough that it no longer matters
Waiting is how the item enters the fog permanently. Peterson's claim is that unaddressed things simply get worse, so delay is a choice for a larger future fight.
Is it for you?
Best for
Long-term relationships and working partnerships where the same friction recurs and both parties have tacitly agreed not to mention it.
Not ideal for
Transient or low-stakes relationships where the cost of the conversation genuinely exceeds the cost of the friction.
From the transcript
“some things if you don't address them they just get worse”
“that's too much chaos in the kitchen something's wrong well what's wrong well there's something wrong in the domestic relationship”
“i don't want more conflict i'd rather have genuine peace which is very very very hard to obtain people generally obtain peace by sweeping things…”
“i have another chapter in this new book called don't hide things in the fog”
From the episode
#502: Jordan Peterson on Rules for Life, Psychedelics, The Bible, and Much More