{"id":36677,"date":"2024-03-18T11:00:32","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T18:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36677"},"modified":"2024-03-14T17:01:48","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T00:01:48","slug":"one-map-to-rule-them-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/one-map-to-rule-them-all\/","title":{"rendered":"One Map to Rule Them All"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week, as we begin class, Dr. Clark gives our cohort the coffee table test<\/em>: \u201cIf a person saw the book that we all read this week on your coffee table, and asked what it was about, what would you tell them?\u201d.<\/p>\n

This week we read Jordan Peterson\u2019s Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, <\/em>and if I were to describe it in a short sentence, I\u2019d say something like, \u201cit\u2019s as if Jordan Peterson took Joseph Campbell\u2019s A Hero With A Thousand Faces<\/em> and wrote a sequel to it 50 years later but added in some neuropsychology\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ok, that\u2019s not only a short description, but it shortchanges a book that, while it clearly shares elements with Campbell\u2019s masterpiece, also makes its own contribution. To explain a bit, Maps of Meaning<\/em>, much like A Hero With a Thousand Faces,<\/em> also relies on Jungian Psychology, and engages philosophy, history, mythology\/archetypes, and religion. And Peterson, like Campbell, also expresses the essential importance of meaning for human beings.<\/p>\n

But Peterson\u2019s unique contribution seems to be his assessment that the stories and symbols embedded across cultures create<\/strong> the very maps that help people navigate life with meaning and purpose and direction. And he is more interested in how<\/em> belief systems emerged than simply pointing out the overlap between those various belief systems.<\/p>\n

His writing was academic and dense (something I complained felt missing with Campbell in my post about his book), and it was full of captivating trails that would be worthy to follow. For instance, I could<\/em> write about how he approaches the balance between order and chaos. Or I could<\/em> do a deeper dive into his thoughts about individual responsibility (and particularly how that has positively influenced younger men I know who are reading Peterson). Or I could<\/em> have fun tracking down his thoughts on religious symbols and stories. But what I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about while inspecting this book, and what I want to spend the remainder of this post on, was simple: Maps.<\/p>\n

Because order and chaos, or individual responsibility, or religious identity, or archetype and symbol, all play into his bigger theme which is that people must understand and navigate reality by using \u201cmaps of meaning\u201d that provide structures to help them make sense of the world and their experiences in the world, so they can make informed choices about how to think and act.<\/p>\n

Peterson claims that the overlap of various maps (social, religious, psychological, historical, etc.) helps humans organize their various experiences in ways that help them interpret who they are, how they think, why they behave a certain way, and where they fit into the world.<\/p>\n

And all of that reminded me of Dr. Clark\u2019s first lecture in Cape Town about maps; this idea was eye-opening and fascinating to me (possibly the first of many threshold moments in this program), that the overlap of various maps help us to understand who we are and where we belong. Without maps, we can easily get lost.<\/p>\n

And in the end, when thinking about the different maps in our lives, I also couldn\u2019t stop thinking about Scripture as the supreme map by which all other maps must be aligned. Because if a person is going to use multiple overlapping maps, they need to know that they are starting with a foundational map that is reliable, to measure the rest of the maps against. The subsequent maps may very well add new perspective or information, but there needs to be a standard.<\/p>\n

In other words, If I am wanting to look at an economic map overlaying a political map overlaying a cultural map of Los Angeles, I\u2019d better have an accurate geographical map of Los Angeles the other maps can align with.<\/p>\n

The primary challenge I had with this book (and with the YouTube series) was that Peterson seems to think the Bible is full of great narratives, archetypes, symbols, and allegories to help humans make maps of meaning of our lives, but he doesn\u2019t seem to see the Bible as a trustworthy ultimate, foundational map.<\/p>\n

Peterson seemed like a lapsed Christian trying hard to reconcile his past fundamental beliefs with an ideology and worldview that can\u2019t quite accept the full implication of a supernatural and transcendent God, or a Scripture that is a divinely inspired and uniquely reliable map for humanity.<\/p>\n

It’s like he wanted to use the Bible as a good map, but not recognize it as the map that provided a necessary foundation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m indebted to Peterson for his important maps-of-meaning metaphor, but I want to teach those I shepherd not to engage the Bible as \u201ca\u201d map among many, but instead to see it as \u201cthe\u201d map to align the rest of the life-maps to, to keep us from getting lost.<\/p>\n

\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every week, as we begin class, Dr. Clark gives our cohort the coffee table test: \u201cIf a person saw the book that we all read this week on your coffee table, and asked what it was about, what would you tell them?\u201d. This week we read Jordan Peterson\u2019s Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,1778],"class_list":["post-36677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-peterson","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36677"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36680,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36677\/revisions\/36680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}