Hi Artimas,
We seem to agree. What I found useful with Peterson is the use of language that helped me find words for things I couldn’t name before, and his clear structure of order//confusion/chaos, and tyranny/democracy/anarchy. Which are sorted something like this:
----------------Order-----------------
-----Anarchy—Democracy—Tyranny-----
--------------Confusion--------------
---------------Chaos-----------------
Too much anarchy and you’ll end up in chaos.
Too much tyranny and you’ll end up in chaos.
Order is opposite to Chaos and finds itself in the middle, as all clarity (and truth) does.
Democracy, which finds itself between anarchy and tyranny, can be prone to confusion, which can also be a shortcut to chaos.
Our task is to clear up the confusion and therefore maintain democracy. Thereby attempting to find the best solution to problems for everybody.
I have just finished reading and listening to maps of meaning, which is very challenging – if not merely from the volume of work put into it. There are many intriguing examples that he gives, which show the degree to which he has gone to clarify “Dasein” for himself – and for those interested.
That is why Meno is obviously right about psychology, and why Peterson is predestined to pursue this course of enquiry. His discovery, following Jung, of the narrative of being, which is something we are all using to make life make sense, has echoed something I have primitively always said, that human beings can be best identified as a species that tells stories to understand his experiences.
I was known here on ILP for a long time as someone who, despite acknowledging that the Bible isn’t primarily historical (there may be a few historical pinpoints), always defended the narrative as a portrayal of experience – good or bad. It is erroneous to imitate any part of it, to adopt its ruling blindly, or claim that it is accurate in a way it can’t be, but as a narrative, it is an interesting witness to spiritual development.
Being pre-science, it addresses issues using (for us) a strange vocabulary, but like other traditions, opens up the psyche of developing mankind, and is valuable for that purpose. I can’t imagine anyone who has half understood what Peterson is telling us, thinking that he is an example of a failure to think.