Maps of Meaning

“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.” 

The book’s opening lines sum up its central thesis: Humans live between the unseen scaffolding of culture and the unknown chaos it keeps at bay. Given the terror of chaos, humans hold onto known (but unseen) culture, even though sometimes the culture needs an overhaul, or a reordering.

“I became simultaneously disenchanted with the study of political science, my erstwhile major. I had adopted that discipline so I could learn more about the structure of human beliefs (and for the practical, career-oriented reasons described previously). It remained very interesting to me when I was at junior college, where I was introduced to the history of political philosophy. When I moved to the main campus at the University of Alberta, however, my interest disappeared. I was taught that people were motivated by rational forces; that human beliefs and actions were determined by economic pressures. This did not seem sufficient explanation. I could not believe (and still do not) that commodities—‘natural resources,’ for example—had intrinsic and self-evident value. In the absence of such value, the worth of things had to be socially or culturally (or even individually) determined. This act of determination appeared to me moral—appeared to me to be a consequence of the moral philosophy adopted by the society, culture or person in question. What people valued, economically, merely reflected what they believed to be important. This meant that real motivation had to lie in the domain of value, of morality. The political scientists I studied with did not see this, or did not think it was relevant.” 

Peterson grounds his philosophical inquiries in his own experience and doubt. Purely rationalist explanations of reality discomfit him because he intuitively grasps that human behavior encompasses the irrational. Neither does a Marxist theory of the world offer all the answers, since to Peterson commodities do not have a universal, or intrinsic, value. Instead, the value of commodities varies and depends on the morality of any given culture. Though Peterson’s ideas here are interesting, they do not fully explain how the value of certain commodities, like oil, have a global impact—or why the worth of a commodity or item increasingly conflates with its currency value.

“I discovered that beliefs make the world, in a very real way—that beliefs are the world, in a more than metaphysical sense. This discovery has not turned me into a moral relativist, however: quite the contrary. I have become convinced that the world-that-is-belief is orderly, that there are universal moral absolutes (although these are structured such that a diverse range of human opinion remains both possible and beneficial). I believe that individuals and societies who flout these absolutes—in ignorance or in willful opposition—are doomed to misery and eventual dissolution.” 

Peterson’s subtle point here is that acknowledging subjectivity does not equal accepting that morality is relative. In other words, just because belief systems vary, the idea of “to each their own” is not necessarily valid. Despite the multiplicity of belief systems, certain moral absolutes exist that we must follow.