The World Knot: A Maps of Meaning Summary
A Schema of Mythology, the World, & Human Action
This essay is a work in progress and explores the book Maps of Meaning in a more condensed and explicitly schematic manner.
Given this is a short piece of a ~470 page book (which is dense in itself) the essay may be difficult to read. Please note that some sections are taken directly from the book due to their aptness.
The Exploratory Hero section is particularly challenging (to write and read) due to the breadth it covers. The writing of this section will be made more clear with future edits as time permits.
Introduction
A set of conscious and unconscious meta-narratives underlie all human action and behavior. Understanding these narratives in their most explicit form (myth) cultivates insight into the interpretation of oneself and one’s relation to the world (meaning) — rendering the basis of all human action (however irrational) comprehensible. Figure 1: The Mythological World of Experience represents the most fundamental of these meta-narratives — the deconstruction and exploration of which is the focus of this essay.
The Generation of Myth & Its Constituent Elements
Through the process of creative exploration, individuals generate new behavioral knowledge (patterns of action) that afford insight into one’s environment and circumstance. If the behavior is sufficiently adaptive to changing situations, it is imitated and adopted by others seeking to benefit from this participatory knowledge.
Over generations, archetypal human action is imitated, abstracted into play, formalized into drama and narrative, and crystalized into ‘myth’. Each developmental ‘stage’ offers an increasingly explicit (conscious), generalized (abstracted and broadly applicable), detailed representation of the behavioral wisdom embedded in and established during previous stages.
Thus, the ‘partially implicit’ mythic stories (that guide our adaptation) appear to embody abstractions of the constituent elements of human experience. Implicitly encoded (preserved) in these myths are the archetypal responses to these fundamental elements, and an ideal, generalized ‘way’ of mediating between and relating to them (a meta-behavior). Abstracting from myths across different cultures and times, these elements are the unknown (unexplored territory); the known (explored territory); the knower (the process that mediates between them); and their preceding chaos (the ultimate source of all things).
The interaction between these four elements symbolizes a fundamental generalization of all human experience and guides all human action (both phenomenologically and neuropsychologically). The ideal adaptive behavior (meta-behavior) applicable across all arenas (worldly situations) can be extracted from these myths as ‘a certain way that the knower interacts with the known and the unknown’ (made explicit in further sections).
Meta-Problems & the Need for Meta-Behavior
The need for this ideal meta-behavior is that the individual (the knower) is confronted with enduring ‘meta-problems’ (problems that transcend the individuals time or place).
As a cultural creature, one must come to terms with the existence of that culture. The individual must master the domain of the known (explored territory) — which is the set of interpretations and behavioral schemas one shares with their societal peers. One must understand their role within that culture — a role defined by the necessity of preservation, maintenance and transmission of tradition, as well as by capacity for revolution and radical update of that tradition (when such update becomes necessary).
The individual must also be able to tolerate and even benefit from the existence of the transcendental unknown (unexplored territory) — which is the aspect of experience that cannot be addressed with mere application of memorized and habitual procedures.
Finally, the individual must adapt to the presence of oneself — must face the endlessly tragic problem of the knower, the exploratory process; must serve as eternal mediator between the creative and destructive “underworld” of the unknown and the secure, oppressive kingdom of human culture.
We cannot see the unknown, because we are protected from it by everything familiar and unquestioned. We are in addition habituated to what is familiar and known (by definition) and are therefore often unable to apprehend its structure (often even unable to perceive that it is there). Finally, we remain ignorant of our own true nature (as the knower), because of its intrinsic complexity, and because we act toward others and ourselves in a socialized manner, which is to say a predictable manner — and thereby shield ourselves from our own mystery.
The figures of myth, however, embody the world — “visible” and “invisible.” Though the analysis of such figures, we can come to see just what meaning means, and how it reveals itself in relation to our actions. Represented as characters in myth, these figures can be conceived of as: The Great Mother, The Great Father, The Exploratory Hero, and the Dragon of Primordial Chaos — corresponding to the constituent elements of human experience and schematized in Figure 1.
The Dragon of Primordial Chaos
1.1) The Dragon
A background of undifferentiated primordial chaos lies at the foundation of all experience — prior to, and birthing the known, unknown, and knower (shown in Figure 2).
Mythic symbols depicting this chaos (‘in the beginning’) are imaginative pictures that serve to represent a paradoxical totality — a self-contained and complete “state” that defies precise definition. Within this state, all distinct elements coexist in harmony, prior to the boundaries of being and nonbeing, beginning and end, matter and energy, spirit and body, consciousness and unconsciousness, femininity and masculinity, night and day. These elements remain intertwined, awaiting their separation into distinguishable components of our experiential world.
In the absence of a frame of reference, an object is everything conceivable at once. It constitutes the union of all currently discriminable opposites. It embodies boundless potentiality.
This potentiality (chaos) is frequently represented in myth as the self-devouring dragon (the uroboros).
- As a snake, the uroboros is a creature of the ground, of matter; as a bird (a winged animal), it is a creature of the air, the sky, spirit
- The uroboros symbolizes the union of known (associated with spirit) and unknown (associated with matter), explored and unexplored; symbolizes the juxtaposition of the “masculine” principles of security, tyranny and order with the “feminine” principles of darkness, dissolution, creativity and chaos
- Furthermore, as a snake, the uroboros has the capacity to shed its skin — to be “reborn.” Thus, it also represents the possibility of transformation, and stands for the knower, who can transform chaos into order, and order into chaos
The uroboros is one thing, as everything that has not yet been explored is one thing; it exists everywhere, and at all times. It is completely self-contained, completely self-referential: it feeds, fertilizes and engulfs itself.
It unites the beginning and the end, being and becoming, in the endless circle of its existence. It is the primal origin and ultimate point of return for every discriminable object and every independent subject.
1.2) Creation of All Things from the Chaos
The birth of the world, the genesis of the cosmos, emerges as the ‘Dragon of Chaos’ undergoes its initial division into the ‘world parents’— the Sky and the Earth (known and unknown). This division is intricately intertwined with the emergence of the explorer, the hero, the knower of existence (portrayed in Figure 3).
Through the act of knowing and exploration, the knower distinguishes between the known and the unknown, effectively bringing forth the known and unknown aspects of reality from the primordial chaos. The known is defined as that which is not the unknown, and vice versa, thus establishing a co-identification between the two. The knower’s role in delineating and differentiating what is known and unknown marks the emergence of experience itself.
It is through this process that ‘the world’ (as a forum for action) begins to emerge, propelled by the intertwined dynamics of the knower and the division of chaos into the known and unknown.
The Exploratory Hero & Knower
2.1) The Narrative Structure of Experience
As the subject of experience and ‘realizer’ (co-identifier) of the order and chaos, the Exploratory Hero represents the individual in a world of the known, exploring the infinite backdrop of the incalculable and unpredictable unknown. In order to survive, succeed, and propagate in a world whose complexity exceeds our representational and functional capacity, the emergence of ‘narratives’ (motivations) are ingrained physiologically and culturally to radically simplify the determinate world. The protagonist of these narratives (represented in myth) is the Exploratory Hero. The experiencer of these narratives (subject of experience) is the individual — traversing the world with their unique amalgamation of inherited/acquired motivational schemas. We will focus on the action of an individual before returning to the myth of the Exploratory Hero.
The maps (narratives) that configure our motivated behavior have a certain comprehensible structure — which can be generalized into the most basic of narrative structure: Point A (the present), and Point B (the future). This is illustrated in Figure 4. The present is sensory experience as it is currently manifested to us — as we currently understand it — granted motivational significance according to our current knowledge and desires. The future is an image or partial image of perfection, to which we compare the present, insofar as we understand its significance. Wherever there exists a mismatch between the two, the unexpected or novel occurs (by definition), grips our attention, and activates the intrapsychic systems that govern fear and hope.
We strive to bring novel occurrences back into the realm of predictability or to exploit them for previously unconsidered potential by altering our behavior or our patterns of representation. We conceive of a path connecting present to future. This path is “composed” of the behaviors required to produce the transformations we desire — required to turn the (eternally) insufficient present into the (ever-receding) paradisal future.
We construct our idealized world (point B), in fantasy (either implicitly or explicitly — that is conscious or unconscious), according to all the information we have at our disposal. It appears, therefore, that the image of a goal (a fantasy about the nature of the desired future, conceived of in relationship to a model of the significance of the present) provides much of the framework determining the motivational significance of ongoing current events. The individual uses his or her knowledge to construct a hypothetical situation, where the motivational balance of ongoing events is optimized: where there is sufficient satisfaction, minimal punishment, tolerable threat and abundant hope, all balanced together properly over the short and longer terms.
This optimal situation might be conceptualized as a pattern of career advancement, with a long-term state in mind, signifying perfection, as it might be attained profanely (richest drug dealer, happily married matron, chief executive officer of a large corporation). Alternatively, perfection might be regarded as the absence of all unnecessary things, and the pleasures of an ascetic life. The point is that some desirable future situation is conceptualized in fantasy and used as a target point for operation in the present. Such operations may be conceived of as links in a chain (with the end of the chain anchored to the desirable future state). As new information is gathered, this idealized situation will morph and change.
As is the case with the meta-myth, this present and idealized state is ingrained neurophysiological in addition to being a neat way of explaining behavior. It is very literally how behavior is mediated. Put another way, these narratives are not a thought or concept driving behavior in a deterministic manner — they are instead neurophysiological qualities that act as a delimited frame for perception, emotion, cognition, and action.
2.2) Spatial & Temporal Resolution of the Narrative
It is important to note that this narrative structure in reality isn’t as simple as one super-ordinate Point A and Point B. There are in fact, nested (hierarchical) stories within each other, at different spatial (space) and temporal (time) resolutions. The “big” story is actually composed of nested “little” stories. The amalgamation of these narratives can be appropriately defined as an ‘identity’ — displayed in Figure 5.
One’s awareness is typically on one spatial-temporal resolution at a time — but can switch/shift between them when appropriate. The cognitive operations dependent upon the intact prefrontal cortex can move up and down these levels, so to speak, fixating at one, and allowing for determinate action, when that is deemed most appropriate (making the others implicit at that place and time); reorganizing and reconstituting the levels and their respective statuses, when that becomes necessary. Just like the narrative structure itself, this focus on one spatial-temporal resolution at a time radically simplifies the determinate world (forum for action) to a point where one can act effectively.
An example of shifting between these spatial-temporal resolutions can illuminate its fundamentality to human behavior. Say you are in the kitchen, and you want to read a book in your study. An image of you reading a book in your favorite chair occupies the “ends” or “desired future” pole of your currently operational story (contrasted with the still-too-illiterate you of the present time). This “story” might have a conceived duration of, say, ten minutes; in addition, it “occupies” a universe defined by the presence of a half-dozen relevant “objects” (a reading lamp, a chair, the floor you have to walk on to get to your chair, the book itself, your reading glasses) and the limited space they occupy. You make it to your chair. Your book is at hand. You reach up to turn on the reading light — flash! — the bulb burns out.
The unknown — the unexpected, in this context — has just manifested itself. You switch “set.” Now your goal, still nested within the “reading a book” story, is “fix the reading lamp.” You adjust your plans, find a new bulb, and place it in the lamp. Flash! It burns out again. This time you smell burnt wire. This is worrisome. The book is now forgotten — irrelevant, given the current state of affairs. Is there something wrong with the lamp (and, therefore, at a slightly more general level, with all future plans that depend on that lamp)? You explore. The lamp doesn’t smell. It’s the electrical outlet, in the wall! The plate covering the outlets is hot! What does that mean? You shift your apprehension up several levels of spatial-temporal resolution. Maybe something is wrong with the wiring of the house itself! The lamp is now forgotten. Ensuring that your house does not burn down has suddenly taken priority.
Figure 6 shows the same diagram as Figure 5, but more generalized and with intermediate steps. Sub-diagram (1) is the familiar and represents the “normal” story, composed of present state, desired future state, and three of the various means that might be utilized to transform the former into latter. This Sub-diagram is predicated on the presumption that many means might be used to get from “Point A” to “Point B”; in truth, however, only one means (the “most efficient” or otherwise desirable) will be employed at any one time. We only have one motor output system (can only perform one action at a time). Sub-diagram (2) is a transformed version of (1), showing that the “plans” of (1) can better be conceptualized as “stories,” in and of themselves. Sub-diagram (2) is still predicated on the presumption that a number of smaller stories might be used as means for a larger end. However, you might do more than one thing, but if two of these multiple things conflict, one will have to be made subordinate to the other. Plans (and ends) are granted comparative importance and organized accordingly. This state of affairs, where the relative importance of (potentially competing) plans has been fixed, is represented in Sub-diagram (3). This is a multilevel, nested structure, composed of the interdependent goals and plans comprising the “life story” and is the generalized version of Figure 5.
2.3) The Creative Act
But what generates the specific set of stories that an individual is implicitly or explicitly operating within? And how are these stories determined / inherited by people? It relates to human’s capability for imitation and subsequent abstraction in play, ritual, drama, narrative and myth. Humans are extremely (uncontrollably) imitative, overwhelmingly social and interminably exploratory. These characteristics allow us to imitative complex adaptive behavior, generate new adaptive behavior, and abstract/represent this behavior in ever more explicit mediums.
Levels of Abstraction (Explicitness & Generalizability):
At its most unconscious (implicit) level, our cultures are primarily patterns of activity undertaken in a social context that we absorb as children through the process of imitation. As parents are to children, cultures are to adults: we do not know how the patterns we act out (or the concepts we utilize) originated, or what precise “purposes” (what long-term “goals”) they currently serve — just as a child does not actually understand the reason that sharing is ‘good’.
Mimetic propensity, expressed in imitative action, provides for tremendous expansion of behavioral competence; allows the ability of each to become the capability of all. Precise duplicative facility, however, still retains pronounced limitations. Specific behaviors retain their adaptive significance only within, restricted environments (only within bounded frames of reference). If environmental contingencies shift (for whatever reason), the utility of strategies designed for the original circumstance (and transmitted through imitation) may become dramatically restricted or even reversed.
The capacity for abstraction of imitation in the initial stages is the capability for dramatic play . Play transcends imitation in that it is less context-bound; it allows for the abstraction of essential principles from specific (admirable) instances of behavior. Play allows for the initial establishment of a more general model of what constitutes allowable (or ideal) behavior. Elaboration of dramatic play into formal drama likewise ritualizes play, abstracting its key elements one level more, and further distills the vitally interesting aspects of behavior — which are representative (by no mere chance) of that active exploratory and communicative pattern upon which all adaptation is necessarily predicated.
Theatrical ritual dramatically represents the individual and social consequences of stylized, distilled behavioral patterns, based in their expression upon different assumptions of value and expectations of outcome. Formal drama clothes potent ideas in personality, exploring different paths of directed or motivated action, playing out conflict, cathartically, offering ritual models for emulation or rejection.
Emergence of narrative, which contains much more information than it explicitly presents, further disembodies the knowledge extant latently in behavioral pattern. Narrative presents semantic representation of play or drama — offers essentially abstracted episodic representations of social interaction and individual endeavor — and allows behavioral patterns contained entirely in linguistic representation to incarnate themselves in dramatic form on the private stage of individual imagination. Much of the information derived from a story is actually already contained in episodic memory (implicit unconscious from less abstract imitation). In a sense, it could be said that the words of the story merely act as a retrieval cue for information already in the mnestic system (of the listener), although perhaps not yet transformed into a form capable either of explicit (semantic) communication, or alteration of procedure.
Adaptive Behavior Feedback Loop:
The explicitness and generalization of behavior into narrative (myth) is of critical importance. Development of narrative means verbal abstraction of knowledge disembodied in episodic memory and embodied in behavior. It means capability to disseminate such knowledge widely and rapidly throughout a communicating population, with minimal expenditure of time and energy. And finally, it means intact preservation of such knowledge, simply and accurately, for generations to come — which leads to more adaptive behaviors. As such narrative description of archetypal behavioral patterns and representational schemas — myth — appears as an essential precondition for social construction and subsequent regulation of complexly civilized individual presumption, action and desire.
Procedure (adaptive behavior) is established through exploration, then represented, then altered in abstraction, then practiced; the procedure changes, as a consequence of the abstracted and practiced modification; this change in turn produces an alteration in its representation, and so on, and so on, from individual to individual, down the chain of generations. This process can occur “externally,” as a consequence of social interaction, or “internally,” as a consequence of word and image-mediated abstract exploratory activity (“thought”). This interactive loop is represented schematically in Figure 7. Every level of analysis — that is, every definable categorization system and schema for action (every determinate narrative) — has been constructed, interpersonally, in the course of exploratory behavior; communication of the strategies; and results thereof.
Returning to the nested narrative structure of motivation outlined in Part 2.2, the stories that most easily or by default occupy our attention, are relatively accessible to consciousness and amenable to explicit verbal/semantic formulation and communication. The higher-level stories, which cover a broader expanse of spatial temporal territory, are increasingly complex and, therefore, cannot be as simply formulated. This is outlined in Figure 8. Myth comes in to fill the breach.
2.4) The Hero Myth and Exploratory Hero
Now that there is an understanding of the narratives an individual’s motivations are comprised of, and how they are created, it is time to move back to the myth of the Exploratory Hero.
To summarize, behavioral knowledge is generated during the process of creative exploration. The consequences of such exploration — the adaptive behavioral patterns generated — are imitated and represented more abstractly. Play allows for the generalization of imitated knowledge, and for the integration of behaviors garnered from different sources (one “good thing to do” may conflict in a given situation with another; “good things to do” therefore have to be ranked in terms of their context-dependent value, importance or dominance). Each succeeding stage of abstraction modifies all others, as our ability to speak, for example, has expanded our capacity to play.
As the process of abstraction continues and information vital for survival is represented more simply and efficiently, what is represented transforms from the particulars of any given adaptive actions to the most general and broadly appropriate pattern of adaptation — that of creative exploration itself. That of confronting the unknown to extract new adaptive behavior. This is the creative act. The behavior which generates new behavior. The most adaptive behavior. The meta-myth. This represented, is the myth of the hero.
At its core, the Exploratory Hero (and how it deals with the known and unknown) is the optimal holistic pattern of adaptive behavior for individuals to imitate (applicable across the most generalized number of domains). It is characterized by voluntary advance in the face of the dangerous and promising unknown, generation of something of value therefore and, simultaneously, dissolution and reconstruction of current knowledge. That story — which is what to do, when you no longer know what to do — defines the central pattern of behavior embedded in all genuinely religious systems.
As such, an examination of the Exploratory Hero part of the meta-myth can most effectively be considered in three parts: the emergence of anomaly; disintegration into unknown, and regeneration into a new known. And as outlined, the creative exploration which the exploratory hero represents, parallels phenomenologically and neuropsychologically with human experience.
The Great Mother of the Unknown
2.1) The Great Mother
Work in Progress
3.2) Emergence of Anomaly (Unknown)
Work in Progress
3.3) Degeneration into Chaos
Work in Progress
3.4) Regeneration into a New Known
Work in Progress
3.5) Voluntary Confrontation with the Unknown
Work in Progress
The Great Father of the Known
4.1) The Great Father
Work in Progress
4.2) Reintegration of Knowledge
Work in Progress
4.3) Catalyzed Anomaly or Chaos from Tyranny
Work in Progress
5) Bounded Revolution of Degeneration and Regeneration
Work in Progress
