Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson

Jordan Peterson spent thirteen years writing this, and it is nothing like the books that made him famous. Maps of Meaning is an academic work — published by Routledge, densely referenced, drawing on Jung, Piaget, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and neuroscience — attempting to explain why human beings across unrelated cultures produced structurally similar myths.

What the book argues

• That myth encodes information about how to act, not claims about how the world objectively is
• The recurring structure of known territory, unknown territory, and the hero who mediates between them
• How belief systems stabilise action and emotion, and what happens psychologically when one collapses
• The relationship between meaning, anomaly and the nervous system’s response to novelty
• Why ideological rigidity and atrocity follow from the defence of a threatened belief structure

Who it’s for

Readers of comparative mythology, psychology and religious studies, and anyone who read 12 Rules for Life and wants the underlying framework. Be warned: this is considerably harder going, and assumes patience with academic prose.

Edition details

• Author: Jordan B. Peterson · Publisher: Routledge
• Format: Hardcover · ISBN: 978-0415922210
• Language: English

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