Maps of Meaning

🧠 Free Recall ❓ Quiz 🔍 Cues 🔮 Simulation 🥷 ShadowBox 📐 Encode Cards

The world can be validly construed as forum for action, or as place of things. The former manner of interpretation-more primordial, and less clearly understood-finds its expression in the arts or humanities, in ritual, drama, literature and mythology. The world as forum for action is a place of value, a place where all things have meaning. This meaning, which is shaped as a consequence of social interaction, is implication for action, or-at a higher level of analysis-implication for the configuration of the interpretive schema that produces or guides action. The latter manner of interpretation-the world as place of things-finds its formal expression in the methods and theories of science. Science allows for increasingly precise determination of the consensually validatable properties of things, and for efficient utilization of precisely determined things as tools (once the direction such use is to take has been determined, through application of more fundamental narrative processes). No complete world-picture can be generated without use of both modes of construal. The fact that one mode is generally set at odds with the other means only that the nature of their respective domains remains insufficiently discriminated. Adherents of the mythological worldview tend to regard the statements of their creeds as indistinguishable from empirical "fact," even though such statements were generally formulated long before the notion of objective reality emerged. Those who, by contrast, accept the scientific perspective-who assume that it is, or might become, complete-forget that an impassable gulf currently divides wh at is from what should be.

Peterson, Jordan B.. Maps of Meaning (p. 1). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

We need to know four things: 
what there is, 
what to do about what there is, 
that there is a difference between knowing what there is, and knowing what to do about what there is 
and what that difference is

Nah this is pretty FIRE March 29, 2023 @ 7:48 PM

Everything a child encounters has this dual nature, experienced by the child as part of a unified totality. Everything is something, and means something--and the distinction between essence and significance is not necessarily drawn.

The significance of something--specified in actuality as a consequence of exploratory activity undertaken in its vicinity-tends "naturally" to become assimilated to the object itself. The object, after all, is the proximal cause or the stimulus that "gives rise" to action conducted in its presence.

Not only do we make stories about our lives, but we make stories of other people's lives and even things! March 29, 2023 @ 7:53 PM

The "natural," pre-experimental, or mythical mi nd is in fact primarily concerned with meaning-which is essentially implication for action-and not with "objective" nature.

And, in truth-in reallife-to know what something is still means to know two things about it: its motivation al relevance, and the specific nature of its sensory qualities. The two forms of knowing are not identical; furthermore, experience and registration of the former necessarily precedes development of the latter. Something must have emotional impact before it will attract enough attention to be explored and mapped in accordance with its sensory properties. Those sensory properties-of prime import to the experimentalist or empiricist-are meaningful only insofar as they serve as cues for determining specific affective relevance or behavioral significance. We need to know what things are not to know what they are but to keep track of what they mean-to und erstand what they signif)r for our behavior.

Peterson, Jordan B.. Maps of Meaning (p. 3). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Prior to the time of Descartes, Bacon and Newton, man 1ived in an animated, spiritual world, saturated with meaning, imbued with moral purpose. The nature of this purpose was revealed in the stories peop1e to1d each other-stories about the structure of the cosmos and the p1ace of man. But now we think empirically (at least we think we think empirically), and the spirits that once inhabited the universe have vanished.

Peterson, Jordan B.. Maps of Meaning (p. 5). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

When one gives up Christian belief [for example] one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality.... Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and comp/ete view of things. Jf one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know what is good for hirn and what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows. Christian morality is a command: its origin is transcendental; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticize; it possesses truth only if God is truth-it stands or falls with the belief in God. Jf [modern Westemers] really do believe they know, of their own accord, "intuitively," what is good and evil; if they consequently think they no longer have need of Christianity as a guarantee of morality; that is merely the consequence of the ascendancy of Christian evaluation and an expression of the strength and depth of this ascendancy: so that the origin of [modern] morality has been forgotten, so that the highly conditional nature of its right to exist is no longer feltY

Profound idea by Nietzsche

Myth can be more accurately regarded as "description of the world as it signifies (for action)." The mythic universe is a pi ace to act, not a place to perceive. Myth describes things in terms of their unique or shared affective valence, their value, their motivational significance.

Thinking also and more fundamentally is specification of value, specification of implication for behavior. This me ans that categorization, with regards to value-determination (or even perception) of what constitutes a single thing, or dass of things-is the act of grouping together according to implication flr behavior.

Action presupposes valuation, or its implicit or "unconscious" equivalent. To act is literally to manifest preference about one set of possibilities, contrasted with an infinite set of alternatives. If we wish to live, we must act. Acting, we value. Lacking omniscience, painfully, we must make decisions, in the absence of sufficient information. It is, traditionally speaking, our knowledge of good and evil, our moral sensibility, that allows us this ability. It is our mythological conventions, operating implicitly or explicitly, that guide our choices. But what are these conventions? How are we to understand the fact 0/ their existence? How are we to understand them?

Peterson, Jordan B.. Maps of Meaning (p. 10). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

However, the individual cannot live without belief-without action and valuation-and science cannot provide that belief. We must nonetheless put our faith into something.

This is so timely because check out this tweet I read this exact same day - March 29, 2023 @ 8:47 PM

Myth, and the drama that is part of myth, provide answers in image to the following question: "how can the current state of experience be conceptualized in abstraction, with regards to its meaning?"

Meaning means implication for behavioral output; logically, therefore, myth presents information relevant to the most fundamental of moral problems: "what should be? (what should be done?)"The des irable future (the object of what should be) can be conceptualized only in relationship to the present, which serves at least as a necessary point of contrast and comparison. To get somewhere in the future presupposes being somewhere in the present; furthermore, the desirability of the place traveled to depends on the valence of the place vacated.

Peterson, Jordan B.. Maps of Meaning (p. 13). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

[What is] ---> How we should act --> [What Should Be]

The central notion of the way underlies manifestation of four more specific myths, or classes of myths, and provides a more complete answer, in dramatic form, to the three questions posed previously

myths describing a current or pre-existent stable state (sometimes a paradise, sometimes a tyranny); 
myths describing the emergence of something anomalous, unexpected, threatening and promising into this initial state;  
myths describing the dissolution of the pre-existent stable state into chaos, as a consequence of the anomalous or unexpected occurrence; 
myths describing the regeneration of stability [paradise regained (or, tyranny regenerated)], from the chaotic mixture of dissolute previous experience and anomalous information. 
 
Bitcoin
Inflating/printing of dollars is bad
Bitcoin
Hyperbitcoinalization
Bitcoin Citadel

The metamythology of the way, so to speak, describes the manner in which specific ideas (myths) about the present, the future, and the mode of transforming one into the other are initially constructed, and then reconstructed, in their entirety, when that becomes necessary.

Unstarred

Dunk (exclude from study)

Maps of Meaning

Review Questions

Todos

Sensemaker