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Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief 1st Edition
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- ISBN-100415922224
- ISBN-13978-0415922227
- Edition1st
- PublisherRoutledge
- Publication dateMarch 24, 1999
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions7 x 1.28 x 8.8 inches
- Print length564 pages
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Review
"The book reflects its author's profound moral sense and vast erudition in areas ranging from clinical psychology to scripture and a good deal of personal soul-searching and experience...with patients who include prisoners, alcoholics and the mentally ill." -- Montreal Gazette
"This is not a book to be abstracted and summarized. Rather it should be read at leisure...and employed as a stimulus and reference to expand one's own maps of meaning. I plan to return to Peterson's musings and mapping many times over the next few years." -- Am JPsychiatry
"...a brilliant enlargement of our understanding of human motivation...a beautiful work." -- Sheldon H. White, Harvard University
"...unique...a brilliant new synthesis of the meaning of mythologies and our human need to relate in story form the deep structure of our experiences." -- Keith Oatley, University of Toronto
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From the Back Cover
About the Author
Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and Professor at the University of Toronto and was formerly at Harvard University. He has published numerous articles on drug abuse, alcoholism and aggression.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Individuals whose life is without meaning hate themselves, for their weakness, and hate life, for making them weak. This hatred manifests itself in absolute identification with destructive power, in its mythological, historical and biological manifestations; manifests itself in the desire for the absolute extinction of existence. Such identification leads man to poison whatever he touches, to generate unnecessary misery in the face of inevitable suffering, to turn his fellows against themselves, to intermingle earth with hell - merely to attain vengeance upon God and his creation.
The human purpose, if such a thing can be considered, is to pursue meaning - to extend the domain of light, of consciousness - in spite of 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. It is during contact with the unknown that human power grows, individually and then historically. 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. This makes him hate life, and work towards its elimination.
Meaning is the most profound manifestation of instinct. Man is a creature attracted by the unknown; a creature adapted for its conquest. The subjective sense of meaning is the instinct governing rate of contact with the unknown. Too much exposure turns change to chaos; too little promotes stagnation and degeneration. The appropriate balance produces a powerful individual, confident in the ability to withstand life, ever more able to deal with nature and society, ever closer to the heroic ideal. Each individual, constitutionally unique, finds meaning in different pursuits, if he has the courage to maintain his difference. Manifestation of individual diversity, transformed into knowledge that can be transferred socially, changes the face of history itself, and moves each generation of man farther into the unknown.
Social and biological conditions define the boundaries of individual existence. The unfailing pursuit of interest provides the subjective means by which these conditions can be met, and their boundaries transcended. Meaning is the instinct that makes life possible. When it is abandoned, individuality loses its redeeming power. The great lie is that meaning does not exist, or that it is not important. When meaning is denied, hatred for life and the wish for its destruction inevitably rules:
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
Product details
- Publisher : Routledge; 1st edition (March 24, 1999)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 564 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0415922224
- ISBN-13 : 978-0415922227
- Item Weight : 2 pounds
- Dimensions : 7 x 1.28 x 8.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Behaviorism Psychology
- #1 in Behavioral Psychology (Books)
- #25 in Medical General Psychology
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are the psychology of religious and ideological belief, and the assessment and improvement of personality and performance.
From 1993 to 1997, Peterson lived in Arlington, Massachusetts, while teaching and conducting research at Harvard University as an assistant and an associate professor in the psychology department. During his time at Harvard, he studied aggression arising from drug and alcohol abuse, and supervised a number of unconventional thesis proposals. Afterwards, he returned to Canada and took up a post as a professor at the University of Toronto.
In 1999, Routledge published Peterson's Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. The book, which took Peterson 13 years to complete, describes a comprehensive theory for how we construct meaning, represented by the mythical process of the exploratory hero, and provides an interpretation of religious and mythical models of reality presented in a way that is compatible with modern scientific understanding of how the brain works. It synthesizes ideas drawn from narratives in mythology, religion, literature and philosophy, as well as research from neuropsychology, in "the classic, old-fashioned tradition of social science."
Peterson's primary goal was to examine why individuals, not simply groups, engage in social conflict, and to model the path individuals take that results in atrocities like the Gulag, the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Rwandan genocide. Peterson considers himself a pragmatist, and uses science and neuropsychology to examine and learn from the belief systems of the past and vice versa, but his theory is primarily phenomenological. In the book, he explores the origins of evil, and also posits that an analysis of the world's religious ideas might allow us to describe our essential morality and eventually develop a universal system of morality.
Harvey Shepard, writing in the Religion column of the Montreal Gazette, stated: "To me, the book reflects its author's profound moral sense and vast erudition in areas ranging from clinical psychology to scripture and a good deal of personal soul searching. ... Peterson's vision is both fully informed by current scientific and pragmatic methods, and in important ways deeply conservative and traditional."
In 2004, a 13-part TV series based on his book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief aired on TVOntario. He has also appeared on that network on shows such as Big Ideas, and as a frequent guest and essayist on The Agenda with Steve Paikin since 2008.
In 2013, Peterson began recording his lectures ("Personality and Its Transformations", "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief") and uploading them to YouTube. His YouTube channel has gathered more than 600,000 subscribers and his videos have received more than 35 million views as of January 2018. He has also appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, The Gavin McInnes Show, Steven Crowder's Louder with Crowder, Dave Rubin's The Rubin Report, Stefan Molyneux's Freedomain Radio, h3h3Productions's H3 Podcast, Sam Harris's Waking Up podcast, Gad Saad's The Saad Truth series and other online shows. In December 2016, Peterson started his own podcast, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, which has 37 episodes as of January 10, 2018, including academic guests such as Camille Paglia, Martin Daly, and James W. Pennebaker, while on his channel he has also interviewed Stephen Hicks, Richard J. Haier, and Jonathan Haidt among others. In January 2017, he hired a production team to film his psychology lectures at the University of Toronto.
Peterson with his colleagues Robert O. Pihl, Daniel Higgins, and Michaela Schippers produced a writing therapy program with series of online writing exercises, titled the Self Authoring Suite. It includes the Past Authoring Program, a guided autobiography; two Present Authoring Programs, which allow the participant to analyze their personality faults and virtues in terms of the Big Five personality model; and the Future Authoring Program, which guides participants through the process of planning their desired futures. The latter program was used with McGill University undergraduates on academic probation to improve their grades, as well since 2011 at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. The Self Authoring Programs were developed partially from research by James W. Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin and Gary Latham at the Rotman School of Management of the University of Toronto. Pennebaker demonstrated that writing about traumatic or uncertain events and situations improved mental and physical health, while Latham demonstrated that personal planning exercises help make people more productive. According to Peterson, more than 10,000 students have used the program as of January 2017, with drop-out rates decreasing by 25% and GPAs rising by 20%.
In May 2017 he started new project, titled "The psychological significance of the Biblical stories", a series of live theatre lectures in which he analyzes archetypal narratives in Genesis as patterns of behaviour vital for both personal, social and cultural stability.
His upcoming book "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos" will be released on January 23rd, 2018. It was released in the UK on January 16th. Dr. Peterson is currently on tour throughout North America, Europe and Australia.
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Peterson (born in 1962) is now a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. He identifies himself today as a Christian. No doubt he sees his 1999 book as a contribution to the field of psychology. Peterson is a prolific co-author of papers published in psychology. However, as far as I can find, Peterson’s 1999 book has not been reviewed by anybody in psychology or in religious studies or in the philosophy of religion – or even discussed at length by any scholars in these fields. But Peterson did a television series based on it for TVOntario (which I have not seen). That television series suggests that Peterson may see himself as a popularizer of a certain kind of Jungian psychological thought. I will return to this point below.
Ong was a Roman Catholic priest in the Jesuit religious order. He was a Renaissance specialist who wrote broadly about our Western cultural and religious history. (Disclosure: I come from a Roman Catholic background. I was in the Jesuits for a period of time [1979-1987]. However, for years now, I have not been a practicing Catholic. Today I would identify myself as a theistic humanist, as distinct from an atheistic humanist.)
Peterson’s 1999 book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief is designed to be user-friendly. It includes a table of contents (pages v-vi), a listing of 68 figures (pages vii-ix), a lengthy and informative preface (pages xi-xxii), the main text divided into five lengthy chapters and a conclusion (pages 1-469), bibliographic and discussion notes (pages 471-502), an alphabetized bibliography of works cited (pages 503-512), permissions (pages 513-514), and an index (pages 515-541).
Moreover, in the "Preface" Peterson provides readers with a summary/overview of his overall argument, and then at the end of the preface, he tips off readers about another reader-friendly feature. He says that similar “summaries precede each chapter (and subchapter). Read as a unit they comprise a complete and compressed picture of the book. These should be read first, after the preface. In this manner, the whole argument I am offering might come quickly to aid comprehension of the parts” (page xxii).
Now, toward the end of his “Preface,” Peterson delineates three major tendencies that represent (1) “unexplored territory,” (2) “explored territory,” and (3) “the process that mediates between unexplored and explored territory” (page xxi). For me, Ong represents my personal hero and an exemplary embodiment of a person dedicated to “the process that mediates between unexplored and explored territory.” In my adult life, I have devoted considerable time and effort to calling attention to his thought. For me, then, Ong represents an example of a person “who,” in Peterson’s words, “sufficiently embodies the oft-implied values and ideals that protect us from disorder [and chaos] and lead us on” (page 3).
For Peterson, Jung appears to have been a comparable person in his life. However, despite the reader-friendly features of Peterson’s accessible 1999 book, I do not know how many people are ready and willing to work their way through 480 pages of relatively unfamiliar thought. The recent publication of Jung’s autobiographical book titled The Red Book: Liber Novus (W. W. Norton, 2009) has sparked new interest in Jung’s thought. Perhaps the publication of Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) will spark new interest in his accessible 1999 book, which in turn could help spark further new interest in Jung’s thought.
Now, it would be out of character for Ong to use the figurative expressions “Maps of Meaning” and “The Architecture of Belief.” But make no mistake about it, Ong explores both religious belief and non-religious belief extensively. Arguably Ong’s most explicitly related publication about belief is his essay “Voice as Summons for Belief: Literature, Faith, and the Divided Self” in the now-defunct Jesuit-sponsored journal Thought: A Review of Culture and Idea (Fordham University), volume 33 (Spring 1958): pages 43-61. Reprinted in Ong’s book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (Macmillan, 1962, pages 49-67); and in volume two of Ong’s Faith and Contexts (Scholars Press, 1992b, pages 68-84); and in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry (Hampton Press, 2002, pages 259-275).
For further discussion of Ong’s thought regarding belief (mostly non-religious belief), see Thomas D. Zlatic’s essay “Faith in Pretext: An Ongian Context for [Melville’s Novel] The Confidence-Man” in the anthology Of Ong and Media Ecology (Hampton Press, 2012, pages 241-280).
Moreover, if we understand Peterson’s use of the expression “Maps of Meaning” to refer to heuristic tools for exploring meaning-making and interpretation, we can relate his exploratory spirit to certain other publications by Ong, most notably his article “Hermeneutic Forever: Voice, Text, Digitization, and the ‘I’” in the journal Oral Tradition, volume 10 (March 1995): pages 3-36; reprinted in volume four of Ong’s Faith and Contexts (Scholars Press, 1999, pages 183-204; and to Ong’s posthumously published unfinished book Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Word and Digitization (Cornell University Press, 2018).
Hermeneutic means interpretation. Heuristic tools are designed to help guide one’s explorations of thought. In short, heuristic tools provide a way of proceeding in one’s explorations of thought. In theory, certain themes in Ong’s thought could serve as heuristic tools to guide one’s explorations of thought – that is, as a way of proceeding in one’s explorations of thought. Basically, in the present essay, I am using certain themes in Ong’s thought to guide my exploration of Peterson’s thought in his 1999 book.
As this quick overview shows, it is not hard to connect Peterson’s overall concerns in his 1999 book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief with Ong’s thought in various publications. However, just as there are numerous themes in Ong’s 400 or so wide-ranging publications that Peterson does not discuss in his wide-ranging 1999 book, so too there are a number of themes in his 1999 book that Ong does not discuss. For example, Ong does not discuss the human brain, except for a passing remark about neuroscience that he makes in discussing Julian Jaynes in his book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen, 1982, pages 29-30). By contrast, Peterson repeatedly refers to the human brain and brain research. No doubt it is fashionable today to discuss brain research. In any event, in the present essay, I want to call attention to how certain themes in Ong’s thought can be related to certain themes in Peterson’s 1999.
Just as Ong does not refer to or discuss Peterson’s 1999 book, so too Peterson in his 1999 book does not refer to or discuss any of Ong’s 400 or so publications. In the list of references toward the end his 1999 book (pages 503-512), Peterson lists 11 publication by the religious historian Mircea Eliade (page 505), 14 by the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist C. G. Jung (page 507), and three by the Jungian analyst and theorist Erich Neumann (page 509). In the index (pages 515-541), we find for Eliade, 22 specific page references; for Jung, 23; including pages 401-442; and for Neumann, two.
Incidentally, Peterson lists eight publications by Friedrich Nietzsche (page 509). In the index entry for Nietzsche, we find 18 specific page references. Ong discusses Nietzsche in his book In the Human Grain: Further Explorations of Contemporary Culture (Macmillan, 1967, pages 147-164). In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I have to give Peterson credit for his use of Nietzsche as a thought-provoking conversation partner – far more so than Ong does. In addition, I give Peterson credit for his extraordinary verbal facility. In contrast to him, I give Ong credit for his concision and precision of thought. I definitely prefer Ong’s concision and precision of thought to Peterson’s extraordinary verbal facility.
Now, over the years, Jung has had distinguished followers such as Robert L. Moore, John Weir Perry, Anthony Stevens, and Edward C. Whitmont – none of whom are mentioned by Peterson. Thus, in addition to Peterson’s 1999 introductory book, there are numerous more advanced studies of Jung’s thought available for interested readers to study if they are interested in doing so.
Now, in Ong’s 400 or so publications, he often refers to Jung and Jungian thought – often enough that I do not have the time or inclination to list bibliographic references for them. Ong also often refers to Eliade’s work, especially to his book The Myth of the Eternal Return, translated by Willard R. Trask (Pantheon Books, 1954), which Peterson mentions. In Ong’s books Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Cornell University Press, 1971, pages 10-12 and 18) and Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press, 1981, pages 18-19, 25, 92, 100, 111, 115, and 148), the published version of Ong’s 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, he discusses Neumann’s book The Origins and History of Consciousness, translated by R. F. C. Hull (Pantheon Books, 1954), which Peterson mentions.
Now, Ong held a non-materialist philosophical position. His 1981 book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness is his non-materialist contribution to the then-emerging field of sociobiology pioneered by the Harvard philosophical materialist E. O. Wilson (1975). From at least his undergraduate years onward, Ong was fascinated with Darwinian evolutionary theory. For example, he edited and contributed to the anthology Darwin’s Vision and Christian Perspectives (Macmillan, 1960), and Ong gathered three of his own evolution-themed essays together in his book In the Human Grain: Further Explorations of Contemporary Culture (1967, pages 61-82, 83-98, 99-126), mentioned above.
In the index of Peterson’s 1999 book, we also find specific page references for the entries “word” (lowercase) and “Word” (capitalized in the Christian tradition of thought; page 541). Similarly, in Ong’s book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press, 1967), the expanded version of Ong’s 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University, we find that all of the indexed items are capitalized, including separate entries for “Word” (meaning the ordinary human word) and “Word of God” (pages 359-360) – but with far more specific page references for each of these two entries than we find in Peterson’s index.
We should note here that Ong subsequently turned his attention to cultural history in the following books: Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (1971), mentioned above; Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, 1977); Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (1981), mentioned above; Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982), mentioned above; and An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry (2002), mentioned above.
However, Ong did return to writing about religious history in his book Hopkins, the Self, and God (University of Toronto Press, 1986), the published version of Ong’s 1981 Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto, and in Faith and Contexts, 4 vols. (Scholars Press, 1992a, 1992b, 1995, and 1999).
Incidentally, Northrop Frye (1912-1991), an ordained Protestant minister in the United Church of Canada who taught English at the University of Toronto, published two widely read books about the Bible that Peterson mentions: The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982) and Words with Power: Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990).
In volume one of Ong’s Faith and Contexts (Scholars Press, 1992a), he refers to Frye once (page 102), but in volume two (1992b), he refers to Frye repeatedly (pages 106, 107, 206, and 207).
Before Frye died in 1991, he wrote the following blurb for the publisher to use to promote the anthology Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong’s Thought (Sage Publications, 1991): “Media, Consciousness, and Culture sustains an admirable level of quality throughout, both is style and content. As clear and readable an introduction as I could imagine to the work of a seminal thinker, it goes on to apply Walter Ong’s insights to many new areas. To say that it is worthy of the subject is saying a great deal, yet this praise seems to me fully merited.”
Now, in the “Preface” to Peterson’s 1999 book (pages xi-xxii), he explains that the concerns he addresses in the book grew out of his own personal experiences, which is a common for authors of self-help books to do, but not so common for authors in academic psychology to do. As I read Peterson’s chronological account of his life and concerns, I tried to recall my own life when I was approximately the same age as he was at various times. By doing this, I discovered that I really do not have much in common with him, except that he and I both come from modest socio-economic circumstances. For example, I do not recall ever having “absolutely unbearable dreams” of the sort that he describes having as a young man. When I read about his disturbing dreams, I was thankful that I was spared from having such disturbing dreams as a young man. But I admire Peterson’s resourcefulness in then undertaking to read Sigmund Freud and then C. G. Jung on the interpretation of dreams (pages xvii-xx).
Toward the end of the “Preface,” Peterson sums up two ways of interpreting the world. He says, “The world can be validly construed as a forum for action, as well as a place of things” (page xxi; this exact same sentence is also the opening sentence of chapter 1 on page 1). Basically, the world construed as a forum for action is the equivalent to what Ong refers to as the world-as-event sense of life, and the world construed as a place of things is the equivalent to what Ong refers to as the world-as-view sense of life. I say, “Basically” here advisedly, because Peterson delineates in detail the two ways of construing the world and a third way of mediating between these two other ways. His different delineations go far beyond anything Ong says. For Peterson, the way of construing the world as a place of things emerges only with experimental science in Western culture after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the mid-1450s. However, for Ong, the world-as-view sense of life is exemplified in ancient Greek philosophy with Plato and Aristotle, and continues in Western philosophy and eventually in Christian theology in ancient and medieval times. But Peterson tends to see all pre-experimental thought as pre-scientific and therefore essentially as mythic. By contrast, Ong sees experimental science as involving visualist tendencies writ large, so to speak. However, Peterson suggests that “all myth has not yet vanished from science, devoted as it is to human progress” (page 3).
Now, the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) delineates what he refers to as a generalized empirical method (from the Greek “hodos,” meaning way of proceeding) in his philosophical masterpiece Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 5th ed. (University of Toronto Press, 1992; orig. ed., 1957). Both ways of construing the world (as a forum for action versus a place of things) involve using the cognitive processes that Lonergan delineates. Similarly, both the world-as-event sense of life and the world-as-view sense of life involve using the cognitive processes that Lonergan delineates.
For further discussion of this point, see the Canadian Jesuit theologian Frederick E. Crowe’s 1965 essay “Neither Jew nor Greek, but One Human Nature and Operation in All” reprinted, slightly revised, in the anthology Communication and Lonergan: Common Ground for Forging the New Age (Sheed & Ward, 1993, pages 89-107).
See Ong’s article “World as View and World as Event” in the American Anthropologist, volume 71 (August 1969): pages 634-647; reprinted in volume three of Ong’s Faith and Contexts (Scholars Press, 1995, pages 69-90).
Ong explores the aural versus visual contrast in his massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press, 1958). Ong explicitly acknowledges (page 338, note 54) that he borrowed the aural versus visual contrast from the French philosopher Louis Lavelle (1883-1951).
Peter Ramus (1515-1572) was a French logician, educational reformer, and Protestant martyr. In Perry Miller’s classic book The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1939), he reports that he had found only one college-educated person in New England who did not claim to be a Ramist. Ong’s former teacher at Saint Louis University, the Jesuit university in St. Louis, Missouri, and lifelong friend the Canadian Renaissance specialist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), a convert to Roman Catholicism, called Ong’s attention to Miller’s book. Consequently, Ong dedicates his book Ramus and Talon Inventory (Harvard University Press, 1958) to McLuhan “who started all this.” Ong did his massively researched doctoral dissertation under the direction of Perry Miller at Harvard University. Ong dedicates his 1967 book In the Human Grain: Further Explorations of Contemporary Culture, mentioned above, to the memory of Perry Miller.
Just as Ramist logic dominated the curriculum at Harvard College (founded in 1636) in New England, so too it dominated the curriculum at Cambridge University in England, where young John Milton (1608-1674) studied it. Later in his life, Milton himself composed a logic textbook based on Ramus’ logic. Ong and Charles J. Ermatinger translated and edited Milton’s Logic for volume eight of Yale’s Complete Prose Works of John Milton: 1666-1682 (Yale University Press, 1982, pages 139-407). Ong’s lengthy introduction is reprinted as “Introduction to Milton’s Logic” in volume four of Ong’s Faith and Contexts (1999, pages 111-142), mentioned above. Over the years, Ong published several pieces about Milton. (Peterson discusses Milton on pages 312, 315, 316, 319, and 338.)
Evidently independently of Lavelle, Lonergan also calls attention in Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) to what Ong refers to as the visualist tendency in Western philosophical thought.
Taking a hint from Ong and Lonergan, McLuhan explores the aural versus visual contrast in his controversial book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press, 1962). (Because McLuhan taught English at the University of Toronto for years, I assume that Peterson has heard of him, even though he does not happen to mention him in his 1999 book.)
Andrea Wilson Nightingale’s book Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context (Cambridge University Press, 2004) strengthens the argument about the visualist in Western philosophic thought advanced by Lavelle, Ong, Lonergan, and McLuhan.
For an essay related to Ong’s 1969 article in American Anthropologist, see the anthropologist David M. Smith’s 1997 essay “World as Event: Aspects of Chipewyan Ontology” reprinted in the anthology Of Ong and Media Ecology (2012, pages 117-141), mentioned above.
However, even though I happen to find it fascinating to see how Peterson’s two ways of construing the world are basically equivalent to Ong’s two expressions, I have to admit that Peterson himself probably would not be as fascinated as I happen to be with Ong’s two expressions or with Ong’s own account of our Western cultural history. Peterson has his own agenda to advance in the field of academic psychology, and Ong’s thought has not had a significant influence in academic psychology. Similarly, Jung’s thought has not had a significant influence in academic psychology. But how much, if any, influence has Peterson’s 1999 book had in academic psychology – or in the academic study of religion or in the philosophy of religion or among other academics who are steeped in Jung’s thought? Or is Peterson even trying to influence academics? For example, is he trying instead to be a popularizer of his understanding of certain aspects of Jungian thought primarily for a non-academic audience? Despite the length of his 1999 book, Peterson seems to me to be a psychologist writing about certain notable psychological thought primarily for a non-academic audience – just as the late Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001) seems to me to be a philosopher writing about certain notable philosophical thought primarily for a non-academic audience in such short books as Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy (Macmillan, 1978), Intellect: Mind Over Matter (Macmillan, 1990), Desires Right & Wrong: The Ethics of Enough (Macmillan, 1991), and his other short books.
Now, Ong writes primarily for an academic audience and for well-informed non-academics. I suppose that I, at times, write about Ong’s thought in the spirit of a popularizer of his thought, but at other times I see myself standing on his shoulders, figuratively speaking, when I venture to apply his thought to discussing something that he does not himself discuss.
At the risk of perhaps over-simplifying Peterson’s thought, it strikes me that everything he says about construing the world as a forum for action involves our affective dimension more than our cognitive dimension. Conversely, everything he says about construing the world as a place of things involves our cognitive dimension more than our affective dimension. But then everything he says about a third way of mediating between these two other ways strikes me as akin to the process in Jesuit spirituality known as discernment of spirits.
Peterson suggests that the Christian myth of the Christ (the Greek-based term for the Messiah, the anointed one) represents a third way of proceeding in the world between the other two ways. I understand his point about the Christian myth of the Christ. But the real challenge for all of us is not to admire the narrative about a supposed Christ who represents the third way that Peterson refers to, but to embody in ourselves and manifest in our own personal lives the third way that he refers to. I have no doubt that both Jung and Ong each tried to the best of his ability to embody the third way that Peterson refers to.
Concerning Jesuit spirituality, see Ong’s article “‘A.M.D.G.’ [abbreviation of the Latin expression Ad majorem Dei gloriam, For the greater glory of God]: Dedication or Directive?” in the now-defunct Jesuit-sponsored journal Review for Religious (published out of Saint louis University), volume 11 (September 15, 1952): pages 257-264; reprinted in Review for Religious, volume 50 (1991): pages 35-42; also reprinted in volume three of Ong’s Faith and Contexts (1995, pages 1-8), mentioned above. Also see Ong’s book
Now, if each of us carries within ourselves what Jung refers to as a collective unconscious, then each of us carries memories in our collective unconscious of the world-as-event sense of life that Ong writes about in his 1969 article in the American Anthropologist. By noting this here, I hope to establish a good reason for Peterson to take an interest in Ong’s account of the world-as-event sense of life.
Now, Peterson begins his “Preface” with the following statement: “Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, in its intrapsychic or internal manifestation. The thing we do not understand is the chaos that gave rise to culture. If the structure of culture is disrupted, unwittingly, chaos returns. We will do anything – anything – to defend ourselves against that return” (page xi). No doubt the possibility of inner psychological chaos is real, even though we may not always be aware of this possibility. But when we have a mental breakdown, we are then experiencing inner psychological chaos, in which chaos overthrows ego-consciousness. In addition, when we contemplate suicide, we are feeling the urge of inner psychological chaos. As I say, chaos is a real inner psychological possibility, not just a colorful expression.
Now, both Ong and McLuhan alert us about the contemporary disruptive influence of communications media that accentuate sound. More to the point, the critical mass of contemporary communications media that accentuate sound is deeply disrupting the dominant print culture that emerged historically in Western culture after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the mid-1450s – the dominant print culture in which Peterson’s experimental science and the way of construing the world as a place of things were in the ascendancy and were superseding the previously dominant way of construing the world as a forum for action. Now, if we were to interpret the spirit of experimental science and the way of construing the world as a place of things as involving the spirit of contemplation, then we might invoke the Jesuit orientation of being contemplatives in action.
I myself grew up under the cultural influence of the critical mass of communications media that accentuate sound. But my parents were part of an older generation that grew up before the ascendancy of the critical mass of communications media that accentuate sound – and so was Ong.
Now, in the self-help book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (Azure Coyote Book, 2013), the psychotherapist Pete Walker recommends the practices of self-mothering and self-fathering (pages 57-59 and 62-63). I would suggest that the practice of self-mothering involves what Peterson refers to as construing the world as a forum for action and that the practice of self-fathering involves what Peterson refers to as construing the world as a place of objects. In addition, Walker recommends re-parenting by committee to supplement our own individual efforts of re-parenting ourselves (pages 63-65). Regardless of which practices work for us, we need to understand that Peterson’s insights about the two ways of construing the world surely require our re-parenting efforts.
When I read Walker’s book, I learned that I am suffering, to a certain degree, from complex PTSD. From reading his book, I have gleaned numerous cognitive insights about myself and my life. In my estimate, Peterson is also suffering, to a certain degree, from complex PTSD – everybody is suffering, to a certain degree, from it. This is the pathos of the human condition. Consequently, we are all challenged to work to recover from it to the best of our ability, so that we can move from surviving to thriving, as Walker suggests.
In conclusion, Peterson’s extraordinary verbal facility makes his 1999 book relatively readable. He is a highly verbal popularizer of the thought of Jung, Neumann, Eliade, and others. As noted, Peterson skillfully uses Nietzsche as a conversation partner. But compared to Ong, Peterson is not a heavyweight thinker.
I have spent much of the last decade trying to answer a question: "What are stories/narratives made out of?". This question has driven much of my private reading, and I have read a lot of books about the structure of narratives, from Aristotle to Joseph Campbell to Robert McKee and many others. But Jordan Peterson is on another level when it comes to answering this question. MoM is the most high-fidelity articulation of the structure and architecture of narratives that I have ever come across. Peterson lays out an extremely detailed framework for understanding narrative structure, and grounds this framework in the latest psychology and neuroscience research. MoM was enormously helpful for me to understand the structure of narratives and stories. So if you are interested at all in storytelling/narratives/marketing, you will truly love this book and find it practically very useful.
Deeper than answering my questions about stories though, Peterson articulates a rational framework for understanding our relationship with the transcendant/divine. I have read the complete works of Carl Jung and have found his rational framework for understanding the transcendant (The "Collective Unconscious", Shadow, Anima, Animus, Self etc) very interesting and helpful. But Peterson's framework for rationally understanding the transcendant/divine (Unknown, Known, Knower, Precosmogonic Chaos) seems to go deeper than Jung, and is grounded more in the latest neuroscientific research. Our modern scientific minds are in desperate need of a rational framework for understanding our relationship with the irrational transcendant, and Peterson has done an extremely admirable job of solving this problem. So if you are interested in the works of Jung, or are trying to find a rational way to understand your relationship with the transcendant, this is the book for you.
One area of MoM that I found very helpful in the context of Jung's work is the final chapters of MoM about Alchemy. I have read Jung's work on alchemy, and although I found it deeply interesting and engaging, it was very hard for me to get at what he was talking about. Peterson's chapter on Alchemy is a fantastic introduction to Jung's alchemy work, and goes deeper than Jung in some key ways. Peterson does an incredible job mapping the heroic pattern of action to the process the alchemist's projected into their attempts to transform base metals into gold. I have always been stunned by Jung's work in alchemy, but it wasn't until I read Maps of Meaning that I really started to understand it. So if you are interested in Jung and Alchemy, I'm sure you will find this book deeply interesting and helpful.
Peterson's conclusion in MoM is a fascinating and deep idea that I am still trying to wrap my head around: "the divinity of interest". Peterson lays out an argument that our sense of meaning/interest is guided by the transcendant divine, and that the proper path to heroic action is to follow your sense of meaning/interest to its end. He also lays out the adversarial patterns of action, how they reject meaning/interest, and how this shirking of responsibility and rejection of meaning (through the lie) is the core act of evil. Peterson showed me that my sense of meaning/interest is divine, and that following my sense of meaning to its end is how I can interface with the divine in my own personal life. Since reading MoM my life has certainly become more meaningful, and following my sense of meaning has quite radically transformed my life direction. Finding this deeper sense of meaning has come through accepting deeper responsibility though, so I have also had an increase in conscious suffering during this time. But as Peterson lays out in MoM, if you accept the burden of responsibility and accept your deepest suffering, you will find the meaning within that will allow you to transcend that suffering. Peterson's conclusion to Maps of Meaning, the "divinity of interest", is a staggering idea that I am barely able to wrap my head around, but after acting this idea out in my life, I can see that it is deeply important. So if you are looking for meaning in your life, and trying to understand the relationship between meaning and your own Good/Evil actions, this book should be a great guide for you.
It's difficult to write a comprehensive review for such a foundational and groundbreaking book. I personally think that Maps of Meaning is one the most important scientific/philosophical/religious works of the 20th/21st centuries, and perhaps human history. Peterson has provided us with a high-fidelity framework for understanding how we humans behave, and more importantly, how we can behave heroically in the face of the ever-present Unknown. It's going to take another 30-50 years before people truly start to truly understand the value of Peterson's great work, and I daresay that this book will have a huge impact on the future of humanity.
Bravo, Jordan Peterson. God bless you for creating such a useful masterpiece. I will continue to read Maps of Meaning every year, and I'm looking forward to reading it a 5th time and a 6th time and many more times to come. Like I said above, Maps of Meaning is the most meaningful and important book that I have ever read. I don't think I have ever read a book 4 times before. It's a very tough read to get through, but it's worth it. If you are curious about stories/narratives, or if you are a fan of Jung and psychology, or if you are simply trying to figure out how to live your life meaningfully, I highly recommend Maps of Meaning, and I hope it is as meaningful for you as it is for me.
Top reviews from other countries
Essentially he is encouraging the reader to discover what is meaningful to them as individuals. This point is getting lost on people with rigid and flawed ideologies.
This book is complex and is the culmination of many years of deep, rational thought.
The book that they delivered is Indian version, printed and bound in India priced at Rs 795. So you figure it out yourself if one doesn't feel cheated.
I think it would not have harmed if they had shown the correct price. Yes the delivery charge would may have led one to give a second thought but to entice customer using the kind of ruse as the above would only weaken one's trust in the brand.









