Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

by Jordan B. Peterson

The great forces of empiricism and rationality and the great technique of the experiment have killed myth, and it cannot be resurrected-or so it seems. We still act out the precepts of our forebears, nonethe1ess, although we can no longer justiry our actions. Our behavior is shaped (at least in the ideal) by the same mythic rules-thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not coverthat guided our ancestors for the thousands of years they lived without benefit of formal empirical thought. This means that those rules are so powerful-so necessary, at least-that they maintain their existence (and expand their domain) even in the presence of explicit theories that undermine their validity. That is a mystery.