Does Jordan Peterson Misconstrue “Myth”?

“This, however, poses another problem because it presumes that mythical truth is somehow free from ideology.”

In Maps of Meaning, Jordan Peterson argues that myth is an antidote to ideology. He insists that myth, as opposed to ideology, offers complete truth. By complete truth, Peterson means that mythical narratives can represent the totality of conflicting forces in any given situation. In contrast, ideology is biased and one sided; it celebrates positive characters of the story while leaving aside negative dimensions.

Eager to confront this ideological fallacy, Peterson’s oeuvre stages a confrontation between myth and ideology. In both Maps of Meaning and 12 Rules for Life, Peterson believes that prevailing ideologies—almost always associated with left-wing, socialist, postmodern neo-Marxist beliefs—are the arch-enemy of the mythical worldview. In the preface to Maps of Meaning, Peterson rails against left-wing socialist ideology, labeling its followers as “peevish” and “irritable.” Upon reading George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier, Peterson discovered “that socialists did not really like the poor. They merely hated the rich.” Socialist ideology, Peterson believes, serves “to mask resentment and hatred, bred by failure.”

Peterson assumes that to step into the world of mythology is to step out of ideology.

12 Rules follow the same trajectory. Peterson offers his polemic against ideologues that cover-up the structure of truth with lies. Ideologues impose “ideological beliefs” in a rational way to achieve a pre-defined outcome. As usual, Peterson directs these charges against the political left, which, according to him, bends reality to fit a predefined agenda. “A left-leaning student” Peterson asserts, “adopts a trendy, anti-authority stance and spends the next twenty years working resentfully to topple the windmills of his imagination.” Such a stance, according to Peterson, is symptomatic of a simplistic ideology. The ideologues simplify things by adopting and operating out of a single axiom: “government is bad, immigration is bad, capitalism is bad, patriarchy is bad.”