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1-Page Summary of Maps Of Meaning
Overview
People enjoy stories.
Whether you’re talking about the ancient Greek gods, fairy tales or Star Wars – narratives that include courageous heroes have always captured people’s attention. That is true since the beginning of civilization.
There are many stories in the world that share common themes. For example, there’s “The Odyssey” and “Alice in Wonderland.” These stories were written by different authors, but they have similar elements. Some people think that this is because of some universal human nature or a shared desire to tell certain types of stories. This book combines mythology, history, and psychology to explain how our minds create meaning and how myths transmit those meanings. It also explains what myths mean in today’s modern society where we’re so concerned with rationality.
There are three things that humans and rats are equally afraid of. All myths have a similar structure, and we can live meaningful lives by following those models.
Big Idea #1: Humans explore their environment out of a fear of the unknown.
If you put a rat in a new cage, it will first freeze. It’s afraid because the environment is unfamiliar and dangerous could be lurking around the corner. However, if you leave it alone long enough to get used to its surroundings, it will start sniffing and licking at things until they seem normal again.
Humans are more complex than rats, but we explore our world in a similar way. When exploring the world, humans tend to avoid new things and stick with what they know. The known is familiar territory that doesn’t scare us as much as the unknown does because it’s something we’ve seen before or can research on our own. Anomalies are anything unusual that stops us in our tracks because we don’t understand them yet.
Since we have no way of knowing what’s in the unknown, it can be both threatening and promising. For example, imagine you received a letter with an unknown contents in the mail that said “Open at your own risk”. Would you feel excited or scared to open it? If you knew it was sent by a friend, for example, then you would probably not feel as nervous about opening it.
We have a natural instinct to explore the unknown. This is because we hope that by exploring it, we can reduce our fear and make it familiar territory.
Unlike rats, we can explore the unknown by thinking about it. You might spend just as much time examining the letter as you would theorizing why someone sent it and who they are.
Our thoughts and actions are critical to understanding the world around us. They help turn the unknown into something we know more about. With that power, we can actively shape our world.
Big Idea #2: Stories help us navigate the world as a place of meaning.
We often think of science as a way to understand the world, but it’s really more about understanding facts. Emotions play an important role in helping us determine which things are good or bad for us and how we should react to them. The meaning of something depends on your current goals and preferences, as well as your social and cultural context. For instance, what you get out of a cheesecake depends not just on whether you like cheesecake but also if you’re dieting and who’s offering it to you—your grandmother or someone else?
From a scientific point of view, the piece of cheesecake is always the same. However, it’s how we feel about that food that determines our thoughts and actions toward it. Therefore, pure rationalism isn’t enough to help us navigate real-world situations where facts and feelings intermingle. Luckily, humans have devised an ingenious cultural tool to read meaning into things: stories. Shared stories about the sun and stars, gods and kings, heroes and monsters are essential parts of human culture since ancient times. Great myths like those in Egyptian cosmology or Greek/Roman mythology belong to this category as well as Christian passion tales.
