- Published on
Maps of Meaning/Personality
- Authors
- Name
- Jayden Koh
Description
The lecture series "2017 Maps of Meaning" is a 4th year, 12-video lecture series for psychology students from the University of Toronto by Jordan Peterson based on his book titled "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief." In accordance with finishing the entire course over the summer of 2021 when I literally had nothing better to do, I had compiled about 50 full pages (25,170 words) worth of notes and introspection.
Maps of Meaning lays bare the grammar of mythology, and describes the relevance of that grammar for interpretation of narrative and religion, comprehension of ideological identification, and understanding of the role that individual choice plays in the maintenance, transformation and destiny of social systems.
Personality is a way of looking at the world, and a characteristic mode of behaving. It's both stable and adaptively dynamic.
The lecture series "2017 Maps of Meaning" is a 4th year, 12-video lecture series for psychology students from the University of Toronto by Jordan Peterson based on his book titled "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief." In accordance with finishing the entire course over the summer of 2021 when I literally had nothing better to do, I had compiled about 50 full pages (25,170 words) worth of notes and introspection. This lecture course adapted the Jungian and Freudian perspectives of psychology regarding cultural archetypes with the new advancement in neuroscience and biology and has largely shaped my viewpoint on how cultures and individuals interplay with reality on a metaphysical and physiological level. Below I have compiled some of the recurrent themes (and their complement) that I've interpreted from the lecture.
Essential themes:
- Order and Chaos/Masculinity and Femininity
- Responsibility and Rights => Individual and Government
- Subjectivity and Objectivity
- Tyranny and Justice
- Enlightenment and Ignorance
- Frames of reference and Hierarchy
- Nihilism and Hedonism
"2017 Personality and its Transformation" is a lecture series for 2nd year psychology students at UoT also by Professor Peterson which describes the different modes of being in the world. Again, I have finished the entire course with roughly 40 full pages (20,370 words) of notes after I had finished the Maps of Meaning lecture series. This class was more based in the biological perspective of psychology and brought the context into the current political and social environment, compared to the abstracted "collective unconscious" Maps of Meaning was based on. As a side note, throughout both of these classes, I've realized that my notes have significantly improved in quality because of the new method I tried out. Additionally, I've found a lot of great readings from writers such as Orwell and Solzhenitsyn.
I've always found it difficult to integrate this aspect of my life when representing myself like writing my resume and simply answering the question "What have you done/accomplished?" because the philosophical and psychological knowledge can't be as directly expressed as some of my other interests and tend to be overshadowed by the more tangible, immediately recognizable achievements.