Maps of Meaning and Plugged-in Power
Has one of your favorite singers or bands ever decided to go unplugged?
One of the bands I’ve enjoyed listening to over the past twenty years is Rise Against. In 2018, they forewent their typical electric, frenetic, punk rock sound to go acoustic in Ghost Note Symphonies. The compilation album included some of their songs from the past two decades, toned down in a major but beautiful way. As always, Tim McIlrath’s vocals were amazing. However, after a while I wanted to listen to the plugged-in versions of songs like Audience of One or Miracle with the governor taken off of the drumming sounds of Brandon Barnes. Rise Against was meant to be experienced, I would argue, with each instrument at full throttle with their powerful wall of sound fully engaging your eardrums. It was the plugged in power that made their brand of music work.
In Maps of Meaning, as intriguing (and admittedly complicated) as it was, at times I wondered where the power was…to live the kind of metaphorically informed life Peterson wrote about. I’ll come back to that later, but first let’s look at a brief overview and then explore three things from the book.
Overview
In Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, Jordan Peterson wants his readers to understand that a person’s purpose is the pursuit of meaning. Peterson writes, “The human purpose…is to pursue meaning—to extend the domain of light, of consciousness—despite limitation.”[1] He believes the message that people want to hear is this: “Risk your security. Face the unknown. Quit lying to yourself, and do what your heart truly tells you to do. You will be better for it, and so will the world.”[2]
Three things: Context, Social Interaction, & Metanarrative
Context
“The world can be validly construed as forum for action, or as place of things.”[3] That is the world in which Peterson sets the stage for the pursuit of meaning, a world somewhere between the arts and the humanities and the more objective world of STEM. This is Peterson’s world of meaning – the world of “what should be”[4] and the objective, scientific world – the world of facts and tools.[5] It is in this context that people make sense of their world and decide to act.
Social Interaction (In particular, the individual’s “adoption of group identity.”[6] )
This is a subject that I eventually want to explore in Peterson’s writing. It relates in some ways to my NPO project — particularly the health or unhealth of an individual and his/her group and our proclivity toward tribalism. We are made for relationships. Groups and tribes are how we go about life. We want to belong. We want and need a tribe. But groups can also become ultimate, idolatrous things. They can foster ideologies and megalothymia. They can become unhealthy environments, toxic for individuals and their flourishing. The well-differentiated[7] individual has to learn the art of being connected and separate at the same time. It’s incumbent on the group – Peterson says “society” – to respect the individual in a way that “allows personal interest to flourish and to serve as the power that opposes the tyranny of culture and the terror of nature.”[8] The interplay of the individual, tribe, and tribalism will require more inquiry.
Metanarrative
I get it. People approach the scriptures in different ways. Functionally speaking, I grew up with a moralistic approach to reading the Bible (that changed when I was an adult). Others approach the Bible critically. Others may read it devotionally. In The Drama of Scripture, Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew refer to the Bible’s narrative as a drama. A six-act drama, in fact.[9] They make the claim that the Bible, as a “Grand Story,”[10] is the “true story of the world.”[11] A metanarrative, if you will. But not just any metanarrative, or “metamyth.”[12] It’s THE metanarrative. For them, the drama of scripture – the story of the world – rests on Jesus Christ. Not as a symbol, (though the Bible throughout its varied genre is certainly full of metaphor and symbolism), but as the one true Savior. How is God’s creation reconciled to the Creator? Through Jesus.
As I inspectionally read Maps of Meaning, I see that Peterson does refer to the Christian story as a “metamyth,” but it would seem that he stops short of referring to it as a “true” story. True in a psychological sense, but not in a literal Jesus-the-hero-savior-and-risen-Christ sense. For Peterson, it would seem the true hero is the “divine individual,” though from Peterson’s perspective this individual is one who bears “individual responsibility”[13] to take the risk, reject the lie, and do what his/her heart tells him/her to do. For that person and for Peterson, “Christ is symbolically the way”[14] to the symbolic Father, whereas for Goheen, Bartholomew, and Christians around the world, Christ is more than symbolic. He lived the life we cannot live. He died in our place. He’s the risen Savior.
Power
There is much to reflect on and learn from Dr. Peterson’s scholarly writing, but I think that ultimately in the end the reader is left with a self-salvation project. There is much good that can certainly be taken from Peterson’s work, but I believe it lacks a proper power source. Moralism can only get somewhere so far. What they need is power. Plugged-in power: God, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, empowering Christians to take risks and pursue meaning…filling them with His Spirit to do the good and dangerous and meaningful work He has set out for them to do, for God’s glory and their joy.
For people who have their hope and identity rooted and grounded in Christ, they can approach life with their “capacity for creative action that makes the tragic conditions of life tolerable, bearable — remarkable, miraculous.”[15] But they don’t despair when they fail. They don’t measure their worth in the success or failure of their meaningful endeavors. Christ is their life. Christ is their righteousness. Christ is their hope. He is the source of their power.
[1] Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, New York: Routledge, 1999, 468.
[2] Ibid., 447.
[3] Ibid., 1.
[4] Ibid., 13.
[5] Ibid., 1.
[6] Peterson writes, “Unprotected exposure to unexplored territory produces fear. The individual is protected from such fear as a consequence of ritual imitation of the Great Father–as a consequence of the adoption of group identity, which restricts the meaning of things, and confers predictability on social interactions. When identification with the group is made absolute, however–when everything has to be controlled, when the unknown is no longer allowed to exist–the creative exploratory process that updates the group can no longer manifest itself. This restriction of adaptive capacity dramatically increases the probability of social aggression.” (Peterson, xxi)
[7] Friedman describes this person as “someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about. I mean someone who can be separate while still remaining connected and, therefore, can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence.” Edward H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. Revised edition. New York: Church Publishing, 2017, 15-16.
[8] Peterson, 469.
[9] Bartholomew, Craig G. and Goheen, Michael W. The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004, 22.
[10] Ibid., 17.
[11] Ibid., 23.
[12] Peterson, 17.
[13] Ibid., 466.
[14] See Peterson’s “Compilation: The Death and Resurrection of Christ: A Commentary in Five Parts” in his series on Youtube: “The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories” – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQD_IZs7y60I3lUrrFTzkpat.
[15] Peterson, 467.
About the Author
Travis Vaughn
8 responses to “Maps of Meaning and Plugged-in Power”
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Travis- I really appreciate a note you have struck here with the idea that when our narrative is rooted in Christ, it allows us to reframe the stories of our experiences. That is a nice nuance that needed to be called out.
Also, your connection to group narratives, tribalism and idolatry is important and needs to be reckoned with. I smile as I write that because it is embedded in the work that several of us are trying to impact. So, I guess the question is: what can we say that Peterson has added to our toolkit of how to impact this reality of societal living?
To your question, I think I’m going to have to read Maps of Meaning again, and do more than an inspectional reading. I do think Peterson has much to say about both the importance of the individual’s formation in the context of a group or tribe, but he also has much to say about the individual needing to leave (a risk) the group to set out on his/her own journey in the pursuit of meaning. I thought of Friedman’s Failure of Nerve and the differentiated leader’s ability to stay connected to the group but also remain separate. I also think he’ll have more to say — with a more thorough reading — about the individual’s need to challenge the unhealthy tribalism and ideologies of a group.
Hi, Travis,
You mention the need for more inquiry around the individual, tribe, and tribalism and state. “The well-differentiated individual has to learn the art of being connected and separate at the same time.” I believe this to be true as a leader. How is your NPO addressing the need to have a balance in this area?
I’m chasing the idea of the need for the leader to have strong familial ties which include strong ties to a tribe — like a denomination, but also the need for a leader to have strong WEAK ties which require less intensity and less emotion…but nonetheless super important for the leader’s health and well-being. There are similarities to J. Peterson’s take on the need for the leader to stay connected to the group but also be able to venture beyond the group (especially when ideologies become problematic). There will be more to explore comparing and contrasting these connections.
I so agree with your assessment of Peterson’s work as a ‘self-salvation project.’ It was masterful at painting a picture of the grand narrative (Ala Joseph Campbell), but feel so short of identifying the true source of all life. In my post, I made mention that Peterson seems to be warming towards a true biblical salvation, and I’m interesting in his forthcoming book “We Who Wrestle with God.”
I learned (from Scott D.’s post) that Peterson was coming out with a new book. And now, I know the title — We Who Wrestle with God. I don’t follow Peterson too closely, but I do know, especially having read Maps of Meaning now, that he references God (or Jesus, actually) as symbolic…not in a literal salvific sense. But he did grow up in a Christian context per what he wrote in the Introduction of his book. So…I wonder what that “wrestling” will look like in his new book, 25 years after publishing his first book. Are you aware of a podcast or article where he discusses how his views have morphed over time?
Travis,
Your last point about a self-salvation project is a fair critique in light of our shared ‘Christian map’. Ultimately, the book assumes a starting place that thinking Christians would reject: that we are responsible to ‘create meaning’.
While we are invited–even required–to search for meaning and wrestle it into our lives…ultimately purpose is revealed to us by the one who made us. The creator, not that which is created, declares the purpose of his creation….which then informs the meaning question that humans beings search for. His anthropomorphic approach can inform this search in some ways, but ultimately it is a bit outside our pay grade.
Indeed, WAY outside our pay grade. There was a bit of adventure and excitement, in some ways, that I think someone could take from Maps of Meaning. But I thought of one of my sons, especially after reading Kally’s post, and how he might have engaged with Peterson’s material. What would he think of Peterson’s call to risk security and face the unknown and do what his heart is calling him to do? What map would he take…and how would he treat the “monomyth” of his Christian formation?
I’m going to be curious to know if Dr. Peterson’s views of the Christian faith have morphed a great deal, now that I know (thanks to your post!) that he is coming out with a new book.