Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

by Jordan B. Peterson

The known is explored territory, a place of stability and familiarity; it is the "city of God," as profanely realized. It finds metaphorical embodiment in myths and narratives describing the community, the kingdom or the state. Such myths and narratives guide our ability to understand the particular, bounded motivational significance of the present, experienced in relation to some identifiable desired future, and allow us to construct and interpret appropriate patterns of action, from within the confines of that schema. We all produce determinate models of what is, and what should be, and how to transform one into the other. We produce these models by balancing our own desires, as they find expression in fantasy and action, with those of the others-individuals, families and communities-that we habitually encounter. "How to act," constitutes the most essential aspect of the social contract; the domain of the known is, therefore, the "territory" we inhabit with all those who share our implicit and explicit traditions and beliefs. Myths describe the existence of this "shared and determinate territory" as a fixed aspect of existence-which it is, as the fact of culture is an unchanging aspect of the human environment.