Maps of Meaning

The title of the preface, “Descensus ad Inferos,” refers to the Harrowing of Hell—in Christian theology, the period between Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, when Christ descends into hell or the underworld. Signifying Christian themes as well as the themes of death, suffering and rebirth, the title sets the stage for one of the book’s chief arguments: that descent into the unknown underworld is a crucial part of human experience. Christ’s resurrection signifies that this descent is temporary, a stage in Christ’s evolution as redeemer. Thus, the ideas of “descent” and “hell” have a more well-rounded, positive value rather than negative associations.

The title also refers to author Jordan Peterson’s own psychological struggle, his personal descent into self-doubt and anxiety, before discovering a redemptive system of meaning. The preface opens with a detailed account of Peterson’s childhood belief systems, his loss of faith, his experiments with socialist philosophy, and his subsequent numbing disenchantment. Peterson’s disenchantment results partly from the knowledge of evil in the world. Growing up in the shadow of the atomic bomb and The Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, Peterson lives in fear of a nuclear holocaust. He cannot understand why humans commit crimes as horrendous as the Holocaust of Nazi Germany. If the Holocaust can happen in the 20th century, any evil may befall humanity. Peterson’s paralyzing self-doubt as a young adult paints a picture of him as a self-aware, intelligent individual concerned with the larger world around him. Peterson recounts his own experiences both to shed light on himself as a character in Maps of Meaning and to help convey his complex theories. He juxtaposes the intimate and confessional with the academic and theoretical as a literary device to sustain interest in the narrative. Throughout the book, Peterson uses personal anecdote and experience, stories, parables, and diagrams to both illustrate and contrast with esoteric concepts from myth studies, phenomenology, and psychology.

Peterson’s anxiety preceded his life-altering decision to change his major from Politics to Psychology and focus on the work of psychologist Carl Jung, who used myths to understand the human psyche. Thus, the moment of descent into darkness and doubt precedes carving a new path. Peterson’s story mimics the narrative of Christ as redeemer, which later chapters explore in great detail through motifs such as the hero’s journey and the revolutionary hero.

Peterson’s early disenchantment with socialism is particularly interesting because it foreshadows the book’s concerns with the shortcomings of all ideology and the excesses of the communist Russian regime, especially under Joseph Stalin. In the book, socialism is close to an “evil” philosophy because it tries to be omniscient—for example, to explain away all human behavior as consequences of socioeconomic forces. However, many socialist critics would argue that Peterson goes to the other extreme and separates human behavior from its material and economic base, thus ignoring the reality of global inequality and injustice.

Chapter 1 is significant because it introduces the key concept of the world as both “forum of action and place for things” (1). While the latter phrase is easier to parse—it refers to the world of objective reality, or the concrete things the senses perceive—the former can be a little puzzling. Peterson acknowledges the fact that the world as a forum of action is an interpretation “more primordial and less clearly understood” (1). Broadly speaking, it refers to the manner, or “way,” in which humans behave and act. The larger point Peterson aims to make through these definitions is that rationalist or scientific methods alone cannot explain why humans act along certain templates. Thus, the rules of empirical science, which can explain the world as a place for things, falter in explaining the world as a forum of action. To understand the modus operandi of human action and behavior, one must turn to the insights offered in belief systems and myths.

In this context, Peterson introduces the terms “meaning” and “valence.” While the term meaning is more straightforward, valence requires some explanation. A term borrowed from psychology, it refers to emotional valence, or the affective quality of an object or phenomenon. In other words, it refers to the emotions—positive or negative, pleasant or painful—that those objects and phenomena generate. Peterson’s point here is that humans experience an object as both objective reality and its valence. “Pure, abstract rationality” (11) cannot explain valence and hence tends to ignore it. Peterson scathingly critiques the modern tendency to denigrate systems that recognize and prioritize meaning and valence. Significantly, he distinguishes between the world before and after empiricism, or the theory that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. In this context, he mentions the mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who offered universal laws about how matter interacts; the philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who promoted skepticism as essential to scientific reasoning; and physicist Isaac Newton (1642-1726/27), who formulated the universal laws of motion. Interestingly, these three men to Peterson represent a rupture from a world saturated with meaning—in other words, a break from the medieval and post-medieval world. The medieval world was a positive environment, though Peterson acknowledges that it was a time when humans lived in constant terror of hellfire. Thus, he takes the radical stance that scientific progress, though necessary, has caused humans much spiritual distress. Some scholars argue that the medieval world differed for the king, the knight, and the peasant and thus resists uncritical idealization. Nevertheless, Peterson reveals his contrarian views with conviction, thereby establishing himself as an individual thinker, which is wholly in line with the book’s stance that having any opinion is better than having none.

To illustrate his hypothesis that myths are more than protoscience but a theory of human evolution and action, Peterson details a Sumerian creation myth, again brightening academic arguments with stories. The inclusion of different mythologies is also important because of the Jungian conceit that all world mythologies share key features. In the Sumerian myth that Peterson quotes, the Goddess Nammu, who is associated with primordial chaos, gives birth by parthenogenesis (the egg reproducing without fertilization by a sperm) to An (Sky) and Ki (Earth). The romantic union of An and Ki bears En-Lil, the God of the atmosphere, who separates the domains of earth and sky. By using this story, Peterson makes a crucial distinction between myth and protoscience. This Sumerian myth did not evolve as a proto-scientific explanation for natural phenomenon; rather, the myth evolved as a meaningful story about human nature and action. For the ancient Sumerians, An was the Great Father who keeps tradition rather than just a sky, while Ki was the creative and destructive Great Mother. They understood that human action involves an interplay between what the Great Father and the Great Mother symbolize.