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A review by gijshuppertz
Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson
3.0
Jordan Peterson: A Classic Conservative-Liberal with Christian Roots
Jordan B. Peterson was the first ‘intellectual’ that I came in contact with around the age of 15. I fell quite deep into the Youtube algorithm and stayed there for a few years. Peterson’s thoughts regarding the bible, psychology, and philosophy were novel and mysterious. It hinted towards a world that I never knew the existence of. As an edgy 16 years old psychology student, this attracted me and I am partly thankful for it. I ate my part of the lobster stew, however, at a certain point I was full.
This point was reached when I started to watch the lectures that went beyond psychology, the 12 rules for life, and his book Map of Meaning. In particular, his more political lectures. As a Dutch citizen, I wondered why he bothered himself with the Dutch nitrogen crisis and discussed mostly one-sided news on his channel. Furthermore, I wondered why he joined the, in my opinion, quite Christian fundamentalist outlet of DailyWire.
This made me wonder if I could trace his ideological roots in his Magnum Opus, Maps of Meaning. A friend of mine recommended reading it and so two friends and I delved deeper into this book. In this essay, I am hoping to share what I have found, what made me think, and where I disagree with Peterson.
Let us first go slowly through the book. According to Peterson, the world exists of two aspects: a world of ‘factual things’ related to science and a world of action related to stories and myths.
We explore the factual world with our senses and via interactions predominantly social interaction we learn how to act within the world. Furthermore, via those interactions, we assign meaning to the world.
The whole living world that we interact in, is shaped by these myths and meanings. Every action we undertake is fundamentally grounded in how the world is towards how it should be. Peterson tells the story of a man that needs to get to his next meeting. There is a certain thought behind his behavior, he wants to do well and gain a raise so he can finally travel. However, the lift is broken, and his ordered pattern of what is and how to act to receive how the world should be is shaken up. He is suddenly confronted with chaos. So, we readjust or we fail.
Myth is the broader framework that helps to shape and give way to these developments of interactions with and attitudes in the world. While we do not think about it most of the time, our behavior in day-to-day interaction is shaped by the idea we have of how it is to be a father or husband for example. A layer on top of that is what it is to be an American or in my case Dutch citizen. Above which is according to Peterson Judeo-Christian personality and above that, the myth of the exploratory hero. This last layer is of utmost importance for Peterson, however, that will be discussed later.
Peterson makes the distinction between rational myths and the myths of old. According to him, the rational myths: Communism and Fascism have failed. Science can not guide us in life because its factual data lacks the blood that runs through life (e.g., the myths that shape our life). This made me think of [[Wilhelm Dilthey]]’s quote “No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject constructed by Locke, Hume, and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought.”, however, I will leave that be.
So to conclude the first part, myth helps us construct how to act or how Peterson draws it
It sees what is
Shapes how we should act
Towards what we should be
In the second chapter, Peterson delves into the cognitive structure that facilitates mythical thinking. He shows that via a multitude of interactions such as play, philosophy, and mimesis, we transfer behavior, values, and ways of thinking. Via these interactions, that we have with the outside world, we slowly integrate the chaos or unknown into the known. Bringing order into chaos.
Herein the eternal knower is the individual that transcends the borders of the known into the unknown and takes the knowledge gained there back to further develop the known. Integrating the old with the new, combining chaos and order. According to Peterson, this is the path all need to walk, the path of the eternal knower between chaos and order.
Peterson then gives a very elaborate overview of the main archetypes that make up mythical thinking and how he connects it to life. These archetypes are:
The primal source: often the source from which everything develops and sometimes mixed with the great mother
The great father: order, culture. Can develop into both protective order and the tyrannical father
The great mother: chaos, nature. Can develop into both promise and threat
The hero: the one who balances chaos and order.
These archetypes are transferred via the sources discussed before. This also might explain how for example Peterson sees that the behavior of a father is the transferral of fathers over generations. Here he also links his thinking to Carl Jung’s concept of heritable memories or the collective unconscious. These great mythical concepts are transferred over generations as heritable memories and therefore function as the collective consciousness. As Peterson describes it:
The collective conscious is the cumulative transmitted consequences of the fact of exploration and culture in action.
Regarding the absolute
So in a sense, we are all actors learning how to act on stage, and our greatest guide on how to act is found by looking back at myths and history to trace patterns. Or as Peterson states:
Culture is therefore the sum total of sur- viving historically determined hierarchically arranged behaviors and second- and third-order abstract representations, and more: it is the integration of these, in the course of endless social and intrapsychic conflict, into a single pattern of behavior a single system of morality, simultaneously governing personal conduct, interpersonal interaction and imagistic/semantic description of such. This pattern is the “corporeal ideal” of the culture, its mode of transform- ing the unbearable present into the desired future, its guiding force, its central personality. This personality, expressed in behavior, is first embodied in the king or emperor, socially (where it forms the basis for “sovereignty”). Abstractly represented–imitated, played, ritualized, and storied–it becomes something ever more psychological. This embodied and represented “cultural character” is transmitted through the generations, transmuting in form, but not in essence-transmitted by direct instruction, through imitation, and as a consequence of the human ability to incorporate personality features temporarily disembodied in narrative.
However, to me, this seemed like a form of relativism while Peterson proclaimed in the introduction that he found absolute truth in his work. To answer this, I need to rely a bit on quotes from Petersons text. On the answer of absolute truths, so what constitutes the highest value or good, Peterson states:
The answer to the question “what constitutes the highest value?” or “what is the highest good?” is in fact the solution to the meta-problem, not the problem, although solutions to the latter have been and are at present constantly confused with solutions to the former- to the constant (often mortal) detriment of those attempting to address the former. The precise nature of that which constitutes morality still eludes declarative exposition. The moral structure, encoded in behavior, is too complex to completely consciously formulate.
Nevertheless, that structure remains an integrated system (essentially, a historically determined personality, and representation thereof), a product of determined efforts (proce- dural and declarative) devoted toward integrated adaptation, and not a merely random or otherwise incomprehensible compilation of rituals and beliefs.
Culture is a structure aimed toward the attainment of certain (affectively-grounded) ends, in the immediate present and over the longer course of time. As such, a given cultural structure necessarily must meet a number of stringent and severely constrained requirements:
(1) it must be self-maintaining (in that it promotes activities that allow it to retain its central form)
(2) it must be sufficiently flexible to allow for constant adaptation to constantly shifting environmental circumstances
(3) it must acquire the allegiance of the individuals who compose it.
Petersons then states that this meta-morality problem is solved by those societies who found a way to have their citizens go through the process of the hero or the eternal knower. The absolute so to say, is the society that helps their individual heroes to balance as well as possible between the known and the unknown. The meta myth of the hero is in the end.
Critique
- The jumping around between biology and culture.
This has to do more with Petersons’ political expressions, not in the book but online.
While I do not want to suggest that Peterson needs to be a perfect representation of his book. I
wonder what happened to his social constructivism in relation towards his Twitter argument
about objective beauty.
- The focus on western myths
I read that the meta-myth of the hero is not applicable to multiple cultures, especially the Chinese.
While I am not familiar with it, it is a decent critique.
- The question of morality is vague
I can understand his steps: every culture has the same myths and everybody seems to work with
stories to create meaning.
The culture that best facilitates the hero’s myth is better.
From the hero’s behavior, we generalize certain ways of behavior (this is the answer to ‘what is the
highest value’).
Furthermore, society guides us because it is a cumulation of these patterns of behavior.
Therefore Peterson appreciates conservatives, they understand this value.
To me, Peterson represents a classical liberal in his emphasis on the freedom of the individual. This is also represented in his careful watch of the tyrannical state, while still wanting the state to regulate the maximum of freedom. His conservative tendency is represented in his appreciation of the culture that forms a cumulation of patterns of how to behave. His Christian roots can be found in how he suggests that we need myth to shape our lives as a guide and that for this, he mostly looks towards the bible for this guidance.
While Peterson does not explicitly as a fundamentalist looks at the bible as the ultimate true source of guidance in life. He does see in it a myth that has been passed down from generations, and should therefore hold a certain truth that has been valued for centuries.
The amount of which Peterson conservatively wants to hold on to certain stories of the bible as important for the current days is left open. This is maybe what left-leaning critics find bothersome since he does. Where is the border between interesting mythical inspirations from the bible, and conservatively leaning on it as a guide for society?
Jordan B. Peterson was the first ‘intellectual’ that I came in contact with around the age of 15. I fell quite deep into the Youtube algorithm and stayed there for a few years. Peterson’s thoughts regarding the bible, psychology, and philosophy were novel and mysterious. It hinted towards a world that I never knew the existence of. As an edgy 16 years old psychology student, this attracted me and I am partly thankful for it. I ate my part of the lobster stew, however, at a certain point I was full.
This point was reached when I started to watch the lectures that went beyond psychology, the 12 rules for life, and his book Map of Meaning. In particular, his more political lectures. As a Dutch citizen, I wondered why he bothered himself with the Dutch nitrogen crisis and discussed mostly one-sided news on his channel. Furthermore, I wondered why he joined the, in my opinion, quite Christian fundamentalist outlet of DailyWire.
This made me wonder if I could trace his ideological roots in his Magnum Opus, Maps of Meaning. A friend of mine recommended reading it and so two friends and I delved deeper into this book. In this essay, I am hoping to share what I have found, what made me think, and where I disagree with Peterson.
Let us first go slowly through the book. According to Peterson, the world exists of two aspects: a world of ‘factual things’ related to science and a world of action related to stories and myths.
We explore the factual world with our senses and via interactions predominantly social interaction we learn how to act within the world. Furthermore, via those interactions, we assign meaning to the world.
The whole living world that we interact in, is shaped by these myths and meanings. Every action we undertake is fundamentally grounded in how the world is towards how it should be. Peterson tells the story of a man that needs to get to his next meeting. There is a certain thought behind his behavior, he wants to do well and gain a raise so he can finally travel. However, the lift is broken, and his ordered pattern of what is and how to act to receive how the world should be is shaken up. He is suddenly confronted with chaos. So, we readjust or we fail.
Myth is the broader framework that helps to shape and give way to these developments of interactions with and attitudes in the world. While we do not think about it most of the time, our behavior in day-to-day interaction is shaped by the idea we have of how it is to be a father or husband for example. A layer on top of that is what it is to be an American or in my case Dutch citizen. Above which is according to Peterson Judeo-Christian personality and above that, the myth of the exploratory hero. This last layer is of utmost importance for Peterson, however, that will be discussed later.
Peterson makes the distinction between rational myths and the myths of old. According to him, the rational myths: Communism and Fascism have failed. Science can not guide us in life because its factual data lacks the blood that runs through life (e.g., the myths that shape our life). This made me think of [[Wilhelm Dilthey]]’s quote “No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject constructed by Locke, Hume, and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought.”, however, I will leave that be.
So to conclude the first part, myth helps us construct how to act or how Peterson draws it
It sees what is
Shapes how we should act
Towards what we should be
In the second chapter, Peterson delves into the cognitive structure that facilitates mythical thinking. He shows that via a multitude of interactions such as play, philosophy, and mimesis, we transfer behavior, values, and ways of thinking. Via these interactions, that we have with the outside world, we slowly integrate the chaos or unknown into the known. Bringing order into chaos.
Herein the eternal knower is the individual that transcends the borders of the known into the unknown and takes the knowledge gained there back to further develop the known. Integrating the old with the new, combining chaos and order. According to Peterson, this is the path all need to walk, the path of the eternal knower between chaos and order.
Peterson then gives a very elaborate overview of the main archetypes that make up mythical thinking and how he connects it to life. These archetypes are:
The primal source: often the source from which everything develops and sometimes mixed with the great mother
The great father: order, culture. Can develop into both protective order and the tyrannical father
The great mother: chaos, nature. Can develop into both promise and threat
The hero: the one who balances chaos and order.
These archetypes are transferred via the sources discussed before. This also might explain how for example Peterson sees that the behavior of a father is the transferral of fathers over generations. Here he also links his thinking to Carl Jung’s concept of heritable memories or the collective unconscious. These great mythical concepts are transferred over generations as heritable memories and therefore function as the collective consciousness. As Peterson describes it:
The collective conscious is the cumulative transmitted consequences of the fact of exploration and culture in action.
Regarding the absolute
So in a sense, we are all actors learning how to act on stage, and our greatest guide on how to act is found by looking back at myths and history to trace patterns. Or as Peterson states:
Culture is therefore the sum total of sur- viving historically determined hierarchically arranged behaviors and second- and third-order abstract representations, and more: it is the integration of these, in the course of endless social and intrapsychic conflict, into a single pattern of behavior a single system of morality, simultaneously governing personal conduct, interpersonal interaction and imagistic/semantic description of such. This pattern is the “corporeal ideal” of the culture, its mode of transform- ing the unbearable present into the desired future, its guiding force, its central personality. This personality, expressed in behavior, is first embodied in the king or emperor, socially (where it forms the basis for “sovereignty”). Abstractly represented–imitated, played, ritualized, and storied–it becomes something ever more psychological. This embodied and represented “cultural character” is transmitted through the generations, transmuting in form, but not in essence-transmitted by direct instruction, through imitation, and as a consequence of the human ability to incorporate personality features temporarily disembodied in narrative.
However, to me, this seemed like a form of relativism while Peterson proclaimed in the introduction that he found absolute truth in his work. To answer this, I need to rely a bit on quotes from Petersons text. On the answer of absolute truths, so what constitutes the highest value or good, Peterson states:
The answer to the question “what constitutes the highest value?” or “what is the highest good?” is in fact the solution to the meta-problem, not the problem, although solutions to the latter have been and are at present constantly confused with solutions to the former- to the constant (often mortal) detriment of those attempting to address the former. The precise nature of that which constitutes morality still eludes declarative exposition. The moral structure, encoded in behavior, is too complex to completely consciously formulate.
Nevertheless, that structure remains an integrated system (essentially, a historically determined personality, and representation thereof), a product of determined efforts (proce- dural and declarative) devoted toward integrated adaptation, and not a merely random or otherwise incomprehensible compilation of rituals and beliefs.
Culture is a structure aimed toward the attainment of certain (affectively-grounded) ends, in the immediate present and over the longer course of time. As such, a given cultural structure necessarily must meet a number of stringent and severely constrained requirements:
(1) it must be self-maintaining (in that it promotes activities that allow it to retain its central form)
(2) it must be sufficiently flexible to allow for constant adaptation to constantly shifting environmental circumstances
(3) it must acquire the allegiance of the individuals who compose it.
Petersons then states that this meta-morality problem is solved by those societies who found a way to have their citizens go through the process of the hero or the eternal knower. The absolute so to say, is the society that helps their individual heroes to balance as well as possible between the known and the unknown. The meta myth of the hero is in the end.
Critique
- The jumping around between biology and culture.
This has to do more with Petersons’ political expressions, not in the book but online.
While I do not want to suggest that Peterson needs to be a perfect representation of his book. I
wonder what happened to his social constructivism in relation towards his Twitter argument
about objective beauty.
- The focus on western myths
I read that the meta-myth of the hero is not applicable to multiple cultures, especially the Chinese.
While I am not familiar with it, it is a decent critique.
- The question of morality is vague
I can understand his steps: every culture has the same myths and everybody seems to work with
stories to create meaning.
The culture that best facilitates the hero’s myth is better.
From the hero’s behavior, we generalize certain ways of behavior (this is the answer to ‘what is the
highest value’).
Furthermore, society guides us because it is a cumulation of these patterns of behavior.
Therefore Peterson appreciates conservatives, they understand this value.
To me, Peterson represents a classical liberal in his emphasis on the freedom of the individual. This is also represented in his careful watch of the tyrannical state, while still wanting the state to regulate the maximum of freedom. His conservative tendency is represented in his appreciation of the culture that forms a cumulation of patterns of how to behave. His Christian roots can be found in how he suggests that we need myth to shape our lives as a guide and that for this, he mostly looks towards the bible for this guidance.
While Peterson does not explicitly as a fundamentalist looks at the bible as the ultimate true source of guidance in life. He does see in it a myth that has been passed down from generations, and should therefore hold a certain truth that has been valued for centuries.
The amount of which Peterson conservatively wants to hold on to certain stories of the bible as important for the current days is left open. This is maybe what left-leaning critics find bothersome since he does. Where is the border between interesting mythical inspirations from the bible, and conservatively leaning on it as a guide for society?