I finished reading Jordan B. Peterson's Maps of Meaning a couple of weeks ago and have been wondering since how to write about it.
Let me tell you what I think Peterson is trying to do, consciously or unconsciously. He is trying to find a way out of our current western dilemma, the apparent stand-off between the stolid bourgeoisie, who I call the People of the Responsible Self, and the artists, writers, and activists of the educated elite, who I call the People of the Creative Self.
And the people that are going to have to change are the People of the Creative Self. Their current line is that they are called to save society from its racism, sexism, and homophobia through transgressive humiliation of the stolid bourgeoisie and government grants to do activism to help the marginalized and the oppressed.
Peterson's Maps of Meaning says that this sort of thing, this salvation of the poor and weak, is not done by regime-approved activism and grants. It is done in the old way, in the constant theme of myth and religion, through the tragic witness of the sacrificial Son and Hero, who redeems a society out of joint with his selflessness, his witness, and his courageous suffering on the border between Order and Chaos.
By the way, there is a YouTube video series of Maps of Meaning.
The constant theme of Maps of Meaning is the play of opposites (hello Hegel?): Order vs. Chaos; What Is vs. What Should Be; Security vs. Tyranny; Creation vs. Destruction; Base Matter vs. Gold; Known World vs. Unknown World.
For Peterson the humans that inhabit this world of opposites are not the rational actors of our modern understanding. In saying this he is merely continuing the narrative that began with the Romantic reaction against the Age of Reason. Instead of rational actors we are creatures of habit that live almost unconsciously until we experience something that shatters our Known World. Peterson illustrates this point with the story of a young executive that thinks his career is going great guns until one day HR calls him in and tells him he is fired because everyone else finds him impossible to deal with. Bam! The whole world of the young man is destroyed: all his assumptions, all his plans, his whole world view is shattered. Until he can figure out what went wrong and develop a better understanding of the world.
On Peterson's view this encounter with the Unknown must be the way of the world. It's the way that the whole of creation except for mankind must live, because our rational-actor model is predicated on the reality of our conscious mind which, we believe, is not available to the rest of creation. This is the meaning of the great instincts like Rage and Fear; they arise at the moment that the world surprises an animal, humans included, and these emotions, these "affects," force us to confront reality and do something about it.
The normal thing for an animal to do, after being surprised, is to freeze, and then to begin to explore the world around it to figure out what went wrong and what to do about it. That is what the young man mentioned above did. And that is what we all do.
But what we humans can also do is strategize about our situation, and develop a rational plan in addition to our hastily acquired knowledge about the world that just surprised us. This human ability is obviously a very big thing.
But whatever the rational plan may be, it must sit atop the more primitive and immediate reality of instinct and affect and, above all, Meaning. Peterson argues that the way to understand this is by studying the great hero narratives of myth and religion and their reality of great opposites: Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, Creation and Destruction. The world of opposites is a world of Meaning.
But Peterson does not present us with a 12 step method to save the world, as he does in his later book. For there are no slick answers on the border between Order and Chaos. There is no telling what may happen after the hero descends into the Underworld there to confront the Dragon of Chaos within his own breast. Nietzsche echoes this in his Beyond Good and Evil where he writes that suffering -- not good and evil or pleasure and pain -- is the real coin of the realm:
Still, Maps of Meaning was a mild disappointment to me. It does not end in a rousing coda, but subsides almost in confusion. But it ends like this:
Really, the current culture war is about warring notions of safety, either in the identity politics of race and gender or in the identity politics of nation. Of course, humans have always been tribal. The question is whether we can find a way emerge from our various safe spaces to transcend our current tribalisms and reinvent them at a higher, more heroic, level.
Let me tell you what I think Peterson is trying to do, consciously or unconsciously. He is trying to find a way out of our current western dilemma, the apparent stand-off between the stolid bourgeoisie, who I call the People of the Responsible Self, and the artists, writers, and activists of the educated elite, who I call the People of the Creative Self.
And the people that are going to have to change are the People of the Creative Self. Their current line is that they are called to save society from its racism, sexism, and homophobia through transgressive humiliation of the stolid bourgeoisie and government grants to do activism to help the marginalized and the oppressed.
Peterson's Maps of Meaning says that this sort of thing, this salvation of the poor and weak, is not done by regime-approved activism and grants. It is done in the old way, in the constant theme of myth and religion, through the tragic witness of the sacrificial Son and Hero, who redeems a society out of joint with his selflessness, his witness, and his courageous suffering on the border between Order and Chaos.
By the way, there is a YouTube video series of Maps of Meaning.
The constant theme of Maps of Meaning is the play of opposites (hello Hegel?): Order vs. Chaos; What Is vs. What Should Be; Security vs. Tyranny; Creation vs. Destruction; Base Matter vs. Gold; Known World vs. Unknown World.
For Peterson the humans that inhabit this world of opposites are not the rational actors of our modern understanding. In saying this he is merely continuing the narrative that began with the Romantic reaction against the Age of Reason. Instead of rational actors we are creatures of habit that live almost unconsciously until we experience something that shatters our Known World. Peterson illustrates this point with the story of a young executive that thinks his career is going great guns until one day HR calls him in and tells him he is fired because everyone else finds him impossible to deal with. Bam! The whole world of the young man is destroyed: all his assumptions, all his plans, his whole world view is shattered. Until he can figure out what went wrong and develop a better understanding of the world.
On Peterson's view this encounter with the Unknown must be the way of the world. It's the way that the whole of creation except for mankind must live, because our rational-actor model is predicated on the reality of our conscious mind which, we believe, is not available to the rest of creation. This is the meaning of the great instincts like Rage and Fear; they arise at the moment that the world surprises an animal, humans included, and these emotions, these "affects," force us to confront reality and do something about it.
The normal thing for an animal to do, after being surprised, is to freeze, and then to begin to explore the world around it to figure out what went wrong and what to do about it. That is what the young man mentioned above did. And that is what we all do.
But what we humans can also do is strategize about our situation, and develop a rational plan in addition to our hastily acquired knowledge about the world that just surprised us. This human ability is obviously a very big thing.
But whatever the rational plan may be, it must sit atop the more primitive and immediate reality of instinct and affect and, above all, Meaning. Peterson argues that the way to understand this is by studying the great hero narratives of myth and religion and their reality of great opposites: Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, Creation and Destruction. The world of opposites is a world of Meaning.
But Peterson does not present us with a 12 step method to save the world, as he does in his later book. For there are no slick answers on the border between Order and Chaos. There is no telling what may happen after the hero descends into the Underworld there to confront the Dragon of Chaos within his own breast. Nietzsche echoes this in his Beyond Good and Evil where he writes that suffering -- not good and evil or pleasure and pain -- is the real coin of the realm:
The discipline of suffering, of great suffering -- do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far?So, in Peterson's story, it all comes down to two Hostile Brothers:
One of these "hostile brothers" or "eternal sons of God" is the mythological hero. He faces the unknown with the presumption of benevolence -- with the (unprovable) attitude that confrontation with the unknown will bring renewal and redemption...But who of us knows whether inside of us dwells the hero or the adversary? The answer that Peterson proposes is that the hero is willing to sacrifice himself. I think that Peterson's famous refusal to obey Canada's C-16 law on non-binary sexual pronouns is his way of living out this heroic path. You have to be ready to sacrifice your job, your reputation, your life, in witnessing to the truth in the face of the mob and the rulers. In this event, his refusal made him into a cultural hero, and now he is traveling the world giving lectures and signing books.
The other "son of God" is the eternal adversary. This "spirit of unbridled rationality," horrified by his limited apprehension of the conditions of existence, shrinks from contact with everything he does not understand... His weakness, in combination with his neurotic suffering, engenders resentment and hatred for existence itself.
Still, Maps of Meaning was a mild disappointment to me. It does not end in a rousing coda, but subsides almost in confusion. But it ends like this:
The human purpose, if such a thing can be considered, is to pursue meaning -- to extend the domain of light, of consciousness -- despite limitation. A meaningful event exists on the boundary between order and chaos. The pursuit of meaning exposes the individual to the unknown in gradual fashion, allowing him to develop strength and adaptive ability in proportion to the seriousness of his pursuit. Meaning is the subjective experience associated with that contact, in sufficient proportion. The great religious myths state that continued pursuit of meaning, adopted voluntarily and without self-deception, will lead the individual to discover his identity with God. This "revealed identity" will make him capable of withstanding the tragedy of life. Abandonment of meaning, by contrast, reduces man to his mortal weaknesses.It hardly needs saying, I think, that this "meaning" cannot be found in the vile snake-pit of microaggressions, safe spaces, and accusations of hate speech from the left. Nor can be be found in the retreat to mere nationalism on the right.
Really, the current culture war is about warring notions of safety, either in the identity politics of race and gender or in the identity politics of nation. Of course, humans have always been tribal. The question is whether we can find a way emerge from our various safe spaces to transcend our current tribalisms and reinvent them at a higher, more heroic, level.
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