Maps of Meaning, Lesson 5: The Great Unknown

Lesson #5 – The Unknown, The Known, and The Knower: A simplification of the Hero’s Journey

(Note: If you’d like to read along with me, you can get Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning on amazon.)

The Old Framework For The Hero

Before Peterson, the best codification of the hero’s journey I had encountered was from Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With A Thousand Faces.” He described the Monomyth, the one great story which is depicted time and time again in religion, mythology, and entertainment. That journey was generally described as the following:

The hero leaves home, fights some great battle, acquiring a new treasure or ability, and returns home to share it with his or her people.

Campbell went much further to break down each of the constituent elements, as seen here:

When you read Campbell, you come to understand the foundational framework of story, and will view all our Disney and Marvel movies through a very different lens.

The best benefit of this Campbellian-lens: a working (and readily accessible) framework of how the hero is depicted in story.

The downside of this lens: it can be quite difficult to apply the lessons from these stories to the specifics of our modern lives.

This book is gold and was a necessary precursor to “Maps of Meaning.” To dive deeper into the Monomyth, check out the classic, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”.

The New Framework For The Hero

In “Maps of Meaning,” Peterson provides an incredibly simple (and ineffably dense) framework through which to interpret the hero’s journey and your daily experience. He says there are 7 players in the divine drama, pictured here:

There is the Archetypal Son (the individual, knower, the divine hero) who is both hero and adversary, nested in the confines of The Great Father (culture, explored territory), who is both supportive and tyrannical, nested inside The Great Mother (nature, the unknown, unexplored territory) which is both creative and destructive, and all of which springs forth from (and ultimately returns to) the Dragon of Chaos (reality).

He communicates that the 3 primary players in the drama – the individual, culture, and nature – possess both positive and negative aspects.

For the sake of today’s conversation, we will get specific on the relationship between the positive Individual, the positive aspect of Culture, and the positive aspect of Nature, to be henceforth referred to as: the knower, the known, and the unknown.

A New Definition of The Hero

I have repeatedly viewed the hero through the Campbell/Jung lens, which goes something like:

The hero is the one who voluntarily confronts the difficult task on behalf of the people he or she serves.

But Peterson, now on my 3rd time through Maps of Meaning, has updated that definition. Now I see that though the previous definition is true, it would be more accurate to say:

There are three elements of experience: the unknown (unexplored territory), the known (explored territory), and the knower (the hero), the process which mediates the two. The role of the hero is to leave the safe confines of the known and go off into the unknown, voluntarily and in search of its benevolence, through creative exploration. The hero takes the information he or she acquires from the unknown and uses that to expand the known.

This is the heroic process. This is what all the stories are conveying. This is the fundamental process we enact whenever we improve our lives. All the information we need is “out there,” so we go into the unknown in search of knowledge and understanding to improve the life we currently enjoy, by expanding our sphere of the known.

This is what we do when we improve our heath, our relationships, our finances, and our skills. We go where we are not strong (the unknown) in search of information (the positive aspect of the unknown) to expand our sphere of understanding and competence (the unknown), thus successfully embodying the archetypal hero (acting as the “knower.”)

In Summary

This might seem like non-sense or mental meandering. To me, I found this codification of nearly endless utility, bringing much clarity to the many aspects of my life. It has helped me develop a healthy relationship to the learning/growth process and continually gives me the courage to stretch myself into places where I am not strong so that I may acquire strength.

The knower is the process which mediates between the unknown and known, and through his or her voluntary creative exploration, expands the known, improving his or her experience of being (and the experience of the people with whom they are connected).

Be the knower. Go off into the unknown in pursuit of information. Use that information to INFORM your life into a closer approximation of your vision.

Do this consistently enough and you will radically change your experience for the better. Godspeed!