Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief - Jordan Peterson - 4 - Marionettes and Individuals (Part 3) (Lecture Notes)

Jung said people’s shadows reach all the way down to hell. We have malevolent impulses that ally us other evil people. It’s terrifying, but you can draw from it and understand your capabilities. You aren’t harmless, and you can use that understanding to protect yourself. 

Breaking Bad is a good example of Walter White being possessed by his shadow side. He’s a normal guy until put into abnormal circumstances. He’s not a good guy turned bad, but he’s bitter and resentful, didn’t accomplish what he wanted as an entrepreneur and ended up a high school teacher, so he walks down a road and gets tangled up more and more on a dark path.

Ordinary Men is similar, about boys raised by Hitler’s Youth propaganda. One step at a time, they are brought to a point where they end up shooting pregnant women in the back of the head.

With the Holocaust, we are implored to never forget—to remember and never to repeat. This means knowing what leads up to it, which means ordinary, “good” people like you and me can play a part in such a thing.

Demagogues stir up a sense of victimhood, which becomes pathological. “They” are hurting and oppressing us, so we are going to get them before they get us. You can’t assume that there are neat boxes like oppressors and oppressed and that you are a victim. You can’t be stuck in class resentment. When the communists invaded Russia, they punished the efficient and productive peasant farmers, and in resentment and jealousy, the intellectuals called them parasites and profiteers. Angry mobs of losers whose resentment was stirred by intellectuals—“you can’t make something with your life and it’s all their fault”—surrounded these farms and forced the peasants onto trains. As a result, six million Ukrainians starved to death in the 1920s, right down to cannibalism. Whenever people are beating the victim drum and they speak for others in apparent empathy, this can go bad, because they aren’t saints.

Every human being is in a tragic enterprise. You’re a biological being that is imperfect. You’re going to be sick, so is everyone you love, and you’re all going to end up dead.

Pinocchio is off to school where the Fox meets him and shows him empathy. He convinced Pinocchio that he is sick—a victim—and offered to take him to Pleasure Island, a place of whimsy and fun. Pinocchio can give up responsibility.

What gives life meaning? Tragedy gives it its negative meaning. When nihilists says life is meaningless, they mean there is no transcendent meaning, not that they don’t experience meaning. Everyone lives as if life is meaningful. Setting goals that you value, being actively engaged in something worthwhile, gives your life positive meaning.

Incentive reward, based on dopamine, keeps you moving forward and brings you less pain, like a hurt athlete who plays through the game, then feels it after. How happy are you about your progress? How much progress, in relation to what? What is the ultimate purpose you place at the top of your hierarchy? Serving that brings the most fulfillment. This also helps to control negative emotions.

Impulsive and short-term hedonism makes you happy in the immediate present, but you’ll pay for it, just like with drugs and alcohol. You keep doing it to keep pushing the problem into the future. It’s not a long-term solution. Conscientious people don’t feel going good unless they are working. They are working hard now, suffering more, to ensure stability in the future. But conscientiousness only works in a developed society where all of your hard work can’t be easily stolen from you.

If I’m a victim, everyone else owes me something, and I don’t have to take any responsibility. It might be that the sense of meaning life can provide is based on the amount of responsibility you’re willing to take on. It’s a weight, and difficult to take on, but if you find pleasure and reduce pain and anxiety, then the more weighty the goal, the greater the pleasure. When you are doing something you really believe in, you are engaged, time passes quickly, and you aren’t bored and looking for distractions.

Maybe the nihilists are right, life is meaningless, so you can live as a hedonist and not take on any responsibility, but you’ll just wander and feel the meaningless of life.

Imagine you have a child who is neurotic, high on negative emotion, and often sick with minor ailments. You let the child stay home from school, but everyday? You have to push them to their limits so they can figure out what they can do or they won’t make it in the world. Maybe a mother wants her child to stay home with her and never leave because she has an abusive and neglectful husband.

Lampwick is a play on Lucifer, bringer of light. He’s a kid who has become prematurely cynical. Some kids are neglected and abused so end up anti-social and others end up conscientious and responsible.

They get on a boat and are off to Pleasure Island which looks like an amusement park. Why are there so many amusement parks in horror film? Because people who have nothing better to do are behaving stupidly and being fleeced. Psychopaths have to keep moving to find new rubes, just like amusement parks. It’s all short-term pleasure and meaning divorced from reality. An Island is not connected to the real world, it’s divorced from it. It’s an escape from the real world. It’s enforced hedonism, a place where you’re going to have fun because that’s what it’s for.

Lampwick has a strut, a bravado, a mimicry of being high on the dominance hierarchy, meant to impress, but is a lie. Bravado and bullying is shallow. Once you stand up to bullies, they disappear, back down, or respect you.

There is a model home on the Island meant for destruction that the kids can set on fire, trash, and destroy. They bring down high culture, civilization, and see no value in hard work and sacrifice. This is also in the story of Cain and Abel. If you’re not doing very well, and it’s your own fault, and you see the achievements of others in front of you, it confronts what you’re not. You feel judged, so you want to destroy it so you have nothing to contrast with your lack of achievement.

God tells Cain to worry about the sin lurking at his door before worrying about the structure of reality. Killing Abel out of resentment and taking revenge against God is not unlike those who shoot up schools and aren’t clear on whom they are taking revenge.

Black cloaked figures with glowing eyes start closing the doors to the Island. The boys are offered bread and circuses, but were instead enticed into a trap. Totalitarian states offer degeneration, and as culture crumbles, they are offered stupid amusements for distraction.

Pinocchio ends up in a bar with Lampwick playing pool. He teaches Pinocchio to smoke and he hates it, but says he likes it. The Cricket emerges on the eight ball and begins pontificating. Lampwick makes fun of Pinocchio for listening to the cricket. In adolescence, boys tease other boys for not taking risks—for being mama’s boys and following the rules. The Cricket stomps off wanting to leave Treasure Island, when he sees a slave ship holding donkeys in crates to be shipped off to do slave work.

There is a half boy/half donkey who cries for his mom. The coachman says he’s not ready yet because he still had the power of independent speech. To brae is to be fully fit for slavery. Like someone trapped in ideology, all of their speech is loyal and indoctrinated. The person is gone.

The coachman says “You’ve had your fun, and now you’re going to pay for it.”

Lampwick transforms into a donkey and starts to brae and is horrified, then Pinocchio. Lapwick sees his image in the mirror and breaks it, but it’s too late.

The cricket finds Pinocchio and takes him to the edge of the cliff at night to escape the Island, representing the blind leap from the impulsive, hedonic adolescent playground into the unknown. He jumps into the water to make a clean break.

Moses represents water and transformation. The Pharaoh represents desert stone. The kingdom is solid ground, but it can be tyranny, and the water is chaos, but it can become freedom. Escaping tyranny doesn’t come easy. Wandering in the desert for 40 years means it gets worse before it gets better. In order to aim up you have to let go of the order you know and embrace chaos, from which you might not recover, but there is no way forward without that risk.

Jung talked about the retrogressive restoration of the persona. You take a leap into a new identity, and when having trouble adjusting, try to return to an older identity, but there is no going back.

Many men are stuck under the thumb of their father and his judgment and tyranny. Why? Why does the opinion of your parents mean more to you than any other person their age? Jung would say to separate out the god image of your dad. Stop idealizing. Freud said no one can be an individual until his father has died. Jung said that can happen symbolically. This can happen when you realize your dad doesn’t have all the answers, and neither does his peers. You become an individual and come to a point where your parents depend on you in their old age.

Pinocchio goes home and his dad is gone. The place is abandoned and covered with cobwebs. The answers you are looking for won’t be found in your parents’ house.

A star appears, becomes a dove, and leaves a glowing piece of paper with gold script for them. Pinocchio’s father wishes Pinocchio would become an independent individual. Jung says when you orient your vision, different things appear to you in the world. It finds what’s relevant to your goal and makes those things visible, everything else becomes invisible.

Pinocchio wonders how he could pick up the pieces and create stability in his new identity. The transcendent star is a goal. As you read and think, surprising thoughts emerge, springing out of the void, bringing you to the next place.

The letter says Pinocchio’s dad went looking for him and ended up in the belly of a whale at the bottom of the sea. Out of chaos you can emerge similar to your previous state, but with new elements, having moved forward. University is similar—you show up a puppet, a bit of a jackass, and what the hell do you know? The humanities can allow you to incorporate the wisdom of your ancestors into your daily pursuits, which makes you stronger. It’s not about knowing more facts, but being a better person. If you can come out of college articulate, laying our arguments in writing, thinking, and speaking, the more articulate person always rises because they lay out strategies more particularly, give reasons, and defend themselves when challenged. Without this, you’re defenseless in the chaos.

Pinocchio now has to face his fears and the unknown. Jung said, “What you most want to find will be found where least want to look.” You can master things and be successful, but also know where you haven’t been successful, and it has this monstrous aspect that makes you feel small. If where are going isn’t working, where you haven’t gone where you need to go.

Let’s say you’re an agreeable person, you don’t like conflict, won’t stand up for yourself, and avoid anger as evil and wrong on top of uncomfortable. But this is exactly where you need to go to move forward. To get the gold, you have to face the dragon. You have to be pushed to the limit.

In the story of Jonah, he’s thrown overboard when not following the path he’s supposed to follow. Chaos finds him, swallows him, and keeps him down, spitting him back up when he’s learned his lesson, putting him back on the path.

Into the water Pinocchio goes. In chaos, you don’t know what’s going on, so you imagine what’s going on. You can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality. You’ve been betrayed by a lover, now you don’t know what the past, present, and future is. This is chaos, so you try to imagine in order to create order. If you face chaos, you’ll find order. You might not find success, but facing it is still your best bet.

Pinocchio’s father can’t get out on his own. An active agent must enter chaos and animate a way out.

When Pinocchio sees the whale, he leaves. When the hero sees the real terror, he flees, because it’s more terrible than he imagines.

The whale swallows Pinnocho and he is reunited with his father, who sees him with Donkey ears and a tail. He reveals he’s a jackass, which is good because it’s an honest appraisal of where he is.

Pinocchio makes a fire, hoping the smoke will make the whale sneeze so they can get out of there, but the father says that will just make him mad. This is the benevolent state against innovation. Even if the innovation is positive and transformative, the standard way will oppose it.

They escape the whale, and it becomes an industrial machine that destroys their raft. Pinocchio’s dad tells him to save himself. Instead, he died rescuing his father. The old personality has to die to give life to the new one. He is revived as a real boy, no longer a puppet. A big celebration ensues and all is resolved.

Cricket gets a gold badge of the sun from the star and blue fairy, representing a conscience properly aligned with the highest good. Pinocchio’s conscience is properly oriented towards the highest value. The movie closes.