All Roads Lead to Babel
My Non-Review Review of Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief
So much of Maps of Meaning was over my head. So this is not so much a review as a within five minutes of closing the book gut-check. I am grateful that Peterson, as he tells the reader in the introduction, included summaries at the beginning of each chapter and subchapter throughout the book. In fact, he says those are all he really cares for those who are not experts in the field to read and that if they do they will come away with his main point (xxii). I believe I have come away with it if it is:
1) All cultures have "maps of meaning" that give both individuals and groups grounding for their actions. And 2) without these "maps" all meaning, and therefore all basis for action, goes out the window. 3) With basis for action lost, so is culture or society of any semblance of the terms.
All this really serves his further point, and what makes the work unique and not just Jung translated for the rest of us, that all cultures' maps look shockingly similar. In fact, what Peterson gives throughout the book is the architectural structure that all maps of all cultures fit into or flow out of depending on where you’re standing. He never really asks why this is the case–at least not to any answer.
I think the reason is because that is not a question of significance for Peterson (though it should be). His point is to justify human action and the preservation of culture, he wants to preserve meaning and meaning in the here and now. “Who cares,” I think Peterson would say in an excellently edited Instagram video, “if all our maps that give us meaning look so much alike that they seem to just have different names for the same cities? That isn’t the point! To know why and how to act is the point!” I, for one, care very much, Dr.
What I appreciated most about the book was his drawing attention to the incoherence of Western society’s belief, in general, that God is dead and yet our unwillingness to let go of the tablets of moral code he's given us to live by. We as a culture at least posit that God is no more, yet we act by the rules he gave us: "We have become atheist in our description, but remain evidently religious–that is, moral–in our disposition" (6). He’s gone, if he was ever here to begin with, but we still use him for meaning whether we are aware we are doing so or not. We've overthrown God while maintaining his rule(s). Why? Again, no answer given really except humans can't live without belief, without a map of meaning, and it is far too late in the game to draw up a new one.
But why, (I want to know from Peterson who today flirts so closely with a Judea-Christian worldview it borders on teasing), why are all maps of meaning across all cultures built with the same architecture? Surely that is not a grand happenstance! I'm not sure what Peterson would say. But I venture my own take:
All maps are our attempts to get back to somewhere. Namely: Babel; where all roads meet at an overgrown path to Eden.
zch