Jordan Peterson opens Maps of Meaning with something many of us know too well - that moment when everything we believed in falls apart. And for Peterson, it began at a prison!

He meets a seemingly harmless little bearded inmate who, it turns out, had forced two policemen to dig their own graves before murdering them. Shocked, he tries to understand how ordinary people could do terrible things. Even more disturbing, he starts having violent impulses himself - like wanting to stab someone with his pen during lectures.

But rather than seeking therapy or medication, Peterson does what any obsessed academic would do - he hits the books.

He dives into psychology & mythology. And surprisingly, this helps. Peterson discovers that beliefs aren't just ideas we hold - they literally shape how we see and act in the world. They're sophisticated maps of human experience and behavior. If this sounds complicated, don't worry - Peterson assures us he'll make these ideas accessible even to skeptical rational thinkers.

So if you're picking up Maps of Meaning, be prepared for an intense journey. A very personal exploration of why belief affects action, why we do terrible things in the name of those beliefs, and how we might find a better way forward.

We like to think of ourselves as brave explorers, driven by curiosity and wonder. But what really pushes us to investigate? According to the evidence, it's actually fear - our brain's default response to anything unfamiliar.

Consider what happens when you move to a new city. Your first instinct isn't to marvel at the architecture - it's to figure out which neighborhoods are safe, where to find food, and how to avoid getting lost. The brain handles it like this: when everything's going according to plan, our newer, more sophisticated cortical systems stay in charge. But the moment something odd happens, something you don’t understand or weren’t expecting  - say, you turn down what you thought was a safe street and encounter something unsettling - control shifts to older brain regions like the amygdala and hippocampus. The hippocampus acts like a constant reality-checker, comparing what's actually happening against what we expected. When those expectations aren't met, the amygdala jumps into action. And FYI the amygdala's default setting is "be afraid of everything unless proven otherwise." It's not waiting to learn what's dangerous - it's already nervous and needs to be convinced something is safe.

This rat experiment perfectly demonstrates this principle. When first placed in a new cage, it freezes - not because it learned to be afraid, but because fear is its natural starting point. Only after cautious exploration, when nothing bad happens, does it gradually relax and begin mapping its environment. We humans operate the same way, though we rarely notice it. Once we get past our initial jitters, we also get this itch to go poke around the unknown. We figure, if we can make sense of all that unfamiliar stuff, we'll start feeling a lot more at ease. It's our way of taking the scary and strange and slowly turning it into the familiar and manageable. But here's where humans are different. While rats can only explore by physically checking things out, we humans can explore through thinking! We can sit back, theorize, imagine different scenarios, and plan our approach. Cool, right?

The thing now is that we know all this after centuries of research. How did our ancestors understand this?

Ever wonder why every culture on Earth tells stories? Not just for entertainment - it turns out our brains are literally wired to understand the world through narratives - some true, others… well, not so much. 

Let's start with one of the oldest stories we have: the Enuma elish. In this Mesopotamian myth, a hero-god named Marduk battles Tiamat, a chaos dragon who happens to be his mother. Marduk wins, cuts her up, and creates the world from her pieces. And similar patterns show up everywhere. This isn't a coincidence - these stories are transmitting beliefs! 

Let's understand it this way: When we encounter something new, we don't just see it objectively. We immediately assess what it means for us. Is it dangerous? Useful? Both? Take fire, for example. We don't just see fire as a chemical reaction. We understand it through what it means to us - warmth, cooking, danger, destruction. Our brains are constantly mapping the world not just as a place of things, but as a place of meaning. AND stories helped with that. We actively master the unknown through behavior modification, and many cultures represent and transmit this process of mastering the unknown through narrative patterns. So, that is what stories did - they're instruction manuals for life. 

And we mean that literally. Say, if you're running an empire, you need some way to explain why you're in charge and how you should use that power. Some of these stories did exactly that. They showed rulers the right and wrong ways to use their authority. And get this - before we had written laws telling us what to do, these stories were in many cases our moral GPS. When people needed to know the difference between right and wrong, they didn't open a law book - they looked to these stories. Before we discuss anything else, here’s a cool fact: many of these maps (and in particular, myths) to explain the world all follow a surprisingly similar blueprint.

Let's get to the heart of it. Every great myth features three key players in a cosmic drama: 

The first - nature or the unknown - typically appears as what we might call the Great and Terrible Mother. Why mother? Because in these myths, the unknown is usually portrayed as a feminine force with two faces – nurturing potential and destructive chaos. Like the Mesopotamian dragon Tiamat we mentioned - she's not just some scaly monster. She represents the raw, untamed forces of nature that both create and destroy. She's the ocean that can either provide fish for a village or swallow a ship whole. 

Standing opposite, is the Great and Terrible Father - the embodiment of human civilization, culture and order. He's usually an old king, and like the Mother figure, he has two sides. At his best, he's wisdom and protection. At his worst, he's rigid control and tyranny. He's the difference between a father who guides and a dictator who oppresses.

Now, stuck between these cosmic forces is the myth’s hero. The bridge between chaos and order. Their job? To venture into the unknown (the mother's domain), face its terrors, and bring back something valuable to the realm of the known (the father's domain). Take the Egyptian myth about Osiris, Horus, and Seth that perfectly captures this drama. See, Osiris was this traditional king who got killed by his power-hungry brother Seth. His son Horus had to journey into the underworld (that's the stepping into the unknown!) to find his father. But when Horus found Osiris, the old king was blind. So Horus gave his father one of his own eyes. Think about what that means - the young hero literally helping the old tradition see things in a new way! Together, they came back and restored order to Egypt. Many of these myths imply that societies need both tradition and innovation to work properly. 

Moving on!

So, the world is a pretty chaotic place when you're facing it alone. And that's why humans created societies! Humanity's collective security blanket. But instead of soft fabric, it's woven from predictable patterns of behavior, shared expectations, and cultural know-how.

When your colleague shows up to work wearing formals instead of pajamas, that's culture at work. Such social rules we follow aren't just random. They're battle-tested solutions to problems humans have faced over and over again. Take professions, for instance. Why do we have distinct roles like doctors and lawyers? Because at some point, our ancestors figured out that having specialized experts was more efficient than everyone trying to do everything. 

Now, you might think this sounds a bit restrictive. But society actually needs needs this stability - predictable patterns that keep us feeling safe. But, it also needs flexibility to adapt when things change. Too much stability, and society becomes brittle like an old rubber band. Too much change, and everything falls into chaos. To keep a balance, culture's got this clever carrot-and-stick thing going. Play by the rules? You're golden - status, acceptance, the works. Break them? Well, anything from dirty looks to actual punishment heading your way.

But while culture protects us from chaos, it becomes a prison when it’s followed despite it’s flaws. Some societies solve their problems by squashing individual differences in favor of group uniformity. Sure, it works - about as well as solving a headache by decapitation. The real art lies in finding the sweet spot between individual growth and group stability. Others get so comfortable with these cultural rules that they start following them blindly despite any wrongs inherent in it. The highest form of development isn't just blindly following flawed cultural rules - it means learning all the traditional wisdom but then developing the ability to go beyond it when necessary. It's about becoming someone who can handle new problems while respecting old solutions.

Now, what happens when our shared map has to face an anomaly?

Ever notice how we panic when something doesn't fit our understanding of the world? This happens when our mental maps - intricate systems of beliefs, behaviors, and interpretations that we've been discussing - face something they can't explain, what academics love to call an anomaly.

Anomaly forces us into adaptation mode. Which isn't just a simple "oh, I learned something new today" moment. It's more like your brain hosting a confusing competition between different strategies - old ones that have worked before and new ones trying to prove their worth. The winner gets to become part of your updated worldview. Some adaptations are like adjusting your tie - minor tweaks to your existing knowledge. But then there's revolutionary adaptation, which mirrors the hero myth. Just as the mythological hero must venture into the unknown, face the chaos, and emerge transformed, revolutionary adaptation demands we undergo a form of psychological dissolution and rebirth. We must completely dismantle and reconstruct our understanding when faced with major anomalies. Besides, more and more anomalies are a sure sign that our old mental maps have gotten a bit out of date. Some cultures, after facing countless unknowns - from natural disasters to technological revolutions - adapted, updated their maps, and passed on these enhanced versions to the next generation.

This adaptation points to something even deeper – self-consciousness!

Back to where we started: why perfectly ordinary people sometimes do terrible things? 

Well, firstly, us humans have a unique ability - self-consciousness.  We are aware of our own vulnerability, our own limitations. This allows us to navigate the dualities of this world that we know so well - life and death, good and evil, order and chaos. In short, we have the gift to figure out how to live in this new, complex world.

Now, our very consciousness, our ability to choose, creates the possibility for both great good and terrible wrong

Bitter truth: we're all capable of evil. Yes, you too. And no, it's not just because you had a rough childhood or watched too many violent movies. Hannah Arendt, the German philosopher, after studying Nazi war criminals, came to a chilling conclusion - evil isn't always dramatic or obvious. Sometimes it's just... boring. Ordinary. She called this the "banality of evil," but Peterson goes further, suggesting it's actually "the evil of banality." Our small daily compromises, our little lies, our moments of intellectual laziness - these add up! So, how do we avoid it? Explore the unknown!

See, human development follows a pattern. First, we're protected by our family. Then we join a group - could be a social circle, a workplace, or even a political movement. Many people stop here, thinking they've reached the finish line. Big mistake! The real challenge is moving beyond group identity to become a genuine individual. Not rejecting all social norms, but voluntarily facing the unknown. Take the example of Satan. Satan's sin was pride; but it was also intellectual cowardice - basically denying the unknown.

The alternative to this satanic denial is what Peterson wants us to adopt. How? By being willing to question your assumptions, face uncomfortable truths, and most importantly, tell yourself the truth. And when we fail at this personal development, we don't just hurt ourselves. We become vulnerable to two dangerous extremes: mindless conformity (think "I was just following orders") or complete self-indulgence (think "not my problem"). The first leads to fascism, the second to decadence. Neither ends well.

Next: how do we actually create and maintain meaningful ways of understanding the unknown?