Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

by Jordan B. Peterson

The "way" is the path oflife and its purpose.23 More accurately, the content of the way is the specific path of life. The form of the way, its most fundamental aspect, is the apparently intrinsic or heritable possibility of positing or ofbeing guided by a central idea. This apparently intrinsic form finds its expression in the tendency of each individual, generation after generation, to first ask and subsequently seek an answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" The central notion of the way underlies manifestation of four more specific myths, or c1asses of myths, and provides a more complete answer, in dramatic form, to the three questions posed previously [what is the nature (meaning, the significance) of current being?, to what (desirable) end should that state be moving? and, finally, what are the processes by wh ich the present state might be transformed into that wh ich is desired?] The four c1asses inc1ude: (1) myths describing a current or pre-existent stable state (sometimes a paradise, sometimes a tyranny); (2) myths describing the emergence of something anomalous, unexpected, threatening and promising into this initial state; (3) myths describing the dissolution of the pre-existent stable state into chaos, as a consequence of the anomalous or unexpected occurrence; (4) myths describing the regeneration of stability [paradise regained (or, tyranny regenerated)], from the chaotic mixture of dissolute previous experience and anomalous information.

The tradition al Christian (and not just Christian) notion that man has fallen from an original "state of grace" into his current morally degenerate and emotionally unbearable condition-accompanied by adesire for the "return to Paradise"-constitutes a single example of this "metamyth." Christian morality can therefore be reasonably regarded as the "plan of action" whose aim is re-establishment, or establishment, or attainment (sometimes in the "hereafter") of the "kingdom of God," the ideal future. The idea that man needs redemption-and that re-establishment of a long-Iost Paradise might constitute such redemptionappear as common themes of mythology, among members of exceedingly diverse and long-separated human cultures.24 This commonality appears because man, eternally selfconscious, suffers eternally from his existence, and constantly longs for respite.

Belief is disruptible, because finite-which is to say that the infinite mystery surrounding human understanding may break into our provisional models of how to act at any time and point, and disrupt their structure.

Involuntary exposure to chaos means accidental encounter with the forces that undermine the known world. The affective consequences of such encounter can be literally overwhelming. It is for this reason that individuals are highly motivated to avoid sud den manifestations of the unknown. And this is why individuals will go to almost any length to ensure that their protective cultural "stories" remain intact.

Mythological representations of the world-which are representations of reality as a forum for action-portray the dynamic interrelationship between all three constituent elements of human experience. The eternal unknown-nature, metaphorically speaking, creative and destructive, source and destination of all determinant things-is generally ascribed an affectively ambivalent feminine character (as the "mother" and eventual "devourer" of everyone and everything). The eternal known, in contrast-culture, defined territory, tyrannical and protective, predictable, disciplined and restrictive, cumulative consequence of heroic or exploratory behavior-is typically considered masculine (in contradistinction to "mother" nature). The eternal knower, finally-the process that mediates between the known and the unknown-is the knight who slays the dragon of chaos, the herD who replaces disorder and confusion with clarity and certainty, the sun god who eternally slays the forces of darkness, and the "word" that engenders cosmic creation.

Inconveniences interfere with our plans. We do not like inconveniences, and will avoid dealing with them. Nonetheless, they occur commonly-so commonly, in fact, that they might be regarded as an integral, predictable, and constant feature of the human environment. We have adapted to this feature-have the intrinsic resources to cope with inconveniences. We benefit, become stronger, in doing so.

Inconveniences are common; unfortunately, so are catastrophes-self-induced and otherwise. We are adapted to catastrophes, like inconveniences, as constant environmental features. We can resolve catastrophe, just as we can co pe with inconvenience-although at higher cost. As a consequence of this adaptation, this capacity for resolution, catastrophe can rejuvenate. It can also destroy. The more ignored inconveniences in a given catastrophe, the more likely it will destroy.

A compelling body of evidence suggests that our affective, cognitive and behavioral responses to the unknown or unpredictable are "hardwired"; suggests that these responses constitute inborn structural elements of the processes of consciousness itself. We attend, involuntarily, to those things that occur contrary to our predictions-that occur despite our desires, as expressed in expectation. That involuntary attention comprises a large part of what we refer to when we say "consciousness."

Modern investigation into the role of novelty in emotion and thought began with the Russians-E.N. Sokolov, O. Vinogradova, A.R. Luria (and, more recently, E. Goldberg)- who adopted an approach to human function that is in many ways unique. Their tradition apparently stems from Pavlov, who viewed the reflex arc as a phenomenon of central importance, and from the Marxist intellectual legacy, which regarded work-creative action-as the defining feature of man. Whatever the specific historical precedents, it is most definitely t...

This intellectual position distinguished them, historically, from their Western counterparts, who tend(ed) to view the brain as an information-processing machine, akin to the computer. Psychologists in the West have concentrated their energies on determining how the brain determines what is out there, so to speak, from the objective viewpoint. The Russians, by contrast, have devoted themselves to the role of the brain in governing behavior, and in generating the affects or emotions associated with that behavior. Modern animal experimentalists-most notably Jeffrey Graf5-have adopted the Russian line, with s...

We do model facts, but we concern ourselves with valence, or value. It is therefore the case that our maps of the world contain what might be regarded as two distinct types of information: sensory and affective. It is not enough to know that something iso It is equally necessary to know what it signijies. It might even be argued that animals-and human beings-are primarily concerned with the affective or emotional significance of the environment.

We may construct models of"objective reality," and it is no doubt useful to do so. We must model me anings, however, in order to survive. Our most fundamental maps of meaning-maps which have a narrative structure-portray the motivational value cf our current state, conceived of in contrast to a hypothetical ideal, accompanied by plans cf action, which are our pragmatic notions about how to get what we want.

"If problems are accepted, and dealt with before they arise, they might even be prevented before confusion begins. In this way peace may be maintained."30

Your image of this potential future is a fontasy, but it is based, insofar as you are honest, on all the relevant information derived from past experience that you have at your disposal. You have attended many meetings. You know what is likely to happen, during any given meeting, within reasonable bounds; you know how you will behave, and what effect your behavior will have on others. Your model of the desired future is clearly predicated on what you currently know. You also have a model of the present, constantly operative. You understand your (somewhat subordinate) position within the corporation, which is your importance relative to others above and below you in the hierarchy. You understand the significance of those experiences that occur regularly while you are during your job: you know who you can give orders to, who you have to listen to, who is doing a good job, who can safely be ignored, and so on. You are always comparing this present (unsatisfactory) condition to that ofyour ideal, which is you, increasingly respected, powerful, rich and happy, free of anxiety and suffering, climbing toward your ultimate success. You are unceasingly involved in attempts to transform the present, as you currently understand it, into the future, as you hope it will be. Your actions are designed to produce your ideal-designed to transform the present into something ever more closely resembling what you want. Your are confident in your model of reality, in your story; when you put i...

A meeting (like the one referred to previously) might be viewed by those participating in it as one link in the chain which hypothetically leads to the paradisal state of corporate chief executive officer (or to something less desirable but still good). The (well-brought-off) meeting, as subgoal, would therefore have the same motivational significance as the goal, although at lesser intensity (as it is only one small part of a large and more important whole).

The affective systems that govern response to punishment, satisfaction, threat and pro mise all have a stake in attaining the ideal outcome. Anything that interferes with such attainment (little old ladies with canes) will be experienced as threatening anel/or punishing; anything that signifies increased likelihood of success (open stretches of sidewalk) will be experienced as promising37 or satisfying. 1t is for this reason that the Buddhists believe that everything is Maya, or illusion:38 the motivational signijicance of ongoing events is clearly determined by the nature of the goal toward which behavior is devoted That goal is conceptualized in episodic imagery-in fantasy. We constantly compare the world at present to the world idealized in fantasy, render affective judgment, and act in consequence. Trivial promises and satisfactions indicate that we are doing weH, are progressing toward our goals.

When a stoplight slows us down, we run a bit faster, once it shuts off, than we might have otherwise. Profound threats and punishments (read: trauma) have a qualitatively different nature. Profound threats or punishments undermine our ability to believe that our conceptualizations of the present are valid and that our goals are appropriate. Such occurrences disturb our belief in our ends (and, not infrequently, in our starting points).

The maps that configure our motivated behavior have a certain comprehensible structure. They contain two fundamental and mutually interdependent poles, one present, the other future. The present is sensory experience as it is currently manifested to us-as we currently understand it-granted motivational significance according to our current knowledge and desires. The future is an image or partial image of perfection, to which we compare the present, insofar as we understand its significance. Wherever there exists amismatch between the two, the unexpected or novel occurs (by definition), grips our attention, and activates the intrapsychic systems that govern fear and hope.39

We strive to bring novel occurrences back into the realm of predictability or to exploit them for previously unconsidered potential by

alte ring our behavior or our patterns of representation. We conceive of a path connecting present to future. This path is "composed" of the behaviors required to produce the transformations we desire-required to turn the (eternally) insufficient present into the (ever-receding) paradisal future. This path is normally conceived of as linear, so to speak, as something analogous to Thomas Kuhn's notion of normal science, wherein known patterns of behavior operating upon an understood present will produce a future whose desirability is an unquestioned given.40

We posit a goal, in image and word, and we compare present conditions to that goal. We evaluate the significance of ongoing events in light of their perceived relationship to the goal. We modify our behavioral outputs-our means-when necessary, to make the attainment of our goal ever more likely. We modify our actions within the game but accept the rules without question. We move in a linear direction from present to future.

The processes of revolutionary adaptation, enacted and represented, underlie diverse cultural phenomena ranging from the rites of"primitive" initiation47 to the conceptions of sophisticated religious systems.48 Indeed, our very cultures are erected upon the foundation of a single great story: paradise, encounter with chaos,Jall and redemption.

'Anyone who considers the basic drives of man... wiil find that all of them have done philosophy at some time-and that every one of them would like only too weil to represent just itselJ as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of all the other drives. For every drive wants to be master-and it attempts to philosophize in that spirit."49 "It is true that man was created in order to serve the gods, who, first of all, needed to be fed and c1othed."5o

Past experience-Iearning-does not merely condition; rather, such experience determines the precise nature of the framework of reference or context that will be brought to bear on the analysis of a given situation. This cognitive frame of reference acts as the intermediary between past learning, present experience and future desire. This intermediary is a valid object of scientific exploration-a phenomenon as real as anything abstracted is real-and is far more parsimonious and accessible, as such a phenomenon, than the simple noninterpreted (and nonmeasurable, in any case) sum total of reinforcement history. Frameworks of reference, influenced in their structure by learning, specifY the valence of ongoing experience; determine what might be regarded, in a given time and place, as good, bad or indifferent. Furthermore, inferences about the nature of the framework of reference governing the behavior of others (that is, looking at the world through the eyes of another) may produce results that are more useful, more broadly generalizable (as "insights" into the "personality" of another), and less demanding of cognitive resources than attempts to understand the details of a given reinforcement his tory.

One man's meat is another man's poison; the contents of the ideal future (and the interpreted present) may and do vary dramaticaIly between individuals. An anorexic, for example, makes her goal an emaciation of figure that may weIl be incompatible with life. In consequence, she regards food as something to be avoided-as something punishing or threatening. This belief will not protect her from starving, although it will powerfully affect her short-term determination of the valence of chocolate. The man obsessed with power may sacrifice everything--including his family-to the attainment of his narrow ambition.

Consciousness (affiliated tightly with orienting, for the purposes of the present argument) therefore appears as a phenomenon critically involved in and vital to the evaluation of novelty-appears vital to placement of the unpredictable into a defined and determinate context as a consequence of behavioral modification undertaken in the territory of the unknown, This means that consciousness plays a centrally important role in the generation of the predictable and comprehended world from the domain of the unexpected, Such response, placement and generation remains forever mediated by the twin forces ofhope/curiosity and anxiety-forces produced, noncoincidentally, by the same structures that govern "reflexive" orientation and exploratory motor output,

The combination of what we have explored and what we have still to evaluate actually comprises our environment, insofar as its nature can be broadly specified-and it is to that environment that our physiological structure has become matched. One set of the systems that comprise our brain and mi nd governs activity, when we are guided by our plans-when we are in the domain of the known. Another appears to operate when we face something unexpected-when we have entered the realm of the unknown.

The "limbic unit" generates the orienting reflex, among its other tasks. It is the orienting reflex, which manifests itself in emotion, thought and behavior, that is at the core of the fundamental human response to the novel or unknown. This reflex takes a biologically determined course, ancient in nature, primordial as hunger or thirst, basic as sexuality, extant similarly in the animal kingdom, far down the chain of organic being. The orienting reflex is the general instinctual reaction to the category of all occurrences which have not yet been categorized-is response to the unexpected, novel or unknown per se, and not to any discriminated aspect of experience, any specifically def...

The simultaneous production of two antithetical emotional states, such as hope and fear, me ans conflict, and the unexpected produces intrapsychic conflict like nothing else. The magnitude and potential intensity of this conflict cannot be appreciated under normal circumstances, because under normal circumstances-in defined territory-things are going according to plan. It is only when our goals have been destroyed that the true significance of the decontextualized object or experience is revealed-and such revelation makes itself known first in the form of fear.106 We are protected from such conflict-from subjugation to instinctive terror-by the historical compilation of adaptive information generated in the course of previous novelty-driven exploration. We are protected from unpredictability by our culturally determined beliefs, by the stories we share. These stories tell us how to presume and how to act to maintain the determinate, shared and restricted values that compose our familiar worlds.

We need to know only that something is hard and glowing red as a means of keeping track of the fact that it is hot, and therefore dangerous-that it is punishing, if contacted. We need to know the feel and look of objects so that we can keep track of what can be eaten and what might eat uso

When we explore a new domain, we are mapping the motivation al or affective significance of the things or situations that are characteristic of our goal-directed interactions within that domain, and we use the sensory information we encounter to identif)r what is important. It is the determination of speeifte meaning, or emotional significance, in previously unexplored territory-not identification of the objective features-that allows us to inhibit the novelty-induced terror and curiosity emergence of that territory otherwise automatically elicits. We feel comfortable somewhere new, once we have discovered that nothing exists there that will threaten or hurt us (more particularly, when we have adjusted our behavior and schemas of representation so that nothing there is likely to or able to

threaten or hurt us). The consequence of exploration that allows for emotional regulation (that generates security, essentially) is not objective description, as the scientist might have it, but categorization of the implications of an unexpected occurrence for specification of means and ends.

When things are going according to plan-that is, when our actions fulfill our desireswe feel secure, even happy. When nothing is going wrong, the cortical systems expressly responsible for the organization and implementation of goal-directed behavior remain firmly in control. When cortically generated plans and fantasies go up in smoke, however, this control vanishes. The comparatively ancient "limbic" hippocampal and amygdalic systems leap into action, modifYing affect, interpretation and behavior. The hippocampus appears particularly specialized for comparing the (interpreted) reality of the present, as it manifests itself in the subjective sphere, with the fantasies of the ideal future constructed by the motor unit (acting in turn as the higher-order mediator-the king, so to speak-of all the specialized subsystems that compose the more fundamental or primary components of the brain).

What you expect to happen-really, what you want to happen, at least in most situations-is a model you generate, using what you already know, in combination with what you are learning while you act. The hippocampal comparatorllO constantly and "unconsciously" checks what is "actually" happening against what is supposed to happen. This means that the comparator contrasts the "unbearable present," insofar as it is comprehended (because it is a model, too), against the ideal future, as it is imagined; means that it compares the interpreted outcome of active behavior with an image of the intended consequences of that behavior.

When something occurs that is not intended-when the actual outcome, as interpreted, does not match the desired outcome, as posited-the hippocampus shifts mode and prepares to update cortical memory storage. Behavioral control shifts from the cortex to the limbic system-apparently, to the amygdala, which governs the provisional determination of the affective significance of unpredictable events, and has powerful output to centers of motor control. 111 This shift of con...

Attention constitutes the initial stage of exploratory behavior, motivated by amygdalic operation-composed of the interplay between anxiety,113 which impels caution in the face of novelty-threat, and hope, which compels approach to novelty-promiseY4 Caution-regulated approach allows for the update of memory in the form of skill and representation. Exploration-updated memory inhibits the production of apriori affect. On familiar ground-in explored territory-we feel no fear (and comparatively little curiosity).

Fear is not conditioned; security is unlearned, in the presence of particular things or contexts, as a consequence of violation of explicit or implicit presupposition. Classical behavioral psychology is wrong in the same manner our folk presumptions are wrong: fear is not secondary, not learned; security is secondary, learned. Everything not explored is tainted, a priori, with apprehension. Any thing or situation that undermines the foundations of the familiar and secure is therefore to be feared.

As civilized people, we are secure. We can predict the behaviors of others (that is, if they share our stories); furthermore, we can control our environments weil enough to ensure that our subjection to threat and punishment remains at aminimum. It is the cumulative consequences of our adaptive struggle-our cultures-which enable this prediction and control. The existence of our cultures, however, blinds us to the nature of our true (emotional) natures-at least to the range of that nature, and to the consequences of its emergence.

Orienting signifies "attention," not terror, in the standard lab situation, and its gradual elimination with repeated stimulus presentation is regarded as "habituation"-as something boring, akin to automatic acclimation, adjustment or desensitization. Habituation is not a passive process, however, at least at higher corticallevels of processing. It just looks passive when observed under relatively trivial circumstances. It is in reality always the consequence of active exploration and subsequent modification ofbehavior, or interpretive schema.

Our emotional regulation depends as much (or more) on the stability and predictability of the social environment (on the maintenance of our cultures) as on "interior" processes, classically related to the strength of the ego or the personality. Social order is a necessary precondition for psychological stability: it is primarily our cornpanions and their actions (or inactions) that stabilize or destabilize our emotions.

What happens if an animal encounters something truly unexpected-something that should just not be, according to its current frame of reference or system ofbelief? The answer to this question sheds substantiallight on the nature of the orienting reflex, in its fuH manifestation. Modern experimental psychologists have begun to examine the response of animals to natural sources of mystery and threat. They allow the animals to set up their own environments, realistic environments, and then expose them to the kinds of surprising circumstances they might encounter in reallife. The appearance of a predator in previously safe space (space previously explored, that is, and mapped as useful or irrelevant) constitutes one type of realistic surprise. Blanchard and coHeagues describe the naturalistic behavior of rats, under such conditions: When a cat is presented to established mixed-sex groups of laboratory rats living in a visible burrow system, the behaviors of the subjects change dramatically, in many cases for 24 hours or more.124 The initial active defensive behavior, flight to the tunnel! chamber system, is followed by aperiod of immobility during which the rats make 22 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations, which apparently serve as alarm cries, at a high rate.125 As freezing breaks up, proxemic avoidance of the open area gradually gives way to a pattern of "risk assessment" of the area where the cat was encountered. Subjects poke their heads out of the tunnel openings to scan the open...

When we explore, we transform the indeterminate status and meaning of the unknown thing that we are exploring into something determinate-in the worst case, rendering it nonthreatening, nonpunishing; in the best, manipulating and/or categorizing it so that it is useful. Animals perform this transformation in the course of actual action, which is to say that they construct their worlds by shifting their positions and changing their actions in the face of the unknown, and by mapping the consequences of those shifts and changes in terms of their affective or motivational valence.

When an animal actively explores something new, it changes the sensory quality and motivational significance of that aspect of its experience as a consequence of its exploratory strategy. This me ans that the animal exhibits a variety of behaviors in a given mysterious situation and monitors the results.