Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

by Jordan B. Peterson

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.