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Zusammenfassung von Maps of Meaning

Name: Maps of Meaning
Rating: 4.6 (476 reviews)
Author: Jordan B. Peterson

Jordan B. Peterson

The Architecture of Belief

4.6 (476 Bewertungen)

26 Min.

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What’s in it for me? Discover how myths help us create meaning out of chaos.

Everyone loves a good story.

Whether the legends of the ancient Greek gods, Grimm’s fairy tales, or the Star Wars trilogy – fantastical narratives about courageous heroes capture our attention, imagination, and emotions. They’ve done so since the beginning of civilization.

But what do these stories have in common? And what does their common structure tell us about the human mind, and the world we live in?

These blinks argue that shared stories – especially those ancient cultural myths that have been passed down for centuries – are the secret to understanding human nature and culture. Combining mythology, history, and psychology, they investigate how our mind creates meaning, how myths transmit that meaning, and what myths mean in our modern era of rationalism.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

what rats and humans are equally terrified of;
which three characters populate all myths; and
how you can live a meaningful life.

Humans explore their environment out of a fear of the unknown.

If you place a rat in a new cage, its first reaction is to freeze. The rat is afraid – and understandably so. After all, grave danger could lurk in this new, unfamiliar territory. Only slowly, will the rat begin to explore its new surroundings – sniffing, licking, and scratching its way through the cage. The more it gets used to the new environment, the calmer it becomes.

Humans are much more complex animals than rats, but we navigate the world in a similar way.

The key message here is: Humans explore their environment out of a fear of the unknown.

For humans, just as for rats, the world is divided into two parts: the known and the unknown.

The known is the familiar cage. It comprises all things we can easily make sense of, either because we’ve encountered them before, or because we can access shared cultural knowledge about them. In this explored territory, we feel calm and safe.

The unknown, on the other hand, is everything we don’t understand yet: a novel situation, an unexplained phenomenon, an unexpected behavior – in short, an anomaly. Just as the new cage terrifies the rat, anomalies tend to stop us in our tracks.

Since we have no way of knowing what we’re dealing with when we encounter the unknown, anomalies evoke dual feelings in us. They’re both threatening and promising.

Imagine, for example, you received a letter with unknown contents in the mail, with the words Open at your own risk written on it. Is it blackmail? An unclaimed inheritance? Probably, you would feel both anxious and excited to open it.

Whether fear or curiosity dominates an encounter with the unknown depends on just how unexpected and unfamiliar the anomaly really is. If you knew the letter was sent by a friend, for example, you would probably be less nervous about opening it.

Either way, you would likely be bursting to see what’s inside. Just like rats, once we’ve overcome our initial fear, humans have a natural inclination to explore the unknown. In doing so, we hope to turn unfamiliar into familiar territory. This helps us reduce our emotional tension and regain our sense of safety.

Unlike rats though, we can explore the unknown not just through action, but also through thought. You would probably spend just as much time examining the letter as theorizing about who sent it and why.

Our thoughts and actions are the tools we have to turn the unknown into the known. With their power, we’re actively creating the world we know.

Stories help us navigate the world as a place of meaning.

In the West, we often pride ourselves on our scientific worldview. Modern science, we think, helps us see the world for what it really is: a place of facts, not feelings.

But as the previous blink illustrated, emotions play a critical part in our day-to-day understanding of the world. Our feelings help us determine whether a thing is good or bad for us, and therefore whether we should approach or avoid it – often without our conscious effort.

All myths follow the same basic structure.

Myths are not simply prescientific nonsense – they are valid and valuable tools for navigating the world.

Given our shared human nature, it’s perhaps no surprise that these tools have some universal characteristics. Whether the Mesopotamian creation myth, the story of the Egyptian gods Horus, Isis, and Osiris, or the passion of Christ – across cultures, myths describe the story of the Way: a brave hero’s journey into the unknown, and his triumphant return.

Myths provide a model for how societies should work and how individuals should behave.

It’s no coincidence that the characters in ancient myths are often kings, queens, and princes battling for the throne.

Many cultures used myths to justify the authoritarian power of their ruler. The Mesopotamian emperor, for instance, was thought to be an emissary of the mythical hero Marduk.

Growing up means learning how to identify with the group and the hero.

When we’re children, we’re protected from the unknown by our parents. We don’t need mythical heroes to model the right behavior for us, because our parents simply tell us how to behave. Of course, in doing so, they embody the values of the culture that surrounds them.

Part of growing up and emancipating ourselves from our parents is learning to replace their values and protection with the values and protection of culture.

Anomalies threaten the stability of our psyche and society – and force us to adapt.

The existence of the unknown is a fact of life. As humans, we’re constantly surrounded by things we don’t understand, and never will.

Culture provides a measure of protection from the chaos of the unknown. Nonetheless, the chaos often finds us when we least expect it.

Our limitations are the precondition for a meaningful existence.

Have you ever come across the curious symbol of a serpent eating its own tail?

In many cultures, this self-consuming snake, the ouroboros, is used to represent the original state of the cosmos. It first appeared in ancient Babylon, and can be found in various cultures across Africa, India, and Mexico.

Evil means rejecting creative exploration, and we’re all capable of it.

One of the most puzzling features of human nature is our capacity for evil.

In today’s world, we tend to view evil as a product of a psychological defect, a bad upbringing, or other unjust social or economic conditions. But as German philosopher Hannah Arendt suggested when she contemplated the evil perpetrated during the Third Reich, the truly horrifying idea is that even ordinary people are capable of evil. She calls this “the banality of evil.”

In order to reach our full potential, we must chart our own path.

Facing the unknown is always uncomfortable – which is why humans have devised countless strategies to avoid it.

Losing ourselves to ideology is one such avoidance strategy. An ideology is a fixed story about how the world works, or how it should be. A national supremacist, for example, believes in the story that his country is better than all other countries. He will try to fit everything he encounters into this narrative – actively avoiding, denying, or suppressing any anomalies that might suggest a different truth.

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Worum geht es in Maps of Meaning?

Maps of Meaning (1999) argues that myths provide the key to understanding the human psyche and our shared culture. Combining classic psychoanalysis with psychology, social and historical analysis, Jordan B. Peterson reveals how myths convey morality and create meaning in our lives – and what we can learn from them to reach our individual potential.

Bestes Zitat aus Maps of Meaning

Fix yourself, fix the world.

—Jordan B. Peterson

Wer Maps of Meaning lesen sollte

Psychologists interested in ancient history, and historians interested in human nature
Jordan Peterson devotees who want to dive deeper into his system of thought
Skeptics who want to better understand the author’s controversial theories

Über den Autor

Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist famous for his controversial views on human nature, culture, and politics. He’s a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He gained notoriety with his popular self-help book 12 Rules for Life.

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