Maps of Meaning, Lesson 3: Be the Hero of Your Own Story

Lesson #3 – Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson: Introduction to the Hero

Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning, I believe, is one of the most worthwhile and necessary books ever written. Though it is not the book’s explicit aim, Maps of Meaning is the best description of the behavioral process of the archetypal hero which has ever been written.

In our first email, we described the world as a forum for action. In our second, we described the experience of novelty along the path toward your goal, and that the hero is the one who searches for its benevolence.

Now, we seek to understand the hero.

Knowledge, Wisdom, and Story

Through the lens of the world as a forum for action, the type of knowledge we are most implicitly concerned with is knowing how to act. What we seek is procedural knowledge (behavioral wisdom) so we can make the most of the time we are given.

But how do we find this wisdom? And how do we apply this wisdom to the unique aspects of our personal experience?

To answer these questions, we must understand how ideas are formed. Consider the following image from Maps of Meaning:

From the top down, this is how we (humanity at large, over eons of time) learn how to act in the world (transmit behavioral wisdom).

First, someone engages in creative exploratory action, turning the unknown into the known and improving the lives of those in the tribe. Then people imitate this behavior. Then this behavior is communicated through story. Then this behavior becomes dogma, religious truth, the narrative by which the tribe lives, and the highest ideal toward which its people aim.

Only later do the philosophers stand on this foundation and semantically describe this process. Most of the time, a community and its people act out the prescription of this ideal without being able to consciously describe what it is they are doing.

We know how to do something long before we know why we do something.

This is highlighted perfectly in the works of Jean Piaget, who uses children and games to demonstrate this. Young kids can play games together, following a set of rules, without being able to articulate what those rules are. The game just works, and all the kids know how to play, though they cannot articulate what it is they are playing or why they are playing it.

There is an embedded procedural knowledge below the surface.

So how do we find the wisdom of our culture which instructs us how to act?

Story is the vessel by which cultures transmit behavioral wisdom.

Myth and Religion, the guiding stories of cultures, portray the actions that the culture most values (1) though the culture may not be consciously aware of this, pending the stage of idea development they occupy, and 2) these actions are most valued because they have historically led to the most profitable encounter with the unknown).

It is these stories which posses the prescription for success: the voluntary confrontation with the unknown in search of its benevolence.

Embedded within the stories of a culture – whether the religion of a spiritual society, or the entertainment of a secular society (what Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Marvel have become for us) – is the behavioral wisdom of how to best act in the world.

But what is this action which the stories seek to convey?

This is where we look for the meta-action, the lowest level resolution of the message, which can hold true across multiple domains and specifics of experience. At this level of magnification, what is Harry Potter doing when he confronts “he who must not be named”? What is the fundamental behavior process that Ironman practices when he destroys those flying dragon things from Avengers? And how can we apply this wisdom to the specifics of our lives, like, asking for a raise, finding a partner, or finally going to the gym?

The meta-action of the hero goes something like this:

The hero is the one who voluntarily and successfully encounters the unknown, generating wisdom through creative exploration; who voluntarily does the difficult thing on behalf of progress, who leaves the comfort of the known in search of the better, and having found or created that benevolence, shares this with his or her people.

And how do I apply this to the particulars of my life?

This is actually the easy part, relying on the innate wisdom within you. Sit down quietly and ask yourself:

“Where am I not embodying the archetype of the hero? In what areas of my life do I avoid the unknown out of fear? What am I not doing that I know I should do? Where have I shirked the responsibility of voluntarily pursuing the difficult on behalf of progress?”

Provided you allocate a few minutes of quiet, undistracted attention toward these questions, the answers will present themselves to you. And when they do, that’s where your work lies.

Whether at work, home, in your health or in your passions, where have you not been playing the role of the hero?

Admitting where you have not been the hero is the first step toward heroic endeavor.

Summary:

Humanity conveys behavioral wisdom through story. We would be wise to seek the lessons the stories of our cultures seek to convey, and having learned the lesson, apply the meta-action (the tacit prescription of the story) to the particulars of our lives.

Next week, we shall discuss how this is done more concretely!