Reddit reviews Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

Think of a baby and how they have object permanency. When you walk out of the room you are no longer in the baby's frame of existence. Well you as a human being never really lose this frame phenomenon psychologically. As you grow older it just grows larger. Every piece of knowledge, every place you've traveled, very technique, person, thing, entity you've ever meet or learn expands your frame of existence.

However your frame of existence is totally dynamic every second. Like right now you're reading TRP, your frame is concentrated to the screen. You're not thinking about that fly sitting on your wall, or what color is the shoes you are or what your dad is doing right now. But the mere fact that I said these things means they are now inside your frame because you're thinking about them. Your frame is dynamically changing every second and it has since the day you were born. Random thoughts are coming in and out of your head, events are happening all around you, in your house, on your street, in your city, your state government, people are moving and things are happen every second but somehow your mind knows what to focus on at any given moment, totally autonomously.

As far as artificial intelligence goes, computers always try to calculate every possible parameter they are giving to solve a problem. The classic example of Frame Problem is place a sentient AI bomb defusing robot in a room and tell it to defuse the bomb before it goes off. Well, that robot will sit there till infinite trying to calculate every possible outcome and it's probability of happening. It will figure the likelihood of touching it one way, will it explode? What if the walls change colors, probability of explosion? What's the probability of the wall changing color? What if it backs up an inch, what's the probability? It will try to calculate everything it can unless programmed otherwise.

From the moment a human is born it can dynamically adjust their frame and egocentricity. This is one of the reasons we have consciousness and we do it totally subconsciously. There are deeply rooted networks in the brain that tell you what you need to be focusing on at any given moment. Cortisol levels connect to fear and danger. Oxytocin will make you focus on those you care about. Dopamine will make you more or less erratic(ADD). And there a million other things that all control and change your frame at any given moment. And that's not even getting into were thoughts generate in the mind or how memory recall and memory reassociation works. Have you ever thought about were your thoughts come from? Go through the day and start paying attention to why the hell you just though what you did? Do your thoughts just come out of thin air or was their a trigger or cascade effect to bring you to where you are right now?

This is a... confusing and hard problem to recreate with AI. The Frame problem was discovered in 1969 and it still hasn't been solved.

If you're interested in this stuff I highly recommend watching Jordan B Peterson in the link above. He's a Pychologist who has pretty much spend his entire life trying to figure this out. He ever wrote a very extensive book on it called "Maps of Meaning: The Architeture of Belief". That book he also teaches as a class in the university of Toronto and you can access all his lectures on youtube. He posts every one of them for the semester. I even believe you can get the syllabus and worksheet stuff on his website.

What's interesting is you'll start to see The Frame Problem explained in many different ways, by different people and at different time periods. I'm a big fan of studying every genius that's ever lived. Inventors, physicists, chemists, etc. Einstein, Van braun, Richard Feynman, Tyson, Hawkings, etc. and pretty much every hyper intelligent individual will tell you that you are and always will be an idiot. What they are referring to is you can never know everything. No matter how large of a frame you grow, no matter how much information, experiences or things you can possibly attain physically or mentally, there will always be more you don't know or haven't experienced. This is an extremely useful thing to realize, one it humbles you and people like humility and two, your options are now limitless. If you become curious about something, you can imagine how deep that rabbit hole could possibly go, but you won't truly know till you start exploring.

Another example in history and probably one of the first times the frame idea was written down was Epictetus and Stoicism. The first line of Enchiridion which is the stoic handbook and condensed version of Epictetus: Discourses writings, says,
>
> "There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs."

Epictetus was a student of Crate and Crate was a Student of Socrates. This was probably the first time the Frame Problem was idealized in writing. Or at least the first one to be preserved till today. In fact stoicism pretty much entirely revolves around learning your frame and controlling what you can. Any time you spend on things outside your control is considered time wasted, which you can never get back. So it's half learning frame and half improving time efficiency.

Self improvement is in a way is an active expansion of your frame, even if the subconscious mechanisms that drive it you didn't think about till I just explained it to you.

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson

Due to personal interest, I've read some of Peterson's work. I've not sure he represents the faction of psychologists concerned with the discipline's notorious and existential replicability crisis.

He seems rather content to discuss the Christian Logos and attempt to understand how religion shapes culture. A peculiar topic for a psychologist and is no doubt rife with methodological complexity requiring exceptional detail to procedure. Well, one hopes.

A description courtesy of Amazon:

> Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself? Jordan Peterson offers a provocative new hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated. A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

He has a lot of dumb or at least very over-simplistic political ideas, but his actual academic work is kind of interesting (I came across his book before he started getting into the political stuff), he basically takes the Jungian concept of the psychological "archetype" and argues that they can be seen as symbolic versions of certain kinds of social roles or behaviors, with stories and myths involving these archetypal roles being a way for society to guide people towards valuable behaviors and away from socially destructive ones.

Also one thing I discovered googling him and "sort yourself out" is that he sometimes uses the phrase in the context of the mindset needed to get through a psychedelic drug experience...I doubt Garrison would ever take a psychedelic drug or sympathize with someone who does, though it'd probably do him a world of good.

I began reading one of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's books that he recommended, the Gulag Archipelago. After that, I think I'll read his book, Maps of Meaning.

You can read more about this in my detailed breakdown of the story

So I thought a bit about these comments while I was lifting, and before I address your post point by point and where I agree, and where I disagree, I wanted to say the following. It seems to me that you want to paint Jordan Peterson as being all bad, that he has no redeeming qualities or ideas, and everything about him is repugnant. You seem intelligent to me, so surely you see the problem with this type of thinking, right? Almost no one (I said almost) is ALL bad or ALL good. I like AOC, but I could tell you things I don't like about her. I support Bernie for president, but he has some policies I don't care for. I like Joe Rogan, but there's many things he says I really don't like. I love my dad, but there are things I don't like about him. Do you see what I'm getting at? Virtually every single thing I'm pointing out to you about why people like Jordan Peterson, you're trying to negate and say he's all bad, then you're left confused as to why millions of people adore him. I just wanted to address that beforehand. You seem to be approaching the subject with it already made up in your mind that everything about Jordan Peterson is bad.

>It's not even an "overgeneralization", it's just a completely absurd, out of thin air idea that is grossly misogynistic. He's claiming to read the minds of millions of women and suggesting that they are all masochists that want to be... I dunno raped and killed, I guess... but fundamentalist Muslims? It's just ugly on so many levels.

Aren't you taking his comments a little too far? I mean... he didn't say that. You're just putting words in his mouth and taking his comments further than they actually were. Big Dick Bernie (viva la revolucion) once penned an essay about a woman fantasizing about being raped. Are we going to nail him to a cross for a lifetime for that?

>But that doesn't discredit his work on social justice. That's just a personal failing between his marriage agreement with his wife. There's not really much to talk about there. Same story with Clinton and his blow job. Something like that should have little to no bearing on orthogonal areas of his life.

No it definitely does not discredit his work for social justice. It just adds to my earlier point about the complexity of people, and how no one is all good or bad. It's not completely unrelated, because it speaks to MLK's character, and that's what we're talking about here - people's character. So just like Peterson may say some stupid shit about feminism, or environmentalism, it doesn't have much to do with his work in psychology.


>You're equivocating. It's one thing to think that the world is flat, it's another to think that women can't think for themselves and should be subservient to men.


This is quite confusing to me. You think someone saying the earth is flat would have MORE credibility than someone saying women can't think for themselves? By the way, you're going to need to source that. I have listened to hours and hours of Jordan Peterson's lectures and podcast appearances, and I have definitely never heard him say anything close to what you're asserting here.

>One has very clear socioeconomic downstream effects, while the other is just nonsense. Not only is Peterson a pseudointellectual, he's also mean and unethical in his statements towards women, LGBT and other minority groups.


What has he said that disadvantages minority groups? On this claim I'm going to have to say the following: you're either lying, or you're misinformed. Again, I have listened to hours and hours of him talking, and I have NEVER heard him say a disparaging or mean thing about minorities. In fact, his writing program helps minorities more than it does whites. Here's a piece that NPR did on him about this topic before he became the scary alt-right boogie man:
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/07/10/419202925/the-writing-assignment-that-changes-lives
"He co-authored a paper that demonstrates a startling effect: nearly erasing the gender and ethnic minority achievement gap for 700 students over the course of two years with a short written exercise in setting goals."

So, here NPR is espousing this neat little writing program that he published an academic paper on and how it helped close the academic achievement gap between minorities and whites, and you're telling me he's "mean and unethical towards minority groups". Do you see the lack of congruence here? It doesn't add up.


>How do you know? Based on what you said above, it sounds like there's a whole lot you don't know about his record.


I've read his book, I've listened to every appearance he's made on Joe Rogan, including the one with Brett Weinstein, I'm listening to the audiobook version of 12 rules for life, I watched his Munk Debate appearance, I've listened to hours and hours of his U of T classroom lectures that he's posted on youtube, and I'm about halfway through his lecture series on the psychological significance of the bible. All of this over three years more or less. I have a very, very solid grasp of what JBP believes/thinks and what he doesn't. A much more solid grasp than you do, I'm willing to wager, based on the facts I've just laid out in this paragraph.


>He also denies climate change, despite not having ANY background in the field. None. Not a single day spent as a climate change scientist or a related, interdisciplinary field. Not a SINGLE shred of credibility on the issue... and yet he PROCLAIMS that climate change is a hoax. This is another enormous red flag regarding his ability to intellectualize on wordly matters.


Again, this is another completely unfounded claim, that I have NEVER heard come out of his mouth. This is beginning to get tiresome to have to repeatedly address things that you're claiming he has said or done, that he has actually never said or done.

Here's what wikipedia says on the matter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson#Climate_change
"Peterson doubts the scientific consensus on climate change.[129][130] Peterson has said he is "very skeptical of the models that are used to predict climate change".[131] He has also said, "You can't trust the data because too much ideology is involved".[132][130]"

While his take on climate change IS bad, there is very clearly a world of difference between "climate change is a hoax", and "I am skeptical of the models being used". Surely you can agree that those positions have worlds between them, right? So, here again, you have made strawman characterizations about him that I have again demonstrated are wrong/fabricated/whatever. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not lying, and that you've been mislead.


>Oh, come on. His self help book is just repackaged ideas that you could find on any Tony Robbins tape. His academic work in psychology is not particularly offense but, from what I understand, is not particularly remarkable to other psychologists (there's a fairly large thread about this in the AskPsychologists sub). What is so brilliant about him?


Well, when you consider that going by academic citations, which is a fairly good metric for evaluating an academics credibility and success, he is in the top 1% of the world's publishing social scientists. I mean, regardless of ANYTHING else about his academic career, surely you can acknowledge that being in the top 1% of publishing social scientists by academic citations, is pretty impressive.

Have you read his book? Because at this point its starting to seem more and more like you've actually consumed/read/listened to very very little of his work, and you've let other people characterize his works for you, and you assumed those characterizations were accurate. See: the other examples in this post where I have demonstrated that you inaccurately characterized him.

If you continue to mischaracterize him and not take a good-faith approach to analyzing his works, you're going to continue to fall flat on your face in understanding why his book sold over 3 million copies in two years, why thousands of people are attending his lectures, and why millions of people are tuning into his video and audio content.

If you want a dense psychology work from him, check out his book "maps of meaning".
https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224

It's a much denser, more complex philosophical/psychological work. 12 rules for life was not written for Cambridge or MIT professors. Or even general lower level academics. 12 rules for life was written for the common person. IMO, he does a solid job of synthesizing some of the great ideas from a selection of the great thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries (Jung, Freud, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and others), while bringing them into the 21st century and making them easily digestible for the common person, while adding his on take on top of it all. What do you feel is more reasonable: that it's just "tony robbins" self-help fake motivational bullshit, or the complex and nuanced view of the book I've just given? Come on.

In my view it is because of a few factors.

The first factor is stress. When you're advanced enough to realize how precarious your hold on life is you begin to wonder at how to exert some level of control on the forces of nature that dwarf you in terms of power and baffle your understanding. In order to relieve the stress of the absolutely unknown you posit the existence of god(s)/spirit(s)/foo that you might be able to placate in order for your people to survive. In short, you trade the incomprehensible and uncontrollable for the capricious but negotiable gods of your society's collective unconscious.

The second factor is death. Humans morn their dead. Some animals mourn their dead. Humans have rituals associated with death. Early homo-sapiens, other hominids like homo neanderthalensis, and modern all exhibit very similar proto-religious behavior. In short: once you're smart enough to know you exist, wonder about the future, and come to the conclusion you won't always exist, you begin to wonder at what happens to you after your body dies.

Story telling. Humans love to tell stories around camp fires. Cultures quickly learn to adapt these stories to teach lessons from the past. Once this process advances through enough iterations cultures start to tell stories about their ideals. If you get an important enough ideal or an especially beautiful one, it's quite possible that ideal might grow into a god(ess) in your culture and be venerated. If you really want to understand how this works over the long haul, read: Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief.

I've seen mention of his book "Maps Of Meaning - The Architecture Of Belief" Wikipedia section here and Amazon reviews here.

I haven't yet read that book, nor watched the corresponding video lectures (partway down on this youtube page).

I'd be interested to hear what those on this subreddit who are philosophically minded think about Jordan Peterson's ideas.

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Edit to add: You can download a free PDF, 400 pages, dated from 1999 (while page 1 says "PDF version with figures - May 2002"), at this blog page.

There are subreddits: /r/Maps_of_Meaning and /r/JordanPeterson

Maps of Meaning.

> Why is that?

Because people should think for themselves.

> But you cannot judge a man based on one work.

Good point. If you want a bit more meat, Peterson also wrote a book called Maps of Meaning which is supported by his class on YouTube.

https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224

Heads up /u/canarduck

used one https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224

You can order it on amazon. Here is the link. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415922224/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jordanbpetery-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0415922224&linkId=795c3c95060be4b74bd66af8726b2d00

ABrokenBeing did say it was how he personally views it so he's not projecting it onto others. I was pulled out of nihilism by Peterson as well, and have to remind myself why. If you watch his videos where he will make these points much more clearly and thoroughly you will see he challenges people to think at the extreme ends, existentialism (everything has some meaning) and nihilism (nothing has meaning). For nihilism he points out that we can prove to most people that life has meaning because everyone will experience pain. It is universal that everything that experiences pain will move away from it and avoid it at many costs. Even a nihilist will avoid something of greater pain than another. So you may stick a knife in your hand to you don't care and ignore the pain, but light it on fire slowly, good luck trying not to react. Hopefully, this is the 'inherent truth' that you're looking for that shows there is at least one thing in the universe that is meaningful. If there is one thing that is meaningful (avoid pain) then you can't be completely nihilistic without deluding yourself.

Also, he wrote a book Maps of Meaning for much, much more information: https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520058558&sr=8-1&keywords=maps+of+meaning

This book, although written well after, is a gentle introduction to
'Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of belief'. Which is much more dense/less accessible but well thought out.

https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224

Oh, this video, it's been a while since I've touched on this one. I've already touched on this video a few times before since it came out, it's missing many things and makes broad accusations against, and using simplifications of systems that are more complex than the weather to justify it.

Look, this conversation is going to be pointless, I know it, and I suspect you know it given your name. You have bought into ideas and shaped your identity around them, asking you to let go of those ideas is like asking you to jump your ship in the open ocean during a hurricane, hoping that someone else will pick you up rather than just staying with the boat you have. I can't change your mind, even if we knew each other as best friends and you trusted me implicitly, it would take me months and months of talking to you, showing you evidence, and even then it might not work.

The best thing I can do for you is to give you a list of books to read, and hope you read them, which I'll do while I explain where each of them fit in Badmouse's video.

>Black Book's Estimations

This estimation is an average between other estimations. It's difficult to really understand this number until you start looking at the error bars. Democide under communism has been estimated by many different people, but the range of these numbers is from 40 Million, which is accounting basically for the minimum Stalin killed, and the minimum that Mao killed, which is 28 and 5 million respectively, and then adding bits and pieces from the other regimes. Adding other events, like the Cambodia Killing Fields, North Korea, and many African countries, can put this number well above 100 million, and if we take the highest estimations and assume they're correct, the total number comes out to be just under 260 million. This number could be further inflated, as if killing anywhere between 40-260 million people needed an inflation, to something much higher given that communistic regimes often start wars and turn their countries into meat grinders for the conflict.

>That's not real socialism

At this point if you think that your ideas have nothing to do with theirs then there's no saving this conversation. That would be like a young fascist, wanting to bring about the perfect form of government, claiming that Hitler was really a socialist, or a capitalist, and had nothing to do with fascism. Sometimes people go so far off the reservation that you just can't reason with them because their morality is orange (as in the fruit) and blue. instead of right and wrong. All I can say is read The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn spends three books explaining why the USSR, one of the two big serious offenders, was socialist, and why it went down the way it did. If it's too much for you, listen to the audio book.

Peterson isn't wrong when he says the thinking is that the person apologizing for socialism and it's regimes assumes they could have done it better, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were in the right place and did the worst thing possible and so it's blamed on them, that's why is wasn't socialist. But that assumes that there could be a person who could do it right, and given that there isn't a ready example given, it's assumed the person apologizing is making that claim.

>Deaths

This assumes these problems could have been stopped, which Badmouse does not know that, and neither do you. You don't know how to run an economy, and the people who have tried killed millions of their own people trying.

Getting a burger in your house on a plate is much harder than you think. Multiple people are needed and multiple steps have to go correctly: The beef farmer has to have a good stock of cows, the wheat farmer has to have a good crop, the lettuce and tomato farmers need to have a good crop, the wine maker needs to have good vinegar for things like mustard, the baker needs to be on time, needs to have sleep, needs to eat, and needs to make good bread on time, then the butcher needs to not waste the meat by making bad cuts, or know when the meat is spoiled, then needs to make a good grind for the burger, keep the grinder clean and so on. Then the cook needs to know how to cook, needs his sleep, his own food, and the spices to make the burger right, a grill to cook it on, oil to make sure he doesn't make a mess. Then the manager of the restaurant needs to make sure he watches out for people lagging on safety, ensure orders are correct, disputes with customers are resolved, fills in for the cooks when the cook is sick or needs help, order the buns and meat and condiments for the burger so that the cook has the things he needs to make the burger. Then the driver need to know where to take the burger, need to know how to drive in any conditions, need to have insurance, need to have food, sleep, and so on, and lastly, they need to know how to treat the customer.

And that's not even half the steps, and accounting for most of the usual scenarios, and that's just one burger, the steps for more complicated things that make that process possible, like Mack Trucks, are even more complex.

Anyone who claims that they have the answer on how to distribute wealth has no idea what they're talking about. These systems are incredibly complex and is the equivalent of a retarded child wanting to drive the helicopter. I'm sorry little Timmy but Collins here spent 5 years just getting his license and has been flying since '72, you barely know how to tie your shoes, let alone how to fly this thing.

Taking on Crusades like this is historically bound to end in failure. Yes, horrible things happen, I know you think you can save them but you really can't. The best thing we can do is to keep what little patch of street we have clean. The moral pleading is there to manipulate people into dismissing those who have looked at the process and come out of it saying "we're literally doing all we can, things have gotten amazingly better, what are you complaining about?"

When the doctor says "you have cancer, and with any luck you'll have a few more years to live with little to no pain if we work on it." you don't stand up and scream "You're just dismissing the problem! you're benefiting off my suffering! You're wrong! I could be a better doctor!" You sit there and accept that even if this person is wrong, he's probably not that far off from the truth, and at the very least you got back what little time you could.

I'm not going to go into a comment chain with you, I might answer a few questions, but I've done that too many times with people to want to really get into one right now. It's a waste of time, and you're better off reading the books that I provided and having an open mind instead of this reactionary, socialist insistence that there must be a better way.

> I mean that's why cultures form isn't it? Norms are established and enforced either through societal/cultural pressure or law.

"I am free, and you are my slave." Yup, nothing to see here!

> It was long. That's kind of a red flag right there.

https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224

564 pages.

> Apparently, police should ignore statistics and focus their limited resources more on people who aren't actually committing the majority of crime. Yeah - that makes a lot of rational sense doesn't it?

Are you encouraging police to go after people of color? Because that would be unconstitutional, right? Altho I guess that doesn't matter once we decide "black people are bad"

>I've tried to figure out what an institution would look like if all the alleged "systemic" racism was removed.

not like this https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/27/us/paul-weiss-partner-diversity-law-firm.html

> nor do I know in what way it's specifically "white"

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/29/17793104/white-house-intern-picture-summer-2018

https://www.amazon.ca/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224

I've discussed this in more detail elsewhere in the subreddit, but the crux of what went wrong is somewhere in the difference between "art" and "propaganda." The problem in distinguishing the two is that both have a point of view; propaganda isn't special in that regard. The criteria for defining propaganda has something to do with the approach to the subject-object problem; you can't really say that the difference between art and propaganda is "Truth." "Truth" is the very thing explored or questioned by art, so it's circular to evaluate art vs propaganda on an assumption about truth.

Two individuals can take the same set of facts and spin opposite "truths" with the use of narrative framing. Perhaps propaganda tells lies with intent to persuade, whereas art tells lies by human fallibility. The problem is that framing is a deliberate (and necessary) choice on the part of the artist, and when the critic comes from a different worldview, he is likely to consider art from his interlocutor as being propaganda, and vice versa.

The difference between propaganda and art is something like the difference between a good and bad faith argument, and an artist's willingness to be proven wrong with a better argument. In science, Popper refers to this as falsification of hypothesis rather than seeking confirmation. Getting into philosophy and sociology of science is a deep rabbit hole; I can go there, but we'll never get back on topic. Suffice to say, I tend to think of art as being science that hasn't been understood well enough to be defined yet, or ever. But that's something else that could be hotly debated.

In any case, "Maps of Meaning," a college textbook, is a cross-cultural study of Ancient myth, and 20th century political ideology, through the lens of evolutionary psychology in an attempt to explain the origins of ideology and why it drives people to war and genocide. The author of that book is extremely qualified to analyze and discuss the psychology of belief systems, in spite of his critics' claims to the contrary. He might be wrong (I don't think he is), but he's certainly not unfounded or ignorant as some have suggested.

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415922224/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_eYQiDbYS7JS67

That was an unsatisfying answer, I suppose. You want me to make a genuine play before we continue, fine, I'll give it a shot. But the supposed delineation between literal and symbolic is the first thing you'll have to discard. It is entirely wrongheaded. It's not even wrong. On one end a literal interpretation has Christians eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, and you end up painting them as vampire cannibals. Which was probably your agenda anyway. On the other, everything is symbolic and the new testament might aswell be referring to Jesus' covert war against clown reptiles. These answers are silly because the question is silly.

In the early 20th century, mathmetician Kurt Gödel set out to create his incompleteness theorem. The theorem was originally intended to show Russel and Whitehead's system for working with natural numbers as complete. This is important, because what use is an incomplete system? Not only did he end up proving the system as incomplete (humiliating two people he actually admired), he ended up proving no consistent system of logic can ever be complete, and vice versa. Neither can the system prove it's own axioms, any more than you can lift yourself by pulling your hair. Why is this crucial to a debate about religion? Because divinity is complete.

Source: Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.

So math and science arrive at what religion already knew. All is one. Duality is false. Symbolic and literal interpretations do not exclude one another, they show aspects of the same complete divine thing. They are shifts in perspective. An unsolved rubix cube does not disprove the solution. One implies the other.

And so the singular divine splits itself into male and female. One becomes two. And the coupling of two will beget a third. But duality is false, division is false. Man is fallible and incomplete, so he stifles the world through his ego. The benevolent king becomes the tyrant. The mighty creator becomes Holdfast, the enemy, the dragon.

It's been awhile since I've actually seen a bible, but as I recall the new testament does not start with Mary or God. It was Herod who called the census and set the whole thing in motion. The bad, unjust king strangles the land in an attempt to secure his reign. Thereby his actions create the very thing he fears most: the hero.

The tyrant-father is just a different face of the holy creator. When the arch-enemy holds the entire world in his stranglehold, new life springs from the void itself. The story of the savior is the story of every single human being. It shows the hero ascending the dominance hierarchy, dethroning the evil tyrant, slaying the dragon and reuniting with the divine. The hero's special weapon is the ability to tell good from evil in all their different guises. And again good and evil are just a perspective shift away from being truth and untruth. What difference does it make if the dragon is an actual dragon, mankind's sin, or the duality of all existance itself? All of it is symbolic. And in the sense that all of us are heroes, all of it is real.

Source: Hero with a thousand faces by Joseph Campbell.

>Clearly we can infer the Apostles and many early Christians believed that these things literally happened, and whether or not you think this is zealotry, the number of Christians who believe this literally is greater than those who see this symbolically.

This part brings a particular quote to mind, and besides there's a third book that I can show off as having read:

>The sun signifies first of all gold. But just as philosophical gold is not common gold, so the sun is neither just the metallic gold nor the heavenly orb...Redness, heat and dryness are the classical qualities of the Egyptian Set (Greek Typhon), the evil principle which, like the alchemical sulphur, is closely connected with the devil. And just as TYphon has his kingdom in the forbidden sea, so the sun, as sol centralis has its sea, its "crude perceptible water" and as sol coelestis its "subtle imperceptible water." This sea water (Aqua pontica) is extracted from sun and moon...
>
>We can barely understand such a description, contaminated as it is by imaginative and mythological associations peculiar to the medieval mind. It is precisely this fantastical contamination however that renders the alchemical description worth examining- Not from the perspective of the history of science, concerned with the examination of outdated objective ideas, but from the perspective of psychology, focused on the interpretation of subjective frames of reference...The alchemist could not sperate his subjective ideas from the nature of things, from his hypotheses (emphasis by prof. Peterson)...The medieval man lived in a universe that was moral- where everything, even ores and metals, strived above all for perfection.

Source: Maps of meaning by Jordan Peterson.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224

That ones not even in the top ten ...... Apparentely "words mean different to you coz you special" brainless.

There's not a single deleted comment in this whole thread, what the hell are you talking about? Are you sure you're not mixing me up with someone else?

Anyways as to meaning, I think it's self evident meaning exists. Outside of that, I defer to the work Maps of Meaning as my reference on this claim. It's a brilliant work, you can read the summary of it here https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415922224/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_TU3OzbN877A4R and the author has posted a free to download PDF on his researchgate.


Anyways I seriously study meaning from multiple academic fields. I know a thing or two about it, and enough to say it exists. Don't agree with me? Read the literature and then make up your mind. I mean, what is your foundation on this subject, huh? Armchair philosophy? Rick and Morty?



I didn't tell suggest to two people to go to therapy because they disagreed with me, otherwise I would have told everyone that. The people I did say that to seem obviously unwell, one much more than and other and extreme nihilism is debatable as to whether or not it can be considered "unwell". Anyways I didn't give a diagnosis. If you actually knew what a diagnosis is I wouldn't have to explain this to you.


I claimed happiness and materialism is meaningless. I never said you people live meaningless lives. Only that meaning is better than materialism and in of itself happiness. Additionally if you don't believe in meaning, why is it a bad thing to live a meaningless life??? Are you even hearing yourself? Jeez.

If this is a serious post--and I certainly hope it isn't--I suggest you read Jordan Peterson and change your own mind:

https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224

https://www.amazon.ca/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Peterson/dp/0415922224/ref=sr_1_3?hvadid=74629409468670&hvbmt=bp&hvdev=c&hvqmt=p&keywords=jordan+perterson&qid=1562453628&s=gateway&sr=8-3

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https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jordan_Peterson2