Maps of Meaning with Jordan Peterson
Part 20, Paradise Lost
In the final pages of Chapter 4 "The Appearance of Anomaly" from Maps of Meaning, Jordan Peterson turns to talk about the impact of death upon human development and consciousness. Recall, in this chapter we're dealing with threats to our maps of meaning, things that cause a crisis in our personal and cultural paradigms. And as you can imagine, death can precipitate such a crisis.
These pages in Maps of Meaning reminded me a lot of Ernest Becker's seminal work The Denial of Death, a book, as regular readers know, that significantly impacted both my scholarship and spiritual journey. I'm an existentialist at heart. Death has always accompanied my thoughts.
Peterson's description of the impact of death upon human consciousness is very similar to arguments I've made before in this space. Specifically, as human consciousness evolved it eventually reached a threshold where a twin capacity emerged, the onset of death-awareness and a capacity for moral reflection. As Peterson writes, "We have become able to imagine our own deaths, and the deaths of those we love, and to make a link between moral fragility and every risk we encounter."
Mythologically, the dawn of this twin awareness is experienced as an expulsion from Paradise. Consciousness becomes saturated with both death and guilt. With the onset of the "knowledge of good and evil" comes expulsion from the Garden. A primordial "innocence" is lost. As Peterson observes, "The tradition of the 'fall from paradise' is predicated on the idea that the appearance of self-consciousness dramatically altered the structure of reality...Our constantly emerging self-consciousness (our constantly developing self-consciousness) has turned the world of experience into a tragic play...Survival has become terror and endless toil..."
Here in this space, I've argued that this mythological take on the evolution of human consciousness is a way to reconcile human evolution with Genesis 1-3. Of course, such a reading of Genesis isn't for everyone, but it is one of those examples where mythological readings can help some people reconcile Scripture with science. As I've said repeatedly in this series, Jordan Peterson is a useful resource for the church in getting skeptical audiences to listen to the Bible. In the hands of Jordan Peterson, Genesis can preach to atheists.
Great post! I just had to comment on the link to "Eden, Death, Evolution and the Fall"
You connect in the Christian creation story morality (sin) with mortality (death), where morality arises from defying God and eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowlege of Good and Evil. I never really thought about it, but the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil might be renamed the Tree of Death, "for the day you eat of it, you shall surely die" (vs17). It is near near the Tree of Life "in the midst of the garden". With sin comes a "death-saturated existence". That's a phrase worth remembering.
This death-saturation is rooted in the Christian understanding of creation as ongoing, not just a single event some billions of years ago and then God stepped aside to watch what happens. Rather, God is actively holding it (and me!) in existence. Sin is rejection of God; therefore sin rejects the source of our ongoing existence, therefore the more that we choose to sin, the more that we orient ourselves towards death. Sin drains the spiritual soul of its life bit by bit and the physical body loses meaning and direction. It cannot long sustain such an emptying before it too dies.
Fear can lead to life: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom", (Ps 110:10) gives us a clue. The "servile fear" of the consequences of sin can drag us down into a vicious cycle of shame and guilt that destroys, but it can also act to restrain us and may actually be the beginning on a "filial fear" which arises from the love of God. This love of God is a relationship that lifts us up to divinity, not just a set of high and noble ethical demands that can drag us down when we fail to meet them. Out of love, we want that relationship with God and we fear anything that restricts our communion with him.
Roy