Jordan Peterson, Revisited: Personal Reflections and an Introduction to Maps of Meaning

Assessing Jordan Peterson's influence on my life and thought

I don’t remember when I first encountered Jordan Peterson.

He first rose to prominence in late 2016, after posting a series of videos criticising a proposal to include gender identity protections in the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code¹. I must have become aware of him not long after this, because I remember watching it all unfold, and then watching his notoriety skyrocket throughout 2017. By 2018 he was an international phenomenon. No longer just an obscure Canadian psychologist and professor, Peterson became a ‘right-wing celebrity’.

I never read 12 Rules for Life; I also never fully agreed with Peterson’s politics, always finding him, paradoxically, too extreme and too lukewarm for my tastes. But I was a young man in my early- to mid-twenties, and in an era when masculinity had been declared ‘toxic’, it was refreshing to see someone speaking so boldly in favour of men and men’s issues. I watched him become a sort of father figure to countless young men—many men of this era can trace their ‘growing up’ to Peterson’s deceptively simple advice to “clean up your room” and “stand up straight with your shoulders back”, and while I wasn’t someone who desperately needed this advice, it did make me reflect on my own habits and my place as a man in the 21st century.

In 2017, it was impossible to avoid the hundreds of Jordan Peterson clip videos being recommended by Youtube’s algorithm. Were we all just nagged into sorting out our lives?

It was Peterson’s intellectual work that sparked my interest. 2016 sucked for me—I wasn’t studying, I was barely working, and it ended with the drawn-out break-up of a long-term relationship—so after receiving an offer in December to move interstate for my postgraduate studies, 2017 presented an opportunity for a fresh start. It proved to be a period of profound intellectual growth. I learned a lot about psychology and psychopathology through my subjects and clinic placements, and my Masters thesis allowed me to go deeper on a topic of my choice. I pursued research in the area of personality psychology, and I found Peterson’s Personality and it’s Transformations lectures incredibly valuable for building my knowledge of this field. The series goes beyond what would typically be taught in an undergraduate personality class, touching on topics as far-reaching as shamanism and existentialist philosophy. It was the first time I'd seen psychology discussed in this way, and it was eye-opening.

2017 was also an important year for me spiritually. At the time, I described feeling like ‘something had shifted’ inside me—it was like I’d built a thick wall of Scientism around my brain, and I was finally beginning to see cracks in the concrete. Peterson’s Maps of Meaning series (based on his 1999 book of the same name) helped me to chip away at these cracks, and from 2017 onwards I began to explore religion, mythology, and other esoteric topics. I gained a new appreciation for Christianity and traditional perspectives more generally, and although I ultimately couldn’t bring myself to Believe in any real sense, Peterson’s Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories lectures allowed me to at least see the value in Christianity from a psychological and symbolic perspective.

So why am I revisiting this stuff so long after Peterson’s peak? In my opinion, Peterson is one of the more interesting thinkers to emerge over the past several decades. He’s an excellent example of what’s meant by the phrase ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’, in that he offers an important synthesis of a significant chunk of work across neuroscience and psychology, mythology and anthropology, literature, and philosophy. Maps of Meaning, in particular, has had a profound impact on my own intellectual development, and has introduced me to many thinkers and ideas that I might otherwise have overlooked.

That said, it’s been a few years since I last explored Peterson’s work in any depth, and I decided it was time for me to do so. In revisiting this, I might find more to disagree with than I did previously. Either way, for what follows, I want you to forget everything you think you know about Jordan Peterson. Set aside your scepticism, set aside your hate—let’s travel back to the 90s, before C-16, before Cathy Newman, and dive into Peterson’s magnum opus: Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief.

Back in the 90s, Peterson took his fashion cues from Seinfeld.

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Maps of Meaning: An Introduction

The Context

Jordan Peterson’s journey has always been a religious one. In the preface to Maps of Meaning, he begins with the story of his (somewhat) Protestant Christian upbringing. Like many young men of our age, he lost his faith to the more compelling arguments of science; he then found a new faith in politics, joining a “mildly socialist” political party in university. This, too, didn’t last. George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier provided the final death-blow, giving voice to Peterson’s own observations of his fellow left-wing activists:

“Orwell said, essentially, that socialists did not really like the poor. They merely hated the rich. His idea struck home instantly. Socialist ideology served to mask resentment and hatred, bred by failure. Many of the party activists I had encountered were using the ideals of social justice to rationalize their pursuit of personal revenge.”

This is a common enough observation amongst Conservatives-who-once-were-Socialists, but where Peterson differed was in his eventual conclusion. Socialist ideology is not the problem—the problem is ideology itself. It’s ideology that divides people into right versus wrong, good versus evil. Only a true ideologue could justify atrocities like the Holocaust or the Holodomor.

“Bereft of solutions, I had at least been granted the gift of a problem.”

This realisation led Peterson to change his course of study from political science to psychology. It also led to a period of significant existential doubt, self-reflection, and eventually, a total re-structuring of his psyche. Turning to the work of Carl Jung and other psychiatrists and neuroscientists (Freud, James, Piaget, Jeffrey Gray, Jaak Panksepp), he began trying to make sense of ideology—how and why it emerges, how it functions, and how it causes people to act in the ways that they do. His work also led him to other thinkers writing in the mythological tradition (e.g., Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell), as well as existential philosophical and literary writers (e.g., Nietzsche, Dostoevsky), who brought him full circle back to Christianity.

Peterson’s strength was his ability to tie these different intellectual threads into a cohesive theory.

Chapter 1: Empirical and Narrative Modes

Maps of Meaning opens with the assertion that the world can be interpreted in two ways: as a ‘place of things’, and as a ‘forum for action’. The former perspective (which I’ll call the Empirical Mode) prioritises a precise, material understanding of the world. In this view, there is nothing immaterial or subjective. Only that which can be measured and proven is true. This is, in essence, the domain of science.

The latter perspective (the Narrative Mode²) interprets objects in terms of what they mean to us. In this view, precision and material reality are less important. What’s important is a thing’s motivational significance, what it motivates us to do. This is the domain of art, literature, and mythology.

To gain a complete picture of the world, we need both perspectives. However, Peterson argues that the Narrative Mode is more important—perhaps the only one that is necessary—because it’s the perspective that ensures our survival. If we encounter a hungry lion, it’s much less important to know precisely what the animal is, and much more important to understand that it presents a threat (which necessitates action to survive). While the Narrative Mode does depend on Empirical information to some extent, we only need a rough idea that the lion fits into the category of ‘threat’ (e.g., it has sharp teeth, claws, and a loud roar) to act.

Seriously, if you saw these teeth coming toward you, would you stick around to find out what they belong to? Photo by Süheyl Burak on Unsplash.

Peterson notes that the Narrative Mode emerged much earlier than the Empirical Mode in the human timeline. The latter seems to have developed in the ancient world, most significantly in the works of Aristotle (although there are notable precursors); before this, humans hadn’t yet formally separated the subjective and objective. As long as something seemed or felt real, it was real. If making sacrifices to Zeus ‘caused’ better harvests, or at least generated a sense of wellbeing and purpose, Zeus was as real as dirt. Peterson describes this as a world “saturated with meaning, imbued with moral purpose”.

How did ancient peoples survive while believing such nonsense? It’s possible that many didn’t, and are sadly lost to history. But Peterson suggests that, for those who did survive, these religious and mythological beliefs were what allowed them to do so. There was a motivational significance to these beliefs—they motivated people to act in adaptive ways—and thus, there was a pragmatic purpose to maintaining them.

Let me offer an example. In Fustel de Coulanges’ The Ancient City, the author traces the development of religion in the ancient world, starting with the earliest tradition of ancestor worship. Ancient peoples—at least in the regions we know as Greece and Italy—believed that a person’s soul survived beyond death, and stayed either in or near the deceased’s body. A soul not buried and cared for in the appropriate manner would become malevolent and “torment the living”, so it was the family’s duty to maintain a family tomb (and an associated sacred hearth fire), and make regular offerings to their ancestors’ spirits. What are the consequences of these beliefs?

On a personal level, ancestor spirits were thought to offer protection. Descendants of these spirits would have found comfort in the knowledge of this protection, not least because it would have deterred others with these beliefs from trespassing on their land. In times of suffering, they would also have found solace in calling upon their ancestors for strength. Practically speaking, maintaining the tomb and hearth tied the family to a particular place. This strengthened family and community ties over generations, meant that fertile land would benefit from consistent care (possibly for centuries), and also eventually led to the emergence of private land ownership. A family tomb could not be maintained by just anyone, after all.

These are just a few of the benefits offered by this particular religious ritual, but the point is clear enough: a belief in ‘nonsense’ can actually offer many emotional, social, and practical benefits, even if this isn’t the explicit intent of the practice. Mythological beliefs that survived to be repeatedly passed on, then, are in a sense more ‘true’ than objective truth—that is, they speak to a deeper truth about how we should act, and as a consequence, improve our chances of survival and reproduction.

A ‘Reasonable’ Alternative

All of this raises an obvious question: Instead of relying on weird beliefs and outdated traditions, can’t we just use empirical observation and rational discourse to reason our way to a better alternative?

Peterson argues that the 20th century was one big experiment in answering this question. Despite their differences, the various Socialist and Fascist regimes of this era had one thing in common—they all claimed a scientific/material basis for their ideas. Both the historical materialism of Marxists and the race science of the Nazis were attempts at creating utopias grounded in something more than mere tradition. Both failed, and killed 100s of millions of people in the process.

Peterson concluded that they really were two sides of the same coin.

You might argue that these ideologies were based on flawed science and historiography, and that’s exactly the point. Humans are simply not capable of perfect rational thought. Somewhere along the way, deeper instincts take over. Self-preservation, resource hoarding, the desire to dominate others, in-group preference—we can never fully escape these instincts. We are motivated animals, and objective analysis is only possible when we are disinterested in the outcome.

The benefit of traditions and religious rituals is that they don’t rely on rational thought. They develop over generations through trial and error, and in so doing, sublimate our baser instincts into something more noble. It's frustratingly slow, but we eventually feel our way to the truth, and right behaviour wins out. Myths work in this way, too. The best stories, the stories that speak to us on a deeper level, get told again and again.

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Conclusion

This started out as more of a personal post, a way for me to reflect on one of the main influences on my thinking over the past few years, but it’s turned into something more. I want to properly explore Maps of Meaning, and make an honest attempt to grapple with the ideas laid out in this book. This doesn’t mean that I (or you) will agree with everything Peterson says, but the ideas themselves are worth considering. What I’ve covered above is just the tip of the iceberg.

The basic idea laid out in chapter 1 is an interesting one—Peterson’s claim is that there’s value in prioritising traditional wisdom over modern ‘rational’ beliefs. It's a big claim, and not one that I agree with 100%, but it’s worth consideration. I’ll pursue this line of thought further in a future post, so if you disagree, I’d ask that you suspend your judgement a little longer. Let’s give the devil his due, and see whether we can come to an agreeable solution to the problem of ideology. See you soon.

(By the way, if this sort of thing interests you, you might enjoy my series On Personality and Psychopathology and my post Chaos, Order, and the Struggle for Survival. More of this to come—subscribe below to stay up to date!)

1. Peterson believed that, if Bill 6-16 passed, people would be legally required to call people by their preferred name, pronouns, etc., and refusing to do so would be deemed ‘hate speech’ and result in penalties. He argued that this constituted ‘compelled speech’, and was therefore in violation of Canadian laws protecting freedom of expression. The bill passed into law in June of 2017.

2. Echoing Jerome Bruner’s distinction between Paradigmatic and Narrative modes, which I believe is roughly analogous to Peterson’s dichotomy.